So, for the last three months eBooks have outsold hardcovers on Amazon, thanks to the Kindle. This according to the New York Times.
People are asking me what this means for textbooks. One of those people is my wife, who just paid $200 for a required high school science book. She had been saving the elder sibling's book from that class for three years, in the hopes that it would still be required. But no, this year a new edition is mandatory. The old version, for which we paid about the same price, is now worth $8.50 on eBay. Not even the Ford Pinto depreciated that fast.
"Textbooks are the biggest legal ripoff in the world," was the unprompted comment from the elder sibling, now in college. (I didn't ask what the biggest illegal ripoff might be. Some rocks are better left unturned.)
I have blogged about this in the past, and I'm sticking to my guns. I continue to believe that Kindle and similar book readers are here to stay, and will ultimately overtake the physical book industry--but not for textbooks. For linear reading. Newspapers, novels, magazines, book-length nonfiction... The reading experience for these on a Kindle is good enough that the convenience factor becomes overwhelming. Every book I care to read in the same book-size device? A new book almost instantly, and cheaper than I could get a physical copy? Sign me up.
Textbooks are a whole different matter. Let's set aside literature textbooks for a moment--at least those that are pretty much collections of linear reading. Almost every other form of textbook is a marriage of content and activities. Homework, discussion questions, problem sets, quizzes, and in the last ten years, interactive animations, computer models, mini-documentaries and interviews, historical footage--you name it. This is not Kindle territory. It's iPad territory. But if it's iPad territory, it's also laptop territory, which brings us right back to the usual problem: textbooks are too varied in purpose to be just books. They are only books at all by accident of history.
What we consider a textbook needs to be a learning environment. It needs to be a technical space in which all the varied purposes of a textbook play out in the technology that is appropriate for the unique purpose being addressed. Quizzes are interactive, graded, with feedback. Discussions questions are actually discussed. Media is interwoven with the associated content, not added through a link or a DVD. Problem sets can be solved, and self-corrected, and remediated.
As far as I can tell, Pearson's MyMathLab continues to lead the way. And in some ways that's unfortunate, because it means there has been little movement over the past several years.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
The nuances of a good video
Musing on the power of video to make a point. It does have that power, no doubt (see: Commercials, TV). But how? What makes a good video a good video and a bad video painful? Well, my answer is in the nuances. But they aren't really nuances once you start thinking about them. Here are a few:
1. Anticipation. The audience needs something to expect. Even if it's a minute long, they have to know there's a kicker coming. Think about the anticipation you feel when you see that Geico Rod-Serling-ish guy saying, "Can Geico really save you fifteen thousand dollars or more on car insurance?" Something clever, interesting, worth seeing is coming. You know that. So you watch. (Or at least, I do).
2. Unexpectedness. Completely the opposite of anticipation, unless of course you're anticipating the unexpected, which creates a whole different level of nuance. But you can't always give them what they expect. "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em; Tell 'em; and Tell what you told 'em" may be good instructional design (in fact most instructional design approaches include variations of this), but it's death as the entire recipe for a video. You can do all that... but you should also tell 'em a few things you didn't tell 'em you were going to tell 'em. And you should tell 'em you told 'em a few things that you didn't actually tell 'em. (If that's not clear, I trust you can work it out. I'm not telling you again what I just told you).
3. Challenge. Don't tell them everything. Make them work a few things out for themselves.
4. Creative Messaging. By this I don't mean a catchy phrase like, "Getting it done is priority one." Do that if you must, but what I mean is that the message should be interwoven with a story, with themes, with characters. That the presentation builds to the message. If you've got a pyramid of ideas, make a physical pyramid that someone actually puts together on screen. This makes it interesting, and memorable.
5. Sparkle. Closely related to fun (see number 7 below), sparkle is that quality that instantly tells people someone cared enough to put something extra into this. There's a sense of energy and creativity here. Nothing was phoned in. Someone thought this was worth putting their stamp on, being proud of. It's special. Warning: after making it special, let it go and make the next one special. Nothing's sadder than someone producing a video and thinking it didn't get enough credit, or airplay, or awards, or whatever.
6. The Unstated. What you don't say, or don't show, is what gives a video depth. If you're producing these things, you should learn to manage the interplay between what is left in and what is left out--there is power in the tension between the two. You can get people to want to see something by not showing it. The old horror movies always did this. I remember how Elephant Man, the movie, showed several people's horrified reactions to the title character while I only heard his calm, sweet voice. By the time I saw how horrible his face actually was, I had already decided I would not react with revulsion. Avatar, more recently, showed the hero's Navi self in a huge fish tank, then, a while later, some maintenance workers were washing out the fish tank. He's gone... somewhere. And it made you really want to see him. Make an audience want to see what you're not showing them. They will love you for it when you do show it.
7. Fun. I'm not saying humor--humor is hard. Do it if you have the talent in place to pull it off. But fun, anyone can do. It's mostly about making sure that everyone involved is finding the process energizing. I learned in the first day of my first producing job (TV News) that the number one thing I could do to create a quality product was to keep the on-camera talent happy and relaxed. Also the number two, three, and four things. If they were having fun, the audience would like it.
Not really nuances. Not really all that subtle. But not paint-by-numbers, either.
1. Anticipation. The audience needs something to expect. Even if it's a minute long, they have to know there's a kicker coming. Think about the anticipation you feel when you see that Geico Rod-Serling-ish guy saying, "Can Geico really save you fifteen thousand dollars or more on car insurance?" Something clever, interesting, worth seeing is coming. You know that. So you watch. (Or at least, I do).
2. Unexpectedness. Completely the opposite of anticipation, unless of course you're anticipating the unexpected, which creates a whole different level of nuance. But you can't always give them what they expect. "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em; Tell 'em; and Tell what you told 'em" may be good instructional design (in fact most instructional design approaches include variations of this), but it's death as the entire recipe for a video. You can do all that... but you should also tell 'em a few things you didn't tell 'em you were going to tell 'em. And you should tell 'em you told 'em a few things that you didn't actually tell 'em. (If that's not clear, I trust you can work it out. I'm not telling you again what I just told you).
3. Challenge. Don't tell them everything. Make them work a few things out for themselves.
4. Creative Messaging. By this I don't mean a catchy phrase like, "Getting it done is priority one." Do that if you must, but what I mean is that the message should be interwoven with a story, with themes, with characters. That the presentation builds to the message. If you've got a pyramid of ideas, make a physical pyramid that someone actually puts together on screen. This makes it interesting, and memorable.
5. Sparkle. Closely related to fun (see number 7 below), sparkle is that quality that instantly tells people someone cared enough to put something extra into this. There's a sense of energy and creativity here. Nothing was phoned in. Someone thought this was worth putting their stamp on, being proud of. It's special. Warning: after making it special, let it go and make the next one special. Nothing's sadder than someone producing a video and thinking it didn't get enough credit, or airplay, or awards, or whatever.
6. The Unstated. What you don't say, or don't show, is what gives a video depth. If you're producing these things, you should learn to manage the interplay between what is left in and what is left out--there is power in the tension between the two. You can get people to want to see something by not showing it. The old horror movies always did this. I remember how Elephant Man, the movie, showed several people's horrified reactions to the title character while I only heard his calm, sweet voice. By the time I saw how horrible his face actually was, I had already decided I would not react with revulsion. Avatar, more recently, showed the hero's Navi self in a huge fish tank, then, a while later, some maintenance workers were washing out the fish tank. He's gone... somewhere. And it made you really want to see him. Make an audience want to see what you're not showing them. They will love you for it when you do show it.
7. Fun. I'm not saying humor--humor is hard. Do it if you have the talent in place to pull it off. But fun, anyone can do. It's mostly about making sure that everyone involved is finding the process energizing. I learned in the first day of my first producing job (TV News) that the number one thing I could do to create a quality product was to keep the on-camera talent happy and relaxed. Also the number two, three, and four things. If they were having fun, the audience would like it.
Not really nuances. Not really all that subtle. But not paint-by-numbers, either.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Why the iPad really could change everything
Assuming the iPad is a successful product--not a given based on early reactions--this looks like a product that could finally bring textbooks into the web 2.0 world. Not because the iBooks functionality is particularly advanced. An eBook reader is an eBook reader, and all eBook readers are Web 1.0, as I have mentioned in previous posts. The iPad has not, at first blush anyway, seriously moved the game forward. You're still reading a flat page on a highly interactive mechanism, and you're still not taking much advantage of "the crowd."
But the iPad has huge possibilities in the textbook arena nonetheless, in my view. There are two reasons for this, neither of which were part of the hoopla of the grand unveiling: iTunes, and EPUB. The iBookstore may not seem like an advance over Amazon for buying books--how could it compete with that megalith? But the promise is not in the transaction, it's in the transformation. Don't forget what iTunes did to the music industry. It deconstructed the CD, the decades of "album" sales, and brought the single back to the forefront of music. Consumers loved it. Publishers... well, not so much. The promise is that Apple will move the textbook publishing industry in that direction as well, selling chunks, or chapters, or just the media associated with a textbook--whatever is of value to students or faculty within a textbook. Is that their plan? Yes, it is. How do I know this? Because of EPUB.
EPUB is an open standard for eBooks. Kindle's is proprietary, as are most of its competitors. Imagine this for a moment... Apple, the undisputed king of the vertical integration, the company that owns the hardware and the operating system and the software, is using open standards for its eBooks. Why is that? Why would they do that? Because they know that in the textbook publishing world, there is as yet no such thing as a "single." The textbook is the equivalent of a CD, or an album. That's easy--they're big, they're expensive, and you're always buying more than you want in order to get the stuff you do want. But what is the parallel to the song? It's not a chapter, because a chapter typically can't stand alone. The answer is, it doesn't exist. But it could exist. There could easily be a digital something that is designed to meet a certain clearly defined learning objective. Several of these somethings could be strung together into a "playlist" that assisted greatly in meeting course learning objectives. And if several publishers were publishing these somethings, these "singles," then a course "playlist" could include singles from Macmillan as well as ones from Pearson.
I think Apple gets this. I further think they're wise enough to know that they can't invent or create these singles themselves. They can transform the textbook industry with iBooks the way iTunes transformed the music industry, but only if they get a lot of help with the songs. Thus, the open standard... they will use a technical platform that anyone can adopt. Do a deal with Macmillan, sure, but leave the door open for the future-thinkers at Pearson to create something that will be a game changer.
I like what Apple has done. I like it a lot.
Article from MacWorld: http://www.macworld.com/article/145940/2010/01/ibooks.html
But the iPad has huge possibilities in the textbook arena nonetheless, in my view. There are two reasons for this, neither of which were part of the hoopla of the grand unveiling: iTunes, and EPUB. The iBookstore may not seem like an advance over Amazon for buying books--how could it compete with that megalith? But the promise is not in the transaction, it's in the transformation. Don't forget what iTunes did to the music industry. It deconstructed the CD, the decades of "album" sales, and brought the single back to the forefront of music. Consumers loved it. Publishers... well, not so much. The promise is that Apple will move the textbook publishing industry in that direction as well, selling chunks, or chapters, or just the media associated with a textbook--whatever is of value to students or faculty within a textbook. Is that their plan? Yes, it is. How do I know this? Because of EPUB.
EPUB is an open standard for eBooks. Kindle's is proprietary, as are most of its competitors. Imagine this for a moment... Apple, the undisputed king of the vertical integration, the company that owns the hardware and the operating system and the software, is using open standards for its eBooks. Why is that? Why would they do that? Because they know that in the textbook publishing world, there is as yet no such thing as a "single." The textbook is the equivalent of a CD, or an album. That's easy--they're big, they're expensive, and you're always buying more than you want in order to get the stuff you do want. But what is the parallel to the song? It's not a chapter, because a chapter typically can't stand alone. The answer is, it doesn't exist. But it could exist. There could easily be a digital something that is designed to meet a certain clearly defined learning objective. Several of these somethings could be strung together into a "playlist" that assisted greatly in meeting course learning objectives. And if several publishers were publishing these somethings, these "singles," then a course "playlist" could include singles from Macmillan as well as ones from Pearson.
I think Apple gets this. I further think they're wise enough to know that they can't invent or create these singles themselves. They can transform the textbook industry with iBooks the way iTunes transformed the music industry, but only if they get a lot of help with the songs. Thus, the open standard... they will use a technical platform that anyone can adopt. Do a deal with Macmillan, sure, but leave the door open for the future-thinkers at Pearson to create something that will be a game changer.
I like what Apple has done. I like it a lot.
Article from MacWorld: http://www.macworld.com/article/145940/2010/01/ibooks.html
Monday, January 11, 2010
Want to change behaviors? Forget education.
Here's my premise: If you want to change core behaviors, forget education or training. Neither one will do the job. It may sound shocking, but you already know this is true. You know you can teach a kid all day long how to clean up his room, but until he fears the consequences of not doing it more than he dreads the drudgery of doing it, he won't do it. You can train an employee step by step on how to properly handle the package/liquid/customer/whatever, but until her desire to do it differently exceeds her comfort level with her habitual approach, she won't do it the way you want her to. Show as many films, provide as many lectures, give as much instruction as you want, but behaviors change only when the motivation is sufficient. It's not about knowledge. It's not even about learning. It's about core motives. And it takes a whole lot of motivation to change established behaviors.
Why am I bringing this up? Because it seems to me everyone in education and training is missing a major tool in the toolbox when it comes to behavior change. To a man who has only a hammer, it's been said, every problem looks like a nail. And I'm thinking that there are a lot of bolts and screws and wing nuts being hammered out there in our field, problems being solved with classes and online training courses and instructional seminars, when there is another tool, much more effective, at our fingertips. One that is proven to change behaviors.
This tool has been used, refined, improved, and finally proven beyond question for something like 50 years. No educator doubts its effectiveness. No training professional has any question about its power. But we never use it. Why not? Because it doesn't sound like training. It doesn't look like education. It doesn't pass the smell test. It won't fit into the centuries-old categories that allow us to feel comfortable doing our jobs. But if anyone had the guts to give it a try, I'd bet it would work. In fact, I am betting it will work--and I'm not likely to lose this one.
The tool I'm talking about is the advertisement. More specifically, the TV commercial.
Before you scratch your head and dismiss these as the ravings of a lunatic mind, give it a think. How many millions, billions of dollars are poured into television commercials every year? Why does that happen? Why do otherwise sane companies pay over a million dollars for 30 seconds of Super Bowl airtime? I'll tell you what you already know. It's because they expect an even bigger return. What is that return? A change in behaviors. Oh, you might say, they're just getting their name out there. It's about brand recognition. Well, I respond, that's the same thing. Name recognition that doesn't drive change is worthless. These commercials are driving change. These companies want, assume, and fully expect that if they can get the right message in front of millions of people, some significant percentage of them will, if not immediately then soon, change their behaviors and buy a different product. Their product. And they are almost never disappointed. It simply works. If it didn't, the whole thing would collapse.
But the key phrase is, "the right message." You won't see the sophisticated behavior-changers yelling about how many Camrys are available for how much down and how much a month. You will see them presenting an attractive image. A feel. A sensibility about a product that suggests it's cool, it's important, it's right, it's delightful--it's attractive--to make this change. Good commercials toy with your core motivations. Your identity. They make you want to change. And they know how to do it.
They also know how not to do it. They stay as far away from education and training as possible. When was the last time you saw a commercial that seriously educated you on the particulars of the product in question? Not one that left you aware of the particulars (that buttery-soft leather interior!) but one that took even a remotely somber training approach, a textbook approach, to detailing the facts about the product. (Our leather is made from the hide of cows. The tanning process begins just after slaughter...) Nobody does that. Why not? Because it won't change your behaviors. It is an odd and ironic thing that companies spend millions upon millions getting just the right message out to customers in bite-sized, delightful nuggets, knowing it will pay off, while at the same time slathering their own employees with coat after coat of deadly dull, heavy, and tedious training that doesn't work well by anyone's measure.
What am I suggesting? Simply this: if our goal is to change behaviors, we should never again go back to the dry well of painstakingly dull knowledge. Of course a knowledge base needs to be established, and we must teach. But when the goal is to change behavior, to get over the hump, to get people to want to institute the new processes, the new approaches, we should abandon the assumption that if our charges simply know it, or know how to do it, they will therefore do it. We should abandon even the assumption that if we tell them how important it is, they will do it. The fact is, there is a well-known and proven way to get them to want to change. We should be students of this field of knowledge. We should study commercials. We should camp out with the advertisers until we understand what makes the good ads good. And we should apply that knowledge to training and education.
And if we must make a video, we should consider spending our meager monies on 60 seconds of pure delight rather than 60 minutes of step-by-step tedium.
Why am I bringing this up? Because it seems to me everyone in education and training is missing a major tool in the toolbox when it comes to behavior change. To a man who has only a hammer, it's been said, every problem looks like a nail. And I'm thinking that there are a lot of bolts and screws and wing nuts being hammered out there in our field, problems being solved with classes and online training courses and instructional seminars, when there is another tool, much more effective, at our fingertips. One that is proven to change behaviors.
This tool has been used, refined, improved, and finally proven beyond question for something like 50 years. No educator doubts its effectiveness. No training professional has any question about its power. But we never use it. Why not? Because it doesn't sound like training. It doesn't look like education. It doesn't pass the smell test. It won't fit into the centuries-old categories that allow us to feel comfortable doing our jobs. But if anyone had the guts to give it a try, I'd bet it would work. In fact, I am betting it will work--and I'm not likely to lose this one.
The tool I'm talking about is the advertisement. More specifically, the TV commercial.
Before you scratch your head and dismiss these as the ravings of a lunatic mind, give it a think. How many millions, billions of dollars are poured into television commercials every year? Why does that happen? Why do otherwise sane companies pay over a million dollars for 30 seconds of Super Bowl airtime? I'll tell you what you already know. It's because they expect an even bigger return. What is that return? A change in behaviors. Oh, you might say, they're just getting their name out there. It's about brand recognition. Well, I respond, that's the same thing. Name recognition that doesn't drive change is worthless. These commercials are driving change. These companies want, assume, and fully expect that if they can get the right message in front of millions of people, some significant percentage of them will, if not immediately then soon, change their behaviors and buy a different product. Their product. And they are almost never disappointed. It simply works. If it didn't, the whole thing would collapse.
But the key phrase is, "the right message." You won't see the sophisticated behavior-changers yelling about how many Camrys are available for how much down and how much a month. You will see them presenting an attractive image. A feel. A sensibility about a product that suggests it's cool, it's important, it's right, it's delightful--it's attractive--to make this change. Good commercials toy with your core motivations. Your identity. They make you want to change. And they know how to do it.
They also know how not to do it. They stay as far away from education and training as possible. When was the last time you saw a commercial that seriously educated you on the particulars of the product in question? Not one that left you aware of the particulars (that buttery-soft leather interior!) but one that took even a remotely somber training approach, a textbook approach, to detailing the facts about the product. (Our leather is made from the hide of cows. The tanning process begins just after slaughter...) Nobody does that. Why not? Because it won't change your behaviors. It is an odd and ironic thing that companies spend millions upon millions getting just the right message out to customers in bite-sized, delightful nuggets, knowing it will pay off, while at the same time slathering their own employees with coat after coat of deadly dull, heavy, and tedious training that doesn't work well by anyone's measure.
What am I suggesting? Simply this: if our goal is to change behaviors, we should never again go back to the dry well of painstakingly dull knowledge. Of course a knowledge base needs to be established, and we must teach. But when the goal is to change behavior, to get over the hump, to get people to want to institute the new processes, the new approaches, we should abandon the assumption that if our charges simply know it, or know how to do it, they will therefore do it. We should abandon even the assumption that if we tell them how important it is, they will do it. The fact is, there is a well-known and proven way to get them to want to change. We should be students of this field of knowledge. We should study commercials. We should camp out with the advertisers until we understand what makes the good ads good. And we should apply that knowledge to training and education.
And if we must make a video, we should consider spending our meager monies on 60 seconds of pure delight rather than 60 minutes of step-by-step tedium.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The radical little interview
Many thanks to Keith Hampson for posting a simple, four-question interview with me at his LinkedIn blog, Higher Education Management Group. I've had many hits on my blog because of it, but no one has left any comments there. I re-read my answers, and had a little aha moment of my own. I'm now trying to determine if there's anyone in the higher education establishment/industry that I didn't manage to offend in some way:
Academics and their quality, check...
Textbook publishers, check...
LMS providers, check...
Learning technologists, check...
Really, I meant only to speak the truth as I see it, and as I have been watching it unfold lo these many years. And I can't really take anything back, nor can I apologize except to say that offense was not my purpose, nor was any disrespect intended. I hold education in the highest regard. I simply believe that in many ways and instances, the process of providing education has overtaken the place of honor that should be reserved for the product, the learning itself.
Let me explain. There is something in 3D virtual games, the MMO's like World of Warcraft, called "the grind." This is a pejorative term, defined in Wikipedia as "the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game." Gamers don't like it, but the game-makers couldn't come up with enough interesting battles or quests to really make you earn something over time, so they just said, "Here, do this about twenty-seven more times and then you'll get what you want."
Replace a few gaming words in that definition with a few scholastic ones, and you have what I don't like about formal education. So little in education needs to fit into the category of "the grind" any more, and yet we continue to let it drive us. We ask them to crank out something (a paper, a project, homework, a quiz) without real substance or interest but that can be graded and managed and documented, thereby qualifying as an academic result. And thereby covering the appropriate expanse of derriere. This happens so much it isn't even questioned by many. It's just what we do and how it's done.
So, I guess in the end I'm not very contrite. But I am hopeful. If you read to the end of that interview, you'll see why.
Academics and their quality, check...
Textbook publishers, check...
LMS providers, check...
Learning technologists, check...
Really, I meant only to speak the truth as I see it, and as I have been watching it unfold lo these many years. And I can't really take anything back, nor can I apologize except to say that offense was not my purpose, nor was any disrespect intended. I hold education in the highest regard. I simply believe that in many ways and instances, the process of providing education has overtaken the place of honor that should be reserved for the product, the learning itself.
Let me explain. There is something in 3D virtual games, the MMO's like World of Warcraft, called "the grind." This is a pejorative term, defined in Wikipedia as "the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game." Gamers don't like it, but the game-makers couldn't come up with enough interesting battles or quests to really make you earn something over time, so they just said, "Here, do this about twenty-seven more times and then you'll get what you want."
Replace a few gaming words in that definition with a few scholastic ones, and you have what I don't like about formal education. So little in education needs to fit into the category of "the grind" any more, and yet we continue to let it drive us. We ask them to crank out something (a paper, a project, homework, a quiz) without real substance or interest but that can be graded and managed and documented, thereby qualifying as an academic result. And thereby covering the appropriate expanse of derriere. This happens so much it isn't even questioned by many. It's just what we do and how it's done.
So, I guess in the end I'm not very contrite. But I am hopeful. If you read to the end of that interview, you'll see why.
Friday, November 13, 2009
The radical little quiz
There's got to be a ton of research on this, right? When it comes right down to it, most of the Pearson MyLab products, which I have spun out a good number of electrons praising in this space, is learning by testing. And then remediating. After all, when is a person's mind more focused than when trying to get the answers right?
I posited an interest in the question of learning by quiz during my session on the End of Book Learning at Elliott Masie's Learning 2009 conference, and I got a follow-up from an energetic attendee who wanted me to discover SpacedEd. Which I have now done, and about which I can now say... okay, cool.
http://www.spaceded.com/
Here's what it does. You sign up for a course, and you get one quiz question a day. Or, every other day if that's too much for your hectic lifestyle. They email you the question. You answer it. They tell you if you're right or wrong. They provide some feedback, reasons, material that further explains the correct answer. Then they tell you when they're going to send you the same question again. Which you can opt out of. In addition, there is a place to make comments and read comments, so that the wisdom of the crowd can add context and application, not to mention some occasional humor.
That's it. Ho hum. Except that this little thing is based on two very well-researched principles: The Spacing Effect, and the Testing Effect. Both are well-explained at spaceded.com. Here's something about the former, lifted from the SpacedEd website:
"Since its discovery in the late 19th century by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, the spacing effect has been extensively studied. Even though this research has repeatedly demonstrated the spacing effect’s potent ability to improve learning retention, these findings have only had limited translation into formal educational practice. Recently, the spacing effect was found to have a distinct neurophysiological basis: Sisti et al (2007) showed that spaced learning in rats improved neuronal longevity in the hippocampus (a region of the brain which is important for long-term memory). "
I love this. Not just because of the reference to a rat's hippocampus, which you rarely get in educational literature these days, but also because I think this is important. I think it's innovative. And it has some very Web 2.0 implications. There's a reason no one has paid attention to this research, and that is because it doesn't fit the process of education. But now, because of Web 2.0, the traditional process of education is all set up to be deconstructed and reconstructed based on research and practice just like this.
Think about it; the entire structure of the education edifice up through and including Web 1.0 was based on the Learning Herd Effect. I just made that term up, but what I mean is that most of the peculiarities of education spring directly out of the need to run large numbers of students through a gamut of some sort and have them come out the other side educated. The Industrial Revolution required, or at least inspired, educators to create grade levels, classes, semesters, credit hours, letter grades, grade-point averages... all for what purpose? To organize the great Herd of Learners. The problems solved by our now-rarely-questioned infrastructure were similar in nature to the problems solved by Disney in the Magic Kingdom, or EPCOT. How do we get huge numbers of people in limited physical space to have the same or similar experience day after day, year after year, at an acceptable level of quality?
Now let's think about the problems that this solution created. It required all learning to take place inside the boxed walls of some room. The boxes may be labs, or simple classrooms, and there may be an occasional field trip, but the point stands. It assumed, by necessity, that all learning, ALL learning mind you, could be divided up into equal parts and be delivered in regular, timed intervals within those boxes. It further assumed that everyone could be made to learn at the same pace, at least everyone who was within the same box at the same time. The teacher was required to do the herding, and to whatever extent possible, leveling of material. So what we got from all that is what we still have, a process-based education that really has little bearing on what the outcome of the process may be. Some students may have learned a lot, some only a little. Some will have been just-shoot-me bored, others just-shoot-me challenged. Doesn't matter, we're solving a people-moving problem, so sit back down and listen up.
Enter Web 1.0. What did we do? We created little boxes online. We even called them classrooms. We boxed the same couple of dozen learners together, following along the same process, dividing the learning up into the same weekly, semester-long schedule. We brought the people-moving solution into a world where there was no people-moving problem.
Now we've got a Web 2.0 world. That means that we can think about what the web can do that can't be done in the physical world. We finally understand that an online environment is not "virtual reality," it is reality using technology, just as we grew up knowing that a phone call is not "virtual conversation," but real conversation using technology. We're no longer stuck with mimicking the physical world and its people-moving problems. And yet we still do it. Most of the Web 2.0 solutions being brought into online Learning Management Systems and Course Management Systems are tacked on, preserving the classes, class sizes, semesters, schedules, all of it. We still artificially divide all the learning up into equal-sized chunks, and we still require learners to group up and let some be bored while others drown.
Which brings us back to this little SpacedEd community. What I like is that it breaks most if not all those structures. It is designed from the learner back, from the research back, and it doesn't give a hoot and a half about any of the Learning Herd Effect solutions. It's about what you can learn when you aren't tethered.
Now you could argue that this device has its own artificial structures, built into the one-question-a-day method. What if I want two questions a day? Or three? And I wouldn't have much with which to argue back. But the point is not whether this structure is better than that one. The point is that here is a radical little quiz that is making an enormously good case for the power of Web 2.0 to upend the mammoth Learning Herd structure of education, and replace it, or even just parts of it, with real, provable, outcomes-based learning that fits no other mold. The box is entirely gone, vanished, beside the point. Learning is the point.
And I like that.
I posited an interest in the question of learning by quiz during my session on the End of Book Learning at Elliott Masie's Learning 2009 conference, and I got a follow-up from an energetic attendee who wanted me to discover SpacedEd. Which I have now done, and about which I can now say... okay, cool.
http://www.spaceded.com/
Here's what it does. You sign up for a course, and you get one quiz question a day. Or, every other day if that's too much for your hectic lifestyle. They email you the question. You answer it. They tell you if you're right or wrong. They provide some feedback, reasons, material that further explains the correct answer. Then they tell you when they're going to send you the same question again. Which you can opt out of. In addition, there is a place to make comments and read comments, so that the wisdom of the crowd can add context and application, not to mention some occasional humor.
That's it. Ho hum. Except that this little thing is based on two very well-researched principles: The Spacing Effect, and the Testing Effect. Both are well-explained at spaceded.com. Here's something about the former, lifted from the SpacedEd website:
"Since its discovery in the late 19th century by the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, the spacing effect has been extensively studied. Even though this research has repeatedly demonstrated the spacing effect’s potent ability to improve learning retention, these findings have only had limited translation into formal educational practice. Recently, the spacing effect was found to have a distinct neurophysiological basis: Sisti et al (2007) showed that spaced learning in rats improved neuronal longevity in the hippocampus (a region of the brain which is important for long-term memory). "
I love this. Not just because of the reference to a rat's hippocampus, which you rarely get in educational literature these days, but also because I think this is important. I think it's innovative. And it has some very Web 2.0 implications. There's a reason no one has paid attention to this research, and that is because it doesn't fit the process of education. But now, because of Web 2.0, the traditional process of education is all set up to be deconstructed and reconstructed based on research and practice just like this.
Think about it; the entire structure of the education edifice up through and including Web 1.0 was based on the Learning Herd Effect. I just made that term up, but what I mean is that most of the peculiarities of education spring directly out of the need to run large numbers of students through a gamut of some sort and have them come out the other side educated. The Industrial Revolution required, or at least inspired, educators to create grade levels, classes, semesters, credit hours, letter grades, grade-point averages... all for what purpose? To organize the great Herd of Learners. The problems solved by our now-rarely-questioned infrastructure were similar in nature to the problems solved by Disney in the Magic Kingdom, or EPCOT. How do we get huge numbers of people in limited physical space to have the same or similar experience day after day, year after year, at an acceptable level of quality?
Now let's think about the problems that this solution created. It required all learning to take place inside the boxed walls of some room. The boxes may be labs, or simple classrooms, and there may be an occasional field trip, but the point stands. It assumed, by necessity, that all learning, ALL learning mind you, could be divided up into equal parts and be delivered in regular, timed intervals within those boxes. It further assumed that everyone could be made to learn at the same pace, at least everyone who was within the same box at the same time. The teacher was required to do the herding, and to whatever extent possible, leveling of material. So what we got from all that is what we still have, a process-based education that really has little bearing on what the outcome of the process may be. Some students may have learned a lot, some only a little. Some will have been just-shoot-me bored, others just-shoot-me challenged. Doesn't matter, we're solving a people-moving problem, so sit back down and listen up.
Enter Web 1.0. What did we do? We created little boxes online. We even called them classrooms. We boxed the same couple of dozen learners together, following along the same process, dividing the learning up into the same weekly, semester-long schedule. We brought the people-moving solution into a world where there was no people-moving problem.
Now we've got a Web 2.0 world. That means that we can think about what the web can do that can't be done in the physical world. We finally understand that an online environment is not "virtual reality," it is reality using technology, just as we grew up knowing that a phone call is not "virtual conversation," but real conversation using technology. We're no longer stuck with mimicking the physical world and its people-moving problems. And yet we still do it. Most of the Web 2.0 solutions being brought into online Learning Management Systems and Course Management Systems are tacked on, preserving the classes, class sizes, semesters, schedules, all of it. We still artificially divide all the learning up into equal-sized chunks, and we still require learners to group up and let some be bored while others drown.
Which brings us back to this little SpacedEd community. What I like is that it breaks most if not all those structures. It is designed from the learner back, from the research back, and it doesn't give a hoot and a half about any of the Learning Herd Effect solutions. It's about what you can learn when you aren't tethered.
Now you could argue that this device has its own artificial structures, built into the one-question-a-day method. What if I want two questions a day? Or three? And I wouldn't have much with which to argue back. But the point is not whether this structure is better than that one. The point is that here is a radical little quiz that is making an enormously good case for the power of Web 2.0 to upend the mammoth Learning Herd structure of education, and replace it, or even just parts of it, with real, provable, outcomes-based learning that fits no other mold. The box is entirely gone, vanished, beside the point. Learning is the point.
And I like that.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Everyone knows something.
It wasn't one of the most crowded sessions at Learning 2009, but it was well attended, and it impressed everyone who was there. I overheard several people talking it up later, even the next day, and in fact I did some of that myself. Not that it was an enormous breakthrough in terms of technology; it wasn't. But it had everyone's head spinning up questions like, "Why couldn't that work for all sorts of learning?" And with that thought, the light of a fundamental, far-reaching shift in the creation of learning experiences seemed to dawn.
You may not know of Cash America, but it's an enormous national chain of pawn shops. Don't snicker, they have a billion dollars in annual revenue and are publicly traded on the NYSE. So what have they done with learning? Their tiny corporate training department created a very simple system that allows store employees to create short, YouTube style videos and post them to train others. The content can be anything, but it started with tips and training on product. As you might imagine when the inventory walks in the front door all day, Cash America has something like 10 times the number of different items to sell that a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart has. Anyone can pawn anything, and employees need to know how to assess an item's value on the way in, and discuss its features on the way out.
Theirs was a simple concept. Those employees who know something about a product, whether it's Fender guitars or video game consoles or designer purses can make a video, using Flip cameras supplied by the home office, if needed (not always needed--they tend to have a lot of cameras in inventory!), and post it to the site created by corporate. And then everyone else can watch it, comment, provide other details. We were shown a video in which an associate ran through a list of differences between a particular designer purse and a well-made knock-off. The company saves over $200 every time an employee can spot the fake on the way in. It was YouTube quality video, but it was highly effective, even with a few errors.
Yes, there were errors. But like its big brother YouTube, Cash America's version is self-correcting. Within days, other employees posted comments that pointed out a couple of minor errors and omissions. And so far, there has been no need to actually reshoot the video. Associates who watch the video also read the comments.
Now, think about this in the context of the statement, "No one knows everything, but everyone knows something." Imagine if this was the primary mode of creating training in corporate America, not some off-the-wall idea way out at the fringes. What if sales training was created this way? What would that do to the level of authenticity, of reality, in the training? Take it to an extreme, what if college faculty didn't create courses based on the fullest extent of their own limited knowledge, but built these course assets up year after year by managing content created by themselves, by other faculty, by invited experts, graduates, even current students? What kind of rich environment would that be for a student, who could now gain knowledge from a wide range of perspectives, with the faculty as content mediator (yes, it still has to be managed) so that the doors and windows of knowledge stay wide open?
They call it harnessing "the wisdom of the crowd," or when used to create a product, "crowdsourcing." And for online learning, I think there's a lot of future packed in there.
You may not know of Cash America, but it's an enormous national chain of pawn shops. Don't snicker, they have a billion dollars in annual revenue and are publicly traded on the NYSE. So what have they done with learning? Their tiny corporate training department created a very simple system that allows store employees to create short, YouTube style videos and post them to train others. The content can be anything, but it started with tips and training on product. As you might imagine when the inventory walks in the front door all day, Cash America has something like 10 times the number of different items to sell that a Best Buy or a Wal-Mart has. Anyone can pawn anything, and employees need to know how to assess an item's value on the way in, and discuss its features on the way out.
Theirs was a simple concept. Those employees who know something about a product, whether it's Fender guitars or video game consoles or designer purses can make a video, using Flip cameras supplied by the home office, if needed (not always needed--they tend to have a lot of cameras in inventory!), and post it to the site created by corporate. And then everyone else can watch it, comment, provide other details. We were shown a video in which an associate ran through a list of differences between a particular designer purse and a well-made knock-off. The company saves over $200 every time an employee can spot the fake on the way in. It was YouTube quality video, but it was highly effective, even with a few errors.
Yes, there were errors. But like its big brother YouTube, Cash America's version is self-correcting. Within days, other employees posted comments that pointed out a couple of minor errors and omissions. And so far, there has been no need to actually reshoot the video. Associates who watch the video also read the comments.
Now, think about this in the context of the statement, "No one knows everything, but everyone knows something." Imagine if this was the primary mode of creating training in corporate America, not some off-the-wall idea way out at the fringes. What if sales training was created this way? What would that do to the level of authenticity, of reality, in the training? Take it to an extreme, what if college faculty didn't create courses based on the fullest extent of their own limited knowledge, but built these course assets up year after year by managing content created by themselves, by other faculty, by invited experts, graduates, even current students? What kind of rich environment would that be for a student, who could now gain knowledge from a wide range of perspectives, with the faculty as content mediator (yes, it still has to be managed) so that the doors and windows of knowledge stay wide open?
They call it harnessing "the wisdom of the crowd," or when used to create a product, "crowdsourcing." And for online learning, I think there's a lot of future packed in there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
