Month: October 2007

Instructional Design Needs More Agility

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A few years back, while working on the Pan-Canadian Online Learning Portal definition project, my colleague Grigori Melnik introduced me to Agile Programming. The Future of Software Development discusses some of the major differences between agile programming and the earlier, less flexible Waterfall Model. You see, at one time, software engineers assumed that they could design a program and then build it based on those specifications. However, the world changes and we never really have a clear picture of all the necessary factors at any given time. My read of the article had me asking if instructional design [or ISD or ADDIE] is also arrogant:

“The problem was that the Waterfall Model was arrogant. The arrogance came from the fact that we believed that we could always engineer the perfect system on the first try. The second problem with it was that in nature, dynamic systems are not engineered, they evolve. It is the evolutionary idea that led to the development of agile methods.”

Instead of factory-style production teams, agile programming uses far fewer, but better, programmers. The principles of communicating, focusing on simplicity, releasing often and testing often are all applicable to developing good instructional programs.

 

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Software development has embraced the iterative and flexible Agile model, but not without a major re-education program. It is up to industry to educate customers so that requests for proposals don’t force vendors into using an older and outdated model. I still see educational and training RFP’s that leave little choice but a quick analysis (if any), little design time (and only at the front end) and then get into production based on a specification whose premises were never tested and cannot be questioned later.

It’s time that the training industry develop its own agile approach or risk becoming redundant.

Blog Action Day – Helping Nature Help You

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I have been volunteering as the Director of Education at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute (AWI) for the past five years. What keeps me motivated is that AWI is focused on addressing causes, not symptoms. We could take in every single injured and orphaned animal in Eastern Canada and be no further ahead. Instead, we take a sampling of animals, about 300 a year, in order to understand causes of displacement, such as toxicity in the environment, disease or human infringement on habitat.

We share this information with researchers at universities, colleges and government agencies, and then we develop educational programming that helps people become stewards themselves. The few of us cannot make a large impact but we can be catalysts for change.

AWI is 12 years old and continues to use a scientific approach in helping people better understand their environment and the species they share it with. If you are looking for a national charity that puts its effort into programs, not advertising, then check us out and consider donating.

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Learners as hackers

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My son sent me this link to The Hacker Manifesto (1986):

This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

There is also a reference to the definition of a hacker. I like this one:

One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

Those who have chosen the red pill already see the absurdity of many of our hierarchies and structures. As parents and educators, we should help all learners become good hackers.

Are the systems starting to crack?

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It wasn’t that long ago that politicians and some scientists were saying that global warming was only a half-baked theory. We now know that we’re going to be completely baked, and Al Gore’s Nobel Prize shows that the world understands.

Dave Pollard created this graphic showing the vicious circle of our industrial/corporate systems and how a more natural approach to work, education and communities is achievable, though difficult.

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One of the major causes of global warming is corporatism, or the drive to keep making and selling more stuff, no matter what the cost to the world. Our communities (commuting in cars) and our schools (no critical thought allowed) reinforce corporatism. I believe that there is a true desire to get away from work as indentured servitude, education as propaganda and communities as holding pens. We just don’t know how to do it.

I commented on Dave’s post that some change at the local level has already started:

I see it in the small things, but there is a hunger for a more natural way of life. For example, a young couple recently bought a small farm here, with the idea that in several years it could help spark a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. They presented this idea to a few families and within a month our Sackville CSA was born, with 20 families enrolled. The operators were amazed at their success and next year we will have 60 families.

We should look to the younger generation for the energy and then help them surmount the barriers with our business experience.

Is the industrial economy starting to crack and are we ready with alternative models and a shared vision?

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen

Ruby Wednesday

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Bruce Tate gave an energetic presentation today to about 100 people who packed in to the NRC’s conference room in Moncton. The presentation was on the development platform Ruby on Rails and obviously there was a lot of interest. For instance, one of the sponsors, Spheric, is looking to hire at least 20 more developers.

Bruce’s presentation was just at the right level for a non-programmer like me. He calls Ruby the perfect platform for “clean database-backed Web apps”. He also showed how a lot of development steps required in Java are no longer necessary with the Ruby on Rails framework. What really struck me as a business advantage though, was the fact that the programmer can write the high level logic in plain language and this can be reviewed by the business lead before any code is written. I’m sure that this can save a lot of time and frustration.

Ruby on Rails is relatively new and the community is not as large as it is for more established languages. Developing skills in this rapid development platform could become a competitive advantage for NB organisations and is worth checking out. Given our small population, we need to develop asymetrical skills to take on new markets.

Please check out Bruce’s charity site, Changing the Present, because they granted him the time to come from Texas to New Brunswick.

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Photo: Dan Martell, President of Spheric Technologies with presenter Bruce Tate

Informal Learning – Show me the money

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Jay Cross has made Chapter 3 of Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance available online. I went through my copy and noticed that I had  a note stuck in this chapter, when I had used it for a previous workshop:

The leading human performance authorities “have all demonstrated that most performance deficiencies in the workplace are not a result of skill and knowledge gaps. Far more frequently, they are due to environmental factors, such as lack of clear expectations; insufficient and untimely feedback; lack of access to required information; inadequate tools, resources and procedures; inappropriate and even counterproductive incentives; task interference and administrative obstacles that prevent achieving desired results” (Stolovitch & Keeps, 2002, p. 1).

I’ve discussed this before, but it’s worth repeating.

Is education over the Internet already the killer app?

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In 1999, everyone in the nascent e-learning industry was citing this quote by John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems:

The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education. Education over the Internet is going to be so big it is going to make e-mail usage look like a rounding error in terms of the Internet capacity it will consume.

Yah, right, say the skeptics who lived through the Dot Com bust and have watched as e-learning (education and training) continues to play a junior role at the boardroom table. Even the largest e-learning companies are mostly unknown outside the industry.

Well, I think that Chambers was right. We’re just measuring the wrong things. Education over the Internet is huge. Consider – Wikipedia, Wiki-How, Google search, personalised information pulled through RSS, social learning networks, learning with blogs and collaboration with wikis. Add all of these together and e-mail is starting to look like a rounding error.

Step outside the box of academic courses or training departments and online learning is growing and not looking like it will stop. As learning becomes essential for our knowledge society, we will become like fish in water, not realizing what it is we’re swimming in. One challenge for learning professionals will be to remain relevant as all of the action moves beyond their traditional turf.

My value proposition

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I had many conversations about work and business models over the past week and realised that my niche is fairly unique, in that not many people focus on learning, business and the Web, at the same time and with the same interest [hence, “Conversations at the intersection of learning, work & technology“]. You can learn much from one discipline and then apply it to another and this process is well described in The Medici Effect.

While some may consider me an edublogger, I spend as much time working on business models. I’m currently evaluating the business plan of a small IT company and looking at how it can grow its market. I’ve also become a geek over the past decade and learned more about web infrastructure than a guy with a History degree should.

To explain my business more clearly, I created a Flickr photo and added some descriptive notes to it. The notes only work in Flickr, once you click on the image. I guess I’ll have to learn some javascript so I can embed the image on my web page.

At the Intersection

Reinforce the margins

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Yesterday, in Miramichi, the conversation came around to economic development and the issues facing New Brunswick, especially the northern part of the province. I was told that a couple of years ago the foresters in the province said that we had about eight years of industrial harvests left and the fishermen felt that there weren’t even that many years left for an industrial fishery. At the same time it seems that governments at all levels are working on the assumption that nothing will change, in spite of certain sustainability task forces.

Rob Paterson has noted that in the province next door, PEI, there are also significant demographic issues:

By 2015, there will be more Islanders over 50 than under. Soon there will be more over 65. Who will do all the work? Who will lead the economy? Who will pay all the taxes to keep all us old folks in retirement homes? PEI will have the least amount of young except Newfoundland. Can we afford to have 65% of them as dependent as the old dears aged 85?

My main deduction from this is that all of our children will have to be net contributers (not just economically) to our society. However, our industrial schools are marginalizing too many children. Meanwhile, Alec Bruce tells us how highly qualified and educated immigrants are barred from fully contributing to our society:

Meet the physician from the Middle East, certified in three crucial specialties. Yet, no hospital in the Atlantic Provinces will touch him because the paper he carries does not convey designations familiar to provincial licensing authorities.

Meet the teacher from Arkansas, a graduate of Harvard and MIT. She works as a nanny in one of New Brunswick’s poorly funded day care centres, where she wipes noses, prepares snacks, and recites Dr. Seuss to pre-schoolers.

Meet the engineer from Hamburg, an expert in bridge and overpass design. He’s a delivery man in Fredericton who deploys his considerable mathematical abilities to reconciling the day’s take with tomorrow’s cash float.

We are facing economic, political and environmental challenges, and we have to fully engage all members of our society, from school-age children to newly arrived immigrants. We cannot afford to marginalize anyone, because it’s from the margins [the edges] that innovation will come.

One indication of the lack of willingness to even contemplate new ways of doing things is the wide condemnation, without an offer of alternatives, of the Post-Secondary Education report. I would say that if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. My own effort to develop one way to face the post-industrial future has been the creation of a work & cultural Commons, and it seems that we are finally making some headway (more to follow on this).

So to anyone who is complaining – get off your butt and do something creative. We need everyone to get involved in creating options, because the folks on the margins [historically, the innovators] aren’t being allowed to participate (yet).