Story – A Strategy for Generating Ideas

We know that stories make information come alive and are a great way to connect learners to new information and concepts.  Meaning and involvement become more personal for the learner when stories are involved. This is an example of how story was used during an advisory committee meeting as a way to generate ideas from members.  In this case advisory committee members were asked to individually create their own story.  This story would be rich in detail  and would depict someone in the community that would benefit from completing an associate degree in the Business Management program.  They were given five minutes to write their stories.  Each member shared their story while someone outlined the important details on an individual flip chart page.  Next, the group was paired up with an advisory committee member and a college representative.  The pairs reviewed the various pages and brainstormed ways to connect with the person in the story. Ideas were captured on post-it notes.  What resulted from this activity were new ideas and very rich information.  The advisory committee members reported enjoying the experience.

This example comes to us from Karen Barr, Beth Kost and Dianne Lazear.  October 2011

Creating a Story from a Picture

Story can be used in every phase of the learning cycle.  This is an example of how story is used in the “generalizing” phase. It comes to us from Sherry Nazer, a student in Dianne Lazear’s Business Management class.  Dianne was teaching a unit on ethics.  The students were asked to create a learning activity around the concepts they had been studying and then facilitate the activity in the class. If they created a game they needed to supply the answer key to the game. While studying this unit, Dianne displayed various ethical principles on posters around the classroom.  Sherry gave each student a different picture and asked them to create a story from the picture that pulled in one of the ethical principles. Dianne reported a high level of intense engagement as the students developed their stories which were then individually shared. The photos combined with the stories made the information come alive in a personal way. You can see how various aspects of the brain were engaged. The pictures evoked emotion and triggered memories.  Both the right and left sides of the brain were involved with the right brain looking for the big picture and meaning while the left brain fills in the details. 

Teaching and Leadership

I reconnected recently to the field of leadership. I am taking a class on instructional design from Dee Fink and am reading his book "Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses." When talking about teacher credibility, Fink draws from the work of Kouzes and Polzner and highlights these three characteristics: competence (knowledge of the subject), trustworthiness (have the best interest of the student at heart), and dynamism (excited about the subject).

This lead me to revisit the books that I have on leadership.  I plan to share a summary every so often.  Below is a summary from Frances Hesselbein's book. My life in leadership: The journey and lessons learned along the way.

There are several key take aways from this book, one is that leadership is done in the spirit of service. Another has to do with inclusion and the role the leader plays in helping people grow the mission in their hearts and minds so they can express it everyday in their work.  Hesselbein suggests that this is how you grow the organization of the future. She describes how she implemented what she calls circular management versus hierarchical command and control, in her role as the CEO of the Girl Scouts of America and now as the CEO of the Leader to Leader Institute. Hesselbein defines leadership this way. "Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do. You and I spend most of our lives learning how to do and teaching others how to do, yet it is the quality and character of the leader that determines performance, the results. Leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do" (p.89).  She suggests that we use the power of saying no as a way to define ourselves and out organizations. Being true to our values and our personal and organizational mission requires saying no. It enhances the ethical performance of the leader and the organization. I love this quote from President Lincoln.

     I am not bound to win,

     But I am bound to be true.

     I am not bound to succeed,

     But I am bound to live

     Up to the light I have.

A Recipe for Creating Significant Deep Learning Experiences

I was thinking that it would be fun to work with some great teachers and share some ideas on how the framework for create significant deep learning experiences could be applied.  We would use a recipe metaphor and model after cooking shows.  Here are some very preliminary thoughts. Once we worked out the details we would share the demonstration during a TLT Group FridayLive Session.  Let me know what you think?

With every recipe there are ingredients.  I think we would create a scenario and provide the following information:

Name of the recipe or is this case the outcome:________________

The ingredients:

• The course
• The competency
• The topic
• The audience
• The setting
• Other ingredients:__________________

The directions:
Demonstrate how the outcome is achieved using the following framework:

• A coherent knowledge structure.
• Assessment strategies where learners are presenters and performers of their learning.
• Active learning tasks that also involve long term engagement.
• A positive and challenging environment.  It is all about the learner and their learning.

Play and learning

I have been mulling over comments made about games and learning at a recent meeting.  Games were laughed at as being a waste of time, not professional and certainly not connected with learning. This has left me scratching my head because it flies in the face of what I know about the brain and learning.  In the monograph I wrote on creating deep learning experiences, I contrasted surface and deep learning.  One of the contrasts was this. Deep learners "are mindful; play and create with new ideas, relate theory to everyday life. Learners enjoy learning, the process flows "  Surface learners "take a mindless approach; entrapped in old ideas, the content is devoid of significance. Learners find learning to be unpleasant."

I plan to do more thinking and research on this perspective.  Maybe it is merely a semantic issue. I have recently listened to some great presentations from TEDD on this topic.

1. Tim Brown on Creativity and Playhttp://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html
   At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't).
   

2. Steve Keil: A manifesto for play, for Bulgaria and beyond

   http://www.ted.com/talks/steve_keil_a_manifesto_for_play_for_bulgaria_and_beyond.htmlAt TEDxBG in Sofia, Steve Keil fights the "serious meme" that has infected his home of Bulgaria -- and calls for a return to play to revitalize the economy, education and society. A sparkling talk with a universal message for people everywhere who are reinventing their workplaces, schools, lives.
   

3. Stuart Brown says play is more than fun

   http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stuart_brown_says_play_is_more_than_fun_it_s_vital.htmlA pioneer in research on play, Dr. Stuart Brown says humor, games, roughhousing, flirtation and fantasy are more than just fun. Plenty of play in childhood makes for happy, smart adults -- and keeping it up can make us smarter at any age.
   
   
   

Accelements - Elements of Accelerative Learning and Teaching

I just completed a great webinar series with Paul Scheele from Learning Strategies Corporation, Accelements - Elements of Accelerative Learning and Teaching." Not only did I learn some cool things about accelerated learning but I came away with some cool ideas to improve my WebEx design and delivery. Here is what I have so far:

How to use WebEx Polling Questions to Promote Deep Learning

I am on a quest to find ways to utilize web conferencing software to create deep learning experiences. The Winter 2011 POD Network News contained a great article by Derek Bruff, “Multiple-Choice Questions You Wouldn’t Put on a Test: Promoting Deep Learning Using Clickers,”  The polling feature in WebEx and clickers will create similar results.  This is how it works: participants respond anonymously which makes it safer to share their perspectives and to take risks; their results are displayed which in turn generates greater interest in discussion as multiple perspectives are revealed.

Bruff (2009-2001) suggests four question types:

1.      One-Best-Answer Question. In this situation, there is more than one defensible answer. Participants are asked to commit to one answer, the results are displayed and a discussion takes place as to why various answers were chosen.
Example: present a short scenario and then pose a question to the group, such as, “select the best option to explain the characters motivation.

2.      Student Perspective Question. Participants are asked to share opinions and personal experiences. These types of questions can help participants personally connect to the content.  When viewing the results they also begin to understand each other a little better and possibly appreciate multiple perspectives.
Example: could ask student views on a current event or to share what type of personal experience they may have had related to the topic.

3.      Misconception Question. A question is chosen that will surface common misconceptions. After the results are displayed, Bruff suggests that participants be given time to discuss in small groups.  The WebEx breakout group feature could be used for this.  After small group discussions, the question is posed again and then a large group discussion takes place around the reasons for and against the various answers.

4.      Peer Assessment Question. Participants are given an opportunity to provide feedback on a fellow participant’s presentation. Anonymous feedback tends to be more honest and constructive and can lead to good discussion regarding discipline standards.

“Based on various definitions for deep learning and what we know about the brain and learning, deep learning involves five traits: (a) focusing on the big picture, the overall meaning, pattern, or principle; (b) connecting new ideas to previous knowledge and personal experience and ultimately fitting these into a coherent whole; (c) linking with internal learning goals; (d) processing actively by being open, creative, and curious; and (e) embracing change, new situations, and multiple perspectives” (Dailey, 2011, p.9). By utilizing questions in this fashion, experiences are created where participants connect new ideas to personal experience and link their learning goals as they think independently in answering the questions.  By seeing the results of the poll, participants are more likely to actively process through discussion and become aware of and appreciate multiple perspectives.

References

Bruff, D. (2009-2010). Multiple-Choice Questions You Wouldn’t Put on a Test: Promoting Deep Learning Using Clickers. POD Essays on Teaching Excellence.  Accessed May 3, 2011 http://www.podnetwork.org/publications/teachingexcellence/09-10/V21,%20N3%20Bruff.pdf. 

Dailey, B. (2011). Creating Significant Deep Learning Experiences. The Cross Papers Number 14. League for innovations in the Community College.

Creating Significant Deep Learning Experiences

February 27th is the end of the journey.  I will be sharing some ideas from the work I have been doing on creating significant deep learning experiences as a part of the Cross Paper Fellowship.  Cross Paper, Number 14 is complete.

Thank you all for supporting me along the way. I have learned so much throughout this project. Now to put all I have learned into practice. I recently viewed a Ted talk that inspired me. It is titled "Lewis Pugh's mind-shifting Everest swim." He ends his talk with this question related to the environment.  I think you can apply the question to our work as teachers.  He asks us to think of one radical tactile shift that we think we can make and then commit 100% to doing it. The journey continues. I hope you enjoy http://www.ted.com/talks/lewis_pugh_s_mind_shifting_mt_everest_swim.html

Learning and Leadership: The Joy of Learning

Learning and Leadership: The Joy of Learning

Below are 2 interesting videos regarding games and learning and games and changing the world.

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world

Games: The Best Way to Learn. Period. Educause

The Essence of Leadership

I ran across this post and thought it was worth sharing.The essence of leadership. Presidential scholar George Edwards argues. "The essence of leadership is not persuasion. Real leadership is recognizing and exploiting opportunities," The context for this piece is about President Barack Obama's negotiating skills but I think the idea is worth contemplating in and of itself.

The Joy of Learning

Interesting Podcast from Educause

Gardner Campbell and Jim Groom Discuss Faculty Attitudes and the Joy of Learning-FULL LENGTH VERSION: http://tinyurl.com/2we4bxu

When Gardner Campbell and Jim Groom get together to discuss the current state of higher ed, it's always an insightful and lively conversation. Gardner is Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University and Jim Groom is an Instructional Technology Specialist at the University of Mary Washington. A couple years ago we caught the two on video debating EDUPUNK. This year we got them talking about the current state of higher ed faculty attitudes about teaching and the internet.

WebEx Ideas

In this post I will share one approach I used recently that was pretty successful.  Please tell me what you think, experiences you have had,etc.  I will use this space to share other strategies that I try and how they worked.

The use of breakout groups
In this case I had WebEx automatically assign people into 4 groups, see below for the group assignments.  Before delivering a mini lecture I gave the groups their assignments.

After the mini lecture the groups were given a little time to formulate their answers and finish their discussions and then reported out.  The participants liked the ability to talk together in groups. They felt that they dug deeper into the content that way.

I have a little more to learn about how to manage the groups and other little nuances that they don't really explain in the documentation.  You need to "experience" it. :)

Beth
  

Team 1 = Questioners.   Ask at least 2 questions about the material covered. Team 2 = Agreers. Tell which points you agree with or found helpful and explain why. Team 3 = Nay-sayers. Comment on which point you disagree with or found unhelpful  and explain why. Team 4 = Example givers. Give specific examples or applications of the material This activity is from Silberman, M (1996). Active learning: 101 strategies to teach any subject. Boston, MA; Allyn and Bacon, p.72.

Looking for teaching online advice



I am looking for advice from those who have way more experience than me. On Friday, November 12th I start a class with 60 new academic directors.  They are from all over the country. The class meets via WebEx 12 times from November - June and online.  There is probably so much you can tell me. Maybe you could share 1 or 2 things that you think I should do to best facilitate the learning of my students. Thank you so much for your insights.  I will keep you posted on how it goes.

Beth

What IS a Learning Futurist?

Good morning!

I am happy to say that I have had a great first week at EDMC.  I haven't been a new employee for about 17 years.  It 's good to re-live this experience.  I have so much to learn about EDMC and about how to manage working from home.  Some how I need to figure out how to create the social element that is naturally in the work place.  I am open to suggestions here.

I ran across this blog post looking http://teachingcollegemath.com/2010/09/what-is-a-learning-futurist/ as I was looking into the the 2010 World Future Society’s Conference and Education Summit.  One of my first new job tasks is to facilitate a monthly conference call with the Faculty Development Directors of EDMC colleges. Someone will be sharing what she learned from the conference.  This should be very interesting.

I love this notion of being a "learning futurist." To read and talk about trends and how learning will be impacted.  One of the sources of information referenced in the article was social networks.  I am still new to this.  I have recently become more active in LinkedIn and joined some groups through ASCD.  I want to start using Twitter.  Any suggestions on what I should do first? 

Do you have sites that you find valuable related to learning?

Learning is so much fun and tapping into technology is amazing.

Beth

Response to "Introducing Difficulty in Learning"

I've only finished reading the first portion so this may be premature but I wanted to share my initial thoughts.

As is noted, the greater the difficulty to overcome the greater the long term retention. The part that is most integral to me is the need to find, in the words of theorist Lev Vygotsky, the "Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)."

If its too challenging retention will not exist because they will give up before success. There is quite a bit of research that has shown that success begets success and failure begets failure. It becomes a snowball effect that is likely further reinforced by the cognitive factors (see Aaron Beck's theories) surrounding failure.

With that said, I would agree wholeheartedly with the concept of novel and varied learning activities and assessments for the very reasons noted. Furthermore, it allows for not only greater long-term retention but greater generalizability of the concepts learned.

These ideas are further reinforced by brain research which suggests (in a simplistic explanation) that the more the brain is involved the greater the retention. By varying the methods used new neural connections are being created and strengthened.

As I first read the "Feedback" portion my gut reaction was, WHAT?! My initial thought was that the majority of students will become overwhelmed by the novelty we're creating without feedback and be likely to fail.

But as I've re-read it I believe the initial concept is relevant with a bit of a caveat.

Feedback is required for a couple of reasons:

1. It allows learners to understand if they are correct or incorrect and why.

2. It allows learners to make leaps in understanding that they otherwise would not make.

With that said, constant and consistent feedback becomes a reinforcer and an expectation. Learners rely on the feedback rather than challenging themselves to think critically and creatively and to search for answers that may not be intuitive. So, tapered and intermittent feedback will likely be more successful assuming it is provided at relevant times.

This is a larger problem with the current K-12 system and the idea of "teaching to the test" (this may be a whole other discussion for another time). It has become a problem at the college level as learners have had 12+ years of conditioning that we have to try to break down in a semester or two.

I recently sent out some early semester surveys to get feedback on my own teaching style. The area students felt I needed to improve on was in providing them with more "feedback" on what exactly to know. While this feedback was provided by a minority of the students overall it was a common theme that further emphasizes the conditioned expectation of "tell me what I need to know for the test so I can show you I know it and forget it."

While the corporate world is significantly more varied than education this is still commonplace in the traditional training methods. For example: Joe is a new employee who needs to learn his task on the assembly line. We model these steps for Joe, have him perform them and then provide him with a detailed set of instructions that is always visible for him to refer back to. Joe will retain the information because of the repetition and because he always has "feedback" (his cheat sheet) available but he will not understand the information or be able apply it or to generalize it when novel situations arise.

This lends a greater question - what do we want from our learners or trainees? Or in other words, what do we want them to get out of this educational experience? I asked a group of educators to reflect on this question in a Teaching Methods course I was instructing this weekend.

For some, these traditional methods make sense. These educators would answer in somewhat the following ways: I need them to memorize the parts of the body, to memorize these rules, to be able to do this task just as we have laid it out for them.

This allows for structure and control but removes any opportunity for innovation, creativity and the room for improvement. It's become a cultural expectation in the K-12 system and in many workplaces.

John Dewey spent most of his life exploring and experimenting on these concepts in education. How can we create relevant and active learning that is consistently novel and immediately relevant to the students interests and needs? He may not have found the exact answers but he did present many of these ideas.

So, my question is how do we use this understanding to change the culture of education to be focused on long term retention rather than the current system of immediate gratification?

What do you think?

Trey

Introducing Difficulty During Learning = Improved Use in New Contexts

I am curious to know what you think and what your experiences have been with the ideas presented by Bjork, D.R. (1994) Memory and metamemoryL Considerations in the training of human beings. In J. Metcalfe & A.P. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing about knowing (pp. 185-205). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Below is my summary.  Beth

If we want the knowledge and skills that are developed in a class or a learning session to be durable and usable in a real world setting with different conditions then the information needs to be multiply encoded and not bound to a single set of semantics of situational cues. Bjork proposes that to meet that end we need to introduce difficulties for the learner as described below. It is important to note that these strategies will impair performance during the initial learning or training session but enhance long term performance.

1. Varying the conditions of practice.
   “It has been demonstrated in a variety of ways, and in a variety of motor, verbal and problem solving tasks, that introducing variability and or unpredictability in the training environment causes difficulty for the learner but enhances long term performance and the ability to transfer the training to novel task environment” (p. 181).
   FOR EXAMPLE:
1. Schedule practice trials in a random fashion rather than block by type of task.
2. Vary parameters of the task like speed or distance to the target.
3. Increase variability, types, and range of experience or problem.
   I think Trey’s example of having his students develop a story using concepts that they worked with on the test is an example of this. The story activity was a new experience.
4. Vary incidental environment context.
2. Provide contextual interference
   An example of this is to make the task environment more variable or unpredictable.  This could involve designing or interweaving material to be learned in a way that creates, at least temporary interference.
1. Research was conducted on 2 groups of learners who had to learn content in a technical article. One group studied an outline organized like the article and the other group studied an outline inconsistent with that of the article. The inconsistent group’s verbatim recall and recognition was impaired but their performance on tests that required inferred answers and problem solving was enhanced.
3. Distributed practice on a given task
   This has been repeatedly demonstrated over time.
4. Reducing feedback to the learner.
   This will make life more difficult during the training but again will enhance post-training performance. In research done involving changing the frequency with which feedback was provided (after every 5minutes or 15 trials or fading the frequency over the length of the training), it was discovered that when the feedback was “faded” over time, simple motor skills were impeded initially but long-term retention of those same skills was enhanced (p. 191).
5. Using tests as learning events
   There is evidence that the act of retrieval by a recall test can be considerably more potent than a study opportunity in facilitating future recall.
1. The rational for this is as follows. In responding to the difficulties and challenges induced by the test, the learner is forced into elaborate encoding processes and more substantial and varied retrieval processes (p.192).

If our goal is to produce transfer of the learning or training related to knowledge and skills to a post learning environment then these might be strategies to consider.

Welcome and Our Experience Using Story as an Instructional Method

Good morning my true believer friends,

I thought this might be a great space for us to share what we are learning about learning and leadership. Also a place for us to keep in touch. 

I will get us started here with a place to share what we are learning about storytelling as an instructional method.  Some of us got together this week (September 16th) and during the conversation there were some comments made about how many of you had recently used story in some form with your teaching.  I invite you to share what you did and how it worked.

I'll start by sharing that the 30 minute teaching demonstration that I did on using story as an instructional method went very well.  I used a story/poem to start the demonstration titled "The Naked Truth and Parable." I also used a story review strategy as a way to discover what people had learned at the end of the demonstration. Thanks to the feedback I got from many of you through the opportunity to practice twice. I previously sent you all a copy of the document I put together summarizing the research I had done on the topic.

Have a great weekend,

Beth

Blogging as an SDL instructional strategy?

Our college invited faculty to work on a project aimed at exploring the concepts of self--directed learning so that we might better equip our students to be successful in more independent learning environments. Five faculty members began the project in the fall of 2004. Three faculty members are continuing the work and are in the process of pre-piloting a self-directed learning inventory along with some instructional strategies that they have found in the literature related to self-directed learning. Utilizing a blog may be another instructional strategy that could assist learners in becoming more self-directed.

Beth