I have almost finished my article describing my particular model for blended learning. I reviewed the Spring 2007 semester’s artifacts (student assignments, projects, and so on) and have refined the model a bit. The three biggest changes:

1) more explicit links between assignments and course goals.

2) more explanatory material concerning the assignments and expectations.

3) using a Constructivist model for designing a course.

This last point is based on the book, Designing for learning: Six elements in constructivist classrooms, which describes a great six-part model for designing a course.  It complements  Fink’s model for significant learning experiences quite well.

Major (as in 110+ pages) of research about the use of E-Portfolios for learning.  I haven’t read it yet but I will prepare a summary.  Before that, download a copy at Becta Research.

This is a common quote by many in which they say that people only remember 10% of what they hear but 70% of what they do (or whatever statistics that still have a wide gulf between hearing and doing).  Well, thanks to some digging by Will at Work Learning this old chestnut has be thoroughly disproved.  Here’s the best point of that article:

“The fact that our field is so easily swayed by the mildest whiffs of evidence suggests that we don’t have sufficient mechanisms in place to improve what we do. Because we’re not able or willing to provide due diligence on evidence-based claims, we’re unable to create feedback loops to push the field more forcefully toward continuing improvement.

Isn’t it ironic? We’re supposed to be the learning experts, but because we too easily take things for granted, we find ourselves skipping down all manner of yellow-brick roads.”

Another blow for the informal learning folks but it seems that Jay Cross has turned from bogus statistics to Proof by Photoshop.

The subtitle is what convinced me to buy:  Help for the Chronically Underfunded Trainer.  I have rarely been in a situation where I felt that I had enough money to create an effective training session.  That I have been able to pull-off great training anyway is thanks to the number of free tools on the Internet or by stretching the limits of the tools I already have.  I know other trainers and teachers have faced similar situations and are amazingly ingenious in creating good training.

Jane Bozarth does a great job of putting together a series of tips on how to create good online training using widely-available free tools.  You’ve probably seen these resources before but Ms. Bozarth also puts these into a framework which helps in planning.  I wish she had spent more time on the various tools but it is a good start for the trainer who needs a low-cost solution.

Great post by Stephanie at Change Agency where she describes five ways that her work has changed due to the Internet and Web 2.0.  I especially like Point Five:

“I have become a less-patient user of traditional ‘tools’ such as paper walk-through forms, paper memos, newsletters, or meetings without agendas or skilled facilitators, etc.”

So have my students and my clients.  They want living documents that link to more information, easy to pass-along, and can be cut-and-pasted into other documents.  They want lectures and presentations that get to the point and have real information content.  They want “for more information” lists in every handout (which should also be digital).  No longer should knowledge stand alone but it should be linked to other bits of knowledge and reshuffled as the occasion warrants.  They want Wikipedia-type living documents and not Encyclopedia Britannica-type of fixed, bulky pile of dead paper.

I’ve been keeping up with the work of the Rotman School of Management which has to have the most innovative curriculum in higher education.  This Toronto-based business school has two big ideas as the focus of its courses:

1)  Integrative Thinking - A model of thinking which was developed by studying how successful business leaders reason about complex business problems.

2)  Business Design -  The use of design principles to produce innovative and effective business solutions.

I would love to see the same two big ideas used in the education of public administrators and have even written a paper on the use of integrative thinking in public administration (opens as a PDF).

 I’m working on the unit for PowerPoint presentations for some of my fall classes.  PowerPoint has become so ubiquitous in education but I still see bad PowerPoints from students.  Of course they can’t be blamed because adult professionals also use PowerPoint badly.

I recently attended a presentation in which the speaker, a communication expert (ironically enough), gave a great show but he was weighed down by a bland, bullet-point riddled PowerPoint.  It’s not that difficult to make a good PowerPoint presentation but the first thing people must do is stop using PowerPoint as just a brain dump for their speech.  The speech should be planned and storyboarded before PowerPoint is even started.

I wish I had seen this video when it was first posted - would have been a great way to Web 2.0 to my colleagues.

While I was spending the weekend in the hospital visiting a sick relative, I had plenty of quiet time to review several books on ROI in training.  Now I have written about this issue before and how I felt that ROI was inadequate to measuring the actual benefits of training and education.  One thing that the ROI folks have done well is determining the cost side of training and education.  But, they still don’t have a good way to measure the benefits.

What is used are indirect measures which indicate some improvement due to training but, as several authors pointed out, those could be the result of other factors such as better equipment, better work environment, and so on.   The standard model of ROI in training is just not that effective and outdated (Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels were created in 1959).

In my opinion, the problem is the focus of evaluating the training.  First, training is not a single event but a process.  As I wrote earlier about the six disciplines of Calhoun Wick, Roy Pollock, Andrew Jefferson, and Richard Flanagan, the key to effective training is the follow-through that reinforces the lessons of the training.  ROI can only measure a fixed event and is not effective for measuring an ongoing process.  What is needed is to apply the still-developing ideas from business process management with a special emphasis on process improvement.  There has been an attempt to use Six Sigma for delivering training but this placed too much emphasis on measuring the details of the process instead of the results from the process.

There is a lot of work to do ensure the continuing quality of the training process while ensuring that people are learning and turning that knowledge into a strategic edge for the organization.  I don’t know the full answer but I feel that the Theory of Constraints can help here.   One step is to create a new measure - return on knowledge.

I was catching up on my blog readings when I came across this item (and yes, it is rather pathetic that it took six months for me to read this) which echoed some conversations I had with colleagues about podcasting lectures.  If we are podcasting our lectures, then why should students actually attend our classes?  If you can get the same one-hour lecture, why go to the trouble of driving to a parking-challenged campus, sit in a temperature-challenged classroom, and frantically scribble notes while the instructor speeds through the material.

Good question which deserves several good responses:

1)  Don’t repeat the same lecture in class.  Rather, break-up your planned lectures into no-more than ten-minute podcasts that provide the material that you wish students would know so that they can intelligently participate in a class discussion.

2)  Record book tours.  You know and I know that students don’t read the material because they don’t have the patience to tease out the information.  Record some podcasts where you go through the book and point-out what is important on that page or in that chapter.  Give an overview of each chapter and reinforce what the students should take away from the book.

3)  Create a radio show.  Use music, interview guests, and put in sound clips that deepen the understanding.

4)  Have the students participate in building a podcast for the class.  Each week, assign a group to the task of creating a ten-minute summary of what was learned that week.

5)  Have students submit questions in advance of the material you will cover and then create a podcast which is an audio FAQ that you will give out after the in-class lecture.

It takes some time to understand the unique ways to use a new medium.  Early films were essentially films of stage plays until some directors realized that film could be used to add dramatic music, lengthen or shorten time, or through the use of lighting, give a mood.  Podcasting has a great untapped potential which is yet to be explored.

Back from vacation a week later than I expected.  Well, it was a working vacation and my last week of summer class just ended yesterday so today feels like an actual vacation.

As I work on incorporating more active learning into my classroom, I am reconsidering how I grade.  When I first started, I used the objective method in which I used quizzes and tests and assigned grades on the number of multiple-choice questions answered correctly.  As many educators know, it is difficult to write a good multiple-choice test to accurately measure if a student actually learned the material or they just crammed their brain before the test.

Since the shift to projects and demonstrations, I’ve used rubrics to determine grades for the students.  I have started off by using commonly available rubrics and modifying them for the course.  This has been better received and I feel that I am achieving the goal of measuring actual knowledge transfer.

Now, I am thinking of having the students co-create the rubrics so that they will shape how they are graded.  Hopefully, this will encourage better work as they attempt to meet their own standards and that they feel they are being fairly graded.  For example, in my section on PowerPoint presentations, I will have students determine what makes a good presentation.  From their criteria, I will create the rubric that will be used to grade their final PowerPoint presentations.

I believe that the assessment issue will be a major issue in Classroom 2.0.