Disrupting Employee Development

I work for a truly wonderful company that creates the best training you can imagine. For an instructional design nerd like me, I'm in the candy store every day. It is a dream job. I work with the smartest people, the most creative folks, to design and build projects for the most visionary organizations doing the most important work. Wow. Just. Wow.

As the manager of the ID team, there are challenges, though. For starters, our standards for what our folks have to be able to do are going up every day. The technology we are designing for keeps evolving and emerging. Yesterday it was elearning. Today it's virtual reality with a side of augmentation. Who knows what exciting things will begin to show up tomorrow.

Plus we are growing like mad. The projects are coming in the door fast and furious. I'm a working manager, so I staff projects that might want a little white-glove attention or maybe just need a senior level ID.

So, what to do -- how to give my team the opportunity to grow and learn, in a way that they will enjoy and doesn't take a ton of my energy? That's when I came up with the idea of a flash mob approach.

As you know, a "flash mob" is a crowd that is organized on social media, comes together to do one thing, and then disperses. Instead of singing the Halleluia Chorus in Grand Central Station, I call people together to think about one thing, and then to make an example of it. The first flash mob was around infographics - what are they, when should they be used, and here's one we made. I asked people to form themselves into teams, and I said the teams had to have at least one of each role. Teams had a (very) limited time to work together, and then they presented to me (Director of Instructional Design), the Chief Creative Officer, and a creative director.

People loved it! We collected what we learned and now knew about infographics. Everyone said they wanted to do it again.

So we did, this time on the topic of games. Games are a hot topic in instructional design, and most IDs want to be able to point to one in their portfolio. But the budget for them can be steep, and obviously they aren't suited to every project or client. So not everyone has had the opportunity to work on a game project.

For the games flash mob, I made the high level design (topic outline, learning objectives, and audience description) and course content available to a few projects with different modalities (elearning, ILT, vILT). Again, I asked people to form teams, with at least one person of each discipline on the team. I gave the teams a short period to work and had a couple of checkins. I invited some folks to be "judges," and created a scoring rubric for them to use. I shared that with the teams, and told them that they would get extra points if their design was reusable and could be added to our library.

It was a huge success -- people got the opportunity to work with team members they hadn't worked with before. And we saw some amazing games come out of it.

If you are looking for a way to breathe life into your employee development, here's my best advice:

1. Give people a choice, about what they are doing and/or who they are doing it with. Adults like choice.
2. Train people on things that will improve their personal portfolios.
3. Choose topics that the company needs a deeper pool of talent in, and let the trainees know that they are going to be a part of the company's future by participating.
4. Always stay true to your corporate values. Teamwork, thinking outside the box, creativity are all part of my company's DNA. The flash mob concept seemed natural and comfortable to folks because of that.

And don't be afraid to try something completely different. Modeling creative thinking to your team is more than something you talk about. It is taking a risk and trying something new. It sure worked for me!

Paint-by-Numbers: Thinking About Types of Content

I have just returned from a really wonderful workshop at the Omega Institute. It was "The Emotional Landscape" taught by a brilliant photographer and amazing instructor, Douglas Beasley. You can find his website here. The workshop was about (in my eyes) about interacting with the physical world as a spiritual being, using photography as a lens to see and share that vision with others. It was much more than I had even hoped when I read the description and signed up. Honestly, my experience with non-trainers teaching has been rather grim up to now. I come with low expectations, usually. If I can take away one or two new thoughts, that's a successful workshop. That was not the case here -- I've got things to think about for years!

But that's not what this post is about.

I observed an interesting phenomena in the session, one you might have encountered if you have tried to teach anything to do with design, soft skills, or decision making. Doug would be talking to us about interacting with our photographic subjects in a spiritual way, about having a "conversation" with our subjects. And right on the heels of this, certain members of the group would be asking about equipment, technology, f-stops. Topics that were about as far away on the spectrum of photography topics as one could imagine. Doug would allow the conversation to veer into this procedural areas, but it must have been frustrating. Why was this happening?

The answer is actually quite easy. We can divide all content into two categories: What we want the learner to be able to DO when they complete the instruction, and what the learner needs to KNOW before they can learn how to DO it. "Doing" content is primarily of two types: Procedural, and Judgement-making (also known as Principals.) Procedural content is the type where if you and I follow the same steps correctly, we will both come to the same correct outcome. Judgement-based content is where you and I will apply guidelines to come to completely unique but entirely correct, outcomes.

Judgement-making is hard to learn, and almost universally poorly taught. It requires particular elements in the instruction, in order to be taught successfully. Here's what you need to include:

• A clear statement of what the happy outcome will be if the guidelines are applied appropriately
• Guidelines that the learner should consider/weigh in making their decision or applying judgement
• An example, with the guidelines called out as they are applied
• An optional non-example, where the learner can see the result if the guidelines are not appropriately applied
• Multiple opportunities for the learner to practice with the nuanced, live, feedback of a master

Procedural performance outcomes are easier to teach because all they require is that the steps be clearly described and the learner be given adequate practice in following them. 

The tricky part is that sometimes content can be described as either procedural or judgement-making. Most judgement-making topics can be taught in ways that use some sort of formula to achieve the impression that judgement was used. Do you remember "paint by number" kits? (Do they even make those any more???)  The painter can just fill in the picture chunks with the specified color, and the result is an oil painting. Or think of the self-help articles that are titled "Three-steps to....." The difference between a paint-by-number painter and an artist is that the artist is NOT doing something formulaic. What determines if the content should procedural or judgement-making is who is in the audience. 

In this case, we had a very diverse audience. We had people who understood the physics of their cameras as easily as taking their next breath. And then we had people who did not, who were novices to cameras. And everything in between. 

Although the description of the class mentioned that participants should have a good working knowledge of their camera, exactly what that meant was rather vague. (It is one of those things where if you had a good working knowledge of your camera, you would understand what the comment meant. If you don't have a good working knowledge of your camera, you wouldn't know what it meant. So people who should disqualify themselves can't, and those who could, shouldn't!) And there was no requirement to prove that knowledge before being accepted into the class. (Thank goodness, or I wouldn't have been able to attend!) It was the decision of the organizers or the instructor to allow anyone in, and there are good reasons to do that. But the tradeoff is that you are going to have class members who keep trying to turn every judgement-making content block into to a procedural content block. Or you may have class members who haven't mastered the preliminary knowledge block that is required in order to be able to learner the performance content.

How can we  design instruction so that we can work around this? In elearning, it would be easier. We could add pre-tests before each topic. If the learner can't prove mastery of whatever the preliminary or foundational knowledge is, they can be pushed to additional content. After they complete that, they can move to the judgement-making content. 

In instructor-led situations, it is much more difficult. The instructor can ignore the needs of the unqualified learners, or can require the prepared learners to wait while the less prepared learners catch up. The best thing to do is to try to keep the audience as homogeneous as possible. And there may be very good reasons not to do this. In that case, the instructor may want to have some supplementary materials available, and realize that a certain amount of procedural information is going to be requested. Determining what your boundaries will be ahead of time, and how you will deal with the group diversity may make walking this tightrope easier for you, and make the experience less frustrating for the class. In our case, the instructor used an approach of being very flexible about responding to class members' needs, bringing humor into the situation, and gently but firmly keeping the focus on the the topics he wished to emphasize. 

Cross Post: What Makes for Great Instructional Design

I was recently published at elearningindustry.com. This was something I wrote for my new job at SweetRush.com (Check them out! They are wonderful!) Take a look, and I hope you enjoy it!

What Makes for Great Instructional Design

Schemas and Adult Learning

Recently I had was telling some of my Facebook friends about my plans for school. Christine Pence, whom I met at a conference a few years ago, asked me this:

Clare Shappee Dygert Christine -- I'm hoping my thesis will be on using ASL as a schema to reduce cognitive load in asynchronous e-learning. Whatcha think?

August 23 at 7:47pm ·

Christine Pence Hmm..could you expand a little on this? Are you thinking about the approaches to learning ASL as in your blog article? http://dygertthinkingoutloud.blogspot.com/2010/08/asl-handshapes-and-schema-learning.html Or, are you thinking about generalizing the design of asynchronous learning content? Do you have a specific academic content environment in mind?

Once I got over the thrill that someone A) read my blog and B)actually thought about it and remembered I had written, I thought about Christine's question.

Schemas (or schemata), as they are discussed in the Memory and Mind chapter, by John P Clapper ("Category Learning as Schema Induction") that I mention in my ASL Hand Shapes and Schema Learning blog post are a little different than what I am considering for my research. They are related, though. Schemas, as John Clapper uses the term, refers to categories of information. Students learn the characteristics of the category and are able to sort new information, determining if the new information is in or out of the category. This corresponds to the "concept" type in my instructional design model. (You can read more than you probably want to know about my model here: http://dygertthinkingoutloud.blogspot.com/2010/01/instructional-design-model.html).

What I would like to investigate in my research is whether or not the structures and grammar of ASL  -- use of signing space, time line, for example -- can be utilized by the graphical presentation of content in asynchronous e-learning as a schema, and would using it as a schema reduce cognitive load and make learning difficult content easier for signing learners.

To get to that question, there are a lot of other questions that have to be answered. How should I measure cognitive load? There seems to be some controversy about that topic. What features of ASL would be most useful to be used as part of a schema? How would that schema translate to graphical presentation of content?

The Chair of the Psychology Department warned me that my research question is more like a dissertation than a thesis.  It does probably have a life-time of work in it. But I think that is a good thing, don't you? If, in the next two years,  I can get the questions listed and understand what work has already been done on this topic, and find an ASL linguist who is willing to work with me, then I will consider the next two years well spent.

I'm In!

I got it in writing!

Yesterday I got the very exciting news that I've been accepted to the MS program in Applied Experimental Psychology and Engineering at RIT. I am absolutely thrilled. Here's what I said in my Personal Statement:

I’m currently working at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf as the department chair for the Educational Design Resources department. Part of my job is to develop new and novel instructional assets to support the education of deaf students. One project that I’ve been working on is the development of asynchronous e-learning for deaf students.

I am interested in figuring out how to use the features of ASL to inform the graphical presentation of asynchronous e-learning. I think that certain features of ASL will perform as a schema that will reduce cognitive load, and increase retention and knowledge transfer for signing students.

The sad fact is that much of the way instruction is presented is not effective. In order to increase effectiveness of my instruction, from the beginning of my career, I’ve turned to research. And happily, there is a lot of research out there. But it’s about hearing students, not deaf.   So to answer my specific questions, I am going to have to do this research myself.  My hope is that this program will equip me with the tools and venue to discover the answers to my questions so that I can apply what I discover in my instruction.

I am joyful and passionate about my work. I believe that what I am doing will make a material difference in the lives of our students.  It probably sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I really feel that this work will be my legacy in the world – that it will improve how instruction for deaf students is developed.

My work style is flexible and collaborative.  At work I see my primary role as connection maker and obstacle remover. And it’s the same outside of work.

I’ve worked as an instructional designer for fourteen years, developing a wide variety of content for both web and instructor-led instruction. I have thought and written on instructional design topics and cognition. Joining this program is an extension of the work I’ve done up to this point.

The program specifically at RIT is a good fit for several reasons. First, I’m interested in deaf cognition, and NTID is the place to be for that. Second, this is program has a focus on application. I actually want to apply what the results of research to my work. And I’m working here, so the convenience of the location and support of my Chair are indeed factors.

The Deadly Webinar: Three Things You Can Do to Keep From Boring Your Students To Death!

I'm sure this has happened to you: You get an email about a webinar. The topic sounds just like something you have thought about/wondered about. Oh, look! It's free! And on your lunch hour! What a great opportunity to do a little professional development and munch your sandwich. What could be better?

When the appointed hour arrives, you are settled at your desk, sandwich in hand. You log into the webinar site, and the technology works fine. The presenter begins and, after a few minutes, you begin to zone out. Between your instant messages, signing a few expense reports and vacation requests, and checking email, you suddenly realize that 20 minutes have passed and you have heard nothing. You have not a clue what they are talking about now. Oh well, they will make the slides available to download at the end. Maybe you can listen to the recorded version too. Only you never do.

Sound familiar? Yeah, me too. And here's the worst part: that's how most of your participants are behaving during YOUR webinar. Here are three really simple things that you can do to make your webinars more engaging.

First, don't be afraid to give your participants pre-work to accomplish. Even if your students haven't completed the assignment, you don't have to begin from zero. A little of the information will prime your audience, and you won't have to wasted as much precious time reviewing the basics. It also sends a subtle but clear message that the participants are going to be actively involved in this engagement, and not be able to just sit there, like blobs, munching sandwiches and zoning out. 

Second, to draw your student in, tell a story, and focus on the why. I actually heard a great webinar yesterday, given by Ray Jimenez on story telling and training. Ray did a great job, and his webinar was the inspiration for this post. Ray gave several examples of how a good story really grabs your learner and makes them tune in. He used a Mercedes commercial to illustrate this. This commercial really grabbed me. I was ready to go out and buy one after watching it, and I never respond to ads like that! If only the car wasn't $100,000+! Telling stories like this is really establishing the "why" that Simon Sinek talks about.  (You can read my post about that here.)

Third, engage your students by asking them questions as you move along through your talk, and - here's the important part - respond to their comments by name. When Ray read my response to one of his questions and said, "Clare, great point," I was hooked! I was no longer just an anonymous participant. I was Clare, with the great point. I wanted to be recognized again, so I listened hard and tried to make good replies to his questions. Ray didn't do this once or twice, he did his all the way through his talk. It was very energizing and engaging, and contributed to the success of the talk.

I'm sure that there are more things/different things you could do to make your webinars engaging. But nothing works like involving your audience. Give these a try and let me know what you think!

Segmenting, Signaling, and Weeding: Improving Learning from Educational Video

It's always exciting to find out that something I have believed to be true actually is true, and there is research to support it! Today I read a wonderful journal article by Mohamed Ibrahim and Pavlo D Antoneko, both affiliated with Oaklahoma State University. The paper is titled, Effects of Segmenting, Signaling, and Weeding on Learning from Educational Video. The study used hearing students and focused on dual channel processing of video and the cognitive load problems that arise, particularly for novice learners without domain knowledge. I believe there are many good take-aways for content that is being developed for deaf learners.

Ibrahim and Antonenko tested three strategies that seem to improve knowledge retention: segmenting, signaling, and weeding.  Breaking the content into smaller pieces allows students' working memory to  Signaling means that the students are notified when a piece of content is important. Weeding refers to removing all superfluous content. 

The core problem is that when novice learners encounter video instruction, it tends to be delivered all in one big piece. It has to be swallowed whole, or not at all. In addition, if the student is a novice, without domain knowledge, then he has to try to figure out what is important and should be remembered, and then where that knowledge should be remembered. So, Ii the content is too long, for example an hour instead of 5 minutes, the student's working memory can't manage it. By contrast, when a student encounters a difficult text, the student can usually stop it, or think about it.

Segmenting is the practice of chunking the video. When the 5 minute video ends, the student must do something to get the next piece. Just this is enough to give his brain the time to consider and store the content.

Signally adresses a problem that novice learners have. Without domain knowledge, the student has to determine what is important, and what is not, and where each part of the knowledge fits, locically. Signaling notifies the student when something important is happening in the video. Not having to make this determination for themselves, when they don't yet have experience reduces the cognitive load on the student, and results in bettter retenion and learning.

Closely related is the problem of weeding. Weeding removes all superfluous material so again the student is able to understand what is important and what is not. Removing this material also reduces the cognitive load for the student.

The concepts of segmenting, signalling, weeding are critical to the instructional design model I'm assembling for teaching business skills, particularly concept and principle content types, to deaf professionals.

Video Cases Research by Ulgur Kale and Pmela Whitehouse, and What It Means to Asynchronous E-Learning

I just read a fascinating article in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education. Structuring Video Cases to Support Future Teachers' Problem Solving by Ulgur Kale and Pamela Whitehouse (you can read the entire article here) describes research done on the use of video cases with preservice teachers. I was particularly interested in what they call "ill-structured pedagogical problem solving." I think this means the messy problems that pop up in real life, when there are people involved. These kind of problems are layered, and, according to Kale and Whitehouse, what the preservice teacher can see in the problem is based on their own preferred teaching theory. In other words, what I call "The Carpenter's Problem" or if all you own is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

I'm interested in the use of video cases for teaching business skills, and this study offered me some great leads on how to structure them. Here's the summary:

1. Students have to be taught how to notice. I'm not sure that Kale and Whitehouse would exactly recognize this from their article, but it's in there. I think that most of what a person needs to learn about any subject that requires more than memorization is how to notice. The how-to-notice piece is what organizes chaos.

2. Students need a schema  for analysis and appropriate scaffolding. It is in reflecting and verbalizing the problem solving process that students are able to understand what is at hand, and their ability to reflect is enhanced. Tools that were proven useful included guiding questions, rubrics, and category codes.

3. Students need more than one schema.  Reviewing content with more than one lens (or with the help of experts with more than one analysis model) allows the students to understand the material more deeply. More points of view translate to greater ability to notice different aspects of the teaching moment.

4. Video cases should be segmented, rather than shown in entirety. Segmented video leads to better skills transfer and knowledge retention. I always felt this was true, because I can feel myself becoming fatigued. Apparently research by R.E. Meyer reveals that when students are working on ill-defined problems, the breaks between segments is particularly necessary because the cognitive and meta-cognitive demands require more time for recovery.

5. Resources should be arranged sequentially. The model for presentation would be first a video segment, and then the instructor's analysis. Then another segment, and more analysis. Presentation in this manner helps the preservice teachers to better identify the "new" material in the subsequent segments. I think having the students apply their own analysis in this manner would also be advantageous. 

All of this was very useful when I consider how to best teach principle (judgement) based learning, such as that I will convey in a business skills course. Right away I am thinking that we need to develop a method for observation that can be taught to students before we start in on the content area. I need to do research to see what sorts of analysis models exist now. The breaking the content into segments and structuring the analysis with the students will be the easy part, I think.

Business Skills Training

I'm working on a fascinating project right now -- development of business skills training for Deaf professionals. Teaching judgment and decision making is a complex undertaking. I have even heard people in the training profession suggest that it can't be done. Of course, they are confusing something that is difficult with something that is impossible. Teaching judgment making is very hard, not impossible, though. Thank goodness for that, or we would have even fewer people in this world making good decisions!

This training will have three parts:

• Self-paced tutorials;
• Group instruction, through webinars or something similar;
• One-on-one mentoring.

Self-paced tutorials I think can be effective for some kinds of content -- what has been described as "knowledge needed" or "What do I need to know before I can start to learn how-to do something." Defining terms, giving students facts, describing the structure or process of something are all types of content where a self-paced tutorial comes in handy. It will give the student the opportunity to learn something at the speed he finds most comfortable. I anticipate that learning English vocabulary and specialized terminology will be important to Deaf professionals, and self-pace tutorials are the best way to learn this kind of content.

My concept for this training is something like the way they doing over at e-Cornell. There, if you buy an online course,  you only have access to it for a period of time. That is because they have real live teachers at the other end of the wire. Contrast this to Element K's product, which is 100% online and without the intervention of humans. I think the e-Cornell approach is preferable, even though I worked at Element K and lead their early efforts at business skills development.

Much of what is currently available in the realm of self-paced tutorials is incredibly boring and ineffective. So whatever we develop has to be entirely new, interesting, engaging, and effective. We are experimenting with using the features of ASL to guide our graphical interface development. The hope is that signing individuals will find that the content "works" for them, and is more effective and engaging because of that.

Self-paced tutorials fall very flat when it comes to teaching how to make judgments, and making judgments is what business skills is all about. Why won't a self-paced tutorial do the job? Because when learning to make judgments, we need subtle corrections from experts. Self-paced tutorials just can't distinguish between almost, almost right and almost right. It can only say right or wrong. The kind of gross distinctions that self-paced tutorials make is not fine enough to really help people understand how to change, if they aren't dead on immediately. To do that we need feedback from a live person, and in my plan, we will do this in a group instruction setting, such as a webinar.

But new judgment makers need even more feedback than that -- they need the input from a coach or mentor that is focusing just on them, and on their unique situation. So I am proposing a time-bound engagement between learner and mentor, where the mentor will give focused feedback and encouragement to a Deaf professional. Of course, it would be optimal if these coaches were themselves Deaf, but that might be a challenge in the beginning. But ultimately that is what we will want -- people who themselves have been successful in advancing their careers serving as mentors and coaches.

Using Research in Design

I was having a conversation recently about designing effective eLearning, and I made a statement that my design is research-based. When pressed for details, I mentioned the name of my ID guru: Dr. Ruth Colvin Clark. Dr. Clark was instrumental in the development of the instructional design model I used at Element K, and her work continues to have a profound effect on me.

But of course, Dr. Clark hasn't been specifically working with D/deaf college students, so of course while I can use her work as a starting place, it doesn't answer all the questions that arise when developing instruction for a totally different culture and language, especially a language that is manual versus spoken.

So for the past three years, I have been working on an instructional design model that starts with my specific audience, D/deaf college students. Many in this group  use ASL as their primary language, and English as a second.However, some use English, and only begin to sign when the come to NTID. And others are scattered along the continuum between ASL and English.

(Side comment: learning a second language while trying to invent an instructional design model for native users of that language isn't so much like building a canoe while rowing it as it is like growing the forest, felling and milling the trees, building the canoe and rowing it! Everyday I learn another little piece that helps me to internalize and know more.)

As I have thought about each section of my design model, I've asked myself: "What does the research say about D/deaf adult learners and this?" I've read mountains of research of various topics, such as:

• How do ASL signers expect/want/need content to be ordered and chunked? How is this different from the way I (as a native English speaker) expect/want/need it done? (Because, let's face it: Our default audience is always "me".)
• What features of ASL can be incorporated in to my instructional design? What features are critical, and what don't matter? For my my non-ASL students in the crowd, this would include things such as presenting material from general to specific, mentioning time first, using a topic-comment pattern, and showing, not telling. There is a lot more to it, but that gives you the gist.
• What kind of illustrations/graphics are most effective? 
• What kind of text is most effective?
• If we incorporate captions, or English, what is the best use of that?
• At what point are what kind of practice activities most effective?
• Are there actually such a thing as visual learners? If so, what does this mean in the development of my content?
• What aspects of Deaf culture are import to incorporate?
• How can non-manual sign components (such as mouth morphemes, gaze, facial expressions, and body shifts be effectively used?

What I have found is that researchers like to research tiny tiny tiny little pieces of things. And I need research on much bigger chunks. So while I continue to read and ask questions, I have also started to establish relationships with researchers so I can hopefully influence the future direction of their research. I firmly believe that it will be through those partnerships that I will finally be able to craft the most effective and engaging instruction. 

We are starting to build the first prototype -- business skills content for D/deaf professionals that desire to move into first-time manager roles. I am confident that this process, with it's millions of design decisions, will lead us to ask more and better questions. And asking the questions, well, that's the first step, isn't it?

Professional Development for Deaf Professionals

I'm really interested in developing some kind of materials for professional development for NTID grads. I saw some statistics that say our students enter the job market at the same pay rate as their hearing colleagues, but when they have been in the market for a while, they stop making the same sort of gains in position and salary. My thought is that our students aren't being promoted to management positions at the same rate as their hearing colleagues. I think that there may be five reasons for this:

1. Weak written English skills
2. Lack of opportunities to be mentored
3. They don't "overhear", so soft skills information isn't being passed to them in that way
4. Lack of appropriate professional development opportunities. (I don't believe simply providing an interpreter at a workshop is enough. And I am not sure that employers are actually making these programs available due to the additional cost of interpreters.)
5. Unwillingness by Deaf professionals to move around, due to the difficulty of training hearing co-workers how to communicate. Once Deaf professionals get things worked out, they may be reluctant to repeat the process. 

Here are the topics I believe would be useful:

• Personal goal setting
• Time management
• Conducting a meeting
• Project management
• Some kind of negotiation skills training 
• Focused business writing: emails, meeting minutes, meeting agendas, status reports
• Presentation skills
• Self-branding and planning your career

I saw some e-learning that was developed at Cornell. The "class" has some material that the student does on his own, and then some webinar sessions where the students are "together". I want the self-pace material to be developed in a way that takes advantages of ASL features. I am planning to work on a prototype of one of these as a "Major Design Project." 

Translating Ideas to Practice in the Classroom

"Teachers will not take up ideas that sound attractive, no matter how extensive the research base, if the ideas are presented as general principles that leave the task of translating them into everyday practice entirely up to the teachers... What teachers need is a variety of living exapmples of implementation, as practiced by teachers with whom they can identify and from whom the can derive the confidence that they can do better. They need to see examples of what doing better means in practice." (Black and Williams, 2008)

Truer words were never written.

ASL, Handshapes, and Schema Learning

Being an instructional designer by trade, I tend to want to take a very active role in my own learning. Learning ASL is a very high priority to me right now, and I am constantly looking for ways to improve the quality and speed of my learning. In general, my ASL teachers have been wonderful, possibly the best teachers of any subject I have had in my long career as a learner.

At this point I have taken 7 quarters of ASL classes. Here at NTID, the first 3 courses are ASL A, B and C. In those courses you learn some basic vocabulary, and general rules for how the language is structured. After that you can take Communication Practice (which practices expressive skills), Receptive practice, or courses on specific parts of the language, such as fingerspelling, numbers, and classifiers.

There is one thing they seem to be doing lately that I wonder about.

There are certain signs that were introduced quite early in my learning that I am constantly confused about. Maybe in the first week of ASL we learned the sign for "appointment" and "work".  I can come up with the sign for "work" -- I have used it many times. But the sign for "appointment seems" welded to the sign for "work" in my brain. And although I know if it is different than "work", but I have to really think hard to come up for it. Why is this happening? When I asked my wonderful tutor Marge Carillo, why these are taught at the same time, she replied that she taught them together because they were similiar signs.

Does teaching things that are close or similar help or hinder the learning process?

 My research turned up a chapter of Memory and Mind titled Category Learning as Schema Induction by researcher John P. Clapper, who is affiliated with California State University. (The entire chapter can be found here.)

Clapper contends that adults classify things into groups, and the most efficient way to learn the next thing is to see what it is "just like that, only different" as my brother Clyde would say. So showing the first sign, then showing a second, that is similar in some way -- either handshape or movement -- is good. But it is important how those two signs are introduced. Clapper says,

"As already noted, when instances of two categories are presented in a randomly
intermixed sequence, relatively little learning of either category is observed.
However, when the sequence is arranged so that one category (call it “A”) is
well-learned prior to the introduction of the second category (“B”), then people
will learn both categories easily. Thus, categories A and B will both be learned
much better in a “contrast-enhancing” sequence like A A A A A A A A A A A
A B A B B A B A A A B, and so forth, than in a “mixed” sequence like A B A
B B A B A A B B A B A B B A B A A A B, and so on. The only difference
between these two sequences is the fact that the first six Bs in the second (mixed)
sequence are absent and replaced by the same number of As in the first (contrast)
sequence. Thus, simply reducing the number of B instances (by eliminating all
of them from the first 12 trials of the training sequence) leads to a dramatic
improvement in B learning."

This would lead me to think that teaching one sign - "work" and having the student practice it multiple times before another sign - "appointment" -  is introduced, and then contrasted with "work" over and over, would be better than showing the first sign and then the second sign. I think this is especially important if the signs are similar, because they will have less to contrast with.  Presenting and practicing the material in the manner that John Clapper suggests would emphasize the differences in the signs, and that should result in improved retention and learning.

Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

The National Educational Technology Plan 2010 was published this March. (You can download a copy of the Executive Summary here.) If you work in educational technology, I encourage you to take a look at this -- it is pretty interesting. Here are some points that I found especially interesting:

•  21st Century competencies that our students must have include critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and "multimedia communication".  I'm not sure what they are thinking of for multimedia communication -- Use of multimedia tools in presentations? Webinars? 

• Students must be able to both develop deep understanding in specific content areas and make connections between content areas.I think that it is the connections between content areas that is most important, because that is how new knowledge is created.

• Assessment of student performance must happen while there is still time to make improvements. I'm afraid that this will be translated to mean have more standardized tests. I believe it would be more useful to teach students how to self-assess. A score on a standardized test is not as valuable as the ability understand one's own strengths and weaknesses, and to chart a course of perpetual improvement.

•  The Plan calls for a shift from teachers that are "solo practitioners" to one of "connected teaching." To make this possible, the Plan suggests that teacher professional development must stop being "episodic and ineffective" and become "collaborative, coherent and continuous." I believe that we need to move from a model where teachers are dispensers of facts, and more fellow learners who model how to assess, plan, and execute learning.

ADDIE

This morning I was reading over the job postings for positions on LinkedIn. (Not to worry - I'm not going anywhere! I just like to stay on top of what is requested/expected for folks in my line of work.) I saw a position that looked really interesting -- a consulting job for an Instructional Design Manager in India. That is, it looked interesting until I got to this line:

Client follows the ADDIE model of Instructional Design and Development.

People, people, people! ADDIE isn't anymore an instructional design model than "lather, rinse, repeat" is a design model. ADDIE, for my non-instructional design peeps means Analysis, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. A design model that has "Design" as one of it's phases -- that's not terribly helpful. A design model should give me guidelines on how to design -- how to decide what's in, what's not,  to chunk, order,  present content. Seeing this statement tells me that whoever wrote the job description, and likely whoever is the hiring manager, has no idea what it takes to make good, instructionally effective content.Working for these people would be a nightmare because I would be continuously struggling to educate management/the client on what the heck we were trying to do.

Likewise, when I'm interviewing candidates and I ask them "What instructional design model guides you most?" and they reply, "The ADDIE model," I know they haven't a clue. Take a few minutes and simply scan the results of a search on "instructional design" and then you can at least toss around names like Merrill and Clark. Otherwise, I can guarantee you - we won't be chatting at a second interview!

Instructional Design Model

Today I had the opportunity to meet with a group of researchers at NTID. I didn't end up using my Prezi presentation. The meeting rooms are set up so that you have to get up and leave the table to use the computer -- I hate that! So I just talked.


This is my outline, with the questions I am investigating. I asked the researchers to help me with sources of information on these questions. They immediately brought up some very interesting points that were very helpful.


I am going to generate a sample course outline based on this so they will have a more concrete picture of what I am trying to accomplish. This model would work for any type of content, but my first course will be a soft skills course for Deaf adults who are about 15 years into their careers.


If you have any suggestions or feedback, please don't hesitate to give it to me!


Instructional Design Model

Course Hierarchy

Course (I am too impatient to get this list indented the way I want it! )

• Lesson
• Lesson
• Lesson
• Topic
• Topic
• Topic
• Objective
• Introduction Elements
• Context Statement
• Wiifm (“What’s in it for me”)
• Organizer
• Content
• Content
• Content
• Interactives/Practice
• Graphical Elements
• Summary
• Evaluation

Audience – What are the important questions?
Communication style? How accepting will learners be if information is presented in a style that varies from their own most preferred style?
Experience with distance/e-learning?
Expectations for learning situations – teacher/student behaviorial expectations?
What audience characteristics matter?

Introductions
Should objectives be explicitly stated? In what form?
Can prerequisite knowledge be expected, established?
What is the best way to generate emotional response?
What is the best way to establish context, present wiifm?
Should context statement always be job-based?
Should organizer element use “features” of ASL? General → Specific? Visual organizer? Topic → Comment? Others???

4.Content
Types:
Fact – one of a kind information that student will memorized
Concept – distinguishes if something is a member of a class or not. Requires a definition, distinguishing characteristic, definite characteristics, variable characteristics, example, optional non-example. How best to present each part?

Process – A description of a chain of events with phases or stages. Used especially to teach problem solving. Requires a graphical representation of process, with clearly delineated beginnings and endings to stages. How to best present?

Procedure – A series of steps that if followed renders a consistent result. Procedures may be branching, or have optional steps. Generally follows the pattern of Location – Action – Result. Does this still hold? How best to present?

Principal – Teaches decision making where a judgment is required. Requires a statement of desired outcome, guidelines, example, optional non-example. How best to present?

Mode of presentation:
Which of these are optimally presented as self-paced tutorials? Which are optimally taught by mentor/teacher? Which should be presented as part of a collaborative exploration?
What communication models should be used? How much written English, if any, is acceptable?

Order and chunk size:
What is optimal chunk size? What are the distinguishing characteristics that determine chunk size?
What order? Common skills and knowledge first? Simple to complex? General to specific? Other?
How much repetition is acceptable/optimal?

Interactives/Practice:
What is optimal frequency? Following topic? Content block?
Collaborative or solo? When is either optimal?
Feedback during, after, not at all? From instructor? Peers? What form?
Is “life-like” important?
Use of emotion?

Graphical Elements:
Video or other representations of the instructor teaching are NOT graphical elements. Graphical elements communicate meaning beyond what the bare words would communicate.
Photo-realistic? Or not?
How presented?
When are they required?

Summary:
What elements are required?
What best to present? How?

Evaluation:
How to best evaluate student mastery of objectives?

Constructivism and Online Learning, part 1

A confession. I am a constructivist.

Constructivism is the belief that learners construct mental models of the world, and then integrate new information into those models. Learners need to direct the learning process, because they know where their mental models need work. This integration is an active process, where the learner has to seek out the knowledge, examine it, determine how and where it fits, reject it if it isn't sound. It is about as far away from a traditional learning model, where the teacher is the font of knowledge and determines what is going to be learned.

For a long time I didn't even know what the name of this was. I hadn't heard the term constructivism. But I grew up in a family that revered self-directed learning. As a child and young adult, I spent the summers studying some topic of my own choosing. One year it was falconry. Not a lot of need for falconry in suburban Dallas, Texas in the late 1960s. But that's what I wanted to learn about. Another year it was folklore, the oral tradition and nursery rhymes. I would read everything we had at the Garland Public Library on my subject of choice. Sometimes that wasn't much. It would have been great if there had been a way that someone could have helped me to construct a framework to think about these subjects, or a way I could have discussed my ideas with others. But I did learn how to dig into something for myself, and I didn't have to apologize to anyone for being interested in kind of weird stuff.

Being able to learn on one's own, to direct a program of study, was much appreciated in my family. Here is a story about my father's uncle. (Warning: this is not the History Channel. I have adjusted the "facts" to suit my need, and over time I don't even remember how much I adjusted the facts. I do this all the time. Some people may call this "lying". I call it "story-telling.")

Ok... So, my grandfather and my great uncle had a dairy business. Grandpa was good with the housewives, and Uncle Lawrence was good with the cows. Grandpa was handsome and smooth and a good enough business man that he retired very early and left southern New York and moved his family to someplace nice -- San Diego -- while he was quite young and still enjoying life. Uncle Lawrence was good with the cows.

One day, Uncle Lawrence had a question about the education that his childern were receiving. So, after tending to the cows, he hitched up his overalls and made his way to the School Board meeting. Uncle Lawrence didn't have the advantage of much formal education -- he had not finished high school. In those days people did that, they quit school and went to work to support their families. So when he got down to the School Board meeting, he was a man who knew how to work hard, who wasn't educated and was good with the cows. Family lore has it that the School Board men weren't very hospitable to Uncle Lawrence. Maybe they chuckled at his un-educated, go0d-with-cows ways. They embarrassed him. Uncle Lawrence returned home.

But as I said earlier, Uncle Lawrence knew how to work hard. So he decided to work hard at becoming educated. He visited the free public library and he read and studied. Eventually he became the President of the School Board.

The moral of the story to me was always clear: Education isn't only what happens at school. As long as there is a free public library, there is no need for me to ignorant. Hard work, study and reading are all it takes.

In this series of reflections, I will discuss how Constructivist theory can be implemented into the development of online learning. I encourage you to share your thoughts -- this isn't just me talking, it should be one side of a dialogue. So, please, pipe up as you think of stuff. The conversation with help us both.

Learning from My Deaf Teachers

Last July I joined the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, NY. Because of NTID, there are quite a few Deaf folks in Rochester, so I had some causual experience of seeing people sign. But I didn't know very much about the culture, and never really thought about how my instructional design "played" to a Deaf audience. Our content was captioned, so it was accessible, right? Wasn't that enough?

When I started to dig into the work at my new job, I decided that I wanted to develop an instructional design model for creating online learning for Deaf adults. It only took me a few minutes of watching my old e-learning to realize that it was woefully poor, if you did have the sound turned on. It lost most of it's meaning and the captions just didn't work to fill the void. But beyond that, I want to develop a model that actually works best for Deaf learners, and doesn't just have access tacked on as an afterthought.

So, it seems to me, that a good place to start is to observe good Deaf teachers. I am assuming that a Deaf person would know the very best how to teach a Deaf student. Lucky for me, I spend an hour a day, four days a week with such people -- my ASL teachers.

We have two languages at NTID: English, and ASL (American Sign Language). I have the opportunity to attend ASL classes and also to work with a tutor twice a week. I have a very long way to go to master this lovely language, but I am making progress.

I have had two different teachers for my ASL classes, and they are both really excellent. They are Sam Holcomb and Barbara Ray Holcomb. I have observed four things that they both do. I am going to assume that these are common practices of excellent Deaf teachers.

1. They don't assume that because they are broadcasting, I am receiving. They make sure I am attending before they communicate. I have started noticing my own communication patterns, and I see that I have a working assumption that because I am talking, you are listening. Of course that's not true -- how many times have I said something, only to discover that the recipient of my communication wasn't listening. Then I have to (after expressing frustration!) repeat myself. Barbara Ray and Sam signal that they are ready to begin -- then check to see if I am making eye contact with them - attending to them. They do that with everyone in the class, all 10 - 15 of us. And if someone isn't ready, they wait.

2. Barbara Ray and Sam both check for understanding after they communicate something. They look right in my face to see if I have understood what they are saying to me. If I don't actively communicate back that I understand, by nodding, saying 'ok' or 'yes' or 'right' -- they communicate right to me and keep doing it until I understand. I can't just zone out and not pay attention because they are checking to see if I am following at every juncture.

3. Both teachers will use a variety of ways to communicate new information -- fingerspelling the word, signing it, and sometimes using pantomime or pictures. Sam frequently explains how the sign might have evolved. It is amazing to me that I have developed the vocabulary that I now have almost completely by this method. Can you imagine learning Spanish at the earliest, most basic level without using English? I can't. Yet, this is how we have learned ASL.

4. The curriculum is entirely material that I need to do my job. It is completely relevant to my everyday existance at NTID. We do learn a little about the daily life of Deaf folks, and a little about Deaf culture, and I find that interesting. It helps me to understand how to modify my communication to be better understood by my Deaf clients and colleagues. But by and large, the stuff I am learning is what I need to survive, on the job.

You may be reading this and thinking, "Well, that's not very ground breaking -- that's just good teaching!" and you would be right. However, in my experience in all levels of education, from primary school up to graduate school, I have rarely had teachers who actively communicated as well as these two people do.

I am going to continue to observe Barbara Ray and Sam, and am going to try to observe some other Deaf professors here. I feel like there is a lot of gold here. Watching them is going to help me to devleop my instructional design theory, and after that, develop the best e-learning ever for the Deaf.