Big Dog, Little Dog

Training, Media, Learning Paths, Brain, & Twitter

2009-07-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

Simulating Medical Situations Helps Students Learn, Retain Basic Science Concepts - Science Daily

Immediately after the simulation, the students were presented with the same four questions they were asked following the lecture. Their answers showed that they were much more likely to demonstrate mastery of the information by answering all four questions correctly on the post-simulation test than on the post-lecture only test

Lost in the new media universe - Guardian

Why did this teen's memo, short on evidence but long on declarative sentences, get so much play among mainstream media outlets? In other words: Why is one 15-year-old's middling analysis of teen media use being interpreted as the new bible of social media? The answer is simple. We're lost in a forest, and we're looking for a guide to lead us out. We live in a world where knowledge is abundant and access is near-ubiquitous. What's scarce is the ability to sift through the information, to extract, synthesise and circulate key ideas to a public that's starving for someone to serve as an intelligent filter. The knowledge-abundance model is a first for humankind, and we're struggling to come to terms with what this shift means for every institution we've erected, from economics to education to religion to work.

Also see The misuse of social media.

It Takes More Than a Learning Path Guy Wallace in The Pursuing Performance Blog

The goal of the Path designers are to create something "as flexible as feasible and as rigid as required."

Adult brain can change within seconds - Physorg

The human brain can adapt to changing demands even in adulthood, but MIT neuroscientists have now found evidence of it changing with unsuspected speed. Their findings suggest that the brain has a network of silent connections that underlie its plasticity.

Twitter Back on Track In June With 20 Million U.S. Visitors - TechCrunch

Twitter may not be for teens, but plenty of other people are flocking to the service. After taking a breather in May, when U.S. unique visitor growth almost screeched to a halt, Twitter picked up the pace again in June. According to comScore, in June Twitter.com attracted 20.1 million unique visitors in the U.S., up 14 percent from May.

Leadership & Revolution, Social Media, Memory, & Virtual Teams

2009-07-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

How to stage a revolution - Technology Review

...the key to seizing power, or at least gaining a significant foothold, is the effective distribution of a small number of leaders within a larger group. "A better distribution pattern has larger influential region and greater clustering factor, which can equip the leaders with the capability of influencing more followers in a given period and strengthening the persuasion power on the followers as well," says the team.

That's an interesting idea which may explain why the effectiveness of internet-based grass-roots campaigns, both political and commercial, which we have seeen in recent years. The take-home point here is that it's not just what you're saying that's important, it's how you distribute your message.

Interactive, social media advertising to reach $55 billion - smart company

New figures from Forrester Research show the US interactive advertising market is set to reach $55 billion over the next five years. The forecast also shows that marketers will go from spending just 12% of total advertising budgets online to 21% of advertising budgets by 2014.

Why It Is Easy To Encode New Memories But Hard To Hold Onto Them - Science Daily

If you can't seem to forget those ABBA lyrics you heard in seventh grade but can't remember Lincoln's Gettysburg address, the vagaries of LTP might be to blame. Neuroscientists think that the process, in which a brain synapse becomes more potent after repeated stimulation, underlies the formation and stabilization of new memories.

Long-Distance Relationship Troubles in Virtual Teams - Human Resource Executive

New research shows that 13 of 14 common workplace-relationship problems, such as broken commitments, mistrust and misrepresentation of information, occur more than twice as often with virtual teams, as opposed to teams located in the same building.

Team Knowledge, Ideas, Design Color, & Better Questions

2009-07-09T10:51:00.000-07:00

Feeling the heat: The effects of performance pressure on teams' knowledge use and performance - Heidi K. Gardner in Harvard Business School

Why do some teams fail to use their members' knowledge effectively, even after they have correctly identified each other's expertise? This paper identifies performance pressure as a critical barrier to effective knowledge utilization. Performance pressure creates threat rigidity effects in teams, meaning that they default to using the expertise of high-status members while becoming less effective at using team members with deep client knowledge.

Synaptic Cleft - SciVee

Need an idea on how to turn a topic into a creative piece of art? Then check out this parody of Wu-Tang Clan's "Gravel Pit" that was made into a short film for Human Biology 4A's unit on Neuroscience. Includes the lyrics in case you have a hard time following the rap.

14 Brilliant Tools for Evaluating Your Design's Colors - Six Revisions

Making sure that you choose the appropriate colors for a design is very important for readability. In addition, ensuring that the colors you select are viewable by persons with vision deficiencies such as color blindness is a good practice to follow when thinking about web accessibility. Also check out their article, 10 Things Every Web Designer Just Starting Out Should Know.

How to Ask Better Questions - HBP

The most effective and empowering questions create value in one or more of the following ways:

They create clarity: "Can you explain more about this situation?"
They construct better working relations: Instead of "Did you make your sales goal?" ask, "How have sales been going?"
They help people think analytically and critically: "What are the consequences of going this route?"
They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways: "Why did this work?"
They encourage breakthrough thinking: "Can that be done in any other way?"
They challenge assumptions: "What do you think you will lose if you start sharing responsibility for the implementation process?"
They create ownership of solutions: "Based on your experience, what do you suggest we do here?"

Performance Reviews, Learning, & Coffee

2009-07-07T09:09:00.001-07:00

photo by Bsivad

The Trouble with Performance Reviews - Businessweek

Possibly the biggest issue, however, is that performance appraisals focus managers' attention on precisely the wrong thing: individual people. As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, taught a long time ago, company performance often results more from variations in systems than from the individuals doing the work.

The New Finish Line for Learning - ASTD

Some of the authors of The Six Disiplines of Training write about the bar being raised on successful training delivery. On-the-job performance improvement is the newest gauge of effective learning transfer.

Coffee

While I normally stick to posts that are related to learning and performance, I could not resist pointing to this article in Science Daily: Caffeine Reverses Memory Impairment In Mice With Alzheimer's Symptoms. For another view, see this report.

After all, I did spend 14 years in the coffee industry. There have been other resech that shows the possible heath benefits of drinking coffee:

If you liked to learn more about coffee, check out my Wire Java Fanatic site.

Social Media & Learning, HTML 5, Brain Training, & Wikis

2009-07-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

Spies, Twitter and gardening: social media meets learning - Donald H Taylor in Corporate Training

If the US intelligence services - notorious for keeping a tight grip on information - have been convinced that sharing information more widely is a good idea, why is that, and what does it have to do with learning?

The answer is that sharing information is one of the ways in which we learn naturally, possible the most natural way of learning we have. After all, when faced with a problem the instinctive reaction is to ask someone for help. Do they have an answer? Do they know someone else who does? Have they met similar problems before?

HTML 5 and eLearning Development - The Upside Learning Solutions Blog

Those of you have heard of HTML 5 will know it's a new version of HTML and XHTML being promoted by Google and Apple in a bid to move the web away from proprietary technologies like Flash, Silverlight and JavaFX. It makes HTML more powerful by adding new elements like video and audio. A list of new elements in HTML 5 can be found here at IBM's site and the draft specification is available here at W3C's site.

HTML and Flash are most commonly used today for developing elearning content. HTML is used for simple 'page-turner' type of courses while Flash is used for interactive courses that contain animations and/or audio. Like most other eLearning developers, we prefer developing content using Flash over HTML because HTML can't support rich vector graphics with animations essential for delivering an engaging learning experience.

However HTML 5 has the potential to change all that. If developers can create animations, play audio and video without having to depend on Flash or Silverlight that would excellent. HTML 5 is particularly useful for organizations with 'no plug-in' policy because it will render natively in HTML 5 capable browsers. Also HTML 5 would help create more platform independent applications which can run across browsers eliminating the need for testing on multiple browsers.

Do Brain Trainer Games and Software Work? - Scientific American

The best memory enhancer is exercise, Snyder says. [For more on exercise and the brain, see "Fit Body, Fit Mind?'] Secondarily, a good diet and an active social life have brain benefits. Does software improve on those standbys, he asks? "Frankly, I have my doubts. The evidence isn't in."

HOW TO: Use Wikis for Business Projects - Mashable

One of the best web tools available to businesses for enabling teamwork and collaboration is the wiki. Few things speak more to staying in the flow of one's work than just clicking "Edit This Page" where you see something that needs to be written or re-written. Though Wikis have been around since the 90s, their potential for business collaboration has made them more popular in the business world over the past few years.

While a wiki can let project documentation grow organically as a project unfolds, it is like any tool and needs to be used the right way to get the most out of it. If you're thinking about using a wiki in your team's toolkit for the first time, keeping a few points in mind will help everyone get up and running without tripping over the changes that the wiki way brings to project documentation.

Social Media, elearning, Blogs, Lifestream, & Productivity

2009-06-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

Where is Everyone? - Baekdal.com

These days, everyone is trying to figure out how to connect with other people. It used to be simple, you just placed some ads in whatever newspaper that was most suited to your product, but now that world is becoming ever more irrelevant. So how do you connect with other people today? And more importantly, how do you do it tomorrow?

eLearning Learning - Tony Karrer

eLearning Learning, a collection of blog posts and articles all around eLearning, now has a blog.

The long tail of blogging is dying - guardian.co.uk

Why? Because blogging isn't easy. More precisely, other things are easier - and it's to easier things that people are turning. Facebook's success is built on the ease of doing everything in one place. (Search tools can't index it to see who's talking about what, which may be a benefit or a failing.) Twitter offers instant content and reaction. Writing a blog post is a lot harder than posting a status update, putting a funny link on someone's Wall, or tweeting. People are still reading blogs, and other content. But for the creation of amateur content, their heyday for the wider population has, I think, already passed. The short head of blogging thrives. Its long tail, though, has lapsed into desuetude.

Frequently Asked Questions About This Lifestream - The Steve Rubel Lifestream

It's been a few days since I announced that I was abandoning my blog in favor of a lifestream. The move seems to be going well as comments have been coming in at a good clip. Here's a quick rundown answers to of some common questions that came in via Twitter, Friendfeed and comments...

Top 10 Productivity Basics Explained - lifehacker

There's a core set of habits and techniques that filter and color a lot of what we write about at Lifehacker, but we rarely step back to explain them for newcomers. Let's get back to basics with 10 productivity tactics.

Social Media, Learning, Web, Twitter, Microsoft, & Training

2009-06-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

From Social Media To Social Business Design - Logic + Emotion

We're realizing that the bigger picture goes beyond how you can be a great tweeter, blogger or social media evangelist for your organization. It's time to think beyond marketing and building personal brands and time to think about how participation through social technologies can lead to emergent outcomes for any organization.

Are Deep Learning Skills Atrophying? - CLO

No one is saying that applying business-outcome analysis to learning is a bad thing. The question is whether the pendulum has swung too far. One might argue that the balance was once set too far toward instructional design and learning delivery for their own sake, without enough emphasis on the measurable impact of learning on the business. Today, the issue that must be carefully addressed is whether the balance has shifted too far toward "running learning like a business" without adequate grounding in the what, how and why of enterprise learning.

The Conversational Web - eContent

Being curious about yesterday's race, I queried Google on "Grandma's Marathon". Almost 100% of the first 20 results (farther down that most people would ever read) are traditional news media reports of the race. However, if one runs the same query via Twitter Search, the results are dramatically different, you learn what it's like to actually run in the race.

Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned - New York Times

Does the label Twitter Revolution, which has been slapped on the two most recent events, oversell the technology? Skeptics note that only a small number of people used Twitter to organize protests in Iran and that other means -- individual text messaging, old-fashioned word of mouth and Farsi-language Web sites -- were more influential. But Twitter did prove to be a crucial tool in the cat-and-mouse game between the opposition and the government over enlisting world opinion.

Why Microsoft Had to Destroy Word - Harvard Business

With the release of Office 2007, Microsoft demonstrated newfound commitment to delivering software that delights. In his excellent presentation on the design of the user interface for Microsoft Office 2007, lead designer Jensen Harris depicts the evolution of Microsoft Word, from a relatively simple application in 1989, to a bloated behemoth so overloaded with features that it required 30 toolbars, 8 task panes, and "clever" technologies such as Clippy to use it all.

Training Magazine

The digital edition of June 2009 Training Magazine is now online.

Media, Animation, Innovation, Information vs. Design, Learning, & Productivity

2009-06-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

Twitter's Role in Iran--Is The Medium Really The Message? - NussbaumOnDesign

"The message finds the medium" - Bruce Nussbaum

Could Power Point Presentations Be Stifling Learning? - Science Daily

This article recently appeared in Science Daily. Part of it reads:

Stephen Mahar of the University of North Carolina Wilmington and colleagues have explored the impact of custom animation in PowerPoint lectures and examined the idea that custom animation may, in fact, negatively impact student learning.

To test their hypothesis, the team recorded two versions of a PowerPoint lecture. The presentations differed only in the presence of animation to incrementally present information. They then showed students either the animated or non-animated lecture and then tested the students recall and comprehension of the lecture.

The team found a marked difference in average student performance, with those seeing the non-animated lecture performing much better in the tests than those who watched the animated lecture.

While maybe its news to the researchers, Instructional Designers have know about this phenomenon for some time. Ruth Clark and Chopeta Lyons wrote about it in their most excellent book, "Graphic for Learning" (2004):

Humans have a low perceptual threshold for movment. Therefor, animation is a very powerful attention grabber. In fact, if you are not careful, too much animation is so powerful it will become a distraction or even an annoyance. (p85)

On using too many effects, the authors warn:

Chances are the learners will enjoy the the animation immensely but not be able to answer the most basic questions about the simple process the animation describes. (p86)

Information is more important than design in evaluating companies on the Internet - Innovations Report

We often think that people are more interested in "Bright Shiney Objects" but this research shows that is not always true.

Researchers from the University of Valladolid (UVa) have shown that the effectiveness of company web sites depends more upon their informative content than on the impact their designs may have on viewers' emotions.

Are Engineers, Scientists And Mathematicians Enemies of Innovation? - Business Week

We need more anthropologists and sociologists working with our engineers and scientists to develop services, products and experiences that people need and want. And we need managers in companies to understand what they do and enable this doing.

How cell phones will replace learning - Computer World

In a nutshell, the Web 3.0 will function a little bit more like a human being. It will "understand" how facts and ideas are connected. And it will also "understand" what you're looking for and take your own particular context, needs and preferences into account. Your interaction with the Web will "feel" less like the operation of a machine and more like interaction with another human being.

Survey Finds Workers Average Only Three Productive Days per Week - Microsoft Press Pass

Unclear objectives, lack of team communication and ineffective meetings are among the top time wasters that workers around the world say make them feel unproductive for as much as a third of their workweek on average. Via Twitter

What I learned from Twitter this Weekend... 140 Characters at a Time

2009-06-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

On my desktop sits a small app called Twitterrific. It's a small window, about 4"x5", that gives me a condensed view of the world by feeding in tweets from people around the world I have chosen to follow. This weekend I decided to select a few of the tweets for those of you who are still wondering what Twitter is all about with the hope of giving you a better understanding. They range from news, to articles, to life in general that caught my attention.

Relevant Articles

The first tweet that really caught my eye was a link by iThinkMedia to a Business Week article on Tufte, who is one of the masters of visualization design.

About 10 years ago, The New York Times crowned Tufte the "da Vinci of data." A more fitting title might be the "Galileo of graphics."

This is perhaps the number one reason I like Twitter, it is always rich with information that is quite relevant to my work. The original tweet that brought me that tidbit looked like this:

ithinkmedia RT @Mary_a_Myers RT @ibmdesign :Interesting BusWeek article @ Edward Tufte, master of visualization design http://is.gd/ZpNb

The message reads:

ithinkmedia: the person sending the tweet
RT: Return Tweet - the original senders of the tweet (clicking on the manes will take you to their Twitter page and if you think they are a person of interest you can choose to follow them)
http://is.gd/ZpNb: the link to the business Week article (the link is shortened in order to fit the character limit - another popular link shortener is http://tinyurl.com

Another informative tweet is from Marcia Conner on the Four-Quadrant Model:

It is a helpful reminder that there are other forms of learning besides formal and informal. We also have "nonformal" - learning, such as OJT, that is directed and led by someone other than the training department, such as a manager.

Amit Gautam tweets a link to Jane Hart's Slideshare presentation on Social Learning:

View more Microsoft Word documents from Jane Hart.

Of course not all of them are links, but rather pithy comments, such as this one from Teach Paperless that causes one to stop and reflect:

"Coming Clash: Social media is formative. High-stakes tests are summative. You see the problem coming down the pike, no?"

Of course some are not really relevant but quite interesting nevertheless, such as this one from Sahana Chattopadhyay that she makes 100 TWITTERS!

Other ones flow in, such as this one from Tony Karrer titled Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive and another one from Mick Yates on the 5 Habits of Successful Executives on Twitter:

They are their brand's conscience
They don't sell - They share
They are real human beings
They write well
They commit

I get three tweets in a row that Annalie Killian, Sharlyn Lauby, and Vanessa Haakenson are now on Facebook (@#%&*, I never got the memo we were supposed to join! Whateeever...). Via Annalie Killian, Sharlyn Lauby, and Vanessa

Update - via gsiemens on Twitter: "...and the facebook vanity urls start rolling in :)." (now it makes sense why I got the above three tweets all in a row... DUH!)

And more Facebooks are tweeted! Ed Shepherd via Ed Shepherd on twitter, Matthew Bibby via mfubib on Twitter, Sahana Chattopadhyay via sahana2802 on Twitter, Clark Quinn via Clark Quinn on Twitter, Guy Wallace via Guy W Wallace on Twitter, & Mick Yates via mickyates on Twitter.

Life Continues...

Many of the tweets give you a small glimpse into their daily lives...

". o O time for less ranting, more stats homework. And perhaps #bacon" - She Semper (the # is a hashtag for search)

"Just had two slices of pizza - 70 16" pizzas just delivered... yum..." - Peter Jones

On Lake James for the weekend. Escaping Lake Norman's weekend crowds and ocean sized waves. Ahhh. - Guy Wallace

Cool, Bug is really restless as our storm os coming up - everything is still and she's ancy - amazing what babies can sense Raj Boora

Conversation Happens

And finally, real conversations happen, such as this one:

sahana2802, "Am finding that it's becoming just as imp to point out source of critical info/content as to be the creator of the content itself."
shantarohse RT (Retweets) the original tweet
sahana2802, "@shantarohse all of us are editing the web in real time...a kind of impromptu learning management is happening that is working beautifully."
shantarohse, "@sahana2802 In that case, I think I would also add that while source is impt, so is the notion that all content is transient."
sahana2802, "@shantarohse yes, I agree. Perceptions and views are rapidly changing...especially so today."

Hints Roll In

"[#Captivate Tip] To paste an object on all slides, copy it; in Storyboard view, select All and Paste. Credit @rickzanotti (via @rjacquez)" - via mfubib on Twitter

Final Thoughts

I hope this post has been helpful for those who have not yet begun to tweet. As sahana2802 paraphrased/tweeted, "Twitter is about "Being in the NOW of Information Exchange" (via sahana2802 on Twitter).

Teach Paperless tweets "Yet another example -- and a big one -- of why we need to include Twitter in education: http://tinyurl.com/kwmh7g." (the URL he is pointing to is an article from the "Atlantic" -- The Revolution Will Be Twittered)

Of course like any media you have to be careful. While Twitter does have its bright spots ('#CNNFail': Twitterverse slams network's Iran absence), it does have its rough spots: Hey, Just a Minute (or Why Google Isn't Twitter)

And if you are tweeting, what are you learning?

Social Media, Brain vs. Eyes, & Sales Training

2009-06-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

Despite Army Order, Some Bases Still Ban Facebook, Twitter - Wired

"At Fort Huachuca both are accessible, however there are a large number of people making noises about it being inappropriate," an e-mail from Arizona reads. "The two things they all have in common are (1) they are older and don't understand web 2.0 and (2) they have never deployed. A lot of DACs [Department of Army civlians] trying to tell us what Soldiers need.

#Lrnchat on Twitter

While the weekly sessions of chats always seem to be at the wrong time for me, I always find them interesting. This is why Twitter makes a great SoMe (Social Media). Transcripts of chats

Brain Knows It's Duck Reason - Scientific American

The brain is faster than the eyes.

"When an Iraqi reporter threw his shoe at President Bush, University of Washington neurologists were delighted. But not because of politics. The fling was just real-world evidence of a theory they were testing. As the shoe flew, Bush ducked while Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, who was standing right beside him, barely flinched. The reason, the researchers say, is that we have a dual vision system. Our brains "see" things well before our eyes do."

Product Sales Training: Overcoming Death by PowerPoint - CLO

The challenges we found boil down to:

Information overload: The need for reps to know a large amount of changing product information.
Sales effectiveness: The need for reps to sell effectively and consultatively in increasingly complex and competitive markets.
Time crunch: The need to meet the two above challenges in shorter amounts of time.

The solutions include:

Case-based learning: Create a systematic set of c-based learning experiences that integrate selling skills and product knowledge.
Point-of-need information: Provide up-to-date product knowledge at at the point of need, during or before a sales interaction.
Knowledge sharing: Provide methods for sharing knowledge and best practices among sales reps.

Twitter, Mind Mapping, Presentations, & Feng Shui

2009-06-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

Twitter Hype? Or Social Media Ignorance? Harvard Business School Blows It - NussbaumOnDesign

Why the latest report about Twitter's decline is wrong. The ratio of number of active to passive users on the very first "web 2.0" application, discussion groups, had about the same ratio.

"Sorry, HBS, but anyone following social media has known about this ratio of active to passive participants for YEARS. I remember talking about this with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales at the World Economic Forum in Davos three years ago. He said that 1% of Wikipedia participants did 90% of the posting and editing, another 9-10% were somewhat active and the rest just used the encyclopedia without changing it."

The Power Of Mind Mapping - Forbes

Why use mind maps?

We brainstorm, interview someone, or review a transcript and want to add a note to another part of the outline. We page up or down, find the right spot, and then add the note. It doesn't take long for paging up and down to become frustrating and exhausting, like running up and down flights of stairs to do your work.
Traditional outlines are linear. If the information is stored in an outline and notes, you have a feeling of dread because you know you are going to have to slog through pages of material to refresh the context and recapture your thoughts.
When working with others on a wiki or even a shared document on Google Apps, it can be hard to collaborate.

Comment on Some ASTD Comments (or, My God, You let these people train others?) - Robert Bacal in The Happy Curmudgeon

"We have a professional trainer attending a professional conference, who is so put off that a presenter DARE use an overhead projector that she feels compelled to make it the first point in here commentary. There's no talk about learning, which after all is the point. This is about being so superficial in attitude and knowledge that one believes that if the newest, more complex technology isn't used, that somehow, it simply isn't worth listening to."

Feng Shui On Steroids: Design Your Space to Achieve Your Goals - zenhabits

Is your space designed to help you do great Instructional Design?

Instructional Design, Innovation, Web Usability, elearning, & Newspapers

2009-06-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

The Various Roles of Instructional Design (work in progress) - Jonathan's ID

Job descriptions in ID (or, ISD) these days are all over the map, with very little consistency. It doesn't help that few HR and Recruiters have any knowledge of, or experience with, the field. So I'm going to propose some roles as I understand them, in the hopes that some day hiring managers will be able to articulate better what they want/need in terms of talent for their training departments or projects.

Twitter's Ten Rules For Radical Innovators - HB

Ideals beat strategies
Open beats closed
Connection beats transaction
Simplicity beats complexity
Neighborhoods beat networks
Circuits beat channels
Laziness beats business
Public beats private
Messy beats clean
Good beats evil

10 Tips to Create a More Usable Web - Webdesigner Depot

"Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process."

Students Who Get Stuck Look For Computer Malfunctions - Science Daily

There is a kind of silence in the relationship between students and the educational software they use. The computer never gets tired, is not bothered by endless examples of random answers, does not distinguish between students, but on the other hand cannot provide individually-fitted feedback, which is one of the most important tasks of a teacher. ...Instead of getting mired in a debate about how digital tools can solve various types of classical pedagogical problems, it would be more relevant to focus on the new types of interaction and knowledge that can arise from the use of digital tools.

How to Save Media - Technology Review

Newspapers and magazines won't vanish. But they must change.

Why The New York Times Doesn't Call Its Readers 'Readers' - New York Times

In a world of near-ubiquitous computing, where an ever-expanding collection of devices turns readers into an army of co-creators and news distributors, The New York Times is trying to figure out its place. And the venerable Gray Lady's place in this world, increasingly, rests squarely with turning its readers into, well, something more.

Learning, Brainstorming, Leadership, Development, Innovation, & Twitter

2009-06-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

Perfect Storm? or Perfect Opportunity? - Ellen Wagner in eLearning Roadtrip

I saw a number of comments (@jarche, @bschlenker, @raetanner) that gave me a pretty clear indication that the technologically savvy crowd was disappointed at how very "behind the 2.0 curve" the general ASTD assembly seemed to be. I saw complaints about the backwardness regarding social media and informal learning. I saw other comments that acknowledged how frustrating it is that learning innovations are being "gated" by IT departments.

Brainstorming for Better Business - Businness Week

Brainstorming sessions have led to important innovations at Kaiser Permamente. Here's how the managed-care company did it

Ten Fatal Flaws That Derail Leaders - HBR

Poor leadership in good times can be hidden, but poor leadership in bad times is a recipe for disaster. To find out why leaders fail, we scrutinized results from two studies: In one, we collected 360-degree feedback data on more than 450 Fortune 500 executives and then teased out the common characteristics of the 31 who were fired over the next three years. In the second, we analyzed 360-degree feedback data from more than 11,000 leaders and identified the 10% who were considered least effective. We then compared the ineffective leaders with the fired leaders to come up with the 10 most common leadership shortcomings. Every bad leader had at least one, and most had several. The list of worst leaders.

9 Ways to Twitter Your Personal Development - Zen Habits

Personal development has become a highly popular blog topic for bloggers and destination for readers. Twitter will likely soon follow, with segments already developing in the personal development arena.

Is Innovating Failing In The US? - NussbaumOnDesign

Economists and policy-makers tend to confuse invention with innovation. Innovations are significant changes that add value to people and organizations. Breakthroughs in science and technology per se do make for innovative changes in society. So it is not the failure of innovation over the past decade that is the problem but the failure of technological and scientific breakthroughs to become innovations that is the issue.

So why? My answer that engineers and scientists often forget the social aspect of invention.

Yes, Twitter is revolutionary--just not in the way that you think - cnet

"Twitter's a success for us when people stop talking about it."

Dialectical Bootstrapping, Connections, Body & Brain, Twitter, & Social Media

2009-06-02T08:32:00.001-07:00

You Know More than You Think - Scientific American

Herzog and Hertwig called their more involved process "dialectical bootstrapping." You can pull yourself up by your own proverbial bootstraps by assuming that you are wrong, providing a second estimate based on a search for new evidence, and then averaging the two estimates. (Interestingly, in Herzog and Hertwig's studies, bootstrapping did not lead to second estimates that were more accurate than the first. The benefit of dialectical bootstrapping was only realized when the first and second estimates were averaged together. Compared to simply providing a second judgment, dialectical bootstrapping creates diversity —it leads to estimates that are more likely to have offsetting errors.)

Using Connection Activities - ASTD

Connections are short, learner-focused opening activities that include four important elements: connecting learners to other learners, to the topic, to their own learning goals, and to the learning outcomes. Learners also connect to the trainer and to the training environment. This means they begin to feel relaxed and at ease with the trainer and comfortable in their environment.

Our Bodies, Our Brains - Scientific American

A recent experiment published in Psychological Science shows that approaching or moving away from an object can actually affect our thought processes. And body movements which are connected to negative emotions tend to enhance cognitive ability. The authors say that's probably because adverse situations typically require more cognitive control to deal with potentially bad consequences.

Working with 38 subjects, the scientists confirmed that either a step forward (a typically positive movement) or a step backward (usually negative) significantly changed one's ability to perform a mental task.

Taking four steps back improved a subject's accuracy and timing on the task, whereas taking four steps forward led to longer processing times and more errors.

Tech sector has questions, few answers - Fortune

Twitter the "it" site of the consumer-technology world, which also happens to be the pinata of techdom. It's popular because people love the immediacy of sharing 140 characters worth of information with friends and strangers alike. Yet Twitter is under attack because there's no visible strategy for the young company to make money.

Social Media Doesn't Sell - Business Week

83% of people on the Internet use social media. But only 5% of them ever use sites like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace to make buying decisions.

Mental Models, Design, Working Together, & Social Media

2009-05-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

Mental models (what a thought) - Dave's Whiteboard

A mental model is a description of how the world of some domain is organized. You often hear "mental map" as a synonym, because a map shows layout and relationships.

You can find mental models in documents; you can also develop them by talking with expert performers who can describe the models they use as they work.

Ten Things to Demand From Design Thinkers - Fastcompany

Get Clarity about Equity
Designers are the Storytellers
The Ergonomics of Understanding
Good Design is Good Business
Design Thinking Starts at the Very Beginning
Designers Need to Be Orchestra Conductors
Keep Design Assassins in the Crosshairs
Use Your Head Before Your Hands
Be a Good Shepherd
Obsessive Compulsives Welcome Here

Working Together - Harold Jarche

Even though all levels of complexity exist in our world, more of our work (especially knowledge-intensive work) deals with complex problems, whether they be social, environmental or technological. ...complex environments & problems are best addressed when we organize as networks; our work evolves around developing emergent practices; and we collaborate to achieve our goals.

Beware Social Media Marketing Myths - Business Week

For many business owners, social networking is as valuable as a Hot Pocket is nutritious, consider the following myths:

Social media sites are free
Social media sites are a great place to find new customers
You need to be on all the big sites
Social networking sites are for marketing
Social networking is the future

Information, Hands, Presentations, Gurus, & Internet

2009-05-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

On the information alarmageddon - Mind Hacks

New York Magazine has an article arguing that the concerns about digital technology drastically affecting our minds is just hype. I really wanted to like it but it's just another poorly researched piece on the psychology of digital technology.

The Case for Working With Your Hands - New York Times

Matthew Crawford's story of working with your hands, to middle managers to being a knowledge worker:

The gap between theory and practice stretches out in front of you, and this is where it gets interesting. What you need now is the kind of judgment that arises only from experience; hunches rather than rules. For me, at least, there is more real thinking going on in the bike shop than there was in the think tank.

In the article the author writes that when he wrote abstarcts for reseach reports he could write any nonsense whatever as there was no consequence for him, the only standard was for the grammar to be correct. This is probably one of the main reasons why we have so much bad research in the learning and development field, such as the 10% transfer of training myth — the people writing such crap rely on abstacts that were written by other people who do not even understand the reports they creating abstracts for, which takes us back to the first news item above, "On the information alarmageddon" &mash; we want information in sound bites.

10 Powerpoint Tips for Preparing a Professional Presentation - makeuseof.com

Presentations - whether they are made with Powerpoint or other applications, are a great way to support a speech, visualize complicated concepts or focus attention on a subject. However, a bad presentation can achieve the opposite. Badly designed slides with too much text or bad graphics can distract or worse, irritate the audience. For more on presentations, see Presentation Skills.

For This Guru, No Question Is Too Big - New York Times

Should the author of "Good to Great" have called it "Good to Average?"

The Internet in 1969 - YouTube

Are we there yet?

Generations, Learning Space, eLearning, Energy, & Talent Management

2009-05-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

I don't know what title to give this post... UNCLE maybe? by Janet Clarey in Brandon Hall Analyst Blog

T+D publishes an article, "One for the Ages" and Janet writes that it gives the, "wrong type of advice for dealing with multiple generations in the classroom." And I strongly agree... how about you?

Mapping the learning space Clark Quinn in Learnlets

Clark maps the performance ecosystem space:

You might also like the Performance Typology Map and the Learning Concept Map.

E-Lessons Learned - Patti Shank in Training Magazine

Six lessons learned:

Online and classroom learning are not interchangeable
Traditional instructional design methods need to be rethought, especially for e-learning
Learners must be given what they need to be successful
We need to work better with Information Technology folks...
Buying e-learning infrastructure (such as a learning management system or LMS) before you know what you need is a great way to throw out money and time
Worry about where your advice is coming from

55 Ways to Get More Energy - Zen Habits

You won't be able to do everything on this list all the time - you'd tire yourself out trying to get more energy - but do try them all to see which ones work for you and your schedule. Add a few of these tips to your regular routine. Or mix them up to keep things interesting.

Talent Management Defined: - ASTD

A holistic approach to optimizing human capital, which enables an organization to drive short- and long-term results by building culture, engagement, capability, and capacity through integrated talent acquisition, development, and deployment processes that are aligned to business goals.

Gestures, Andragogy, 25 Tools, Transfer of Training, Performance, & Why

2009-05-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

With a wave of the hand - Scientific American

Many scientists now think that gestures can help the person making them -- that moving your hands can help you think. Researchers have become increasingly interested in the connection between the body and thought -- in the ways that our physical body shapes abstract mental processes. Gesture is at the center of this discussion. Now the debate is moving into learning, with new research on how students learn to solve math problems in the classroom.

Students who also gestured attempted to make sense of both the speech and gesture in a way that brought the two meanings together. This process, they suggest, could crystallize the new concept of "grouping" in the student's mind.

Andragogy Revisited: Theory for the 21st Century? - Robert Bacal in The Happy Curmudgeon

Malcolm Knowles' theory of andragogy is almost certainly the best known concept in adult education, and it often appears to gain uncritical acceptance based on name recognition rather than careful consideration of its propositions. Since Knowles introduced his theory in the mid-1960s, many concerns have been raised about how the claims of andragogy are grounded. Like any theoretical perspective, andragogy reflects both the context of its conception and the convictions of its creator.

25 Tools : A Toolbox for Learning Professionals - Jane Hart in Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

The 2009 Toolbox contains 25 categories of learning tool. Within each tool category are the names of the most popular tools from the emerging 2009 Top Tools for Learning, as selected by learning professionals worldwide. The majority of tools in the Toolbox are FREE tools, although a number of commercial tools are included. Some of the tools are desktop tools; others are online services.

25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

The Strange Case of the Transfer of Training Estimate - Robert Fitzpatrick in The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist

Why do posts and articles, such as "When the Game's Up", which would otherwise be great posts, keep basing their message on a retorical question? -- "I...would estimate that only 10% of content which is presented in the classroom is reflected in behavioral change on the job."?

Completing the Zen in Performance Management - Don Clark

A lot of people associate performance management with the annual performance review. While it can and often does include performance reviews, it goes far beyond it in that it looks at performance improvement as a daily activity, rather than just a yearly event.

Real Leaders Ask - Harvard Business

Questions packing this kind of punch are usually open-ended - they're not looking for a specific answer. Often beginning with "Why," "How," or "What do you think about...," they are questions that set the stage for subordinates to discover their own solutions, increasing their competence, their confidence, and their ownership of results.

Wikis, Learning, Pattern Maker, & Ideas

2009-05-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

Control and Community: A Case Study of Enterprise Wiki Usage - Matthew Clarke in Boxes and arrows

There are three key differences in which Wikis are used: public, team and enterprise Wikis. In addition, there are various forms of control to protect against risks, including user registration, moderation, enforced stylistic rules, and imposing prescribed topic structures and page layouts. These types of control, however, are typically seen as contrary to the basic Wiki concept. Consequently, one of the central tensions when managing a Wiki is between centralized control and anarchy. In the public arena, the balance of power tends towards anarchy, but in a corporate environment a more centralized approach is often required.

Continuous Learning Experience - Blender - Training Solutions

Through experience I am learning that training should never be a one time event, it should be a continuous learning experience. As a corporate trainer it can be all too easy to facilitate the class (off or online), collect your smiley sheets, and check the class off the list as done forever. It feels great to mark the task off the list but it can also be a recipe for disaster. This raises the question, "What are the best "Continuous Learning" solutions?" This post highlights some of the wins and losses I have had in creating continuous learning experiences.

Pattern Maker - Repper

A free-to-use pattern creator that turns your images into eye-catching designs. You can start playing right away: just upload an image and start dragging.

Creative Elegance: the power of incomplete ideas - Matthew E. May in Change This

To begin with, the menu has only four food items. You can order a Hamburger, a Cheeseburger, a Double-Double, and French Fries. The fifth item is a beverage. You can partake in the standard array of Coca-Cola products, or order one of three flavors of milkshake: chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.

That's it. Or is it? One reason for the cultish phenomenon of the company is the "secret menu."

Social Sites, Design, Informal Learning, & Brain Games

2009-05-04T07:43:00.000-07:00

Java Time

Anthropology: The Art of Building a Successful Social Site - ReadWriteWeb

The Nine Building Blocks of Social Engineering:

Voting
Tags
Editing
Badges
Karma
Pre-search
Google is UI
Performance
Critical Mass

Is Design Too Important To Be Left Only To Designers? - NussbaumOnDesign

There is huge anxiety among designers and design educators at the encroachment of business, education, health, energy, transportation and other fields into Design. The evolution of Design from an individual working intuitively to shape beautiful things into a collaborative process of discovering what can come next and making it happen is attracting people to Design for new ways to journey through these confusing and uncertain times.

Informal Learning: Directed and Flow Goals

People tend to fall into one of these two camps in terms of how they approach their own learning:

Directed Learning Goals – specific focus
Flow Learning Goals – nonspecific, exploratory

See:

Learning Goals : eLearning Technology - Tony Karrer

On Directed and Flow Learning Goals - Michele Martin

Informal learning for "directed" and "flow" goals - Catherine Lombardozzi

Brain Games: Do They Really Work? - Scientific American

So what do these findings tell us? Clearly IMPACT demonstrated that both trained and some untrained cognitive abilities can improve after two months of structured sensory input training. But the control group also improved, albeit to a smaller extent, suggesting that even watching videos (such as The History Channel) may help!

Chrysler, Culture and Cerberus - NussbaumOnDesign

Chrysler thrived when it's brands and design aligned with American culture. Jeep, Dodge--muscle stuff. Vans--family stuff. Chrysler failed when got out of touch with US culture--and merged with German car culture. Daimler Benz ran the numbers and saw efficiencies of scale.

Slides & Video

2009-04-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

The future of e-learning is social learning - Jane Hart

This first in a series on social learning, "What is Social Learning?, Social Learning platforms, and the role of Social Learning Professionals"

View more presentations from Jane Hart.

Text boxes - are they the new bullet point? - TJ Kopcha's Weblog

People present they way they do for a reason - it's a culture left over from the days of the overhead projector. And in those days, text was king.

Presenting With Visuals (UPDATED)

View more presentations from Rowan Manahan.

Michael Merzenich: Exploring the re-wiring of the brain - TED

Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich looks at one of the secrets of the brain's incredible power: its ability to actively re-wire itself. He's researching ways to harness the brain's plasticity to enhance our skills and recover lost function.

Width, eLearning, ID, Sentences, Science, & the 8-Hour Workday

2009-04-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

The Long and the Short of Learning - Peter Orton, David Beymer, and Daniel Russell

Subjects reading the narrow paragraphs had better retention than those reading the wide paragraphs. After reading the material, subjects were given a surprise multiple-choice test on the material. On average, subjects reading the wide paragraphs answered 43 percent of the questions correctly, while those reading the narrow paragraphs answered 58 percent correctly. Narrow-width paragraph readers spent less time reading but had greater retention, so the additional time required by the wide-width paragraph readers was devoted not to reading and processing the material, but rather to reorienting their eyes.

To Successfully Implement E-learning, Forget What You Know About Change - Tom Werner

Forget those old ideas about change that never worked that well anyway, such as:

seeing senior management as the customer and seeking management support as the driver for initiatives.
treating the four levels of evaluation as being of equal importance.
using roll-outs as the vehicle for implementation.
relying on accountability to motivate people to accept change.
planning large-scale, blanket change efforts.
thinking of change agents as lone individuals.
using kick-offs as a way to create excitement.
taking years to implement change.
letting "overcoming: be our natural response to resistance.

Instead, we need to:

build the business case for e-learning.
document business results (Level 4) as the way to evaluate e-learning.
create "pull" by making e-learning easy to adopt.
have real dialogue with people about their business and learning needs.
build a change agency by building a coalition among likely clients and colleagues.
communicate frequently and specifically to inform and educate about e-learning.
move fast and get quick wins with e-learning.
talk openly about resistance, and the reasons behind it instead of trying to conquer it.

When the Rubber Hits the Road - Ellen Wagner in eLearning Roadtrip

ID represent the essential core of what makes our work unique when compared, say, to the work of a graphic artist or a web designer or an LMS administrator or a content author, or a technical writer or a research analyst.

How Does the Brain Form Sentences? - Scientific American

The procedural memory system is responsible for putting grammatical sentences together. The findings also shed light on our understanding of procedural memory itself, which was thought to be restricted to specific experiences and motor skills. This study shows it is also able to support abstract knowledge, making it more powerful than previously thought.

A Really Dangerous Book - Forbes

By showing people that science can be dangerous, Gray aims to put some of the pizazz back into the profession.

"People in science do exciting and dangerous things," Gray says. "That's what our message to kids should be: If you want to do exciting and dangerous things, go into science."

Biological Basis For The 8-hour Workday? - Science Daily

We have less of a handle on the 8-hour rhythms than the 12-hour rythm, but the fact that we can see them reliably means there is the possibility that there could be a biological basis to an 8-hour cycle.

Improving Informal Learning

2009-04-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

Two recent posts got my attention -- Tony Karrer's Reduce Searching Start Talking and Harold Jarche's Effective knowledge sharing.

Harold notes the 80-20 funding ratio between formal and informal learning and Will Thalheimer questions this funding differential in the comment section. That is, 20% of the learning in organizations is formal, while 80% is informal; however, organizations spend 80% on formal learning and only 20% on informal, thus it looks something like this:

Chart 1

Yet the numbers pertaining to spending were pulled out of thin air (Cross, 2007, p.17). What is perhaps even more interesting is that (Carnevale, Gainer, & Villet (1990, p. 23) reported the amount of employer investments in workplace training hovers around $210 billion annually. Of that, about $30 billion is spent on formal training, while the remainder, $180 billion is spent on informal or on-the-job training. Thus, informal learning gets 86% of all learning investments, while formal learning programs get 14% of the total investment:

Chart 2

But the trouble with their report is that they do not mention where they got their numbers. So which chart do we believe?

Well, if we go with Chart 1 then we don't have to worry about informal learning since its already a highly efficient learning machine. Our time is better spent with the formal part of learning. After all, we know that we have highly detailed processes that must be learned in order to ensure that our customers receive the correct product and service, compliance and safety issues, plus the development programs our leaders want to implement. Thus why waste our time with something so highly efficient?

However I tend to believe the learning to spending ratios look closer to second chart, but probably for a couple of different reasons than where the authors of the book got their numbers from.

First, Allen Tough (1999), a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto and a thought leader on informal learning, wrote that within each informal learning episode (where the primary motivation is to gain and retain certain knowledge and skills on a task), the average learner interacts with an average of 10 people. Thus rather than informal learning being a solitary act, these learners are interrupting the daily activities of their coworkers as they seek advice and coaching.

Compare this with formal learning that gets its efficiency from a learning designer who works with the SME(s) to gather the needed knowledge and skills and then packages it in a platform to be used by a number of learners.

The second reason why informal learning is less efficient is that searches often end in failure. Outsell reports that searches fail 30% of the time, while IDC estimates that enterprises employing 1,000 knowledge workers may waste well over $6 million per year each in searching for information that does not exist, failing to find information that does, or recreating information that could have been found but was not (Sherman & Feldman, 2003).

Thus it is for these two reasons that I believe that informal learning is not the highly efficient method as shown in chart 1, but rather it looks more like chart 2, but perhaps not quite as bad, which means that the learning profession needs to be more involved with it. Again, if it was all that efficient then we should just stay out of its way.

How Do We Increase the Efficiency of Informal Learning?

The report that Tony and Harold discuss in their recent posts seem to confirm this: 1) sharing personal advice (interacting with others to learn informally) does not save time and 2) codified knowledge (searching for information) does not improve work quality.

This means we have two primary areas to concentrate on. The first is improving social networks (means for sharing personal advice) so that when learners need to find an "expert" on a particular subject they have both an easily searchable database and the means to have a discussion with them, either face-to-face or through an electronic means.

The second is improving the quality of captured information (codified knowledge). The problem nowadays is not so much as capturing knowledge but rather capturing the correct knowledge. That is, most of the knowledge capturing being performed now is what an expert already knows and has known for some time. Yet learners are not for the most part looking for this type of information because they already know it, thus they are wasting time researching data that is already known to them. People searching for information will generally have roughly the same knowledge levels of others in their field. What they are mostly searching for are lessons learned -- what have others in their field have recently learned. Perhaps the best example of this is the U.S. Army's After Action Review (AAR).

"The Army's After Action Review (AAR) is arguably one of the most successful organizational learning methods yet devised. Yet, most every corporate effort to graft this truly innovative practices into their culture has failed because, again and again, people reduce the living practice of AAR's to a sterile technique." -- Peter Senge

AARs are not a means to capture what you think others may want to learn, but what you have learned. It is normally accomplished by discussing four areas:

What was supposed to happen? (confirm baseline)
What actually happened? (confirm performance)
Why did it happen that way? (knowledge harvesting)
What did we learn? (learning shared)

Now while you will probably not use an AAR for every lesson learned, but rather the concept behind it of sharing newly learned knowledge and skills, rather it be through blogs, wikis, discussions groups, or other means.

References

Carnevale, A., Gainer, L., & Villet, J. (1990). Training in America: The Organization and Strategic Role of Training. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cross, J. (2007). Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Sherman, C. and Feldman S. (2003). The High Cost of Not Finding Information. International Data Corporation Report #29127, 11 pp., April 2003.

Tough, A. (1999). Reflections on the Study of Adult Learning: A brief talk at the 3rd New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL) Conference, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. NALL Working Paper #08-1999. Feb 19, 1999, NALL, Toronto.

Active Learning, Adobe Captivate, Office Spaces, Savant Thinking, & Business

2009-04-18T08:02:00.000-07:00

The Web: Design for Active Learning - University of Alberta

A very good and detailed document on designing for activity learning.

Get ready to wear that creative hat while using Adobe Captivate - start with Rollover Slidelets!

Have you ever wondered while authoring your elearning content, "How do I get a context menu appear on mouse rollover over any object in Adobe Captivate?". Have you ever questioned yourself, "In Adobe Captivate, how do I get to view content on mouse rollover and simultaneously have an action performed on mouse click, both on single object?" Well, if you did have such "How do I...s" then you hit the right node by coming to this post. This post would guide you through to achieve them by using Rollover Slidelet and a little bit of creativity!

Evolution of Office Spaces Reflects Changing Attitudes Toward Work - Wired

From Taylorism - crowding workers together in a completely open environment while bosses looked on from private offices, much like on a factory floor; to Networking - during the past decade, furniture designers have tried to part the sea of cubicles and encourage sociability.

Learn to Think Better: Tips from a Savant - Scinetific American

The bell curve distribution for IQ scores tells us that two thirds of the world's population has an IQ somewhere between 85 and 115. This means that some four and a half billion people around the globe share just 31 numerical values ("he's a 94," "you're a 110," "I'm a 103"), equivalent to 150 million people worldwide sharing the same IQ score. This sounds a lot to me like astrology, which lumps everyone into one of 12 signs of the zodiac.

Blowing Up 'Business as Usual' - BNET

At some companies, employees skip meetings, set their own schedules, and take unlimited vacation time. Surprise: They also get more done.

Following Twitters

2009-04-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

Why is it that when I get an email from Twitter informing me that someone is now following me and they have a lot of followers and they follow a lot of people (normally in the thousands) and I in turn follow them, that I soon receive another email from Twitter telling me that another person is now following me, and again they follow a lot of people and have a lot of followers?

It does not seem to matter if I immediately start to follow them of if I wait several days to follow them that I always receive another email from Twitter shortly after I agree to follow them telling me that another "large" follower is now following me.

Is this some sort of bot or scheme for these people to gain a large number of follows? Just curious. Has Twitter turned into a rat race -- whoever gets the most followers wins? How can someone pay attention to all those followers... I am now having trouble paying attention to the less than 100 people I now follow? Might be a good time to do some Twitter housekeeping...