Source: eLearning Infographics
Archives For Learning
Source: Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat
In Why Academics Stink at Writing Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University and chair of the usage panel of the American Heritage Dictionary points to Watterson’s Calvin to provide a summary for why academics stink at writing:
“…the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!”
In addition to this wonderful humour Pinker offers the following explanations for why so many academics write so poorly:
- Metadiscourse — Verbiage about verbiage or the unnecessary attempt to guide your read through your writing.
- Professional narcissism — The unnecessary description of their federation rather than what the audience wants to know.
- Apologizing — The over explanation of ideas that are difficult, complicated and controversial.
- Shudder quotes — Many academics have a nose-holding disdain for idiomatic English.
- Hedging — Academics often fear criticisms and cushion their prose with wads of fluff to give them a way out from making a firm commitment to an idea.
- Metaconcepts and nominalizations — Because academics spend so much time thinking about issues and ideas they write at that abstract level. This also contributes to their tendency use Zombie Nouns. They do this by turning a verb into a:
“lifeless noun by adding a suffix like –ance, –ment, or –ation. Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement.”
Pinker expands on all these ideas throughout his long article but his final reason for shoddy academic writing is:
“There are few incentives for writing well.”
Since few graduate programs teach writing, few academic journals stipulate clarity as a submission criteria and few reviewers and editor enforce it there is little professional motivation to engage in self improvement.
That is until now…
In this blog post The sophistication of truth Seth Godin argues that these common forms of complexity are the sophistication of fear.
“Long words when short ones will do. Fancy clothes to keep the riffraff out and to give us a costume to hide behind. Most of all, the sneer of, “you don’t understand” or, “you don’t know the people I know…”
“It’s complicated,” we say, even when it isn’t.
We invent these facades because they provide safety. Safety from the unknown, from being questioned, from being called out as a fraud. These facades lead to bad writing, lousy communication and a refuge from the things we fear.”
He encourages us to be fearless and reminds us that our work doesn’t have to be obtuse to be important or brave. I agree with Godin since I have spent that last 20+ years in academia I too have fallen into the traps of
“scientific sophistication, hoping to bamboozle [my] audiences with highfalutin gobbledygook.”
To be fearless Godin suggest that we need to start with:
“This is, “here it is, I made this, I know you can understand it, does it work for you?”
Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to stop writing in the conventional way and simply state what we need to state in the simplest terms. I subscribe to and read Godin’s posts on a daily basis because they are short, simple and to the point.
Or when it is appropriate we need to stop writing all together and use other forms of communication. The following video is a the best example of this sophistication in simplicity:
Do you prattle on with words when a video, infographic, illustation or other form of media is the right tool to use?
Richard Lyons, dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business says:
“Half of the business schools in this country could be out of business in 10 years—or 5.”
This isn’t an empty prediction. It is a stark reality especially when you consider what Robert Lytle, partner in the education practice at Parthenon Group, warns:
“Once you get out of the top tier of schools, you’re either already online, on your way there, or dead in the water.”
While this is a bold statement it does ring true when you consider that Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business which launched an online MBA program in 1999 now has 1,072 students enrolled in their online MBA program–more than double the number in the school’s regular two-year program.
Perhaps an even more significant factor contributing to the need to move programs online is the level of daily online utilization in world around us. Internet banking, ticket purchases, merchandise overnighted from Amazon and so many more daily aspects of our lives are being served online at the times that are convenient for us.
This really became clear in the past few weeks after I started watching the news on cable TV once again. Because of several moves in the past couple of years we haven’t subscribed to cable TV. But now that we are settled down in one location for the foreseeable future and Shaw offered a 6 month free trial TV cable package as an addition to our internet connection, I have been watching several news channels. These channels haven’t really changed all the much in the past few years except that they all point to Twitter as a way to keep up with the breaking news, their websites have matured and now offer virtually all the same content one can watch on TV and they use Skype or other video conferencing tools to regularly to bring in experts from all over the world to comment the news.
If the major news channels and networks have recognized that we all demand control over how we consumer the daily news and expect to have best experts Skype into the conversation in real time is there any wonder that this same level expectation will extend to the way that we are educated. I have been teaching online since 1995 and have been promoting a student-centered approach to creating significant learning environments and I am excited to see that online learning has matured to the point where we can now address the most significant aspect of this type of learning–giving the learner control over the time, place and context in which they wish to learn.
The schools that get this are already online or are well on their way to getting there. The rest will be dead in the water. What category will your school fall into? Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? What are you doing about this?
https://seths.blog/2014/09/people-who-like-this-stuff/
One of the biggest reasons I have been and currently use a MacBook Air is that there is an elegance in the laptop’s simplicity and efficiency. It makes it very easy to get my work done, I don’t have to tweak anything and it seldom if ever fails me. Apple makes it very easy to like their stuff. I recently went away from the iPhone to the Google Nexus because I wanted to find out why more than 80% of smartphone users worldwide have chosen Android over the IOS. I have found that the greatest advantage of Android over the iPhone is that you can configure the Android to do anything you want. The biggest problem with the Android is that you HAVE to configure it to do everything you want. Granted, companies like Samsung, LG, HTC, and many more have created overlays to the Android OS to provide as close to an IOS experience as possible but these systems are nowhere near as simple and efficient to use as the iPhone. The Android world offers many more options and incorporates the latest greatest innovations but Apple makes it easy to keep on using their stuff despite the lack of innovation. Over the past 5 years, Apple’s market share for the iPhone has been sliding only slightly because “People who like this stuff…like this stuff”.
What does this have to do with learning? A great deal when you consider the role and opportunities that technology brings to the learning environment. In the blog post Back to School—Technology Is Changing Learning but Is It Changing Schooling? Marc Rosenberg laments:
“…that technology in our schools has come upon a significant barrier: the schools themselves.”
Rosenberg also points to the fact that regardless what opportunities technology offers the traditional schooling model won’t be undone quickly. He also warns that the fundamental change in our thinking is not coming quickly enough and
“traditional schooling may kill the promise of technology.”
Unfortunately, Rosenberg doesn’t offer any solutions to this problem but points to the blog post 5 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Innovate in Your School for those who are still willing to attempt to use technology to improve our traditional system.
Why is change in education so slow and so difficult? I think Seth Godin offers one of the most simple and elegant explanations…
“People who like this stuff…like this stuff”
Godin goes onto explain that:
“…for those that are already in it, you can’t push too far, because they like the genre. That’s why they’re here.”
Those who have walked away probably aren’t just waiting around for you to fix it. Those who have never been, don’t think the genre has a problem they need solved.”
If we apply this elegant thinking to the challenges we face in improving education, then most educators who like this stuff [traditional learning environments}… like this stuff. Most people who don’t, have walked away as we can see by homeschooling, unschooling, and uncollege movements. Perhaps more importantly, for those (students, parents, and politicians) who have never been behind the scenes of our traditional educational system, there is no problem. Or the problems that they can see are simply ones that appeal to emotions like class size or special needs. These issues become hot buttons for political sound bites and the 6:00 news but sound research by people like John Hattie reveals that student achievement is not impacted significantly by class size but by many other factors that just aren’t as newsworthy.
How then do we get people who like this stuff (traditional education) to like new stuff (digital learning environments)? While innovating the learning environment has been a significant challenge for the past century (John Dewey was calling for a change to progressive education almost 100 years ago) it is possible and involves the following four steps.
1 Start with Why – In his popular TED talk Simon Sinek makes the argument that “people won’t buy what you do they buy why you do it”, so rather than telling traditional educators what they should or need to be doing to improve learning you need to provide a reason why they would want to add to or improve the current system. This has to be an emotional appeal. Sinek provides a fully developed argument for starting with why and how to use the Golden Circle in his book Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
2. Identify and enlist key influencers – There are key social leaders within all organizations that have the influence to bring about the small activities that can start the behavioral change that leads to organizational change. Once you can identify one or two key activities and give these influencers the reason why they should be making these changes you can start the process of implementing digital learning to enhance the traditional learning environment. Once these influencers like the new stuff they will give others reason to like the new stuff as well. The book Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition
3. Install an effective execution strategy – You can’t change everything within an organization at once. You still have the whirlwind of the day-to-day activities that will consume 80-90% of your efforts. However, the key activities that your influencers are willing to change can become the one or two wildly important goals (WIG) that make up the foundation of The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals
4. Enlist and empower self-differentiated leaders – Edwin Friedman in the book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix
This is not an easy process but we owe it to our children and to the young men and women who are going to our universities and colleges with dreams of building a better world.
…education is what people do to you and learning is what you do to yourself 10:08
