Monday, November 19, 2012

USU Alumni Spotlight

The Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Department at Utah State University recently spotlighted me on their website. I thought it was pretty good (obviously - my self-centered side coming through) so I thought I would share.

http://www.itls.usu.edu/htm/people/alumni-spotlight/articleID=19295


Monday, November 12, 2012

My New Areas of Study: Motivation, Habits, and Success

I have been in teaching, training, or designing instruction in various capacities for roughly the past 13 years. For the past 6 years, I have studied in the field of educational technology and instructional design and have earned 2 graduate degrees and published several articles in the field. I have found a home in this field, and it has been a great joy to learn what I have about instructional effectiveness.

The Purpose of Education
At the broadest level, one could state that the purpose of education (and by extension instructional design) is to enable an individual to live a successful, meaningful, contributing life. I believe that I have a basic grasp of how to help students gain knowledge and skills, but I believe I have an opportunity to understand more about how I can positive influence students to adopt outstanding habits, build their motivation, and help them move forward with success in their lives.

A Shift in My Research Interests
I am now beginning to feel a shift in my personal research interests. I have realized that some of the most important aspects of a student's success learning do not occur outside of an individual (e.g. the instruction we present to a learner). In the field of educational technology and instructional design we tend to focus on doing something to students to influence there learning and behavior. I know from research and experience that using effective strategies to provide students with learning experiences is vital to helping a student succeed. However, I also believe that the internal motivation, habits, and characteristics of a student are perhaps even more important than the external strategies we use to help instruct them.

Learning About the Internal
All of my own research has focused on what the instructor or instruction (external to the student) does to engender learning. I have asked fundamental questions about what good instructors do, what strategies more effectively help students learn, and what steps designers can take to create effective instruction. I will never stop seeking the answers to these questions; however, there are other fundamental questions about learning that I plan to start to investigate.

My Emerging Interests
Among other things, here are the general topics that I am interested in learning more about. These are areas that I have some knowledge of, though my knowledge is more peripheral and perhaps biased.


Motivation
  • What are the psychological and neurological features of motivation?
  • What creates the motivation to act in an individual?
  • What strategies can be used used to influence and create motivation in an individual?
  • What are the most effective strategies for influencing motivation in an individual?
Habits
  • What are the psychological and neurological features of habits?
  • How are habits formed?
  • How can undesirable habits be eliminated or modified?
  • How can positive habits be created and automated in a person's life?
  • What strategies can be used to help others eliminate undesirable habits?
  • What strategies can be used to engender positive, automated habits in another individual?
Success
  • What are the psychological and neurological features of success?
  • What makes an individual successful in achieving meaningful, difficult goals?
  • What strategies can be used to help an individual be successful in his or her own life?

Friday, November 9, 2012

Book Review - "Instant Influence"

I recently listened to Dr. Michael Pantalon's book Instant Influence. In this book, Pantalon synthesizes research that he and others have done on how to influence others by helping them find motivation to make some kind of change in their life. He presents a series of questions that have proven to create motivation in others and help them create their own motivation to make change in their lives.

According to Pantalon, when you are working to motivate another individual, you must adhere to a few key principles:
  • Affirm the individual's free choice, their autonomy to choose their own actions. This affirmation must be sincere.
  • Do not tell the individual to change. Do not tell them why or how to change - have him or her generate personal reasons and ways to change.
  • Have sincere care for the individual, have a true desire to help the individual move forward.

Pantalon recommends asking the individual 6 Questions, which are designed to help the individual determine their own motivation for doing a specific thing. After identifying a change that you believe the individual should make to improve their life, ask the following questions:
  • Why might you change?
  • How ready are you to change on a scale of 1 to 10?
  • Why didn't you pick a lower number?
  • Imagine you have changed. What would the positive outcomes be?
  • Why are those outcomes important to you?
  • Whats the next step, if any?
The goal of these questions is to help the individual determine his or her own internal motivation for doing the behavior in discussion. I believe that the internal motivation is much more powerful than any outside motivation, and these questions appear to help an individual tap in to that internal motivation.

Pantalon also recommends using these questions to help motivate oneself into some kind of action or change in your own life. I have personally used these strategies on myself since reading the text and find that it truly does provide a surprising sense of internal motivation and excitement about making changes that seem important but that are difficult to start doing.

As a scholar, I prefer books that appear to be based on sound research and experience, and Pantalon references his own research, the research of others, and his experiences using the system he promotes. I found the book easy to follow and found the many examples very helpful in aiding me to understand how the 6 Questions can be applied.

Great, useful work.

Monday, November 5, 2012

New Blog Name: Reflections on Learning Success

In the past my blog has been titled Reflections on Instructional Design. I have written a lot about instructional design and other education-related topics over the past year and I have really enjoyed it. However, I have noticed that many of my posts revolve around different subjects, and I am not sure that the blog title fits all of the things I enjoy writing about. Therefore, I am changing the name of my blog to

Reflections on Learning Success

The title is purposefully ambiguous - it could mean that I am reflecting on successful learning experiences. It could also mean that I am writing about how to learn to succeed. I will likely write about both of these, so I think the new title is appropriate.

I'm sure I will continue to write about instructional design and technology; after all, it is my area of expertise and I really enjoy the field and the practice. But I will also write more about other topics of interest, including motivation, habit change, goal setting, and personal achievement, among other things. These topics all clearly relate to the field of education and instructional design, and they also reflect some of my current interests more fully.

I wonder what I will revise my blog's name to next year...

Friday, November 2, 2012

AECT 2012: Summary of my Conference Experiences

#AECT
This is my summary post for the he AECT 2012 International Convention. I had an outstanding experience and in previous posts I blogged some of what I learned throughout the week. If you missed the conference, these links share my experiences.

I feel like I met my goals for the conference - I met some great new people, got oriented to what is going on in the research, and got to interact with old friends. Below is a summarizing list of the blog posts that I wrote about the conference this year. Thanks AECT for a great conference!

Before the Conference
Here are a few posts before the conference and during the drive from Columbus to Louisville.
At the Conference



Day 3 AECT 2012: Part 3 - EdTech Dojo Podcast of Conference Experience

This post is part of a Multiple Part Series on the 2012 AECT Convention.
#AECT 2012

Last night I recorded a podcast with my brother J. Clark Gardner for the EdTech Dojo on my conference experience here at the 2012 AECT Conference. In this podcast I reflect on the experience and talk about some of the interesting presentations.

click here to listen to podcast

Day 3 AECT 2012: Part 2 - Invisible Forces That Influence Instructional Design

This post is part of a Multiple Part Series on the 2012 AECT Convention.
#AECT 2012
 
This afternoon I did a poster presentation, along with some of my colleagues at Franklin University, on the invisible forces that seem to influence and affect instructional design.

 Dr. Eunice Luyegu and me (Dr. Joel Gardner)

In our poster, we assert that there are three types of tools that instructional designers use: (1) Technologies or physical tools, (2) Processes or how to build the instruction, and (3) Theory or what the instruction should be like. Here is the image we used to demonstrate this:



We also noted that there are many forces that influence our design work. We developed 6 categories for these influence types, based on a review of several models. The image below shares these.






We present this idea as a way to really think about design in a different way. We tend to think about our own special little processes and tools in instructional design, however there are so many things that influence our work, and we need to be sure we align what we do with all of those influences.

We had a lot of interesting feedback and ideas, including a suggestion to develop the concepts into a book of some kind, which could be a lot of fun.

Day 3 AECT 2012: Part 1 - Sharing Your Work as an Academic

This post is part of a Multiple Part Series on the 2012 AECT Convention.
#AECT 2012


Impacts and Dissemination of Scholarship
The first presentation I attended was given by Patrick Lowenthal, who presented on how to effectively share knowledge in higher education. I found that he provided some very powerful methods for sharing knowledge and getting scholarly work out there. Here is a summary of what he presented (not a comprehensive summary, but several of the main points). This, in my opinion, should be viewed as an additional set of strategies that supplement the traditional (and still important) methods of publishing, presenting, and teaching.



Put your stuff online! This is the basic habit - get your work out there to spread what you are doing to the rest of the world.
Track how people are using your work. Set up Google Alerts for your writing topics, your paper titles, your own name, etc. This will help you discover how people find you so that you can more effectively share your work in the future.
Publish some in open access journals. This get your name out there more because the work is openly available. Some open access journals even allow you to see how many people are looking at your work.
Share your work using social media. Some site include the following:
 Pick a social network or two to share your work on. This helps push your content and you work to others and gets your name out there even more. I personally use LinkedIn and Twitter. I also share on Google + whenever I have something new I have written.

Share pre-publication drafts of your work. This helps get your work out there and helps you to connect more with the people that are doing work in your area. (I've done this on my blog for some of my articles, for example this one).

Review work of other people. This helps build the community and helps you to build a network with others who are doing similar work. You could easily do book reviews on Amazon.com.

*        *        *        *        *

Again, this is a non-comprehensive summary of the presentation, but the ideas are powerful and really help to promote scholarly work in meaningful, interesting ways. Great presentation.

    Thursday, November 1, 2012

    Day 2 AECT 2012: Part 3 - The Future of the Field of Educational Technology

    This post is part of a Multiple Part Series on the 2012 AECT Convention.
    #AECT 2012

    The Future of Our Field
    What is the future of the field of educational technology? Of education in general? Higher education has clearly undergone rapid transformation over the past 10 years- how will it transform over the coming years?


    The panel: Patricia Young, Andy Gibbons, Elizabeth Boling, Ana Donaldson, David Wiley

    In this panel session, several leading scholars discussed their take on (1) what changes will occur and (2)what changes should occur in the field. Note: This post will be a little different because I am going to basically share my notes (slightly edited) on what was said during the session.

    Anna Donaldson
    • Learning Design is another way of looking at design. We should consider thinking deeply about our learners' experience instead of the processes we use as designers.
    • Our designs are often seen another resource for learning and not just the only source of learning.
    • Learning analytics will likely have a powerful impact on the field. Understanding and using them will help us know how to interact with our students.
    • We should really rethink how we think. We are stuck in what we think we know.
    Andy Gibbons
    • The economics of instructional design. Instructional designers should be aware of their value added. Decisions made by designers are tradeoffs that eventually have to do with economics, and we should think of what we do in terms of economics. 
    • We must view design in terms of constraints. We often think there is some kind of ideal, but this is not necessarily true. We are working under actual constraints that change how we approach our work.
    • Ask the question: what is going to be important in the future? What represents progress in the field of instructional design? Potential answers, potential opportunities:
      • Intelligent Tutors.
      • Data mining for educational purposes.
        • Bayesian statistics - Book to read: "The Theory That Would Not Die."
      • Corporate universities are nearly as many as educational universities. (We seem to be totally unaware of this presence.)
      • There seems to be a change in the business approach of education. What used to be the public schools only is now taken over by many different types of institutions, and these will potentiall totally take over many aspects of higher education.
    • Themes that should be included in our thinking about instructional design: portability, pallatability, accessibility, efficiency, scalability, sustainability, generativity, adaptivity, manufacturability, cost, actionable knowledge, popularity, coalition support
    David Wiley
    • Problem: The demand for higher education will increase exponentially (times 10) over the coming 15 years. We have demand for higher education but we do not have a plan in place to handle the demands that will inevitably come in the future. We don't really talk about these things very much, as a field.
    • Openess
      • Open Content - take instructional content and make it available to anyone. Allow people to use it, tweak it, localize it.
      • Open Research - We should make the research that we perform totally available to others in an open way. Taxpayers pay for the research (through NSF for example) and then have to pay more to read the article. Doesn't make sense...
      • Open Data - We should be showing the products of our work to each other. We should allow others to use our data in meaningful ways.
      • Open Teaching - We should make our teaching available to anyone who would like to learn.
    • Analytics will allow us to improve our instruction, and using open content allows us to change whatever we want to change.
    Openness + Analytics 
    Chocolate + Peanut Butter
    • Credentialing. We should allow people to credential others in meaningful ways (such as open badges).
    • Our designs don't have any kind of quality that is independent from the interaction with learners.
    • Science vs. Arts. We might have some kind of science envy. There is an art to what we do, and we don't talk about that very much. We should consider that important aspect of the work of designers.
    Elizabeth Boling
    •  Our field could potentially just dribble away if we are not willing to take a look at how the world and how learning is changing. We could potentially just go away and become obsolete.
    • We often confuse values with scholarship. We confuse theory with design philosophy. For example: learning design and instructional design are mainly a difference in design philosophy.
    • Questions we should be asking ourselves about our field:
      • Why do other sectors in the world adopt technology faster than we do
      • Why is human performance seen as different than Instructional Design and Learning Design?
      • Why don't we guarantee our work? How do we get away with consulting people on how to design without a guarantee that it will improve learning?
      • Why can't we guarantee our tools?
      • Why don't we show each other our work?
      • We have theories that do not really reflect our practice. How we practice should inform our theories, not the other way around.
    Patricia Young
    • Situating learning in the context of culture. What do kids do in their daily lives? We should localize our instruction to needs of particular groups.
    • Culture influences how people learn and perform in e-learning environments.
    • We should explore culture's impact on learning. What does it mean to move away from westernized thinking? How do you move more toward this culture-specific application? To design for aboriginals? or for Caucasian mountain dwellers?
    • We should include a course on instructional design, technology, and culture.
    • If we ignore culture, we will have poor ramifications.



    Day 2 AECT 2012: Part 2 - Problems with Sampling in EdTech Research

    This post is part of a Multiple Part Series on the 2012 AECT Convention.
    #AECT 2012

    Went to a presentation by Patrick Lowenthal on some of the issues that we come across in higher education research. He discussed a few interesting key points:
    • We assume that we know what the research shows. For example: "Most of the research in _____ is quantitative in nature." Unfortunately, this is often just an assumption and it may not be totally accurate. A systematic review often reveals that our assumptions are incorrect.
    • We often have issues with our research because we do convenience sampling. For example, the research done in some forms of online interaction nearly all focused on classes in education-related fields in higher education. This tends to skew our view of what education is like. Anyone going into education most likely had a nice educational experience, so they might approach their learning in different ways. 
    Patrick asks a key question:


    These kinds of ideas are appropriate and important for researchers. We base our assumptions about instructional design on the models research we are exposed to. And we base our work on those assumptions. This is a pretty scary proposition, and it implies that we often do this in other areas of life. I have my assumptions on how things work - instructional design, business, higher education, nutrition, etc. - but these are only based on what I know, on what I think based on my limited experiences and exposure to the environment. By gaining knowledge of what is actually there and identifying my own assumptions, I could potentially increase my personal ability to be effective at what I do.

    This is related to something my philosopher friend at Franklin University continually hammers on. We live, believe and behave based on our assumptions about life.  However, he argues that most people usually do not base their assumptions on evidence or logic, and this can have disastrous consequences. I hope to write more on this when I have a little time.

    Day 2 AECT 2012: Part 1 - Microscenarios

    This post is part of a Multiple Part Series on the 2012 AECT Convention.
    #AECT 2012


    9:15- 10:15 Scenario-based and Standardized Patient Simulations in Nursing Education
    The first session I attended was about how to create simulations for nursing students. Catherine Maney of Northern Illinois University presented on how she created simulated live scenarios of mental health patients. The scenario she described was interesting - a bipolar patient in a manic state. I was impressed with the process they used for creating the scenario case:


    I like the methodical nature of this task or case creation process, particularly the step of having another faculty member review the scenario. A great way to formatively evaluate a learning scenario.

    They used a live actress for the simulation. After following the scenario-creating process, they
    1. ran the simulation with 2 nursing students as the learners
    2. filmed the students in the simulation as they worked through the process of calming the patient, gathering vital signs, deescalating patient's manic behavior, and administering medication.
    3. debriefed the students on how it went by reviewing the video at key points.
    4. had the students self-evaluate their work by asking what they did well, how they might improve.
    The presenter mentioned that they also use these recorded scenarios as a way to present examples to later students in the course. This makes sense to me since students, particularly novices, benefit greatly from worked examples of how to approach a particular task. A very good presentation on an application of task-centered instruction, in my opinion.

    The second presentation in this session was given by John Jeon and Terry Tao of University of Wisconsin-Extension. They described how they are developing an online scenario-based training.

    The presenters described how they worked developed an idea of using what they call microscenarios. They basically broke these scenarios (cases) that they were using previously into pieces and developed an online strategy and technology for delivering and applying that knowledge.

    Here are a couple of interesting graphics from the presentation: