His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet

Last week, I had the opportunity (and pleasure) of attending two public talks given by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama (one talk in Ottawa and another in Toronto). I was struck by his warmheartedness and the fullness of his laugh. The following paragraphs describe my interpretation of the various messages presented by His Holiness.

From the time we are born, the affection given to us by our mothers is critical for our development, both physical and mental. There is scientific evidence that links brain development with affection in our early years. Physical affection helps kids grow up healthy. Our bodies respond to affection with a stronger immune system.

Providing affection towards others leads to personal happiness. A corollary to that is self-centered attitudes cause loneliness. Affection also leads to trust, and trust leads to genuine friendship. From the opposite perspective, a lack of affection leads to fear and distrust. In addition, anger, fear, and hatred weakens the immune system and shortens your life. Our physical well being is linked to our emotions.

A healthy, happy community begins with healthy happy individuals. World peace begins with inner peace. Individual affection leads to world peace.

In our global world, we need to realize that destruction of our neighbour is actually destruction of ourselves. The concept of war is out-dated (obsolete), since it leads to self-destruction.
The division of we versus they (us versus them) leads to war.

Conflicts should be solved through dialogue. We should be teaching our children how to dialogue effectively. We should send our kids to spend time living in other countries. This helps them to develop an appreciative understanding of other cultures as well as true friendships. Appreciative understanding helps dialogue and true friendships lead to peace.

A concrete path to world peace is to start by merging the armed forces of the world. As countries sign-on to a unified world-army, there would be no one left to fight. This would lead to dis-armament. The unified world-army would be available to all member-states in the even to natural disasters.

All religions should be respected, including the non-believers. Religions can be categorized as either theistic or causational. That is, religions either believe in a supreme being (gods) or they believe in causal relationships (karma). The best religion for a person is the one that is associated to their culture and family. This is because they are most familiar with it, and as a result they can develop a deeper understanding of it. As for the non-believers, they can choose ;).

Cheers.

World Cafe on Informal Learning

Inspired by Harold Jarche's unworkshop on informal learning, on September 26, as part of Learn @ Work week, I hosted a world cafe on Informal Learning for the Ottawa Chapter of the Canadian Society for Training and Development. The event was attended by 17 amazing people who work within the training industry in the Ottawa area. At the event, three questions were posed:

• What is informal learning?
• What would make you and your organization more receptive to informal learning?
• How do you measure informal learning?

Here are the notes that were taken at each of the tables during the conversations:
During the debriefing the following themes were discovered:

• Informal learning's value is not always measurable in the same ways as formal learning
• Informal learning can be connected to formal learning events
• Informal learning is adaptable and flexible
• A formal definition of informal learning is unnecessary
• Informal learning represents a shift from "how I got it" to "having it"
• "how I got it" represents degrees / certifications
• "having it" represents demonstrated competencies
  
• Informal learning is life as usual
• No define, no design, no delivery, no assess
• 80% of the budget goes to formal learning, which provides 20% of the actual learning
• Formalization kills informal learning
• Informal needs to stay informal
• Informal learning is about the process
• Employee engagement could be used as a means of measuring informal learning

One of the greatest things about the World Cafe format is the opportunity for people to meet, make connections, and have meaningful conversation. I'd like to invite anyone who attended to share their reflections of the event and possibly insights they have realized since the event, as comments to this blog.

Cheers,
Rebecca

Is it informal learning if ...

What makes informal learning "informal"?

• Is it the lack of a certificate of completion?
  
• Is it the lack of an instructor?
  
• Is it the lack of learner evaluation?
• Is it the lack of a "formal" motivator?

I can think of examples for each of these that would qualify as "informal" learning. I can't think of a single characteristic of learning that could not be informal for one person and formal for another.

For example:

• When I wanted to learn about SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model), I searched the Internet and found a web-based tutorial on SCORM. The tutorial tracked my progress and when I completed the tutorial I was presented with a certificate (on the screen) that I could print. Would this be "formal" learning because I received a certificate? I would not call it such. To me, this was also informal learning. However, if I needed a SCORM certification, then the certificate of completion could be considered formal training. This also serves as an example of learning without an instructor. The course did not even have an associated email address for learner questions. The learners were completely on their own.
  

• Currently, I am auditing a couple of sociology courses at the University of Ottawa. I attend the "formal" lectures, but do not write tests or papers, and I am not graded. From my perspective, this is an informal learning opportunity for me. I am not part of any formal process, I simply attend the lectures I chose to attend and I learn (I think I learn a lot more than those who attend the course formally, since I am not concerned about how I will be graded). But for the majority of folks in the class, this is a formal learning opportunity. Their learning is measured and they received "credit" for the learning that they demonstrate. For the other students, the credit provides an external motivator. My motivation for attending is strictly personal interest.
  

So, is "informal" just a context?

The ideal rapid e-learning tool

I have been contemplating a lot lately what I think the ideal rapid e-learning tool would look like. I've put my current thoughts below. If you are a "text book" ADDIE fan, you will find that I am suggesting the development of some material backwards or completely contrary to good practices (specifically, the learning objectives are written after the story and not the other way around). I think this approach is more organic, and therefore, will be more likely to produce courses that have a more positive user experience. I don't think the world needs any more bad e-learning!

The key concept of this tool is that a story is used as the design mechanism, rather than the learning objectives. In my experience, courses written from learning objectives directly don't flow well. They are often very chunky, moving from one topic to another. It takes a lot of work by a good instructional designer to make a learning objectives based course flow well.

Note that the tool and associated process assumes that the designer has done research into the course topic.

To begin, the designer hits the "Start" button. This brings up a wizard.

Stage 1: Who's the course for?
The first question would be: "Who is the audience for this course?". The tool would encourage the designer to be specific about the audience. What is their prior knowledge on the topic? What skills do they have? What background skills do they have? What personality types are they? What is their normal job role?

Stage 2: What's the purpose?
The second question is "What are the course goals?". Another way to phase this might be "what behaviour do you want to change as a result of this course?" Designers can list multiple goals, but then the tool would ask that the goals be prioritized. A single course should not have more than five goals (two or three is ideal).

Stage 3: The story outline
The third question is the outline of the story. The designer would be asked to write the story that is the course. This would be full sentences that flow together. It is a narrative. When the designer feels that further detail is necessary, they add a further detail icon at the end of a sentence. Each one to three sentences would form a topic.

When the story narrative is complete, the tool would ask the designer to "tag" the sentences into different topics, and move the sentences around until the story flows well. Not all sentences require tags.

Stage 4: Checking against the goals
The designer would then be re-prompted with the course goals and be given an opportunity to validate that the course goals are being met. The tool would asked the designer to tag specific topics to the various course goals (based on the topic tags created in the previous step). A given topic can be in none or many of the goals. Topics that are not in any of the goals are "glue" topics, that are in the story simply to make it flow. Topics that support the goals are candidates for "learning objectives".

Stage 5: Writing the learning objectives.
Now that the topics have been associated with course goals, the learning objectives need to be written. The tool gives the designer topics and the designer is prompted to write appropriate learning objectives for these goals.

Note that it is intentional that topics that do not support the course goals do not have learning objectives. Glue topics should not be used for evaluation; therefore, they are not included in learning objectives.

Stage 6: Developing the assessment.
If the course requires an assessment, the test question are developed in this stage. The tools provides the designer with a learning objective. The designer can develop one or more question per learning objective. Questions are categorized as "review" or "assessment" questions.

At this point, the tool is just a set of drop down menus and places for text to be added.

Stage 7: Auto-generation of template
The course takes the narrative, the topics, and the assessment questions and creates the "outline" of the course with the development framework. This is where the wizard ends.

The development framework
The development framework looks something like the following:

The designer would be able to configure the layout (like any good graphics design tool). In addition, there would be a "storyboard view" that allows the designer to change the order of pages. The design will also be able to "preview" the course as the user would experience it.

A good tool would allow the course to be "published" into multiple formats: SCORM compliant, Self-contained web-based, self-contained application-based, etc.


So, what do you think? Would it help every aspiring course developer build better e-learning courses faster?

Covenanting and Online Collaboration

On Jay Cross' Informal Learning Blog, Jay asked for "what makes for successful online collaboration". This was a timely question, since I am in the process of preparing a workshop on covenanting.

Covenanting is a process that I have used both in face-to-face intentional communities and in online learning communties. It may be called different things, but the goal is the same: to set expectations (ground-rules) regarding behaviour.

From wikipedia, a definition: "A covenant, in its most general sense, is a solemn promise to do or not do something specified."

Covenanting in a face-to-face environment
In a face-to-face environment, I first learning of covenant when doing youth ministry work. I was an adult adviser working with a group of youth that use an "intentional community" model. The youth use covenant as a way to create a safe community without the need for too many "rules". It was more effective than creating "rules", because the youth themselves defined the covenant. As a result, they owned the expectations and agreed to abide by them.

Here is one way to build a covenant in a face-to-face environment. This method works well in small groups (6-15 people):

1. Ask each person to reflect upon the characteristics of particular group they participated in where they felt safe and enjoyed the experience (give them a minute or two to recall).
2. Ask people to share the characteristics of that group (record them on flip-chart paper). For example:
• Each person was allowed time to speak.
• People's ideas were respected.
• When you didn't understand someone, you could ask for clarification without judgment.
• etc.
3. Keep collecting items until no one has anything left to add. Ensure you check with each person.
4. Ask the group if they can agree to behaviours listed. If there are any behaviours that don't align or apply to this group, discuss them. If necessary, remove or modify them.
5. Once all the items are agreed by the entire group, re-write the agreed list neatly, and ask each member to sign the "covenant" or "agreement".
   
6. Post the signed list somewhere visible for all group meetings.
   

Covenanting in an online environment
In an online environment, I did a covenant within the first class of my Master's degree. The Master's program used an online learning community as the main learning tool. It was a transformative experience. I worked with an incredibly diverse and talented group of people throughout the program and learned a lot from sharing experiences with my fellow learners.

One of the reasons our learning community was so strong was in the beginning we had discussions about expectations and trust in the online environment. One of our activities was to post answers to the following questions within a discussion group:

• What trust builders do you personally consider to be the most important and why?
• What can you contribute to your virtual team?
• What do you need to receive in return?
• Describe your sense of the ideal virtual team?

We were encouraged to discuss the items that each person listed and as a team propose a list that we could all agree upon.

Covenanting and context
Covenant items are different depending on the context of the interaction. A covenant for a group of students in a course will be different than a group of professionals working together or a church group discussing spirituality. Covenant items might include:

• Be respectful of others.
• Always assume good intentions.
• Keep your commitments, don't commit if you can't follow through.
• Participate (if you are going to be away, let the team know).
• Everyone has the right to pass.
• Step-up step-down (if you are an outgoing extrovert be mindful when you are dominating the conversation and step-down, if you are introvert or shy be mindful of when you are not participating and step-up).

The important points about the covenanting process are:

• The items are determined by the group (use language that the group agrees upon).
• Each member of the group has the right to challenge items on the covenant (discuss challenged items until all can agree on the language used).
• The complete covenant must be agree upon by everyone (you might ask each person to sign the covenant to indicate their agreement).
  
• Each member is responsible for their own behaviour and upholding the agreed upon covenant.
  

As I prepare my covenanting workshop, I'll post some more articles in this area. If you have an suggestions or best practices, I'd love to hear them.

An ah-ha moment -- Learning Theories

I'm taking an introduction to sociology class at the moment, and in yesterday's class I had one of those ah-ha moments. Back when I was studying learning theories (as part of the Master of Arts in Distributed Learning program) I had a hard time grasping the relationship between the different theories. I was trying to analyze learning theories as a "natural scientist" rather than a "social scientist". With a background in computer science and physics, I suppose that isn't too surprising ... however, a paradigms shift was definitely necessary for me to grasp learning theories.

In sociology class we are exploring the different ways in which socialists attempt to describe culture (specifically western culture). Each of the sociologists do their analysis using a different theoretical framework. It is within the confines of their frameworks that they are able to describe how people interact with the society. Reasons for a given behavior can be describe in many different ways, based upon the framework used for the description.

This concept also applies to learning theories. For example, behaviorist learning theory is not an attempt to describe absolutely how everyone learns: rather, it is an attempt to describe how learning occurs within the constraints of the framework. In the case of behaviorist learning theory, the constraint is the stimulus-response framework. The cognitive learning theories use the framework of the brain as an empty vessel, and learning is the process of filling the vessel. The constructivist learning theories use the framework of building learning through social interactions.

Each learning theory is an attempt to describe how learning occurs given the specific framework. Learning theories are not absolutes. As an educator, my job is to alter the frameworks as necessary to ensure that learning occurs.

Today, I got of my bike and said Hello

For the last several weeks, I have been riding my bike along the Ottawa river parkway at least twice a week. Each time I come to this one section, I observe with wonder the stone sculptures. I take a brief pause and watch the artist do his work.

Today, I choose to get off my bicycle and read the sign. The artist was standing near the sign adding some sculptures to the platform with the sign. I said "hello" and we had a delightful conversation. He has been creating these sculptures at this location for over 20 years. For the last 7 years, the National Capital Commission (NCC) has been contracting him to maintain the sculptures throughout the summer.

The main sculpture (the one to the right in the photos) is the signature sculpture. The sculpture appears on the information plaque. The artist mentioned that he is drawn to recreate that sculpture every year. One year, he consciously tried to not create it, but found himself constantly drawn back to that area. The center-piece has the same concept every year, but with slight modifications each time it is re-created. It will be interesting to compare next years with this years :).

The artist uses just stones to create the sculptures. The larger stones are balanced and "wedges" of smaller stones are used to ensure the balanced rocks stay in place. They are very easily disturbed. The artist commented that the seagulls will often knock over sculptures when they take off (landing is often down with enough elegance that the sculptures remain undisturbed, until the bird decides to depart).

Another passer-by asked the artist about what happens to the sculptures in the winter. The artist said that he allows them to go the way of Zen ... that is, back to nature, such that new creations can be built the next year.