Dave's Whiteboard

For some time, I’ve been using CC-licensed images on my blog posts and elsewhere as well.  CC Search makes that easy, as does Compfight.

I’m using far less text and far more images when I create presentations or workshops.  Here, you still get lots of text.  So it goes.

I think it’s important to give credit to the people who offer the images, and so I try always to make the image itself a link back to the source.  And I try to include a credit (like at the bottom of my posts), linking to the photographer’s profile.

One other thing I’ve been doing is writing a brief note to the photographer.  I thank him for sharing. I include a link to the photo (so he knows which one I’m talking about), and I include a link to the blog post (in case he’s curious about how I used the image).

I’m often surprised by the associations I make based on the images.  Even if my contact with the photographer is a one-time thing, it reminds me that there aren’t events–but there are connections.

By the way, the April edition of the Working / Learning blog carnival has arrived, hosted at Dave Wilkins’ Social Enterprise blog.  It’s worth a visit.

If you don’t think you can contribute this time around, Kevin Jones of Engaged Learning will host the May edition.  (Wanna host in June?)

CC-licensed hoto of phone photo by Dave.Hull.

Andrew Maynard, an expert on new scientific technologies,  has a post reprising the notion of the two cultures (science and humanities, with a chasm between them).  He offers a one-question poll and sees the results as indicating that the chasm isn’t necessarily that vast.

Ruth Seeley offers a similar poll from the humanities side.

I liked both polls, though as I commented to Ruth, I’m not sure her topic is necessarily comparable Andrew’s.

Ruth knows this isn’t a serious disagreement; we’ve had several enjoyable exchanges. The two polls did give me an excuse to test a polling plugin (a piece of code for WordPress blogs like this one).

Other than messing around in the tool aisle, I was shooting for a question like Maynard’s that touches on more fundamental concepts.

 Loading ...

Okay; now you can scroll down to the comments and check. Then, if you would, the bonus round: a second poll to help analyze the answers:

 Loading ...

This entry is part 9 of 21 in the series Ten Steps to Complex Learning (the book)

Getting to Step 4, “design supportive information,” feels like a new stage in Ten Steps to Complex Learning.

As the diagram shows, the first three steps relate most closely to learning tasks; steps 4, 5, and 6 relate to the supportive information component of van Merriënboer and Kirschner’s blueprint.

[Supportive information] bridges the gap between what learners already know and what they should know to fruitfully work on the non-recurrent aspects of learning tasks…

Remember, “supportive information” always mean support for non-recurrent aspects of complex skills–the things you do differently when handling different problems.  (The things you do the same each time fall under “procedural information.”  It’ll be a few more posts before I get there.)

So what is supportive information?  First, it’s information about how to solve problems in a particular domain (including how the domain is organized).  It includes examples that illustrate such information.  And it includes cognitive feedback on the quality of the learner’s performance.

You could call it the theory for a field.  In fact, this is where well-meant complex training often goes bad.  “We don’t have much time, so we can’t do any hands-on.  Let’s concentrate on the theory.”

The main parts of the chapter:

• Providing systematic approaches and domain models
• Illustrating those approaches and models
• Presentation strategies
• Cognitive feedback
• Supporting information in the training blueprint

Strategies and models: teaming up for learning

A systematic approach to problem-solving (SAP) is a cognitive strategy; it helps you perform tasks and solve problems in a given field–systematically.  vM&K will go further into SAPs in the next chapter.  For now, in terms of learning complex skills, a learner might study an SAP, or might work with a process worksheet that guides him through a task.

Mental models also provide support.  They explain the arrangement of the field–via conceptual models, structural models, and causal models.

The two work together: a cognitive strategy isn’t any good if you don’t have a good mental model of the field; and the mental model’s no good unless you have an effective way to solve problems in that field.

The goal of SAPs is to help the learner establish meaningful relationships among new pieces of information, and to establish meaningful relationships between those new elements and what she already knows.  Suggestions from The Ten Steps:

• When discussing phases, the learning methods should stress sequence and consequence.  You do job aid analysis after task analysis, because you need to know details about the tasks; you do job aid analysis before designing learning material, because job aids eliminate memorization.
• When discussing rules of thumb (a significant part of many cognitive strategies), the learning methods should stress cause-effect relationships–effect being the goal of the learner, and cause being what the learner needs to do to bring about the effect.

Those seem closely related to me.  My guess is that the first bullet (“temporal organization” in vM&K’s terms) has to do with broader processes, while the “change relationship”  deals more specifically with decisions and actions.  That at least aligns with the idea that you have both high-level or global SAPs and more detailed ones.

Keeping the model in mind

If SAPs are how experts do things, mental models are how they see things.

Conceptual models help answer the question, “What is this?”  A financial advisor needs to understand the difference between stocks, CDs, options, bonds, mutual funds, 401Ks, 403Bs, IRAs, SEPs, and other types of investment forms and structures.  Some instructional methods to facilitate this:

• Analyze a particular idea into smaller ideas (what kinds of tax-deferred accounts are there?).
• Describe main features or characteristics (an SEP is a tax-deferred retirement structure for self-employed people; a mutual fund is a form of indirect investment).
• Present a more general idea or organizing framework (connect principles of web page design to overall user-interface design).
• Compare and contrast similar ideas (an ordinary web site compared with a blog).

Since we’re comparing and contrasting, structural models answer the question, “How is this organized?”  The typical focus is on the spatial or temporal relationship of parts.  What-happens-when models (which vM&K call scripts) might include things like life cycles (for organisms or for processes).  What’s-where models (templates) explain how things fit together. Among methods for aiding learning:

• Explain the relative location of elements in time and space.  (What are the components of a memorandum of law?  Of a court brief?)
• Rearrange elements and predict effects.  (What if you move elements within the style sheet?  Will digitized video of an actual performer aid or detract from learning?

Causal models focus on how elements affect each other.  These models hlep learners interpret processes and make predictions.  They answer the question, “How does this work?”  The simplest form is a principle (for example, the law of supply and demand).  An interrelated set of principles is a theory (for natural phenomena like evolution) or a functional model (for human-built systems).  Methods for presenting causal models stress relationships:

• Make a prediction of future states.  (What will happen if we post federal earmarks, with locations, amounts, and sponsoring legislator?)
• Explain a particular state of affairs.  (Why is customer satisfaction o much higher in District Five than in Districts Three and Four?)

Expertise: you can’t practice theory

The eight bullets above, suggesting ways to present cognitive strategies and mental models, are expository.  They don’t provide any practice.  The bulk of this chapter of the Ten Steps deals with how to illustrate strategies and models, and how to activate prior knowledge and elaboration.

In other words: the support needs to make things concrete, and needs to put learners to work.

In instructional materials, modeling examples and case studies are the external counterparts of internal memories, proving a bridge between the supportive information and the learning tasks.

For providing supportive information, modeling examples illustrate SAPs and case studies illustrate domain models, while these same two approaches may be seen as learning tasks with maximum task support.

One criticism of much advanced training is that it’s too theoretical.  vM&K would say, “Well, duh!”  (Perhaps they’d say something more diplomatic.)  Real cognitive strategies combine theory (strategies and models) with real-life practice; otherwise you’re dealing only with abstractions.

Modeling examples (you remember them as part of learning tasks) bring out the expert performer’s hidden mental processes.   One valuable form is seeing how the expert responds when things don’t work out.  How does she respond to the problem?  What does she see, what does she try?  Psychologists in training, for example, study videotaped sessions in which experienced therapists demonstrate specific techniques and strategies.

Case studies, according to the Ten Steps, embody the types of models mentioned earlier.  A programmer might examine a successful interface to develop models for concepts like user-friendliness, metaphors, dialog boxes, and so on.  A structural-model case study might have architects exploring a building and analyzing how well the materials used fit the original purpose.

I’m going to stop here.  Next time, I’ll look at how to match models and case studies with specific types of presentation.  I’ll also go into elaboration, a key requirement for supportive information, and into the way that supportive information in general fits into the Ten Steps blueprint.

CC-licensed sales-strategy image by bschmove.
CC-licensed affinity diagram by Rosenfeld Media.
CC-licensed bridge photo by tour of boring.

Frank Zappa once defined rock journalism as “people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.”

I think there’s a related phenomenon for bloggers who blog about blogging, and so I try to avoid that.  Today’s an exception, though if you don’t have a blog of your own you can skip and come back another day.  (I’m nearly ready for another post on Ten Steps to Complex Learning, which has taught me that “step” is a very flexible concept.)

Sometime on Sunday, my blog was hacked.  And really hacked–more that a dozen of the behind-the-scenes files were altered, with code inserted in them that ended up taking orders from a server in Latvia.  (There are over 600 files that make up WordPress–a lot of scenery to hide behind.)

At least on my own computer, that led to random redirects: I’d click a link in Google and jump past the target to some crummy aggregation site, from which I’m sure hacking-through-Latvia folks were getting reimbursement.

I found some other malware on my own computer, though I don’t know if it’s connected to the blog hack or just a depressing coincidence.  As a result, I’ve spent the best past of two days doing search-and-destroy (or search-and-feel-befuddled), along with a lot of testing and attempts at cleanup.

This is the dark side of the networked, interlinked world: we take our tools for granted, the way we don’t think about counterweights in elevators or the airframe on our flight to Dallas.  And the confluence of complexity with multiple vendors and extreme specialization means that when things go wrong, it’s damned hard to figure out where, let alone how to resolve it.

Like this advice:

The easy way to [protect your MySQL database] is to put the database access passwords in a file with a .inc.php extension (such as config.inc.php), and then place this file in a directory which is above the server’s document root (and thus not accessible to surfers of your site).  Then, refer to the file in your PHP code with a require_once command.

I actually understand about 85% of that, which is more than I can usually say for household wiring.  Still, it leaves me pessimistic; working with PHP code is like working with that wiring, where I’m thrown as soon as I find three wires rather than just two (and, no, I’m not counting the ground wire).

Caveat blogger.

CC-licensed wiring photo by playbeasy.

This post is my contribution to the April 2009 Working/Learning blog carnival, hosted by Dave Wilkins at his Social Enterprise blog. 
(I updated this note when Dave’s “host post” appeared on April 30.)

Conversation in a learning chat on Twitter last Thursday included this from Shanta Rohse:

Doctors have “do not harm”
I wish IDers had an equivalent.

I always thought this phrase was part of the Hippocratic Oath, but it’s apparently much more recent. That spoils the analogy a bit, but not the idea of the duties of a learning professional.

The UK’s General Medical Council has published the duties of a doctor. I used those to think about my responsibilities as a learning professional.  Here’s the result:

Learners and clients must be able to trust learning professionals with their time, with their goals, and with their desire to learn. To justify that trust you must show respect for learning and you must:

• Respect the goals and the business of the clients and learners with whom you deal
• Protect and promote the right of each person to learn
• Provide a good standard of practice and care
  • Keep your professional knowledge and skills up to date
  • Recognize and work within the limits of your competence
  • Work with colleagues in the ways that best serve learners’ interests
  • Test your assumptions, question your preferences, and seek evidence to support the effectiveness of approaches to learning
• Treat learners as individuals and respect their dignity
  • Treat learners politely and considerately
  • Respect learners’ right to confidentiality
• Work in partnership with your clients
  • Listen to them and respond to their concerns and preferences
  • When you believe their plans or preferences will not accomplish their goals or facilitate learning, provide reasons and alternatives in a collegial, constructive manner
• Work in partnership with learners
  • Listen to them and respond to their concerns and preferences
  • Give them the information they want or need in a way they can understand
  • Respect their right to reach decisions with you about their learning
  • Support them in managing learning for themselves to improve and maintain their knowledge and skill
• Be honest and open and act with integrity
  • Act without delay if you have good reason to believe that you or a colleague may be putting patients at risk
  • Never discriminate unfairly against learners or colleagues
  • Never abuse your learners’ trust in you

What are your thoughts?