This is the Learning Circuit‘s Blog Big Question of the Month. It caused me to go back and look at what I blogged about this past year. I talked a lot about mobile (rightly so), and of course about games, but what struck me as I read was the regular occurrence of talking about models. When I got near the beginning of the year, I found that I’d suggested that it should be the Year of the Model, so that’s it, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The point is that we don’t use conceptual/mental models enough in our learning and training (as I was just complaining in a project on training call answering). And we can. Increasingly, the power of visualization is being understood and taken advantage of. But that’s only part of the benefit. The notion of thinking in terms of systems and causal relationships is at core. I knew it before, but it’s been something I’ve been thinking about more, and wishing I had a way to work on more.

The potential benefits are big: while we might need to spend a bit more time to ensure we get the models, and communicate them, what we stand to gain are reduced time in training (fewer examples and practice needed), and what should be big wins in terms of retention and transfer, as well as flexibility to deal with situations that we didn’t anticipate.

As Karyn Romeis points out, it’s not like it’s a big new thing I learned, it’s just an increasing awareness that it’s a big untapped opportunity.

My Mom’s been here the past few days visiting (hence the lack of action here). She hadn’t been up in a long time since my Dad wasn’t strong enough to travel, and after he passed away she’s been afraid to leave since she’s trying to sell her mobile home. However, I finally convinced her she didn’t have to be around for the place to sell. She had a great time, having been afraid the logistics would be difficult, but they weren’t.

It’s been a time for a multitude of reflections, about aging, slowing down, but also about learning and trying to be wiser. Age brings gifts as well as infirmities. If you pay attention (and that can be a big if), you have the opportunity to learn from the events in your life, and also across them. Most of us do the one, but I think the larger one, looking for patterns, is less ubiquitous.

Speaking of looking for patterns, I was reminded of the value of collecting data. On a project I learned about the Personal Software Process (PSP) from Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute, which is about documenting your estimates, your actual work effort, and then the Team Software Process (TSP) where within the team you circulate your work to find errors, and document those too. The point is to improve your estimates, and your code. The interesting thing is that there’s no reason that applies only to software! They say that the overhead is more for a couple of weeks, but then drops down. I confess I haven’t tried it, but that’s partly because what I’m doing varies so much I can’t figure out how to categorize it.

Ideally we have people to work with who can provide good feedback, but that’s not always possible or easy. I think one of the things about software is the ‘cowboy’ mentality where they crank out code without reflection and often without review. Extreme programming has helped, and recently someone posted about using that approach in elearning design. I’m having a senior moment remembering who said it, but it’s an idea worth thinking about. Speaking of senior moments, I learned the term from my Mom. Having come full circle, I’ll stop there.

Harold Jarche writes about the need for critical thinking, and has a map of the skills mapped to particular tools. I agree, and added:

I’ve been a fan of critical thinking for years, since I was a grad student and TA’d for Jean Mandler’s class on it. We used Diane Halpern’s book as a text, and that approach is still relevant.

I think we need to do more, however. Just having the tools isn’t enough. To develop new skills, we need support: motivation, examples, guided practice. The received wisdom is that it has to be layered on to authentic tasks. Of course, I say build it into a game! (there’s a bit in Quest).

I sympathize with [] cynicism, but I believe it can be taught, and there’s evidence to support my position. But we do it by making it a priority (before college), and making it part of what we test (meaning a whole new type of testing, but that’s what we need anyway).

We need to build critical thinking on top of our systems, into our content (Pellegrino’s brilliant article for the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has a section on this, it’s available from this page), and make it a priority. Not to put too big a point on it, our future’s at stake!

Sorry if I’ve been sparse this past week, but I was traveling to LA and San Diego to visit my Mom, pick up my son from surf camp with his friend, and visit my brother. The last day at my brother’s we went to the beach, and a glorious time was had by all.

The water was so warm we could stay in as long as we wanted (a couple of hours) without wetsuits! My brother had several surfboards along (we forgot the boogie boards), and the kids took turns riding them, to various degrees. His older son has a soft foam board and had been several times before. My son had only his 3 half days of camp, but we’d talked about some of the principles. They were both catching waves and standing up to ride them in. His younger son and my daughter took some turns riding in on their bellies. My brother and I both took some time paddling out and catching waves for ourselves too (I was so thrilled that my work to get my arms in shape for paddling really paid off!).

The neat thing was the degree to which the kids advanced even during that one day. I’d once tried to teach my kids swimming, and forgot to break it down into the basics and get those drilled. I haven’t made that mistake since after hearing how the swim coach (and friend) we hired for a few hours per day for a week did what I’d not. Since then I’ve tried to find just one thing to point out and comment on for a day or so that will improve them the most, and it’s worked much better. When you’ve the time, and are working on major conceptual shifts…

Speaking of concepts, it pleases me my how my lad (in particular), can be given a concept and he will use it to guide his own performance. His soccer coaches say he’s “coachable”, and that’s great to hear. He’s not big for his size or particularly fast, but he quickly understands and applies. His sister is more the ‘practice practice practice’ type, but advances quickly. Two different approaches (sort of like the two different parents: I’m more like him, my wife’s more like her).

I learn so much about learning from watching them learn. And it’s fun, too.

I’m unduly proud of having now served on two eLearning Guild research reports – ILS (read: games) and mobile. I’ll argue that it’s due to my approach rather than genius (I know too many people that are way smarter than me), and of course from having great mentors. It’s believe it’s because I try to have a conceptual understanding of many models as tools to think and solve problems, both frameworks and approach. My PhD advisor’s focus (at the time) was on applied cognition, and that’s what I try to bring to bear. It necessarily includes an understanding of how our brains work, how to be systematic in examining problems and trialing solutions, organizations, and quite a bit of background in technology.

I’d started drafting this post and then read Jay Cross’ comments on lots of models, loosely joined, rather than one overarching approach. Exactly!

I want to suggest that these are great curriculum goals as well. Understanding the societal context, including economics and business, understanding technology systems, and how people think and interact, are critical components of an ability to meet the coming needs. Also having systematic processes of information gathering, design/problem-solving, and execution, driven again by a conceptual understanding of where and how they work (so you can adapt them to the situation) is a component.

Of course, your pedagogy has to have you working on complex problems and pulling models in to solve them, so you have practice and can meta-reflect as well. We’ve the knowledge, and the technology, now if only we had the political will. I’m afraid it won’t be done tinkering around the edges of No Child Left Behind, but throwing out the whole thing except the notion that we might want to assess learning, and starting again. I suspect the end result will be annotated portfolios, with profiles of performance, not ‘scores’. But I’ll leave that to the people who solve this particular problem.

Jim Schuyler, CTO of the Dalai Lama Foundation (and colleague, mentor, friend), writes in his blog:

My contention is that much of what we have to accomplish in educating people is to help individuals understand the limits of their own cognitive (and memory) abilities and find ways to interface with memory and cognition-devices in the external world so they can effectively and productively learn – and I mean learn and learn and learn for an entire lifetime – and make use of what they have learned.

In one sense this sounds a lot like George Siemen’s connectivism, and in another like the meta-learning (learning to learn) that I was promoting with Jay Cross and several others. I still think that meta-learning is a big missed opportunity in the corporate world, and it’s definitely part of the curriculum I’d like our schools to be working on.

It’s about developing a mind-set to steadily and systematically learn along our lives, and having the skills to do so effectively and efficiently. Sounds like the best investment I can think of. We know our limitations: great pattern matchers, poor arbitrary rememberers. Which is why I push my ‘external brain’ (my Treo) to see how much smarter it can make me (part of my mobile learning learning).

As a side note, I wish Sky allowed me to put this comment on his site, but he requires having a log-on and I’ve enough of those already. In general, when I’ve read others’ comments on my blog in their blog, I leave comments on their blog rather than reiterate them here. And maybe I’m missing one of the benefits or responsibilities of blogging? Live and learn, so opinions welcome.