adult learning

Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem

On 06/20/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, lifelong learning, passions, platforms, professional development, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, streams of content, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem — from edu2030.agorize.com
How might we empower people to design their own learning journeys so they can lead purposeful and economically stable lives?

Excerpts:

The problem
Technology is rapidly transforming the way we live, learn, and work. Entirely new jobs are emerging as others are lost to automation. People are living longer, yet switching jobs more often. These dramatic shifts call for a reimagining of the way we prepare for work and life—specifically, how we learn new skills and adapt to a changing economic landscape.

The changes ahead are likely to hurt most those who can least afford to manage them: low-income and first generation learners already ill-served by our existing postsecondary education system. Our current system stifles economic mobility and widens income and achievement gaps; we must act now to ensure that we have an educational ecosystem flexible and fair enough to help all people live purposeful and economically stable lives. And if we are to design solutions proportionate to this problem, new technologies must be called on to scale approaches that reach the millions of vulnerable people across the country.

The challenge
How might we empower people to design their own learning journeys so they can lead purposeful and economically stable lives?

The Challenge—Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem—seeks bold ideas for how our postsecondary education system could be reimagined to foster equity and encourage learner agency and resilience. We seek specific pilots to move us toward a future in which all learners can achieve economic stability and lead purposeful lives. This Challenge invites participants to articulate a vision and then design pilot projects for a future ecosystem that has the following characteristics:

Expands access: The educational system must ensure that all people—including low-income learners who are disproportionately underserved by the current higher education system—can leverage education to live meaningful and economically stable lives.

Draws on a broad postsecondary ecosystem: While college and universities play a vital role in educating students, there is a much larger ecosystem in which students learn. This ecosystem includes non-traditional “classes” or alternative learning providers, such as MOOCs, bootcamps, and online courses as well as on-the-job training and informal learning. Our future learning system must value the learning that happens in many different environments and enable seamless transitions between learning, work, and life.

From DSC:
This is where I could see a vision similar to Learning from the Living [Class] Room come into play. It would provide a highly affordable, accessible platform, that would offer more choice, and more control to learners of all ages. It would be available 24×7 and would be a platform that supports lifelong learning. It would combine a variety of AI-enabled functionalities with human expertise, teaching, training, motivation, and creativity.

It could be that what comes out of this challenge will lay the groundwork for a future, massive new learning platform.

Also see:

Office of Edtech Wants Help Making Sense of All Those Higher Ed Providers — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

From DSC:
As important as being able to effectively communicate with others is, I think we could do a better job throughout the entire learning continuum of proving more coaching in this regard. We should provide far more courses, and/or e-learning based modules, and/or examples where someone is being coached on how best to communicate in a variety of situations.

Some examples/scenarios along the continuum (i.e, pre-K-12, higher ed and/or vocational work, and the workplace) might include:

For children communicating with each other
- How to ask if someone wants to play (and how best to find an activity everyone wants to do; or how to handle getting a no each time)
- How to handle a situation where one’s friend is really angry about something or is being extra quiet about something
- How to listen
For children communicating with adults (and vice versa)
- How to show respect
- How to listen
- Not being shy but feeling free to say what’s on their mind with a known/respected adult
For highschoolers
- Wondering how best to interview for that new job
- For communicating with parents
- How to handle issues surrounding diversity and showing respect for differences
- How to listen
For college students
- Wondering how best to interview for that new job
- Encouraging them to use their professors’ office hours — and to practice communication-related skills therein as well
- For communicating with parents, and vice versa
- How to listen
For those entering the workplace
- How to communicate with co-workers
- For dealing with customers who are irate about something that happened (or didn’t happen) to them
- How to listen
For managers and their communications with their employees
- How to encourage
- How to handle disciplinary issues or change behaviors
- How to listen
For leaders and their communications with their departments, staffs, companies, organizations
- How to inspire, guide, lead
- How to listen

I intentionally inserted the word listen many times in the above scenarios, as I don’t think we do enough about — or even think about — actively developing that skill.

The manner in which we deliver and engage learners here could vary:

One possible way would be to use interactive videos that pause at critical points within conversations and ask the listeners how they would respond at these points in the scenarios. They might have 2-3 choices per decision point. When the video continues, based upon which selection they went with, the learner could see how things panned out when they pursued that route.
Or perhaps we could host some seminars or workshops with students on how to use web-based collaboration tools (videoconferencing and/or audio only based meetings) and/or social media related tools.
Or perhaps such training could occur in more face-to-face environments with 2 or more learners reading a scene-setting script, then pausing at critical points in the conversation for students to discuss the best possible responses
….and I’m sure there are other methods that could be employed as well.

But for all the talk of the importance of communications, are we doing enough to provide effective examples/coaching here?

Some thoughts on this topic from scripture

James 1:19-20 (NIV)
Listening and Doing
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Proverbs 21:23 (NIV)
23 Those who guard their mouths and their tongues keep themselves from calamity.

Proverbs 18:20-21 (NIV)
20 From the fruit of their mouth a person’s stomach is filled; with the harvest of their lips they are satisfied. 21 The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

Proverbs 12:18-19 (NIV)
18 The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. 19 Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.

“Blockchain: Is it Good for Education?” [virtuallyinspired.org] + other relevant resources

On 03/30/2018, in accreditation, adult learning, Blockchain, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, face-to-face, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, IBM, ideas, innovation, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, MBA, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, platforms, professional development, project-based learning, society, strategy, student-related, tools, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Blockchain: Is it Good for Education? — from virtuallyinspired.org

Excerpt:

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is a public ledger type database made up of records called blocks that are linked together like a chain. It is a shared unchallengeable ledger for recording the history of transactions. Here, the ledger records the history of academic accomplishments. An education ledger (blockchain) could store academic information such as degrees, diplomas, tests etc. It could be kind of digital transcript.

A Few Potential Applications of Blockchain

Learning Credentials Repository – A blockchain database of credentials and achievements can be a secure online repository. Digitized records/blocks replace paper copies for sharing proof of learning and can be easily accessible and tracked. Blockchain can make it easy to access all of your academic accomplishments in a digitized and ultra-secure way. Each record is a block. Your records would be chained together and new credentials will be added as you go throughout your lifetime of learning.
Lifelong Learning Building Blocks – Informal learning activities could be captured, validated and stored in addition to formal learning accomplishments. This can be as simple as noting a watched video or completed online lesson. We’re already seeing some universities using blockchain with badges, credits, and qualifications.
Authenticating Credentials – Institutions, recruiting firms or employers can easily access and verify credentials. No more gathering of papers or trying to digitize to share. Blocks are digital “learning” records and come in multilingual format eliminating the painstaking task of translation.

What’s more, with diploma mills and fake credentials causing havoc for institutions and employers, blockchain solves the issue by providing protection from fraud. It has two-step authentication and spreads blocks across numerous computer nodes. It would take hitting over 51% of computers to falsify a block.

Sony and IBM have partnered and filed patents to develop a blockchain educational platform that can house student data, their performance reports and other information related to their academic records. Some universities have created their own platforms.

Also see:

Blockchain in Education — from by Alexander Grech and Anthony F. Camilleri

Context
Blockchain technology is forecast to disrupt any field of activity that is founded on timestamped record-keeping of titles of ownership. Within education, activities likely to be disrupted by blockchain technology include the award of qualifications, licensing and accreditation, management of student records, intellectual property management and payments.

Key Advantages of Blockchain Technology
From a social perspective, blockchain technology offers significant possibilities beyond those currently available. In particular, moving records to the blockchain can allow for:

Self-sovereignty, i.e. for users to identify themselves while at the same time maintaining control over the storage and management of their personal data;
Trust, i.e. for a technical infrastructure that gives people enough confidence in its operations to carry through with transactions such as payments or the issue of certificates;
Transparency & Provenance, i.e. for users to conduct transactions in knowledge that each party has the capacity to enter into that transaction;
Immutability, i.e. for records to be written and stored permanently, without thepossibility of modification;
Disintermediation, i.e. the removal of the need for a central controlling authority to manage transactions or keep records;
Collaboration, i.e. the ability of parties to transact directly with each other without the need for mediating third parties.

Sony wants to digitize education records using the blockchain

College of Law Announces the Launch of the Nation’s First Live Online J.D. Program [law.syr.edu]

On 03/22/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, change, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, online learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

College of Law Announces the Launch of the Nation’s First Live Online J.D. Program — from law.syr.edu

Excerpt:

The American Bar Association has granted the Syracuse University College of Law a variance to offer a fully interactive online juris doctor program. The online J.D. program will be the first in the nation to combine real-time and self-paced online classes, on-campus residential classes, and experiential learning opportunities.

…
The online J.D. was subject to intense scrutiny and review by legal education experts before the College was granted the variance. Students in the online program will be taught by College of Law faculty, will be held to the same high admission and academic standards as students in the College’s residential program, and will take all courses required by its residential J.D. program.

Also see:

The first fully interactive online J.D. program
The Syracuse University College of Law
SU Law first in nation to offer live online law program
Bar Association grants SU a variance to offer fully interactive online programs

“The JD degree is usually required to practice law in the United States. It is considered the first degree in law. The JD degree is offered by American Bar Association (ABA)-approved law schools, by law schools that are not ABA-approved, and by many Canadian law schools.”

(source)

From DSC:
The American Bar Association is finally starting to grant more variances that involve online-based education (or in their terms, “distance education”). I’m sure that they have been facing increasingly intense pressure from a variety of law schools over the last decade or more. It’s good to see the ABA grant these types of variances, as it won’t be long now before online-based learning is as much a part of the offerings from a variety of law schools as it is for institutions offering traditional undergraduate and graduate degrees.

2018 Workplace Learning Report — from learning.linkedin.com

Excerpts:

The path to opportunity is changing
The short shelf life of skills and a tightening labor market are giving rise to a multitude of skill gaps. Businesses are fighting to stay ahead of the curve, trying to hold onto their best talent and struggling to fill key positions. Individuals are conscious of staying relevant in the age of automation.

Enter the talent development function.
These organizational leaders create learning opportunities to enable employee growth and achievement. They have the ability to guide their organizations to success in tomorrow’s labor market, but they can’t do it alone.
…
Our research answers the talent developer’s most pressing questions:
* How are savvy talent development leaders adapting to the pace of change in today’s dynamic world of work?
* Why do employees demand learning and development resources, but don’t make the time to learn?
* How do executives think about learning and development?
* Are managers the missing link to successful learning programs?

From DSC:
Even though this piece is a bit of a sales pitch for Lynda.com — a great service I might add — it’s still worth checking out. I say this because it brings up a very real trend that I’m trying to bring more awareness to — i.e., the pace of change has changed. Our society is not ready for this new, exponential pace of change. Technologies are impacting jobs and how we do our jobs, and will likely do so for the next several decades. Skills gaps are real and likely growing larger. Corporations need to do their part in helping higher education revise/develop curriculum and they need to offer funds to create new types of learning labs/environments. They need to offer more internships and opportunities to learn new skills.

Why Professors Doubt Education Research [Young] + “Personalized Faculty Development: Engaging Networks, Empowering Individuals” [Leafstedt]

On 03/09/2018, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, faculty/staff, higher education, ideas, instructional design, learning, learning theories, pedagogy, research, teaching & learning, teaching online, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Why Professors Doubt Education Research — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young

Excerpts:

You found that professors really care about their teaching, and yet they are skeptical of education research. It sounds like a lot of people ended up teaching the way that they had been taught, or the way that they felt good as a student in classes they had had.

That’s right. People sometimes ignore the research precisely because they care about teaching. Different faculty arrive at the point where they’re teaching college students from wildly different experiences of their own. Some have wanted since they were small children to be professors at a university, and some fell into it later in a career.

For faculty who think that research is a good way to learn how to teach, they will devour the literature on learning sciences. They’ll reach out to experts across a number of disciplines and within their own discipline to try and learn what the best way to teach is

For faculty who believe that teaching is an art, that it is just something that you develop with experience and time, that you can’t learn from a book, you need to learn by doing more or learn from your students, no amount of exposure to learning science research is going to disrupt their sense that this is something they learn by doing, or that they need to follow their gut on.

…

Do you have any advice for someone who wants to change someone’s mind to either adopt or consider more of this evidence-based research?

People can always change their perspective. If you’re trying to communicate the value of a technology or an approach, or even of learning science or education research as a field, you have to start with the person you’re speaking to. They may come to that conversation with a sense of, “I know that people get PhDs in education. People get PhDs in curriculum design, and I’ve never even taken a class where we’ve talked about curriculum design. I would like to know what they know.”

Then there are people who will say, “I’ve been teaching since I was a graduate student. My students are very happy with the teaching. I feel pretty good about my teaching. I understand that you have a PhD in curriculum design, but I don’t really need that.”

You need to approach those two different faculty members differently, understanding that there are some people who are interested in hearing about evidence-based practices, and just pointing them towards the resources is great.
…

Excerpt from the question:
What about your own teaching? I’m curious. Are you someone that tries different techniques that are based on research?

There is so much literature, and there are so many right ways, and there are so many recommendations that incorporating all of them into your practice at the same time is literally impossible. Many of them are contradictory. You have to choose a suite that you’re adhering to, because you can’t do the others if you’re doing these. Trying to embody best practices while teaching is really complex. It’s a skillset that you develop. You develop with time, and instruction, and you can master, but you’re always going to have to continue to perfect it.

Also see:

Personalized Faculty Development: Engaging Networks, Empowering Individuals — from er.educause.edu by Jill Leafstedt

Excerpts:

During the meeting, I chose to spend my time focused solely on sessions in the Faculty Development and Engagement track. My goal: return to my home campus energized and ready to tackle the age-old problem of how to move faculty from being content experts into dynamic educators.
…
Luckily for me, I was not the only one looking for this inspiration. The faculty development sessions were packed with people trying to answer questions such as, “Why don’t faculty want help?” or “Why don’t faculty attend my workshops?” On the whole, the sessions reaffirmed my belief that faculty development does not happen in a workshop, nor does it happen through training. Improving teaching is a long, messy, reflective process that must be approached from multiple angles with many entry points.

Sound challenging? It is, but there is reason to be hopeful; our colleagues are working hard to find and share answers. Two themes came through loud and clear from the sessions I attended. First, meet faculty where they are. Don’t expect them to come to you ready to learn; go to them and start where they are. Second, build networks for ongoing learning.

From DSC:
Both of the above articles present a HUGE issue in terms of improving the level of teaching and learning. Both articles seem to be saying that anyone interested in really improving the teaching and learning that’s going on needs to meet with each individual faculty member in order to meet them where they are at. When you have hundreds of faculty members plus an over-flowing job plate that’s asking you to wear numerous hats, that’s a very tall order indeed.

Who’s Teaching the Teachers? [Alsop]

On 03/07/2018, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, career development, colleges, community colleges, faculty/staff, higher education, pedagogy, teaching & learning, universities, by Daniel Christian

Who’s Teaching the Teachers? — from chronicle.com by Elizabeth Alsop

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Last fall, the academic career coach Jennifer Polk conducted an informal Twitter poll: How many of you, she asked her followers, received any meaningful pedagogical training during graduate school?

Replies ranged from the encouraging to the mostly dispiriting, with one doctoral candidate noting that the only training the program had offered took the form of “trial by fire.” Just 19 percent of the 2,248 respondents said they had received at least “decent” training — a number that, however unscientific, is also symptomatic.

This statistic reflects something that many of us could confirm firsthand: Teaching remains undervalued in the context of doctoral training and the profession at large. The result, by this anecdotal reckoning, is that less than one-fifth of aspiring college teachers are effectively taught how to teach.

…

The American Association of University Professors estimates that over 70 percent of all faculty positions are non-tenure-track, so these are teaching, not research, appointments.

…

Ennobling as such rhetorical constructs may be, they obscure not only the very real labor of teaching, but the fact that teaching is teachable: something that results not from divine, Dead Poets Society-like bursts of inspiration, but, as in other career fields, from study, apprenticeship, and practice. There are any number of books — including Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, John Bean’s Engaging Ideas, and Cathy Davidson’s The New Education — that offer excellent advice for college instructors.

It’s also worth noting that the resistance to addressing pedagogy in graduate education may be practical, as well as philosophical: Teaching someone to teach is hard. Like writing, teaching is a craft, learned not just in a single class, practicum, or workshop. Rather, it’s a recursive process, developed through trial and error — and yes, by “fire” — but also through conversation with others: a mentor, a cohort, your peers.

DC: Might Alexa be a tool to periodically schedule & provide practice tests & distributed practice on content?

On 03/03/2018, in A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, assistive technologies, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, curriculum, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, experimentation, formal learning, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interaction design, interactivity, internet, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, learning theories, liberal arts, lifelong learning, microlearning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), online learning, online media, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, universities, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
After seeing the article entitled, “Scientists Are Turning Alexa into an Automated Lab Helper,” I began to wonder…might Alexa be a tool to periodically schedule & provide practice tests & distributed practice on content? In the future, will there be “learning bots” that a learner can employ to do such self-testing and/or distributed practice?

From page 45 of the PDF available here:

The 4th Next Generation Learning Spaces event is right around the corner!

Take a look at the latest agenda.

Here is just a fraction of what you can expect:

Explore what’s next in learning spaces + design thinking that breaks the barriers of tradition and inspire innovation
Retool your learning environments with virtual & augmented reality
Connect your learning space design with strategic planning initiatives
Discover next generation learning solutions during our networking breaks
Overcome institutional and financial roadblocks to building active learning spaces
Redesign spaces with limited budgets

From DSC:
I am honored to be serving on the Advisory Council for this conference with a great group of people. Missing — at least from my perspective — from the image below is Kristen Tadrous, Senior Program Director with the Corporate Learning Network. Kristen has done a great job these last few years planning and running this conference.

NOTE:
The above graphic reflects a change for me. I am still an Adjunct Faculty Member
at Calvin College, but I am no longer a Senior Instructional Designer there.

This national conference will be held in Los Angeles, CA on February 26-28, 2018. It is designed to help institutions of higher education develop highly-innovative cultures — something that’s needed in many institutions of traditional higher education right now.

I have attended the first 3 conferences and I moderated a panel at last year’s conference out in San Diego. I just want to say that this is a great conference and I encourage you to bring a group of people to it from your organization! I say a group of people because a group of 5 of us (from a variety of departments) went one year and the result of attending the NGLS Conference was a brand new Sandbox Classroom — an active-learning based, highly-collaborative learning space where faculty members can experiment with new pedagogies as well as with new technologies. The conference helped us discuss things as a diverse group, think out loud, come up with some innovative ideas, and then build the momentum to move forward with some of those key ideas.

If you haven’t already attended this conference, I highly recommend that you check it out.

eLearning Trends of 2018 (Top picks from 57 experts)

Summary of 11 top trends in 5 minutes, 21 seconds.

Includes predictions from 57 industry experts.

Note from DSC:
Audio is a music track only.
There is no narration or
speaking from the experts.

A Product at Every Price: A Review of MOOC Stats and Trends in 2017 [Shah]

On 01/22/2018, in 21st century, adult learning, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, higher education, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, student-related, training / L&D, trends, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

A Product at Every Price: A Review of MOOC Stats and Trends in 2017 — from edsurge.com by Dhawal Shah

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The MOOC landscape has grown to include 9,400 courses, more than 500 MOOC-based credentials, and more than a dozen graduate degrees. The total number of MOOCs available to register for at any point of time is larger than ever, thanks to tweaks in the scheduling policy by MOOC providers.

However, for the first time, we are seeing a slowdown in the number of new learners, a direct result of a shift in priorities towards users who are willing to pay. According to data gathered by Class Central, around 20 million new learners signed up for their first MOOC in 2017, fewer than the 23 million new learners who registered for a MOOC in 2016. The total number of MOOC learners is now 78 million.

Here is a list of the top five MOOC providers by registered users:

Coursera: 30 million users
edX: 14 million users
XuetangX: 9.3 million users
FutureLearn: 7.1 million users
Udacity: 5 million users

…

Up to now, efforts to offer college credit for MOOCs have been targeted towards students who are enrolled in on-campus degree programs at the institutions that produced the MOOCs. Now, for the first time, we are seeing examples in which on-campus students have the option to earn credit from MOOCs, even from colleges and universities other than the one they attend.

The big MOOC providers now have a product at every price point—from free to million-dollar licensing deals with employers.

From DSC:
I have been trying to blog more about learning how to learn — and to provide some more resources on metacognition and the like.

Along these lines — and with permission from the author — the following excerpt is from Quentin Schultze’s solid book, Communicate like a True Leader (pages 35 & 36). I asked Quin if I could share this excerpt because I think it could be a great strategy to share with students (at least for them to experiment with, and try it out to see if it helps them). Whether they know it or not, learning how to learn is THEE key skill these days.

Quin would also emphasize some other items such as listening, attending to reality, communicating effectively with others, and more…but my focus here is on learning strategies. So I share it in the hope that it will help some of you students out there just as it helped Quin.

During the beginning of my sophomore year, I started reviewing each day’s class notes after classes were over. I soon realized how little I recalled even of that day’s lectures and discussions. It dawned on me that normal note-taking merely gave me the impression that I was learning. I implemented a strategy that revolutionized my learning, launched me successfully into graduate school, helped me become a solid teacher, equipped me to be a productive researcher-writer, and made it possible for me to be an engaging speaker.

I not only reviewed my notes daily. I rewrote them from scratch within a couple of hours of each class meeting. I used my actual course notes as prompts to recall more of the lecture and to help me organize my own reactions to the material. My notes expanded. My retention swelled.

My revised notes became a kind of journal of my dialogue with the instructor and the readings. I integrated into my revised course notes my daily reading notes, reworking them into language that was meaningful to me and preparing to ask the instructor at the next class anything that I was uncertain about. From then on I earned nearly straight A’s with far less cramming for exams.

Moreover, I had begun journaling about my learning — one of the most important communication skills. I became a real learner by discovering how to pay attention to others and myself.

In a broad sense, I learned how to listen.

DC: Helping our students in K-20 learn how to learn. Post includes several resources re: metacognition.

On 01/17/2018, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, assessment, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, entrepreneurship, future, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, instructional design, intelligent systems, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, learning preferences, learning theories, lifelong learning, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, neurodivergent/special needs, online learning, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, psychology, staying relevant, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, universities, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
From an early age, we need to help our students learn how to learn. What tips, advice, and/or questions can we help our students get into the habit of asking themselves? Along these lines, the article below,”How Metacognition Boosts Learning,” provides some excellent questions.

Speaking of questions…I’ll add some more, but of a different sort:

How can all educators do a better job of helping their students learn how to learn?
How can Instructional Designers and Instructional Technologists help out here? Librarians? Provosts? Deans? Department Chairs? Teachers? Trainers (in the corporate L&D space)?
How might technologies come into play here in terms of building more effective web-based learner profiles that can be fed into various platforms and/or into teachers’ game plans?

…

I appreciate Bill Knapp and his perspectives very much (see here and here; Bill is GRCC’s Executive Director of Distance Learning & Instructional Technologies). The last we got together, we wondered out loud:

Why don’t teachers, professors, school systems, administrations within in K-20 address this need/topic more directly…? (i.e., how can we best help our students learn how to learn?)
Should we provide a list of potentially helpful techniques, questions, tools, courses, modules, streams of content, or other resources on how to learn?
Should we be weaving these sorts of things into our pedagogies?
Are there tools — such as smartphone related apps — that can be of great service here? For example, are there apps for sending out reminders and/or motivational messages?

As Bill asserted, we need to help our students build self-efficacy and a mindset of how to learn. Then learners can pivot into new areas with much more confidence. I agree. In an era that continues to emphasize freelancing and entrepreneurship — plus dealing with a rapidly-changing workforce — people now need to be able to learn quickly and effectively. They need to have the self confidence to be able to pivot. So how can we best prepare our students for their futures?

Also, on a relevant but slightly different note (and I suppose is of the flavor of a Universal Design for Learning approach)…I think that “tests” given to special needs children — for example that might have to do with executive functioning, and/or identifying issues, and/or providing feedback as to how a particular learner might best absorb information — would be helpful for ALL students to take. If I realize that the way my brain learns best is to have aural and visual materials presented on any given topic, that is very useful information for me to realize — and the sooner the better!

How Metacognition Boosts Learning — from edutopia.org by Youki Terada
Students often lack the metacognitive skills they need to succeed, but they can develop these skills by addressing some simple questions.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Strategies that target students’ metacognition—the ability to think about thinking—can close a gap that some students experience between how prepared they feel for a test and how prepared they actually are. In a new study, students in an introductory college statistics class who took a short online survey before each exam asking them to think about how they would prepare for it earned higher grades in the course than their peers—a third of a letter grade higher, on average. This low-cost intervention helped students gain insight into their study strategies, boosting their metacognitive skills and giving them tools to be more independent learners.
…
More recently, a team of psychologists and neuroscientists published a comprehensive analysis of 10 learning techniques commonly used by students. They discovered that one of the most popular techniques—rereading material and highlighting key points—is also one of the least effective because it leads students to develop a false sense of mastery. They review a passage and move on without realizing that they haven’t thoroughly understood and absorbed the material.
…
Metacognition helps students recognize the gap between being familiar with a topic and understanding it deeply. But weaker students often don’t have this metacognitive recognition—which leads to disappointment and can discourage them from trying harder the next time.
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To promote students’ metacognition, middle and high school teachers can implement the following strategies. Elementary teachers can model or modify these strategies with their students to provide more scaffolding.
…
During class, students should ask themselves:

What are the main ideas of today’s lesson?
Was anything confusing or difficult?
If something isn’t making sense, what question should I ask the teacher?
Am I taking proper notes?
What can I do if I get stuck on a problem?

…

Before a test, students should ask themselves:

What will be on the test?
What areas do I struggle with or feel confused about?
How much time should I set aside to prepare for an upcoming test?
Do I have the necessary materials (books, school supplies, a computer and online access, etc.) and a quiet place to study, with no distractions?
What strategies will I use to study? Is it enough to simply read and review the material, or will I take practice tests, study with a friend, or write note cards?
What grade would I get if I were to take the test right now?

…

After a test, students should ask themselves:

What questions did I get wrong, and why did I get them wrong?
Were there any surprises during the test?
Was I well-prepared for the test?
What could I have done differently?
Am I receiving useful, specific feedback from my teacher to help me progress?

From DSC:
Below are a few resources more about metacognition and learning how to learn:

Metacognition — from wikipedia.com

Metacognition And Learning: Strategies For Instructional Design — from theelearningcoach.com by Connie Malamed

Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects — from coursera.org

Students should be taught how to study. — from Daniel Willingham
Excerpt:
Rereading is a terribly ineffective strategy. The best strategy–by far–is to self-test–which is the 9th most popular strategy out of 11 in this study. Self-testing leads to better memory even compared to concept mapping (Karpicke & Blunt, 2011).

Study smart | Make the most of your study time with these drawn-from-the-research tips. — from apa.org | from Willingham’s article above

Quiz: how solid are your study skills? — from the American Psychological Association

The Lesson You Never Got Taught in School: How to Learn! — from bigthink.com
Excerpt:
Have you ever wondered whether it is best to do your studying in large chunks or divide your studying over a period of time? Research has found that the optimal level of distribution of sessions for learning is 10-20% of the length of time that something needs to be remembered. So if you want to remember something for a year you should study at least every month, if you want to remember something for five years you should space your learning every six to twelve months. If you want to remember something for a week you should space your learning 12-24 hours apart. It does seem however that the distributed-practice effect may work best when processing information deeply – so for best results you might want to try a distributed practice and self-testing combo.There is however a major catch – do you ever find that the amount of studying you do massively increases before an exam? Most students fall in to the “procrastination scallop” – we are all guilty at one point of cramming all the knowledge in right before an exam, but the evidence is pretty conclusive that this is the worst way to study, certainly when it comes to remembering for the long term. What is unclear is whether cramming is so popular because students don’t understand the benefits of distributed practice or whether testing practices are to blame – probably a combination of both. One thing is for sure, if you take it upon yourself to space your learning over time you are pretty much guaranteed to see improvements.

Addendum on 1/22/18:

Using Metacognition to Promote Learning
IDEA Paper #63 | December 2016
By Barbara J. Millis

Excerpt:

Some Definitions of Metacognition
Metacognition, simplistically defined, can be described as “cognition about cognition” or “thinking about thinking” (Flavell, Miller & Miller, 2002, p. 175; Shamir, Metvarech, & Gida, 2009, p. 47; Veeman, Van Hout-Wolters, & Afflerbach, 2006, p. 5). However, because metacognition is multifaceted and multi-layered (Dunlosky & Metcalf, 2009, p. 1; Flavell, 1976; Hall, Danielewicz, & Ware , 2013, p. 149; Lovett, 2013, p. 20), more complex definitions are called for. Basically, metacognition must be viewed as an ongoing process that involves reflection and action. Metacognitive thinkers change both their understandings and their strategies. The clearest definitions of metacognition emphasize its nature as a process or cycle.

Several authors (Nilson, 2013, p. 9; Schraw, 2001; & Zimmerman, 1998; 2000; 2002) narrow this process down to three ongoing stages. The first stage, pre-planning, emphasizes the need for reflection on both one’s own thinking and the task at hand, including reflection on past strategies that might have succeeded or failed. Following this self-reflection, during planning, metacognitive thinkers develop and implement—put into action—a plan. In the third and final stage—post-planning adjustments/revisions—subsequent analysis following implementation leads to modifications, revised decisions, and new future plans. In an excellent summary, Wirth states that “metacognition requires students both to understand how they are learning and to develop the ability to make plans, to monitor progress and to make adjustments” (as cited in Jaschik, 2011, p. 2).

Conclusion: As we have seen, metacognition is a complex but valuable skill that can nurture students’ learning and their self-awareness of the learning process. It is best conceived as a three-step process that can occur through deliberately designed activities. Such activities can take place before, during, and after face-to-face lessons or through online learning. They can also be built around both multiple choice and essay examinations. Immersing students in these metacognitive activities—assuming there are opportunities for practice and feedback—can result in students who are reflective learners.

Developing a learning culture: A framework for the growth of teaching expertise [Chick, Kenny, Berenson, Johnson, Keegan, Read, & Reid]

On 01/15/2018, in adjunct faculty, adult learning, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, faculty/staff, higher education, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, online learning, pedagogy, professional development, research, teaching & learning, universities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Developing a learning culture: A framework for the growth of teaching expertise — from facultyfocus.com by Nancy Chick, Natasha Kenny, Carol Berenson, Carol Johnson, David Keegan, Emma Read, & Leslie Reid

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Many postsecondary institutions have started to explore what it means to develop and demonstrate teaching expertise, recognizing not only the complexities of teaching and of documenting the experiences of teaching, but also that teaching expertise is developed through a learning process that continues over time (Hendry & Dean, 2002; Kreber, 2002). Our framework (see below graphic) for this growth of teaching expertise draws from the scholarly literature related to postsecondary teaching and learning to demonstrate that teaching expertise involves multiple facets, habits of mind (or ways of knowing and being), and possible developmental activities.

The Structure of the Framework
Our framework (Figure 1) introduces three foundational habits of mind—inclusive, learning-centered, and collaborative ways of knowing and being—that ground five interwoven and non-hierarchical facets of teaching expertise:

teaching and supporting learning
professional learning and development
mentorship
research, scholarship, and inquiry
educational leadership

Figure 1: Conceptualization of a framework for the development of teaching expertise

This framework is “written in pencil” in that it is meant to be shared, adapted, and used according to the needs of local contexts. The intention is to provide a scholarly framework for recognizing the breadth of characteristics involved in the development of teaching expertise in postsecondary contexts across all career stages.

Workplace learning trends 2018 — from elearninglearning.com

Excerpt:

The beginning of a year is a great time to take stock of the year gone by and plan for the year ahead. In this blog post, we will have a quick glimpse of what we believe would be some of the key trends in workplace learning this year.

Also see:

Learning Experience Design Trends For 2018 — from elearninglearning.com. & theelearningcoach.com by Connie Malamed
8 Ways Things are Changing for Practitioners

Here are the trends I’ve been seeing, reading and hearing about.

Integrating Learning with Work
From Instructional Designer to Learning Experience Designer
ADDIE Who?
Embracing Design Thinking
Increased Awareness of Universal Design
Working Out Loud Circles
Seeing the Value in Metrics
Openness to All Types of Learning Experiences

Learning Ecosystems

College of Law Announces the Launch of the Nation’s First Live Online J.D. Program [law.syr.edu]

2018 Workplace Learning Report [LinkedIn.com]

Why Professors Doubt Education Research [Young] + “Personalized Faculty Development: Engaging Networks, Empowering Individuals” [Leafstedt]

Who’s Teaching the Teachers? [Alsop]

The 4th Next Generation Learning Spaces event is right around the corner! DC: Make plans to attend this conference — you won’t regret it!

Developing a learning culture: A framework for the growth of teaching expertise [Chick, Kenny, Berenson, Johnson, Keegan, Read, & Reid]

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