Wicked Memories

Altria Theater, Richmond, VA. Yin Wah Kreher (Copyright).

"Like a comet pulled from orbit, as it passes a sun. Like a stream that meets a boulder, halfway through the wood... Because I knew you."

Dancing through life. Defying gravity.

Mythbusting Instructional Design

Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really really really wanna bust out something dat been buggin' me.- Adapted from Wannabe, Spice Girls

Perspective. A to-be-finished pastel work by Yin Wah Kreher (C).

Myth #1: I'm an instructional designer just like you!

Yo, would love to write a rap song but IMA just a wannabe. I don't claim to be a rap artist. As my blog theme suggests, one of my interests is to better understand the mind so as to better design learner-centered instruction. I'd love to be a cognitive scientist but I wouldn't call myself one. Yes, I've been schooled in ed psych and learning theories in my formal education as an instructional designer (ID).

When it comes to calling oneself an instructional designer, I notice there seems to be no shortage of people in social e-media that identify themselves as that professionally. Technical writers, programmers, media specialists, e-learning developers ... are just some of the labels attached to IDs. Not so many people would call themselves cognitive scientists. Why the disparity I wonder? Of course, if even folks in my field argue over the nomenclature, I can't blame others for perpetuating the confusion. And many people think ID is not rocket science. My response? "It depends on the quality of ID work you want accomplished."

It appears that the goal of performing the tasks of instructional design is easily attainable. Teachers and trainers have to do that as part of their job, whether schooled in the discipline or not. Truly, there are many paths to becoming an instructional designer; one does not always need to be formally educated in any professional school. Talent, hard work and opportunities to hone one's skills can nurture a gifted and highly skilled instructional designer. There's no snobbery towards those who take the unschooled path. I welcome colleagues who take different trajectories to the field.

However, as in any profession, there are gatekeepers of the field and professional competencies that my colleagues and I share. Lawyers have to pass the bar, physicians have to be certified by boards, teachers need to be certified to teach in Singapore and some US states (?) -- to maintain some quality standards. In the profession of ID, instructional designer competencies are established by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction. In graduate ID school training, coursework and practicum lead us to a final comprehensive exam and portfolio that are assessed against IBSTPI standards. 

So what exactly does an instructional designer do? 1. Check the IBSTPI competencies. 2. Instructional designers solve learning problems, although the solutions are not always instructional in nature. Training is not always the answer. Human Performance Improvement (HPI) is the ID-related field that deals with human performance in organizations. Check out ISPI.

In short, I consider myself a learning advocate and I solve learning problems. My goal is to help optimize learning conditions to facilitate learning.


Myth #2: Instructional design precludes learning design. 

One of the grossest bits of misinformation out in Twitterverse and the web about the ID field is that instructional design does not focus on learning design. It's all about instruction.

If your understanding about IDs come from reading or creating job ads, I want to dash your misperceptions by stating that many job ads are written by department managers to fill vacancies for employees with certain required skills for their department needs. These job ads are thus not aligned with ID definitions or competencies listed by the gatekeepers of the discipline. If you think an instructional designer is someone who codes standards-compliant HTML, XHTML and JavaScript, understand agile software development, have SCORM/AICC expertise, methinks you are NOT looking for an instructional designer. Nor understand the term as defined by those in the field or discipline.

There is what in the field we call small id and BIG ID. Design can be about design alone or what we call instructional systems design. ID is evolving like any discipline. An ID who strictly does id and no production/IDev work (say prototyping) is not quite common in these elearning times because of confusion over the terminology.


Myth #3: Instructional designers are so prescriptive. 

If you have this perception, I'm not sure who you've been interacting with? In ID schools, we study learning and instructional theories/philosophies just like any professional would study theories/statutes in their field. We learn heuristics and organizing schemes. They guide me conceptually. In practice, I don't spout theories with my client. I make connections. I synthesize. I customize a learning solution for my client. That is the joy of my profession. Good ID starts with strong conceptual design grounded in how people learn and the realities of the context. And, if you insists you already have a grasp of learning psychology through real life -- "Bravo! You are gifted!" Or by reading Bransford et. al's book alone - "More depth please?"

I recommend you read Gordon Rowland's (1992) article, What do instructional designers actually do? to obtain an awareness of how IDs at the expert level function. No, I don't start with say, an ADDIE model or whatever scheme you think I use to craft a learning solution. Linearity in any theoretical model/framework is scoffed at, BTW. ID is a creative iterative process. Design is intuitive to me. I have internalized all the ID and learning theories/models I have learned over the years in my head. Novice IDs, with no disrespect intended at all, learn heuristics so that they can gain a headstart in the profession.

As a certified and credentialed ID, I have tools I have learned in formal ID school and along the way. They are part of my toolkit, developed through the long arduous process I've gone through in graduate ID school. I have no attachment to any particular tool. Being certified in that tool does not mean I endorse a tool. I use tools as they best serve the learning purpose. If I do have any affinity, it is towards human beings and their life worlds. I admire a few learning scientists. I love their ideas and how they inspire me to be a better designer. That is why I go to conferences. To interact with humble emerging and great scholars and practitioners and learn from them. I have a high learning rate and ID changes rapidly in the field of e-learning.

Again, the field is evolving. We are now considered, arguably, a sub-discipline of learning science and so at the conceptual level, I'm a learning scientist. I learned to do research about learning. I know this will start another debate among detractors. That will be fodder for another blogpost which I'm not sure I will get into.

P. S. There is ID and there is heterogeneity among IDs. I happen to be an ID who likes to draw, write, think, speak multiple languages and synthesize all my skills and experiences to create products and excellent work for passion-driven learning. I'm happy to start a respectful conversation if you want to know more. Let's not create walls between disciplines.


Reference:

Rowland, G. (1992). What do instructional designers actually do? An initial investigation of expert practice. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 5(2), 65-86.

Listening with Care

One of my work duties involves observations of learning interactions in an experimental classroom, the Learning Studio. Until I completed the Listening Differently assignment in the Creativity MOOC, I hadn't realized how I had seen the Learning Studio with my eyes, but hadn't captured a lot of other interactions with my ears. The scope of my observation had been limiting and limited. Julian Treasure's video is a fabulous resource to review (Thanks again, Tina Seelig!). He is right; "we are losing our listening." When novelty ceases to be so, we become desensitized to the familiar. It is not just teachers who don't listen long enough for students to articulate their views; we just don't listen very well in these microwave-paced times. And, we don't teach listening in our schools, not very much. We assume we are effective listeners or that our students will somehow pick that up.

Treasure also touches on two other causes to this listening deficit: we are now able to document sounds and images (text, still and moving); there is so much clamor in our environment, we have to shut out noise from the truly deserving sound bites. To quote Treasure, "The art of conversation is being replaced -- dangerously, I think -- by personal broadcasting" (2011, July, Treasure, TED Global). How then could we improve our listening?

I practiced listening more carefully in the class and was able to capture some interactions I had not noticed in the Learning Studio previously (See mindmap above). The most striking detail I had hitherto omitted -- the hissing sound in the room! I wondered if it came from the sound system not being switched off. How ludicrous that I had missed this detail for an entire semester. Yet, it didn't bother anyone in the room, not the teacher, nor the students. It was screaming at my ears that very afternoon!

Silence. Mixer. Savor. Listening positions. RASA. Check out Treasure's explanation in the video for these five ways.

Captioning and transcript available through TEDGlobal link below.

References:

Treasure, J. (2011, July). 5 ways to listen better [TEDGlobal 2011 Video]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better

Treasure, J. (2011, July). 5 ways to listen better [TEDGlobal 2011 Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSohjlYQI2A 

Online Icebreaker: A Life Story Album Cover

Yin's Album Cover A

Yin's Album Cover B

Yin's Playlist

As an online introduction, Tina Seelig invited us -- participants in her MOOC -- to design an album cover of our lives to construct a narrative of who we are. Add to that the creation of a 10-song playlist, fictional or actual songs, and we'll get some bonus points. I created two album covers.  Which one do you think I submitted? A or B? 

I think these ideas are excellent as icebreakers in online teaching. They afford students multiple means to participate in course conversations. It helped me to reflect, synthesize my life experiences and use a succinct title to capture a bit of the essence of who I am. As Tina says, "Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous!" 

April 14, 2014: Although my playlist is in JPEG format, participants were given a space with a text editor to type in text if they do not wish to represent their knowledge in the way I did. 

April 19, 2014: I realized that my visuals are not accessible to screen-readers. So here's a description of each: 

Album Cover A: It has a picture of me seated in a cafe and in a pensive mood. The title of the album is Meditations in Z Minor. 

Album Cover B: It has a main picture of me surrounded by an L-shaped collage of 11 other smaller pictures. Each picture shows a different side of me. The title of the album is Facets. 

My 10-song playlist describes my listening choices at the time of submission. The 10 songs are:

1. No Frontiers (Mary Black)

2. The Rainbow Connection (Sarah McLachlan)

3. Change (Carrie Underwood)

4. Reflection (Soundtrack, Lea Salonga)

5. 天冷就回家 (Come home in the winter)

6. The Fool on the Hill (Beatles)

7. 你的倒影 (Your Reflection)

8. Beneath Your Beautiful (Labrinth ft. Emelie Sande)

9. La Solitudine (Laura Pausini)

10. Rambling Man (Laura Marling)

 

What does Vulnerability in Learning Look Like?

The word vulnerability in learning surfaced in a recent discussion about teaching in the open world wide web. It's the topic of my visual journal entry for the day.

My reflections on this topic come in the form of questions as these ideas swirled in my head:

1.  I'm glad that someone has stood up for vulnerability and recognize that it is a valid emotion that should not be frequently stigmatized as being shameful to own. Megan Boler's book (1999), Feeling Power, focuses on the politics of emotions. In it, she discusses how emotions are often sites of social control and political resistance in higher education classrooms. How many teachers and students are aware of this perspective on emotion? Or do more people buy in to Daniel Goldman's (1995) concept of emotional intelligence? Vulnerability is a risky emotion. In discussing a pedagogy of emotions, Boler states that it is not equivalent to confession, a baring of one's soul (1999, p. xviii). It is necessary to self-monitor one's emotions, but emotional management does not trump authenticity. Vulnerability also necessitates the presence of an empathic listener, without which the complex contradictory emotions of shame and rejection emerge when vulnerability is not embraced. How then do we represent truth and live truthfully in ways that engage others in the co-production of truth (Boler, 1999, p. 168)? 

2. "Vulnerability is not weakness," said Brene Brown (TED Talk 2012). Whether vulnerability is weakness or strength, is that not a result over time of how we perceive and process the challenges to learning and learn to assign value to emotion(s)? In the context of changing mindsets or attitudes that require paradigm shifts, how much time do we give learners to process the challenges? Or do we expect instant transformation?

3. To see challenges as "desirable" or failure as "productive" requires intentionality. Today, I was reminded by a colleague of the implicit and unconscious biases that we lug along with us daily. How do we live out in reality, consistently, the desire to be indefatigable about enacting positive change? I read of Myshkin Ingawale, co-founder of Biosense Technologies, and how he iteratively developed a mobile device to diagnose and monitor anemia without the use of needles -- the device did not work until his 33rd attempt. I read of grit, resilience, growth mindset, and all the "non-cognitive" factors we need to press on.  Vulnerability is the "birthplace of creativity and innovation" (Brown in TED Talk, 2012). In practice, how do we foster environments in complex social structures to render the appropriate support? How do we support the flourishing of courage?


References

Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. Psychology and the Real World: Essays Illustrating Fundamental Contributions to Society, 56–64. Retrieved from http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/EBjork_RBjork_2011.pdf.

Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. 

Brown, B. (2010). The power of vulnerability. [video]. TED Houston. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.

Brown, B. (2012). Listening to shame. [video]. TED Conference. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.

Kapur, M. (2008). Productive failure. Cognition and Instruction, 26(3), 379-424. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07370000802212669 

Vygotsky, L. Zone of proximal development. [Wikipedia]. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development


Images for collage

Robert Bjork's image from Association for Psychological Science website. Retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/redesign/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/bjork_robert_web.jpg.

Megan Boler's book image, Feeling power: Emotions and education. Retrieved from Amazon.

Brene Brown TED Houston still. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability

Lev Vygotsky's image from Wikipedia. 

Oblique Strategies to Overcome Mental Blocks

Applicants to All Soul's College at Oxford were required -- until recently --  to write essays in response to a single-word prompt within three hours. These essays were used to gain insight into prospective students' ability to be imaginative and leverage their existing knowledge to make connections (Seelig, 2012, cited in Tina Seelig's MOOC, Creativity: Music to My Ears, 2014).

In a recent meeting, the word "vulnerability" in learning surfaced. I was inspired to associate the word with several books I'd read and some life experiences -- akin to how "oblique strategies" (original concept by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt) are used. [Vulnerability (in learning) will be the inspiration for my next blogpost.] Briefly, Eno and Schmidt joined forces in the '70s to work on oblique strategies after they discovered that they were working on a similar idea. Short phrases or questions were created and printed on cards as prompts to break an impasse and forge a way ahead. 

An online version is available at http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html. There are also mobile apps for these strategies. Thanks to my course peer, Jose Sanchez, from Tina's MOOC for pointing me to these apps. I've installed 2 of them on my phone!

2 Oblique Strategies apps on my mobile phone

An excellent illustration of how oblique strategies work is how Jason Mraz uses a phrase or a song game to spark his creative songwriting process. Check out his video below. Other musicians are also said to have used them for inspiration (Wikipedia, 2014).


Jason Mraz "rain dance" from Stanford Tech Ventures Program on Vimeo.

Again, many thanks to Tina Seelig and my fellow learners in the Creativity MOOC for generously sharing these resources with us!