It's About Learning

Creating Significant Learning Environments

You’re either already online, on your way there, or dead in the water.

Dwayne Harapnuik — September 29, 2014 — Leave a comment

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-14/online-programs-could-erase-half-of-u-dot-s-dot-business-schools-by-2020

Online Programs Could Erase Half of U.S. Business Schools by 2020 – Businessweek via kwout

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?

Read the full Bloomberg article…

In Online Learning context, control, Creating Significant Learning Environment, Skype, student centered

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 provides an exceptional explanation of how to start behavioral change.

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 (4DX) change process that has proven to be an effective strategy in executing organizational change. Once one or two aspects of the traditional environment are changed you can then move on to the next one or two activities and so on. The key is to have an effective strategy and to execute.

4. Enlist and empower self-differentiated leaders – Edwin Friedman in the book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix posits that having the conviction to keep on moving forward when everyone in your organization is screaming for the status quo is a key ability of the self-differentiated leader. These people do not need validation from the group but are able to see beyond the challenges to the broader goals of serving learners in new and productive ways. These people practice change by living it and have the ability to lead by example and can show people why they like the “new stuff” and why liking the new stuff is better for our learners and for our society as a whole.

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.

Learning over Education

Dwayne Harapnuik — August 6, 2014 — 4 Comments

…education is what people do to you and learning is what you do to yourself 10:08

In Learning, Video - Wednesday Watchlist Education, innovate, Learning, now-ist

E-Reading isn’t a threat to the Humanities–Relevance and motivation are

Dwayne Harapnuik — July 14, 2014 — 2 Comments

http://chronicle.com/article/How-E-Reading-Threatens/147661/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

How E-Reading Threatens Learning in the Humanities – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout

The timing on this Chronicle of Higher Education post by Naomi S. Baron professor of linguistics and executive director of the Center for Teaching, Research & Learning at American University, could not have been more fortuitous. It is fortuitous in two ways. First, I have been reflecting on the importance of creating learning environments that help foster intrinsic motivation and provide the necessary context and significance for learning. And second, I have been lamenting receiving an exceptional book as a gift in print format because I am not able to add virtual highlights and notes which I use extensively in all the books that I read using an e-reader.

I will deal with the second point first. In the past I had extensively used adhesive book tabs, notes in the margins and highlights to mark and identify important passages and as result some of my most heavily used books are messy and cluttered.

While the tabs were intended to help me find the important thoughts and ideas in the books they really didn’t help because the more tabs you add the more difficult it becomes to find what you are looking for. In addition, as you can see from the picture above, the tabs get curled and mangled the more you use the book. Virtual highlighting and note placement not only eliminates this problem you can also search the entire book, notes or your highlights looking for the that key term or passage. In addition, many e-readers enable you to export all your highlights and notes to a text file which allow you to work directly with the most important sections of the text.

The final frustration with receiving a print based book is that I no longer carry any of these adhesive tabs in my briefcase or have any on hand in my office so I am not able to mark the important sections of the book. I will just have to purchase an electronic copy of this book I received as as gift.

While this convenience aspect of using an e-reader is important it may not be as important as my first point–reflecting on the importance of creating learning environments that help foster intrinsic motivation and provide the necessary context and significance for learning. Professor Baron argues that “deep reading” is not possible on an a digital screen because digital reading encourages distraction because most people have the tendency to engage in some form of multitasking. She also points to survey results that reveal that some students still view reading in print as “real reading” and that reading in print forces a student to read more slowly and carefully. Baron also points to anecdotal evidence of students asking for shorter version of the text, article or other form of summary like SparkNotes because they can’t be bothered to read the full text.

In the prelude to the actual statement of her argument, Baron also laments that students just don’t have the motivation to read deeply. I would argue that this is the actual problem and digital text made available on an phone, tablet, or other digital devices simply escalate the tendency to look to something more interesting or meaningful. I recall having to slog through too many devastatingly dry, boring and irrelevant books in my many years as student and even though I didn’t have access to the books in a digital form I still found many ways to distract myself from the mind-numbing reading of material that was given to me without any context or obvious purpose. OK, the purpose was to know the material for the test–unfortunately that was and is still not enough for most students.

The challenge that we have as educators is to create a learning environment where students understand and appreciate that they can learn so much from the work of others. The “deep reading” that Professor Baron argues is so important to the humanities only happens with the right motivation. The format of the material is really irrelevant. If learner understands why the material is important, where it fits in their life’s journey and how it will help them to become who they wish to become the deep reading, and I would argue deep learner, will happen using text or other materials in any format.