Training

My Heart Will Go On: Social Media In The Enterprise

I just read a wonderful post by Jane Hart entitled “The Future Of Social Media In The Enterprise“.  In it, she deftly describes an issue that I’ve been encountering often lately with potential clients who want to talk about using this game-changing paradigm-shifting bar-raising (insert your own favorite stupid marketing metaphor here) thing we call Social Media.

titanic1Her argument is quite elegant.  If I may distill it, she feels that using Social Media tools only behind your firewall (not allowing employees to connect outside the company) is short-sighted.  And that their real value is the cross-pollination and connection that comes from engaging across a discipline, around the world, and to people who see things in vastly different ways.

(I bet British Petroleum has a great internal forum to discuss how much time and money to spend when drilling really deep wells, and what to do when you get 700+ safety violations.  But maybe, if they’d been more connected to reality, they wouldn’t have lost $17 BILLON DOLLARS and become the poster boy for dumb.)

I have to say, though, that I’m getting a little bit tired having this discussion with people who are extremely focused on keeping the fence up between their employees and the rest of the world.  Stopping the dangers of Farmville, YouTube, and people randomly getting information they might use to improve their skills.  It’s exhausting to keep having the same chat with the same network administrators.  The same vendors who want to sell their custom “behind the firewall” solutions.  The same tiny minds who think they have all sorts of special secrets about how they put their canned hams in the boxes and ship them out.

Would it make more sense for me to have a “pre-work” session, where there’s an assessment of some kind?  And if the client is mostly focused on how to lock all the doors and bar all the windows — just smile and move along?

On Jane’s blog, I said it this way:

We try to run from or eradicate that which we do not understand. If we can’t kill it, we try to control it and limit the access of others.

Probably true with the first cave-person who found fire. Still true in corporate America today. I have to admit that I, personally, am actually getting a little tired of having this discussion with potential clients and people who ask for advice.

I want to just say “Whatever” and move on to someone who’s open to new ideas and things that might help them. (Kind of a lifeboat drill — if I’ve only got so many years left, do I spend them arguing with people about the VALUE of parachutes or just HAND OUT parachutes to as many people as possible before the crash?)

It’s actually kind of exhausting. Like trying to convince my mom that “unlimited long-distance” actually meant she could talk to me as long and as often as she liked.

Never won that one, either.

So what do you think?  Do you want a parachute, or should we keep talking about the nuts and the in-flight movie?

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Is NPR Denser Than Chengdeite?

They say the densest material on earth is something called “Chengdeite“. But this morning I was listening to a reporter on NPR, and I’m thinking we’ve got a new competitor in the race.

teacherThe story was about how a Boston school district was wondering if they could improve teacher skills by modeling a “resident” program after medical school — where a new teacher taught side-by-side with an experienced teacher rather than just jumping in to a tough school with little or no experience.

Wow! Stop the (virtual) presses, Jeremy! Better get this one on the air!

They went on to interview people in the program, a guy at the Harvard School of Education, and several “actual students” — all of whom, surprisingly, agreed that getting some practical experience would be a good thing.

Uh, huh.  Incredible.  Better get that news to Plumbers, Electricians, Surveyors, Air Traffic Controllers, Cake Bakers, Serial Killers and DMV Employees nationwide.

Sometimes it’s enough to make an education wonk weep.

Is Learning Going Down The Toilet?

Update: If you do not have children in a large, urban school district this post may not make a lot of sense. You are among the lucky.

As someone who has used toilets for many, many years — with little formal training — I feel quite qualified to redesign our nation’s plumbing system to improve the performance issues that I’ve identified.

toilet(I’m basing this on the recent action of the State Board Of Education in Texas, in their amazing redesign of a curriculum created by professional teachers and learning designers. This is an attitude that I frequently encounter, in which someone who has experienced education feels that that qualifies them to design education for others.)

Now you might think that it would make more sense for me to ask a master plumber who has years of training and experience how to handle the waste that flows out of my home. But since I’ve spent so much time on the input side of the equation, I feel perfectly capable of making decisions without consulting one of these so called “plumbing gurus” and just going with my gut.  (First of many puns intended.)

My Ten-Point C.R.A.P. Program

With much thought, I’ve developed a Comprehensive Revised Aesthetics Processing (CRAP) program that will deliver a system flush with success and we’ll all come up smelling like roses.

  1. Your toilet will be assigned a particular plumber based on where you live, regardless of the quality of the plumber.  You can petition the local Plumbing Board to allow you to drive your toilet across town to a better plumber every morning, but we won’t pay to put it on a bus.
  2. If your plumber fails to unclog your toilet over and over, we’ll just move him to another geographic location.  Much like the Catholic Church, no matter how deep of a pile of shit he’s in we won’t admit it or take steps to remove him.
  3. We believe every single toilet is unique — so Plumbing Boards in each community must spend months deciding where to put the “flush” handle, how to connect the water, and whether or not the float is hollow. It would be impossible to have national standards of any kind for toilets. Local communities know better what they need.
  4. If, over several years, the toilet doesn’t perform well, we’ll just keep asking for more money for purchase of toilets.  And complaining that people don’t respect the work that toilets do.
  5. No toilet can be removed, even if it doesn’t perform at the most basic level.  Once installed, it’s there for life.  Best we can offer is a “substitute-potty” program where we have specialists come in for huge fees to try to fix the toilet and fail.
  6. Well over 50% of the budget for Toilet Repair will have to go to “Toilet Administration” — a group of people in nice suits who have never actually installed or used a toilet.  They’ll make charts, graphs, and evaluate the plumber as he is on his knees getting his hands dirty.
  7. If you have several toilets in your house, we will require that you balance the use of each amongst all family members.  Just because one is closer, performs better or has less gunfire will not be considered a factor.
  8. If you complain that your toilet doesn’t perform well, we will fight to the death any attempt to actually measure how well waste passes through.  Even though nearly every other profession in the world (from jet pilot to fry cook) is measured on results, we’re special. Plus, it might make the toilet feel bad if we labeled it as “failing” in some way.
  9. After 25 years, we’ll remove your toilet.  But you’ll still have to pay for it every month, along with a generous service allowance and perks.  And it’s free to go be a toilet for someone else and get paid twice for taking one load.
  10. Despite all this, you do have the option of installing your toilet in a “Charter RestRoom” that is sponsored locally for those who demand better performance.  You’ll still have to pay all the fees for that traditional toilet you’re not using, and at any time we retain the right to tell you we’re pulling the plug and your successful toilet no longer meets our standards.

Legislation is already in front of Congress (“No Behind Left Behind”) to implement this simple plan, and I encourage you to call your representative to urge them until it passes.  If they have trouble passing something of this size, there are aids available.

Beyond The Lecture — Fighting The Learning Wars

If you’re involved in the process of trying to move information from your head into other heads (aka “learning” or “teaching” or “training” or “edumacating”) you probably began with the simplest form –

lecture1972the lecture. Open mouth, spew words, hope recipient can hear and understand and process and retain information. You used this model because for twelve years (or more) that’s the way you were taught in formal education.

And learners like lectures. They’re passive, and don’t require much. It’s easy to zone out, thinking about the weekend and having some fun. There’s little risk of looking stupid, or giving a wrong answer. Somebody else is driving, and you’re just along for the ride. All you have to do is keep your eyes open, avoid drooling, and ask a few easy softball questions at the end.

“So tell me, Professor Canhardly, since you wrote the text we’re using does that mean that you’d heartily endorse all the concepts and theories therein?”

Speaking as a presenter, we like lectures too! You all have to look at us up here in the front of the room, and pretend that what we’re saying is important. We get to decide what’s important, and what’s not. We get to make the lame jokes, and you have to pretend to laugh. And if you ask a difficult question, we get to deflect it or claim that it’s outside the bounds of our subject for today.

So — What’s The Problem?

The problem is (you just KNEW there was going to be a problem here, didn’t you?) that lectures aren’t very effective at long-term transfer of information from one humanoid to another. They’re pretty good if all you want to do is just jam some random facts in a head, take a test, and then forget it forever. Or if you’re just trying to get an evaluation that says “Dr. Neverdidt was really funny and told good stories”.

Here’s a simple example — if you’re headed out to the airport today, would you choose the pilot who’s heard a LECTURE on how to fly, or the pilot who’s actually FLOWN before?

Of course you’d want the guy who’d had some time actually doing the task, in addition to hearing someone talk about it.  And, in a nutshell, that’s why lectures really can’t do much more than give you a really nice overview of a topic.  In the learning world, we’ve got a way to measure what level of actual “doing” you’re going to have after we’ve taught you something — it’s called “Bloom’s Taxonomy“.  (A “taxonomy” is just a fancy word for a classification system — like the Dewey Decimal System at the library or the way butchers grade meat at the grocery store.)

Dr. Bloom ranked the learner’s ability to do something on six levels, and gave them names — and then provided examples and descriptive words to go along with — like so:

Category

Example and Key Words
Knowledge: Recall data or information. Examples: Recite a policy. Quote prices from memory to a customer. Knows the safety rules.Key Words: defines, describes, identifies, knows, labels, lists, matches, names, outlines, recalls, recognizes, reproduces, selects, states.
Comprehension: Understand the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and problems. State a problem in one’s own words. Examples: Rewrites the principles of test writing. Explain in one’s own words the steps for performing a complex task. Translates an equation into a computer spreadsheet.Key Words: comprehends, converts, defends, distinguishes, estimates, explains, extends, generalizes, gives Examples, infers, interprets, paraphrases, predicts, rewrites, summarizes, translates.
Application: Use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Applies what was learned in the classroom into novel situations in the work place. Examples: Use a manual to calculate an employee’s vacation time. Apply laws of statistics to evaluate the reliability of a written test.Key Words: applies, changes, computes, constructs, demonstrates, discovers, manipulates, modifies, operates, predicts, prepares, produces, relates, shows, solves, uses.
Analysis: Separates material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences. Examples: Troubleshoot a piece of equipment by using logical deduction. Recognize logical fallacies in reasoning. Gathers information from a department and selects the required tasks for training.Key Words: analyzes, breaks down, compares, contrasts, diagrams, deconstructs, differentiates, discriminates, distinguishes, identifies, illustrates, infers, outlines, relates, selects, separates.
Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure. Examples: Write a company operations or process manual. Design a machine to perform a specific task. Integrates training from several sources to solve a problem. Revises and process to improve the outcome.Key Words: categorizes, combines, compiles, composes, creates, devises, designs, explains, generates, modifies, organizes, plans, rearranges, reconstructs, relates, reorganizes, revises, rewrites, summarizes, tells, writes.
Evaluation: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials. Examples: Select the most effective solution. Hire the most qualified candidate. Explain and justify a new budget.Key Words: appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates, evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates, summarizes, supports.
Source: http://www.skagitwatershed.org/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html

So, any time you want to teach somebody something, you can think about measuring what they can do based on these six levels.  They range from very low “knowledge” to very high “evaluation”.  To make that a little easier to understand, let’s try a couple of examples.

Suppose your job was to teach people to tie their tennis shoes.  Here’s what that might look like in the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy:

Knowledge: Recall data or information.

 Can identify tennis shoes from loafers.

Comprehension: Understand the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and problems. State a problem in one’s own words.

 Can explain why it’s important to tie shoes correctly (“fall down – go boom!”)

Application: Use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Applies what was learned in the classroom into novel situations in the work place.

 Can demonstrate how to tie shoes.

Analysis: Separates material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences.

 Can compare how to tie tennis shoes and boots with hooks and loops.

Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure.

 Can devise how long laces must be by counting number of holes, calf size and knotting/lacing model.

Evaluation: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials.

 Can compare and contrast use of rawhide laces, nylon laces, catgut and cotton to recommend the best choice for each situation.

One more example? How about that jet pilot, learning to deal with losing an engine…

Knowledge: Recall data or information.
 Can list the basic steps in engine restart.
Comprehension: Understand the meaning, translation, interpolation, and interpretation of instructions and problems. State a problem in one’s own words.
 Can give examples of why an engine may have failed, and probable causes.
Application: Use a concept in a new situation or unprompted use of an abstraction. Applies what was learned in the classroom into novel situations in the work place.
 Can demonstrate the “Hot Engine Restart” procedure in the flight simulator.
Analysis: Separates material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences.
 Can analyze cockpit instrumentation to determine most likely cause of failure and choose best restart mode.
Synthesis: Builds a structure or pattern from diverse elements. Put parts together to form a whole, with emphasis on creating a new meaning or structure.
 Can combine engine-out experiences to generate emergency plan for unforeseen circumstances.
Evaluation: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials.
 Can land plane in the Hudson River and have every single person walk away alive.

sully

So, this is why it’s sometimes important to think a little bit further than just lecturing to people about what it is that you want them to know. And that means things like getting their little fingers dirty, testing out concepts, discussing and experimenting, role-playing, tearing it apart, putting it back together, breaking it, fixing it, building a completly new model — all the stuff that takes more time and costs more money.

And aren’t you glad that US-Air did that stuff?
(Updated 5/17/2010 to reflect, as mentioned by a commenter, that Captain Sullenberger actually flew for US-Air.)

We Don’t Need Better Teachers

I’ve been listening to lots of talk lately about how to “fix” education. Mostly, from people not currently involved in the design or delivery of education.  And there are lots and lots of theories.

(I’d imagine that when plumbers get together for a beer, they laugh about how architects think they know how to “fix” plumbing.  It’s always fun to listen to people who have used a complex system pontificate about how to redesign it.)

And like the plumbers, it looks pretty simple to me.  The problem is that the people sitting on top of the system don’t really want to think about all the crap that flows through the system.  And eventually the sheer amount of crap in the system plugs it up, and the system stops working.

Roto-Rooting K-12 Education

outhouseMany years ago, we all headed outdoors to do our business.  There was a little house with a half-moon on the door and a Sears catalog.  That worked just fine, until the whole idea of indoor plumbing came along and pretty soon there wasn’t much of a market for outhouse manufacturers.  It didn’t mean that they weren’t high-quality outhouses, or that the people who built them didn’t care a lot about their product.

But things had changed.  Technology had come along that was more efficient and better served the needs of the user.

So even if we’d paid more for the outhouses, or given them incentive bonuses for taking higher levels of crap than the average — it wouldn’t have fixed the basic problem.

A Better Way To Do It

The type of learning that we’re trying to support in K-12 is, in large measure, not very difficult to provide.  Much of it is rote memorization, matching patterns, and understanding simple relationships.  The content (reading, writing and ‘rithmetic) hasn’t changed markedly since I was a tiny tot.

What has changed is the availability of technology to deliver this learning.  Beginning with Sesame Street and the Muppets, we saw that the use of well-designed video really worked for learning.  Then video games showed us that higher level learning could also be very effective.  Now e-learning provides more than half of the training that happens in the corporate arena.

But our school districts keep telling us that we need more money to find and hire highly skilled teachers for the classrooms, and pay them incentives if they succeed at teaching Johnny to read.

(In the corporate world, we call this “Instructor Led Training” or “ILT” — and there’s less and less of it every year.  It’s very expensive, often gives inconsistent results and isn’t very flexible for individual learners.)

But – But – But

No, I’m not saying we don’t need to have children spend time learning social skills.  Or understanding how to work with others, be part of a team, support diversity, appreciate fine art or hug trees.  Those are things that technology-driven learning doesn’t always do well — yet.  A human instructor is great for that kind of content.

But right now, 50% of the kids in my state don’t graduate from high school.  The lion’s share of graduates don’t read at grade level.  Making change is a challenge. Basic economics is a mystery. These are skills that could be taught easily (for most students) with technology, leaving our teachers lots of time for the outliers and special situations.

But the people sitting on top of the system just keep downloading more crap.

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