What it takes to be a great leader

Dwayne Harapnuik —  March 24, 2021 — Leave a comment

Rosalinde Torres shares the result of 25 years of observing truly great leaders at work that are summed up in the following three simple but crucial questions:

  1. Where are you looking to anticipate the next change to your business model or life?
    Answer – The answer to this question is in your calendar – who are spending time with, what are you doing, what are your reading/learning. Great leaders are collaborating and looking around corners.
  2. What is the diversity measure of your network?
    Answer – Consider your capacity to develop relationships with people who are different than you. Having a diverse network is a source of pattern recognition and of potential solutions.
  3. Are you courageous enough to abandon the past?
    Answer – Going along to get along leads to failure. Great leaders dare to be different and don’t just talk about risk-taking they do it. People who will join you are usually different from your traditional network.

Torres states that the great leaders of the 21st Century are:

those women & men who are NOT preparing themselves for the comfortable predictability of yesterday but are preparing for the realities of today and all the unknown possibilities of tomorrow.

In Leadership, Video - Wednesday Watchlist , , , , ,
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Psychology Recommended Reading List

Dwayne Harapnuik —  March 21, 2021 — Leave a comment

I am an avid reader and researcher so it is not uncommon for my students to ask me to recommend books, readings, or subjects that they can explore to go deeper into a subject. I was recently asked what program or course of study I would recommend for someone who wanted to go into Psychology. Even though I have a Ph.D. in Psychology or Educational Psychology to be more specific I often find it difficult to recommend traditional Psychological books or texts because I have found that they often provide too narrow of a focus or explanation.

Most people are drawn to the study of psychology because they want to better understand human behavior or find an explanation for why or how people tend to feel, act and do the things that they do. I have found that human behavior is much more complex and requires a much broader exploration. My main Recommended Reading List points to this broader perspective and points to my top 200+ reads.

I realize that most people do not have the time nor the desire to engage in the more classical study of philosophy, theology, and history to help them understand why we do the things we do so I will attempt to consolidate and offer my top 15 list of Psychology reads which are also listed on my Recommended Reading List page:

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by K. Anders Ericsson, Robert Pool
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
The Psychology of Intelligence by Jean Piaget
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz
A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas by Warren Berger
Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The following two books aren’t typically referred to as psychological texts but they do offer a perspective of why people tend to do the things that they do. Both of these books point to a time in history when humanity was not at its finest so we tend to get a perspective of why we do the things we do when then things are really bad. Some would argue that the best of times and the worst of times are when our true humanity is revealed.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Finally, you may want to download a copy of my COVA eBook which explains how to create a significant learning environment in which you give your learner choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities and also incorporates many of the ideas that you will find in the books listed above.

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The Shift from Engaging Students to Empowering Learners

Dwayne Harapnuik —  March 17, 2021 — 2 Comments

While I appreciate the message in the video and agree that we need to empower our learners to become more self-directed the author doesn’t really provide any suggestion on how to do this. This is where the Learner’s Mindset and the CSLE+COVA approaches come in. Don’t just talk about empowering your learners, take the steps to make this happen.

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13 Study Tips: The Science of Better Studying

Dwayne Harapnuik —  March 4, 2021 — Leave a comment

Even though the authors of this video subtitled the video “The Science of Better Learning” the reality is most of these tips deal with memorization and studying and have much less to do with learning which is the making of meaningful connections.

I wish that educators would get the language right. Regardless if you are in a situation where you need to engage in information retrieval or you want to be honest with your learners and help them prepare for standardized testing then the following video will help your students improve their information retention and regurgitation.

In Education , , , ,
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Aligning Outcomes, Activities & Assessments

Dwayne Harapnuik —  February 26, 2021 — 4 Comments

PDF of Video Slide Deck
Finks Resources

The first half of the video points primarily to the traditional cognitive alignment that we should strive for in our instructional design and curriculum development. If you are engaged in competency-based education that is part of a skills-based program, introductory to intermediate courses, instruction that is designed to prepare students for a credentialing exam, or other forms of standardized testing and evaluation then the cognitive alignment which we outline is the minimum alignment you should apply.

Alignment

If you are working at a higher level or are able to incorporate authentic learning opportunities through project-based learning and are using an outcome-based design then you will have the opportunity to expand your scope of alignment and incorporate more aspects of the affective and the psychomotor domains and better address the whole learner. If you are not familiar with the difference between competency-based education vs outcome-based education or need confirmation of how I am using these two concepts please refer to the post Why I Don’t Use Checklists, Progress Bars & Other Activity Monitors to explore these ideas further.

To explore alignment at a higher or more wholistic level you need to first change your focus:

When you create a significant learning environment (CSLE) in which you give your learners choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities (COVA). The CSLE+COVA framework shifts the focus from the curriculum, skills, and abilities to the authentic learning opportunity which ideally should be a real-world project that will have a significant impact on the learner and their learning community. The skills and abilities may still need to be developed or supported but the learner takes on the responsibility to become more of a self-directed learner who acquires or learns those skills and abilities in a just-in-time fashion as they work toward solving the challenge of the authentic learning opportunity. The instructor takes on more of the role of coach, guide, and facilitator and helps shift the learner from assessment of and for learning to assessment as learning

Alignment is one piece of the learning environment and we must warn against the notion of looking for a quick fix or simple application of a tool to help you find this alignment. This is part of a well-thought-out and planned instructional design or curriculum development process.

Additional resources to consider:

Collecting dots vs connecting dots
Assessment OF/FOR/AS Learning
Feedforward Vs. Feedback
We Need More Autodidacts
How to Change the World One Learner at a Time
3210 Curriculum Resources
COVA eBook
Dwayne’s Recommended Reading

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