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Teachers, read this book!

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I’ve been reading a few books about schools, since my lad’s made the transition from elementary to middle school and it’s been a bit of a battle.   When he’s being set assignments like coloring in a poster on math facts, I’m a wee bit concerned.   John Taylor Gatto’s Dumbing Us Down was a wakeup call (he won NY teacher of the year for a couple of years, and insightfully (and incitefully) criticizes our current school system.   So, when I noticed that Daniel Willingham (who’ve I talked about before) had a book out, I checked it out.

His Why Don’t Students Like School sounded like another tirade against schools, but it’s more positive than that. The subtitle tells you more: “A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for your classroom”.   It follows a format of:

  • question related to successful learning through teaching
  • the cogntive science research that underpins this question
  • specific recommendations for improving teaching

Fortunately, I could just skim the second part, which is the meat of the book, courtesy of my own PhD in cognitive science, and it was review.   But what really struck home was how he (as reviewers repeatedly point out) uses “clear and compelling language” to help the audience really understand what’s important.   He’s got great examples, and makes a large chunk of cognitive research comprehensible.   Which is not to say it’s a light read, but it’s accessible and clear.

More importantly, the third part of each chapter, his conclusions, are very concrete and actionable. If teachers followed these guidelines, they’d have happier learners and better learning outcomes.   What more do you want?   (Ok, well, curriculum reform, but this is aimed at teachers.)

He covers a lot of ground.   In nine chapters (this isn’t a long book, just deep and relevant), he covers motivation, learning styles, cognitive skills, and more. He answers the core questions and the ancillary questions that emerge. And, no, I don’t agree with him on quite all of it (e.g. on making content meaningful, he’s concerned that too familiar or interesting tasks may overwhelm the intrinsic lesson), but I suspect we’d find if we sat down that we’re agreeing furiously.

I have to say that if all my children’s teachers read this book, their schooling would be a lot better.   If all our children’s teachers read this book, schools would be a lot better.   So, if you’re a teacher, read this book.   If you work with teachers, know teachers, or influence teachers, get them to read this book.   And if you   design learning experiences, even if you don’t actually teach, you should read this book.

Cognitive science research oriented towards making better learning, in a digestable form.   It doesn’t get much better than this.   I have no higher praise for a book than “I wish I’d written it”, and I do.   Highly recommended.

Debugging

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This starts out slightly technical, but eventually gets to the learning!

My first job out of college was designing and programming educational computer games (FaceMaker & Spellicopter may be the two best known titles).   When I went back to grad school, I went for the design side, though I’ve kept the ability to understand what technology does, and do a bit more than the average bear.

So when my internet connection started getting flaky, I realized I had a problem.   Not the basic problem, but because there were several comonents in the chain, and it’s hard to isolate one without substitute parts.   And, of course, when you have two potential culprits, it’s so typical to have the manufacturer of one blame the other, and vice versa!   Now, my DSL modem and my wireless router were both quite old, at least 4 years and maybe as old as 6 or more.   And I didn’t have a spare of either router or modem. What was I to do?

(Tech details)

For those who are curious, the DSL signal comes in on the phone line, and then the modem translates it into ethernet. That could go straight into the computer, but instead I have that go to a wireless router to serve all the devices in the house (currently 4 computers, a Wii, two DS’s, and my iPhone; when no one’s visiting!).   The phenomenom I was seeing was the connection starting to hang on various accesses.   Rebooting both router and modem solved the problem (rebooting only one never seemed to work), but only for a while (8-24 hours). BTW, this behavior was described both by the ATT guy and a guy at Fry’s as classic hardware going bad.

I called ATT, and they agreed to send me a new modem (I reupped for a year).   That came and I managed to get it installed.   Took several tries, since they forgot to tell me that the modem now stores it’s own account login details, so those detalis don’t need to be stored in the router!   Ahem.   That one bit of info, and I was up and running again.

For a while.   Then the flakiness happened again.   So off I went to Fry’s for a router. For a ridiculously low price they had a refurbished one available, so I nabbed it. Same brand, only a newer version of my old one, which I was happy with.

Taking that home, I finally accessed it’s settings, but couldn’t make it talk to the modem!   The lights on both modem and router said they were connected, but no traffic would go through.   And I couldn’t access the settings via wireless, and it took a long time for the settings page (you control the router through a web page it hosts internally).

I took the router back and exchanged it.   I was willing to bet that the first one was just flaky.   With the new one, the settings page came up almost instantly, and I could access it wirelessly as well.   OK, that seemed better.And the lights indicated everything was fine. But, no traffic was still going through!?!?

I was pretty sure that, it being the weekend, I couldn’t get help ’til Monday, but I searched the Netgear site anyways, and they said they had phone help 24 hours, so I called and got through.   The guy there first said he couldn’t help me by phone for a refurbished modem, but then proceeded to tell me just what the problem was (turns out he couldn’t walk me through online, but could give me the details, which was all I needed).   Of all crazy things, the modem and the new router both want the same URL!   He had me reset the router’s IP address to something different, and viola’, I’m online!

(End tech details)

The learning here is severalfold.   First, systematicity helps.   Now, I know that, but it’s nice to have a chance to practice it.   One of things I miss most about not programming anymore, besides the ability to create new experiences, is debugging.   I loved using logic to try and figure out what’s wrong, and testing, repairing, and so on. I used to work on cars with my Dad, and the same process would be followed.   I think systematic research and testing is a meta-learning skill, and one we really don’t teach in school, yet it’s critical!

Another meta-learning skill, or really attitude, is persistence. I didn’t have an option, because no internet connection would be a critical business issue.   Fortunately I had a connection, it was just flaky (and with all this online seminar action coming up!.   And I admit there were times when I was tempted to use bad language (or did), and/or had to take time out to cool off.   But I kept thinking, testing, talking, reading, and more.

Of course, the two critical pieces of information would’ve been devastating if I didn’t have them.   And I didn’t find either in a discussion forum, I talked to people, live. I’ve learned to be very clear about the steps I’ve already taken, and that helps to short-circuit what can often be very basic stuff (e.g. “did you plug it in, and are the lights lit”). I mentioned that I’d tried the manual, and my steps, which helps build credibility with the tech person (the router person commented that he thought I could do with just the instructions).

So, I think we could and should spend more time developing reasoning skills as well as rote knowledge (duh!), and help people learn to share their thinking to help identify the problems faced.

And now, here’s hoping it was the hardware and not a different problem!

Note that this ate up a lot of my time this past week, what with store, and time on tech support, etc, so this is also an apology for my lack of blogging this past week!

A wee bit o’ experience…

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A personal reflection, read if you’d like a little insight into what I do, why and what I’ve done.

Reading an article in Game Developer about some of the Bay Area history of the video game industry has made me reflective.   As an undergrad (back before there really were programs in instructional technology) I saw the link between computers and learning, and it’s been my life ever since.   I designed my own major, and got to be part of a project where we used email to conduct classroom discussion, in 1978!

Having called all around the country to find a job doing computers and learning,   I arrived in the Bay Area as a ‘wet behind the ears’ uni graduate to design and program ‘educational’ computer games.   I liked it; I said my job was making computers sing and dance.   I was responsible for FaceMaker, Creature Creator, and Spellicopter (among others) back in 81-82.   (So, I’ve been designing ‘serious games’, though these were pretty un-serious, for getting close to 30 years!)

I watched the first Silicon Valley gold rush, as the success of the first few home computers and software had every snake oil salesman promising that they could do it too.   The crash inevitably happened, and while some good companies managed to emerge out of the ashes, some were trashed as well.   Still, it was an exciting time, with real innovation happening (and lots of it in games; in addition to the first ‘drag and drop’ showing up in Bill Budge’s Pinball Construction Set, I put windows into FaceMaker!).

I went back to grad school for a PhD in applied cog sci (with Don Norman), because I had questions about how best to design learning (and I’d always been an AI groupie :).   I did a relatively straightforward thesis, not technical but focused on training meta-cognitive skills, a persistent (and, I argue, important) interest.   I looked at all forms of learning; not just cognitive but behavioral, ID, constructivist, connectionist, social, even machine learning.   I was also getting steeped in applying cognitive science to the design of systems, and of course hanging around the latest/coolest tech.   On the side, I worked part-time at San Diego State University’s Center for Research on Mathematics and Science Education working with Kathy Fischer and her application SemNet.

My next stop was the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research & Development Center for a post-doctoral fellowship working on a project about mental models of science through manipulable systems, and on the side I designed a game that exercised my dissertation research on analogy (and published on it).   This was around 1990, so I’d put a pretty good stake in the ground about computer games for deep thinking.

In 1991 I headed to the Antipodes, taking up a faculty position at UNSW in the School of Computer Science, teaching interface design, but quickly getting into learning technology again.   I was asked, and I supervised a project designing a game to help kids (who grow up without parents) learn to live on their own. This was a very serious game (these kids can die because they don’t know how to be independent), around 1993.   As soon as I found out about CGIs (the first ‘state’-maintaining technology) we ported it to the web (circa 1995), where you can still play it (the tech’s old, but the design’s still relevant).

I did a couple other game-related projects, but also experimented in several other areas.   For one, as a result of looking at design processes,   I supervised the development of a web-based performance support system for usability, as well as meta-cognitive training and some adaptive learning stuff.

I joined a government-sponsored initiative on online learning, determining how to run an internet university, but the initiative lost out to politics.   I jumped to another, and got involved in developing an online course that was too far ahead of the market (this would be about 1996-1997).   The design was lean, engaging, and challenging, I believe (I shared responsibility), and they’re looking at resurrecting it now, more than 10 years later!   I returned to the US to lead an R&D project developing an intelligent learning system based on learning objects that adapted on learner characteristics (hence my strong opinions on learning styles), which we got up and running in 2001 before that gold rush went bust.   Since then, I’ve been an independent consultant.

It’s been interesting watching the excitement around serious games.   Starting with Prensky, and then Aldrich, Gee, and now a deluge, there’s been a growing awareness and interest; now there are multiple conferences on the topics, and new initiatives all the time.   The folks in it now bring new sensibilities, and it’s nice to see that the potential is finally being realized. While I’ve not been in the thick of it, I’ve quietly continued to work, think, and write on the issue (thanks to clients, my book, and the eLearning Guild‘s research reports).   Fortunately, I’ve kept from being pigeonholed, and have been allowed to explore and be active in other areas, like mobile, advanced design, performance support, content models, and strategy.

The nice thing about my background is that it generalizes to many relevant tasks: usability and user experience design and information design are just two, in addition to the work I cited, so I can play in many relevant places, and not only keep up with but also generate new ideas.   My early technology experience and geeky curiosity keeps me up on the capabilities of the new tools, and allows me to quickly determine their fundamental learning capabilities.   Working on real projects, meeting real needs, and ability to abstract to the larger picture has given me the ability to add value across a range of areas and needs.   I find that I’m able to quickly come in and identify opportunities for improvement, pretty much without exception, at levels from products, through processes, to strategy.   And I’m less liable to succumb to fads, perhaps because I’ve seen so many of them.

I’m incredibly lucky and grateful to be able to work in the field that is my passion, and still getting to work on cool and cutting edge projects, adding value.   You’ll keep seeing me do so, and if you’ve an appetite for pushing the boundaries, give me a holler!

Mobile tools

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Ok, I’ve had my iPhone a bit now, and some things are very useful, some things are cool, some are way fun, and some things are still irritating.   Note that most of the apps I download are free; I’m cheap and there are great free apps (and games).   I regularly go off to the iTunes store and check out what’s new (particularly the top free apps list).

Let’s get the negative stuff out of the way quickly.   Naturally, my pet peeves haven’t changed (because they haven’t fixed them, ahem): no cut/copy/paste drives me nuts.   For example, I put an address in my calendar, and then can’t cut and paste it into Google Maps to look it up when I’m on the go.   It’s there, but I can’t just carry it across!?!   Frustrating.   Similar with notes and todos.   As I’ve mentioned, if I promise something and it doesn’t get into my phone, we never had the conversation.   However, that’s much harder to do on the iPhone, because I have to email a message to myself!   Frustrating.   Similarly with memos. There already have been times I wanted to put things into a memo to take with me (e.g. a meeting agenda), and I can’t.   Sure, I could use EverNote, but then I’d have to have connectivity, and thanks to ATT’s coverage and hotel policies on wireless, that’s not always the case.

OK, the useful: Google Maps, Yelp, and now UrbanSpoon (finally covers Walnut Creek, my corporate headquarters) are very useful when I’m out and about and need to find some location, or a restaurant, or store, or…   I use them quite a lot, actually.   UrbanSpoon’s interface method of choosing at random is fun enought that it’s almost a ‘cool’.   Weather has been useful when travelling, as is Clock (not least for timing my tea :). Also, I’m all over references. I use the Wikipanion and the Google App.   Occasionally, the various unit converters, calculators, and the like are handy.   I expect to use the translator on occasion as well.   Hey, that’s why we have digital devices, to offload those things our brain’s aren’t great at, like remembering arbitrary data, and leave us to do the strategic and pattern-matching stuff.   The camera’s handy as well.   I haven’t used the voice recorder, though I’m ready.   And a secure password storage app, SplashID. And I got a first-aid reference, a Bart schedule, even the constitution (relevant in several ways).

The fun are the games I’m playing.   I used to play a lot of Risk in college, and then Lux on the computer.   Now there’s a somewhat abbreviated version of Lux on the iPhone.   That, along with Solitaire and Mahjonng are fun.   And of course, the LightSaber app.   Great for entertaining the kids when we’ve got to wait.   I play games for research reasons, er yeah, that’s it…. Oh, and books.   I’ve read a couple including James Fenimore Cooper’s “Pathfinder”, Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Tarzan” (I read as a kid, was re-reading to see if my lad’s ready), and Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” (hadn’t ever read, amazingly). Lots of free classics available and worth reading.

Finally, the cool.   I just got Google Earth, and that’s way cool.   Just amazing to have it running in the palm of your hand!   Went over and looked at our old house in Australia; they’ve put a tree in the front yard, it appears.   Twittelator lets me tweet and keep up with others’.   I have LinkedIn and FaceBook, though I haven’t used them much.   Midomi will let me hear a song, capture 10 seconds of it, and tell me what it is. Amazing.

By the way, many of these were available on the Palm, and some version of the above may be available on Windows Mobile, RIM’s Blackberry, or forthcoming on Android.   Anyway, it’s about extending your brain, and these apps do it in various ways.   So, what are you finding useful, and what am I missing?

Design: final heuristics

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Part 4 of the 4 part series:

Here‘re the final suite of heuristics I came up with many years ago as a result of looking at our design process and the barriers our cognitive architecture can put in our own way.

Full Spectrum Design: One of the most insidious problems observed in educational multimedia is a tendency to incorporate all the solution into the computer.   The system will be the repository of all the text, sound, graphics, etc, and the instruction.   Unfortunately, this does not properly reflect what’s known about reading text on screen and the role of the teacher.   In conjunction with the No Limits Analysis, another way to get the best design is to consider the full spectrum of media, particularly considering delivering text on paper, having the instruction accomplished by an instructor, etc.   The proper use of the term multimedia is to consider all the available media and their use and to distribute the instructional task across all of them.

No Limits Analysis: After assembling a team, the first step in the design process is analysis, and an important component is proper information gathering to ensure that all relevant possible sources of inspiration have been considered.   However, before we consider what others have done in the same, we should see what we come up with when we think as if there were no limits.   This occurs after the pedagogical problem has been identified but before other examples are considered.   The step is to consider how the problem would be addressed if there were no technological limitations, as if anything could be accomplished as if by magic. Arthur C. Clarke said “any truly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and we‘re really at the stage where the barriers are our imaginations, not the technology.   So stop and think what an ideal solution would be.   You may not be able to achieve what you imagine, but you certainly can‘t if you don‘t identify that option, and you‘ll prematurely limit the solution space.

Kitchen Sink Analysis: After the No Limits Analysis, comes the systematic consideration of other corners of the design space or other relevant prototypes for modification.   Lewis & Reiman suggested that “plagiarism” is an appropriate design strategy (as far as your lawyers would let you, as they cautioned), where ideas are lifted from existing designs rather than reinventing the wheel.   An expansion to this concept is to not only look at what others have done but to also consider how instruction might proceeded without computer support, what theory suggests as an approach, etc.   In short, the suggestion is to exhaustively search all potential sources of input into the design process, including the proverbial ‘kitchen sink’.   This process is both to help populate the design space and discover all constraints.

And let me add one other that I didn‘t explicitly include before:
Lateral input:   Research on brainstorming and creativity (cf D Bono), has shown that besides being systematic and covering all the known or plausible solutions, lateral thinking is valuable. After you‘ve been exhaustive within the box, find ways to get ‘outside the box‘.   Use random inspirations: play a game, doodle, get some random input!   Get silly!   It may not be politically correct anymore, but back when I worked for a learning game company, the CEO (hi, Sky!), used to bring in pizza and beer on Friday afternoon and have some idea sessions!   There are lots of tools and approaches, just make sure you make some concerted effort here.

OK, that‘s it for this series on design.   I hope these past few posts give you some useful guidance or ideas.   I welcome your own!

First: https://blog.learnlets.com/2008/09/design-design-as-search/

Second: https://blog.learnlets.com/2008/09/design-our-barriers/

Third: https://blog.learnlets.com/2008/09/design-the-first-heuristics/

Learning out loud

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In an article I was reading, they mentioned how Patagonia was tracking the environmental footprint of some of their products. The point they made, however, was that doing this was part of their ongoing experimentation/research that they were publicizing to get others to join in towards making this a more sustainable world (my inference). The phrase they used that intrigued me was the quote that they were “learning out loud”.

One of the reasons it intrigued me was that I realized that what I’m doing with Learnlets is indeed ‘learning out loud’. But I hadn’t really reflected on what that could mean, and I think there are some really interesting opportunities here. First, by learning explicitly, we can reflect on our own learning processes, looking at how we learn, essentially initiating double-loop learning.

Second, others can watch us learn, and learn with us. They can also learn to learn. Learning together, we can learn more effectively. I think this is a critical component of the Work Literacy movement looking at how to improve at work; they’re making their thinking explicit and asking for participation.

One of the Big Questions was Should All Learning Professionals Blog, and I replied. My answer then was that all should reflect, and I’ll add now that doing it publicly (blog or otherwise) is an opportunity to have others participate and even add value. Yes, there’s a risk involved, but I’ll suggest you throw ego to the wind, and take a chance on greater learning.

So I’ll keep on learning out loud, and hope to hear you, too. Let’s learn together; better, and have more fun doing it.

Give and get…(tools please!)

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I told you before that electronic versions of the eLearning Guild printed research reports are now available for FREE for all paid Guild members and all associate members that complete the survey related to a particular report. These reports include Measuring Success, Mobile (with yours truly), Immersive Learning Simulations (ditto), Learning Management Systems, and Synchronous Learning.

Steve Wexler, their Director of Research, lets me know that the surveys for their forthcoming reports on tools are available.   I’ll kindly request that take the time to fill them out (they’ve got data from 1059 folks already!). Particularly if you’re using tools for Simulations, Media, and Combining & Deploying (those’re the areas where the fewest contributions are). Get free access to the great advice, share your experience, and help yourself and your peers.   I’ve already done so for the tools I use.

I’m really thrilled that they’re creating this great source of data and informed insight. I can tell you that I will be reading from all the reports I wasn’t part of (I’ve already read the ones I was involved in; great stuff from my colleagues)!

So, please do take the time to be at least an associate member, consider being a full member, and fill out the surveys for all.   Hey, for a little time, you can get access to some great thought.

Content, context, and experience

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In my (next to) last post, I talked about print versus screen reading, and at the end made a comment about publishers. I want to extend that comment here, and to do so I need to go to Pine & Gilmore’s Experience Economy.

I’ve talked about it before, but the premise briefly is that we’ve moved from selling services to selling total customer experiences (the pre-sales, the sale, the product or service, the support). Hence the success of Apple, which creates amazing experiences, generating great customer loyalty and satisfaction. So how does this bear on publishers?

The hoary old cliche’ is that publishers need to realize that they’re not about books, they’re about content (the analogy being to the railroad companies who suffered when they didn’t realize they were in the transportation business). On the other hand, the current discussion in industry is that now context is king. The point is that content can be customized to the immediate need. What the experience economy tells us is that the differentiator will be the overall experience. So, is experience or context king?

I want to suggest that the answer is ‘yes’. Contextualized content creates a positive experience. However, I want to argue two facets to this. Publishers do need to move to where content is semantically tagged for when there are smart systems that can contextualize it. However, I want to suggest that they also need quality information design to create a good experience even when it’s unable to be customized.

That’s come into play with educational publishers. Pine & Gilmore have argued that the subsequent economy will be the ‘transformation economy’, with experiences that transform us. I want to suggest that quality learning design will be the differentiator, and it definitely means going beyond traditional instructional design and incorporating cognitive science research and emotional engagement. I immodestly suggest that Engaging Learning is part of the solution, but the point is much bigger. It’s about reorganizing content to focus on meaningful outcomes, and then aligning the experience to achieve those. While incorporating the semantic hooks as well.

So, I’m arguing that the content business needs to look to both quality in design, and elegance in implementation, to support either or both scenarios: customized and quality experiences.

Learning Mobile

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Ok, so I’m on the eLearning Guild‘s research team for mobile learning (a truly awesome group of people to be able to work with), and one of the team members asked: how do you get transfer from mobile learning? My reply was:

transfer … comes from a couple of sources: applying the same concept as skill in different contexts, and reflection even after a single context explicitly discussing abstraction and reapplication in other contexts.

So, a couple of ways (and agreeing with [the] notion of a blend, so these are in conjunction with other activities): you can stream out different examples in different contexts for viewing/reading/listening (vcast, PDF/page, podcast), you can make available little mini-scenarios in different contexts, you can bring in reflection after real-life practice, you could provide abstraction and reapplication questions after most any of the above…

This was just off the top of my head, but there’s a point here. You’ve heard me riff on models before, and to answer the question I stepped back and looked at the fundamental concept behind transfer (ok, a very abbreviated version), and then put that together with some of the models behind mobile, and was able to generate an answer on the fly.   That’s the power of models: they’re explanatory, they’re predictive, and they’re generative.

And, of course, thinking about mobile design is a habit I’m trying to inculcate in organizations and designers. There are great opportunities to deliver not only immediate (and, potentially, contextualized) performance support, but also to extend learning. Will Thalheimer has touted ‘learning follow-on’ systems, and it’s also consonant with my ‘slow learning‘ interest in developing people over time.

So, think models, think mobile, think opportunity!

(And stay tuned for the report. I was part of the Immersive Learning Simulations report, and it was not only fun but I think the outcome is really good, and I expect the same here.)