The HG2S Training Blog

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, March 5, 2010:

“President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

Edward Tufte, Appointee for Member, Recovery Independent Advisory Panel
Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University. He wrote, designed, and self-published The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence, which have received 40 awards for content and design. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Society for Technical Communication, and the American Statistical Association. He received his PhD in political Science from Yale University and BS and MS in statistics from Stanford University.”

From ET:

“I will be serving on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. This Panel advises The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds:

‘The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with two goals:To provide transparency in relation to the use of Recovery-related funds.
To prevent and detect fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
Earl E. Devaney was appointed by President Obama to serve as chairman of the Recovery Board. Twelve Inspectors General from various federal agencies serve with Chairman Devaney. The Board issues quarterly and annual reports to the President and Congress and, if necessary, “flash reports” on matters that require immediate attention. In addition, the Board maintains the Recovery.gov website so the American people can see how Recovery money is being distributed by federal agencies and how the funds are being used by the recipients.

Mission statement: To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information.’

I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I’ll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary.”

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003e0&topic_id=1#

(c) 2009 Jeff Parker, Florida Today.

A new study conducted by Dr Clare Wood, of Coventry University, and the British Academy has addressed whether “texting” has a pathological effect on learning to read and write. Dr Wood, who is a specialist in reading development, looked at a group of 8–12 years olds over the course of the school year and has concluded that far from eroding basic reading and writing skills, the activity may be a sign of their mastery. The results come as a surprise to many who assume the practice to be a clear sign of the decay of basic literacy. From the university report on the research:

“We began studying in this area initially to see if there was any evidence of association between text abbreviation use and literacy skills at all, after such a negative portrayal of the activity in the media. We were surprised to learn that not only was the association strong, but that textism use was actually driving the development of phonological awareness and reading skill in children.  Texting also appears to be a valuable form of contact with written English for many children, which enables them to practice reading and spelling on a daily basis.”

The study goes further to suggest that the degree to which a user has mastered texting may be indicative of his or her overall reading ability:

“The research, carried out on a sample of 8-12 year olds over an academic year, revealed that levels of ‘textism’ use could even be used to predict reading ability and phonological awareness in each pupil by the end of the year.”

Dr Wood is hoping that the results of the study change the way people look at texting in relation to phonetic literacy:

“In short, we suggest that children’s use of textisms is far from problematic. If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards among young children, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it.”

For those unfamiliar with texting, this post is re-written in Lingo below:

A nu stdy conducted by Dr Clare w%d, of Coventry uni, n d brit Academy hs adressed whether “texting” hs a pathological effct on lerning 2 read n wrt. Dr w%d, who’s a specialist n readN dvlopmnt, lOkd @ a grp of 8–12 yrs olds ovr d corZ of d skool yr n hs ended dat fr frm eroding basic readN n ritN skilz, d activity may B a cYn of their mastery. d rslts cum as a surpriz 2 mnE hu aSume d prctic 2B a clr cYn of d DK of basic literacy. frm d uni rprt on d rsrch:

“We began swating n dis area initialy 2C f der wz Ny evidnce of asociatn btw txt abbr uz n literacy skilz @ ll, aftr sucha neg portrayal of d activity n d media. We wr surprisd 2 lern dat nt 1ly wz d asociatn strong, bt dat textism uz wz actuly drivN d dvlopmnt of phonological awareness n readN skill n kids. txtN also appears 2B a valuable 4m of contct W ritN en 4 mnE children, wich enables em 2 prctic readN n sp on a daily basis.”

d stdy goes furthA 2 sugest dat d Dgre 2 wich a user hs mastered txtN may B indicative of hs or her O’all readN ability:

“d rsrch, carried ot on a sampL of 8-12 yr olds ovr an academic yr, revealed dat lvls of ‘textism’ uz cUd evn B uzd 2 4tell readN ability n phonological awareness n ea pUpl by d Nd of d yr.”

Dr w%d S hopin dat d rslts of d stdy chng d wA ppl l%k @ txtN n relation 2 fonetic literacy:

“n short, we sugest dat children’s uz of textisms S fr frm problematic. f w’r seein a ebb n literacy stdz among yung children, itz n spite of txt msgN, nt coz of it.”

References.

Text Messaging Chat Abbreviations

Is texting valuable or vandalism?

For more information about the research, or an interview with Dr Clare Wood, please contact:
Kate Turnbull, Press and PR Manager:  0207 969 5263 / k.turnbull@britac.ac.uk or Ali Bushnell, External Press and Media Relations Officer, Coventry University on 024 7688 8245

According to technology blog CNET, the educational content wing of Apple’s iTunes Music site, iTunes University,  passed a milestone of over 100 million downloads this week. iTunes University is part of a mobile learning and content distribution service available through Apple’s iTunes application. As stated by Apple on their mobile learning site:

“Today’s students expect constant access to information—in the classroom and beyond. Which is why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students. And now, with the 3.0 software update for iPhone and iPod touch, iTunes U is directly accessible over both cellular and Wi-Fi networks through the iTunes Store.”

Interestingly, according to CNET, one of the most popular draws on iTunes University’s bandwidth is the much esteemed Open University (OU) in the UK that had earlier tried and failed to launch an American campus in the late 1990s. A brief report of the OU’s foray into the American educational market is provided here.

The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom but operates internationally. According to its web site the OU serves over 150,000 undergraduate and 30,000 postgraduate students. 25,000 are outside the UK. It is generally considered “the world’s first successful distance teaching university” and the United Kingdom’s only university dedicated to distance learning.

The iTunes University download service is popular among many other universities as well. Contributors include: Stanford University, Princeton, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. A partial (and growing) list of schools providing content can be found here. Given it s recent growth and overall wide acceptance, iTunes University appears to have become a standard tool for distribution of audio and video content among American colleges and universities.

I’m tired of talking. Let me explain. One of the basic rules of thumb for adult learning says that a class should be a little more than half practical application and workshop material to appeal to the audience. That aside, classroom (or instructor-lead) training has become expensive, and managers and consumers have become vocal in letting us know that they want to make sure it’s worth their time and money. To be plain, are we doing all we can to make the trip worthwhile?

I have always been an advocate for lots of hands-on activity in class, probably because it matches my own learning style but also because the majority of the attendees enjoy it. Not surprisingly, in the midst of teaching a class a few years ago, I started to wonder if I could get more time for discussion and activities, and lessen the burden we all felt in getting through the lecture pieces to the workshops. In this particular case the lecture was preparatory to the workshops and provided necessary background required to complete the labs and assignments. Fortunately, in addition to instructor-lead courses, I also work on web-based training and have done many voice over and narration tracks for online and computer-based presentations. Eureka! I found a way to off-load all the passive broadcasting of background material and recoup the time for projects, experiments, discussion and debate–the things that make class interesting and engaging. Although I didn’t have a name for it, I adopted the Inverted Classroom and have since learned that many others have had, either from desire or need, their own Eureka! experiences.

The “Inverted Classroom” as coined by professors Lage, Platt and Treglia in a paper presented to the Journal of Economic Education, Winter 2000, moves away from the traditional lecture. In it they describe how they saw a need to serve a wider variety of learning styles in class:

“Recent evidence has shown that a mismatch between an instructor’s teaching style and a student’s learning style can result in the student learning less and being less interested in the subject matter (Borg and Shapiro 1996; Ziegert forthcoming). This finding implies that either educational administrators should strive to ensure a good match between the instructor’s teaching style and the students’ learning styles (a difficult task) or that concerned instructors should use a portfolio of teaching styles so as to appeal to a variety of student learning types. Unfortunately, a majority of introductory economics courses are taught using only one teaching style–the traditional lecture format (Becker and Watts 1995).”

Lage, Platt and Treglia define the inverted classroom in simple terms:

“Inverting the classroom means that events that have traditionally taken place inside the classroom now take place outside the classroom and vice versa.”

What this means is that the class is designed in such a way that “passive” activities (such as listening to a lecture) are done outside class and what was lecture is replaced by workshops, discussion, and activities that require interaction. In theory this should increase the value of class time and provide more time for new and additional. Educators are still unsure how to optimize the inverted classroom, but what seems clear is that inverted classes will use of a mix of technologies like podcasts, DVDs, PowerPoint, text, video and interactive media in conjunction with hands-on projects and group activities.

Researchers Gerald C. Gannod, Janet E. Burge and Michael T. Helmick of Ohio’s Miami University are carrying out a study to evaluate the design and delivery of inverted classes in computer engineering. In a work-in-progress report delivered to the ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, 2007, Gannod states:

“Based on the SGID analysis performed on the course, student acceptance of the inverted classroom process has been well-received. Over eighty-five-percent of the students (in a class of twenty) have responded favorably to the inverted classroom structure, while over ninety-percent prefer the short learning activities over more prolonged assignments. In regards to the use of podcasting as a lecturing medium, students have indicated that the ability to use the play, pause, reverse, and fast-forward capabilities of the podcasted videos beneficial to their ability to learn the material.”

From the standpoint of instructor overhead, questions remain concerning the difficulty in designing, deploying and maintaining an inverted class. Certainly, the initial chore of creating podcasts (if they are used) may be considerable. Further, a sufficient number of high-quality projects and activities are required (vapid “busy work” may be less tolerated than boring lectures). Finally, the students must rise to the new class format and, to use an expression from the past, “come to class prepared.” Gannod plans to address issues of faculty overhead, podcast production and course maintenance in an upcoming report.

References.

Lage, Maureen, J., Platt, Glenn, J., and Treglia, Michael, “Inverting the Classroom: A Gateway to Creating  an Inclusive Learning Environment”, Jnl of Economic Education, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2000), pp. 30-43.

Gannod, Gerald, C., Burge, Janet, E., Helmick, Michael, T., “Using the Inverted Classroom to Teach Software Engineering”, Technical Report MU-SEAS-CSA-2007-001, Miami University, Department of Computer Science and Systems Analysis, School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2007.

Gannod, Gerald, C., “Work in Progress – Using Podcasting in an Inverted Classroom”, 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, October 10-13, 2007.

MERLOT: Putting Educational Innovations Into Practice

Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

As far as I know this is a unique web site and resource.

“MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services. MERLOT’s vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.”

“Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education.”

Collections in:

• Arts
• Business
• Education
• Humanities
• Mathematics
• Science & Technology
• Social Sciences

Explore MERLOT to find:

• Learning Materials
• Colleagues
• Personal Collections
• Learning Exercises
• Guest Experts

How to get involved:

“In MERLOT, there are many benefits available. Find out about each.

Become a Member

Find all the information you need to join MERLOT and become an active member of the online learning community.

Become a Partner

Partnerships are essesntial to the MERLOT community. We invite you to learn about the different types of partnerships in MERLOT and how your institution can be involved.

Become a Peer Reviewer

With 17 disciplines and more being formed, being a peer reviewer is a great way to be involved with MERLOT. See how you can become an active participate to the process.

Become a Virtual Speaker (VSB)

Find guest experts in the Virtual Speakers Bureau to assist you in your teaching or presentations.

Participate in JOLT – Journal of Online Learning and Teaching

MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. The MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) is a peer-reviewed, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia resources in education. JOLT is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December.

Experience the MERLOT International Conference

The MERLOT International Conference is a venue for educators, administrators, and technologists who have interests and expertise in technology-enabled teaching and learning and who recognize the need to remain current in this rapidly advancing field of educational practice and theory.”

More information here.

Dean José Bowen of Southern Methodist University is not only advocating an outrageous pedagogical overhaul that many see as dangerous and ill-conceived, he is in the throes of implementing it as well. His professors at the Meadows School of the Arts are now required to teach primarily without computers or, more precisely, without PowerPoint slides. An short interview with Professor Bowen can be viewed here.

As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Bowen’s technological denuding of the classroom is motivated by several forces he sees eroding the quality of education in American classrooms:

• Lectures are boring and are usually done badly.
• PowerPoint is a terrible educational tool.
• Lectures are not interactive and can be done just as well online.

In Bowen’s impassioned view there is little reason for students to pay extra for the privilege of residential college tuition given the deplorable state of the antiquated lecture system. Bowen suggests that it can be done cheaper and perhaps better by the online colleges.  Secondly, students have the option of going to open courseware educational sites (like MIT and Stanford) to see lectures delivered in a way that are “really top notch.” In essence, as Bowen sees it, students will vote with their fingers as it were and take their lectures at a cheaper and better online resource if things do not change. “They will pay less for better.”

Bowen’s call to reform the lecture hall starts by asking what role the class meeting serves in light of modern media like podcasts and online presentations? His answer, make the lecture worth attending by using it as a venue for exploration of ideas, spontaneous questions and answers, group projects and debates. Use technology outside the classroom to prepare for the classroom.

Not surprisingly the Chronicle sites problems from both sides of the lecture hall:

“The biggest resistance to Mr. Bowen’s ideas has come from students, some of whom have groused about taking a more active role during those 50-minute class periods. The lecture model is pretty comfortable for both students and professors, after all, and so fundamental change may be even harder than it initially seems, whether or not laptops, iPods, or other cool gadgets are thrown into the mix.”

A previous foray into “inverting the classroom” at Miami University in Ohio evoked similar reactions from the students:

“‘Initial response is generally negative until students start to understand and see how they learn under this new system,’ says Glenn Platt, a professor of marketing at Miami who has published academic papers about the approach, which he calls the ‘inverted classroom.”’The first response from students is typically, ‘I paid for a college education and you’re not going to lecture?””

Both Bowen’s and Platt’s views converge on one nagging conclusion: We have to create good reasons for students to come to lectures. If not they will tune out, turn off, and probably go elsewhere. It seems ironic that in an age of mobile computing, electronic media and information at the speed of light that the lecture hall may only survive if it returns as a low-tech 21st Century edition of the classical academy. Time will tell which particular approaches favor this revitalization of the classroom but it is hard to deny that it is desperately needed.

Further Information.

Teach Naked: Dean Urges Tech-Free Classes (NPR)

Teaching Naked: Why Removing Technology from your Classroom Will Improve Student Learning

In an article that reads surprisingly like a case study from a course on McLuhans’ Laws of Media, T. X. Hammes writes in the Armed Forces Journal on the pernicious effects of pushing PowerPoint too far in the presentation culture of the Pentagon. Apparently keenly aware of the implicit bias of media, Hammes observes:

“Every year, the services spend millions of dollars teaching our people how to think. We invest in everything from war colleges to noncommissioned officer schools. Our senior schools in particular expose our leaders to broad issues and historical insights in an attempt to expose the complex and interactive nature of many of the decisions they will make.

Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.”

Others have voiced concern over the nature and limitations of this tool and its ilk. Edward Tufte for example penned the monograph “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within” in an attempt to illustrate the common problems with the medium and offer suggestions on how to rectify them. Designers, illustrators and even cognitive scientists join the chorus in an effort to stem the plague of needlessly ineffective slide shows.

PowerPoint and its cousins have their genetic roots in presentation packages designed for selling, which is why PowerPoint still has a strong tendency to reduce everything it touches to a sales pitch. Hammes lights on this when he mentions how language and communication are bent to that of the Ad Man:

“Let’s start by examining the impact on staff work. Rather than the intellectually demanding work of condensing a complex issue to two pages of clear text, the staff instead works to create 20 to 60 slides. Time is wasted on which pictures to put on the slides, how to build complex illustrations and what bullets should be included. I have even heard conversations about what font to use and what colors. Most damaging is the reduction of complex issues to bullet points. Obviously, bullets are not the same as complete sentences, which require developing coherent thoughts. Instead of forcing officers to learn the art of summarizing complex issues into coherent arguments, staff work now places a premium on slide building. Slide-ology has become an art in itself, while thinking is often relegated to producing bullets.”

In PowerPoint language is reduced to a staccato burst of one-liners. Complete sentences are not at home in the medium. Language and rhetoric are reduced to a fractured mosaic of bullets, images and partial thoughts that serve as placeholders for information and ideas. The inherent bandwidth limitation of the medium is fine for sales presentations but falls flat when content and depth are required. Users struggle, perhaps unknowingly, to compensate for the inherent bias of the medium:

“Our personnel clearly understand the lack of clarity and depth inherent in the half-formed thoughts of the bullet format. In an apparent effort to overcome the obvious deficiency of bullets, some briefers put entire paragraphs on each briefing slide. (Of course, they still include the bullet point in front of each paragraph.) Some briefs consist of a series of slides with paragraphs on them. In short, people are attempting to provide the audience with complete, coherent thoughts while adhering to the PowerPoint format. While writing full paragraphs does force the briefer to think through his position more clearly, this effort is doomed to failure.”

Compounding the problem, (post-literate) reading speeds and the need to digest detailed and complex data fly in the face of the easy sales pitch proffered by the slide deck:

“People need time to think about, even perhaps reread, material about complex issues. Instead, they are under pressure to finish reading the slides before the boss apparently does. Compounding the problem, the briefer often reads these slides aloud while the audience is trying to read the other information on the slide. Since most people read at least twice as fast as most people can talk, he is wasting half of his listeners’ time and simultaneously reducing comprehension of the material. The alternative, letting the audience read the slide themselves, is also ineffective. Instead of reading for comprehension, everyone races through the slide to be sure they are finished before the senior person at the brief. Thus even presenting full paragraphs on each slide cannot overcome the fundamental weakness of PowerPoint as a tool for presenting complex issues.”

Hammes notes other signs of users’ struggle against the flow of the medium in mentioning the “quad chart” and slides crammed with so much information they cannot be processed by the viewer’s visual system, let alone addressed by the speaker. This is simply a low-bandwidth medium with rigid boundaries.

An Example Quad Chart

“The next major impact of slide-ology has been the pernicious growth in the amount of information portrayed on each slide. A friend with multiple tours in the Pentagon said a good rule of thumb in preparing a brief is to assume one slide per minute of briefing. Surprisingly, it seems to be true. Yet, even before the onslaught of the dreaded quad chart, I saw slides with up to 90 pieces of information. Presumably, some thought went into the bullets, charts, pictures and emblems portrayed on that slide, yet the vast majority of the information was completely wasted. The briefer never spoke about most of the information, and the slide was on screen for a little more than a minute. While this slide was an aberration, charts with 20 items of information portrayed in complex graphics are all too common. This gives the audience an average of three seconds to see and absorb each item of information. As if this weren’t sufficient to block the transfer of information, some PowerPoint Ranger invented quad charts. For those unfamiliar with a quad chart, it is simply a Power Point slide divided into four equal quadrants and then a full slide is placed in each quadrant. If the briefer clicks on any of the four slides, it can become a full-sized slide. Why this is a good idea escapes me.”

Hammes further notes that PowerPoint, like every technology, creates or alters the environment of the user. Interestingly, Hammes cites the effect PowerPoint has on time and events:

“PowerPoint has clearly decreased the quality of the information provided to the decision-maker, but the damage doesn’t end there. It has also changed the culture of decision-making. In my experience, pre-PowerPoint staffs prepared two to four decision papers a day because that’s as many as most bosses would accept. These would be prepared and sent home with the decision-maker and each staff member that would participate in the subsequent discussion. Because of the tempo, most decision-makers did not take on more than three or four a day simply because of the requirement to read, absorb, think about and then be prepared to discuss the issue the following day. As an added benefit for most important decisions, they ’slept on it.’

PowerPoint has changed that. Key decision-makers’ days are now broken down into one-hour and even 30-minute segments that are allocated for briefs. Of particular concern, many of these briefs are decision briefs. Thus senior decision-makers are making more decisions with less preparation and less time for thought. Why we press for quick decisions when those decisions will take weeks or even months to simply work their way through the bureaucracy at the top puzzles me.”

Hammes does not miss the effect the indiscriminate use of the tool has on understanding and thought processes (“We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” – McLuhan):

“Unfortunately, by using PowerPoint inappropriately, we have created a thought process centered on bullets and complex charts. This has a number of impacts. First, it reduces clarity since a bullet is essentially an outline for a sentence and a series of bullets outline a paragraph. They fail to provide the details essential to understanding the ideas being expressed. While this helps immensely with compromise, since the readers can create their own narrative paragraphs from the bullets, it creates problems when people discover what they agreed to is not what they thought they had agreed to. Worse, it creates a belief that complex issues can, and should, be reduced to bullets. It has reached the point where some decision-makers actually refuse to read a two-page briefing paper and instead insist PowerPoint be used.”

In closing Hammes concedes that there are appropriate uses for PowerPoint but these tend to be presentations that are closer to its origin: “primarily, information briefs rather than decision briefs.” As depth and complexity increase, the appropriateness of PowerPoint falls away. As Hammes says, “There is a reason students cannot submit a thesis in PowerPoint format.”

iPods in School - Here They Come, Ready or Not!

Although there has been a notion floating around for several years that iPods can be used effectively as instructional tools, psychologists at SUNY Fredonia have only recently completed a study to quantify the value of the iPod in a lecture course. Professors Dani McKinney, Jennifer Dyck, and student Elise Luber (‘08) have compared the effectiveness of podcasts to live lectures.

McKinney et al. divided a group of 64 students into two groups, one of which received a podcast lecture complete with podcast-formatted slides and printed hand-outs of the instructor’s presentation. The control group received the same hand-outs but attended the lecture. Test results indicate that the podcast group did considerably better than the live lecture group, especially if they treated the podcast as a live lecture.

“The podcast group averaged nine points (out of 100) higher on the test than those in the live audience. Moreover, those who took notes during the podcast scored even higher, averaging 15 points higher than their live-lecture counterparts.”

Commenting on the results, McKinney explains:

“If they listened to the podcast just one time, they didn’t do any better than the people who came to the lecture. However, the people who treated it like a live lecture, and took notes or replayed certain sections… they did significantly better.”

The research suggests that active involvement with the podcast combined with taking advantage of the inherent properties of the technology paid off. According to McKinney:

“If you treated it like a live lecture, you did better. But if you just listened to it passively, you didn’t get any benefit. One student watched the podcast at the gym, and his score reflected that. One person watched the podcast seven times, and her score reflected that.”

McKinney is quick to point out that this study is preliminary and hardly conclusive. She plans to extend the study to other subjects like biology, chemistry, sociology and history. A one semester study is also planned to assess the effect of longer time frames on the effectiveness of the iPod as an educational technology.

Although few educators believe the podcast is radically different from earlier approaches that used recording technology such as audio cassettes, McKinney does believe there is a general lesson to be gleaned for the study:

“Learning doesn’t change, regardless of the medium.” If you want to perform well on exams, you need to leave yourself usable ‘breadcrumbs,’ visual and mental cues. Study, take notes, listen and take more notes. That’s how you learn, regardless of whether you’re watching a professor in a class or an iPod in your hand.”

Further information on the study can be found here.

I think it was from Marshall McLuhan that I first heard:

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Now, for the first time, neurological evidence is demonstrating that this is literally true. Data published in the June 23rd issue of Current Biology shows that when we use a tool, even for a short time, it actually modifies the brain’s body schema. That is, the brain enhances the area of its map of our body associated with the tool. As reported in Science Daily:

“‘Since the origin of the concept of body schema, the idea of its functional plasticity has always been taken for granted, even if no direct evidence has been provided until now,’ said Alessandro Farnè of INSERM and the Université Claude Bernard Lyon. ‘Our series of experiments provides the first, definitive demonstration that this century-old intuition is true.’”

A report by the British Psychological Society describes the experiment:

“After several minutes using the grasping tool, the participants subsequent reaching movements with their hand were slower to start and stop, making them longer-lasting overall, compared with before the tool use – as if their own arm was now perceived as longer. Moreover, when the participants were subsequently blindfolded and asked to point to where they’d just been touched by the researchers, on the tip of the middle finger and on the elbow, the places the participants pointed to were further apart, compared with before tool use, again suggesting that they now perceived their arm to be longer.”

Interestingly the feedback loop from man-to-tool and back again is observed. From Science Daily:

“After using a mechanical grabber that extended their reach, people behaved as though their arm really was longer, they found. What’s more, study participants perceived touches delivered on the elbow and middle fingertip of their arm as if they were farther apart after their use of the grabbing tool.

People still went on using their arm successfully following after tool use, but they managed tasks differently. That is, they grasped or pointed to object correctly, but they did not move their hand as quickly and overall took longer to complete the tasks.”

The authors of the study go on to say:

“We believe this ability of our body representation to functionally adapt to incorporate tools is the fundamental basis of skillful tool use. Once the tool is incorporated in the body schema, it can be maneuvered and controlled as if it were a body part itself.”

Further information on this study can be found here:

Cardinali, L., Frassinetti, F., Brozzoli, C., Urquizar, C., Roy, A., & Farnè, A. (2009). Tool-use induces morphological updating of the body schema. Current Biology, 19 (12) DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.05.009

Information designer Tom Wujec of AutoDesk gives a short talk at TED on three ways the brain processes images and media to create meaning. Wujec points out that the better we understand the way the brain creates meaning, the better we can communicate and collaborate.

Seeing an image sends the visual impression to the visual cortex which feeds (at least) three parts of the brain.

• Ventral Stream (the ‘what’ detector)
• Dorsal Stream (locates an object in physical body-space)
• Limbic System (the ‘feeling’ part)

Wujec goes on to say that a “good graphic invites the eye to dart around.” It invokes “visual interrogation,”  in his words, and creates “visual persistence,” aiding memory and recall. Good graphics are interactive and invite engagement.

Death by PowerPoint

Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen has pulled an old skeleton from the presenter’s closet: The Technical Presentation: “Who says technical presentations can’t be engaging?” Scientific and technical presentations are often put in a separate class because they tend to be highly specialized, dense, and often a bad match for the limited bandwidth of PowerPoint. This, in combination with a variety of other issues (poor preparation, bad graphics, lack of clear purpose, no regard for the medium) often results in what is commonly known as the “Data Dump.” Too often we fall prey to this abuse, even when we are paying for the privilege of the presentation. Reynolds cites an essay by geologist J. Lehr (1985) who reminds us of our primary burden as presenters:

“Failure to spend the [presentation] time wisely and well, failure to educate, entertain, elucidate, enlighten, and most important of all, failure to maintain attention and interest should be punishable by stoning. There is no excuse for tedium.”

Avoiding the Data Dump requires work. Far too often presenters are pushed to deliver reams of data and complicated charts and graphs without the assistance of (or time for) a design(er). It’s almost unheard of (and perhaps ironic) that technical people have any background or knowledge of information design to help them prepare media. What’s worse, this blind spot is just as common in technical writers and instructional designers who fashion presentations for others to give. This is certainly one instance where good design can pay off.

With that said, what can we do to avoid inflicting a lethal PowerPoint presentation on a trusting audience?

1. Prepare in advance
2. “Own” the material
3. Simplify the look and content
4. Don’t read the slides
   
5. Avoid gratuitous anything (this may be a comment on 3. above)
   
6. Connect with the audience
   
7. Adapt the presentation to the audience
8. Tell a story
9. Rehearse the talk (this may be a comment on 1. above)

The notion of Teacher as Disc Jockey goes back at least to the time Apple’s iTunes introduced the concept of Rip, Mix, Burn to the world. Since then trainers, educators and instructional designers have been inundated by reports on social media, Web 2.0 and collaborative learning while fending off rising demands to crank out more educational media in less time, with less money. Now the prevalence of open source media and courseware has exceeded a critcal mass with thousands of open source courses being distributed by organizations like Open Courseware Consortium and ccLearn.

With that in mind educational technologist Scott Leslie of Victoria, BC, has gven an excellent talk on the current state of web-based open source tools and techniques available to teachers who need to rip, mix and burn a new course or presentation. Using the metaphor of the DJ, Leslie’s basic work flow follows these steps:

Search – finding the PLE diagrams

Sample – grabbing ones that weren’t already easily saveable

Sequence – tumblr? how to get in a mediaRSS feed

Record – my own PLE diagram

Perform – cooliris and wii controller?

Share – blog it

The reader should be cautioned: If you are not familiar with Web 2.0 concepts in teaching, this talk will be the proverbial ‘drink from a fire hose‘. Leslie presents dozens of sites and tools that designer and educators can use in the preparation and dissemination of a whole course or simple talk. Having considerable experience with these methods, Leslie suggests that we pick and choose among the sites and services for those that match our objectives and personal style.

“You may find the metaphor of ‘educator as DJ’ doesn’t work for you – fine. Maybe it’s ‘educator as mashup artist’. Maybe it’s ‘educator as painter.’ maybe it’s ‘educator as architect’. But…

I URGE you to seek out the metaphor YOU ALREADY BRING to your teaching practice, because inevitably you do. Becoming conscious of it is important not only because of how it lets you expand on it, but because the act of teaching IS the supreme metaphorical act; just as metaphor allows us new understanding by using a familiar vehicle that conveys attributes to a specific tenor, so do you as teachers seek to help your learners move from their existing understanding to somewhere new.”

Leslie’s talk is presented here in both slide and video formats. Notes and references are also included.

Researcher Annika Lantz-Andersson has taken an interesting look at how students respond to making mistakes while being tutored with mathematics software. Comparing both traditional textbook students to those using mathematics software she found that the computer-based group had a decided tendency to blame the computer (or the software) when they got a problem wrong:

“When students attempting to solve a mathematical problem, were informed by the computer that their answer was incorrect, they often focused on trying to find the reasons for this in the functions of the educational software itself. ‘They would maintain that their answers merely needed to be rephrased, that the computer’s answers were wrong in the same way as answers on an answer key of a mathematics textbook could be wrong, or provided other similar explanations,’ says Annika Lantz-Andersson. Her study shows that the often-repeated proposition that educational software is self-instructing is just not true.” [1]

What seems apparent from Lantz-Anderson’s work is that software employed in this fashion has to be used in conjunction with a teacher who gives feedback in order for the software to be effective as a teaching tool. As the old teaching maxim goes: “Telling is not teaching,” even if a computer does the telling.

“The extremely rapid increase in educational software predicted around the year 2000 has not been realised, although most textbooks today have a digital application linked to their conventional text. ‘Educational software has many advantages, not least its interactivity and its opportunity to promote cooperation amongst the students. There is still a strong belief that digital technology improves learning, despite the fact that this has not been proven’, declares Annika Lantz-Andersson. ‘Instead of getting mired in a debate about how digital tools can solve various types of classical pedagogical problems, it would be more relevant to focus on the new types of interaction and knowledge that can arise from the use of digital tools.’”  [2]

Annika Lantz-Andersson presented these findings as part of her thesis “Framing in Educational Practices. Learning Activity, Digital Technology and the Logic of Situated Action” at the Department of Education, University of Gothenburg, on Friday, 29 May, 2009.

I think it was Donald Norman in “The Invisible Computer” who pointed out that as technologies get more and more common, and perhaps accepted, they recede into the background of our lives and become invisible. Witness the electric motor in the 19th century and the microprocessor in the 20th. (How many microprocessors do you have in your life today?)

Are we witnessing a similar “technology blindness” to the web browser? Is Internet connectivity and usage so ubiquitous that average users take it for granted? A recent survey by Google, reported at TheNextWeb.com, suggests that the average American (almost 92%) do not know what a web browser is and cannot contrast it to a search engine (like Yahoo, Bing, Cuil). Whether this has ramifications on Web 2.0 and education remains to be seen.

Lecturing as most people know it probably goes back to before Gutenberg when the lecturer read what was a rare or perhaps only copy of an important book before an attentive (and interested) audience of students. This (primarily) broadcast method of disseminating information is still a mainstay in classrooms and presentation halls even though it is the bane of every media-enhanced post-literate learner. Furthermore, there are few signs that it will leave the educational scene any time soon.

Given that we will probably have to live with lectures, and in some cases make livings delivering them, honing lecturing skills can be a desirable and rewarding thing to do. As a teacher one wants to be successful in getting the message across. As a human one wants to cause as little pain to others as possible. With that in mind Rob Weir at Inside Higher Ed has some tips on how to deliver a better lecture. Some of the tips should be part of every train-the-trainer program:

“Bad lecturers violate nearly every rule of good communication. They never vary voice timbre or pitch. They either stare at their notes or ignore them altogether and ramble onto whatever topic comes to mind. They never make eye contact with their audience or use visual aids and handouts. Everything comes out at the same speed, and they never, ever show the slightest bit of life when discussing the very subject that supposedly excites them. Check for a pulse; if you can stay awake!”

Weir goes on to present a simple guideline for presenters to help keep the lecture focused and coherent:

“Step one to improving your lecture skills is to purge yourself of bad communication habits, but the rest of lecturing is a formula. Mix with enthusiasm and repeat the following:

• Stated Objective(s)
• A Plan
• Hook
• Body
• Repetition
• Summary
• Restated Objective(s)

State the objectives of the lecture for your sake and the sake of the audience. Let the audience know why the lecture is being given and what they should get from it. Keep the objectives clear and simple.

Weir suggests that lecturers employ a “Hook” when they speak. Many good lecturers are also great story tellers. This is where the Hook comes in:

“A time-tested way of engaging students is using a hook. Unveil a teaser, pose a question, tell a story, be provocative, invite brief brainstorming… any adult equivalent of ‘Once upon a time ….’ Frontloading wonderment helps keep an audience.”

Once the hook is set proceed to the Body of the talk:

“Once hooked, proceed to the body. Illustrate the thesis, don’t hammer it into submission. In days past I crammed as much detail as I could into lectures, which often led to confusion (and sore note-taking wrists). It’s better to say a lot about a little than a little about a lot. Delving into a few examples makes for a more cohesive narrative. Make sure that everything in your lecture relates to the objectives and isn’t just shoehorned in for the sake of being ‘comprehensive.’”

Take the time to present your main points from several angles. Remember we hold classes to help people who do not know the topics covered in the class or lecture to learn the things covered in the class or lecture. Try presenting the material from varying learning styles. Reinforce the main points and see if you can connect them to useful and relevant examples.

Finally, Weir suggests wrapping the talk with a summary of the important points and met objectives, a question and answer period, and a telltale mystery or two (to keep them hanging):

“… ask students to consider new ways to consider the material for the next class. Few things grab interest like a good mystery. If you dismiss class with a juicy conundrum to contemplate, you’ve got them primed for the next meeting.”