Narrating my Work - October 22, 2013

I taught a class today titled, "Conversations that Count"with a dear colleague, Cindy.  The two sections I managed were Feedback and Coaching, and Listening.  The learners were a great group, open to sharing and willing to listen to others. 

 One of the articles I quoted was on the misconception of multitasking.  Patrick Gray wrote the article, The Lie of Multitasking, which Tech Republic published in mid August, 2013.

Gray explains that we used to think our brains operated like a computer processor. While a computer processor can give 50% of processing power to two tasks and manage both well, research is proving just the opposite about our brains. Unlike our computers, the human brain's capacity to process degrades significantly the more tasks it's trying to manage. 

 Rather than a 50% reduction in performance when trying to do similar tasks at once, the reduction tends to be more in the area of 80-95%.
So, how to multitasking mavens seems to do it?  Gray found that people who can get a lot done well, are not multitasking.  Instead, they prioritize tasks by sequencing them logically and then focus with laser-like intensity on a single activity.

These are the people who are not mesmerized by their smartphones or stopping to open their email application every time the new email beep occurs.  Rather than performing several activities at once, they're able to focus on a single activity, then rapidly shift to the next activity.

So, this is my goal for the week - use laser-like focus on sequenced tasks, and throw multi-tasking to the wind!



Narrating My Work - October 8, 2013

Deep in Design Details

Cathy Moore has been inspiring me for months, now. It began with Action Mapping, a way to design eLearning with business goals in mind and job behaviors to change. 

It revolutionized how I approach instructional design. I discontinued beginning a course with an information dump (interesting, yet a glut of info) and moving towards comprehension checks.

Her next influence was on learner feedback.  Instead of "Yes, you are correct." or "No, did you consider...", Cathy encourages designers to make learners think. 

I created scenarios posing a situation to the learners which forced them to make a decision and then showed results of their decisions.  This technique worked well in an online course I developed for beginning Interns, teaching them troubleshooting with Central Venous Line Insertions.  Below, you can see the scenario and results. 



Now, I'm working on a cultural competency online course and will continue to use Cathy's fresh approach to allowing learners to think.

Whew!  First blog article in months!



Narrating My Work - April 19, 2013


Let me tell you a story...

I suffer from a disease.  I knew the hazards of letting it go undiagnosed.  I refused to believe my symptoms.

Walking into work, I'd have an idea of the work I needed to get done that day.  I'd log onto my computer, spend a few minutes taking care of loose ends and 35 minutes later, I'd be ready to go.  This was a mild symptom.

Waking up on the weekends, I'd conjure up a list long enough to keep 5 able-bodied people busy for 12 hours, expecting to work in a hike later on.



I have the multi-tasking syndrome, MTS.  This past week, I decided, ENOUGH! That, and I had a project with an extremely tight deadline as well as multiple other projects popping up, and a vacation day thrown in the mix.

Searching for help, I found two great assets.  Checklist:  Are you doing these five things to be more effective at work?  Eric Barker's first thing I tried this week, Establishing a Daily Ritual. The first step is:  My Morning Minutes. When I got to work, I made of list to to-do's for work and personal, I gave myself 15 minutes to prioritize emails and then shut down my email.  Bold, but it worked.  Next week, I'll try his 2nd step:  1 minute every hour: Refocus.

The other item I found on Slideshare, 26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I'd Known at 20.   This beauty spoke clearly to me.  I choose two hacks to try this week.  I began writing down anything that distracts me from my work.  This was HUGE.  From google searches, new ideas, random thoughts.  I was amazed at the difference it made to write instead of do.

As Eric Barker and Etienne Garbugli both highlighted in their writing, making decisions is exhausting.  Being aware of my tendency to get off track and deciding not to go with it and stay on track, took determination. 

I don't want to multi-task like a big shot.  I want to be a single-treader leaving work on time with tasks completed.

Narrating My Work - New Beginnings

I believe I have successfully moved my "Narrating My Work" posts to this blog.  And now I need a new title...Narrating My Work with a date is boring.  Going forward the blog title will  reflect the subject.  

 It was informative to scan the older posts as I pasted them in here to see the evolution of my posting.  Different stages included journaling my day, opining on favorite blogs, neglecting to post at all, and documenting theories I'd learned.

 As I return to my keyboard, purposefully to share what I"m learning in my work currently, it could be summed up as: storytelling and feedback that shows results.  

Storytelling

If I asked you, "Who tells a good story?" you could provide a quick answer.  We remember effective storytellers because they tell good stories.  Good learning involves not just stories, but meaningful connections to stories.

 As I was writing this, I was *pinged* by my Learnist account that someone had followed my Cooking for Storytelling board.

Feedback

"Yes, you are correct" or "No, not quite", are answers but not feedback. Cathy Moore states that feedback must show the result of the question, not a yes or no answer.  Her article on feedback explains an effective redirect or response to a question.  She explains how telling feedback isn't as memorable as showing feedback.



Storytelling and feedback are going to directly affect my next project, explaining to interns how to trouble shoot a central line catheter.  More to follow!


Narrating My Work - Donna Sunshine - January 1, 2013


My grandmother, Donna Sunshine, had a memorable New Year's Day tradition.  She encouraged us to a do a little something of everything you want to do all year on the first day of the year.  Her idea was a little laughing, a little sewing, a little sweeping, a little cooking, etc.  My day so far, a little coffee, a little reading by the fire, a little work, a little gardening...and next, a little blogging followed by a little walk outside.

When I started narrating my work last fall, it began as a documentation effort of the sites and blogs I visit.  It quickly became an easy way to save and access ideas or discussions I'd found, read and wanted to reread.  

Making myself write about what I've read has stirred up dreams of what path I could create for the next phase of my life.  

Narrating My Work - January 1, 2013


Today, I listened to a webinar by Daniel Pink, who latest book, To Sell is Human, is topping my stack of books to read.  He shared his favorite books, blogs and ideas.  Two of his ideas:  Mobile is bigger than we realize and What is college really for? are fodder for budding dreams of what's next for me.  

But before I go there, I want to share some of Daniel's insights.  He believes that subscription services will gain traction for busy, budding enthusiasts of almost lifestyle, sport or habit. He explained a subscription service for shavers, Dollar Shave Club.  You select the razor you like, pay a nominal monthly fee ($1 for the cheapest blade) and they send you one razor a month.  Here are some of the other sites he shared that interest me:
Farm to Baby  Grape Crate and Bark Box.  

Here are some of Mr Pink's favorite blogs, that I plan to investigate:
Farman Street - The blogger reads constantly and posts highlights.  An online Cliffnotes?
Barking Up the Wrong Tree - His latest post explains 3 ways to train your brain to be happy.
Springwise - The essential fix of entrepreneurial ideas
Arts Journal -  Daily arts in the news
Findings  - A daily round up of academic studies 

 He also shared some of his favorite tools:  Dropbox, Jambone, Everyman headphones, Idonethis.com and Restickable Tabletop Easel Pads.  My favorite was Instapaper, a simple tool to save web pages for reading later.

Thank you, Daniel Pink, for sharing your insights.  Now, onto your book!

Narrating a Teacher's Work - Problem Based Learning - December 12, 2012


One recent (within the last five years) type of learning has been gaining attention.  Flipped Learning trades lectures (usually classroom-based) with homework.  Learners watch videos or lectures at home and then work through problems (do their homework) in class.  As a former classroom teacher, I never found homework valuable and assigned it only because it was a requirement from the Board of Education.  When I learned about Flipped Learning, I thought, aha!  Here it is!  A way to interact with learners when they were actually learning, this allowed for questions, explanations and immediate application of knowledge.
One of the classes I developed this year, Financial Acumen: Cost Management Tool used flipped learning to share our leaders' perspectives on Healthcare as a Business with individuals.  

Last week, I read this article by Shelley Wright, a high school teacher in Saskatchewan, Canada.  Ms Wright feels that juggling the traditional lecture around wasn't really creating any ownership for the learner. She found the power of learning is when students take responsibility for their own learning.  "New knowledge should be actively constructed", according to Shelley.

Just a few days before I found Ms Wright's article, I spoke with two med school students who were prepping for finals.  They explained how they were using Problem Based Learning in their classes instead of lecture-based instruction.  Students were owning their learning by devising their own plans to meet course objectives. Unfortunately, the tests were based on the older lecture-based model.  Not a model for success in this case, but hopefully the tests will be updated to reflect the learning.

I'm reworking the class I developed earlier this year on Financial Acumen. I'm planning to use a problem-based learning approach to see what I can do with managers who are learning how to manage their budgets.  



Narrating My Work - November 6, 2012


Still formulating my design approach for the Windows 7 course.  I'm enjoying the time I have to muddle through the course conceptually so by the time development starts, I've had time to become familiar with the topic from multiple angels. 

Armed with the intent to design for the affective domain, I incorporated a new type of design technique coined Action Mapping by it's creator, Cathy Moore.  The premise is to alleviate the grueling ADDIE process of analyzing needs, moving from design to development, then implementation and onto evaluation.  Action Mapping starts by identifying What business change do we want to create?  Once a measurable goal is determined, you map what actions people need to take in order to meet this goal.  Then for each action the learner needs to take, a practice activity is designed.  Lastly, you identify what information the learners must have to complete each practice activity.
Here's where I am with Action Mapping on the Windows 7 course.  The green triangles are the actions, the purple shapes - practice, and the blue rectangles, the information.

I met with the development team to share this model, and they were open to giving it a go. I've designed my first topic, using Favorites in Windows Explorer and we're meeting this afternoon to look at it together.

Next time, I'll look at another new methodology, SAM (Successive Approximation Model) which uses iterative, short work cycles to provide the best possible product.  Best get cracking at the book first!

Narrating My Work - October 17, 2012 - Affective Context



I've done more exploration of Nick Shackleford Jones' theory of Affective Context Theory after uncovering an earlier blog post from a couple of years ago.  This one, Towards a Working Theory of learning: The Affective Context Model provided support for my research as I plan out the ever ambiguous Windows 7 course.  

My highlights from this article include Nick's decision to leave teaching psychology because he found himself writing "Piaget believed learning should be exploratory" onto a board while students copied it down.  After I read the name, Piaget, I immediately began googling him to see if there were any current blogs about him. 

Jean Claude Piaget is responsible for my lifelong love of learning.  It was in college when I first heard about him watching his children learn from their play.  Learning about him testing his theory of object permanence ignited my quest to live in the land of learning.  Thank you, Jean! 

Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980) 

Other highlights on Affective Context from Nick S-J includes these points:
  • Context rather than content determines learning efficiency.
  • Learning is the process by which people attach emotional sense to information.
  • Sometimes it really matters to people to learn, other times someone else makes it matter.
Shackleford-Jones' Affective Context Model defines the difference between 'pull' - type and 'push' - type learning.  In Pull - type learning, the content format doesn't matter. It already means something important to the learner because the learner is desperate to figure something out.  In Push - type learning, the importance is unclear. Learning is usually presented at the time when the importance is not imminent to the learner.

So, how does this affective context affect my current development plan for the Windows 7 course?  I put together these questions after I asked myself: What are the reasons why this audience would care?  

Back to development of the Windows 7 course!

Narrating My Work - October 4, 2012


While the thought of a PHD looms in the distance, my current work allows me another angle of learning. How do I create learning that goes beyond fulfilling an imposed requirement from management?   As I pick up my next project, transitioning employees to the new Windows 7 Operating System, how do I belie their fears of losing a system they knew well and use daily to complete tasks?  Simply explaining how this new system is better isn't helpful.  Comparing what they have with what they will now have can benefit the learner, but it seems to overlook the fear associated with new anything.   

One of my favorite blogger, Nick Shackleton-Jones suggests consideration of a Care Curve in this September post.  He looks beyond the traditional approach and performance consulting view to improve learner understanding, and looks toward a new (at least to me) approach.  His approach examines the affective context and maps patterns of concern. I understand his Care Curve to have two foundational aspects when designing learning. In addition to the tasks learners need to perform, the care curve will:
1. explain why the tasks matter to the individual and 
2. highlight challenges that may be overlooked when focusing on tasks.  

Mr. Shackleton-Jones uses the first day of school as an example.  How do you provide learning for this?  The history of the school, the pedigree of the principal, the length of the school year don't seem to matter to a new student on the first day of school.  The key is fitting in, not making a fool of oneself.  

So, my next step is how do I weave the Care Curve into the Windows 7 Transition?  Personally, I know how excruciating it is to search for a file when someone is waiting for it or watching me.  Equally high on my affective scale, is not knowing how to do something I used to do routinely and not being able to figure it out, like saving to My Documents (non-existent in Windows 7).

I think I'll play the piano when I return home tonight. The Care Curve was a large part of my learning this instrument.  I remember my mother explaining the importance of practice because some day I could play in church.  This was very motivational for me. And to Nick's second point, I still look for pieces with the least number of sharps and flats!


Narrating My Work - September 12, 2012


As I've been exploring the online learning available to all at no cost, I am considering the potential.  It seems limitless.  Anyone who wants to learn, can.  Living at a time when learning is available for everyone is my kind of magic.  I see open windows, avenues and worlds for learners.  Yet, I am reminded of the many people  who will never actualize this benefit. Those who do not believe they are learners.  

I remember my first teaching experience.  

As a beginning early childhood education teacher in Los Angeles, California, I realized quickly that not everyone believes they are a learner.  I began at Hillcrest Drive Elementary School in the SRLDP program, a School Readiness Lanauage Devleopment Program.  It is an oral language program intended to prepare students for kindergarten.
My students from Monday through Thursday were 4 years old, on Friday, their parents or guardians came to school instead.  I realized the learning impact with these moms, aunties and grandmothers of the children I taught.  They subtly revealed their unbelief in themselves as learners. Why would they be interested in something they believed they could not do?  Tossing the approved curriculum aside, our Friday mornings together became a time for me to listen.  If I could summarize their disinterest in learning, the curiosity fire had been snuffed out so early in their lives that they lost any recognition of it.  

How does the profusion of free learning affect these disbelievers of their own learning potential?  

Narrating My Work - August 20, 2012


Free world-class education for anyone anywhere.  This is the mission of Khan Academy.  I learned about this goldmine from a colleague who was reviewing statistics for an upcoming project.  Since I was writing a class on Financial Acumen, I took a Khan course on Income Statements and 12 minutes later, I was informed enough to understand this concept.

In my first post on Narrating My Work, I shared Dave Weinberger's research and belief of the benefits to an entire ecosystem where everyone shared the knowledge they've gained. 

Earlier this week, I listened to Daphne Koller explain Coursera, the program she co-founded to provide courses online for free.  Coursera's mission -  to provide everyone free access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few.



Today, I was working on an online class I'm creating for our organization as we transition to Windows 7.   A colleague showed me a Windows 7 Introduction from the St Louis Library's eCourse site.  I enrolled, completed the pre-survey and first lesson of this free class and learned something.  

This content, created by a true expert, can be linked to from our online class.  Instead of focusing on functionality, I will simply highlight our internal Windows 7 policies.  Careful explanation of what is and is not available to our people will be my focus, not how it works.

I'm intrigued with the idea of sharing knowledge freely, especially online. 

Narrating My Work - July 31, 2012


 I started the day by creating a brief interview for my Needs Assessment.  I used ASTD's format to formulate some simple questions for my interview with the Subject Matter Expert this Friday.  

 Next, I attempted to initiate today's narration on Storify. I'm blogging here because of my Storify experience.  The guided tour was interesting but once I started creating, I couldn't figure out how to add sources which left with me only Facebook as a resource.  Not robust enough to record my work day.  I could've googled an answer, but wasn't compelled. Back to the blog I go!

 This afternoon I packaged the videos for the Financial Acumen pilot class tomorrow at Sullivan Hospital.  Next, I'm going to review videos for BJC Today to insure that lyps are sinched, or lips synched before we have them published for our online viewers.

 After work tonight, it's Winslows Home for Fried Chicken.  The History Channel filmed Chef Cary last week as they compared northern and southern cuisine.  We decided to walk there tonight and conduct our own taste test.

Narrating My Work - July 20, 2012


 Two weeks ago I signed up for an online course hosted by Harold Jarche and Jane Hart of the Social Learning Centre.  The class: "From training, to performance, to social" seemed to fit perfectly with my desire to learn more about social learning. It was a great thrill to find that 39 of the 41 learners were from outside the States.  What an opportunity to share ideas and be heard by other practitioners in the learning field.

We started out with the basics of training. Training can only solve a knowledge or performance issue, if there is a different issue in the workforce training is not the answer.  Next, we discussed the ID models of ADDIE, ISD and whether or not they were still applicable to today's rapid pace of information sharing.  The next assignment was reflective about how we solved an issue we had with a co-worker, was training the answer? Yesterday's assignment was on Narration of your Work. I had never heard of this concept until Harold explained that it is making your tacit knowledge (what you feel) more explicit (what you are doing with that knowledge).  I listened to a short video by Dave Weinberger where he explained Public Learning.  He used an example of software developers searching online for solutions to problems they encounter.  The developers generously share information, even though it may be with a competitor, because knowledge should not be owned.  I found the concept interesting.  Dave believes there are tremendous benefits to the entire ecosystem when everyone shares the knowledge they've gained.

One of Harold's last quotes in the Narration your Work topic is that we should focus on helping each other to turn narrating our work into a habit. He believes in the future it will be the norm to share what you are up to.  Formal documentation and stream of private emails that is current output of most knowledge workers is not going to cut it going forward.  We need to think about how we can move towards that culture.

Okay, so here's my first step in moving towards that culture.  

My Work day - Friday, July 20, 2012

Arrive at work and scan email, respond as needed and then dive into one task before our staff meeting:  reviewing an internal PowerPoint.  Because we are presenting to our peers I wanted to add a little something special so deliberated about using prezi.  Completed review of PowerPoint and headed to 2 hour meeting.

Social Media Updates - after the meeting, I visited Feedly to see what interesting posts I could add to our FB and Pinterest account next week. I found some options and used Hootsuite to schedule.  I use IE for this activity because I usually run into issues with loading graphics.  Chrome is worse for this tasks but IE crashed again today so after shutting down for a few minutes, I completed this task.

Video Review - for one of the classes I'm working on, we video-taped several of our executives.  I reviewed the final versions from the YouSendIt site to see how they looked. We had been concerned that maybe they would be too long but nope, only 2 were 3 minutes long and the other 10, were under 1:30.  This will be perfect for our class because we are experimenting with Flipped Learning for this class.  We will send out several videos and a pre-class survey in order to alleviate most of the lecture and allow our learners to spend more time working on the concepts, rather than listening to them.

Internal PowerPoint - I tried several attempts at creating a Prezi PowerPoint by next Tuesday.  It seems easy enough to use, but after an hour and no real gains, I figured I didn't have the time.

Lunch at my desk as I scheduled appointments for next week.  

I was scheduled to sit in on a demo by Splash Media to see what kind of marketing we could use for our social media efforts.  

Social Learning Centre - I read through the Narrating Your Work topic and considered attempting to use Storify like one of the participants had done.  Considering my Prezi path earlier in the day, I went back to my blog...which hasn't seen my fingers in over a year. I enjoyed this first go at work narration.  I'm going to add it to my calendar for next week.  Thanks, Harold!



 Since I don't like blogs without pictures, I've included one of my office building here!

Narrating My Work - February 15, 2013

A colleague of mine, Steven Loomis, a great Instructional Designer, thinker and motivator, and I designed an online course for new adopters of the iPhone.  BJC Healthcare made a decision last year to remove the Blackberry server, which meant all Blackberry users had to move to iPhones. 

 Steven and I were tasked with designing the content.  It was his idea to add snarky humor.  Including simple scenarios, getting a text while on a way to the meeting, was our attempt to introduce reluctant users into helpful tool.

 Not all employees are eligible for a company-issued iPhone so we couldn't market this course like we usually do. To increase awareness, we decided to email everyone after they'd ordered their new iPhone with a direct link to the course.  Every week, I sent an email and we received positive responses.  I've been doing this for two weeks, in a month I'll see if it did increase enrollment.

Narrating My Work - 7.20.2012

Two weeks ago I signed up for an online course hosted by Harold Jarche and Jane Hart of the Social Learning Centre.  The class: "From training, to performance, to social" seemed to fit perfectly with my desire to learn more about social learning. It was a great thrill to find that 39 of the 41 learners were from outside the States.  What an opportunity to share ideas and be heard by other practitioners in the learning field.

We started out with the basics of training. Training can only solve a knowledge or performance issue, if there is a different issue in the workforce training is not the answer.  Next, we discussed the ID models of ADDIE, ISD and whether or not they were still applicable to today's rapid pace of information sharing.  The next assignment was reflective about how we solved an issue we had with a co-worker, was training the answer? Yesterday's assignment was on Narration of your Work. I had never heard of this concept until Harold explained that it is making your tacit knowledge (what you feel) more explicit (what you are doing with that knowledge).  I listened to a short video by Dave Weinberger where he explained Public Learning.  He used an example of software developers searching online for solutions to problems they encounter.  The developers generously share information, even though it may be with a competitor, because knowledge should not be owned.  I found the concept interesting.  Dave believes there are tremendous benefits to the entire ecosystem when everyone shares the knowledge they've gained.

One of Harold's last quotes in the Narration your Work topic is that we should focus on helping each other to turn narrating our work into a habit. He believes in the future it will be the norm to share what you are up to.  Formal documentation and stream of private emails that is current output of most knowledge workers is not going to cut it going forward.  We need to think about how we can move towards that culture.

Okay, so here's my first step in moving towards that culture.  

My Work day - Friday, July 20, 2012

Arrive at work and scan email, respond as needed and then dive into one task before our staff meeting:  reviewing an internal PowerPoint.  Because we are presenting to our peers I wanted to add a little something special so deliberated about using prezi.  Completed review of PowerPoint and headed to 2 hour meeting.

Social Media Updates - after the meeting, I visited Feedly to see what interesting posts I could add to our FB and Pinterest account next week. I found some options and used Hootsuite to schedule.  I use IE for this activity because I usually run into issues with loading graphics.  Chrome is worse for this tasks but IE crashed again today so after shutting down for a few minutes, I completed this task.

Video Review - for one of the classes I'm working on, we video-taped several of our executives.  I reviewed the final versions from the YouSendIt site to see how they looked. We had been concerned that maybe they would be too long but nope, only 2 were 3 minutes long and the other 10, were under 1:30.  This will be perfect for our class because we are experimenting with Flipped Learning for this class.  We will send out several videos and a pre-class survey in order to alleviate most of the lecture and allow our learners to spend more time working on the concepts, rather than listening to them.

Internal PowerPoint - I tried several attempts at creating a Prezi PowerPoint by next Tuesday.  It seems easy enough to use, but after an hour and no real gains, I figured I didn't have the time.

Lunch at my desk as I scheduled appointments for next week.  

I was scheduled to sit in on a demo by Splash Media to see what kind of marketing we could use for our social media efforts.  

Social Learning Centre - I read through the Narrating Your Work topic and considered attempting to use Storify like one of the participants had done.  Considering my Prezi path earlier in the day, I went back to my blog...which hasn't seen my fingers in over a year. I enjoyed this first go at work narration.  I'm going to add it to my calendar for next week.  Thanks, Harold!