Instructional Design 

Part 1 – Teaching Habits That Inspire You Out of Learning?

Part 2 – I Have Bragging Rights, Because I Am …?

Part 3 – Is PowerPoint Evil?

Part 4 – No Stupid Questions! I am Serious!

Part 5 – Show Up to Throw Up! 21st Century Thinking? 

Part 1:

Teaching Habits That Inspire You Out of Learning?

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward

Can anyone become a great educator (teacher or lecturer)? Or is it gift that we are born with (Nature)? Or can we become a great educator through learning, practice, feedback, reflection, etc. (Nurture)? Or perhaps it is a combination of Nature and Nurture? Or perhaps it is neither? What are the characteristics of a great educator anyway?

What Good Teachers say about Teaching?

“At the University of California at Berkeley, the Distinguished Teaching Award was instituted in 1959 to recognize and reward excellence in teaching. Since the inception of the award, over 150 faculty in forty-eight departments have been honored…although these essays (by the award winners) were prepared independently over a number of years, there are striking similarities about what good teachers say about teaching. On at least ten propositions, the contributors are in near or total agreement (Source):

1. The teacher’s main task is to guide students through the learning process, not to dispense information.
2. The goal of teaching is to help students read, speak, write, and think critically—and to expect students to do these things.
3. Learning is a “messy” process, and the search for truth and knowledge is open-ended.
4. Good teachers love their subject matter.
5. Good research and good teaching go hand in hand. Students’ engagement with the subject is enhanced by knowing about the teacher’s own research, and the interaction with students often provides new insights into the research.
6. The best teachers genuinely respect students and their intellectual capabilities.
7. Good teachers are rarely satisfied with their teaching. They constantly evaluate and modify what they do.
8. Good teachers usually had good teachers, and they see themselves as passing on their own teachers’ gifts to a new generation of students.
9. Good teachers treasure the small moments of discovery in the classroom and the more enduring effect they have on students’ lives.
10. Good teachers do not see teaching as separate from other activities; rather, they see their lives as remarkably integrated.”

The interesting thing today, is that we increasingly have access (if we have Internet!) to all sorts of content about the art of excellent teaching (A short list). In addition, we can also study and reflect amazing lecturers through video lectures and podcasts from many of the most respected Universities around the world, including MIT, Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge (YouTube Channels, Podcasts and OpenCourseWare).

So, why can’t we inspire all our students to learn (if you can, please share your secret!)? That is a tough question beyond my intellect, knowledge and experience (I suppose because it needs two to tango)! However, let’s play a bit with this question, and instead ask, “what were the least inspiring teachers we experienced during our student days?” Or more specifically, “What were the teaching habits that inspired us out of learning?“

5-PART SERIES?

In this 5-part series (which might evolve into a 10-part series!), I will reflect specific teaching habits practiced by some educators that I experienced personally during my 20 years career as a student (I suppose when I do my PhD I can add another 3-4 years). I am not interested in witch hunting any particular educator (I am really bad with names anyway, so that is not a problem!). Instead, I am trying to reflect back and learn from their teaching habits (and perhaps avoid them!) that made me wonder: Are you kidding me? Is this guy for real? This guy needs a life! What is wrong with him? Can’t he see that we are sleeping! Don’t teachers undergo training on how to teach and facilitate learning? Perhaps he doesn’t care!

Since I have had the privilege to experience educators from every major continent of the world during my 20-year career as a student, I suppose I will have some very interesting teaching habits to share with all of you. Whether they are bad teaching habits or not, I will leave that for you to decide. But one thing is for sure, these teaching habits certainly inspired me out of learning.

Finally, before we begin this ‘unlearning‘ journey, I have to admit I have never been an easy student to deal with. During my primary and secondary school I was rude, noisy, and spent a lot of time in detention. I literally slept through high-school, and just managed to scrape through. Once, one lecturer threatened to kick me out of class if I didn’t stop sleeping, and even placed me in the front row to ensure that I didn’t sleep. It didn’t help much! When you are tired, and have to sit through a boring lecture, what do you expect! I suppose if I had taken more vitamin supplements, given up on football, stopped having fun, and slept earlier, things would have been different. I suppose it is a learning process!

Then I moved to Malaysia, and the power of faith (Islam) brought the passion back to learn in me. During my undergraduate and graduate days, I forced myself to sit in the front row until it became a habit I am proud of. Not only did I sit in front, I also become the ultimate annoying student that always asked questions. I became the kind of smart-aleck I used to despise in my younger days. In a nutshell, that is my story as a student. Now, let’s move on to the real point of this 5-part series.

White Board and I are One?

During my undergraduate studies, I had a very interesting statistics lecturer, which I will name Dr. Woody (woodpecker) for the name protection sake. Dr. Woody was a multimedia encyclopedia of statistics, and he certainly did not need to refer to any book or notes during his lectures. He had perfected every lecture he conducted. In addition, he was a caring guy and always smiled. So, what is the problem! Yeah! Hmm, got a point there!

Interestingly, I had two different statistics (can’t remember the names!) subjects with Dr. Woody that semester, and we only had a 10-minute break in-between the two 90-minute sessions twice a week (6 hours a week with Dr. Woody).

Dr. Woody was always punctual and so was I. I remember, he would always be stressed at the beginning of each class and would be eager to start as fast as possible, so that we could complete the syllabus on time. As soon as he began teaching, he would face the whiteboard with his markers, and begin the magic statistics writing adventure. And you know what, he would just go on, and on, and on, and on, like a dog hunting a fox. His urgency to do his thing (teach!), gave him no time to turn back and assist the helpless students in shock! We managed to complete 50% of the syllabus within the first 3 weeks of a 14-week semester. Of course it was impressive to see Dr. Woody practically write the book on the whiteboard, doing it at a speed that even Ferrari would not be able to match.

My fingers (and brain) used to be really exhausted after two consecutive 90-minute sessions (twice week) of nonstop writing (15-25 pages of notes each time!), trying to capture everything that Dr. Woody wrote on the whiteboard. Thank GOD many lecturers today use PowerPoint, or provide some form of course notes. However, we have to keep in mind that taking notes itself, is a skill that all students should master. Because in most working environments, there probably won’t be any books or notes to rescue us, and solve all our problems.

Reflection

It was only after I discovered notes taken from his previous students that I realized how amazing Dr. Woody’s memory was. It was as if he had imprinted the notes and formulas in his brain, and simply repeated it again and again every semester. Even a photocopy machine would be proud of such perfection. Although, we got to experience him do his thing (process flow!), it was kind of overwhelming, and I believe most of us had problems dealing with the information overload. I suppose if we could replay the lecture in slow motion (many times!), it would be more useful.

Interestingly, when I revised the notes I had taken from Dr. Woody’s lectures, I couldn’t even remember that I had written them. Did I really write that! I suppose I had no time to think while taking the notes.

Overall, Dr. Woody was knowledgeable, skillful, caring, experienced, and an expert in his subject area. However, I am not sure I learned much about statistics from him. Actually, I didn’t! Though, since I had the passion to do well, I managed to do quite well anyway.

But, what is important to keep in mind here, is that being an authority in a knowledge domain, does not mean that we are fit to educate and facilitate learning. Even worse, some educators have an amazing ability to make you sick of a subject (They might argue that it is self-inflicted!). Is that a natural gift, too?

Although, it is important to learn new ways to improve our teaching, it is also important to reflect our own existing teaching methods, and perhaps unlearn those that really inspire people out of learning.

Until Part II, let’s explore our own teaching, and try to point out to ourselves (at least!) a few habits that might turn students off learning.

“That student is an idiot! I have told him a 100 times and he still doesn’t get it!”

See Video >>

Throughout the developing world, scarce Internet access is a more conspicuous and stubborn aspect of the digital divide than a dearth of computers. “In most places, networking is more expensive–not only in relative terms but even in absolute terms–than it is in United States,” says Vivek Pai, a computer scientist at Princeton University. Often, even universities in poor countries can afford only low-bandwidth connections; individual users receive the equivalent of a fraction of a dial-up connection. To boost the utility of these connections, Pai and his group created HashCache, a highly efficient method of caching–that is, storing frequently accessed Web content on a local hard drive instead of using precious bandwidth to retrieve the same information repeatedly.

Despite the Web’s protean nature, a surprising amount of its content doesn’t change often or by very much. But current caching technologies require not only large hard disks to hold data but also lots of random-access memory (RAM) to store an index that contains the “address” of each piece of content on the disk. RAM is expensive relative to hard-disk capacity, and it works only when supplied with electricity–which, like bandwidth, is often both expensive and scarce in the developing world.

HashCache abolishes the index, slashing RAM and electricity requirements by roughly a factor of 10. It starts by transforming the URL of each stored Web “object”–an image, graphic, or block of text on a Web page–into a shorter number, using a bit of math called a hash function. While most other caching systems do this, they also store each hash number in a RAM-hogging table that correlates it with a hard-disk memory address. Pai’s technology can skip this step because it uses a novel hash function: the number that the function produces defines the spot on the disk where the corresponding Web object can be found. “By using the hash to directly compute the location, we can get rid of the index entirely,” Pai says.

To be sure, some RAM is still needed, but only enough to run the hash function and to actually retrieve a specific Web object, Pai says. Though still at a very early stage of development, HashCache is being field-tested at the Kokrobitey Institute in Ghana and Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria. 

The technology ends a long drought in fundamental caching advances, says Jim Gettys, a coauthor of the HTTP specification that serves as the basis of Internet communication. While it’s increasingly feasible for a school in a poor country to buy hundreds of gigabytes of hard-disk memory, Gettys says, those same schools–if they use today’s best available software–can typically afford only enough RAM to support tens of gigabytes of cached content. With HashCache, a classroom equipped with pretty much any kind of computers, even castoff PCs, could store and cheaply access one terabyte of Web data. That’s enough to store all of Wikipedia’s content, for example, or all the coursework freely available from colleges such as Rice University and MT.

Even with new fiber-optic cables connecting East Africa to the Internet, thousands of students at some African universities share connections that have roughly the same speed as a home DSL line, says Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “These universities are extremely bandwidth constrained,” he says. “All their students want to have computers but almost never have sufficient bandwidth. This innovation makes it significantly cheaper to run a very large caching server.”

Pai plans to license HashCache in a way that makes it free for nonprofits but leaves the door open to future commercialization. And that means that it could democratize Internet access in wealthy countries, too.

Cache Cow

Sometimes, even the basic of questions go right over people’s head. I’m talking about ME! Here I teach people to not assume anything and then I go and NEVER talk about how an Ecourse works….until now.

I will keep things as basic as possible as I’ll focus on concepts than applications.

First of all, I’m assuming you already know what an Ecourse is.

OK, the way an Ecourse works is in the category or concept of how classes worked when you were in school. For example, you had Math class on M-W-F, you did NOT have it 8 hours a day for 5 days. You had smaller segments of learning given to you over time. This is done to keep you from what some call “education overload”. In other words, you get so much info at once you cannot process everything, therefore you’re not learning. Get it?

Here’s a concept you may be able to follow. If you’ve ever worked out to get in shape you know you just can’t do 500 push ups today and have a ripped body tomorrow. You have to do a little each day so your body gets used to it’s new information, process it and then can learn and adapt to it.

Well, your brain is the same way, it needs time to process and grow with the new information it’s given. When I say “you”, I mean you and your clients and subscribers.

So, how and Ecourse works is you give bits and pieces of info to your clients/subscribers about your topic a little at a time so they can digest that info and be ready for more, which you will send again. Get it? It’s information given over time. Understand that concept and you’ll go far.

Ecourse Training – Which Teaching Method is Best, “1 on 1″ Or “1 on Many”? Ecourses Have Both!

Some people say making money online is best done “1 on 1″.  Some people say “1 on many” is the key (aka, teleseminars).  I’m not here to debate that issue, I’m here to teach on it.  Give you the scoop, “If you weeeeel”!  (I love quoting Dusty Rhodes!)

Let me explain; with the “1 on 1″ concept, you’re giving all your attention to one person at a time.  It’s just you and that person, no one else.  You can answer their questions and really get an understanding of what they want and need from you.

A “1 on many” concept takes the best of the “1 on 1″ concept and incorporates it into MANY people listening at once.  As long as you give the listeners a chance to ask questions in some capacity, this works great!  My caution to this, if you do NOT give a way for them to ask questions, you can loose people fast.  Don’t assume you know what they want to ask, find out from them in some capacity.

Now, what an Ecourse does is takes the “1 on 1″ feeling while utilizing the “1 on Many” concepts.  The individual reading or listening gets to learn at their own pace, ask questions if they want (and you had better be prepared to answer) and not be intimidated by having the feeling of being in a big crowd.

I’m not saying that “1 on many” is the only way to do it,  and I’m not saying “1 on 1″ is the only way to do it.  But if you truly understand the concepts behind each, then customize your Ecourse to incorporate the best of both worlds.  The beauty of this is you can constantly tweak your Ecourse to the direction you feel your readers/listeners need to go.

Once you get people in your world with your Ecourse, then you can utilize both the “1 on 1″ concept and the “1 on Many” concept.  See how it all ties in?  You reach more people with less work!

Ecourse Training – How to Find People Interested in Your Ecourse

Here’s a question people ask all the time. “How do you find interested people to follow you or buy your products?”

If you’re one of the folks that ask this, I gotta say, you’re looking at this in the reverse way. You’re thinking to go out and find the people. How about coming from the other side? How about having the others find YOU instead of you find them? Yes, I know, that may sound the same at first glance, but really think about it for a bit.

Let me explain (“No time to splain, leme sumup” -great line from the move “The Princess Bride”). If you’re constantly using all your time to locate interested people, what happens when you find them? You’re just another person in the vast pool of people interested in your topic. Just because you’ve found people doesn’t mean they’ll follow you or buy from you, does it?

There’s a reason it’s called the “World Wide Web”, it’s global! That being said, do you think there’s a chance a few people in the world are looking to find info on your topic? Sure there are. Your job is to give them something to find, not go out and find them. See the difference?

Being in the creative mode and focusing on creating product, whether it be written, audio or video, is where your money will be made. As you create more product, if you follow what I teach, you also create marketing material so people CAN find you. Now do you see what I mean by the “reverse way”?

Ecourse Training – What to Do With Your Ecourse and Your Business

Getting an online business going may seem scary for some folks, may even seem impossible for others.  If you’re one of the “impossible” people, chances are you’re not reading this so I’ll write to the other folks instead, ok?

All over the internet, you’ll find people that offer “free this” or “free that”, a report, a class, an audio, just about anything you can think of to help you get your business going.  Now please understand, there is nothing wrong with this type of marketing. 

The thing you MUST understand is that the success of YOUR business is entirely up to YOU!   These tools you find throughout the internet are a great way to give you that boost you may need, but ultimately it’s up to you to get stuff done.   YOU ARE THE HUB OF YOUR BUSINESS!

If I could offer one small tidbit of advice it’s this, take action.  Take action in doing something for your business.  Whether it’s creating an ecourse, writing an ebook, recording an audio, you MUST DO SOMETHING! 

And, to go along with this, I’ll add one nugget of info, you must do massive consistent action!  In other words, writing 1 or 2 articles won’t cut it.  Having 2 or 3 blog posts won’t cut it.  You must constantly be creating and marketing.  Oh, and if done correctly, these two activities intermix so you’ll be doing 2 things at once, which is really smart business. 

As long as you’re doing something, you’ll see a direction you want your business to go, how to adapt it to your clientelle, and most importantly, how to grow your business!

BUT, it all starts with doing something.  So my question to you is, what have you done today to grow your business?

Source: written by By Drew Poletto for EzineArticles. [link]

In the process of web surfing, there are times you stumble on some gems – some material so transcendent you find yourself spellbound.

Such is the case with the work of Mark Pesce at The Human Network. David Parry, assistant professor of Emergent Media and Communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, offers his assessment of Pesce’s work on his AcademHack blog:

“I find Pesce to be one of the more provocative thinkers on the internet and matters of cultural transformation. I am not sure I always agree with what he suggests, but this is also one of the reasons I find him worth reading.”

“For as long as anyone can remember, introductory physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was taught in a vast windowless amphitheater known by its number, 26-100.”

True of Most Large Universities

The sentence was striking as I did not attend MIT. But as a math major and physics minor, the image of 26-100 was the same as that of Bennett Hall and the extraordinarily large amphitheater-like lecture hall that was my home thirty plus years ago.

I do not know how many students the room could seat – but somewhere between three and four hundred would not have been an exaggeration. And it was full for first semester physics and calculus, and it was nearly full for the second semester of those courses.

And while additional semesters were often held there, beginning with the third semester of each those courses they could have been held in smaller halls. That was because of the winnowing out of those who simply did not have what it took to be able to survive the demands as structured.

Source: Poste by Alternative Learning Organization

This change is not without its challenges. Although there is money to be made in the industry by vendors, Web 2.0 tools by their very nature are defined by commoditization; as is much of the new social media industry, a topic we touched on briefly here, when discussing how content has become a commodity.

The knowledge fountain in any organisation is, more often than not, either the water cooler or the canteen. How many times have you met colleagues at the water cooler and picked up valuable tips — whether it was about how to ask your boss for leave or a shortcut to complete the report you were working on. Wouldn’t it be great if timely and valuable advice was available to tackle all learning processes at work?

The days are not far, as many companies have started blending formal and informal sources of learning onto one platform and making it available for employees. This paradigm is called e-learning 2.0.

Professionals want to learn tips, tricks, and techniques from successful peers in their community. They don’t really want to listen to scripted “talent”, or to professional trainers, says a blog by Thomas Kelly, co-author of The Business Case for E-Learning and advisor for many small and medium-sized companies focusing on learning organisations, systems and strategies. Jay Cross’ book Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovation and Performance, says 80 per cent of all learning at a work place happens informally, such as at the water cooler. Therefore it is important to blend formal learning with informal learning.

This means integrating social media/communities, such as wikis (derived from Wikipedia modelled search engines), discussion forums, podcasts, blogs and non-profit Web sites that give greater and, at times, more practical insights on a subject, with traditional classroom or e-learning based courses. Information, therefore, should be presented in brief, focused modules that are two to ten minutes long and not full courses, white papers or one-hour video segments.

For instance, one could host a 2-slide presentation on ‘short keys used in Microsoft Excel’ along with the basic course material that defines all important functions and operations of the software. That way the user, depending on his need/availability of time, could choose which module to study. Unlike traditional learning, that is structured as “one-size-fits-all” modules, users now have a choice of what to learn first, how long to learn and when to learn a module.

2 key issues addressed

According to Robin Lloyd, Vice-President and General Manager, Global Content Development, Lionbridge Technologies, e-learning 2.0 addresses two key issues that earlier training systems lacked: The linkage between the educational event, and its application in a dynamic, real-world scenario and the failure to fully capture and incorporate the collective knowledge and experience of the learners themselves. E-learning 2.0 creates an environment where users can give feedback and engage in discussions with peers, thereby continuing to remember and extend their classroom learning much beyond the scope of an exam.

In Europe, for instance, e-learning 2.0 is directly linked to the imminent ‘pappy-boom’ where many senior employees will retire in the coming years, potentially without transferring their deep experience and know-how to a new generation of employees. So a key objective of e-learning 2.0 is to establish interactions between learners and enlist them as peer-teachers using Web 2.0 tools, says Lloyd.

This eliminates the need to hire formal trainers all the time (not to mention costs of the study material) and therefore e-learning 2.0 is also significantly cheaper than traditional e-learning technologies and classroom training. For example, classroom training for 100 students per course could cost an average of $3,00,000 while the same may amount to $75,000 or lesser depending on usage of e-learning 2.0 tools. While one session/module of e-learning could cost up to one-fifth of a classroom session, Lloyd says early adopters of e-learning 2.0 are targeting as much as 30 per cent improvement over their first generation e-learning benefits.

Take the case of Perot Systems, a technology outsourcing firm that has added elements of web 2.0 into its learning. The in-house portal houses several communities such as project management, Java, .NET, Mainframe, agile development framework, enterprise architecture, telecom and healthcare. Formal learning is delivered through webinars that are connected to these communities for furthering discussion. Individual members can also start blogs on their professional areas of interest. “We have (so far) seen a 15 per cent reduction in training costs and a 20 per cent increase in the number of employees opting for certification courses,” says Bhanu Potta, Director – Knowledge Management Group, Perot Systems’ Applications Solutions.

A major financial services giant in the UK invested (according to industry sources about 1 million pounds) in Web 2.0 tools to train employees on compliance and regulatory issues. Nuggets of information were delivered to employees’ mobile phones, PDAs and Blackberrys.

Rob Gillam, Sales Manager at Giunti Labs UK, that provided the content management technology, says that most employees rarely had 40 minutes of working time to spend on an e-learning course. Additionally, like all other financial services institutions, the client too had reserved all its network capacity for business operations, thereby leaving no capacity to host e-learning modules. Web 2.0 tools helped as the information nuggets could be read in 10 minutes during lunch and other breaks. It was also easy to update or correct information because you only had to deal with correcting one nugget and not the entire course.

Expertus, a Learning Outsourcing organisation, has seen learning development time cut down by half using tools such as wikis, blogs and podcasts, says the company’s Founder and Vice-President, Client Services, Mohana Radhakrishnan. Sharing the case of a large storage solutions provider, she says collaborations tools such as discussion threads and “answers” forums have made doing business with the company as simple as online banking.

Prior to implementing a smart portal, the company’s interactions with various parties — channel partners who make sales, customers and vendors — was at best described as unsatisfactory. These parties would find it difficult to hunt for product information or apply for certificate programs. Expertus blended together concepts of easy buy, formal training, and informal education to create a portal that would allow one easy access to data. Additionally, a kind of security measure was also enabled that linked access to the credentials of a user. Only verified users would be allowed access to information. Needless to say, the Web site is seeing a surge in online sales, Mohana says, without sharing figures.

These results are significant in the current economic climate where training and developments budgets have drastically been cut or in some cases, not allocated at all. Amazon.com was one of the first to use e-learning 2.0 by allowing users to provide book reviews, thereby adding value to their service. Today it also incorporates blogs and RSS feeds on its site. Firms such as Pfizer (with its wiki Pfizerpedia) and the US Intelligence community (Intellipedia) have followed, and as the recession continues, many industry watchers believe e-learning 2.0 implementations will mushroom.

A study by Brandon Hall Research, titled ‘Emerging E-Learning: New Approaches to Delivering Engaging Online Learning Content’ published in January mentions that Sun Microsystems’ new environment for Web 2.0 learning provides more collaborative, modern features that combine search, formal and informal learning assets, training plans, comments, tagging and ratings. This is expected to boost companies’ transition to e-learning 2.0.

In its Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 to 2013, Forrester Research reports that organisations’ spending on Web 2.0 technologies will “surge” over the next five years, growing 43 per cent each year, to reach $4.6 billion globally by 2013. It will predominantly be used to connect with customers and help employees collaborate. The market for web 2.0 technologies in 2008 was around $764 million. (See graphic)

Reflecting this is the consistent triple digit growth that Cornerstone OnDemand, an on-demand integrated learning and talent management software provider, has seen for at least the last three years. “December 2008 was our best quarter in our 10-year history,” says Charles Coy, Director of Product Marketing, Cornerstone Ondemand. “We started with large size clients averaging 10,000 employees each but are now moving downstream towards mid-market and small and medium enterprises,” he says, without disclosing any numbers. The private company raised $32 million in venture capital in late 2007 for its expansion plans.

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/enterprise_20_to_become_a_46_billion_industry.php

Forrester Research and the ReadWriteWeb, a blog that provides Web Technology news, reviews and analysis:

The Writer, a former Business Line staffer, is currently based in New Jersey, US. Her e-mail ID is archana.vratnam@gmail.com

Source: Article by Archana Venkat for The Hindu Businessline. [link]