Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning « Previous post in this series • Next post in this series » (Note: this is a continuation of the previous post in this series. Together they deal with Step 2, sequencing the task classes.) Clusters, chains, and parts "In exceptional cases," van Merriënboer and Kirschner say in Step 2 of Ten Steps to Complex Learning, "it might not be possible to find a task class easy enough to start the training with."  They’re thinking of very complex training-like, say, complete programs for doctors or pilots. "If you are not dealing with such an exceptional case, you may skip this section." Thanks, guys. I’m extending this discussion of Step 2  ( "sequence the task classes" ) because, while vM&K say part-task sequencing is an exception to usual practice, I’ve used some of the techniques in less-than-complex situations. Parts: on the whole, they’re incomplete "Part-task sequencing" has a special meaning in the Ten Steps approach.  It refers to how you decide which clusters of constituent skills to deal with, in which order, because you see the overall skill-the whole task-as too complex to confront a learner with. A cluster is a group of interrelated constituent skills that make up an authentic real-life task, even if it’s not the complete task.  If you think of "diagnosing a patient" as the whole task, one cluster might involve conducting physical exams while another might involve reviewing test results and reports from exams done by others.  Each cluster makes sense on its own (it’s something a physician would do in the real world); each is a part of the whole task of diagnosis. I’m feeling a little sympathy for vM&K.  There’s lots of terminology like "task" that can apply at different levels.  The authors end up with lots of phrases like "whole task" and "part-task sequencing."  I suppose  the alternative is to try nailing a term to a particular level.  Good luck. One advantage to clusters is that they reduce difficulty: the learner has fewer things to attend to.  The tradeoff is that the clusters hinder integration (since you’re leaving out some of the skills) and limit opportunities to coordinate the skills. In a sense, that coordination is headquarters for "the whole is more than the sum of the parts."  The complex task is not simply what you get when you add up its constituent skills; you also have to retrieve and deploy combinations of those skills-coordinate them-on the job. Linking the tasks Imagine the job of a first-level supervisor.  For the sake of example, we’ll look at the managerial parts of the job (as opposed to industry-specific ones).  As a supervisor/manager/leader, you’ve got whole tasks like: Maintain a skilled team (e.g., make sure people have or acquire necessary skills; make sure they get to develop them) Manage the performance of your team Assess the performance of your team (monitor, provide feedback, conduct performance reviews) You might choose different clusters, and so might I.  You’ll likely agree that each of the three bullets at least implies a related group of skills, and that each cluster might itself be so complex as to need additional breaking down.  Concentrating on one of these clusters at a time, and training within that cluster, is what part-task sequencing means. And, yes, you’ll still have to integrate the clusters eventually.  Yes, that’s going to take time and cost money.  Complexity is complex. In forward chaining, you address the constituent skills in a logical order, typically the way they’re performed.  Take the task of "managing the performance of your team."  In forward chaining, you might work through these constituent skills: Communicate requirements and standards Monitor individual performance Discuss performance with individual Document results of discussion Backward chaining works in the opposite direction; you’d train tasks in this order: Document results of discussion Discuss performance with individual Monitor individual performance Communicate requirements and standards With either method, you can use snowballing.  You combine each subsequent task with what’s been taught before.  The forward version would have task classes like these: "Communicate" tasks "Communicate and monitor" tasks "Communicate, monitor, and discuss" tasks "Communicate, monitor, discuss, and document" tasks Van Merriënboer and Kirshner believe the most effective combination is backward chaining with snowballing.  Since you start near the completion of the task, you need to provide the learner with outcomes from earlier stages not yet covered: "Document" tasks (given: the outcome of "communicate, monitor, and discuss") "Discuss and document" given: the outcome of "communicate and monitor") "Monitor, discuss, and document" tasks (given: the outcome of "communicate") "Communicate, monitor, discuss, and document" tasks This last approach, they argue, should be the default mode for part-task sequencing, which in turn is an exception reserved for only highly complex whole tasks.  As for the other combinations: Backward chaining without snowballing is what you do when you lack time for including snowballing. Forward chaining with snowballing is only for part-task practice Forward chaining without snowballing is for part-task practice when you lack time. "Part-task practice" is another specialized term; it’s Step 10 of the Ten Steps, and it’s meant to develop automaticity for recurrent tasks.  That means the procedural stuff you do the same way each time.  It’s how you learned your times tables; it’s how you practice scales on the cello. Two more combinations Earlier we talked about whole-task sequencing: each task class presents the whole task, with the early task classes providing simple examples and the late ones providing complex examples.  This post looked at part-task sequencing, something you do when the whole task is too complex for a learner to tackle.  So, naturally, Whole-task sequencing and part-task sequencing may be combined in two ways, namely whole-part sequencing and part-whole sequencing. See why I broke Step 2 into two posts? It’s not as bad as it sounds-if I understand vM&K.  Here’s what I think they’re talking about.  Remember that constituent task for the supervisor, "Manage performance of your team?’  Its four skills (communicate, monitor, discuss, document) might apply in two contexts: coaching someone to improve current performance, and counseling someone to correct a deficiency.  Or "how to do even better" versus "you need to do better.") Here’s how I think that works on a whole-task class for the "manage performance" skill.  This class is made up of relatively simple, straightforward situations.  Individual task problems may involve coaching or may involve counseling. First skill cluster: documenting skill. Learning via backward chaining and snowballing, the supervisor is asked to document various simple counseling and coaching situations.   (The givens include the outcomes of communicating, monitoring, and discussing.) Second cluster:  the supervisor would now works on problems that involve discussing with an performance employee, then documenting the discussion. (Gives: communicating and monitoring.)  Again, some are coaching situations, some are counseling. And so on.  This is whole-part because the class involves the whole task ("managing performance"); within the class, we sequence by parts of the performance. vM&K say you could also have part-whole sequencing.  I take that to mean, in terms of this example, that you have a class where you document easy cases, then medium ones, then difficult ones, and then move on to a class where you discuss and document, and so on. Since their clear preference is for whole-part (if you have to have part-task sequencing), and since they didn’t provide any examples of their own, I’m going to tiptoe away from Step 2. Next in the series: Step 3, Setting Performance Objectives. CC-licensed image of Vasarely works by notalike. The posts in this series: Complex learning, step by stepComplex learning (coffee on the side)Ten little steps, and how One grewProblem solving, scaffolding, and varied practiceStep 2: sequencing tasks, or, what next?Clusters, chains, and part-task sequencing (that's this post) Step 3: performance objectives (the how of the what)Criteria for objectives-also, values and attitudes

Another one of those multi-link paths today.  I had conversation with Ruth Seeley of No Spin PR, which led me to follow her blogroll to Fiona Walsh’s blog, where Walsh suggested a Marshall Goldsmith post on asking one tough question. That question, asked of people too busy to implement changes they said they wanted to make, was "What am I willing to change now?" I get uneasy around some coaches (and not just the ones in sports), so I was all the more surprised to read Goldsmith saying "do what you can do now…and make peace with what is." Each of those statements linked to yet other posts, so this was like three links out with a bonus.  I’ve been a bit frazzled lately, so it was good to be reminded of these things. My most recent project really energized me.  I got to work with a skilled expert who’s been thinking about how to increase the skills of new people coming into his field.  He doesn’t think he has all the questions, much less all the answers.  I hadn’t had that direct contact in a while, nor such a free-flowing exchange. So part of the "do what you can do" message is getting clear on what I’d like to be doing, or doing more of.   Stewart Friedman’s advice include being real (which I read as "true to yourself"), be whole, and be innovative. As for the being at peace, the second link cited by Goldman, Annie McKee is writing about dealing with pressure and building things into your life to spark both psychological and physical renewal: Listen to life’s quiet wake-up calls.  Maybe they’re just the small sound life is making in another room.  What’s happening (or not happening) while you want for Something to Happen? Practice mindfulness.  This one’s hard for me.  I sometimes fell like Bill Blazejowski in Night Shift ("What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, with the tuna fish? Or… hold it! Chuck! I got it! Take live tuna fish, and feed ‘em mayonnaise! Oh, this is great.")  I have to work at building this, the way you have to work at building muscle strength. Find hope. The motto of Detroit is Speramus meliora-"we hope for better things." Hope is a vote for the future. Practice compassion. This isn’t a virtue widely prized in competitive culture, but it’s one I value. This was a good shift between reports I’m working on and books I’ve been reading.

Twitter’s a stream, not a bookshelf.  Comments, ideas, and links flow past.  You can’t follow up on each one.  I have, however, come up with a homemade version of a clipping service. A couple of times a day, I skim tweets and click on promising links.  Each link opens a new tab in Firefox.  Usually I end up with six or eight tabs, ideal for quick browsing. Skimming, round two, involves those tabs.  I’ll start reading the link and do a kind of cognitive triage: close; read and close; read, tag (in Delicious), and close. One such tweet led to an article on usability principles in social networking, posted by Verne Ho at creative briefing. Ho’s main topic is putting usability ideas to work specifically on social network sites. Social networks differ from regular websites in 3 fundamental ways: Activities and content are fully (or at least mostly) driven by the users.  Users are expected to do things on the website — interact, post, vote, etc. Users are expected to come back to the website periodically and continue to do things. At least the first two points apply to learning: it’s the learner who does it, not the facilitator, designer, or the chief learning officer.  And for learning to happen, learners have to do stuff. That’s a bit of a tangent, and Ho’s points are worthwhile in their own right.  I like how he handled some possibilities: "…Basic usability principles…dictated righter from wronger (sometimes there was no strictly right or wrong answer)." A quick rundown of some of his principles: Show only relevant information. Emphasize important actions. Provide visual feedback…(and make wait times feel shorter). Use the five-second text. That test: "ask people to list what they can recall after viewing your site for five seconds."  Not a bad principle to apply to, say, visuals in a presentation.

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning « Previous post in this series • Next post in this series » In Ten Steps to Complex Learning, van Merriënboer and Kirschner’s third step is set performance objectives.  (Click for a diagram of all ten steps and the four components into which they fit.)  The main sections of the chapter are: Skill decomposition (or, academic language rides again)-figuring out the constituent skills of the whole task Creating performance objectives Classifying performance objectives Performance assessment The authors emphasize one point so often, I’m putting it first: Many instruction design models use performance objectives…as the main input for the design decisions to be made….Instructional methods are selected for each objective, and each objective has its corresponding test item(s)…. This is certainly not true for the Ten Steps.  In complex learning, it is precisely the inegration and coordination of constituent skills described by the performance objectives that must be supported by the training program. In other words, you can’t tie your instructional methods to a specific objective; you have to connect with interrelated sets of objectives. I’m willing to ride at least part of the way with vM&K, even though there’s some risk of semantics here.  The subject is complex learning, not how to set up a Facebook page.  Many criticisms of traditional instructional design and of formal learning result from the failure of training interventions to address the whole of a complex skill. That said, much traditional organizational learning has glossed over the reality that complex things are complex.  For every death-by-PowerPoint three-day workshop, there’s a senior executive somewhere who believes that talking is teaching.  He doesn’t want "paralysis by analysis," though his fervent belief in Best Practices (especially if they come from outside his organization) is often a case of faith without good works. Skill decomposition, or, what does it take? The Ten Steps assumes you’re doing a needs analysis (and if you’re not, how the hell do you know what you should be doing?).   Two additional assumptions follow: …There actually is a performance problem that can be solved by training …[and an] overall learning goal…a statement of what the learners will be able to do after they have completed the training program. Since the Ten Steps is iterative, the goal helps you break down the complex skill, and the constituent parts of the skill help you refine the overall goal.  As you identify the learning tasks (Step 1) and sequence them (Step 2), you’re uncovering information about the relationship of the constituent skills. The top-level goal can be elaborate, like their example for patent examiners: After having followed the training program, the learners will be able to decide upon the granting of patent applications by: Analyzing the application Searching for relevant prior documents Conducting a substantive examination Delivering a search report where the relevant documents that have been found are cited and their relevancy is acknowledge on the basis of the substantive examination, and Communicating the result of the substantive examination to either The examining division so that a patent can be granted immediately, or The applicant so that, at a later stage, a reply can be filed by the applicant and a patent granted, or the application is refused. vM&K list several approaches to filling out the set of constituent skills.  A hierarchy is an obvious approach: what specific skills are necessary in order to perform the more general skill?  In my earlier example of supervisor skills, "monitoring individual performance" is a prerequisite for the overall skill of "managing performance." If you want to know whether to expand the skills on the same (horizontal) level, there are temporal relationships (skill A must be performed before skill B), simultaneous ones (you perform C and D at the same time, like shifting gears and steering the car through a turn), and transposable ones (perform skills E and F in any order). I’m not sure why this amount of detail appears here.  My guess (and that’s all it is) is that the relationship information will come into play with the cognitive strategies and rules. The chapter mentions heterarchical (peer-to-peer) relationships between skills on the same level, and also what vM&K call reitiary but others seem to call retiary relationships-networks of skill or "competence maps." The thumbnail on the right links to a competence map for cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of psychotherapy, though the elements on the map aren’t interconnected. Data: gaining as you gather Analyzing the skills helps highlight which are similar.  Similarity may facilitate learning or may impede it (when "similar" means "with tiny but important differences").  vM&K recommend observing skilled performers as they work first on simple whole tasks, and then on more complex ones. So, no, you don’t sit down and just have the subject-matter expert tell you about things.  As Tom Gilbert often noted, to figure out her tennis skills, you have to watch Martina Navratilova’s feet. Martina has lots to say that’s useful, but the whole skill is serving, not just foot-placement or racquet-holding. And the expert performer is often unaware of how she applies complexes of skills. This chapter offers suggestions for gathering data.  The authors refer to objects-things that the performer focuses on or changes.  A shift from one object to another suggests a shift in constituent skill.  If the supervisor checks the project schedule and then a worker’s weekly report, the shift might be from "determining individual’s goals" to "tracking individual’s progress." Another source of data: the tools the performer uses.  The chapter gives an example of a patent examiner switches from a highlighter to a search engine to a word processor as he works on a report.  Possible constituent skills are "analyzing applications" (the highlighter), "performing searches" (the search engine), and "writing results of pre-examination" (the word processor). In addition to working with skilled professionals who demonstrate the desired performance, there’s value in working with deficient performers as well.  The gap between optimals and actuals (as Allison Rossett phrased it) helps target performance-improvement efforts. The (A)BCDs of building performance objectives Van Merriënboer and Kirschner see four elements to a performance objective: the action, the tools and objects, the conditions, and the standards. Not that difference from ABCD objectives (actor, behavior, condition, and degree).  True, they left out "actor," but I’d say it’s pretty obvious. The action verb part is what you’d expect.  No "understand," "know," or "be aware of" allowed. You specify the tools and objects for several reasons.  One, if they’re used on the job, they’re part of the task, and learners need to learn them.  (In designing training, naturally, you might come up with simple or low-fidelity versions of some of the tools or objects, especially for the early stages.)  In addition, if some of these items change often, you’re forewarned; you know that the training may have to change as well. Conditions play a major part in complex learning-think of the military surgeon who must perform not only in a well-equipped hospital but also in suboptimal conditions closer to the front. In the Ten Steps approach, the final element, standards, involves not only criteria, but also values and attitudes.  That’s where the next post in the series will begin. Martina Navratilova image adapted from a CC-licensed photo by Chip_2904. The posts in this series: Complex learning, step by stepComplex learning (coffee on the side)Ten little steps, and how One grewProblem solving, scaffolding, and varied practiceStep 2: sequencing tasks, or, what next?Clusters, chains, and part-task sequencingStep 3: performance objectives (the how of the what) (that's this post) Criteria for objectives-also, values and attitudes

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning « Previous post in this series • Note: this is a continuation of the previous post in this series, because I can’t seem to summarize and comment on one of the Ten Steps to Complex Learning in a single post.) Step 3 is "set performance objectives."  As the introduction and first section of this chapter emphasize, this is an iterative process, not a linear one.  The real-life tasks in which you perform the complex skill help to determine the overall learning goals and the specific tasks that will help achieve them. In turn, these help refine understanding of the complex skill and the constituent skills that it embodies. After analyzing (or "decomposing") the skills, you create performance objectives.  I’ve discussed Van Merriënboer and Kirscher’s actions and the tools and conditions that apply to the objectives.  It’s a bit tough to talk about standards as they describe them. Keeping to the standards The Ten Steps sees standards as having four elements: criteria, values, and attitudes.  Criteria means what you think: minimum requirements for things like accuracy, speed, quality, and so forth. Values indicate that the constituent skill conforms to some set of rules or regulations.  Two examples vM&K offer: "without violating traffic rules" and "taking the ICAO safety regulations into account." My feelings are mixed.  I can see the value of this as shorthand ("wiring for this remodeling must meet the National Electrical Code").  Is there a little game of gotcha on the side?  Or are we acknowledging that in complex learning, there are areas of performance that matter, even if we’re not going to provide instruction related to them? I really can’t say; this just feels a bit like a junk drawer in the conceptual cabinet of the Ten Steps. Feelings about attitudes If values are the junk drawer of instructional design, attitudes are like scribbling "Get organized!" on a to-do list.  The Ten Steps doesn’t define "attitudes," but says they’re "subordinate to, but fully integrated with" constituent skills. Apparently we’ll know them when we see them.  However, they won’t be things like "have a client-centered attitude."  vM&K say this is a non-example: a research librarian doesn’t need to have such an attitude outside of work, nor does he need to have it when doing tasks that don’t involve clients. So, whatever an attitude is, it’s not an enduring part of your personality.  I actually think there is such a thing as attitude; I just don’t think  you can influence it directly very well.  The Ten Steps seems to agree: It is only necessary to specify the attitude in the performance objective for these relevant constituent skills. If possible, all observable behaviors that indicate or demonstrate the attitude should be formulated or specified in a way that they are observable!  The standard "with a smile on your face" is more concrete, and thus more observable, than "friendly;" "regularly performing checks" is more concrete…than "punctual…" "With a smile on your face?" This is an unsatisfactory nod toward a complex issue.  Think of medical professionals interacting with patients (so-called bedside manner).  Can it be that helping a surgeon demonstrate interest in the person and not just the condition-"Dr. Manoogian, your gall bladder’s in room 5″-might require this close a focus? Classifying Objectives Three dimensions apply to the objectives you develop (remember, these are objectives for the constituent skills that make up the overall complex skill): Teach, or not? Non-recurrent, or recurrent? Make automatic, or not? The easy part is sorting out the objectives you’re not going to include in your training-either because the typical performer already has these skills, or because the objectives are covered elsewhere.  Those that remain fall into four groups. Non-recurrent skills, you’ll recall, are applied differently to different problem situations.  They involve schema-based problem solving and reasoning.  They require supporting information like cognitive maps during the training, which is the topic for Step 4. Recurrent skills are those you apply the same way to different problem situations.  They’re the rule-based skills.  In training, these require procedurall information. vM&K state that any prerequisite skills for a recurrent skill are by definition recurrent.  "A recurrent constituent skill," they says, " can never have non-recurrent aspects!"  Since they say with with both italics and the second exclamation point in two pages, they must mean it. The same skill, they go on, could be non-recurrent in one training program, but recurrent in another.  Repair of military aircraft in peacetime might be a non-recurrent skill, because there’s time for diagnosis.  In wartime, one of the criteria is to repair or replace as quickly as possible, which could mean that repair becomes a more procedure-driven and thus recurrent task. Some recurrent skills require a high level of automaticity.  This involves the part-task practice discussed in Step 10.  Some jobs don’t require this type of automaticity (for example, the recurrent patent-examiner task).  Factors that suggest automaticity include: Enabling other skills higher in the hierarchy. Musicians practice scales, even after achieving a high level of skill, in order to automate basic skills and enable more fluid performance of higher skill. Simultaneous performance with many other skills. Process operators in manufacturing and air-traffic controllers are two types of jobs where the individual reads displays automatically as she analyzes and responds to dynamic sistuations. High risk in terms of cost, damage to equipment, or danger to life. Pilots and flight attendants practice emergency procedures. Ten Steps makes a point that not all routine skills need automation.  There’s a cost/benefit consideration — you don’t memorize all the addition possibilities of two numbers from 0 to 999; you do (eventually) automate the skill needed to keep a car moving in a straight line. Twofers "Rare situations" exist, according to vM&K, when you’d choose to automate a non-recurrent skill.  They use "double classified" for what seems to be combinations of recurrent and non-recurrent skills, like their example of shutting down a power plant in an emergency. The shutdown can occur in many ways, depending on circumstances (non-recurrent), but must follow specific procedures (recurrent).  This is an expensive decision and often requires high-fidelity simulation.  In addition, the authors say that learners should be explicitly told that they’ll switch from automated mode to problem-solving mode at times. The things you left out Remember that "category" of objectives that you won’t be teaching? If learners have already mastered a particular constituent skill in an isolated manner, this is no guarantee that they can carry it out in the context of whole-task performance.  Performing a particular constituent skill in isolation is completely different from performing it in the context of a whole task, and automaticity of a constituent skill that has been developed through extensive aprt-task practice is often not preserved in the context of whole-task performance. Which is to say that when Bruno gets a perfect score on the loan-application system, it doesn’t necessarily mean he can use it while interviewing a live loan applicant at the bank branch. Objectives and assessment It’s pretty obvious that clear, observable objectives relating to clusters of constituent skills that make up the complex skill have many benefits.  You can develop tools to help learners do self-assessment.  You can provide support for a peer, who can help identify areas of improvement (and whose own performance can benefit from helping the other person). IN assessment, values and attitudes are usually measured narratively, or through qualitative scales (very poor, poor, acceptable, good, excellent). vM&K acknowledge the potential burden of a highly-detailed assessment, which is virtually a necessity for complex sills.  They recommend self-assessment and peer assessment.  They also suggest a development portfolio, a collection of assessments for all learning tasks. This details what the learner’s done and how well he’s doen.  He can choose his next learning tasks based on this information. In the next post, we’ll (finally) move from the learning task component to the supportive information component.  The corresponding steps are designing supporting information (Step 4), analyzing cognitive strategies (Step 5), and analyzing mental models (Step 6). The posts in this series: Complex learning, step by stepComplex learning (coffee on the side)Ten little steps, and how One grewProblem solving, scaffolding, and varied practiceStep 2: sequencing tasks, or, what next?Clusters, chains, and part-task sequencingStep 3: performance objectives (the how of the what)Criteria for objectives-also, values and attitudes (that's this post)

1066 and All That states (sensibly, I think) that history is what you remember.  More than that; at least for me, history is how you respond to what you remember-and perhaps what those responses lead you to. You can turn inward, recalling only the good things and staying inside the value equivalent of a walled garden, or you can move outward, using what you know to help figure out other things. I’m descended from Highlanders.  I remember my father talking to our upstairs neighbor in Detroit, who was (of course) also from Cape Breton.  Frank said to my dad, "Wouldn’t it be great, Hughie, if we could go back to Scotland?" I don’t think anyone in Frank Gillis’s family had been within a thousand miles of Scotland for two hundred years, except perhaps during two world wars-but this was Frank’s attitude (and my dad’s).  Scotland for them was like Paris for Hemingway: a moveable feast, only with more MacDougals. I treasure this connection to a small place, though not as a Celtic Disneyland frozen in time.  I know a little of how my ancestors came to Canada, and then my parents to the States.  That knowledge, I think, helps me connect a little with the origins, the journeys, and the memories held by others. I don’t see Bonnie Prince Charlie as a noble hero, but today’s the anniversary of the last battle on the island of Britain.  Jacobite forces under Prince Charlie were crushed by the army of the Duke of Cumberland, son of King George II, on April 16, 1746.  The site is known by two names: Drumossie and Culloden. So here’s Deanta with Mary Dillon, singing Alastair McDonald’s Culloden’s Harvest.

There’s an image on the Citizenship and Immigration Canada website: An amendment to the Citizenship Act went into effect today.  I took the quiz that the image links to, even though I knew how it would turn out: Have you ever renounced your Canadian citizenship?   Nope. Was your Canadian citizenship ever revoked for fraud?   No. Where were you born? The Inverness hospital-oh, "in Canada." When were you born? (In my case, the right answer is: "Between January 1st, 1947, and February 14, 1977.") At the time of your birth, were your parents foreign diplomats in Canada?   No (unless under really deep cover). So I passed. Under the new law, "Citizenship will be automatic and retroactive to the day the person was born or lost citizenship, depending on the situation."  So I’ve zipped back to 1958 when my parents became naturalized U.S. citizens.  At the time, I gained U.S. citizenship through them and automatically lost my Canadian citizenship. Oh, there it is.  And retroactive, too, so I’ve been Canadian all along.  (You had doubts?)  I read once that Stephen Hawking claimed time travel would never be possible.  He offered as proof the fact that we haven’t been invaded by tourists from the future.  (I used to think, well,  maybe we’re just the time-travel equivalent of someplace no one wants to visit. )  I guess Canada and I have showed him.

This post is my contribution to the April 2009 Working/Learning blog carnival, hosted by Dave Wilkins at his Social Enterprise blog.  (I updated this note when Dave’s "host post" appeared on April 30.) Conversation in a learning chat on Twitter last Thursday included this from Shanta Rohse: Doctors have "do not harm" I wish IDers had an equivalent. I always thought this phrase was part of the Hippocratic Oath, but it’s apparently much more recent. That spoils the analogy a bit, but not the idea of the duties of a learning professional. The UK’s General Medical Council has published the duties of a doctor. I used those to think about my responsibilities as a learning professional.  Here’s the result: Learners and clients must be able to trust learning professionals with their time, with their goals, and with their desire to learn. To justify that trust you must show respect for learning and you must: Respect the goals and the business of the clients and learners with whom you deal Protect and promote the right of each person to learn Provide a good standard of practice and care Keep your professional knowledge and skills up to date Recognize and work within the limits of your competence Work with colleagues in the ways that best serve learners’ interests Test your assumptions, question your preferences, and seek evidence to support the effectiveness of approaches to learning Treat learners as individuals and respect their dignity Treat learners politely and considerately Respect learners’ right to confidentiality Work in partnership with your clients Listen to them and respond to their concerns and preferences When you believe their plans or preferences will not accomplish their goals or facilitate learning, provide reasons and alternatives in a collegial, constructive manner Work in partnership with learners Listen to them and respond to their concerns and preferences Give them the information they want or need in a way they can understand Respect their right to reach decisions with you about their learning Support them in managing learning for themselves to improve and maintain their knowledge and skill Be honest and open and act with integrity Act without delay if you have good reason to believe that you or a colleague may be putting patients at risk Never discriminate unfairly against learners or colleagues Never abuse your learners’ trust in you What are your thoughts?

Frank Zappa once defined rock journalism as "people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read." I think there’s a related phenomenon for bloggers who blog about blogging, and so I try to avoid that.  Today’s an exception, though if you don’t have a blog of your own you can skip and come back another day.  (I’m nearly ready for another post on Ten Steps to Complex Learning, which has taught me that "step" is a very flexible concept.) Sometime on Sunday, my blog was hacked.  And really hacked-more that a dozen of the behind-the-scenes files were altered, with code inserted in them that ended up taking orders from a server in Latvia.  (There are over 600 files that make up WordPress-a lot of scenery to hide behind.) At least on my own computer, that led to random redirects: I’d click a link in Google and jump past the target to some crummy aggregation site, from which I’m sure hacking-through-Latvia folks were getting reimbursement. I found some other malware on my own computer, though I don’t know if it’s connected to the blog hack or just a depressing coincidence.  As a result, I’ve spent the best past of two days doing search-and-destroy (or search-and-feel-befuddled), along with a lot of testing and attempts at cleanup. This is the dark side of the networked, interlinked world: we take our tools for granted, the way we don’t think about counterweights in elevators or the airframe on our flight to Dallas.  And the confluence of complexity with multiple vendors and extreme specialization means that when things go wrong, it’s damned hard to figure out where, let alone how to resolve it. Like this advice: The easy way to [protect your MySQL database] is to put the database access passwords in a file with a .inc.php extension (such as config.inc.php), and then place this file in a directory which is above the server’s document root (and thus not accessible to surfers of your site).  Then, refer to the file in your PHP code with a require_once command. I actually understand about 85% of that, which is more than I can usually say for household wiring.  Still, it leaves me pessimistic; working with PHP code is like working with that wiring, where I’m thrown as soon as I find three wires rather than just two (and, no, I’m not counting the ground wire). Caveat blogger. CC-licensed wiring photo by playbeasy.

Series: Ten Steps to Complex Learning « Previous post in this series • Next post in this series » Getting to Step 4, "design supportive information," feels like a new stage in Ten Steps to Complex Learning. As the diagram shows, the first three steps relate most closely to learning tasks; steps 4, 5, and 6 relate to the supportive information component of van Merriënboer and Kirschner’s blueprint. [Supportive information] bridges the gap between what learners already know and what they should know to fruitfully work on the non-recurrent aspects of learning tasks… Remember, "supportive information" always mean support for non-recurrent aspects of complex skills-the things you do differently when handling different problems.  (The things you do the same each time fall under "procedural information."  It’ll be a few more posts before I get there.) So what is supportive information?  First, it’s information about how to solve problems in a particular domain (including how the domain is organized).  It includes examples that illustrate such information.  And it includes cognitive feedback on the quality of the learner’s performance. You could call it the theory for a field.  In fact, this is where well-meant complex training often goes bad.  "We don’t have much time, so we can’t do any hands-on.  Let’s concentrate on the theory." The main parts of the chapter: Providing systematic approaches and domain models Illustrating those approaches and models Presentation strategies Cognitive feedback Supporting information in the training blueprint Strategies and models: teaming up for learning A systematic approach to problem-solving (SAP) is a cognitive strategy; it helps you perform tasks and solve problems in a given field-systematically.  vM&K will go further into SAPs in the next chapter.  For now, in terms of learning complex skills, a learner might study an SAP, or might work with a process worksheet that guides him through a task. Mental models also provide support.  They explain the arrangement of the field-via conceptual models, structural models, and causal models. The two work together: a cognitive strategy isn’t any good if you don’t have a good mental model of the field; and the mental model’s no good unless you have an effective way to solve problems in that field. The goal of SAPs is to help the learner establish meaningful relationships among new pieces of information, and to establish meaningful relationships between those new elements and what she already knows.  Suggestions from The Ten Steps: When discussing phases, the learning methods should stress sequence and consequence.  You do job aid analysis after task analysis, because you need to know details about the tasks; you do job aid analysis before designing learning material, because job aids eliminate memorization. When discussing rules of thumb (a significant part of many cognitive strategies), the learning methods should stress cause-effect relationships-effect being the goal of the learner, and cause being what the learner needs to do to bring about the effect. Those seem closely related to me.  My guess is that the first bullet ("temporal organization" in vM&K’s terms) has to do with broader processes, while the "change relationship"  deals more specifically with decisions and actions.  That at least aligns with the idea that you have both high-level or global SAPs and more detailed ones. Keeping the model in mind If SAPs are how experts do things, mental models are how they see things. Conceptual models help answer the question, "What is this?"  A financial advisor needs to understand the difference between stocks, CDs, options, bonds, mutual funds, 401Ks, 403Bs, IRAs, SEPs, and other types of investment forms and structures.  Some instructional methods to facilitate this: Analyze a particular idea into smaller ideas (what kinds of tax-deferred accounts are there?). Describe main features or characteristics (an SEP is a tax-deferred retirement structure for self-employed people; a mutual fund is a form of indirect investment). Present a more general idea or organizing framework (connect principles of web page design to overall user-interface design). Compare and contrast similar ideas (an ordinary web site compared with a blog). Since we’re comparing and contrasting, structural models answer the question, "How is this organized?"  The typical focus is on the spatial or temporal relationship of parts.  What-happens-when models (which vM&K call scripts) might include things like life cycles (for organisms or for processes).  What’s-where models (templates) explain how things fit together. Among methods for aiding learning: Explain the relative location of elements in time and space.  (What are the components of a memorandum of law?  Of a court brief?) Rearrange elements and predict effects.  (What if you move elements within the style sheet?  Will digitized video of an actual performer aid or detract from learning? Causal models focus on how elements affect each other.  These models hlep learners interpret processes and make predictions.  They answer the question, "How does this work?"  The simplest form is a principle (for example, the law of supply and demand).  An interrelated set of principles is a theory (for natural phenomena like evolution) or a functional model (for human-built systems).  Methods for presenting causal models stress relationships: Make a prediction of future states.  (What will happen if we post federal earmarks, with locations, amounts, and sponsoring legislator?) Explain a particular state of affairs.  (Why is customer satisfaction o much higher in District Five than in Districts Three and Four?) Expertise: you can’t practice theory The eight bullets above, suggesting ways to present cognitive strategies and mental models, are expository.  They don’t provide any practice.  The bulk of this chapter of the Ten Steps deals with how to illustrate strategies and models, and how to activate prior knowledge and elaboration. In other words: the support needs to make things concrete, and needs to put learners to work. In instructional materials, modeling examples and case studies are the external counterparts of internal memories, proving a bridge between the supportive information and the learning tasks. For providing supportive information, modeling examples illustrate SAPs and case studies illustrate domain models, while these same two approaches may be seen as learning tasks with maximum task support. One criticism of much advanced training is that it’s too theoretical.  vM&K would say, "Well, duh!"  (Perhaps they’d say something more diplomatic.)  Real cognitive strategies combine theory (strategies and models) with real-life practice; otherwise you’re dealing only with abstractions. Modeling examples (you remember them as part of learning tasks) bring out the expert performer’s hidden mental processes.   One valuable form is seeing how the expert responds when things don’t work out.  How does she respond to the problem?  What does she see, what does she try?  Psychologists in training, for example, study videotaped sessions in which experienced therapists demonstrate specific techniques and strategies. Case studies, according to the Ten Steps, embody the types of models mentioned earlier.  A programmer might examine a successful interface to develop models for concepts like user-friendliness, metaphors, dialog boxes, and so on.  A structural-model case study might have architects exploring a building and analyzing how well the materials used fit the original purpose. I’m going to stop here.  Next time, I’ll look at how to match models and case studies with specific types of presentation.  I’ll also go into elaboration, a key requirement for supportive information, and into the way that supportive information in general fits into the Ten Steps blueprint. CC-licensed sales-strategy image by bschmove. CC-licensed affinity diagram by Rosenfeld Media. CC-licensed bridge photo by tour of boring. The posts in this series: Complex learning, step by stepComplex learning (coffee on the side)Ten little steps, and how One grewProblem solving, scaffolding, and varied practiceStep 2: sequencing tasks, or, what next?Clusters, chains, and part-task sequencingStep 3: performance objectives (the how of the what)Criteria for objectives-also, values and attitudesStep 4: supportive info (by design) (that's this post) Learning to learn (an elaboration)