Why Is the Research on Learning Styles Still Being Dismissed by Some Learning Leaders and Practitioners? I have been battling the notion of "designing instruction for learning styles" in my own quixotic fashion for a couple of decades now. In my attempt to be a good steward of my clients' shareholders' equity I wished to help them avoid faddish instructional design practices that have been disproven by empirical research. I first learned back in the 1980s at NSPI (now ISPI) conferences that while self-reported learning style preferences do exist, that designing instruction to accommodate them has no basis. When I posted yet again on this topic on my blog a couple of months ago and then sent a Tweet out about it—Jane Bozarth, EIC of this magazine, invited me to publish an article. I accepted and decided to reach out to the usual suspects, those in my professional crowd who know the research, for their inputs. Here is some of what I got back that day and shared with Jane to show her I was "on it." Wisdom from This Crowd From Harold Stolovitch: There is so much press about learning styles.
Why can't you sell Knowledge Management? I have just returned from delivering one of our accelerated Stage 3 KM courses in Helsinki, where how to sell Knowledge Management became a focus. It was a fantastic experience with some incredible thinkers, all senior manager, in the room. All our courses open with a ‘marketplace’, where participants share problems for discussion during the course, and what never ceases to surprise me is that, regardless of the location, EU, Middle East, USA, and without fail, one of the problems will be, ‘how do I sell Knowledge Management to the _____ (insert CEO, Board, Senior Management Team, staff etc.). This is still a real problem for Knowledge Managers and I am not going to get into the specifics of project context or measurement tools, but I am going to strip things back to the basics. How to sell Knowledge Management ‘up’… First, who decided that Knowledge Management was important enough to hold a position in the organisation in the first place? How to sell Knowledge Management ‘down’… 1. 2.
Global Cool's - The Art of Conversation Where does knowledge come from? In most of the training courses I run, I ask the question "where does knowledge come from?" Always, every time, I get the answer "Experience - Knowledge comes from Experience". Never does anyone answer "Knowledge comes from Information". Never If you don't believe me, try it yourself. So why do we persevere with the Data/Information/Knowledge pyramid? If you believe in this pyramid, then your KM approach will be an extension of information management. If instead you believe that knowledge comes from experience, and shared knowledge comes from shared experience, then your KM approach will be based on review and transfer of experience, connection of people, and conversation. So we could in fact come up with a different pyramid, shown here, where experience leads to knowledge, which leads to decisions, and which leads to action. The great thing about this version of the pyramid, is that action leads back to experience. So the pyramids stack, as shown below. Guess which of these works better?
The best course I ever did, and 11 Top Tips for creative teaching | Transition Network Over the next few days we will be sharing the winning three stories in our Transition Training competition of courses people did that changed their lives. I thought it might be a good idea to start with my story of the course that impacted me the most in my life so far. In June 2001, I got off the bus in a small village in Lancashire, with a rather heavy bag and in somewhat inclement weather, to walk up the hill to Middlewood, a permaculture project set atop a hill in beautiful woodland. The walk was considerably longer than I had anticipated, the road, seemingly to nowhere, seemed to stretch on for miles. The reason for my trek was to do a course called Teaching Permaculture Creatively, led by Rod Everett. Middlewood was a stunningly beautiful place. The Middlewood Study Centre, with the yurt we studied in to the right. The course itself took place in a large yurt, in the round. Sure enough, it turned out we had learnt an astonishing amount of stuff.
10 Destructive KM Myths These 10 Destructive KM Myths seem to permeate conversations around the digital KM-sphere. They are not ranked and I am sure you could add to them, but, from my perspective, they need to be put out to pasture. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Please, take the time to share... Time for knowledge and wisdom “I never have the time”. “The internet’s just providing too much information these days”. “No-one ever knows where to start with all this information”. Common symptoms of the Non-Believer, enough to stop him or her ever starting their own blog, podcast or del.icio.us bookmarking site. The internet could be seen as becoming a victim of its own success by providing a means for the masses to not only seek information but, in the past few years, to provide their own versions and interpretations of information in real time and at the click of a mouse. As educators we believe we work first and foremost in the knowledge industry, yet our current attitudes and beliefs of what in fact constitutes knowledge are widely out of touch with the reality of modern knowledge systems. As Dave Weinberger noted in his article in Smart Tech’s ieMagazine Autumn 2005: The traditional idea of Western knowledge goes back to the Greeks. Info Flux: a Bad Thing? Note the question mark. Well, here’s my take.
The Knowledge Management strategy map You know I am a firm believer in business led Knowledge Management Strategy. At a meeting yesterday, I saw this presented in a very striking and visual way, through the use of a Strategy Map. A strategy map is a pretty well established way of mapping out the strategy of a company in a visual way, The approach was invented by Robert S Kaplan, and is well described in this HBR article (from which the example to the right - a strategy map of Volvo Dealership - is taken). A strategy map can be linked to Balanced Scorecard, and can be used to explain why a company is choosing the initiatives that it has. The standard Kaplan map starts from the vision, and works down, via elements of the strategy (in the example shown, growth and efficiency), then looks at the financial, customer, process and learning elements or objectives that support it. Knowledge Management should be aligned with this strategy map.
Dealing with the problems The Daily Motivator - www.GreatDay.com Friday, September 13, 2013 The more you learn from your problems, the more effective you become at dealing with them. The more you learn from a problem, the less likely it is to trouble you again. When a difficult problem comes along it can be easy to feel sorry for yourself. What will help is a positive, informed response. At first, go ahead and feel bad about the problem. Problems can get your attention and motivate you, so let them. Choose to be positively motivated, to learn, and to respond with action. — Ralph Marston Copyright ©2013 Ralph S. Copyright ©2013 Ralph S.
Information literacy The United States National Forum on Information Literacy defines information literacy as " ... the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand."[1][2] Other definitions incorporate aspects of "skepticism, judgement, free thinking, questioning, and understanding... A number of efforts have been made to better define the concept and its relationship to other skills and forms of literacy. History of the concept[edit] The phrase information literacy first appeared in print in a 1974 report by Paul G. The Presidential Committee on Information Literacy released a report on January 10, 1989, outlining the importance of information literacy, opportunities to develop information literacy, and an Information Age School. The Alexandria Proclamation linked Information literacy with lifelong learning. On May 28, 2009, U.S. Presidential Committee on Information Literacy[edit]