Recently, I came across an article about a new explanation for behavior, including intelligence. This ‘free energy principle’ claims that entities (including us) “try to minimize the difference between their model of the world and their sense and associated perception”. To put it in other words, we try to avoid surprise.  And we can either act to put the world back in alignment with our perceptions, or we have to learn, to create better predictions.

Now, this fits in  very nicely with the goal I’d been trying to talk about yesterday, generating surprise. Surprise  does seem to be a key to learning! It sounds worth exploring.

The theory is quite deep. So deep, people line up to ask questions of the guy, Karl Friston, behind it!  Not just average people, but top scientists need his help. Because this theory promises to yield answers to AI, mental illness, and more!  Yet, at core, the idea is simply that entities (all the way down, wrapped in Markov blankets, at organ and cell level as well) look to minimize the differences between the world and their understanding. The difference that drives the choice of response (learning or acting) is ‘surprise’.

This correlates nicely with the point I was making about trying to trigger transformative perceptions to drive learning. This suggests that we  should  be looking to create these disturbances in complacency. The valence of these surprises may need to be balanced to the learning goal (transformative experience or transformative learning), but if we can generate an appropriate lack of expectation and outcome, we open the door to learning. People will want to refine their models, to adapt.

Going further, to also make it desirable to learn, the learner action that triggers the mismatch likely should be set in a task that learners viscerally get is important to them.  The suggestion, then, is create a situation where learners want to succeed, but their initial knowledge shows that they can’t. Then they’re ready to learn. And we (generally) know the rest.

It’s nice when an interest in AI coincides with an interest in learning. I’m excited about the potential of trying to build this systematically into design processes. I welcome your thoughts!

There’s a time when someone takes a result, doesn’t put it into context, and leads you to bad information. And we have to call it out. In this case, someone opined about a common misconception in regards to brainstorming. This person cited a scientific study to buttress an argument about how such a process should go. However, the approach cited in the study was narrower than what brainstorming could and should be. As a consequence, the article gave what I consider to be bad information. And that’s a problem.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming, to be fair, has many interpretations.  The original brought people into a room, had them generate ideas, and evaluate them.  However, as I wrote elsewhere, we now have better models of brainstorming. The most important thing is to get everyone to consider the issue  independently, before sharing. This taps into the benefits of diversity. You should have identified the criteria of the problem to be addressed or outcome you’re looking for.

Then, you share, and still refrain from evaluation, looking for ideas sparked from the combinations of two individual ideas, extending them (even illogically). the goal here is to ensure you explore the full space of possibilities. The point here is to  diverge.

Finally, you get critical and evaluate the ideas. Your goal is to  converge on one or several that you’re going to test. Here, you’re looking to surface the best option under the relevant criteria. You should be testing against the initial criteria.

Bad Advice

So, where did this other article go wrong? The premise what that the idea of ‘no bad ideas’ wasn’t valid. They cited a study where groups were given one of three instructions before addressing a problem: not to criticize, free to debate and criticize, or no instructions.  The groups with instructions did better, but the criticize group were. best.  And that’s ok,  because this wasn’t an  optimal brainstorming design.

What the group with debate and criticizing were actually tasked with doing most of the whole process: freewheeling debate  and evaluation, diverging and converging. The second instruction group was just diverging.  But, if you’re doing it all at once, you’re not getting the benefit of each stage! They were all missing the independent step, the freewheeling didn’t have evaluation, and the combined freewheeling and criticizing group wouldn’t get the best of either.

This simplistic interpretation of the research misses the nuances of brainstorming, and ends up giving bad advice. Ok, if the folks doing the brainstorming in orgs are violating the premise of the stages, it is good advice, but why would you do suboptimal brainstorming?  It might take a tiny bit longer, but it’s not a big issue, and the outputs are likely to be better.

Doing better

We can, and should, recognize the right context to begin with, and interpret research in that context. Taking an under-informed view can lead you to misinterpret research, and consequently lead you to bad prescriptions.  I’m sure this article gave this person and, by association, the patina of knowing what they’re talking about. They’re citing research, after all!  But if you unpack it, the veneer falls off and it’s unhelpful at the core. And it’s important to be able to dig deep enough to really know what’s going on.

I implore you to turn a jaundiced eye to information that doesn’t come from someone with some real time in the trenches. We need good research translators.  I’ve a list of trustworthy sources on the resources page of my book on myths. Tread carefully in the world of self-promoting media, and you’ll be less hampered by the mud ;).

I was listening in to a webinar on trends in higher education. The speakers had been looking at different higher ed pedagogy models, within and external to institutions. It became clear that there was a significant gap between a focus on meeting corporate needs and the original goals of education. Naturally, it got me to think, and one link was, not surprisingly, wisdom. So what does that mean?

In the ‘code academy’ models that are currently challenging to higher education, there’s very much a ‘career’ focus. That is, they’re equipping students to be ready to take jobs.  Which is understandable, but there’s a gap. A not-for-profit initiative I was involved with wanted to get folks a meaningful job. My point was that I didn’t want them to get a job, I wanted them to  keep a job!  And that means also learning about learning to learn skills, and more. That more is where we make a substantial shift.

The shift I want to think about is not just what corporations need, but what  society needs. The original role of institutions like Oxford and Harvard was to create the next generation leaders of society. That is, to give the philosophical (in the broad sense) and historical perspective to let them do thinking like what delivered the US Constitution (as an example). And there’s plenty of lip service to this, but little impact. For example, look at the success of teaching ethics separately from other business classes…let’s move on.

It seems like there’s several things we need to integrate. As pointed out, treating them separately doesn’t work. So how do we integrate them and make them relevant.  Let’s take Sternberg’s model of Wisdom, where you think about decisions:

• for the short term  and long term
• for you, yours,  and society as a whole
• and also explicitly discuss the value assumptions underpinning the decision.

This gives us a handle. We need to find ways to naturally embed these elements into our tasks. Our tasks need to require 21C skills and understanding the societal context as well.

In my ‘application-based instruction’ model, I talk about giving learners challenges that do require 21 C skills in natural ways. In this model, tasks mimic world tasks, asking for things like presentations, RFPs, problem recommendations, and more.  Then, how do we also include the societal aspects?  I suppose by putting those decisions in situations where there are implications not just for the business but for society.

Ok, it may be too much to layer this on every assignment (major assignment, not the accompanying knowledge check), but it should be covered in every subject (yes, even introductory) in some way. This thinking has already led me to create a question on evaluating policy tradeoffs for the mobile course I’m developing.

We need to keep the societal implications involved. Ensuring that at least a subset of the assignments do that is one approach. Doing so in a natural way requires some extra thinking, but the consequences are better. Particularly if the instructor actually makes a point of it (making a note to myself…).  A separate course doesn’t do it. So let’s get wise, and develop in deeper ways that will deliver better outcomes  in the domain, and for the greater good. Shall we?

Here, a foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of my little mind. While there are some learnings in here (for me and others), it’s really just getting stuff off my chest. Feel free to move along. This is just a lack of consistency that I suggest is unnecessary and ill-conceived.

I’ve hinted at this before, but I don’t think I’ve gone into detail. I like LinkedIn. It’s a useful augment for business networking. However, what drives me nuts is the inconsistency between the device app and the web interface.  One instance is sufficient: messaging someone you’ve just connected to.

So, on the device, if you link to someone, you immediately get a notice and a link to send them a message. And I like that, since I like to send a quick followup to everyone I link to (a trick I learned from a colleague).  On the device, it goes straight to the messaging interface. Perfect. Now, from the invitations on the app that I want to query (e.g. it’s not clear why they’ve linked) or to explain why I won’t (I generally  don’t link to orgs, for instance), I can’t do that, but that’s ok, it can wait ’til I’m on my laptop using the (richer) web app.

On the web version, when I accept a link, I’m also offered the chance to message them, but here’s the trick: it’s not a message, it’s an InMail!  And, of course, those are limited. I don’t want to use my InMails on messaging someone I’m already linked to.  (I don’t use them in general, but that’s a separate issue.).  WHY can’t they go to messages like the app?  That’d be consistent, and this is a worse default than using messages.  I get that the app would have more limited functionality in return for being an app (there’re benefits, like notifications), but why would the full web version do things that are contrary to your interests  and intentions?!?!

Good design says consistency  is a good thing, generally; certainly aligning with user expectations and best interests. It’s bad design to do something that’s unnecessarily wasteful.  There are lots of such irritations: web forms that only tell you the expected format  after you get it wrong instead of making it easy to point to the answer  or give you a clue and sites with mismatched security (overly complex for unessential data or vice-versa) are just two examples.  This one, however, continues to be in my face regularly.

This inconsistency is instead a hobgoblin of a sensible mind. Has this irritated you, or what other silly  designs bedevil you?