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How to Proactively Limit the Whirlwind

Dwayne Harapnuik —  June 2, 2017 — 3 Comments

Have you every had a situation where you thought something would only take a few minutes to complete but ended up taking a couple of hours? To make sure this post doesn’t turn out this same way I will get to the point. This morning my co-instructor and I needed to send out the announcement to our new group of students. No problem…I have an announcement script in my trusty Evernote so I told my colleague this will just take a few minutes; I just needed to update the script to reflect the fact we are co-teaching, change the dates and then I can post it. Or so I thought.

Rather than explain in full detail the challenges that arose and how they were addressed I will summarize my experience in the following list:

  • IT folks didn’t give me access to my own course – sent IT a message but got no response so after a series of Google Hangout messages with my co-teacher we explored other options to add me to the course.
  • Noticed I needed to add the latest two chapters and the most recent article my colleague and I have recently written to the list. Only one of the articles has been “officially” released so I added the URL to the publication and then went to the other 3 publication to create “In Press Draft” PDF files for our students.
  • Noticed that each of the files was formatting differently and while the double-spaced text is required for the publisher and their proofing the documents are much more readable with 1.5 spacing so I changed the formatting on all 3 document. OOPS… this also lead to changing some tables, adding page breaks and many other formatting issues that could have been avoided if we were using the full power of Word. Make note….need to talk to colleague out standardizing our writing formats.
  • Uploaded the 3 draft publications to the course storage and updated the reading list, linked to the draft documents and linked to the published article on the Journal site. Also uploaded the files and made the same updates to the Master Course.
  • Finally got to updating that course announcement script and created the new announcement with updated information.On the final proof read I noticed that there were some formatting and spacing issues with the announcement in the BlackBoard (BB) editor and pulled the HTML formatted content from BB editor and put it into my text editor to scan for and remove the extra “” and “” formatting that BB adds to the file when you save it. Did the search and replace and cleaned up the HTML content and pasted it back into the BB editor and FINALLY got an announcement message that I could post/send to our students.
  • While I was pulling together the draft documents I also realized that I needed to move these documents and related research files and folders to the same location in on my drives and then add these draft documents to my website so before I forgot and rather than add this to my ToDo list I re-organized some of my research files and related articles and chapters for publication.

By the time I went through the above process which included many other smaller steps too tedious to mention the few minutes to update the announcement message took just under two hours to complete. The authors of 4DX point to the day to day whirlwind of just getting your work done as one of the major factors that prevent significant change from taking place in most organizations. Most people are very busy just doing their work so adding anything new or looking to innovate is very challenging in the busy work that we live in. While this is true I also believe that we can add to that whirlwind by being reactive rather than being proactive. Let me explain. The steps above detail one reactive measure after another and if I would have been more proactive I could have eliminated or limited most of these steps and saved myself some time and frustration. Consider how I could have been more proactive:

  • When I emailed back and forth with the IT person who was involved in managing my course copy I informed him that even though I was not “officially” listed as the instructor on the course I was going to be co-teaching the course and needed to be added to the course as an instructor once it was copied. He said sure, no problem. In my second email exchange, I asked him to confirm that I was added and IF I needed to jump through the new formal request process. I was willing to fill out the necessary forms and jump through all the hoops but still hoped I didn’t have to. He said it wasn’t needed. Mistake two was when I didn’t check the course site until this morning rather than the night before—I wasn’t added to the course.
    Proactive countermeasure – don’t trust IT, jump through their time-consuming processes and check and double check to see if they have actually done what they say they will do.
  • Rather than wait until documents accumulate and pile up it makes better sense to format your documents for your specific audience right at the point where you are also submitting them for publication. It takes months for articles, chapters and books to be published so there will always be a need to create an “In Press Draft”.
    Proactive countermeasure – while the current document is being worked on for publication use page breaks, spacing, and all other formatting features that are built into the word processor that will enable you easily move the document from one format to another.
    Proactive countermeasure two – while the current document is being worked on creating and format the“In Press Draft” PDF that you can share with your students and the rest of your audience.
    Proactive countermeasure three – move that document to where it needs to reside so that you can easily share it. This includes uploading it to your website, master course, or wherever else it needs to go.
  • Dealing with the BB editing issue will take too much time to address so I will leave that to another post.

I must acknowledge that even though being proactive will help you save some time you still need to actually spend the 2, 5,  or 10 minutes here and there doing what needs to be done. You can save same some time but more importantly, you can save frustration and anxiety. Human’s don’t function very well in a heightened state of anxiety. Frustration and anxiety will cause adrenaline to flow and will turn on our flight or fight response which redirects our blood flow from our brains to our extremities. When things aren’t going well we don’t need blood being redirected from our brains to our limbs so this flight or fight state makes us even more unproductive. Ever noticed how the frustration just seems to build and it can take some time to calm down. This is just our physiology doing what it is supposed to do — get us ready to react and fight or take flight.

By being proactive we can not only save time but we can prevent moving into these states of growing frustration which we all know just kill our productivity. Being proactive will also mean that we can be much more purposeful and add to our work/website/ePortfolio on a consistent basis. The making of meaningful connections which are the essence of learning and growth are much more effective if we approach them incrementally. Creation, reflection, and revision and more reflection and revision require time… lots of time. If we are proactive we can leverage the hours we have and learn and grow more effectively.

More of my thoughts on being proactive:
The Paradox of Being Proactive
Why Create Significant Learning Environments
Sense of Urgency: Create It Now or React to It Later
How to Change Before You Have To
Pick Two – Innovation, Change or Stability
Practice Change by Living It

In Learning, Productivity , , , , ,
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What are you learning today?

Dwayne Harapnuik —  March 2, 2017 — Leave a comment

I have always been a reader. In grade school I read hundreds of books on every imaginable subject. I grew up in a rural setting and as a young boy I the read through the World Book Encyclopedia and then used the school library and any other repositories of book as resources to solve many practical day to day problems I faced living on a farm in Northern Alberta. These books became a lifeline to a much bigger and brighter world that I was also inspired to explore. I didn’t know it then, but these books also started me down the path of authentic learning which I define as making meaningful connections with new ideas and using that new knowledge to shape and change my attitudes, skills, and behaviors.

So, anything that would help me to learn was extremely valuable. This was many decades before the birth of the Internet so books magazines, films, records, recordings, stories and insights from experienced people and almost anything that contained or was able to share information contributed to my learning. Unfortunately, this cognitivist focused learning I found so natural was not a priority in any of the behaviourist focused schools that I attended as a child and teen in the 1960s and 1970s. I am not alone in viewing learning as an amazing and natural part of the human experience and have always been frustrated with the fact that learning happens so naturally everywhere but in schools (Thomas & Brown, 2011). Fortunately, I didn’t listen to all those teachers and administrators who said I wasn’t “suited” for school. I had always known that there was much more to learning than just being able to repeat meaningless facts and figures on quizzes and tests.

While I wasn’t “suited” for school, I was suited for learning, and as a result, I focused on learning how to learn more effectively (Harapnuik, 2011). Furthermore, my use of technology to create things, to solve problems, and to enhance my learning was something that I also was prevented from using in school. Therefore, most of my experiences in a wide assortment of educational systems and at all levels confirmed that for the most part the 20th century model of information delivery followed by confirmation via some form of summative assessment was really the priority of school.

As an adult in higher education, I also had to deal with the troubling reality that my passion for learning, which I now refer to as the making of meaningful connections, or connecting the dots, was not as important to my teachers as the processes of schooling, which I also refer to as collecting and regurgitating the dots (Harapnuik, 2015a).

While collecting and regurgitating the dots, or the information delivery model of instruction, is well suited to the industrial age, it is not so well suited for the information age. Unfortunately, throughout my entire childhood educational career and up to the present time, I have been forced to deal with teachers, educators, and many colleagues who still operate in the industrial age of information delivery. Because these people are so trapped by the existing systems of schooling and the behaviourist methods that still dominate our assessment strategies, they mistakenly believe that they can simply take technology and strap it onto existing modes of delivery. As we have learned from Papert (1993), this is no more effective than strapping a jet engine onto a horse cart.

This response by traditional educators is unfortunate because technology has profoundly changed the world in which we live. That change has the potential to improve education in the way in which our students use digital resources to acquire and apply knowledge and more importantly, create new knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors. Despite the availability of these digital tools and resources, most educators continue to struggle to effectively implement them. There are small number of teachers who are early adopters of technology who are making a difference and who are using technology to enhance the learning environment. They are willing to give the learner choice, ownership and voice through authentic learning opportunities. These people are using technology to help create the significant learning environments that promotes growth and enable learners to address what is one of the most important fundamental questions we need to continually ask – what are you learning today? This question leads to the next most important question – What do you want to learn next? And this is the topic for future posts….

References

Harapnuik, D. (2011, September 4). Not suited for school but suited for learning
[Youtube]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/clv2yr_UhDU

Harapnuik, D. (2015, August 15). Connecting the dots vs collecting the dots. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/85XpexQy68g

Papert, S. (1993). The children’s machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer. New York, NY: Basic books.

Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the
imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace.

In Learning , , ,
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DLL Why & Principles

Dwayne Harapnuik —  January 18, 2017

The Master of Digital Learning and Leading (DLL) at Lamar University is a collaborative learner-centered program that embraces technological innovation through collaboration, active and authentic learning, and the creation of significant learning environments. The fundamental principles of the DLL include:

Why: We believe that we must inspire and prepare our learners to lead organizational change using technology innovations as a catalyst for enhancing learning.

How: To do this, we create significant learning environments (CSLE) which give our learners choice, ownership and voice through authentic (COVA) learning opportunities.

What: We prepare leaders who can lead organizational change and drive innovation in a digitally connected world.

While technology is continually used to enhance the learning environment in the DLL, it isn’t just relegated to being another tool that teachers put in their instructional toolboxes. Innovative technologies are used as catalysts to enhance learning and when effectively employed, the technology disappears into the learning environment.

The DLL program is grounded in the approaches of Dewey, Bruner, Papert, and Piaget who advocate that learning is an active, dynamic, and social process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current and past knowledge and experiences. The making of meaningful connections is key to the learning and knowing.

In the DLL program, we create and model significant learning environments (CSLE) where the learner takes control and ownership of their learning. Through authentic projects, DLL students learn how to purposefully assemble all the key components of effective learning and create their own significant learning environments that will then, in turn, help their learners to learn how to learn.

Research and experience confirm that we learn most deeply through effective collaboration and feedback from our peers. DLL collaborative activities are structured so that students can bring their ideas to their group, examine and test those ideas, and then apply those refined and strengthened ideas to their own projects.

Collaboration is not used as a consensus driving process, rather it is part of the significant learning environment where learners are immersed and engage in productive thinking and problem solving and emerge with enhanced knowledge and skills that they can apply in their own classrooms and professional development.

In DLL the student will not be asked to sit and get professional development but will be required to go and show what they have learned through the creation of their own learning ePortfolio. The DLL ePortfolio reinforces learner choice, ownership, voice through authentic learning (COVA) which the DLL students are then able to share with their learners and their learning communities.

What is the COVA?

C The freedom to choose (C) their authentic learning opportunity and how to organize, structure and present their learning experiences.
O Ownership (O) over the entire learning process – including selection of authentic projects and their eportfolio tools.
V The opportunity to find and use their own voice (V) to revise and restructure their work and ideas.
A  Authentic (A) learning opportunities that enable students to make a difference in their own organizations and learning environments.

See the COVA page on this site for more information.

As primary developers of the DLL program Dr. Harapnuik, Dr. Cummings, and Dr. Thibodeaux will be continuing research into the DLL and COVA approach that will explore student perceptions on how choice, ownership, voice, and authentic projects impact their ePortfolios, learning, and learning environments. The findings of this study and ongoing research will add to the growing body of research into how the COVA learning approach will contribute to the continued use ePortfolios as a learning tools beyond the program of study, how the COVA approach can be used to impact student learning, and how this experience transfers to students’ learning environments.

Sinek, S. (2009, September 28). Start with why — how great leaders inspire action. [Youtube]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/u4ZoJKF_VuA

Revised January 20, 2019

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COVA Model

Dwayne Harapnuik —  September 29, 2016

COVA Model

Why:

We believe that the Digital Learning and Leading program at Lamar University must prepare educators to lead organizational change using technology innovations as a catalyst for change.

How:

To do this, the Digital Learning and Leading program at Lamar University provides an innovative, collaborative learning environment which equips our learners with the necessary tools to effectively bring about change in their organizations.

What:

The Digital Learning and Leading program at Lamar University prepares leaders who can create significant learning environments, lead organizational change, and drive innovation in a digitally-advanced century.

What is the COVA Model?

C The freedom to choose (C) how they wish to organize, structure and present their experiences and evidences of learning.
O Ownership (O) over the entire ePortfolio process – including selection of projects and their portfolio tools.
V The opportunity to use their own voice (V) to revise and restructure their work and ideas.
A Authentic (A) learning experiences that enable students to make a difference in their own learning environments.

 

Digital Learning and Leading Principles

The Master of Digital Learning and Leading (DLL) is a collaborative learner-centered program that embraces technological innovation through collaboration, active and authentic learning, and the creation of significant learning environments.

While technology is continually used to enhance the learning environment in the DLL, it isn’t just relegated to being another tool that teachers put in their instructional tool boxes. Innovative technologies are used as catalysts to enhance learning and when effectively employed, the technology disappears into the learning environment.  

The DLL program is grounded in the approaches of Dewey, Bruner, and Piaget who advocate that learning is an active, dynamic, and social process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current and past knowledge and experiences. The making of meaningful connections is key to the learning and knowing.

Similarly, the educator and philosopher Mortimer Adler suggests that:

teaching is a very special art, sharing with only two other arts — agriculture and medicine — an exceptionally important characteristic. A doctor may do many things for his patient, but in the final analysis it is the patient himself who must get well — grow in health. The farmer does many things for his plants or animals, but in the final analysis it is they that must grow in size and excellence. Similarly, although the teacher may help his student in many ways, it is the student himself who must do the learning. Knowledge must grow in his mind if learning is to take place (p. 11).

In the DLL program, we create and model significant learning environments where the learner takes control and ownership of their learning. Through authentic projects DLL students learn how to purposefully assemble all the key components of effective learning and create their own significant learning environments that will then, in turn, help their learners to learn how to learn.

Research and experience confirms that we learn most deeply through effective collaboration and feedback from our peers. DLL collaborative activities are structured so that students can bring their ideas to their group, examine and test those ideas, and then apply those refined and strengthened ideas to their own projects.

Collaboration is not used as a consensus driving process, rather it is part of the significant learning environment where learners are immersed and engage in productive thinking and problem solving and emerge with enhanced knowledge and skills that they can apply in their own classrooms and professional development.

In DLL the student will not be asked to sit and get professional development, but will be required to go and show what they have learned through the creation of their own learning ePortfolio. The DLL ePortfolio reinforces learner choice, ownership, voice and agency (COVA) which the DLL students are then able to share with their learners and their learning communities.

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Opening Up Spaces for Answers

Dwayne Harapnuik —  September 7, 2016 — 2 Comments

Spaces for answers
Source: deathtostockphoto.com

The other day in our online class meeting in EDLD 5313 – Creating Significant Learning Environments course, one of the core courses in the M. Ed. in Digital Learning and Leading at Lamar University, one of my students asked me why this particular course that deals with learning theory and creating significant learning environments was not one of the first courses in the program. I explained that we run the learning theory course after EDLD 5305 – Disruptive Innovation in Education, the course in which the students research and develop a learning innovation proposal and plan, because 5305 creates a context for which you need to explore your beliefs about learning. Without having a context to look at how people learn, the work on learning theories is just theoretical. The genuine context provides the real world need or application where one needs to explore how best to design and create learning environments.

I am more than likely articulating this better in this post then I did in the meeting and as I thought about what I wish I would have said, Clayton Christensen’s perspective on learning came to mind. In a conversation with Jason Fried published in Inc in 2012, Christensen and Fried talked about innovation, the trap of marginal thinking, and learning. The perspective on learning that really caught my attention was the notion that someone can’t be taught until they are ready to learn. Christensen frames his perspective in the following unique way:

Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question — you have to want to know — in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.

When viewed in this light the reason we run EDLD 5305 – Disruptive Innovation in Education first and get students to start the process of creating a learning innovation proposal and plan, is that 5305 disrupts students enough or disrupts their typical thinking about teaching and leanring enough, where they start asking the types of questions that will be addressed in EDLD 5313 and many other courses. Many students lament in the class discussions, class meetings, and in their reflections that this course and program has forced them to re-think many of their ideas about teaching and learning. Students often feel unsettled or uncomfortable because they may feel they have more questions then they have answers.

We have designed the DLL program and the courses to push students to start questioning conventional thinking about teaching and learning, the educational system, their schools and classes, and their process and methods so that their minds are opened up enough to the point that they want to know how to do things different. The program and courses are design to open up spaces in our learners minds for new ideas to fit and when we explore those new ideas in the next module or course many of those disconcerting questions or spaces are filled with the new ideas—only to have new questions that start to open up new spaces in their thinking.

In an age of standardized testing, of covering the content, of checklists masquerading as rubrics, and the need to regurgitate the right answer, getting learners to struggle with challenging questions is unfortunately a foreign concept. But learning has never fundamentally been about spouting off the right answer; it has always been about making meaningful connections and to make those meaningful connections you have to start with the questions. The type of questions that open up the spaces in our thinking and motivate us to want to know and to make those meaningful connections—only to have the whole process start over. This is learning—this is life.

References

Fried, J. (2012, September 25). A Conversation with Innovation Guru Clayton Christensen. Retrieved September 7, 2016, from http://www.inc.com/magazine/201210/jason-fried/a-conversation-with-innovation-guru-clayton-christensen.html

In EDLD 5313, Learning , , , ,
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