The Bamboo Project Blog

Information Literacy and Habits of Mind

Here's an interesting tidbit published in Science Daily--researchers analyzed 91 studies that included over 8,000 people and found that most of the time we seek information that supports our viewpoints and then screen out everything else:

The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to consider an opposing idea (33 percent). Certain individuals, those with close-minded personalities, are even more reluctant to expose themselves to differing perspectives, Albarracín said. They will opt for the information that corresponds to their views nearly 75 percent of the time.

The researchers also found, not surprisingly, that people are more resistant to new points of view when their own ideas are associated with political, religious or ethical values. . .

This seems to be another piece of evidence that confirms my concerns about online homophily, which of course extends offline as well.

As humans, we're innate patternmakers. But to some extent, we seem bound to find data that supports the patterns we already see, as opposed to seeing new patterns in the data. A few years ago I was trying to learn how to draw using Betty Edwards' book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. What was most fascinating to me about the experience was how you have to turn off your left (analytic) brain in order to draw things as they really are. When the left brain is in full operational mode, we tend to draw not what we actually SEE (which is the raw data coming in), but our concept of that data. So we don't draw the face that's in front of us. Instead, we draw our idea of a face. For example, we don't place eyes in the middle of the face where they actually are. We put them toward the top because that's our construct of where they belong because of our hairlines. The point is, that while we think we see the data, what we really are looking at is our preconceived idea of what that information means.

I read with interest Nancy White's excellent post the other day on Skills for Learning Professionals Part 2. In it she says that scanning, filtering, connecting and sense-making are critical skills.  I agree with this, but think that maybe Nancy didn't go far enough in thinking about how we develop these skills. She offered a series of excellent questions to ask ourselves in terms of our ability to do things like scan and filter, but they don't take into account the habits of mind and psychological behaviors we bring to the table in developing these skills.  In light of our tendencies toward homophily and pre-conceived ideas, it would seem there are deeper issues at work that we need to consider:

• When we are scanning, how do we combat our natural tendency to only "see" information that fits with our preconceived notions of the world? The skill of scanning isn't just about how well we are able to manage a stream of information. It's also about our ability to actually SEE information in its raw form. 

• In developing our filtering skills, how do we ensure that we are not filtering out information that doesn't fit wth our existing concepts and frames? I suspect that many, if not most of us, are likely to apply our filters in a way that shields us from data we may not want to consider. But this is not effective filtering behavior, particularly if we end up filtering out key data that would change our decisions or ideas about how things work.

• Creating a knowledge network is important, but if we are creatures of homophily, seeking out like-minded connections, then are we really using this skill to its full advantage? How do we make our networks diverse? As I've pointed out before, social technology tends to collude in this process of connecting us to like-minded people, for example suggesting friends who share our interests. But how do I ensure that I'm connecting to people who think differently than I do?

• How do we become capable of objective sense-making based on the actual data that is coming into us, rather than our IDEAS of what the data means? I think that the tendency to interpret information as its coming into our brains is so ingrained we don't even realize it's happening. That's why "beginner's mind" is an aspiration, rather than something most of us are able to do on a regular basis. 

These skills are not just about the technology strategies we use to find, filter and make sense of information. They are also about the habits of mind that we bring to these activities. If we don't address both aspects, then we're missing something here.

Flickr photo via vaxZine

Accessibility and Learning

As I've mentioned previously, I'm working with a couple of clients right now who work with individuals with disabilities on some social media projects and it continues to be a learning experience. For the past week I've been hard at work pulling together a wiki for a 2.5 day workshop we're doing in August on using social media in Centers for Independent Living. We're adapting Beth Kanter's fabulous WeAreMedia curriculum,  focusing on how the tools can be used within a community with varying challenges to accessing the technology. In particular, I'm finding that there are a lot of challenges to using social media with people who have visual disabilities. Here's some of what I'm learning:

• The convention of having links that say "As I've mentioned previously" (see my first sentence) or "go here" does not work for individuals with visual disabilities who are using a screen reader to navigate the web. They need links that are descriptive---that say where you're linking too. This is actually good SEO practice, too, but something I continually have struggled to stop doing as I'm so used to making links out of vague references, as I did above.

• I'm used to embedding Slideshare and YouTube videos directly into my wiki handouts so that people don't have to navigate away from the site to access them. For individuals with visual disabilities, though, this is a problem. They can't advance through Slideshare slides or hit the "play" button on a YouTube video because their screen readers can't give them the information they need to do this. For them, an embedded video is just a frustrating blank in the wiki page.

• Speaking of Slideshare, many of the great presentations on Slideshare make extensive use of photos and graphics to illustrate their points. I find this to be particularly true of technology presentations where there are lots of screenshots and Flickr photos being used. While this is obviously a great way for sighted people to learn about the tools,  if you have a visual impairment, visuals aren't going to be very helpful. 

• Often when I do wiki handouts, I'll use photos to add some visual interest to the page. VIsuals on a page are OK for screen readers, as long as they've been properly tagged so that the screen reader can identify it as either decorative or illustrative of a point and there's some indication of what the photo is about. Unfortunately, Wikispaces isn't giving me that option (or at least I didn't find a way to do this), so I've ended up removing all of the photos to avoid confusion. BTW--this is also an issue for those of us who use photos in our blogs, which may make it more difficult for people with visual impairments to navigate our posts.

The biggest shift for me has been needing to think in very different ways about my materials and how to make them accessible. This project has been a huge reminder to me too of how visual I am in my development of materials, which can be great in some cases, but in others requires a big shift in my thinking.

Who's in the Market for Learning: Individuals or Organizations?

As part of the ongoing conversation on the future business models for learning with Tony Karrer, I mentioned in both my blog post and in a comment on Tony's blog that I think we're going to see a move away from companies and organizations to individuals as the consumers of learning products and services. Tony followed up by asking if I had anything to back up my thinking. Good question, so here's my train of thought.

Everyone agrees that work today is more complex, more knowledge-based and rapidly changing. There are a lot of arguments about how we're going to develop our workforce, but no one is arguing that there's a need for LESS learning. Everyone agrees that learning must be constant in order to keep up with the pace of change. So the demand for learning is there. The question becomes, where's the market?

For the past 50 years or so, we saw companies taking responsibility for employee learning. This made sense when you had people working for you for an extended period of time, wanted to develop them along a career path and saw them as integral cogs in your company's operation. As a result of company's taking responsibility for learning, they were the primary market for learning products and services and the learning industry (at least in terms of corporate education and training) has been totally geared toward that market.They PAID for learning, so they were the target market.

But these conditions no longer exist in most industries. Turnover (both voluntary and involuntary) is a way of life. The median job tenure according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 4.9 years, but this is skewed by the tenure of older workers (9.9 years). Workers between 25 and 34 had only 2.7 years on the job. It's also skewed by the differences between public and private sector workers--in the public sector median tenure is 7.2 years (9.9 years for federal employees), while in the private sector it's 3.6 years. If the research I mentioned in my previous post is true--that employers only begin investing in training for employees after 3 years on the job--that's a lot of people missing out on employer-provided training.

Another trend I see going on is the rise of contract/freelance workers. As I mentioned in my previous post, there's been a surge in companies looking to hire contract workers, either directly or through placement agencies. Careerbuilder reports that 28% of employers are indicating they will increase the number of contract and temporary workers they hire in 2009. And this PBS report indicates that contract worker make up 30% of the workforce. This doesn't include the numbers of people who are probably working as freelancers, but are misclassified as employees.  That's a significant number of people who need to continue to upgrade their skills and who probably won't be getting professional development from their companies.

To these two trends let's add the fact that while companies SAY they need ongoing training, many of them jettison learning at the first sign of hard times (look at Tony's post for some stats on that). Learning is seen as a "cost," of doing business, not an investment in infrastructure and as a cost, in hard times it will be cut.

I also think there's a general reluctance to train staff because knowledge and skills are portable and with people having the flexibility to move to other jobs, companies are understandably reluctant to train their future competitors.

Finally, let us not forget the high percentage of small businesses that are out there--I've seen estimates as high as 90%, many of which employ under 20 people. These are not companies that are typically in the business of training their employees because of time and money constraints. At best they may send one or two people to an outside course. They still need skilled workers, but these workers need to get their skills elsewhere because these companies simply aren't in a position to provide the services.

I suspect that we may be at a place with employee training that is similar to where we are at on things like employer-provided healthcare and pensions. In larger companies and organizations that could afford these benefits, the trend has been to put more and more of the "costs" onto workers and for companies to get out of things that aren't their "core" business. Small companies couldn't even afford to play.  I'm not sure that employers see employee training and development as a central concern (although they pay it lip service), so I'd see T&D as a primary candidate for putting back on workers, especially if they can invest in performance support systems to cover what they need for business processes. 

So how to improve worker skills if it isn't going to happen through employers? At best, I think we'll be seeing employers using things like tuition reimbursement, which puts both the buying and the onus for learning on the individual.Yes, companies may have some guidelines on the courses that could be taken, but beyond that, they will have little input into the buying decision.

We may also see government stepping up to the plate. I do a lot of work with "second chance" workforce programs that are funded through the US Department of Labor. Here, laid off workers can qualify for "individual training accounts" that they can use to upgrade skills in order to find new employment. The Recovery Act infused a ton of funding into that system, so it may be another avenue for funding learning, although, again, it puts decisions in the hands of individual consumers. And as a government program, there are lots of caveats on how the money can be used. 

So to summarize--I see several different trends intersecting here that, to my mind, are going to reduce the amount of employer-provided/funded training and education that will occur. There's still a NEED for ongoing learning, but I think the market for this is going to shift to individuals rather than being delivered through employers. I also think that we've had an untapped market sitting there for awhile that we haven't figured out how to access yet (I'm thinking of freelance workers, for example).

What I'm really trying to say here is that whoever pays for the product or service is the target market. In the past, we've relied on companies to pay for ongoing worker training, just as we've relied on them to provide healthcare benefits. What I think we're seeing, though, is a move away from employers paying for ongoing learning, which means either people stop learning or someone else has to pay for it. I think it will be individuals, either out of their own pockets and/or with assistance from government (if government can get its act together on financial aid and supporting lifelong learning).

Frankly, figuring out who is going to pay for lifelong learning is a key policy decision we need to face as a country if we're going to survive in the long-term.We also need to figure out how to re-educate that large class of workers used to relying on their companies to tell them what training and skills they need to develop and then paying for it. These people need to fundamentally change their view of how we do professional development in this country.

If what I'm thinking is where we're headed, I do think this changes the conversation we're having about the business models to employ. Individuals are going to be thinking very differently about what they want to access and how than are employers. ROI will be calculated in a different way too. This isn't to say that companies will no longer be purchasing learning. I just think that as providers and business people, there are some markets here that are changing and need to be further explored.

So what do you think? Am I making sense here? What am I missing?

The Business of Learning: What Does the Future Hold?

Tony Karrer is asking an important and provocative question for those of us in the business of learning:

While training as a publisher of courses and courseware faces an increasingly challenging market, what other things can learning businesses successfully sell to internal or external customers?

As always, Tony's post includes a good framing of issues along with a reading list. The basic premise is that internal and external training departments have been in the business of more traditional formal learning and content creation--how does the model change when content is free and readily available? And how does it change when there's an increasing reliance on informal learning over more traditional formal methods?

I have no answers but wanted to get down some of the random thoughts/questions going through my mind after a quick read through his post.

What's popping out for me here is the idea that where ever things go for the future, we're going to have to embrace some of what's disrupting other industries, such as publishing and music. We're also going to have to think about the characteristics of social media that are rapidly shaping our expectations both on and off-line. (Warning--Stream of consciousness and ill-formed thoughts ahead)

In terms of the products that get created, I think we're looking at having multiple formats of complementary materials that can be used flexibly. I think of SpanishPod, for example, where you can learn to speak Spanish through a combination of podcasts (listen online or on a mobile device), videos, printable exercises/activities, participation in a language learning community, teacher discussions and flash cards. You use what you need to support the lessons. The idea of multiple formats along with the ability to learn alone or by connecting to a community is key.

SpanishPod also illustrates another thing I think we'll be seeing for the future of learning--subscription models. The podcasts are free, but to access the other learning materials, you pay a monthly fee that frankly is pretty reasonable if you're serious about learning another language--$9 for the basic package and $29 for the premium package. What's happening here is that you aren't buying content as much as access to an ongoing community and set of services, offered at a reasonable rate. You can try the subscription out for a month and then stop if you don't like it--something you can't do when you buy more traditional learning packages.

The community aspect is big and I think we're going to be thinking a lot about what makes up a learning community and how to nurture them. It may be partially about the platforms we use, but it's also about who is in the community. I tend to think that open communities of practitioners learning together across organizations may be a more viable long-term model than "behind the firewall" solutions. I can't help but think that open source and open social networks are successful for reasons that apply to learning, although I know that privacy and proprietary issues play a role, too.

How learning content is packaged is something else we need to look at. If the social web is teaching us nothing else, it's that having a personality and a point of view sells. We're talking business here, so it isn't just about who has the most "effective" learning tool. It's about who's creating learning that people want to participate in. The rest just looks institutional and like the commodity it is. People want a sense of humor, to be entertained.

 A good example of what I'm talking about is the Plain English videos, created by Lee and Sashi LeFever of Common Craft fame. That series is fun and full of personality ("Yea! Boo!") and they were able to parley that into a business for themselves. I think that it's this kind of creativity that we'll be needing more of for the future.

I'm also wondering who the market will be. If you read Tony's post, the assumption is that we'll be selling learning to organizations--in particular, large companies.  But increasingly,  I'm thinking we'll be selling to individuals. For one thing, even though businesses say that learning is important, at the same time, they are investing less and less in their workers. A few years ago I attended a conference where the keynote speaker shared research indicating that businesses didn't invest in training their employees until they'd been there for three years. Given the average tenure on the job is shrinking, we're going to see more people who aren't there for that three year window of opportunity.

Related to this, I think we're seeing a push to more contract workers. Technically these people are not employees and most companies are not going to invest a lot in their development. That leaves learning up to individual workers themselves. 

I also think that company-specific training in procedures and processes is either being handled through OJT or with performance support systems,  which decreases the need for learning that's customized to a specific company. This too will give companies an "out" in terms of whether or not to invest in training.

If I'm right, then this really changes the business landscape for learning. Individual learners are working with different value propositions and needs than are their employers. Right now, they try to get those needs met through colleges and some self-study,  but I think there might be some opportunities here for training companies, especially along the lines of the subscription model I mentioned earlier. These learners will be more price sensitive and will want learning that is flexible, creative and fun.  I also think this is where the community aspect becomes important--the right community will build long-term loyalty, which is exactly what we're seeing when community is done well in other businesses.

I'm someone who, frankly, would prefer to see individual workers being in charge of their own learning, rather than putting that responsibility in the hands of companies. This is the essence of a knowledge economy--you own the means of production, in your head. Letting someone else decide what you should learn would be like letting someone else decide what machines you would use to produce your goods in a factory. This is one reason that companies are reluctant to invest in training--you can now take their "machinery" with you when you leave. I will admit, then, that part of me WANTS the future to be in learning sold to individuals, rather than to companies. Still, I think there's something here.

I hesitate to prognosticate--I'm sure you guys will be able to point out a lot of the flaws in my thinking here. In fact, I hope you do! This is an interesting conversation for us to be having, though, because in a knowledge economy, how people will be able to access learning is a big deal. The business opportunities are also going to shape what learning is provided, how it's provided, etc. so I'm curious to see where this takes us.

Do You Know How to Ask the Right Questions?

Looking at tools like Google Squared, Google Trends and Wolfram Alpha, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that one of the key challenges we have before us is learning how to ask questions. And not just any question, but the RIGHT questions. There's tremendous power in the possibilities of these tools, but if you don't know what to ask about or how to ask it, then what's the point?

This leads me to wonder if we're really doing a good job of teaching the art of questioning, either in schools or in the workplace. My anecdotal response would be "no, we do a terrible job of this," partially because we seem to do what we can to kill curiosity and creativity, starting from an early age. A 4-year old does a great job of asking question, but by the time he gets out of 2nd grade, not so much.

And from what I can tell,  many workplaces are structured to avoid questions. Let's just do what we've been doing and not stir things up with curiosity. We also seem to love moving immediately to answers and solutions. Maybe we need to spend more time formulating the right questions.

This seems like one of those areas where we need to think carefully about how our tools may be outstripping our ability to use them. I love all this cool technology, but are our skills keeping up with what the tools can do? And how are we going to address this?

Some Resources for Accessible Learning

In using social media tools for learning (or anything else), one thing I think we often forget is the issue of accessibility. And by that, I don't mean in terms of issues like having access to a computer or broadband, although those are issues as well.

Currently I'm working with two different clients who work with individuals with disabilities and one of the things we're grappling with is how accessible these tools are. For many of their consumers, web-based technologies have been a God-send that has helped them access information, resources and communities of support  they never would have dreamed possible a few years ago. Opportunities for teleworking, online learning and self-employment have also exploded.

But for some people, especially those with visual or cognitive impairments (including brain injury and learning disabilities), social media and the Web can be a mixed bag. One one project, for example, we've had problems with one of our team members, who is blind, being able to use our group wiki with JAWS, a tool that many people with visual impairments use to surf the web. I've also heard some individuals from the brain injury community complaining about use of Flash and how difficult it is to navigate through some sites. And let's not forget the large numbers of people who have learning disabilities.

This has all been a real eye-opener for me, so I've been doing some research into accessibility issues and wanted to share a few resources.

• 100 Killer Web Accessibility Resources: Blogs, Forums and Tutorials--Resources on general accessibility, as well as for individuals with specific disabilities, such as visual impairments and epilepsy.

• Accessify--News, tools, etc. related to accessibility. Shows you how to do things like easy closed-captioning for YouTube videos, as well as providing some useful tools for development.

• Access eLearning--a tutorial of the Georgia Tech Research on Accessible Distance Education (GRADE) project at Georgia Tech. Includes 10 modules.

• Designing Web Content that is Accessible to Users with Cognitive Disabilities--This webcast provides information on cognitive accessibility research conducted by NCDAE and others, and overviews and provides strategies for addressing the most common web accessibility issues for users with cognitive and learning disabilities.

• TARGET Center Discovery Series--a whole series of webinars on issues such as making accessible PDF files and emails with file attachments. Also a bunch of webinars on ergonomics and the home office.

• For Twitter--Accessible Twitter and TwInbox have both been recommended to me. The latter lets you use Twitter from Microsoft Outlook. This post on Twitter for Those Who Can't Talk or Type is also eye-opening.

I'm still learning a lot myself, so if this is something you have experience in, I would love to get your feedback and links to the resources you use and find to be helpful.

Feeling Like Dirt

The past few months for me have been a sort of hodgepodge of deadlines and projects and weird personal things like realizing that my younger daughter is going to college next year (COLLEGE! My baby!) and that she doesn't need her mother so much anymore. Compounding the situation,we've had lots of rain and cloudy, cool days and my heart is crying out for 85 degrees and sunny so I can sit on my patio and listen to the birds.

I've also had several profound reminders recently that I've been doing what I always do when I start to get overwhelmed, which is is to retreat deep inside myself where I don't have to notice that I'm overwhelmed. I can just slog through things under the premise that I have my act together. Which in many ways I do, but in many more important ways I don't.

The problem with this mode of dealing with things is that I end up feeling really alone and isolated and my feelings of isolation only reinforce the sense that I should stay inside my little hermit cave. I am also less into blogging and commenting and online socializing because of course that means coming out of my cave. And then I miss that sense of community, which further reinforces the cycle. . . well, you can see the problem.

So this morning I have time to breathe a little after weeks of competing deadlines and I come across this post by Havi Brooks who talks about how she's feeling like dirt right now and giving herself permission to do so. And I realize that right now I'm feeling like dirt, but have been trying to talk myself out of that feeling, which honestly only makes things worse. If you're going to feel crappy, at least don't add to it by beating yourself up for feeling crappy.

Why am I writing about this? Because I think a lot of us can get stuck in feeling like dirt and we don't have enough compassion for ourselves to just let those feelings be there for a time.  The combination of feeling this way and trying to make yourself NOT feel this way is a powerful recipe for personal and professional dysfunction. I've seen it in action and it's not pretty.

I also know that for myself as a learner, it's just as important for me to acknowledge and explore the emotional undercurrents that pass through me as it is for me to look at using a new tool or developing a new process. I'm reading Brain Rules right now and I can see so clearly how emotions and stress are as important to learning as anything else, but you have to know where you're at in order to move forward. And if I'm going to blog about learning and development, then I need to also blog about when things are NOT working, which right now, they are definitely not.

So suffice it to say that I'm feeling like dirt, but I'm cool with that, because this too shall pass. Plus dirt can be what makes things grow as long as you give it the chance.

Flickr photo via Teeny!

On Directed and Flow Learning Goals

Tony Karrer has an interesting post on the issue of learning goals. He's noticed that there seem to be two types of goals:

• Directed Learning Goals – specific focus
• Flow Learning Goals – nonspecific, exploratory

He goes on to argue that 1) people tend to fall into one of these two camps in terms of how they approach their own learning and 2) formal learning seems to more effectively support people with directed learning goals, while informal learning seems more for those with flow learning goals.

Says Tony of informal learning:

Unlike formal learning, informal learning is generally not going to ensure that specific knowledge will be transferred. Instead, people will learn what they need in order to accomplish the ultimate objectives. We aren't sure what they will learn.

He suggests that for informal learning to be effective for those with a more directed learning goal approach, the instructional design process must take into account their need for more specificity about what will be learned.

Tony's take on this makes sense to me. He sees himself as a directed learning goal guy. I'm much more of a flow learning goal person. After working with Tony on the Work Literacy Ning learning event, I can see that some of our behind the scenes back and forth on how to structure the learning was based on us coming at this from these two different angles. I saw us designing a much more free-flowing, exploratory experience, while Tony had some very specific learning goals in mind.

You can actually see our two approaches in the unit we did on social networking and LinkedIn. I set it up as a sort of "here are some things to explore--check them out" kind of unit. Tony added a screencast on how to find an expert on LinkedIn. You can see that he had something very specific in mind about using LinkedIn, while I was coming at it from a very different point of view.

So the issue becomes, how do you define learning goals for social, informal learning in a way that provides context and makes sense for more concrete directed goal learners?

Tony suggests that defining a business outcome or purpose for the learning is a good start. There doesn't have to be agreement about the specific topics or process, but if directed learners understand that the purpose of the informal learning is to help them achieve a specific business outcome, then they have a higher level of comfort with the process.

In my experience, this may be true of a directed learner like Tony, but he seems to be an exception. The people in my work who are most uncomfortable with informal, social learning are those who are also uncomfortable with something as ill-defined as a "business outcome" for their learning goals. They want very specific, concrete, actionable learning objectives AND they want a step-by-step process for getting there. In fact, I find that these types of learners have no patience for informal learning. To them, it's not learning at all. It's too messy and ill-conceived (in their minds).

For me, some of the value in Tony's distinction is that it points to a larger learning issue I see around types of learners. In general, in my experience, those who have directed learning goals (with Tony as the exception, rather than the rule) are also the ones who see formal learning as the only route to achieving those goals. They have a more concrete, linear way of seeing the world that requires X to lead to Y to lead to Z.

Flow learning goal people tend to prefer more informal learning events, in part because formal learning feels too constricted and controlled. They seem to be less linear and more networked in their thinking, where X connects to A, which connects to G and gets us to Z. They want and need the freedom to explore those connections, rather than being forced down a linear learning path.

If I'm right, I'm not sure that it's possible to provide enough of a structured goal orientation to informal learning to totally satisfy most directed goal learners. You can get partway there by doing as Tony suggests--linking the learning to some specific business outcomes. You might also try to provide people with some guidance on how to set directed learning goals for themselves within the context of a specific informal learning activity--perhaps by providing them with some potential learning paths to follow that lead to a more specific skill or by suggesting questions they might ask to get what they want from the experience.

What's intriguing to me about informal learning is that it most closely mirrors the work environment, which is rarely (if ever) linear and structured, unless you're in a manufacturing facility. It forces us as learners to have to extract our own learning from the situation, which in turn forces us to have to be clear about establishing our own learning goals and strategies.

In designing informal learning activities, we may need to get better at helping directed and flow learning people forge a learning path for themselves to navigate the social learning space. But that's a good thing--because then we're also helping people develop the skills they need to learn from work itself.

Lying for Learning

Over the weekend I Stumbled this post on an interesting learning strategy--lying:

One of my favorite professors in college was a self-confessed liar.

I guess that statement requires a bit of explanation.

The topic of Corporate Finance/Capital Markets is, even within the world of the Dismal Science, (Economics) an exceptionally dry and boring subject matter, encumbered by complex mathematic models and obscure economic theory.

What made Dr. K memorable was a gimmick he employed that began with his introduction at the beginning of his first class:

“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.”

And thus began our ten-week course.

This was an insidiously brilliant technique to focus our attention - by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements, he transmitted lessons that lasted far beyond the immediate subject matter and taught us to constantly check new statements and claims with what we already accept as fact.

I love this! Not only does it focus attention, it also teaches people to challenge what they hear from "experts" and to begin thinking for themselves. It also forces them to dig deeply into the meat of the learning.

Although this was a strategy used for a semester-long course, I think it could be adapted for shorter time-frames, even down to several lies in a single day-long workshop. I may be trying this in my next training session. . .

Evaluating Contributions to a Social Network

As we incorporate social networking tools into learning, I know that some of us are thinking about how to encourage and evaluate meaningful contributions to and participation in those networks.  Dave Duarte's list of 20 Ways to Evaluate Contributions to a Social Network seems like a good start. Many of these items are open to further discussion (i.e., what's a "well-structured argument" look like?), but in those conversations, you can arrive at additional insights and ideas for thinking about how people are contributing.

You could also easily set up a Social Network Challenge (along the lines of the Comment Challenge), using some of these ideas. I could see, for example, doing a week-long challenge that involved the following tasks.

• Pose a question to the group
• Build on the ideas of another in the network.
• Tell a story
• Make a recommendation
• Post a "Top 10" list
• Offer help or answer a question for another person in the network
• Use a graphic to illustrate an idea

This would encourage the most valuable social networking behaviors in a way that's more fun than simply posting a list of "Guidelines for Participation." It also makes more sense to teach and encourage these behaviors before plunging into evaluating them.

What do you think of this list? Have you been evaluating contributions to social networks? How have you been doing it? What have the results been?