Digital Learning & Leading is a collaborative learner-centered program that embraces technological innovation through collaboration and active and authentic learning that will prepare learners to create meaningful change. Innovative technologies are used as catalysts to enhance learning and when effectively employed, the technology disappears into the learning environment. This online program is designed to develop both digital learning knowledge and leadership.
The emphasis on digital learning and leading from the DLL is maintained in the ADL. The shift in using the notion of “applied” is to emphasize Applied Learning which is an active and collaborative process in which learners apply knowledge and skills gained from theory, hands-on experience, and authentic learning opportunities. What differentiates ADL from the DLL are the increased emphasis of assessment as learning and critical reflections on the application of analysis, evaluation, in the creation of significant learning environments.
Program Length
12 courses for 36 credit hours
10 courses for 30 credit hours
Course Length
5-week courses
Since the start of the program, all courses in the DLL have been continually and incrementally updated. Mid-term diagnostics feedback surveys conducted in each course revealed the most important need was additional time to enable deeper learning.
8-week courses
The course content from the DLL is was used as a foundation and updated. No new content was added. The increased time was added to enable learners to go deeper into their analysis, evaluation, and creation of their authentic learning opportunities.
Program Completion
The DLL program is typically completed in 18 -24 months. Due to the intense 5-week duration, students are allowed to complete one course at a time.
The ADL program can be completed in one year because students have the option of taking 2 courses at a time. Students also have the option of doing one course at a time and doubling up on courses when their schedules allow.
Discussions & Collaboration
Discussion forums are used in the DLL to foster collaboration and to provide a forum for students to help each other with their innovation projects. Discussions are monitored by instructors and contributions evaluated using a metric that combined the quantity and quality of participation.
Discussion forums are used in the ADL to foster collaboration and to provide a forum for students to help each other with their innovation projects. Evaluation of collaboration shifts from the instructor to the student. Self-evaluations are based on an assessment as learning model where students self-assess their contribution to their own learning and to that of their core learning community.
Walking the Talk
Changing or improving the world one learner at a time is not an end but a process. Once you start this process it requires continual effort. Fortunately, it has a compounding effect, and small but consistent efforts will maintain and grow its impact.
I have been endeavoring to walk the talk in all aspects of my life for many decades. Whether it was the technology-related courses I developed in the early ’90s, my move into online learning at the University of Alberta in 1995, my related research into web-based instruction that went into my doctoral dissertation, or the dozens of online and blended learning courses that I have developed since then, I have always strived to apply all the theories, approaches and principles that I advocate in my own practice. A continual and iterative process of analysis and evaluation that leads to synthesis and creation is simply part of the learner’s mindset and is what I have been using in the development of courses for the new Applied Digital Learning (ADL) Master which is an update or revision of the Masters of Digital Learning and Leading (DLL) which I co-developed at Lamar University in 2014-2015. One of my goals for revising the DLL courses and converting them to ADL courses has been to strip away unnecessary information, activities, processes, or anything else that will impede the learner’s choice, ownership, and voice as they create their innovation plans and then create significant learning environment where their plans can be realized. Another goal is to point to how key foundational concepts like Applied Learning, Assessment Of/For/As Learning, Connecting the Dots Vs Collecting, the Dots, Change of Focus, CLSE, COVA, and the Learner’s Mindset will play a role in their growth and development.
Desiring the Quick Fix
Over the past several years my colleagues and I have observed and analyzed the tendency for many educators who come into the DLL program to look for a quick fix to innovation. They generally see technology as a tool that has a hyped potential for a quick fix so they often expect to be told what procedure, process, or product they should implement as part of their innovation plan. While the application or applying of a model or simulation may initially appear to be what they want when they try to apply these products or processes to their circumstance, they quickly find that this often doesn’t work. The educational technology (Edtech) literature for the past several decades is filled with examples of how the application of technology in a learning setting makes no significant difference and has little impact on learning outcomes and that the focus needs to be the learning, not the technology if we want to make a difference (Reich, 2020; Cuban, 2001; Russel, 1999; Wenglinsky, 1998). The research is clear. Edtech is not a quick fix or silver bullet (Thibodeaux, Harapnuik, Cummings, & Wooten, 2017) and the naive notion that one can implement it better than the last group that failed is continually repeated in all levels of classrooms across the nation. This is why the SAMR model or other quick fixes do not work (Harapnuik, 2017). Why does this thinking continually persist?
Start with a Change in Thinking about your Thinking
In analyzing this situation I looked at what type of thinking or level of thinking that was being used. According to the revised Bloom’s taxonomy when people are attempting to carry out a procedure or implement a process or apply an existing model to a new but similar situation they are using lower ordering thinking in their hopes of applying existing information to their situation. The category of Applying is at the top of the lower order thinking within Bloom’s taxonomy but it is still considered lower-order thinking and only facilitates information transfer because there is no analysis, evaluation, or creation which are at the higher-order and are essential to deeper learning.
The inverted Bloom’s taxonomy is one of my favorite perspectives because it combines the higher-order thinking into a continuum and reveals that analyzing, evaluating, and creating must be conducted in conjunction. In the Applying section, the notion of using information in a new but similar situation seems to fit what I was seeing in many of my students in the DLL program.
Because I practice what I preach, I continued to analyze and evaluate my ideas further before I created this post. I also went to the original or primary sources of the Bloom taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) to make sure I wasn’t missing any key information in the dozens of abbreviated versions of Bloom’s taxonomy that a quick Google search revealed. While the summary in the inverted Bloom taxonomy was useful and it was compatible with many other summaries of Bloom’s taxonomy, you will find online the original perspective from Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) was much more effective in addressing my concerns.
Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure through executing or implementing. Applying is related and refers to situations where learned material is used through products like models, presentation, interviews, and simulations.
This summary confirms what I have seen with many students who just want to be told what procedure or model they need to execute or implement and believe that all they have to present an existing model to their colleagues, simulate the new approach, and their innovation process is complete. To be fair to many of these students, this is what they know and simply what their administrators, schools, districts, or other organizations ask them to do. This ongoing process of identifying a standard to be met, finding the approved or accepted procedure or process being used in the organization to meet this standard, and finally applying a standardized test or other information transfer confirmation tools to confirm that the standard has been met by the students is the norm. For rudimentary knowledge, simple situations, and information transfer this application process does work well and our education system has been relying on this model for over a century. As we move further into the digital information age we are realizing that our challenges are much more complex and require much more than doing what we have done in the past. To address these more significant challenges we need to move beyond applying existing information or processes in a new but similar fashion.
Moving to Higher Order Thinking
We need to move into analyzing, evaluating, and creating new solutions to ever-increasing challenges that we and our learners will face in the future. We also need to look beyond convenient summaries, quick fixes, or “Coles Notes” solutions and go back to primary sources to get the full picture. If we want to address the ever-increasing complexities in the challenges we face in the 21st Century then we must use higher-order thinking. We must continually analyze and evaluate what we are doing as we begin creating innovations that will enhance learning. Anderson and Krathwohl (2001) explanation of the following three higher thinking levels offers the best starting point for our own analysis, evaluation, and creation of a novel way of integrating these ideas.
Analyzing: Breaking material or concepts into parts, determining how the parts relate or interrelate to one another or to an overall structure or purpose. Mental actions include differentiating, organizing, and attributing as well as being able to distinguish between components.
Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
Creating – Putting elements together to form a novel coherent whole or make an original product.
Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating Lead to Deeper Learning and Learner’s Mindset
While the inverted Bloom’s taxonomy is useful for helping us to see the linear relationship between analyzing, evaluating, and creating and also see how the higher-order thinking is separated from lower-order thinking, it doesn’t convey the interrelatedness between analyzing, evaluating, and creating. It also doesn’t show how the interrelation between analyzing, evaluating, and creating contributes to deeper learning.
The Venn diagram (Harapnuik, 2021) reveals how analyzing, evaluating, and creating come together and at that convergence point is where the learner engages in deeper learning and has then moved into the Learner’s Mindset.
This deeper learning and the adoption of a Learner’s Mindset is realized when you create a significant learning environment in which you give your learner’s choice, ownership, and voice through authentic learning opportunities (CSLE+COVA). I have been applying this approach in all the learning environments that I have created and most recently have applied this to the DLL and ADL programs as well as in the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program (PIDP).
In my grandiose goal of changing the world one learner at a time, I am sharing this approach with as many people that I can. It is my hope that you too will begin the ongoing process of analysis, evaluation, and creation. Through a continual and iterative process of analysis of your learning environment, the new concepts, theories, and ideas you are exploring combined with your goal of bringing learning innovation to your organization, you too can begin to explore and evaluate how best to synthesis your findings and ideas into an innovation plan which will create the changes you desire and prepare your learners for life.
Please remember that this is only one part of a bigger picture so explore the following:
Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D., & Bloom, B. S. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A Revision of bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives (Abridge Edition). Addison.
Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused: Computers in the classroom. Harvard university press.
Harapnuik, D.K. (2017). Reconsider the use of the SAMR model. [Blog]. Retrieved from https://www.harapnuik.org/?p=7235
Reich, J. (2020). Failure to disrupt: Why technology alone can’t transform education. Harvard University Press.
Russell, T. L. (1999). The no significant difference phenomenon: A comparative research annotated bibliography on technology for distance education: As reported in 355 research reports, summaries and papers. North Carolina State University.
Thibodeaux, T. N., Harapnuik, D. K., Cummings, C. D., & Wooten, R. (2017). Learning all the time and everywhere: Moving beyond the hype of the mobile learning quick fix. In Keengwe, J. S. (Eds.). Handbook of research on mobile technology, constructivism, and meaningful learning. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Wenglinsky, H. (1998). Does it compute? The relationship between educational technology and student achievement in mathematics. ETS Policy Information Center. https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/PICTECHNOLOG.pdf
Bloom’s original taxonomy created in the late 50’s was updated in 2001. Leslie Wilson (2001) offers one of the best visual representations of the changes which include a shift from a noun to a verb form, create was substituted for synthesis, and the position of evaluate and create was switched.
I think that the Inverted Bloom’s taxonomy better characterizes the role that analysis, evaluation, and creation play in higher-order thinking and have posited that these three aspects of higher-order thinking lead to deeper learning and the adoptions of the learner’s mindset.
Bloom’s Taxonomy was applied to the Digital world that we all live in by Andrew Church in 2007 and many now refer to this as Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy.
While Church does a wonderful job of pointing to verbs and examples of digitally-focused activities that can be structured according to the different levels of thinking I would prefer this call this a digital application of Bloom’s taxonomy as opposed to Bloom’s digital taxonomy. I am also hesitant to limit learning to just the digital environment especially since we know that the most effective learning takes into account all aspects of the environment and does limit only to the digital space. Regardless, this is another useful tool that can be used in the design and creation of significant learning environments.
My son Caleb and I have been rereading The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance and we are both exploring how to apply the key principles of engagement management vs continuing to fail at attempting to manage time. I am writing this post in a 90-minute engagement cycle and will be shifting to a purposeful 20-minute break when my timer goes off and then focus on another type of energy I need to be productive. The key idea that Schartz points to is that energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance which is at the heart of this process which was first established in a book co-written with Jim Loehr’s, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal. I explored the ideas in this book back in 2010 and recently reread portions to remind myself of the 4 energy management principles that drive performance in my pursuit of finding a sustainable balance in my productivity.
Principle 1: Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Principle 2: Because energy capacity diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.
Principle 3: To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do.
Principle 4: Positive energy rituals—highly specific routines for managing energy— are the key to full engagement and sustained high performance.
To implement these principles effectively you have to begin with finding a balance between physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. More specifically, you have to replenish one type of energy by either doing something to restore that energy and/or by switching to an expenditure of another type of energy. For example, after my 90-minute cognitive focus on writing this post, I will be shifting to building up my spiritual energy by taking in and meditating on a spiritually uplifting talk on YouTube. I will then shift my focus to building my physical capacity by going on a HIIT run. I listen to audiobooks on my runs and workouts so I can also build myself up mentally while challenging myself physically. Some time spent with my family in the afternoon will restore my emotional energy so that when I return to writing or creating I will have been replenished emotionally and mentally and can then approach more writing or creation with full engagement. Finding a balance in these types of energy use and replenishment is the key to my productivity and performance. I wish I could say that I have come to this understanding quickly and easily.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case, and my journey to engagement management prefaced by several decades of failing at time management. I have been looking for the key to time management since the early to mid-’80s when I first started trying to implement Blanchard’s One Minute Manager. After more than a decade of failing to make this work, I shifted to David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) in 2006 and my Evernote still has the foundational structure of GTD for my main notebooks. I have also experimented with a wide assortment of GTD oriented tasks or ToDo list applications. Other than the GTD structure that I use to organize my Evernote notebooks about the only other GTD method I use is the GTD rule of doing something immediately if it will take 2 minutes or less. The challenge I have always found with GTD is that it takes so much time and energy to set it up properly and it also takes significant time and effort to implement consistently. I was never really able to use it completely or properly and I found that the time I spent trying to make GTD work could be better spent on actually doing what I needed to do.
As result in 2009, I turned to Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog which is now in its third edition. Both GTD and Eat That Frog emphasize time management but Tracy better recognized that people have limited willpower or discipline to build and maintain a sophisticated GTD structure and methodology so he advocated that people do the most pressing task that they were not looking forward to first…hence the title Eat that Frog. Tracy also advocates for a prioritization structure not unlike the GTD structure be used to organize your other tasks. I have listened to and reread Eat That Frog multiple times and while I did manage to eat many frogs while attempting to use the Eat That Frog methodology I really didn’t get beyond this first idea. One of the other key insights I gained from Tracy was his emphasis on the notion of having limited stores of willpower and that the best way to preserve those stores was to set up a process that would become habits that would enable one to what they desired because of habituation and preserve the limited willpower stores for other things like eating that frog.
This led me to explore Charles Duhigg’s ideas in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business in 2014. Duhigg argued that since more than 40% of what we do each day is a result of habitation it made sense to explore how this worked. He identified the habit loop which consists of a cue, a routine, and then a reward as the key to understanding how habits work and how to change them. Duhigg also argued that habits never really disappear so to change or replace a habit you have to first identify the habit loop and then change the habit or routine by isolating the cue and then choosing a new routine or behavior that will deliver a reward that you are craving. While this behaviorist approach does explain why we continue to do the things we do or don’t want to and it does offer a way to change habits, it was just too difficult to implement from a time management perspective.
Even when I looked into Stephen Guise arguments in Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results like putting your shoes and gym clothes by your bed so that the first thing you do when you wake up is put them on a go to the gym or go for a run, I was able to improve on my work out consistency but I wasn’t able to effectively apply these ideas to my time and productivity management. While exploring habits, mini habits, and willpower I turned to Kelly McGonigal’s The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Once again just knowing more about willpower and the mechanism behind habituation didn’t really give me the ability to make changes to my time management. Even though it makes sense that we have 3 kinds of willpower, that being able to differentiate between “I won’t” “I will” and “I want” power and the notion that we can train our biological willpower like a muscle, I just wasn’t able to put this into practice. McGonigal did point to the notion of finding a balance of eating well, exercising, meditating, getting enough sleep, and spending time with people who are positive influences as a way to build willpower. I started noticing this similar pattern of addressing or finding a balance in more holistic variables as a way to build willpower or energy.
I reread this book in 2017 and again in 2018 and for the past couple of years have been working at finding a balance expending and replenishing my physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. I have taken a relatively holistic approach and have scheduled my writing time for first thing in the morning and have also been very consistent in my workouts, and my nutrition. I have always set aside time for my family and I do regularly address my spiritual needs through readings, prayer, and meeting with others who hold similar beliefs. In the past several years I have incorporated a 90-minute sleep cycle approach to match my body’s natural circadian rhythms and I have never slept better. Now, I am applying a similar approach to my waking hours and my ultradian rhythms thanks to the insights shared by Schartz in The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs That Energize Great Performance.
Schartz points to the work of the “father or sleep” Nathaniel Kleitman who discovered rapid eye movement (REM) and proposed that sleep included active brain processes. Kleitman also discovered that a Basic Rest Activity Cycle (BRAC) is present when people are awake and is part of our ultradian cycles. These cycles involve alternating 90 minutes periods of high-frequency brain activity followed by lower-frequency brain activity that lasts for about 20 minutes. The key to the highest levels of productivity is to engage in highly focused creativity or deliberate practice during this 90 minute period and then take a break by doing something physical, emotional, or spiritual in the 20 minute break period. Schartz also points to the work of authority on deliberate practice by Anders Ericsson who found that the most successful musicians or athletes engaged in an average of 4-4.5 hours a day of practice that was broken up with a few shorter breaks. It appears that these people have found their highest level of productivity in the natural rhythm in 3 cycles.
In the final analysis and synthesis, I have found that when I combine 90-minute cycles of intense focus with shorter cycles of exercise I am completely engaged and highly productive. I am also finding that if I can get 2-3 of these cycles in first thing in the morning I am much more productive than I have ever been before. I am not only more productive I can analyze, evaluate, and synthesize ideas more efficiently and can write or create more effectively. The power of full engagement is really finding a balance in the expenditure and replenishing of one’s physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. It has taken me too many years to learn that time management really doesn’t work and there is no simple solution, quick fix, or just a matter of disciplining oneself to eat that frog. The key is to address all aspects of our humanity, find that balance and take into account all the factors that are necessary to be as complete and as productive as we were intended to be.
References
Allen, D. (2002). Getting things done: The art of stress-free productivity. Penguin Books.
Blanchard, K., & Johnson, S. (n.d.). The one minute manager. Berkley Publishing Group.
Brian, T. (2007). Eat that Frog!: 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and get more done in less time. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business (Vol. 34). Random House.
Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise. Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Duhigg, C. (2016). Smarter faster better: The secrets of being productive. Random House.
Guise, S. (2013). Mini habits: Smaller habits, bigger results. Selective Entertainment LLC.
Loehr, J. E., & Schwartz, T. (2005). The power of full engagement: Managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance and personal renewal. Simon and Schuster.
McGonigal, K. (2011). The willpower instinct: How self-control works, why it matters, and what you can do to get more of it. Penguin.
McGonigal, K. (2016). The upside of stress: Why stress is good for you, and how to get good at it. Penguin.
Schwartz, T., Gomes, J., & McCarthy, C. (2010). The way we’re working isn’t working: The four forgotten needs that energize great performance. Simon and Schuster Audio.
