This is a draft version of a presentation on a new method of approaching instructional design. It maintains some of what has already been used including Bloom's Taxonomy but adds specific content on emotion and the unconscious. The methods to leverage these landscapes include social learning, stories, video and visual design.
Instructional Design in the Age of Digital Media (Draft)
Monday, July 18, 2011
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Experiencing Self and the Remembered Self
I recently watched a TED talk by Daniel Kahneman and I have realized another advantage of the concepts of Self Determination Theory. Each of these components, Autonomy, Mastery and the ability to relate to others exist both in the experiencing self (acts in the present and can remember the past) and the remembered self (reflects on the past). This is different then say honesty which as a specific meaning changes over time. Every other year an event happens that seems to explain the core of certain leadership principles like honesty and integrity. But each of these defined leadership attributes happen in the remembered self. We look into the past for examples of honesty and integrity. These leadership principles are defined in the past. Someone can feel they act with integrity but its not really defined until after the event happens. This is different than autonomy, mastery and the ability to to relate to others as we experience each of these three in the present (experiencing self) and also in the remembered self(reflection in the past).
A new way to look at digital stories
Digital stories owe their roots to the history of storytelling and while I think most people would agree with this I am going to challenge the traditional way we should think of digital stories.
Digital Stories can be viewed as affecting three components of the main or secondary characters. These three components are the main driving force of Self Determination Theory. The three are Autonomy, the ability to master something, and the ability to relate to others.
I would argue every single interesting story you have ever heard touches on at least one of these components from a character perspective. The best stories are the ones told where it is clear there has been a change in the main characters feelings on autonomy, mastery and the ability to relate to others. In fact the best way to think of a story is a series of moments pictured in certain settings with other people that affect the main character's state of being. Self Determination Theory is one (there are other theories) of many theories that tries to describe the well being of an individual. And so what great digital stories do is to provide a shared path of understanding where a narrator can follow along on the character's journey into better understanding the autonomy, master of something and ability to relate to others. Along the way the narrator thinks about their own feelings on autonomy, mastery, and the ability to relate to others.
I would go so far as to say that learning in its purest form is the essence of how our views change on these three topics. That principles such as integrity, honesty, and other attributes are emergent properties of the three larger components. The ultimate emergent property among autonomy, mastery, and relating to others is what we commonly refer to as purpose or our life goal. But as we have experienced our feelings on autonomy, mastery and our ability to relate to others change and with it changes our perception on our life's purpose. We often think of our life's purpose as a freedom to do something (autonomy), a special ability to do something(mastery), or an ability to serve/support/counsel people (relating to others).
Digital Stories can be viewed as affecting three components of the main or secondary characters. These three components are the main driving force of Self Determination Theory. The three are Autonomy, the ability to master something, and the ability to relate to others.
I would argue every single interesting story you have ever heard touches on at least one of these components from a character perspective. The best stories are the ones told where it is clear there has been a change in the main characters feelings on autonomy, mastery and the ability to relate to others. In fact the best way to think of a story is a series of moments pictured in certain settings with other people that affect the main character's state of being. Self Determination Theory is one (there are other theories) of many theories that tries to describe the well being of an individual. And so what great digital stories do is to provide a shared path of understanding where a narrator can follow along on the character's journey into better understanding the autonomy, master of something and ability to relate to others. Along the way the narrator thinks about their own feelings on autonomy, mastery, and the ability to relate to others.
I would go so far as to say that learning in its purest form is the essence of how our views change on these three topics. That principles such as integrity, honesty, and other attributes are emergent properties of the three larger components. The ultimate emergent property among autonomy, mastery, and relating to others is what we commonly refer to as purpose or our life goal. But as we have experienced our feelings on autonomy, mastery and our ability to relate to others change and with it changes our perception on our life's purpose. We often think of our life's purpose as a freedom to do something (autonomy), a special ability to do something(mastery), or an ability to serve/support/counsel people (relating to others).
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The next big thing is small
This is likely the future of accessing the internet as least from a casual browsing standpoint, now called the Sony Dash. I love Sony and I grew up buying Sony products for their quality. I hope that they improve on this product and make it cheaper.
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644695998
It is ultimately inevitable that the Sony Dash will shrink so that you can hang it. It will weigh less and look like a small TV, with a better picture quality but what will ultimately make this device a killer device is voice recognition combined with gesture ability. So when I walk into the kitchen I wave my hand over the device and say "Traffic", it automatically turns on and lists the current traffic conditions. This is really not far from being practical as the voice recognition can be done.
-Mike
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644695998
It is ultimately inevitable that the Sony Dash will shrink so that you can hang it. It will weigh less and look like a small TV, with a better picture quality but what will ultimately make this device a killer device is voice recognition combined with gesture ability. So when I walk into the kitchen I wave my hand over the device and say "Traffic", it automatically turns on and lists the current traffic conditions. This is really not far from being practical as the voice recognition can be done.
-Mike
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Why you can't measure someone's learning
Some notes about why trying to measure a person's learning is like trying to find out the meaning of a person's life...
You can't measure someone's learning. There I said it. But's define learning to make sure there is no confusion. My definition of learning is the ability to acquire knowledge in pursuit of a goal. It is true that we can confine the measure of someone's learning say to a particular task/skill. But if that is the case then we should be specific because often the leaning objectives that we document don't really match what students/workers want out of a course.
Learning is about knowledge/experience, time, context, and meaning. Knowledge/experience is easy to understand because we have so many SME's and we all understand the nature of a specific knowledge base. Time is harder to understand because we really don't understand what defines one person's amount of time to another person's to learn something. What we do know is that a lot of information and a lot of time doesn't mean that a person will meet the learning objectives. Sometimes it is context that is the problem, the learning doesn't really match what the person will do. But often "meaning" is the problem because what is means for someone to really want to learn is hard to understand and in many cases impossible.
Rather than trying to measure learning, companies should seek those individuals whose meaning and purpose match their own. In essence the company should try to find out how their best employees can help them discover the company's true purpose and help the company be successful.
Mike
You can't measure someone's learning. There I said it. But's define learning to make sure there is no confusion. My definition of learning is the ability to acquire knowledge in pursuit of a goal. It is true that we can confine the measure of someone's learning say to a particular task/skill. But if that is the case then we should be specific because often the leaning objectives that we document don't really match what students/workers want out of a course.
Learning is about knowledge/experience, time, context, and meaning. Knowledge/experience is easy to understand because we have so many SME's and we all understand the nature of a specific knowledge base. Time is harder to understand because we really don't understand what defines one person's amount of time to another person's to learn something. What we do know is that a lot of information and a lot of time doesn't mean that a person will meet the learning objectives. Sometimes it is context that is the problem, the learning doesn't really match what the person will do. But often "meaning" is the problem because what is means for someone to really want to learn is hard to understand and in many cases impossible.
Rather than trying to measure learning, companies should seek those individuals whose meaning and purpose match their own. In essence the company should try to find out how their best employees can help them discover the company's true purpose and help the company be successful.
Mike
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Some thoughts on turning corporate training into something more interesting and fun
How to turn your old training methods into an interesting story
Step 1
Identify your main character in the story of your company, hint it is not your customer. You'll never know your customers as good as your employees now matter how good your marketing is. Even if you think you really know your customers, the way you collect information about your customers will creep most of them.
Step 2
Identify your main supporting characters. Your customer is the main supporting character in your story. If you customer isn't there to support you, you have no business.
Step 3
Identify the different types of your main character, your protagonist. Find out his/challenges and create several variations of this character. Make the characters so that real life people can identify with them.
Step 4
Identify the knowledge your main character will need to be successful for your customer and your business.
Step 5
Identify levels as commonly found in video games. Make each level harder than the next. The first level is a happy customer who needs a question to be answered. The next level gets progressively harder requiring more levels of knowledge. Each learning object for each level is represented by a key in the story, The character/player collects all keys before moving on to the next level. Non-human characters can be involved in supporting this activity.
Step 6
Allow each character/player to customize them selves in any way they want.
Step 7
Award points to those characters that meet the learning objectives the quickest. List the names of the people getting the highest scores.
Step 8
Create a framework where you can swap in and out learning objectives allowing you to modify the game making the learning more challenging and fun.
These are just some thoughts to make your training program into something that is interesting, scalable (because you create the world and modify levels, keeping the characters/players in the story), and user focused.
-Mike
Step 1
Identify your main character in the story of your company, hint it is not your customer. You'll never know your customers as good as your employees now matter how good your marketing is. Even if you think you really know your customers, the way you collect information about your customers will creep most of them.
Step 2
Identify your main supporting characters. Your customer is the main supporting character in your story. If you customer isn't there to support you, you have no business.
Step 3
Identify the different types of your main character, your protagonist. Find out his/challenges and create several variations of this character. Make the characters so that real life people can identify with them.
Step 4
Identify the knowledge your main character will need to be successful for your customer and your business.
Step 5
Identify levels as commonly found in video games. Make each level harder than the next. The first level is a happy customer who needs a question to be answered. The next level gets progressively harder requiring more levels of knowledge. Each learning object for each level is represented by a key in the story, The character/player collects all keys before moving on to the next level. Non-human characters can be involved in supporting this activity.
Step 6
Allow each character/player to customize them selves in any way they want.
Step 7
Award points to those characters that meet the learning objectives the quickest. List the names of the people getting the highest scores.
Step 8
Create a framework where you can swap in and out learning objectives allowing you to modify the game making the learning more challenging and fun.
These are just some thoughts to make your training program into something that is interesting, scalable (because you create the world and modify levels, keeping the characters/players in the story), and user focused.
-Mike
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Why the newspaper is about lifestyle and not "paper"
The demise or near demise of the newspaper has been a recent topic in the past few years. I don't buy it because its not about the physical paper contributing to the recent decrease in people reading the newspaper. Reading the newspaper for many is about taking time to relax and enjoy reading. The rise of the information from other places namely the web browser via the Internet has allowed people to reserve part of their day to use the Internet to get what they used to get from the newspaper. But many like sitting back on the couch and reading their newspaper, its their lifestyle. Most people would agree that many people that are older who grew up reading the newspaper still do because its a habit. Generally I would agree even though I am sure there are many people in their 30's and 40's that read the Sunday newspaper. The use of digital content will eventually kill the newspaper as a dominant form of getting information for most people. Since the technology can not immediately affect people's lifestyle, newspaper's death will be a slow one.
Newspapers will still be read by many until e-books become more advanced and get cheaper. Amazon's reader is a great improvement in an e-book reader in terms of how the material (novels, etc) are marketed and distributed.
Newspapers will still be read by many until e-books become more advanced and get cheaper. Amazon's reader is a great improvement in an e-book reader in terms of how the material (novels, etc) are marketed and distributed.
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