The HG2S Training Blog

Fossil fish bridges the evolutionary gap between animals of land and sea. Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation

I’m glad that someone has gathered the courage to say this out loud: Instructional design in the 21st Century is not about events, it’s about experiences. No doubt from the looks of things, instructional design (ID) is in the natural throes of shaking off the learning events metaphor imposed on it by the educational psychologists of the Industrial Revolution, but learning and development thinkers like Charles Jennings hope that we can hasten it along for the sakes of our students and ourselves. For Jennings the shift from working with the hands to working with the head is a key indicator that promotes the need to move from events toward processes:

“Undoubtedly instructional design is crucial if the mindset is learning events – modules, courses, programmes and curricula. However, if the mindset has stretched beyond event-based learning to where most learning occurs for workers, which is in the workplace at the point-of-need, where process-based learning serves best – and where learning through doing and learning as part of the work process happens, then ID takes on a whole new dimension.”

Jennings posits the notion of “learning” held by inhabitants of the 21st Century as moving from a habitat of “knowledge” to a new one of “behavior.” The medium is the message. It’s not about content anymore.

“For years we’ve been led to believe that ‘learning’ meant acquiring knowledge. If knowledge acquisition is the end-game, then the logical conclusion was to provide information that could be turned, whatever the magic employed, into knowledge in the recipient’s head. Believe me, the old idea that data becomes information which in turn becomes knowledge and finally transmogrifies into wisdom has been debunked years ago. We use our knowledge and experience to interpret data and information. Wisdom comes to a few only after years of experience.”

Jennings reminds us that Ebbinghaus and the Forgetting Curve aside, we need to observe learning in action to make intelligent assessments about its effectiveness. Experience and practice are the keys and, as such, instructional designers need to become interactivity designers.

“Good ID will result in the design of experiences that can build capability and learning far more quickly and effectively than by filling heads with information and ‘knowledge’ and then hoping that will lead to behavioural change.

We need designers who understand that learning comes from experience, practice, conversations and reflection, and are prepared to move away from massaging content into what they see as good instructional design. Designers need to get off the content bus and start thinking about, using, designing and exploiting learning environments full of experiences and interactivity.”

Further information about Charles Jennings and his work can be found here.

The Bandwagon

If you are thinking of using social media in a class to help build useful collaborative connections, retire the fears of shy students and introduce the same engagement you see in sites like Facebook, think again.  A recent study by the Lab for Social Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology suggests that the use of social media in classrooms might yield little effect in improved communications and enhanced connections between students. The study into the effects of social media was conducted as part of a course on the use of social media and tools. It included contributions from online learning and course management systems and discussion groups that were proposed to enhance instruction, improve communication and facilitate connections between the students and course content. The results indicate that poor social acumen in the face-to-face interactions might be mirrored in the (more) virtual social medium. What’s more, echoing teacher and educational social media researcher Michael Wesch, the RIT study suggests that the educational use of social media may have to be learned:

“…the educational use of social media may not counteract poor social connections that are seen in face-to-face communication or elicit the same impacts seen in the use of social media sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.”

Researcher and team leader Susan Barnes comments on the hopes and goals of social media in the educational environment relative to her team’s findings:

“Many social media advocates have argued that the use of these tools in classroom settings could greatly enhance interaction and learning and assist shyer, more reserved students in becoming more involved, as has been seen in other online environments. However, our findings show that the incorporation of social media had no measurable impact on social connections, to the point that students did not consider other members of the class to be part of their social network.”

The RIT research team plans to expand the study to consider different educational formats and additional social media applications in an effort to determine the effects and differences of social media from traditional classrooms. The intent is to help educational planners and instructional designers better use social media in course development and delivery.

“The issues surrounding poor social network construction within online educational environments points to greater opportunities to examine how technology and mediated software can be better designed to suit the types of communication and interactions desired by our students.”  – Christopher Egert, co-author

References.
Jacobs, Stephen, Egert, Christopher A., Barnes, Susan B., “Social Media Theory and Practice: Lessons Learned for a Pioneering Course,” 39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, T4J-1, October 18 – 21, 2009, San Antonio, TX.

Study Examines Use of Social Media in the Classroom

Despite the fact that we are quick to assert that we live in The Information Age and are swimming in all kinds of media, data and sensory stimuli, it’s sobering to take a step back and reflect on the fact that information is not always where the focus of attention is. Marshall McLuhan was fond of saying that “We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.” Information today is a little like that water and as teachers and instructional designers we have to pay attention to the differences between the medium and message if we want to be effective in what we do.

Right in keeping with this problem, the folks at MAYA Design have produced a really useful and (dare I say) informative animated short on the problem of distinguishing information from its presentational form. That is, in Gestalt terms, how to see the ground separate from the figure.

As an example of the problem of teasing information from its encapsulating medium, do you know what information is? Can you cite an example? What would you say if you were told that you can’t actually see or hear information? Would you be comfortable with the idea that neither the words on a page nor the numbers on a spreadsheet are information? In the words of MAYA Design, “Information has no form. It’s not made of atoms.”

So, what is information? In MAYA’s view:

“Information is what allows us to confidently make a selection from a set of given or implied alternatives.”

And what is our job then relative to information design? Our job is to give it form. We write it down, verbalize it, draw it and act it out. All with the intent of communicating it. Take a few minutes and look here or below and get reacquainted with the differences between medium and message.

Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the popular book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, have applied key principles of their stickiness theory to teaching. The resultant 13 page e-book is available in PDF format at their web site or on scribd.com as a free download.

Borrowed from their research, the brothers Heath apply six traits that make ideas (and teaching) stickier. Sticky ideas are:

SIMPLE.

“This process of prioritization is the heart of simplicity. It’s what we call ‘finding the core.’ Simplicity doesn’t mean dumbing down, it means choosing. Some concepts are more critical than others. And as the teacher, you’re the only one who can make that determination.”

UNEXPECTED.

“Piquing curiosity is the holy grail of teaching.” Cialdini said, “You’ve heard of the famous Ah ha! experience, right? Well, the Ah ha! experience is much more satisfying when it’s preceded by the Huh? experience.

So how do you create the ‘Huh?’ experience with your students? George Loewenstein, a behavioral economist, says that curiosity arises when we feel a gap in our knowledge. Loewenstein argues that gaps cause pain. When we want to know something but don’t, it’s like having an itch we need to scratch. To take away the pain, we need to fill the knowledge gap. We sit patiently through bad movies, even though they may be painful to watch, because it’s too painful not to know how they end.

Movies cause us to ask, What will happen? Mystery novels cause us to ask, Who did it? Sports contests cause us to ask, Who will win? Crossword puzzles cause us to ask, What is a 6-letter word for psychiatrist? Pokemon cards cause kids to wonder, Which characters am I missing?

One important implication of the ‘gap theory’ is that we need to open gaps before we close them. Our tendency is to tell students the facts. First, though, they must realize they need them.”

CONCRETE.

“Concreteness etches ideas into our brain—think of how much easier it is to remember a song than a credit card number—even though a song contains much more data!”

CREDIBLE.

“For an idea to stick, it needs to be credible. YouTube-era students don’t find it credible that hanging out outside, for a long period of time, alone, could be conducive to great thinking. So how do you combat their skepticism? You let them see for themselves. It’s like a taste test for ideas.”

EMOTION.

“That’s what Emotion does for an idea—it makes people care. It makes people feel something. In some science departments, during the lesson on ‘lab safety,’ the instructor will do something shocking: They’ll take some of the acid that the students will be handling and use it to dissolve a cow eyeball. A lot of students shudder when they see the demonstration. They feel something. Lab safety ‘dos and don’ts’ don’t grab you in the gut, but a dissolving eyeball sure does.”

STORY.

“The second surprise about stories is why stories, even boring stories, are so sticky. The answer starts with some fascinating research done on ‘mental simulation.’ Brain scans show that when people imagine a flashing light they activate the visual area of the brain; when they imagine someone tapping on their skin they activate tactile areas of the brain. The activity of mental simulation is not limited to the insides of our heads. People who imagine words that start with “b” or “p” can’t resist subtle lip movements, and people who imagine looking at the Eiffel Tower can’t resist moving their eyes upward. Mental simulation can even alter visceral physical responses: When people drink water but imagine it is lemon juice, they salivate more. Even more surprisingly, when people drink lemon juice but imagine it is water, they salivate less. … The takeaway is simple: Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something—but it’s the next best thing. And, to circle back to the world of sticky ideas, what we’re suggesting is that the right kind of story is, effectively, a simulation. Stories are like flight simulators for the brain.“

The free booklet gives practical suggestions and examples of how to use “stickiness” to improve lessons and teaching. The authors are quick to remind readers that the principles are pragmatic design guidelines for better teaching not just theories for the way instructional design works. “Teaching that Sticks” is an entertaining and informative read for anyone who designs, writes or presents classes or educational material. A companion booklet “Making Presentations that Stick” is also available.

References.

http://www.madetostick.com/teachers/

Why you should train your people

In what might seem an unusual post by a leading business analyst and venture capitalist, Ben Horowitz, of Andreesen Horowitz, writes in businessinsider.com

“Almost everyone who builds a technology company knows that people are the most important asset. Properly run start-ups place a great deal of emphasis on recruiting and the interview process in order to build their talent base. Unfortunately, often the investment in people stops there.”

Horowitz’s own experience in training sounds all too familiar:

“When I first became a manager, I had mixed feelings about training. Logically, training for hi-tech companies made sense, but my personal experience with training programs at the companies where I had worked was underwhelming. The courses were taught by outside firms who didn’t really understand our business and were teaching things that weren’t relevant.”

A turning point in Horowitz’s perspective on training came through Andy Grove’s High Output Management, specifically the chapter titled “Why Training is the Boss’s Job.”

As Director of Product Management at Netscape, Horowitz decided to put his new found inspiration to work and produced a guide titled Good Product Manager/ Bad Product Manager in an attempt to educate his staff on how to bring value to product management.

“I was shocked by what happened next. The performance of my team instantly improved. Product managers that I previously thought were hopeless became effective. Pretty soon, I was managing the highest performing team in the company. Based on this experience, after starting Loudcloud, I heavily invested in training. I credit that investment with much of our eventual success. And the whole thing started with a simple decision to train my people and an even simpler training document.”

Horowitz sees four key benefits to well-designed well-delivered training:

• Productivity
• Performance Management
• Product Quality
• Employee Retention

On Productivity Horowitz credits Grove with doing the math for the amplification of benefits from training:

“Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manger can perform. Consider for a moment the possibility of your putting on a series of four lectures for members of your department. Let’s count on three hours preparation for each hour of course time—twelve hours of work in total. Say that you have ten students in your class. Next year they will work a total of about twenty thousand hours for your organization. If your training efforts result in a 1 percent improvement in you subordinates’ performance, you company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the result of the expenditure of your twelve hours.“

On Performance Management Horowitz sees training as laying the foundation in understanding between the manager and the employees in terms of job responsibilities and expectations:

“If you don’t train your people, you establish no basis for performance management. As a result, performance management in your company will be sloppy and inconsistent.”

On Product Quality, Horowitz cites a common instance of where a push to cater to an urgent demand forces training out of the process leading only to an unnecessary and expensive reinvention of the wheel:

“As success drives the need to hire new engineers at a rapid rate, companies neglect to train the new engineers properly. As the engineers are assigned tasks, they figure out how to complete them as best they can. Often this means replicating existing facilities in the architecture, which lead to inconsistencies in the user experience, performance problems, and a general mess. And you thought training was expensive.”

Last but not least, Horowitz speaks to the issue of Employee Retention. Using his own experience at Netscape as a real-life example, Horowitz recounts an instance where he analyzed exit interviews to determine why people were leaving:

“1. They hated their manager – generally the employees were appalled by the lack of guidance, career development and feedback they were receiving.
2. They weren’t learning anything – the company wasn’t investing in the employees.”

“As Andy Grove writes, there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. Therefore, training should be the most basic requirement for all managers in your organization. …Managing the company is the CEO’s job. While you won’t have time to teach all of the management courses yourself, you should teach the course on management expectations, because they are, after all, your expectations.“

The archives collection  at Wired.com has a transcribed discussion between computer gurus Alan Kay and Danny Hillis that, surprisingly perhaps, includes a few comments about learning and education. It’s a worthwhile read in many respects but I’m plucking a couple quotes from it that relate specifically to knowledge, learning and pedagogy:

“There’s this interesting interplay between what you might call talent and how much of a meta-system we can put down on top of meager talents to learn how to do things. Two recent tennis champions, Ivan Lendl and Chris Evert, were not actual athletes. They were people who just learned how to play tennis. Some of the most natural tennis players, like Nastasi and Agassi, only do well when things are going well – they don’t have learned skills to drop back on. So in any given population maybe 5 to 20 percent have a natural hacker sort of talent; they are often not helped by pedagogy. Pedagogy is about getting the other 80 percent of people within hailing distance. So I’ve been very interested in taking some very important ideas and wondering how you get them in a state where the 80 percent can actually learn them in an operational way. And that’s why I keep coming back to computers.”

Interestingly the conversation concludes with:

“DH:

The question that I keep asking myself is, where is the next frontier? Where is that place that a new world is being constructed? Do you know any candidates?

AK:

I think the frontier has to do with human learning. Knowledge is not completely relative. There are a hundred or so powerful ideas that basically mean the difference between life and death, and I think one of our major jobs should always be to be true and get as many people enfranchised into them as possible.

DH:

But in fact, if you look at what’s happening, it seems just the opposite. We’re very much heading toward a two-class society, where either you’re somebody who sort of knows about, or feels empowered to deal with all of the complexity in society, or you’re one of the people that is a victim of it and is just on the receiving end of it all.

AK:

And I think the gap actually gets bigger as the leading edge of knowledge gets less intuitive.”

The full transcript by Steven Levy and Kevin Kelly can be viewed here.

I can’t say whether the only course I’ve taken in programming was taught well. This is partially the case because it was so long ago and looking back on it it’s doubtful that anyone had an idea about how to teach such a new subject. It seems in retrospect that the professors and graduate students of that era were trying to figure out how to program themselves, let alone teach programming to undergraduates. To give you an idea, the language I learned in class was something called FORTRAN.

Since then I have had to learn (to some degree) about a dozen programming and scripting languages. Some were for application development, some were for web development, others were for database systems, but all were a hard-fought climb up a learning curve of an unnatural new literacy. Since I am not a real “computer person” I have had to learn to program for practical reasons such as building new tools or to complete a project. This is to say, I have had to start learning new languages from the position of a neophyte – someone without much formal knowledge or skill – who nonetheless had a practical goal or objective in mind.

Often when working around computer scientists and engineers who program for a living, I would ask how to best go about learning programming. Invariably I was told that the best (and only) way to learn to program was to program. I think this was the result of my colleagues early experience and education. They read books on the syntax and rudiments of the language in question and started in on cobbling together simple lines of code that eventually grew to more and complex routines until they achieved a modest proficiency in the language and it quirks. And so did I.

As things progressed, and I added more computer languages to my list of things to learn, I started to suspect that I could climb the learning curve a little faster if I read lots of programming examples to get a good sense of the everyday grammar of the language and learn some of the colloquial shortcuts employed by experienced users. In a sense I began to suspect that learning a programming language was much like any other foreign language.

It seems professionals in the field of computer science are having some of the same concerns. Professor Mark Guzdial, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, writing in the blog of the Communications of the ACM, lays it on the line in the title of his post:

“How We Teach Introductory Computer Science Is Wrong.”

Basing this conclusion not only on his own experience but also on results from several researchers, Guzdial questions whether extensive use of programming exercises are the best path to teaching programming to introductory learners. That is, is it best to teach problem solving by problem solving?

Guzdial starts his critique of computer science instruction by citing research in mathematics education by Sweller and Cooper (1985). In it, Sweller and Cooper compare two groups of students both of which are shown two worked examples in algebra. An experimental group is given eight more completely worked out examples in algebra. The control group gets the same eight problems to work out themselves. Not surprisingly the control group takes five times longer to complete their assignment. Next, both groups get a new set of problems to solve. Ready for the ta-da? Drum roll please….

“The experimental group solves the problems in half the time and with fewer errors than the control group.” – Guzdial, 2009

In other words, the work-it-out-for-yourself problem solving approach was less effective by a long shot. And, as an aside, it should be said that this approach to instruction is common not only in computer science courses but also in subjects like mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering.

Other work by researchers Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) and Kalyuga, Chandler, Tuovinen and Sweller (2001) comment on this effect and help explain where and when problem solving is superior to worked examples. Guzdial quotes Kirschner (1992) in summarizing the state of the problem:

“After a half-century of advocacy associated with instruction using minimal guidance, it appears that there is no body of research supporting the technique. In so far as there is any evidence from controlled studies, it almost uniformly supports direct, strong instructional guidance rather than constructivist-based minimal guidance during the instruction of novice to intermediate learners.”

Does this mean, as Marshall McLuhan was fond of saying, that “the whole fallacy is wrong?” Have we been sold down the river educationally where training in computer science, physical sciences, mathematics and engineering are concerned? Perhaps not. What the studies do suggest is that relying primarily on learn-programming-by-programming, work-it-out-for-yourself, minimal guidance methods are not well suited to introductory learners. These methods are, however, better suited to learners who have already acquired some background knowledge and are therefore a better fit to intermediate and advanced courses.

“What’s striking is that no one challenges [Kirschner, Sweller and Clark] on the basic premise, that putting introductory students in the position of discovering information for themselves is a bad idea!”  – Guzdial, 2009

That is not to say “never” of course. What the data are saying is that it’s not the best principal approach for beginners.

In hindsight the findings make perfect sense. My original intuition that learning a computer language is like learning a foreign language was not far off the mark.

The data suggest that for a beginner, learning to read before learning to write is a more effective approach.

References.

Kalyuga, S., Chandler, P., Tuovinen, J., Sweller, J. (2001), “When Problem Solving Is Superior to Studying Worked Examples,” Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(3), 579-588.

Kirschner, P. A. (1992), “Epistemology, practical work and academic skills in science education.” Science and Education, 1, 273-299.

Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., Clark, R. E. (2006), “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-based, Experiential, and Inquiry-based Teaching,” Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86.

Sweller, J., Cooper, G. A., (1985). “The use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra.” Cognition and Instruction, 2, 59-89.

Measured “return on investment” and “training effectiveness” are two of the business metrics commonly used to yoke trainers and developers in business and government training centers around the globe. “Is the training effective?” and “Is it worth the cost?” are standard queries at development meetings and design reviews. Knowledgeable designers and managers invoke Bloom, Kirkpatrick and things like ADDIE to promote development of effective training, little knowing that Pygmalion might provide the help they need.

A little over 40 years ago, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson performed a simple and ingenious experiment in a California school that jolted educational psychology. Dubbed the Pygmalion Effect (after the play by George Bernard Shaw; later the musical and movie My Fair Lady) the experiment showed that the effectiveness of teaching was largely determined by the belief of the teacher in the students. That is, all things being equal, if a teacher believes the students are exceptional, they will tend to match the expectation. Surprisingly perhaps, this “effect” has been replicated many times since its inception and has garnered support from similar studies done in colleges, industry and the military. What Pygmalion describes might be taken as the equivalent of the Placebo Effect in education, but it might just as well be a re-coining of the psychotherapeutic expression “you have to believe in the Process” directed toward the classroom.

What Rosenthal and Jacobson did in their study was give teachers false information about their students based on what they said was an advanced test to determine future performance and achievement. In reality they administered a standard IQ test, randomly selected a group of students without regard to the test results, told the teachers these students were going to bloom in achievement and sat back and noted the results. At the end of the school year the students were tested and the results showed that a significant number of the “bloomers” had in fact made unexpected gains in academic performance and behavior. In fact, tests of the same students two years later showed that they carried and maintained this advantage over that time.

Interestingly, while accounts of the first study did not include details of what went on in the classroom while the study was underway, written reports by the teachers themselves indicate that no special measures, programs or materials were provided to assist the “bloomers” in learning or to enhance the classroom experience. What Rosenthal and Jacobson concluded the “bloomers” got that the control group missed were clear signs of approval, more chances to interact with the teacher and patient acceptance, all moderated unconsciously by of the beliefs of the teacher.

Over the years the Pygmalion Effect has come under scrutiny by many researchers and has been criticized for its original experimental design and the general meaning of its results. But, all in all, it remains steadfastly rooted in the literature of educational psychology and provides a lasting contribution to the field.

References.

Rosenthal, R., and Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils’ intellectual development’. New York: Rinehart and Winston. (Newly updated edition, 2003)

Rosenthal, R., and Jacobson, L. (1966). Teachers’ expectancies: Determinates of pupils’ IQ gains. Psychological Reports, 19, 115-118.

Rosenthal, R. (1965). Clever Hans: A case study of scientific method. Introduction to Oskar Pfungst, Clever Hans (translated by Rahn, C. L., 1911). New York: Bolt, Rinehart and Winston, pp. ix-xiii.

George Siemens at elearnspace mentioned a remarkable site called Indexed in a recent blog post. Indexed author Jessica Hagy uses mathematical metaphors in sketches of relationships that span topics from consumption and arrogance to expectations, communications and perception. Hagy claims in her About page that Indexed “… is a little project that allows me to make fun of some things and sense of others without resorting to doing actual math.” To be fair to all the mathphobes out there, the mathematics is rather mild and, more to the point, Hagy’s adept skill at using Venn diagrams and xy-graphs reminds me of what must be one of the primary objectives we all face when creating technical graphics:  transform complex observations and relationships into simple and appealing visual designs. A good graphic after all is a data compression scheme. It’s no wonder then that it’s often easier for many people to remember the graphic than the explanatory text.

I wonder if the relationship between confusion and information is really parabolic? Hmm….

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 addition to being a Nobel Laureate (1965), great story teller, and perhaps the most passionate and unrelenting student of physics in the 20th century, Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was also one of the greatest contemporary teachers of physics. His Feynman Lectures are no less than a gold standard in science education and still inspire and inform students more than 40 years after they were first given. Many professional physicists I have known (perhaps secretly) refer to his Lectures on Physics whenever they need a quick “refresher” on a topic or a summary of a long-forgotten area well beyond their specialty. Feynman was quirky, unique, eccentric, out-spoken, always informative, and always in command of his subject. He did not respect self aggrandizing appearances or mimetic behavior and showed this in an address he gave in 1974 at a commencement ceremony at CalTech, now recorded in essay form here and here.

In Cargo Cult Science Feynman lights on several pseudo-scientific pursuits that cause him concern: ESP, metal bending, mystical states, reflexology, and yes, education. An acknowledged master at both physics research and education, he says:

“A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way—or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. …So we really ought to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science.”

Feynman had a clear view of what was scientific, that is, what followed the scientific method and produced testable laws. Education did not, in Feynman’s mind, qualify as Science but was relegated to Cargo Cult Science – a mimetic form that played at being scientific but didn’t deliver the goods.

From the talk:

“I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they’re missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.”

Feynman was not antagonistic towards the arts, he just didn’t think that a theory in a social science, for example, was equivalent to that in a physical science:

“But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you’ll see the reading scores keep going down—or hardly going up in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There’s a witch doctor remedy that doesn’t work. It ought to be looked into; how do they know that their method should work?”

More to the point, these “theories” can intimidate and confuse, and often don’t go much farther than advertisements in their ability to inform:

“The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn’t soak through food. Well, that’s true. It’s not dishonest; but the thing I’m talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it’s a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will— including Wesson oil. So it’s the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.”

The bottom line is honesty, integrity and awareness. Education, technical training, instructional design, and plain old teaching are complex fusions of art and science. They are complicated endeavors for which we have yet to figure out the laws. As Feynman would say, it’s like we are learning the laws of chess by watching games being played, and gradually deduce that certain pieces remain on the same color square and that certain odd behaviors between pieces (like castling) can occur in a corner of the board. Being unscientific doesn’t necessarily make an endeavor worthless, undesirable or even ineffective, but it does behoove us to be clear about its character. It’s important to be honest about the level of our understanding and know the limits of the technologies we employ, be they educational theories, pet approaches in the classroom, or PowerPoint.

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.”

The University is doomed. At least from some accounts. Recent articles and blog posts claim that both educational consumers and producers have deep concerns over the state of its health and projected longevity. For example:

• The Impending Demise of the University
• End the University as We Know It
• Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?
• Universities will be ‘irrelevant’ by 2020, Y. professor says
• The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
• Is College Obsolete?
• Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course

What seems clear from all this discussion is that life in electronic world has shifted the ways in which we learn, teach, work and relate to one another, and these ways are not reflected in the mainstream educational institutions that presently exist.

Naturally the roles played by the University are varied. David Wiley at “Hacking Education” by Union Square Ventures offered five basic components of a college or University:

1. Content provisioning
2. Research – conducted, archived, disseminated
3. Help provided to a student with a question on content
4. Social life
5. Issuing credentials

Note these might just as well be extended to the high school or the entire K-12 educational system as most points overlap secondary and college systems. A point of departure among students and critics (often unspoken) is that most or all of these essential services can be gotten from outside formal schools. Once upon a time there was a notion that schools centralized scarce information and formed a focus or concentration of knowledge that modern learners no longer regard as necessary or true. To a modern learner the “information is out there” all around us. What they need are tools and techniques for harnessing, interpreting and applying ubiquitous information.

The discussion about how education must or will change in light of the modern electronic environment goes back quite a few years. A casual glance at Marshall McLuhan‘s writings on education will turn up articles and interviews from over forty years ago. One such article co-authored with George Leonard for LOOK Magazine (Feb. 21, 1967) is titled “The Future of Education: The Class of 1989.” With the exception of professorial tenure, McLuhan and Leonard address the same points that current writers wrestle with:

• Schools are preparing students for a world that no longer exists.
• Classrooms have not changed substantially over the last century.
• Mass education is a product of the mechanical age and the production line.
• Education was designed to slow and control the processes of personal growth and change.
• Students are furnished with rigid and isolated “bodies of knowledge.”
• Competition is the chief motive force in mass education.
• The lecture system, the “…least effective [mode] ever devised by man, served well enough in an age that demanded only a specified fragment of each human being’s whole abilities.”
• New technologies are not as central to tomorrow’s schooling as are new roles for student and teacher.
• There will no distinction between work and play as the student will be totally involved.
• The main work of the future will be education.
• The University will become an integral part of the community offering degrees of “membership” corresponding to varied levels of participation.

Given the essential and ongoing nature of education to the modern learner (or consumer) certain changes in approach can be expected:

• The learning process must be interactive or two-way.
• Learning styles must be taken into consideration.
• Standardized one-size-fits-all courses are out. Same for tests and evaluations.
• The University (read: curriculum or degree program) should not have walls.
• Learning should be asynchronous.
• Courses must be timely, relevant and engaging.
• Failure is part of the learning feedback loop; not an end of the process.
• Responsibility for learning will be shifted away from the student and towards the instructor or institution.
• Portfolios are more important than letter grades.
• Certifications are static and local and therefore have little lasting value.

There are several compelling reasons why we can expect consumers to prevail over the Universities and win these changes. First, students are coming to school steeped in electronic communications media and want to continue learning as they live, with full involvement. They will not accept that they have to “power down” to go to class. Educators will have to embrace new methods and techniques if they are to engage modern learners. Michael Wesch is a good example of a university teacher who accepted the challenge with his classes at Kansas State University only to write a new chapter in undergraduate pedagogy.

Secondly, education is expensive. The current average cost of a private university in the US is about $25,000.00 a year and is growing faster than inflation or medical care. Several generations of Americans have been to college since the Second World War and have grown to accept that in most cases a degree or two are essential to membership in the middle class. That said, these same middle class folks are also steeped in the most commercially oriented culture in history and are now becoming more consumer oriented concerning education. Part of this consumer oriented pressure will be in the direction of getting an education that fits their goals and lifestyles. Already we have seen the rise of non-traditional online Universities that focus on older students already in the workforce. No doubt others will rise to furnish the needs of other groups. If the Universities don’t change, students will vote with their feet (and checkbooks).

One other factor that is influencing modern students’ perception of the University is cultural, verging on mythological. Many top business/media/technology leaders like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Michael Dell  do not have college degrees. This sends a powerful, if silent, message to many. Consider the story of Rob Kalin at “Hacking Education” mentioned above:

“I graduated high school with a D minus average. …My guidance counselor said ‘drop out of high school, you’ll have an easier time getting into college if you just get a GED.’ I [decided] to graduate with this D minus and see what it does for me. I didn’t get into any accredited school . I got into a diploma program in an art school in Boston, and it was near MIT. … I used the art school to make a fake ID to go to MIT. Someone said [college is] expensive. I said no, it’s free, you just won’t get credit for it.”

“Today, no one is going to ask Rob for his college transcript. His credentials are the companies he has created.”

One of my pet rants is that good design matter, even for training materials. Well designed tools don’t just delight the eye they function better, adding efficiency to their purpose. The problem, however, is that design is often taken as extraneous and unnecessary by development managers, instructional designers and other business people who see it as “eye candy.”

Psychologist and author Donald Norman has a post on this issue and attempts to remedy the situation at Northwestern University:

Terry Winograd of Stanford’s computer science department and d.school wrote a very nice description of our new Design + Operations MMM program at the Kellogg School of Business and Northwestern Engineering. That article is available in Interactions, the magazine for Human Computer Interaction professionals.

In Winograd’s words:

The essence of successful interactive products is not just the interaction an end user has with the product, but with the whole range of operations that make that interaction work.

Norman goes on to say that  Jimmy Guterman at O’Reilly Radar Group reviews the program in a post titled “Teaching Design to Business People.” A copy of the Winograd article in PDF format can be gotten here:  p44-winograd.

Educational Origami is a wiki site dedicated to bringing the classroom into the 21st Century. It’s a bit “busy” but well worth the effort combing through its many winding links and pages. One of the main features of the site is the update of Bloom’s Taxonomy for the modern electronic learner.

Diagram of Bloom's Taxonomy

Other notable topics include: the 21st Century Teacher, the 21 Century Learner, ITC and Learning Style, and Web 2.0 Tools and Resources.