Dave's Whiteboard

There’s an image on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website:

An amendment to the Citizenship Act went into effect today.  I took the quiz that the image links to, even though I knew how it would turn out:

1. Have you ever renounced your Canadian citizenship?  
   Nope.
2. Was your Canadian citizenship ever revoked for fraud?  
   No.
3. Where were you born?
   The Inverness hospital–oh, “in Canada.”
4. When were you born?
   (In my case, the right answer is:
   “Between January 1st, 1947, and February 14, 1977.”)
5. At the time of your birth, were your parents foreign diplomats in Canada?  
   No (unless under really deep cover).

So I passed.

Under the new law, “Citizenship will be automatic and retroactive to the day the person was born or lost citizenship, depending on the situation.”  So I’ve zipped back to 1958 when my parents became naturalized U.S. citizens.  At the time, I gained U.S. citizenship through them and automatically lost my Canadian citizenship.

Oh, there it is.  And retroactive, too, so I’ve been Canadian all along.  (You had doubts?) 

I read once that Stephen Hawking claimed time travel would never be possible.  He offered as proof the fact that we haven’t been invaded by tourists from the future.  (I used to think, well,  maybe we’re just the time-travel equivalent of someplace no one wants to visit. )  I guess Canada and I have showed him.

1066 and All That states (sensibly, I think) that history is what you remember.  More than that; at least for me, history is how you respond to what you remember–and perhaps what those responses lead you to.

You can turn inward, recalling only the good things and staying inside the value equivalent of a walled garden, or you can move outward, using what you know to help figure out other things.

I’m descended from Highlanders.  I remember my father talking to our upstairs neighbor in Detroit, who was (of course) also from Cape Breton.  Frank said to my dad, “Wouldn’t it be great, Hughie, if we could go back to Scotland?”

I don’t think anyone in Frank Gillis’s family had been within a thousand miles of Scotland for two hundred years, except perhaps during two world wars–but this was Frank’s attitude (and my dad’s).  Scotland for them was like Paris for Hemingway: a moveable feast, only with more MacDougals.

I treasure this connection to a small place, though not as a Celtic Disneyland frozen in time.  I know a little of how my ancestors came to Canada, and then my parents to the States.  That knowledge, I think, helps me connect a little with the origins, the journeys, and the memories held by others.

I don’t see Bonnie Prince Charlie as a noble hero, but today’s the anniversary of the last battle on the island of Britain.  Jacobite forces under Prince Charlie were crushed by the army of the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II, on April 16, 1746.  The site is known by two names: Drumossie and Culloden.

So here’s Deanta with Mary Dillon, singing Alastair McDonald’s Culloden’s Harvest.

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning

Note: this is a continuation of the previous post in this series,
because I can’t seem to summarize and comment on one of the
Ten Steps to Complex Learning in a single post.)

Step 3 is “set performance objectives.”  As the introduction and first section of this chapter emphasize, this is an iterative process, not a linear one.  The real-life tasks in which you perform the complex skill help to determine the overall learning goals and the specific tasks that will help achieve them.

In turn, these help refine understanding of the complex skill and the constituent skills that it embodies.

After analyzing (or “decomposing”) the skills, you create performance objectives.  I’ve discussed Van Merriënboer and Kirscher’s actions and the tools and conditions that apply to the objectives.  It’s a bit tough to talk about standards as they describe them.

Keeping to the standards

The Ten Steps sees standards as having four elements: criteria, values, and attitudes.  Criteria means what you think: minimum requirements for things like accuracy, speed, quality, and so forth.

Values indicate that the constituent skill conforms to some set of rules or regulations.  Two examples vM&K offer: “without violating traffic rules” and “taking the ICAO safety regulations into account.”

My feelings are mixed.  I can see the value of this as shorthand (“wiring for this remodeling must meet the National Electrical Code”).  Is there a little game of gotcha on the side?  Or are we acknowledging that in complex learning, there are areas of performance that matter, even if we’re not going to provide instruction related to them?

I really can’t say; this just feels a bit like a junk drawer in the conceptual cabinet of the Ten Steps.

Feelings about attitudes

If values are the junk drawer of instructional design, attitudes are like scribbling “Get organized!” on a to-do list.  The Ten Steps doesn’t define “attitudes,” but says they’re “subordinate to, but fully integrated with” constituent skills.

Apparently we’ll know them when we see them.  However, they won’t be things like “have a client-centered attitude.”  vM&K say this is a non-example: a research librarian doesn’t need to have such an attitude outside of work, nor does he need to have it when doing tasks that don’t involve clients.

So, whatever an attitude is, it’s not an enduring part of your personality.  I actually think there is such a thing as attitude; I just don’t think  you can influence it directly very well.  The Ten Steps seems to agree:

It is only necessary to specify the attitude in the performance objective for these relevant constituent skills. If possible, all observable behaviors that indicate or demonstrate the attitude should be formulated or specified in a way that they are observable!  The standard “with a smile on your face” is more concrete, and thus more observable, than “friendly;” “regularly performing checks” is more concrete…than “punctual…”

“With a smile on your face?”

This is an unsatisfactory nod toward a complex issue.  Think of medical professionals interacting with patients (so-called bedside manner).  Can it be that helping a surgeon demonstrate interest in the person and not just the condition–”Dr. Manoogian, your gall bladder’s in room 5″–might require this close a focus?

Classifying Objectives

Three dimensions apply to the objectives you develop (remember, these are objectives for the constituent skills that make up the overall complex skill):

• Teach, or not?
• Non-recurrent, or recurrent?
• Make automatic, or not?

The easy part is sorting out the objectives you’re not going to include in your training–either because the typical performer already has these skills, or because the objectives are covered elsewhere.  Those that remain fall into four groups.

Non-recurrent skills, you’ll recall, are applied differently to different problem situations.  They involve schema-based problem solving and reasoning.  They require supporting information like cognitive maps during the training, which is the topic for Step 4.

Recurrent skills are those you apply the same way to different problem situations.  They’re the rule-based skills.  In training, these require procedurall information.

vM&K state that any prerequisite skills for a recurrent skill are by definition recurrent.  “A recurrent constituent skill,” they says, ” can never have non-recurrent aspects!”  Since they say with with both italics and the second exclamation point in two pages, they must mean it.

The same skill, they go on, could be non-recurrent in one training program, but recurrent in another.  Repair of military aircraft in peacetime might be a non-recurrent skill, because there’s time for diagnosis.  In wartime, one of the criteria is to repair or replace as quickly as possible, which could mean that repair becomes a more procedure-driven and thus recurrent task.

Some recurrent skills require a high level of automaticity.  This involves the part-task practice discussed in Step 10.  Some jobs don’t require this type of automaticity (for example, the recurrent patent-examiner task).  Factors that suggest automaticity include:

• Enabling other skills higher in the hierarchy. Musicians practice scales, even after achieving a high level of skill, in order to automate basic skills and enable more fluid performance of higher skill.
• Simultaneous performance with many other skills. Process operators in manufacturing and air-traffic controllers are two types of jobs where the individual reads displays automatically as she analyzes and responds to dynamic sistuations.
• High risk in terms of cost, damage to equipment, or danger to life. Pilots and flight attendants practice emergency procedures.

Ten Steps makes a point that not all routine skills need automation.  There’s a cost/benefit consideration — you don’t memorize all the addition possibilities of two numbers from 0 to 999; you do (eventually) automate the skill needed to keep a car moving in a straight line.

Twofers

“Rare situations” exist, according to vM&K, when you’d choose to automate a non-recurrent skill.  They use “double classified” for what seems to be combinations of recurrent and non-recurrent skills, like their example of shutting down a power plant in an emergency.

The shutdown can occur in many ways, depending on circumstances (non-recurrent), but must follow specific procedures (recurrent).  This is an expensive decision and often requires high-fidelity simulation.  In addition, the authors say that learners should be explicitly told that they’ll switch from automated mode to problem-solving mode at times.

The things you left out

Remember that “category” of objectives that you won’t be teaching?

If learners have already mastered a particular constituent skill in an isolated manner, this is no guarantee that they can carry it out in the context of whole-task performance.  Performing a particular constituent skill in isolation is completely different from performing it in the context of a whole task, and automaticity of a constituent skill that has been developed through extensive aprt-task practice is often not preserved in the context of whole-task performance.

Which is to say that when Bruno gets a perfect score on the loan-application system, it doesn’t necessarily mean he can use it while interviewing a live loan applicant at the bank branch.

Objectives and assessment

It’s pretty obvious that clear, observable objectives relating to clusters of constituent skills that make up the complex skill have many benefits.  You can develop tools to help learners do self-assessment.  You can provide support for a peer, who can help identify areas of improvement (and whose own performance can benefit from helping the other person).

IN assessment, values and attitudes are usually measured narratively, or through qualitative scales (very poor, poor, acceptable, good, excellent).

vM&K acknowledge the potential burden of a highly-detailed assessment, which is virtually a necessity for complex sills.  They recommend self-assessment and peer assessment.  They also suggest a development portfolio, a collection of assessments for all learning tasks.

This details what the learner’s done and how well he’s doen.  He can choose his next learning tasks based on this information.

In the next post, we’ll (finally) move from the learning task component to the supportive information component.  The corresponding steps are designing supporting information (Step 4), analyzing cognitive strategies (Step 5), and analyzing mental models (Step 6).

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning

In Ten Steps to Complex Learning, van Merriënboer and Kirschner’s third step is set performance objectives.  (Click for a diagram of all ten steps and the four components into which they fit.)  The main sections of the chapter are:

• Skill decomposition (or, academic language rides again)–figuring out the constituent skills of the whole task
• Creating performance objectives
• Classifying performance objectives
• Performance assessment

The authors emphasize one point so often, I’m putting it first:

Many instruction design models use performance objectives…as the main input for the design decisions to be made….Instructional methods are selected for each objective, and each objective has its corresponding test item(s)….

This is certainly not true for the Ten Steps.  In complex learning, it is precisely the inegration and coordination of constituent skills described by the performance objectives that must be supported by the training program.

In other words, you can’t tie your instructional methods to a specific objective; you have to connect with interrelated sets of objectives.

I’m willing to ride at least part of the way with vM&K, even though there’s some risk of semantics here.  The subject is complex learning, not how to set up a Facebook page.  Many criticisms of traditional instructional design and of formal learning result from the failure of training interventions to address the whole of a complex skill.

That said, much traditional organizational learning has glossed over the reality that complex things are complex.  For every death-by-PowerPoint three-day workshop, there’s a senior executive somewhere who believes that talking is teaching.  He doesn’t want “paralysis by analysis,” though his fervent belief in Best Practices (especially if they come from outside his organization) is often a case of faith without good works.

Skill decomposition, or, what does it take?

The Ten Steps assumes you’re doing a needs analysis (and if you’re not, how the hell do you know what you should be doing?).   Two additional assumptions follow:

…There actually is a performance problem that can be solved by training
…[and an] overall learning goal…a statement of what the learners will be able to do after they have completed the training program.

Since the Ten Steps is iterative, the goal helps you break down the complex skill, and the constituent parts of the skill help you refine the overall goal.  As you identify the learning tasks (Step 1) and sequence them (Step 2), you’re uncovering information about the relationship of the constituent skills.

The top-level goal can be elaborate, like their example for patent examiners:

After having followed the training program, the learners will be able to decide upon the granting of patent applications by:

• Analyzing the application
• Searching for relevant prior documents
• Conducting a substantive examination
• Delivering a search report where the relevant documents that have been found are cited and their relevancy is acknowledge on the basis of the substantive examination, and
• Communicating the result of the substantive examination to either
  • The examining division so that a patent can be granted immediately, or
  • The applicant so that, at a later stage, a reply can be filed by the applicant and a patent granted, or the application is refused.

vM&K list several approaches to filling out the set of constituent skills.  A hierarchy is an obvious approach: what specific skills are necessary in order to perform the more general skill?  In my earlier example of supervisor skills, “monitoring individual performance” is a prerequisite for the overall skill of “managing performance.”

If you want to know whether to expand the skills on the same (horizontal) level, there are temporal relationships (skill A must be performed before skill B), simultaneous ones (you perform C and D at the same time, like shifting gears and steering the car through a turn), and transposable ones (perform skills E and F in any order).

I’m not sure why this amount of detail appears here.  My guess (and that’s all it is) is that the relationship information will come into play with the cognitive strategies and rules.

The chapter mentions heterarchical (peer-to-peer) relationships between skills on the same level, and also what vM&K call reitiary but others seem to call retiary relationships–networks of skill or “competence maps.”

The thumbnail on the right links to a competence map for cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of psychotherapy, though the elements on the map aren’t interconnected.

Data: gaining as you gather

Analyzing the skills helps highlight which are similar.  Similarity may facilitate learning or may impede it (when “similar” means “with tiny but important differences”).  vM&K recommend observing skilled performers as they work first on simple whole tasks, and then on more complex ones.

So, no, you don’t sit down and just have the subject-matter expert tell you about things.  As Tom Gilbert often noted, to figure out her tennis skills, you have to watch Martina Navratilova’s feet. Martina has lots to say that’s useful, but the whole skill is serving, not just foot-placement or racquet-holding. And the expert performer is often unaware of how she applies complexes of skills.

This chapter offers suggestions for gathering data.  The authors refer to objects–things that the performer focuses on or changes.  A shift from one object to another suggests a shift in constituent skill.  If the supervisor checks the project schedule and then a worker’s weekly report, the shift might be from “determining individual’s goals” to “tracking individual’s progress.”

Another source of data: the tools the performer uses.  The chapter gives an example of a patent examiner switches from a highlighter to a search engine to a word processor as he works on a report.  Possible constituent skills are “analyzing applications” (the highlighter), “performing searches” (the search engine), and “writing results of pre-examination” (the word processor).

In addition to working with skilled professionals who demonstrate the desired performance, there’s value in working with deficient performers as well.  The gap between optimals and actuals (as Allison Rossett phrased it) helps target performance-improvement efforts.

The (A)BCDs of building performance objectives

Van Merriënboer and Kirschner see four elements to a performance objective: the action, the tools and objects, the conditions, and the standards.

Not that difference from ABCD objectives (actor, behavior, condition, and degree).  True, they left out “actor,” but I’d say it’s pretty obvious.

The action verb part is what you’d expect.  No “understand,” “know,” or “be aware of” allowed.

You specify the tools and objects for several reasons.  One, if they’re used on the job, they’re part of the task, and learners need to learn them.  (In designing training, naturally, you might come up with simple or low-fidelity versions of some of the tools or objects, especially for the early stages.)  In addition, if some of these items change often, you’re forewarned; you know that the training may have to change as well.

Conditions play a major part in complex learning–think of the military surgeon who must perform not only in a well-equipped hospital but also in suboptimal conditions closer to the front.

In the Ten Steps approach, the final element, standards, involves not only criteria, but also values and attitudes.  That’s where the next post in the series will begin.

Martina Navratilova image adapted from a CC-licensed photo by Chip_2904.

Twitter’s a stream, not a bookshelf.  Comments, ideas, and links flow past.  You can’t follow up on each one.  I have, however, come up with a homemade version of a clipping service.

A couple of times a day, I skim tweets and click on promising links.  Each link opens a new tab in Firefox.  Usually I end up with six or eight tabs, ideal for quick browsing.

Skimming, round two, involves those tabs.  I’ll start reading the link and do a kind of cognitive triage: close; read and close; read, tag (in Delicious), and close.

One such tweet led to an article on usability principles in social networking, posted by Verne Ho at creative briefing.

Ho’s main topic is putting usability ideas to work specifically on social network sites.

Social networks differ from regular websites in 3 fundamental ways:

1. Activities and content are fully (or at least mostly) driven by the users. 
2. Users are expected to do things on the website — interact, post, vote, etc.
3. Users are expected to come back to the website periodically and continue to do things.

At least the first two points apply to learning: it’s the learner who does it, not the facilitator, designer, or the chief learning officer.  And for learning to happen, learners have to do stuff.

That’s a bit of a tangent, and Ho’s points are worthwhile in their own right.  I like how he handled some possibilities: “…Basic usability principles…dictated righter from wronger (sometimes there was no strictly right or wrong answer).”

A quick rundown of some of his principles:

• Show only relevant information.
• Emphasize important actions.
• Provide visual feedback…(and make wait times feel shorter).
• Use the five-second text.

That test: “ask people to list what they can recall after viewing your site for five seconds.”  Not a bad principle to apply to, say, visuals in a presentation.