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I really like this article because it really makes the point I’ve been trying to make through this career transition.
I think if you bring a strong skill set with you, you can teach in any type of setting.
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 10:01 PM EST
Recently in elearningpost’s daily newsletter, there was a brief on using one’s experience base to weave inferences and further learning around one’s situation that just bears sharing at least in part.
I watched “The Usual Suspects” again last week….couldn’t help linking the way Keyser Soze, Kevin Spacey’s character, conjured up the story in the interrogation room with the way experts make sense of novel situations….The interrogation takes place in a police officer’s room which has the usual information snippets, newspaper clips and mug shots stuck all over the walls. Soze, the real crook in the movie, uses all the information available in that room to spin a believable story and finally manages to convince the officer of his innocence. This is the same way experts make sense of situations. (Stop your inductive reasoning here: all experts are not crooks!) They use their experience base to interpret the information around them to mentally play out a story. And if the mental story makes sense, they act it out. If it does not make sense, then they revise to balance it out till it does. This entire sensemaking happens in a few seconds or a few minutes timeframe. If Keyser Soze were a novice con man, he would have found it difficult to interpret the information around him, let alone spin a story around it. Here’s my point. A rich experience base is what distinguishes an expert from a novice. One way to build an experience base is to wait for experiences to come to you. This is the natural way. The other way is to create an environment where experiences can be accelerated. This is the realm of training. But how much of our training is based on accelerating experiences? How many training outcomes are based on interpretation and sensemaking capabilities? This is where I feel that business organizations are missing out on a great deal….The very nature of a business organization provides for a fertile ground to accelerate experiences. Knowledge management can provide for the wealth of accumulated experiences to tap from, while training and e-learning initiatives can leverage on this wealth of lived experiences to build environments where sensemaking can be accelerated.
This is addressed from the point of view of the learner, but for us as teachers it’s yet another argument for the need to weave through our lesson planning. The need to weave the lesson components. The need to weave the device that provides the momentum for the course. The need to weave in our own knowledge and background experiences. The need to weave in the learner’s nkowledge and background experiences.
Learning isn’t an accident. Ideally, it’s a series of knowledge-building experiences woven together so well that the learner doesn’t realize they’re learning.
Posted by Rebecca as Learning methods at 9:52 AM EST
Just a quick link to this article on the learning of wisdom before I head off to Portland for the weekend.
Have a safe and wonderful holdiay!
Posted by Rebecca as Learning methods at 9:54 AM EST
I recently started a new job and have been undergoing the necessary training to bring me up to speed. I came at an odd point in the work cycle, so they had to decide where they were going to start training me. Finally, it was decided that they would give me an overview of the Big Picture and then let me start by learning the end of the process.
This ended up not being what happened (instead, I was given the overview and then started in the middle of the process), but it brought to mind a concept that I learned about while working on my thesis a few years ago (has it really been that long?).
There is a concept among the Inuit people called isumaqsayuq, which is defined as "the way of passing along knowledge through observation and imitation embedded in daily family and community activities, integration into the immediate shared social structure being the principal goal. The focus is on values and identity, developed through the learner’s relationship to other persons and to the environment." (attributed to Arleen Stairs in my notes)
Essentially, these children are trained into the tasks that will become part of their daily lives through this method, also known as backward chaining. They begin at the end of a process, where they learn how to finish the process until they cvan do it proficiently on their own. Then, they are taught the next earliest part of the process until they can successfully complete it on their own. At this point, the student is expected to handle the process from the new part through to the completion of the process. It continues in this method until the student has learned all the way to the beginning of the process.
I look at that, and I think about how I felt when I thought that was how my training was going to happen. To me, this makes sense. If I am taught in this backward chaining method, then it reduces the time I will ask, "What now?" because I will know what comes next. The learning is not out of context. In fact, it may even make steps easier to learn because I’ll understand why things are done in a certain way because I will already be familiar with the later part of the process that is prepared for by an earlier step.
While backwards chaining may not be possible in all learning ventures, I do have to wonder how many would be made easier if this method was considered.
Posted by Rebecca as Learning methods, Teaching methods at 2:49 PM EST
Since I originally read this article, a blogversation has erupted between Gahran and another blogger. She’s linked to it in this article, and I think it’s worth it to read through the entire conversation.
I’m going through various trainings at my new job this week, one of which included an eLearning course that has been poorly maintained. It was an almost entirely reading training with three brief activities to break up the reading. There were screen shots. Roughly 90% of them did not at all match the text around them, making things a bit more difficult. . Somehow, I did pass the assessment.
At my last desk job before this one, we had numerous classroom and e-Learning options open to us. After several poor learning experiences with our training specialist (great guy, but his teaching style didn’t match any of our learning styles, and the concept of adapting the teaching style was completely foreign to him), many of us turned to the courses on our e-Learning system. This system, run by an out-of-house company, was great. The courses were concise and full of exercises to help promote bite-sized understanding. It was amazing how many of us embraced the e-Learning system because we came away feeling we had learned what we needed.”
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning at 7:23 AM EST
I’m currently waiting for my access to be granted to my first training at my new job. It’s an online pre-learning class that, if I pass, will let me into the classroom course. It kind of makes today’s link a bit more relevant.
While the convenience and self-pacing inherent in online training courses can be a wonderful thing, it should not be forgotten that many people learn better in a setting that provides opportunities for interacting with others’ understanding of the material presented.
I’ve always been a fan of collaborative learning for this very reason.
Posted by Rebecca as e-learning at 9:53 PM EST
Here’s an interesting article on the human need for the natural compensations of interactions in the online setting.
I think this is just a fascinating topic to begin with, and an interesting way to consider how we work to convey those things that cannot be seen or heard in our online interactions.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 1:45 PM EST
I’ve always believed that if you can handle teaching in certain venues, then you have a certain edge over those who have only taught in the classroom. This is especially true for those who teach online classes or prepare instructional units to be self-studied through a computer.
As this article points out, for this group, there is no opportunity to receive those critical non-verbal clues that make teaching the art that it is. This group has to choose their words, language, and lesson structure very carefully. This then carries over into their classroom teaching, allowing them to use that same preciseness to structure learning opportunities, benefitting the students with a more focused learning experience.
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 8:40 AM EST
As a teacher, one of the ways you can use to measure whether or not the students are learning what you intend them to learn is to gauge their response to various stimuli. If they respond appropriately, then the student may actually have learned what you intended them to learn. However, every teacher faces a time when the student gives the appropriate response to the stimulus and then fails the assessment at the end of the teaching cycle. Did the student actually learn? No. Did they perceive what the teacher wanted to hear and then tell them that when the teacher was looking for a response? Yes.
I was reminded of this challenging aspect of teaching recently while reading this article. I hadn’t really thought about it, but those involved in usability testing face the same challenge. What I think is really important, and important for any of us in this kind of situation to remember, are the lessons LeFever took away from the experiece:
Here are my lessons from this session:
why the product is not communicating value or context to this type of
user
Posted by Rebecca as Teaching methods at 4:01 PM EST