Dave’s Whiteboard

This post is part of September’s edition of the Working / Learning blog carnival.  This month’s host is Michele Martin of The Bamboo Project blog.  (And here’s info about the carnival in general.)

Cammy Bean is “auditing the auditor’s version” of a course on connectivism.  She referred to a post by Christy Tucker, “Does learning grow or is it built?”  The question’s based in part on Stephen Downes’s contention that understanding is “the process of making connections,” and that the “connectionist networks” are not built (like a model) but grown (like a plant).

Christy’s post, and the many comments, got me thinking about this build/grow concept.  It’s certainly true that whatever learning is, it happens in the brain — electrochemical processes leading to new brain cells, stronger connections, increased pathways — as in the old notion “the neurons that fire together, wire together.”

The drawback, from a learning-at-work standpoint, is that we don’t know and can’t do much at the level of the individual neuron, or even the level of a whole bunch of them.  I’m not saying Stephen’s wrong, but I’m thinking build-versus-grow is a bit of a distraction.

Especially since, as with most Metaphor Parties, we all bring our own recipes.

I make an analogy with the musculoskeletal system (though to look at me, you’d conclude that must be pure theory on my part). Here’s what I mean:

You can just go about your ordinary activities, and even without strenuous work or deliberate exercise, way down there at the cellular level, you’re going to get new muscle cells and you’re going to strengthen existing ones. Eventually that has an effect on the larger, organized systems we call muscles.

In infancy and childhood, we’re not doing much directing of that process; we’re not activity choosing which set of muscles to work on.  Yet in a fashion that parallels things like acquiring language, we gain in our musculoskeletal ability.

We know that we can, if not build, at least focus and concentrate our efforts.  We can set out to increase out physical ability — and it turns out that working enough with muscles has an effect on bone, too: strength training (working with weights) not only increases the capability of muscles (nice way to avoid “grows” or “builds,” huh?), it can increase the capability of related bones.

That’s why strength training is beneficial for elderly people: their bones get stronger — more so than if they continued only with everyday activity.

It’s just an analogy; the brain is far more complex.  I just see these potential parallels in the musculoskeletal system:

• Whether you just happen to do a lot of physical labor, or you work out, in certain circumstances you increase both cardiovascular capacity and  strength.
• Increased cardio and strength, in various combinations, lead to overall fitness and increased health (decreased anxiety, increased endorphines, lowered stress, etc., etc.).

The connection?  Learning may grow in a way we can’t do much about at the cellular level.  But, particularly in the world of work, it’s obvious that we can find ways to make concepts clearer, to organize information, to create sequencing or scaffolding that can help an individual learn better.

Can you learn French by being dropped in the middle of Aix-en-Provence with 5,000 euros and a suitcase?  Sure.  But you might learn faster by having someone who can model and demo (as Downes says).  You might also benefit from knowing that nearly all French nouns ending in <i>-tion</i> are feminine — something I only found out this year, despite years spent trying to improve my French.

I don’t mean for a moment that corporate training departments or learning organizations have the answer.  For one thing, there isn’t the answer.  For another, inertia is one of the strongest forces in the universe — and not just for the training/learning professionals.  How many managers and how many workers still see live classroom delivery as the preferred way to learn?  How many busy people resist formats that seem too open-ended because they’re unclear about the process or the outcome?

No answers from me here.  I’m glad to have even a small part in this wide discussion.

Both photos by tyfn.

In a comment on Jen’s post about web 2.0 not necessarily being the future of education, Rob Wall talks about B.S.O.S. — Bright Shiny Object Syndrome.

Many educational technologists have a slightly geeky personality and become attracted to cool new technology toys. I myself have been guilty of over-using nifty new technologies because I find them “bright and shiny” rather than picking tools that suit what my students need to learn….

There are many good tools that can be put to good use helping students learn. Some of the technologies are, by our thinking, old ones like the printing press or paper. Some of the new ones and upcoming ones will also be useful. I think mobile devices like the iPhone/iPod touch hold some exciting possibilities. But I need to remind myself to pick the tools to fit the job, not to pick the jobs that fit the newest tools.

I followed Rob back to his Open Monologue and his recent post, No Gurus. He talks about many smart, funny, articulate people he’s learned from. He appreciates what they’ve shared but doesn’t see them as gurus, a term he equates with sitting on a mountaintop in a state of blissful enlightment.

I like the term guru, myself, as a way of describing someone with in-depth knowledge or insight. Informally, I think we use the term as a synonym for expert, with a twist: a guru helps you move toward the expertise and insight you seek.

(Or, sometimes, helps you make the decision to choose another path.)

Speaking of sects and cults, David Lane said that the bigger the claim a guru makes, the bigger the chance is that the guru is unreliable. That makes sense in the world of learning as well.  I often refer to Joe Harless as my guru because of what I learned from him.  Joe would no more claim to have all the answers than he would claim to know all the questions.  Even after much professional success, he’d revisit what he thought he knew and question it, rework it.

“Rely on the teachings to evaluate a guru,” says the Dalai Lama.  ”Do not have blind faith, but also no blind criticism.”

This applies to your personal learning as well: if you’re guiding yourself, you need to think every so often about how good the guide is.

Photo of Bright Shiny Object by Sidereal / Jack Lyons.

The Working / Learning Blog Carnival seems to have been on vacation for a while. Time to reopen.

The idea of a carnival is a regular collection of posts with some common thread. In this case, we’re talking about posts relating to the theme of work at learning; learning at work.

So if you’ve got something to say about how people go about their own learning, or how individuals and organizations try to foster learning at work, you ought to think about taking part.

If you don’t know much about blog carnivals, there are three mains parts:

• Participants write a post connected to the overall theme, publishing that post on their blogs on the designated day.
• One blogger acts as the host for the carnival, publishing a short description and a link to each participating post. (In return, each participant posts a link to the “host post” so readers of the one blog can find the rest of the carnival.)
• The carnival appears on a regular basis.

Once a month seems good for now. Past editions of the Working / Learning carnival appeared on the third Monday of the month. If I can get at least four hosts to step up, we’re covered for the rest of the year.

Can’t have a blog carnival without posts, though. Our process hasn’t been very bureaucratic: if you want to participate, just write a post ahead of time (or, if you must, recycle a hit from the past) and send the permalink and a description to the host. You don’t need an invitation; you don’t need to make a commitment to join each time.

It’s a good way to discover other bloggers you might not follow, and someone might discover you as well.

More details on these pages:

• Hosting the Working / Learning carnival
• Participating in the carnival

“Alive” poster photo by eqqman / Eric Hart.

In the way that New Hampshire has places worth hiking, Cathy Moore has ideas worth hearing. A recent example asks, “Can your learners wing it?” What she’s asking is whether the training you develop allows people to think for themselves — especially in situations that don’t exactly match those in training.

And, you know, in more than 30 years of full-time employement, the only places I’ve encountered multiple-choice questions are automatic teller machines and the Motor Vehicle Administration. (One of those locales has been weighed, measured, and found wanting.)

Cathy’s post made me think about design advice that makes sense to me, like “show and tell” rather than “tell and show.” That’s meant to capture the idea that by demonstrating something — say, the main steps in some process — you’re offering a conceptual frame onto which people can hang the specifics.

Her post has great examples based on the idea of using “I statements” appropriately in difficult situations. The recommendation about moving from a demonstration to some sort of application — “Here’s an example (not a sermon). Now, do something.” — made me want a quick mnemonic like “show and go.”

A better mantra for a design approach might be blink and think. Instead of yammering away about “seven keys to effectively manage difficult conversations,” go right to a striking example or demonstration — something to make them blink.

You want a little ambiguity, because brains are all about forming patterns — and when things don’t quite add up, we work harder at making sense (finding or creating patterns).

Meaning before details, remember.

What happens after a blink? We think. We try to figure out what’s going on. We’re not always right — but that’s okay; learning hinges on not always being right.

I know I’ve spent lots of my instructional-design time busily constructing safety nets, seat belts, suspenders, safety harnesses, overview, intros, and before-you-begins. (It’s a perverse variation of the Gaelic proverb that says, “A day’s work: getting started.”)

Better by far to treat learners as intelligent adults. You don’t want to plunge into esoterica, the way a Wikipedia page on, say, refraction clobbers you in the fourth sentence with Snell’s law:

(unless you know they’re already into the mathematics of physics). But you do want to assume they understand, interpret, and connect the new to the already known.

Blink and think photos both by K. Sawyer.

It’s not only Mayorga Coffee’s Café Cubano that has me going this morning; I’ve just read a pair of posts by Clive Shepherd.

Last June, he wrote about “Three tiers in the content pyramid.” He was modifying an earlier idea that e-learning would develop two tiers: a high end top tie for complex, high-impact projects, and a lower tier of “good enough” contend “designed to communicate simple information or provide basic knowledge.”

In that post, he said he’d failed to consider the impact of web 2.0 tools. He also felt that as you move further down the tier, you get more user-generated content, a kind of bottom-up initiative.

[The bottom-up stuff] occurs because managers are not the only ones with an interest in learning and performance improvement — it is to every individual’s advantage that they have the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out their current jobs effectively, to take advantage of opportunities for advancement, and to remain competitive in the marketplace.

Clive goes to to say that the three tiers — high end, rapid development, and user-generated — are not in competition with each other. In fact, the more experience people have with creating content for themselves, the more they can appreciate the skills that professional bring to bear.

In a post last Friday, Clive revisited the topic. He’s now thinking that the boundaries between the tiers are less distinct, and that what may be more important is agile development (a term from Nicola Foster). Agility is “a combination of strength, coordination, responsiveness, speed, and balance.” Put another way, “agile development is about getting the right content to the right people in a timely fashion.”

I’ve been involved in the early stages of a project related to flood insurance. Clive’s posts have help clarify a notion that’s loitered near the back burner for a while. Imagine using the insight of experts and the tight focus of the Common Craft videos.

I don’t mean “use whiteboards, drawings on paper, and Lee LeFever,” though you could do worse. I mean: target a crucial outcome and use it as a compass to guide your development.

Notice that there is no interactivity whatsoever in the Common Craft products (unless you count “click here to start”). What makes them “good enough,” to use Clive’s terms, is that they make clear what they can do (e.g., explain social networking in plain English) and deliver on that in under four minutes. What happens after that is up to you (which is pretty much the way learning has always been).