Connectivism: Week 1

With little time these days, I'll be auditing the auditor's version of the 12 week Connectivism course happening now. I haven't signed up anywhere, I haven't taken part in any of the sessions, but I'm like a moth drawn to the flame: as I peer in on all the conversation beginning to happen, I can't help but join in. In my own lazy way, at the very least.

• Am I creating a new pattern?
• Am I growing new knowledge? (As opposed to building it?) See Christy Tucker's musings on this topic: Does Learning Grow or is it Built?.

As I sift through this week's reading assignments, I'm trying to pick out how this learning theory effects my work as a creator (an instructional designer) of self-paced eLearning experiences for the corporate market. (Justifying why I might spend my time doing this...filtering this info through my own context in order to create patterns that make sense to me and can be applied to me...)

Little nuggets that stand out to me:

George Siemens writes, in Connectivism: Learning Theory or Pastime of the Self-Amused?:

Educators today face challenges relating to: (a) defining what learning is, (b) defining the process of learning in a digital age, (c) aligning curriculum and teaching with learning and higher level development needs of society (the quest to become better people), and (d) reframing the discussion to lay the foundation for transformative education—one where technology is the enabler of new means of learning, thinking, and being. (p. 9)

Stephen Downes (What Connectivism Is) talks about the role of the teacher = model and demo; the role of the learner = practice and reflection. The best self-paced eLearning does this well, providing scenario-based learning and demos with plenty of opportunity for reflection and practice.

More on this later?

Technorati Tags: connectivisim,CCK08

Instructional Designers with ID Degrees? Survey Results...

The great thing about blogs is that you don't even have to be around, and people still come visiting. I haven't posted in ages (hoping this will start to change as my work-life settles back in), but responses are still coming in to my survey.

As of today, 166 instructional designers have responded to the survey: Do You Have a Degree in ID?

About 34% of instructional designers have an advanced degree in ID. And 66% of us don't.

As reported earlier, there continues to be a wide range of backgrounds for IDers, mostly in the liberal arts.

Take the survey now.

View the latest survey results here.

In Loving Memory of My Father

Captain Robert M. Morrison (USN Ret.)

January 20, 1933 - August 18, 2008

Back to Work

Monday was my first day back to work after almost three months. I put in a nice five hour effort, appearing on site at our new office space. Citrus colored walls, big windows that let the sun pour in. Not too bad.

So. What have I been doing all that time? Enjoying the best summer vacation/maternity leave of my life. My husband is a stay-at-home-dad, so we had the benefit of two parents home all summer with the kids. And a completely mellow baby, who appears to be a good sleeper. The way it should be!

I did this:










A lot of this:










Some pleasure reading, which included 50% of the complete works of Jane Austen (that's three novels...but no, I'm no Janeite), Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Michael Pollan's The Ominivore's Dilemma (which only took me about four months to read, but was well worth it), Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father (still in progress, but summer ain't over).

A bit of gardening. Tomatoes every night this week!

Finished up some lingering sewing projects (and yes, I did finish that baby blanket I started knitting last winter).

Baked a lot of cookies.

I have thought surprisingly little about things eLearning and instructional design, although probably more than you would think.

I've got a fresh and open mind. Committed to enjoying my work -- 'cuz if I don't enjoy the time that I have to be away from my family, then it would just be hell, wouldn't it?

Expect to start hearing from me again, although probably in spurts and dribbles.

Best Project Ever

A baby girl. Born on Sunday. Yes, ahead of schedule by a few days! No name yet. People find this very disconcerting -- an unlabled person -- but we're waiting for the right name to appear stamped on her forehead.

No News

That is to say, I have not yet had this baby.

My official "due date" is not until May 21, but I've been hoping (as all expectant mothers do), that this is one project that would be delivered a bit early.

Can't project manage these things...

In the meantime, I've taken the last week off from work to do things like: hang out with my kids and husband, garden, cook, fold laundry, hang out with my parents, get my teeth cleaned, nap, knit, and various nesting projects.

My instructional design postings will be sporadic, at best, over the next few months. Unless I decide to post about the absolute lack of instructional design manuals that come with new babies!

Making Six Sigma Training Fun

OK. Maybe it's not possible to make Six Sigma eLearning fun. But I've tried.

And to be honest, it wasn't quite Six Sigma, but close.

This manufacturing process training course was originally delivered as a four hour plus death-by-PowerPoint classroom session (if you could see the original PPT source content, you'd begin glazing over within a few slides).

I went out on a few limbs here and tried to design something different. Within certain parameters as defined by the client (of course).

Here's some of what I tried to incorporate in order to (we hope) create an engaging experience:

Less is More. Cut, cut, cut.

Of course, SMES pushed back on this approach during story board review.

But when I hear someone telling me that this is the spot in the classroom session when the users start drooling and staring out the window, don't you think that's a good place to simplify?

Storyline. I created characters that the learner follows throughout the course. "Meet Pete and his team." Learn from this manufacturing group and how they applied these principles to their work place.

And we made it fun. Rubber Ducks! Everyone loves rubber ducks, right? Applying concepts to a fun, but real-world scenario to ensure better knowledge transfer and retention.

Got some pushback on this one, again from the SMEs. "Is it too juvenile?"

When reviewing the alpha version of the course, I made sure to have their team have actual end-users take the course and see what their responses were.

End-users thought it was fun. SMEs felt a bit threatened by this fun take on their sacred content. The juries still out.

Games! We created three or four mini-games scattered throughout the course to test concepts. Of course, we used rubber ducks whenever possible to create some fun graphics and exercises. For design inspiration, I took a few pages out of Karl Kapp's book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Using Audio. I tried to make more effective use of audio. Avoided reading text heavy pages word-for-word. But I got pushback. "Unless there's audio on every page, our user's will think it's broken..."

Better Assessment Questions. I wrote scenario based questions that were about context and concepts -- not rote memorization skills.

Navigation. I tried, but couldn't convince my client to go with open navigation. We had to go with lockouts, meaning the learner must go through the topics in order and can't advance to the next topic until the previous topic has been completed. Alas.

Overall Feedback. So far, the client likes it, but there's some uncertainty. "This is unlike anything we've done before." Which can be a good thing and a bad thing, right?

Do you think I went too far with the rubber duck motif? Did I threaten a sacred cow?

Photo Credits:

• So many ducks...Ducking hell. by Gaetan Lee
• Cut my breath by batega
• Devil Duck by wonderferret