I want to thank David Kelly and the eLearning Guild for awarding me the prestigious title of Guild Master.
Guild Masters including an amazing list of folks, including lots of research-to-practice legends like Ruth Clark, Julie Dirksen, Clark Quinn, Jane Bozarth, Karl Kapp, and others who utilize research-based recommendations in their work.
Delighted to be included!
21st December 2016
Neon Elephant Award Announcement
Dr. Will Thalheimer of Work-Learning Research announces the winner of the 2016 Neon Elephant Award, given this year to Pedro De Bruyckere, Paul A. Kirschner, and Casper D. Hulshof for their book, Urban Myths about Learning and Education. Pedro, Paul, and Casper provide a research-based reality check on the myths and misinformation that float around the learning field. Their incisive analysis takes on such myths as learning styles, multitasking, discovery learning, and various and sundry neuromyths.
Urban Myths about Learning and Education is a powerful salve on the wounds engendered by the weak and lazy thinking that abounds too often in the learning field — whether on the education side or the workplace learning side. Indeed, in a larger sense, De Bruyckere, Kirschner, and Hulshof are doing important work illuminating key truths in a worldwide era of post-truth communication and thought. Now, more than ever, we need to celebrate the truth-tellers!
Click here to learn more about the Neon Elephant Award…
2016 Award Winners – Pedro De Bruyckere, Paul Kirschner, and Casper Hulshof
Pedro De Bruyckere (1974) is an educational scientist at Arteveldehogeschool, Ghent since 2001. He co-wrote two books with Bert Smits in which they debunk popular myths on GenY and GenZ, education and pop culture. He co-wrote a book on girls culture with Linda Duits. And, of course, he co-wrote the book for which he and his co-authors are being honored, Urban Myths about Learning and Education. Pedro is an often-asked public speaker, one of his strongest points is that he “is funny in explaining serious stuff.”
Paul A. Kirschner (1951) is University Distinguished Professor at the Open University of the Netherlands as well as Visiting Professor of Education with a special emphasis on Learning and Interaction in Teacher Education at the University of Oulu, Finland. He is an internationally recognized expert in learning and educational research, with many classic studies to his name. He has served as President of the International Society for the Learning Sciences, is an AERA (American Education Research Association) Research Fellow (the first European to receive this honor). He is chief editor of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, associate editor of Computers in Human Behavior, and has published two very successful books: Ten Steps to Complex Learning and Urban Legends about Learning and Education. His co-author on the Ten-Steps book, Jeroen van Merriënboer, won the Neon-Elephant award in 2011.
Casper D. Hulshof is a teacher (assistant professor) at Utrecht University where he supervises bachelors and masters students. He teaches psychological topics, and is especially intrigued with the intersection of psychology and philosophy, mathematics, biology and informatics. He uses his experience in doing experimental research (mostly quantitative work in the areas of educational technology and psychology) to inform his teaching and writing. More than once he has been awarded teaching honors.
Why Honored?
Pedro De Bruyckere, Paul Kirschner, and Casper Hulshof are honored this year for their book Urban Myths about Learning and Education, a research-based reality check on the myths and misinformation that float around the learning field. With their research-based recommendations, they are helping practitioners in the education and workplace-learning fields make better decisions, create more effective learning interventions, and avoid the most dangerous myths about learning.
For their efforts in sharing practical research-based insights on learning design, the workplace learning-and-performance field owes a grateful thanks to Pedro De Bruyckere, Paul Kirschner, and Casper Hulshof.
Book Link:
Is my book, Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form, award worthy?
I think so, buy I'm hugely biased! SMILE.
Here's what I wrote today on an award-submission application:
Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of Dangerous Art Form is a book, published in February 2016, written by Will Thalheimer, PhD, President of Work-Learning Research, Inc.
The book reviews research on smile sheets (learner feedback forms), demonstrates the limitations of traditional smile sheets, and provides a completely new formulation on how to design and deploy smile sheets.
The ideas in the book — and the example questions provided — help learning professionals focus on "learning effectiveness" in supporting post-learning performance. Where traditional smile sheets focus on learner satisfaction and the credibility of training, Performance-Focused Smile Sheets can also focus on science-of-learning factors that matter. Smile sheets can be transformed by focusing on learner comprehension, factors that influence long-term remembering, learner motivation to apply what they've learned, and after-learning supports for learning transfer and application of learning to real-world job tasks.
Smile sheets can also be transformed by looking beyond Likert-like responses and numerical averages that dumb-down our metrics and lead to bias and paralysis. We can go beyond meaningless averages ("My course is a 4.1!") and provide substantive information to ourselves and our stakeholders.
The book reviews research that shows that so-called "learner-centric" formulations are filled with dangers — as research shows that learners don't always know how they learn best. Smile-sheet questions must support learners in making smile-sheet decisions, not introduce biases that warp the data.
For decades our industry has been mired in the dishonest and disempowering practice of traditional smile sheets. Thankfully, a new approach is available to us.
Sure! I'd love to see my work honored. More importantly, I'd love to see the ideas from my book applied wisely, improved, and adopted for training evaluation, student evaluations, conference evaluations, etc.
You can help by sharing, by piloting, by persuading, by critiquing and improving! That will be my greatest award!
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