Another Few From The North

 Anyone who reads this blog must know that I love this Ever Shade series (here), so I'm adding to it today. 

First an entry from someone named Lava Dog. 

Forgiveness is never about undoing the past . . . it's about making a better future possible. 

Quick Review: Sultry Quagmire

 This book, if nothing else, provides a tretise on the importance of finding a good title. Which is odd, I find that good novel titles are everywhere! Behind Locked Doors, Sunset Perfection, Oasis Club. That's just off the top of my head! Sultry Quagmire? Needs work. Sounds like a slow, mad, racing horse name to me. 

The book itself is  . . . well to be nice, it's trying very hard. Sadly, I don't think its achieving much despite all that effort. The author has an earnestness to his writing, which is simple, and surprisingly refreshing. 

One thing this novel has going for it, along with the writing style, is the era that the author picked. I am a sucker for war novels and for depression era novels. The life, the troubles and challenges, the simplicity of the life with the coming complexity of the war. For me, this is a wonderful era to read about which was enjoyable to find in this work. 

This is 4 stars. Would have been 5 with a better title, and a little bit more elegance and panache to the writing style. 

The Brain on Art

Recently, I have struggled through the text I'm reading for a class on learning and how the brain reacts to learning. The chapters we are reading at the moment discuss the importance of art on the developing brain. this is hardly material I need in my job or for my organization.

However there was one statement that with me. Much of my organizations training development in the past twenty years has been centered around using our in-house development application that provides little to no artistic freedom to our developers. There is a place for an image at the top right of the screen. It takes up no more than 30% of the total screen area. The rest of the screen area is dedicated to text. The text is word for word verbatim what the narrator says. Black text on a white background. Clients came to us because they valued speed of production, the ability to deliver to the masses, free development and updates, and a secure place for the instruction to be provided.

I was hired to improve the quality of our training deliverable. I wonder now, if we have been severely under-serving our clients and our learners. By not providing any artistic quality to any of our training modules, have we been inhibiting the ability for our learners to effective learn the material? Sousa states "In recent years, neuroscientists have been developing theories about ways in which art develops cognition. One common element of the current theories is that each art form involves different brain networks" (p. 247). If this is the case, and our learners have been developing neural networks since childhood that include art and artistic works accessing different areas of the brain, and our module in no way help to access those networks, are we potentially leaving untapped areas of the brain which could be useful for effective learning and memory retention?

A tangential thought-line arose at the same time. We have been struggling to help our developers use new software applications that would allow for a more dynamic learning environment. Instead of the staid and standard text book style computer training they're used to producing, we are asking them to think about animations, interactive games and movements, videos and images, and sounds that before were a never a part of the repertoire. I under estimated the amount of time and talent it would take to break them of their old habits. I believed that it was merely a function of giving them the opportunity and they would rush to make more effective training. Instead what we've found is that the old traits they learned are what they are most comfortable with and thinking outside of that box is not something they are eager to do. Worse yet, I worry that we hired developers who were happy to not at artistry or provide any artistic license to their product but who were instead happy to remain in the staid, stable confines of the black on white, small image CBT. We may be trying to make artists of those who don't want to nor see the value of art in our product. 

References

Sousa, D.A. (2016). How the brain learns, (5th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Academic Writing

I write on weekends now. That's my new writing habit. I wake up on weekends and write with some coffee in my hands for a few hours. What's nice is that now I want to write on weekends. Before when I had all the time in the world to write, I wrote infrequently and in small snippets. Now, when I don't have time, I force time to happen on weekend mornings. 

One thing I've noticed is that the dissertations I've read are not that impressive. Are they well researched and good, sure. But, they aren't that comprehensive. Not only that they were only about 20,000 words of actual content. If you take out the TOC's, the reference pages, and other fluff, it boils down to just 20,000 words. 

I write 20,000 words for novels in no time. Each of my novels were 90,000 words. Each of my National Novel Writing Month entries are 50,000 words and those are words I write in a month. This disseration process is just 20,000 words. 

I'm stunned by how worried my colleagues in my classes are about their disserations. I already have a good handle on what I want to do for my dissertation. Compared to Ranger School this is a walk in the park. Compared to a presentation to a CEO, this is nothing. Compared to National Novel Writing Month, this should be easy. I have two years to write 20,000 words.

Always Eat Alone

I cringed when I read about Never Eat Alone. Eating alone is one of my favorite things to do. That being said, I also recognize how it stifles the creation of, and the fostering of networks.

Years ago I took a DiSC analysis workshop and I was paired up with all the other "S's" in the class. Our challenge was to communicate to the rest of the teams what it means to be an S (S = Supportive). The first thing we all identified about ourselves was that we all ate alone. Curt when for long walks. Joe liked to shut his door and recharge. Will liked to go shopping, usually at a bookstore. I would go to the gym for a workout. I've always thought it was funny that this was the defining characteristic of our S group. 

That being said, the rationale behind the book Never Eat Alone has merit. Since then, since having identified that I need to network more since I don't eat out with others, I force myself outside my comfort zone to either eat with prospective clients or to find ways to network more. 

I look back on my career and it's true. . . . none of my career opportunities (well except the very first) came about due to my degree. All of them came from networking and work that I performed. Networking was key in many of the more high profile career moves. I recognize that this is the case and recognize too that my lack of willingness to never eat alone hurts those opportunities so I find other ways. A sequel to Never Eat Alone should be "Learn how to Golf" (another skill I lack).

Starting a New Series

 I'm going to start a new series, to help me catalog some of the ideas that come up. You know I'm a fan of these tagged series. I have my first line series (here), my lines about the morning series (here), and my series on poignant line called Ever Shade (here). This next one I'll file under Sunset Perfect (here) which is already started.

The thing is I intend to use this to store information I may find that could be useful for my writing. In this case today, I ran into several things that I think would be worthwhile for the book I just wrote last November. It was about a lady who ran off to Colorado to help get her life together. I realized even then I needed a catalyst that makes her pick up and move. I think I found a decent one. 

MRT

I was sitting in my office the other day considering the reading and the reading I've done for other works, especially those for the area of interest I have with this class, emotion and Virtual Reality (VR) and ran across a new area of interest. The terms I hit on were Media Richness Theory (MRT) and Media Synchronicity Theory (MST).

MRT, proposed by Daft and Lengle in 1986 is the idea that processing of learning is influenced by creating more media rich delivery systems. Where MST is the idea of multiple MRT delivery systems working together to create a system or designed more effective learning. Both of these are new to me and I look forward to finding out more. The point of this post is less about the theories (I'll save those for next class) but more about the fact that the more we learn about a subject the more we find out and want to learn about that subject. 

My organization is going through a cultural change in it's views on business and on education and learning. For the past 30 years this organization has been focused on providing training, quickly, inexpensively, to a captive audience. They've made updates to their operationally processes to move contractors through training, and have found ways to scale the training delivery systems, but have struggled at quality and providing an ROI to their members. All of this is catching up to them.

Now they are facing competition from both other non-profits and private companies alike who have focused on quality. Now, their captive audience is being opened up to new methods of delivery that do not include our brick and mortar learning community. The organization is facing head winds in terms of these eLearning delivery systems, and playing catch up to many of our competitors, as well as facing headwinds in training quality. MRT and MST should not be new theories for our organization, yet they are. MRT was proposed in 1986, yet no one at this organization knows what it is. Why not? Why does a learning community not focus on its quality sooner rather than wait until the last second to catch up? I think too often our learning communities are too set in their ways and lack innovative skills to keep up with private organizations until it is too late and they see the world changing. 

The one area where the organization is achieving is in creating a learning community. On page 295 of Taylor and Marienau the authors write, referring to John Dirkx, "adults' feelings about any learning environment and the activities they encounter there are both "unavoidable by-products of learning and the constitutive of the very learning process itself." The learning environment at our organization is in many cases the best that any of our learners have ever been to. The environment is ripe for wonderful and reflective training, but the product hasn't kept up with the packaging. 

I can't wait to dig into MRT and MST more and see how they can help our organization. My question here is I wonder if anyone else has encountered these? In what way have either been effective or not in helping create more effective learning solutions?

Taylor, K., & Marienau, C. (2016). Facilitating learning with the adult brain in mind: A  conceptual and practical guide. John Wiley & Sons. 

Neuromyths

Like many of my classmates I struggled with some of the neuromyths that we read in class due in part to some things I've learned in the past and some of my experiences. 

Years ago my wife and I were foster parents for a young boy named Anthony. During our training to be his foster parents we were told that children develop "learning templates" through out their lives and that foster children, due to the nature of having unsteady home lives, generally miss out on developing this "templates" at the same pace and at the same times as other children who may have stable home lives. Due to their delayed template forming, generally foster kiddos had difficulties dealing with things that other children their same age might not have difficulty with. This was the way it was explained to us. I'm sure there's also alot of "emotion" involved in their memory making as well, but 

When I read in Sousa that "if tantrums almost always get the child satisfaction when the window is open, then that is the method the child will likely use with the window tapers off" (p. 28). Instead of discussing it as "templates," Sousa discusses "learning windows." But doesn't the idea of "learning windows" fly in the face of the neuromyth that you bring up in your comment above? 

Like many I'm struggling with the nuances of some of the neuromyths vs what we are learning about the brain and memory making. I look forward to figuring it out more as we go. I wonder too how much my brain is a self-reinforcing engine that is having a hard time grasping new information? The backward bicycle (see link below), is really revealing in some ways about this. The narrator of the video, who must be in his thirties, proves that although it takes him weeks and weeks to learn to ride the backward bicycle, his son who is six achieves the feat in just a few days. Obviously the window is not quite as open for learning the backward bicycle when we are in our thirties. Or perhaps the narrator is having to force the window open. 

References

Sousa, D.A. (2016). How the brain learns, (5th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Long Term Memory Development

In my reading for my classes, both in the texts, and the articles, I've been slightly surprised by the role that emotions play in the development of memory, so I almost decided to post about that. I also almost wrote about the Neuromyth regarding how people learn better if we teach to them in their preferred learning style. My boss loves to talk about this neuromyth, so I can't wait to discuss "learning preferences" with him. However, I've decided to post about what I found exciting regarding "immediate" memory.

Ten or so years ago, I took a facilitation training and was introduced to the process of moving a learning objective from short-term to working then long-term memory. Since that moment, I have always used that process and that lexicon to discuss learning and training in my roles at work. As good as that description of learning was, it always seemed to leave me wanting more. It was terrific for surface level explanations, but I'm very glad that Sousa wrote how "immediate" memory is a part of that process as well. The way that Sousa describes immediate memory as a clipboard where we place thoughts for just a short period, while working memory is more like a work table, where we decide what to do with these thoughts, figure out how they might work with other thoughts, and decide if we want to file them away for long term memory storage, really spoke to me. I might have changed "clipboard" to "post it note" for immediate memory. Regardless, this description helped me tremendously in terms of further developing that process of learning and long term memory development.

 During my training classes on large tanker trucks, I was always looking for "timelines" and "specifications" regarding how the truck works. While my Subject Matter Expert (SME) might say "you fill the tank" I would ask "How long does that take? At what point should I as a new person become nervous that something is wrong? What's a good rule of thumb?" (The correct answer, in case you are wondering, is for a 3000 gallon tank vacuuming up a viscous water-like liquid on a level surface with no debris blocking the hose, is about 15 minutes).

Watching the video linked here helped provide some of those specifics about the different types of memory like the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer helped me understand how immediate and working memory interact.  These really helped me understand what makes it from immediate to working and why.

I really liked that my simple process of moving a learning objective from short term to working to long term memory has already become far more nuanced and well developed thanks to just these first few resources and I look forward to seeing what else I can pick up in the following weeks.

I wonder in what ways others in this group have already further developed their understanding? 

What made the most impact on the rest of the group the way these two made an impact on me?

Gold Star Student

I've been struggling with some problems that are similar in nature to what Andrew my friend described in class the other day. His was a problem of learning as a child. These that I'm dealing with involve my ten year old son, and I'm sure it's common at the moment for most young learners struggling through a "pandemic learning experience." 

In my son's case he had been a "gold star student" when class was in session, live at the school. He helped classmates, worked in class, participated and was eager to join in to activities. Once the pandemic hit however and he had to work from home he failed in many ways. We struggled to not only help him keep involved in class, but also to keep his spirits up. I found it amazing how not only were his grades suffering, but so was his enthusiasm for school. It was easy to see how one aspect of life (his ability to do well in class) so greatly influence another aspect of his school life, his verve and enthusiasm for class. 

I believe the biggest culprit in this drama was the nature of the Zoom classes. Hours and hours of sitting in his study alone, trying to focus on the tasks his teacher gave him, not actively engaging, never being a part of the class, he holed himself away. I was reminded of this when I read in Sousa, "once again the brain area that is most sensitive to this activity is the hippocampus. Studies show that increased physical activity in school leads to improved student attention and academic performance. Yet students still sit too much in school, especially high school," (p. 36).

Prior to the pandemic shutting off so many activities this was a four sport child. My other son struggles with sports and team activities, but the ten year old revels in outdoor play and sports. With the pandemic stopping that, and without the outlet of actually going to school and participating with others, I was surprised by how quickly the spiral of depression kicked in with him. I believe that he went from a "curious" thinking to a very "anxious" learner who felt dismayed about his prospects. Although I know that schools were reacting to the world they were thrust into as best they could, schools would do well to learn from the experience and to keep Sousa's quote in mind in the future. 

References

Sousa, D.A. (2016). How the brain learns, (5th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

30 Rock Moments

 It's not everyday that you find a poingnant line in 30 Rock. Usually it's just inane pabulum that’s hard to laugh at. In this case it was Julienne Moore as Nancy and Alex Baldwin as Jack. Old lovers trying to work through her being married. Wanting to be together. He tells her he loves her . . .

Nancy: Stop! 

Jack: Let me talk.

Regrets!

 I used to live by this mantra, I'm glad to see it's still out there and around!

That "relationship we were afraid to have" hits home at time.

Elizabeth, Betsy 

Evershade, evershades, ever shade, ever shades, shades of Betsy

Organizational Evolution

I really enjoyed reading my colleague Anne's comment if only because I've found that I have experienced the same evolution and understanding regarding some of my organization's classes. In our case I think that so many of our instructors are so eager to get to the meat of the class that they skip the appetizer and the cocktails. 

To continue that analogy of the dinner, which would you feel more at ease and comfortable in, which would be the more memorable experience, a party with cocktails and discussion, then a fancy new amuse-bouche, a soup, first course, second course, pallet cleanser and dessert with aperitif? Or a dinner party where they quickly sit you at the table, slap a plate of food in front of you, then ask you to eat and leave. That first will be more memorable which is the same thing we are trying to achieve with our classes. 

Additionally, as much as I love the classroom moments in all of the classes I've taken, the discussion boards are where I really get the most benefit out of all of the classes. I've started to try and institute discussion boards in some of our classes with the hopes that the learners will take a moment after class to share thoughts and reflect on the training and the class.

Anne is correct, those ice-breakers, and the moments of discussion are key toward true learning and should not be discounted. The next step is convincing the managers who pay for the training to see that by taking the appropriate amount of time there's a better chance of achieving true "learning" rather than just getting the "training" over with as quickly as possible. 

Updated Bloom's

I was inspired after reading the articles and chapters that included more insight on "Bloom's Taxonomy." Like you I enjoyed seeing it from a different view. 

As I was reading Caine and Caine and their article on Meaningful Learning and the Executive Functions of the Brain, my margin notes say on page 55 "Bloom's Taxonomy" next to the sentence that states, "an essential aspect of learning from experience is making relevant decisions" then the note to see the sentence in Budhai's Leveraging Bloom's Taxonomy to Elevate Discussion Boards in Online Courses where on page 3 under "Apply" the sentence "at the application stage, students are expected to demonstrate and interpret. This is going beyond the understanding stage where students were required to simply report what they know, as is." 

This ability for students to make relevant decisions is directly related to the Apply stage of Bloom's Taxonomy. As I wrote in my post, it's more than just "use" that we see when we schedule and perform a "hands-on" training class, instead it is practical application. The same thing that Budhai is asking for with the post on application with discussion boards. 

I also like your analogy about the escalator rather than a ladder. I almost see it as an elevator where students can hit whichever button is hit by the occupant depending on which floor they would like to use for that moment. The lobby would be Remember but the student who understands the content deeply could push whatever button is most practicable for that moment.

Building Mentorship Networks

My college John discussed building a mentorship network at the same time we create a learner network. I have two thoughts on this. 

First regards my industry and injuries and fatalities. Whenever there was an injury in our contractor organization there would be a spate of miss-communication and innuendo all throughout the organization. One week we had an arm amputation in south Texas at the same time we had a truck accidentally spill out noxious chemicals onto a southern Illinois neighborhood near a refinery. Both bad events, and thankfully no one in the neighborhood was hurt or injured as the gas wasn't hazardous, just smelly, and the amputation turned out to be the result of bad medical advice. Regardless, as a part of the safety group I started getting all sorts of calls from field supervisors looking for information on the fatality that had occurred in Missouri. Somehow the stories had been conflated and morphed into a completely different story. It took dozens of calls to get the information out. It would have been nice to have that network set up within the safety and supervisor community so we could get the information out to them quicker and better . . . get them information on how to re-train and keep their own team safe. As an addendum we could have communicated to our clients that our teams had been retrained and briefed within hours instead of weeks. It's easy to see how powerful that type of tool could be for information dispersal. 

The second thought hits directly on John's mentorship idea. We provide leadership training for supervisors and crew leaders. During the one or two day classes the learners develop very strong relationships with the facilitators. At the moment, when they leave there is no connection back to our organization or the facilitator. That relationship is severed almost as soon as the class is over. There's no chance to follow up with them, determine if the class or the tools and techniques were effective, and no chance for us to leverage the mentor/student relationship to get them enrolled in more advanced classes or more students from their organization. 

This is one network I'm trying to create right now. I ask all of our leadership learners to enroll in our LinkedIn page for leadership so we can maintain that connection and that relationship. We only started it in November so thus far we haven't gotten as many discussions started as I hoped, but I have my fingers crossed for luck. But basically the mentor/student relationship you were discussing in your post is exactly what I hope to create as a learning community for our contractor members. 

More on Connectivism

In my field, we have safety managers who go around helping to ensure safety on site and if an incident occurs they reach out to other safety people and doctors to try and manage the incident as best they can. If our safety manager in the NE leaves or retires his entire network could be lost. I would love to create expanding networks that are stable and don't get lost. 

I think about this class I am taking and the expertise that I and my classmates have in our different subject areas. While we are in the classes and in the program we are developing these networks and furthering our expertise, but what happens when we graduate or move forward. The networks we've used for discussion on the boards is lost unless we snag each other's emails, but in terms of group discussion, it's only now, in the class discussions. 

I continue to create groups for our Leadership Classes to help create discussions, but it's an uphill battle. I created one of supervisors and team leaders for our contractors, but that too was an uphill battle and it took over a year for it to become self-sustainable from the users themselves. 

I'm reminded of the hurricane and floods we had here in Texas five years ago. My neighborhood of over 1500 homes was at risk of being flooded by the nearby river topping the banks and levies. We got most of our news and exchanged most information not through the national or local television news channels, not through the radio nor newspapers, but through our neighborhood facebook group. This means it was self-sponsored from the group members alone, not by any outside source. The little neighborhood facebook group continues on now and continues to create a network of neighborhood experts. 

I love that your company uses channels on Teams and think that you're following right along with the intent and philosophy of connectivism. 

Fire Together Wire Together - Out of Sync Fail to Link

This week I became very intrigued by the article Experience, Consciousness, and Learning for Instruction by Sheckley and Bell. The idea of fired together wired together (FTWT) neurons for memory is nothing new to me, but linking it with change-of-body-state (COBS) in the way that they described was intriguing. 

At first blush, the reading made me think of the experiment with Pavlov's dog and the salivation that occurred whenever the dinner bell rang. However with further thought and reading I started to apply the thought to our cohort of adult learners here at my organization, especially when the authors link the FTWT and COBS experience to a multi-textured conscious experience (p. 45). Many of our learners come to our organization with long histories of work experience in the field that they take into their training. This can be both good and bad and can help to contribute to their experience or detract from it much like the coffee drinking example in the paper. However, the experience they've had at my organization in training is also a part of that experience. Many times I've heard complaints about our organization that our training is too rote and rudimentary. this in many cases equates to boring and ineffective. My job is to change that dynamic. Make our product learning rather than just training. Move the needle in a positive direction so that the learner is not bored and ready to leave as soon as he's pushed the "advance" button enough times, but rather so he learns something during the course of his time with us, and even better, that he reflects on it later and uses it. 

This made me think of the line in Meaningful Learning and the Executive Functions of the Brain by Caine and Caine when they write "people learn from experience in a way that is simply not possible from instruction or information delivery alone" (p. 54) in regards to the "field experience" our learners bring with them to our classes and the line "in order to adequately understand any concept, or acquire any mastery of a skill or domain, a person has to make sense of things for himself or herself, irrespective of how much others know and how much a coach, mentor, or teacher tries to help" (p. 54) in regards to their past experience and their ability to learn from our organization. 

One aspect I am working to change with our organization is the sense of connection and networking. The idea that a learner would leave the field (and his experiences from the field) at our front door so they could pass a test is not what we want. Our goal is to blend training/learning/and field experience all together so that the learner is constantly using what he learns with us in his field position not because he's told to do it, but rather because he knows why, and has learned why it's the right thing to do. In the class Characteristics of Adult Learners we learned about the idea of "connectivism" whereby learners learn through groups of connected networks of experts. Instead of me asking a question of my friends and colleagues, I could be more powerful and effective by engaging mine as well as others networks for that information. Think about community pages for different application or a neighborhood Facebook group. One of my goals is to produce a network of learners that begins at our classroom doors and expands and stays with the learner as they leave. Finding ways to communicate, interact with the learner in the field, and provide learning on demand is key to this and a part of the mix. 

The goal is to stay connected with that learner outside our walls and continue his learning experience as he moves into and stays in the field. That way we can leverage his time better and not have the two hats of "training" vs "work" but blend the two together. I wonder if anyone else has has similar experiences with this and how you were able to achieve it.

Say Something

There are some lyrics that are so poignant that they are easy picks when you hear them to become memorable. For me that means that I'm going to make them a part of this list I'm composing (see the full list here).

In this case, I've heard these before, but there was a PSA on polar bears and it reminded me of the song. Taking a look at the lyrics, this stanza stood out:

I'll be the one, if you want me to

Anywhere, I would've followed you

Say something, I'm giving up on you

Elizabeth, Betsy 

Evershade, evershades, ever shade, ever shades, shades of Betsy

Facilitation and Videos

I really enjoyed reading my colleague's post on facilitation and free writing techniques especially as he mentioned videos. I used to do the same thing in my classes on safety in refineries. We would have module 1 then module 2 then module 3 with nothing ostensibly connecting them. The problem is that like so many things, an accident isn't a consequence of something going wrong like what happened in module 1 or 2 or 3. Usually it's a combination of several things at once. 

Knowing how all of the modules work together to create the environment for an accident and to make the accident worse is what's needed. For example, we might go over fire safety and the rules for how to use a fire extinguisher and the components of the fire triangle, then the second module would be on electrical safety and hazard communications, then the third module would be on how to work in confined or restricted spaces. There was usually no tie binding them all together. 

My organization found videos that combined them all. We would take all three modules then watch a movie of a real life incident where all three modules combined to create a fatal event. Irrespective of the "relevancy factor" since we were showing them videos of actual events in work places similar to where they would be working, or the "reinforcement aspect" since the video constituted a reinforcement mechanism of the learning objectives from the modules, the video helped tie it all together. In the example above, we watched a video of a fire incident that was created by a spark from an electric motor in a confined space.

To tie this back to your post Andrew, prior to starting the video I asked the class to write down some key words and write what they saw and how it related to the key words. This was done to help them pay attention to the information in the video but also as a chance to expand their understanding of the learning objectives, help them make the connections between the modules, and again as a reinforcement and reflection exercise. 

Experiential Learning and Reflection

Reading Chapters 7 and 8 in Facilitating Learning with the Adult Brain in Mind by Taylor and Marienau there is a passage on page 217 that not only caught my eye, but made me want to underline, bracket and provide a note via post it so I could turn right to it. 

"Early in his courses and work shops, (Tony Saddington) having emphasized the importance of experiential learning and the power of learning from one's experience, he startles participants with "You don't actually learn from experience." And they look at me and say, "What?" And I say, "No, you learn from reflection on experience. You can go through life having experiences and learn nothing. Something may stick, but it's incidental" (p. 217).

It's that line "you learn from reflection on experience" that got me. 

In my other group discussions I've brought up the different tools my organization has been using to try and promote reflection among our learners. I won't bore you again. I will say, in my struggles to help teach what I'm learning to my colleagues, I've been struggling to find a way to boil things down to them so that they can re-iterate, simply at sales meetings and lunches what I'm learning through blood, sweat, and tears here in classes. I think I've settled on one that should help. I started with the idea of "reinforcement." Another key for effective adult learning is relevancy. It must be relevant to the learner. One of my colleagues saw the two R's and added her own, "rigor." She believes it must be challenging or the learners will devalue it and not waste their time trying to learn. I've added "reflection" for the very reason that Taylor and Marienau bring up here in the text. 

The other day I was recounting these 4 R's to our sales and marketing chief, and started to tick them off on my fingers: "Relevance, Rigor, Reinforcement and Reflection," and she scoffed at reflection. I stopped her and said, truthfully, it's reflection that is key to actual learner. If we can get our learners to think about what they've learned, on their own, hours or days later, and re-access those memory networks that were created during the training, that's when true learning has taken place and hopefully it will stick. 

I'm not sure I converted her, but I'm going to keep ticking off those 4 R's; relevance, rigor, reinforcement and reflection, and continue to reinforce that reflection is the key.

Taylor, K, & Marienau, C. (2016).  Facilitating learning with the adult brain in mind:  A conceptual and practical guide.  San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass.

New Trainers

I was just recently discussing hiring a new trainer with my Director of Training the other day. We provide safety and craft skills training for the petro-chemical and oil and gas refining industry. Usually, our trainers are extremely experienced craftsmen who are looking for an easier job than one that involves shifts in the plants. 

When discussing our upcoming hiring choices we were presented with a choice between a potential trainer with deep experience and expertise in his field, but no formal training background or capabilities. The second choice was a trainer who had very little expertise but had been a trainer for many years. In all likelihood, his skills in empathy, enthusiasm, clarity, and cultural responsiveness were far more attuned and deeper. The question was to we hire the trainer with little experience or the trainer with long experience but no training experience.

We settled on the trainer with the experience and bet on his having innate capabilities in terms of his empathy, enthusiasm, clarity, and cultural responsiveness or that we might be able to develop those characteristics in him. The calculation was that that would be an easier and more effective road to take than to have a trainer with those characteristics and try to find a way to develop his expertise. An easy decision when you consider that experience in this industry is developed in the field not the classroom. 

What is interesting is that if I read your discussion post correctly, you chose "expertise" as your most important characteristic among the ones that Wlodkowski & Ginsberg identify in our text. We at our safety council came to the same decision about the importance of expertise as you did. 

Will it be hard to develop empathy, enthusiasm, clarity, and cultural responsiveness? To be sure. Those are hard characteristics to develop, particularly with older instructors who have little training experience, but finding ways to develop expertise and experience outside of the refinery field setting would be harder if not impossible. 

 

I'm a Faster, So I Guess Now I'm also a Wiggler

 I've been using Intermittent Fasting (IF) for the last year or more to great success, so I was eager to read The Wiggle Factor; Intermittent Fasting and Dieting Made Easy by Cody Smith, and I was not disappointed. 

I fell into fasting by reading a few articles, downloading an app, and following the recommendations of the app. Having read the Wiggle Factor, I wish I had had this book with me when I started. Smith breaks down why FAsting works, how it works, and the best way to ensure it works in the first part of the book then gives different fasting recommendations and the drawbacks and benefits to each in the second part of the book. I really enjoyed the first part of the book. Smith obviously knows a lot about digestion and how digestion and fat storage is affected by fasting. I was less impressed with his rundown of the different fasts that fasters could potentially choose. 

I will say, as a guy who has struggled with weight loss all his life, to varying degrees of success, this book was worthwhile to help me recharge my batteries in terms of fasting. I've lost almost 15 pounds from watching what I eat, exercising (habits that Smith feels are not as worthwhile for long term weight loss as fasting), and through Intermittent Fasting. I'm looked at strangely by my co-workers, my wife thinks I'm crazy, but as a guy who tried being a vegetarian, cross-fit, the Whole 9, Slim-Fast, the Cambridge Diet, Weight Watchers, and many others, I'm all on board with IF and I'm glad I read the book to help keep me on board. 

Could it use a better title? Sure. More details and sample fasting recommendations? You bet. But was it filled with useful and inspiring information about IF? YEP! Glad I read it.

More From a Fave

 Yet another. I think I'm getting to the point where I don't have to do an introduction, I can just apply the "Ever Shade" label (see here) and quote the passage!

This first comes from Uncle Moose (which I think is a spectacular profile name . . . and yes that is a moose in the pic with a duck on his back). 

How complicit are YOU in creating the conditions you say you don't want.

Friendship and Proximity

I have been thinking a-lot about friendship lately. The older I get the more I'm sure that friendship are only successful if they include proximity and intersectionality. 

When I was working with a contractor for many years, one close friend of mine was Greg. When I left Greg and I texted a few times back and forth, but then eventually we wander off our own ways. Here was someone who I chatted with daily for over ten years, yet as soon as the job was over and we were no longer in neighboring offices, the friendship was kaput.