Donald Kirkpatrick Answers Questions. Click to view.
Nice NY Times article on class size and technology-enabled learning at MIT, where they are getting rid of the large lecture hall, opting instead for “pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.”
The article talks about using clickers in the classroom as well, a subject near and dear to my heart. See my website www.AudienceResponseLearning.org and my free research-to-practice report on how to use questions with audience-response technology.
Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava) has created stages of Twitter, a Kübler-Rossian kind of list.
Here are his stages:
And a few days ago, he added another stage:
6. Collaboration: “Actual, meaningful relationships and collaborations have occurred out of my usage of Twitter”
You can see his post and the amazing number of people who commented at this webpage.
Here is my addition to the list, an even dozen in honor of Kübler-Ross:
7. Bliss: “Blissful feeling of competence and connectivity, driven by obvious advantages perceived.”
8. Recruiting: “Exhibiting a missionary zeal to find coverts and increase number of followers.”
9. Divorce: “Less blissful feeling due to bounded competence, particularly unrelated to geographically-contiguous family members.”
10. Frustration: “How come other people keep getting ahead, when I know so many things and so many people?”
11. Worry: “I wonder if I’m spending too much time Twittering? No. No. I think not. Let me ask my followers.”
12. Death: “My only regret is that I didn’t Twitter more. #BYE.”
I’m absolutely astonished that our national leaders are contemplating an extension of the TV-signal switch-date from analog to digital.
See the AP article on how Obama has asked Congress to extend the deadline. Or this NY Times article explaining the thinking.
First, let me say that I live in an analog-only TV house that doesn’t have a convertor box. We’ve been thinking of buying a new TV, but we’re also thinking maybe the price of TV’s will come down after the switch, especially as the economy deteriorates (in which case we might rather have the money for food). Actually, our neighbor just offered us his convertor box, so we’ll probably use that.
HOWEVER, what’s astonishing is that people are acting like TV is an essential commodity, more like water and food (okay maybe not like sex), than like the optional accessory it really should be.
Here’s my counter-proposal. A national month of TV blackout for everyone (analog, digital, networked, etc.). Complete with opportunities for learning, sharing, exercising, perhaps a national dialogue on key issues, and hey, what about reading.
Can we get back to reality?
The eLearning Guild is reprising the 10 most FAVORITE sessions from DevLearn, their recent conference.
And OMG I’m a favorite. Better yet there is a whole group of fantastic folks including Ruth Clark and Clark Quinn.
I’m going to be leading the Opening Session at 11:30 Eastern Time on Giving Learners Feedback, and the Research thereof.
It’s Next Week January 15 & 16, 2009. Check it out.
I found my first surprisingly intelligent use of Twitter: http://flixpulse.com/. It scans tweets, analyzes word stream, and reviews movies!!
And the really cool thing is that people aren’t intentionally rating a movie. They’re just flinging their opinions to the masses. This, it seems to me, is a fundamentally different data stream than an intentional rating function. Some academic ought to study this.
The language-processing capability has loads of applications. A marketing department could analyze product/company reputation; political analysts could analyze preferences; each of us individually could analyze our own reputations; state departments could look at their national reputations or the feeling people have toward particular issues.
Hmmm. What could us learning-and-performance people do with this?
Keep this one top of mind so you can look for opportunities.
This Friday January 9th, I will talk about Instructional Objectives, and some research, thereof.
Instructional Objectives:
- Do they produce learning results?
- Are they all the same?
- Do we have to use them?
- Do prequestions work just as well?
- How specifically do they have to be worded?
- Can I use the word “Understand”? Answer: In some of them, but not others.
- Hey Will, do you have a new taxonomy for us?
Click to Sign Up:
Friday January 9th — Noon — US East Coast Time
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/247154110
Here is what your colleagues are saying about the Brown-Bag Webinoshes:
Great content, great visuals. Authenticity of presenter and passion for the subject matter was apparent. I am taking away one thing to do right away as well as inspiration to move in this direction… all of those things combined are my definition of 30 minutes well spent. (Love the short timeframe, I feel like I got a whole lot of good stuff in a little bit of time!) – Senior Instructional Designer
I’m grateful to Will for his munificence regarding his time, research, and expenses he so selflessly gives out to everyone who wishes to join in. – Instructional Systems Designer
Enjoyed the dry humor sprinkled in. Great devil horns. – President
I’ve been a big fan of your work for several years. Your papers on simulation-like questions, the spacing effect, learning feedback, etc., have greatly influenced and improved my instructional design. Thank you. – Director of E-Learning
Will, YOU are thee man, the Big Kahuna of the pack, the Big Dog all the small dogs aspire to become more like……..! – Principal
Enjoyed it! Time well spent. – Program Manager
I greatly appreciate that you are willing to give of your time to “push” this information to us. Also appreciative of the fact that you are willing to freely share the information (both in the session and as follow-up documents). – eLearning Manager
I like the short, topic specific nature, also the additional one’s like myth of the week and news. It is easy to become so absorbed in the daily details of projects that you forget to apply new things you’re learning –this is a good way to be reminded and to learn new nuggets. – Training Specialist Supervisor
Thanks for the ideas. I have new inspiration. Also, I think the format of the brown bag session is an effective way to share your research. – Consultant
Thank you for sharing your valuable research. – Training Consultant
Will is an extremely knowledgeable person and his ideas have far-reaching benefits to the training field. Offering his job aids free and letting participants share them freely shows how much he values the importance of training and helping ensure that learning is relevant and applicable to the job/skill. He’s outstanding! – Senior Instructional Designer
I like Will’s sense of humor and how it helps to take some of the sometimes-intimidating research down to an accessible level of understanding. – Learning Executive
Yikes. Today Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, worried in his NY Times column about the United States sinking into another Great Depression.
Here are some other recent articles/blog posts suggesting coming economic ruin.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/113198-this-great-depression-is-just-getting-started
Until recently the message from economists in the media was that it was unlikely that we would fall into another great depression.
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12852043
Here are some interesting articles on the Great Depression, historically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
From Hale Stewart:
Part 1: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/12/31/73320/435/904/678462
Part 2: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/the-great-depression-pt-i_b_154730.html
Part 3: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/the-great-depression-pt-i_b_155181.html
Below I offer my Top 10 List for 2008, reprising my best work from the previous year.
Honorable Mentions
Before I get to the Top 10, there are some honorable mentions.
— Brown-Bag Learning Events. These are short webinars that I started running once or twice a month or so on various topics. I started these up this year as an experiment and they seem to be going really well. Come join me sometime!
— Graduate School Advice. I offered my advice on how to choose a graduate school and how to approach graduate school once you get in. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/10/thinking-of-goi.html.
— Neon Elephant Award to Robert Brinkerhoff. Several years ago I started a once-a-year award to honor folks who are creating really beneficial innovations in our field. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/12/neon-elephant-award-for-2008-given-to-robert-brinkerhoff.html
My Top 10
10. Advice on the use of Personality Instruments. The training-and-development field relies too often on instruments (like the Myers-Briggs) that are not reliable or valid. I decided to put together a quick review of the research and suggest better alternatives. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/12/personality-instruments-and-workplace-performance.html
9. On-the-job Learning. Too often, we in the learning-and-performance field forget that (1) learning happens on the job, (2) we can leverage and guide some of that learning, and (3) formal learning interventions can be specifically designed to support on-the-job learning. In this blog post, I shared results of a work-learning audit I conducted with a major retailer. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/04/what-work-learn.html
8. All Media Forced to be Sold for Cheap. Those of us in the learning-and-performance field need to stay attuned to the larger world and the technology-spaces we live in. This blog post noted how people’s expectations are changing about how much they are willing to pay for information. This has profound implications for our field. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/06/all-media-force.html
7. Commenting on Learning 2.0. Learning 2.0—the practice of letting users generate and share information, knowledge, and personal asides—is here to stay. We learning professionals need to figure out how to make the best of it. I feel a special responsibility as a learning expert to bring insight to the tsunami. My best exploration on this issue involved designing two Learning 2.0 systems. I can’t share those designs here, but they provided a great learning experience for me to draw on in thinking about Learning 2.0.
I offered insights on how to evaluate learning 2.0 in an article for the eLearning Guild. http://www.work-learning.com/Catalog/Documents/EvaluatingLearning20_FinalVersion.pdf.
I’ve also begun to explore Twitter, which I’m finding intriguing but probably only useful for specific applications. I’m not done investigating, but the signal to noise ratio and the distraction problem may just be too hard to overcome. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/11/my-twitter-genesis-talking-with-god-versus-the-multitudes.html.
6. New Measurement Job Aid and Smile-Sheet Design. In 2007, I wrote a research-to-practice report critiquing learning measurement practices because they often fail to understand learning fundamentals. I continue to follow-up on that work in an effort to move the field forward. For example, I’ve been teaching workshops on learning transfer and partnering with Roy Pollock of the Fort Hill Company in teaching workshops on measuring learning through the eLearning Guild. Within this month, Roy and I will be releasing a job aid on how to incorporate measurement into the learning-design process.
In June, I released a job aid on measurement best practices. The latest version of the job aid is available at the following link: http://www.work-learning.com/Catalog/DocumentDownloadPages/DL_MeasBestPractices.htm.
Also, this year, I began improving my own smile sheet practices, including using a better immediate smile sheet and a delayed smile sheet as well. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/07/smile-sheets-th.html
5. Situation-Based Learning Design. I have continued to refine my research-based conception, Situation-Based Learning Design, a learning-design conception that provides a potent alternative to our traditional topic-based instructional design. Although I don’t have a full write-up about this yet, I’ve been using this conception in my consulting and workshops—and learning professionals have found this conception extremely compelling. The following blog post hints at this a bit. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/10/changing-our-le.html. The following link provides a job aid to introduce people on how situation-based learning design might work differently. http://www.work-learning.com/Catalog/DocumentDownloadPages/DL_SBLD_StarterKit.htm. I would recommend that organizations utilize this after taking a workshop. I’m not sure how well it will work without some background information.
4. Learning-to-Performance Responsibility Chart. For over 10 years I’ve been compiling research from the world’s preeminent refereed journals on learning, memory, and instruction. One of my lessons learned is that we need simple models (one’s that are research-based) that resonate with our stakeholders. I’ve also seen how the business side of our organizations don’t always understand how learning works or how they can help to support training and application. Given this need, I developed the Learning-to-Performance Responsibility Chart. Latest version is available here: http://www.work-learning.com/Catalog/DocumentDownloadPages/DL_LP_ResponsibilityChart.htm. The rationale behind this was discussed at this link: http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/08/a-better-learni.html.
3. Learning Landscape Model. I’ve been evolving this model for almost ten years. This year, I expanded it and have begun relating it to learning measurement. The Learning Landscape Model is a visual model that shows how learning becomes performance and creates results. It’s based on years of research and I have found it very helpful in (1) clarifying my own thoughts, in (2) helping other learning-and-performance professionals fully understand their roles/goals, and in (3) explaining training-and-development to business (non-learning) stakeholders. The following blog post offers two links, an annotated slide deck describing the model and the blog post that describes some of the thinking/research behind the model. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/12/learning-landscape-model-annotated.html.
2. Feedback Report. I spent a long, long, long time compiling research from refereed journals on how to give learners feedback. This is a breakthrough report for a number of reasons. The research is messy and needs some enlightenment from the practice side, which I like to think I have provided. I offer suggestions to researchers on what they might be missing. The report is divided into two parts, one focusing on practice, one on research. Finally, I decided to give away the research report for free as an experiment, instead of selling it. Click the following link to get your own copy. http://www.willatworklearning.com/2008/05/free-research-r.html
1. Making All Documents FREE!! Since about 2001, I’ve been selling my research-to-practice reports online. At the time, I figured that I was making an exhaustive effort in compiling the research and making it practical for learning professionals and that I ought to get some return on that effort. Moreover, I didn’t get a salary the way academic researchers do, and I needed to make a living just like everyone else. Well, that model never worked that well (I did the work, but the compensation was meager). I also sometimes felt a nagging pang of discomfort charging money for information—even with the value-add that I was providing. But the worst part by far was that this crucial information just wasn’t getting to that many people—where it needs to go so that it can make a difference in the lives of real learners and organizations.
So, starting a few months ago, I started giving it all away. My hope is that the research—and the valuable insights provided in its distillation—will get a much wider audience and have a greater impact on the field.
I’m still updating some documents, so stay tuned for further free research-to-practice reports in the next couple of months.
By the way, the experiment seems to be having an impact. I’ve gotten numerous requests to distribute documents in business organizations and academic institutions. Also, even in this terrible economy, organizations are requesting that I consult, lead workshops, or speak at their events. If your organization could benefit from my work, let me know. And feel free to distribute my documents as far and wide as you like. www.work-learning.com/catalog.
THANKS TO ALL FOR YOUR INTEREST AND SUPPORT !!!!!!