Dave's Whiteboard

I collect rules-of-thumb the way some people collect fantasy sports-league players.  (Willy Pareto? Economist out of Turino Tech.)  But I’m cautious when the rule seems too broad or the numbers too specific.  After all, it wasn’t Vilfredo himself but Joseph Juran who suggested that the 80/20 rule be called the Pareto principle.

Lately I’ve been trying to change some everyday behavior, and so this PsyBlog post, How Long to Form a Habit?, pulled me in.

(Disclaimer: when someone asks, from a training viewpoint, “How long does it take to develop [whatever]?” I habitually ask myself, “How long is a rope?”)

The PsyBlog post says participants in a study (working on new habits like eating fruit with lunch or running 15 minutes per day) on average hit a plateau in about 66 days.  As the chart (from the post) shows, you get to your “drink more water” goal much fasts than your “do 50 sit-ups” goal.

The post links to an abstract for the actual study, which notes that of the original 96 participants, 82 had enough data for the study, 62 fit the statistical model, and 39 had “a good fit.”    And the range to automaticity varied–from 18 to 254 days.

I got curious and found some other items on habit, which Wikipedia defines as a routine of behavior, repeated regularly, that tends to occur subconsciously.

Under that definition,  I have a habit of carrying my wallet in my left front pocket; this is an oddity, I realize, but it’s behavior of longstanding, such that I feel strange to have the wallet anywhere else.

Habits are learned behaviors, and a 2005 article on CNET News cites an MIT study looking at how old (presumably bad) habits reassert themselves.  It claims habit gets established in the basal ganglia (site of, among other things, procedural learning and addictive behavior).

Backsliding is easier, then, and to counteract it, we may need to be conscious not only of the former habit but of the presumably better behavior we want to make as automatic as possible.

I found lots of silliness–21 days to establish a habit, or 99, or 60, and one guy who said he could establish one in a day.  (Maybe if you’re establishing the habit of having maple syrup on vanilla ice cream.)

If it’s not currently part of your standard behavior, then to establish a habit, you’re got to exert some effort.  Initially you’re likely dealing with a lack of immediate, enjoyable payback.  And almost by definition, you’re disturbing of your behavioral routine.

I found a 2007 Psychological Review article by Wendy Wood and David T. Neil, A New Look at Habits and the Habit-Goal Interface (21-page PDF).

Habits are learned dispositions to repeat past responses. They are triggered by features of the context that have covaried frequently with past performance, including performance locations, preceding actions in a sequence, and particular people. Contexts activate habitual responses directly, without the mediation of goal states.

In other words, acquiring a habit means you’re likely to repeat a given action.  Settings that invite that action do so directly–you don’t think about losing weight (a goal) as you do about eating fruit rather than a bag of chips.

Wood and Neil propose three principles:

• Habits are cued by context. You can learn to associate a context; after a while, the context can do its own triggering.  (This explains the advice to insomniacs about not watching TV, reading too much, or tossing and turning for long times in bed.  They’re working to create an association between bed and sleep.)
• Over time, the goal fades but the habit remains. ( “Habit context-response associations are not mediated by goals.” )This explains why my dad continued to buy kid-friendly cereal years after all of us were grown and married.  He’d done the grocery shopping for 20 years; his choices were a habit.  He didn’t eat the cereal himself, and my mother’s…feedback, let’s call it…took a long time to have any impact.
• Habits interact with goals. Initially, goals direct habits; over time, habits and goals influence each other.

It seems to me, then, that when we talk about acquiring good habits, we’re likely not only adding to our current repertory of activity; we’re likely replacing something seen as less helpful.

The Wood & Neal article discusses that at more length than I have space in this post.  Also, I haven’t fully established the habit of reading 21-page journal articles on the screen.  So I’m printing the PDF, and I’ll have a future post on habits, goals, and how they might get me to the gym more often while surfing online a bit less.

I’ve already mentioned David Sousa’s How the Brain Learns, but I keep going through it and thought it deserved a little more exposure.

Sousa’s writing for teachers (including college and university faculty), along with principals and staff development folks. Almost everything here offers value for the corporate trainer or instructional designer, in terms of more structured learning

A lot of makes sense for less formal learning as well.

It’s clear from the outset that Sousa does what he encourages you to do.  By the time you get to page 9 (there are 300 pages), he’s nudging you to do more than just read:

One of the best ways to assess the value of the strategies suggested in this book is to try them out in your own classroom or in any other location where you are teaching. conducting this action research allows you to:

• Gather data to determine the effectiveness of new strategies and affirm those you already use,
• Acclaim and enhance the use of research in our profession, and
• Further your own professional development.

Besides which, he says, you get feedback on how you’re doing (as an instructor or designer), and you can collaborate with your peers to apply the research more broadly or more deeply.

So, what’s he offering?  The chapter titles are clear:

1. Basic Brain Facts (parts, development)
2. How the Brain Processes Information (models and their limitations)
3. Memory, Retention, and Learning
4. The Power of Transfer (both transfer during learning and transfer after learning)
5. Brain Specialization and Learning (lateralization, spoken language, learning to read)
6. The Brain and the Arts
7. Thinking Skills and Learning
8. Planning for Today and Tomorrow

Each chapter includes a section called Practitioner’s Corner. These are short, focused sections to help the teacher (trainer, learning professional) move stuff off the pages and into her repertory of skills.  For chapter 3 (memory, learning, retention) there are ten practitioner’s corner items.  They range from “avoid teaching two very similar motor skills” to “strategies for block scheduling” to “using rehearsal to enhance retention.”

I’ve actually felt a little intimidated by How the Brain Learns. I look at what Sousa’s done and think “I ought to be doing my own action research.”  I ought to create and document not only some successes from what I’ve done–but make those potential resources for future clients and coworkers.

• What am I trying to do?  What’s telling me to try it?
• What difference will it make?  How can I tell?
• What difference did it make?
• What do I do now?  What can I do better?  What’s telling me that?

I’m reading e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer.  I’ve admired Clark for years; she energetically and effectively applies research to the problem of learning at work.

One strategy they recommend for elearning (and that you’ll find applies in other situations) is the use of worked examples.

A worked example is a step-by-step demonstration of how to perform a task or solve a problem.

That means that in some cases, a worked example can look a lot like a job aid.  Especially for procedural tasks (those you perform the same way each time), worked examples are natural ways to show specifically how to accomplish some task.

Clark and Mayer offer four guidelines:

• Replace some practice problems with worked examples.
• Apply good practice when using text, audio, and graphics in worked examples.
• Provide diverse, job-realistic worked examples to help build mental models.
• Train learners to self-explain as they use worked examples.

Practice: less can be more

Remember homework?  It’s an attempt to strengthen the use of procedure skills.  Clark and Mayer cite research (as they do throughout the book) to suggest that you can save learning time by replacing some practice with worked examples.

“One [caveat] is that worked examples are only effective if the learner studies them.”  So design some worked examples as completion problems: partly-worked examples that the learner finishes.

Other approaches: make the worked example interactive — like, say, a widget that allows the learner to change one or more factors and see the result.

The authors point out that worked examples seem to benefit novices more than they do people already skilled in a topic.

The media can work

I heard more than an echo of Ten Steps to Complex Learning. (That’s no coincidence; the book cites research by Ten Steps co-author J. J. G  van Merrienboër.)  Clark and Mayer advocate applying sound principles for media use when you create worked examples.  For instance:

• Integrate text with graphics; don’t restrict text to a caption at the edge.
• Use audio to expand on visuals; don’t use it to narrate text on the screen.
• Personalize.  Use conversational tone.  Use virtual agents (like a coach who addresses the learner).

Act like work

It’s almost depressing to think this point needs stressing.  When you create worked examples, make sure they involve realistic tasks that people face on the job.  (All the more reason to involve typical performers in the design, if you ask me.)

And vary the examples.  That’s more than changing the names; change the structure of the example.  Doing so helps you approximate the range of problems that show up on the job, where not everyone comes in asking the same thing.

…When teaching tasks that require judgment and problem-solving–tasks known as far transfer–more than one example will be needed…

Thre is no one right method for performing these tasks, since each job situation will be different.  Solving these far-transfer tasks, whether in highly structured domains such as programming…or in more ill-defined areas such as sales…requires more flexible knowledge in long-term memory.

Interestingly, worked examples help to lower extraneous cognitive load (the mental burden imposed by the course design).  A variety of examples adds to the intrinsic cognitive load, which can improve learning.

The idea is that the learner works at figuring out what the different examples have in common, and thus builds up her own mental model for the skills in question.

Do-it-yourself explaining

“Successful learners can explain worked examples to themselves, and their explanations focus on the principles behind the examples.”

So Clark and Mayer suggest that a virtual coach can demonstrate how to work through a worked example.  In other words, the worked example is an example of explaining a worked example.  From the text:

• (Onscreen text in a quality-control unit)
  Take 4 sequential widgets off the line every hour for 24 hours.  These are your subgroups.
• (Jim, the onscreen virtual coach, in audio:)
  First, I notice that the subgroups are selected on a regular basis–four in a row, every how.

So what?

Here’s what I think is worthwhile about the use of worked examples (and about the book generally):

• It’s based on research, not someone’s preferred way to present.
• It works for both procedural and non-procedural skills.
• It suggests that design does, in fact, matter, so that even an advocate of informal learner can benefit by applying the principles to things meant to foster that learning

Yesterday’s post here about med students who spend time as “patients” in nursing homes brought to mind another example of learning on the job.

It comes from the 1970 management classic, Up the Organization,  by Robert Townsend.

Townsend became CEO of Avis Rent A Car in 1962.  The company had not made a profit in thirteen years.  By 1965, Avis increased its sales 150% and had annual profits of $1 million, $3 million, and $5 million.

I’ve had my copy (see photo) for years; it originally belonged to the General Motors legal staff library.  (Maybe they never read it.)

It wasn’t much work to find this particular passage and the accompanying footnote:

Before you hire a computer specialist, make it a condition that he spend some time in the factory and then sell your shoes to the customers.  A month the first year, two weeks a year thereafter.  This indignity* will separate those who want to use their skills to help your company from those who just want to build their own know-how on your payroll.

* Everybody including the chief executive had to go through the Avis rental-agent training school.  I once saw the Ph.D. who was responsible for all Avis systems panic and run from an O’Hare rental counter at the approach of his first real customer.

Townsend was blunt, wry, and pragmatic.

Probably whenever Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and the other chiefs powwowed, the first topic of conversation was the shortage of Indians.  Certainly today, no meeting of the high and the mighty is complete until someone polishes the conventional wisdom: “Our big trouble today is getting enough good people.”

This is crystal-clear nonsense.  Your people aren’t lazy and incompetent… They’re beaten by all the overlapping and interlocking policies, rules, and systems encrusting your company….

Do you know what they have to go through to hire somebody–or buy something?… It’s your fault they’re rusty from underwork.

From the chapter on Office Hours:

Anyone who makes over $150 a week should be allowed to set his own office hours.  Many will conform to the traditional 9 to 5 but it should be their choice.  A few will set hours that reduce their effectiveness and cost them their jobs.  Overall, it’s worth it.

From Organization Charts: Rigor Mortis

[Organization charts] have uses: for the annual salary review; for educating investors on how the organization works and who does what.  [Otherwise] a chart demoralizes people.  Nobody thinks of himself as below other people.  And in a good company, he isn’t..

In the best organizations people see themselves working in a circles as if around one table.  One of the positions is designated chief executive officer, because somebody has to make all those tactical decisions that enable an organization to keep working… [But tactical] leadership passes from one to another depending on the particular task being attacked…

From People:

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with our country except taht the leaders of all our major organizations…[have] been using the Catholic Church and Caesar’s legions as our patterns for creating organizations.

And until the last forty or fifty years it made sense.  The average church-goer, soldier, and factory worker was uneducated and dependent on orders from above.

That last chapter goes on to summarize another nearly-forgotten classic, Douglas McGregor’s The Human Side of Management. McGregor posited three assumptions he called Theory X:

• People hate work.
• People have to be driven and threatened to get them to work toward organizational objectives.
• They like security, aren’t ambitions, want to be told what to do, and dislike responsibility.

In contrast, McGregor saw (and Townsend recommended) Theory Y:

• People don’t hate work; it’s as natural as rest or play.
• If people commit themselves to mutual objectives, they’ll drive themselves more effectively than you can drive them.
• People commit themselves to the extent they see ways of satisfying their own goals (as well as those of the organization).

And just think… all this before social media.

Townsend, by the way, was the CEO who brought in the legendary We Try Harder advertising campaign.  Before you watch the next episode of Mad Men, take a look at some examples of Avis’s approach at the Sell Sell blog.

How fully do you immerse yourself in new skills?

The University of New England’s program in geriatric medicine gives students a “diagnosis” and places them in nursing homes.  The students spend two weeks living as they would with the symptoms and limitations of their condition.

Here’s 38-year-old Kristin Murphy, who said, “I said I want the full gamut [of treatment].  And I said that completely not knowing what I was getting in to….’Well, do you want a Hoyer lift?’  And I had said, sure.  I did not know what a Hoyer lift was.  I had no idea, none whatsoever.”

(I can’t seem to embed the video; click the image to view it on the New York Times site.)

Here’s the full article, which appeared in the August 24 New York Times.

I think the program is remarkable for what it demands of the medical students.  Doctors generally and specialists in particular are rarely on the receiving end of the full range of treatment that a patient experiences.

The two-week length of the “condition” provides time for a variety of experiences–the daily routine of eating, bathing, using the toilet.  There’s also at least the potential for the spirit-sapping dreariness of nursing home life: your personal space is limited to a bed, a dresser, a closet, a few shelves.  Your roomate, not chosen by you.  A television always on; a call-light signal pinging away endlessly; people younger than your grandchildren calling you by a nickname–or just “honey” or “dear.”

And twenty-four hours, after which the cycle starts again.

I’d like to know what happens when participants return from this experience.  How do they process what doesn’t happen? They don’t (and can’t) experience the full burden of pain and frailty. They don’t (and can’t) experience the full burden of medication.

It’s sobering to read that only 10 students have gone through this program…and more so to see that only about two-thirds of geriatric fellowship slots (required for certification) are filled.