Trudgery

Trudgery is not a word but it should be. Trudge is a verb meaning slow, laborious walking. Drudgery is noun meaning hard, menial work. I'm at the trudgery part of the Masters: doing slow laborious work that is often hard, mostly tedious...and occasionally satisfying.

Next deadline of March 15 is coming up -- first draft of project and paper due. There's even a chance I'll get there. Every once in a while though, my brain just stops working, like earlier today. Now I'm back at it. Such is my Saturday night. This reclusive life is getting to me.

Onwards!

Reflections on my own Learning

In the past few weeks, I've been on a steep learning curve for Flash & AS3. I've modified and reused a couple of games, and took days to figure out the main interface; still have to figure out how all these components communicate with each other. All the while still on track towards Java certification.

Coming up for air recently, I had a few observations.

• The learning process is non-linear. Yes, maybe it would have been more efficient to pick up ONE book and go through it step-by-step. Yes, perhaps I should have learned Flash before diving into ActionScript 3 -- but I didn't. For whatever reason, I choose to start with AS3 (because I knew some Java and wanted to do something cool and didn't want to mess with animation techniques) and then went back and learned Flash. Learning Flash then felt relevant and it went very fast.
• Learning is ad hoc. This goes with the non-linear. Ad hoc is often used to mean improvised and impromptu. However, I like the alternate dictionary definition: "concerned or dealing with a specific subject, purpose, or end." I learn what I need when I need it, and by googling specific phrases, searching through my books, or trying it multiple ways until it works -- somehow I find the answer -- or decide to do something different.
• Learning is appreciative & problem-based. I learn when I'm trying to solve a particular problem. Problem: How do I get this thing to work right? Appreciative Inquiry: How do I do it better? Is this the best mechanic to use?
• Learning needs multiple examples. This to me is *the* most important point. By using multiple examples, multiple analogies, multiple tools can I formulate a solution. I learn primarily by example then an understanding why those examples work. Through examples I can create my own models and my own theories on particular subjects. Through the use of salient examples (bringing out key points), I can improve my ability to learn quicker.
  

Providing multiple salient examples allows learners to understand what is important and allows learners to create their own mental models. Then perhaps, in contrasting those models with an experts point-of-view we learn more. We have to engage with the material, provide elaborations and understandings that are relevant to us.

How does one create the design of learning space to reflect this?

It's a conflict, no? We're suppose to teach a specific thing, a specific model. Everyone must have the same picture in their heads (industrial view of learning). How do we accommodate their background, their experience as adults? Experiences that often ameliorate understandings of what is taught? Perhaps what we need to teach is creating a common language around a set of experiences from which we build our models. Then use theories and expert models to push the boundaries of the problem space, to imagine something different.

Here's the rub -- it takes time to learn in this way -- more time than is usually allotted. I'm learning by doing, learning by example, and learning deeply. And it's slow going. But in this case, I'm not just learning, I'm changing how I think of myself in relation to my work. Reconfiguring those brain cells is hard work. Not quite there yet -- wish me speed so I can make my self-imposed deadline of graduating in May 2009.

Passion in Learning: to be more fully human

When I wrote about Emotion and Designing Learning I was examining the idea proposed by Carmen Taran that instructional designers need to have chemistry with their content -- which I interpreted as passion for the content. This post received many comments - and V. Yonkers proposed the idea that people needed curiousity about what they were designing -- but not neccessarily passion. As I continue on my quest to design a game around accounting, I am agreeing with her more and more. Good instructional design requires curiousity, it requires our intellectual and emotional attention, it requires a passion for the design process as Jason W. pointed out, and identifying with a project as Mike B points out.

Still I couldn't let go of the idea of passion. And then I came across an article with this quote:

To be motivated, to have passion, is not merely to be working toward pre-determined goals, but to be swept away by the power of an idea or the drama inherent in all educative, transformative events.
Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences by David Wong

It made my heart sing! To incite passion in the learning, to remember that education can mean having fun, being in the flow. To be swept away by an idea -- haven't we all had this at some point in our lives?

South of Big Sur, CA, USA (Dec 2006)

Now back down to earth -- in our everyday working lives, in the world of constraints, we can't always have this. But we can aspire to this in our work, everyday. As David Wong continues to say in his article -- "to teach is to inspire." Yes it's a cliche, and it's true. If we as instructional designers cannot try to inspire with what we design, then why do we do the work we do?

Educators, at their best, create experiences in which students can feel more fully alive, more fully human. Perhaps, it is hard to imagine that learning can be so moving. Our darkest, most weary cynicism dismisses this vision of education as idealistic, romanticized, and too difficult to achieve. However, in the end the truth is this: we only wish our learning could be so compelling.
Beyond Control and Rationality

To be more fully human: to make a connection through words, images, sounds to another person's mind. To have them leap with you. "Whether the learner is engaged in reading a story, watching a film, or conducting scientific inquiry, anticipation is what moves us to the edge of our seat so that we may see better and be better prepared for what we might see." This is instructional design should aspire to: to have others anticipate what's coming next and anticipate what they are thinking, feeling and imagining -- and perhaps take them to places they never imagined.

Yes, I'm a dreamer.

Thank you E. David Wong.

For Further Reading:

• Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences by David Wong (Teachers College Record Volume 109 Number 1, 2007, p. 192-220 http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12740, Date Accessed: 1/27/2009 12:23:26 PM)
• The Nature and Design of Compelling Experiences - reading list by David Wong

The Human Moment: Fidelity

This post is dedicated to Schon B - who inspired me with the article and human moments of her own when I most needed them.

Recently I re-read an article called the "The Human Moment at Work" by Edward M. Hallowell (HBR.) The gist of the article is that physical presence and attention constitutes the human moment, and we are losing human moments as we are increasingly using technology to mediate interactions in the workplace. This results in misunderstandings, loss of morale through increased alienation and isolation, and increased anxiety. Hallowell also notes that he realizes that misunderstandings can happen regardless, but they happen more often through technology. He cites brain chemistry research underlying the human moment -- remember those studies about how when babies aren't cuddled as infants they become messed up? Yup, that brain chemistry. We actually need other people in our lives to keep us healthy. Ok - I buy it.

This concept was first brought up to me in the context of Second Life (SL) and how SL would never be as good as Real Life (RL). At the time, I never imagined that any tech would replace the human interactions. I think we need the human moments -- especially in the workplace -- to ground us.

In thinking about the human moment one word came up for me -- fidelity. Even though I don't think technology will ever replace face-to-face or brain-to-brain interactions, I do think it can become less attenuated the higher the fidelity of the technology. (Oiy, be careful of those double negatives.)

What do I mean by fidelity? The quality of the sounds, the quality of the writing, the effectiveness of the design -- all of these things add to fidelity. Way back, in 1996, when I was first introduced to all this tech stuff, I remember interface design being defined as "mind meets computer." I realize now that is false. It's "mind meets mind." For what is the computer and its interfaces but the design of one human for another. The design/writing/quality allows another to enter your mind. How well those minds meet is the fidelity of the conversation. (Have we not been moved by a beautiful, clear sound? by a poem that is never fogotten? by a design that meets and surprises us?)

And then I came across this small 3 min radio piece on NPR: "Reading creates simulations in the mind." The gist: language is a powerful form of virtual reality; when we read we create simulations in the mind as if we were actually doing that thing that is described; we can control what happens in other people's brains with our words. What controls the fidelity of those "simulations in the mind"? How are they different or similar to what happens in the "human moment"?

Somewhere I had read, perhaps in the book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own, that when we observe or think about something, as opposed to actually doing it, the simulations are there in our mirror neurons, but not with as much strength as if we were doing it ourselves. "Mirror neurons map the actions, intentions and emotions of others directly into your own system of body maps, creating as close to a telepathic link as the known laws of nature allow. They allow you to understand and empathize with the minds of others, not through conceptual reasoning, but through direct simulation via your own body maps."

The human moment --> language as virtual reality --> mirror neurons: is it not possible to create better human-lite moments through technology? Is it not possible to imagine yourself in another's mind -- whether that is mediated through film, radio, or online interactions? It may not have all the chemistry of the human moment, but it will have a fidelity all of its own.

*Image courtesy of Janis Cromer as posted on Daily Kos