Played around with effects in camera. Kinda fun.
I've been trying for years to get a good shot of a raven. Now I've got three!
Took a little day trip to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. If you haven't already been there, you should definitely check it out. They have refurbished the visitors center, and it is free to all visitors.
I did it! I just turned in my last assignment for my Masters degree. What an amazing experience it has been. I am feeling such a deep sense of accomplishment. The last two years have been a whirlwind of deadlines and projects. I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to go back to school, to make so many new wonderful friends, and to have grown so much professionally and personally. Now onto the graduation ceremony!
Loving the gorgeous flowers Murphy and I see on our daily walk.
A great way to assess learning, when you can't perform a formal assessment, is to demonstrate learner improvement via a pre- and post- Likert Scale strategy. You just take the objectives of the course, and have the student self-report their own knowledge in a quick survey. It takes very little time to design (since it's based off of the course objectives), very little time to participate in (3-7 questions with no wrong answers), and if you have the student fill it out in class, you will have 100% participation.
Ideally, you would be able to perform a formal assessment of the learner's knowledge. When you are unable to, at the very least you should perform a Likert pre- and post- assessment to demonstrate to the learner their personal development.
I recently had a conversation with a huge corporation about their needs assessment and course development process. I was happily surprised to hear that they perform a formal needs assessment which includes onsite assessment, and a focus group process. I've spent the last few weeks pondering why that came as a surprise to me. It's such an important part of the instructional design process, and is one that I've been taught should be the basis for all course development efforts.
I realize we are often given very little time to do our work, but the power behind the feedback you can get from a focus group is just that…it's powerful. In addition to critiquing several courses, I've had the pleasure to facilitate a couple of focus groups now: one especially comes to mind. We had been giving the same basic course for years, and just as a checkin, we decided to hold a quick focus group after the last day. We asked for volunteers, and had three students offer to stay a bit later the last day, bribing them with pastries.
What was their overall view of the course?
Was it of value to them?
How did they feel about the instructor's teaching style?
What activity had the most impact?
Would they remove an activity?
Did they find anything lacking, or glossed over?
How could we add to the course to make it more meaningful?
The suggestions we walked away with helped to support the learners in that recent class, as well as future students. The number one thing the participants were asking for was procedural knowledge; enabling them to act and do things, or perform tasks. The general leadership course was too high level, and not detailed enough on actual steps for how to perform in their new roles. The result was we developed a new course on performance management for the new leaders to take in conjunction with the more general course.
We all know that post-course surveys are very seldom filled out. That's one of the things that was so great about doing the in-person focus group right after class. The course was fresh in their minds, and was on a volunteer basis. We actually had more people participate in that focus group than we were getting via the online likert scales.
As a final project, in Planning and Facilitating Live Events (INTE 5670), I'm hosting a free webinar May 3, 2018 at 6pm MST. I will send the link to the event to the first 5 people that email me. christinahopemoore@gmail.com. Hope to see you soon!
Just received my new business cards and holder from Moo.com. Gorgeous!
Just watched this TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson on teaching creatively. I especially loved his story about Death Valley. That even when things look dead, or absent, they are just dormant; waiting for the right conditions to flourish.
This term I'm taking a class on Facilitating Live Events. We've been asked to discuss CARP (Contrast, Alignment, Repetition and Proximity) in its relation to presentation design.
Contrast: This can take many forms. Whether it's contrasting color, size, shade, or even font choice, you want a good deal of contrast in your layouts.
Alignment: You can bring focus to an element by changing it's alignment, or naturally guide the viewer's attention by keeping a nice alignment to your slide. I always design on a grid layout with columns.
Repetition: I actually prefer the word consistency here. There should be one style for headlines, and a complimentary readable body font treatment. There should be a consistent layout to your slides, rather than each looking like their own presentation.
Proximity: This is grouping things that belong together, and keeping the illustration or diagram with the topic.
While I employ all of these approaches in my layouts, I think that proximity is probably the most important aspect in presentations. It is really difficult to understand the point, when the supporting graphics do not appear with the lesson. Think back to any school book you read in K12. Did you have to search for a diagram or chart? That disruption to the learning is tiresome, and you've lost your audience if you employ that method. Most learners don't appreciate having to search for the information.
Initially I had searched for a good and bad example to illustrate a bad PowerPoint screen. Ultimately I decided to create my own.
I am an avid consumer of online educational materials, and one of the common delivery methods is a webinar. This (my last) term in my graduate program, we are learning about how to design and facilitate live online events, and about what makes certain webinars great, while others fall short. I decided to perform my review of a webinar that was presented by a well-known eLearning professional, whom I very much respect and admire.
Use a curved arrow to show motion/action.
The mic was way too close to the mouse. Lots of taps and squeaks. The speaker should have used a mouse pad to soften the sound of its movements.
This is the first webinar that I've had to lower the volume, so that tells me the levels were really good/loud enough for people like me.
They started off with a template for the PowerPoint, but then abandoned it.
There didn't seem to be a consistency in the graphic treatment (which is kinda ironic, since it's about infographics). There could have been a color scheme at the very least, or a grid layout so that elements are organized similarly in each slide.
The speaker had an enthusiastic tone of voice, and was familiar with the slides.
They kept tabs on the chat topics and reached out several times to address comments made there.
I liked that there was 15 minutes of intro music and slides for early arrivals (such as myself). They also started off with a chat, asking people to share where they were from.
A facilitator assisted the presenter. I wonder what their planning process is to ensure that it goes smoothly.
I feel as though the description for the presentation wasn't very accurate. I ended up critiquing the webinar, since I wasn't learning anything new. If I'm going to plan to take an hour of my workday to attend an event, I want it to be valuable for my professional growth. I think that in this case, it was a victim of marketing. They likely wanted as many people as possible to attend, and so built up a good deal of hype about it. I longed for more actionable lessons on building infographics, rather than a very general overview of what an infographic is.
Some of the intro slides had a huge amount of material on them, and were only on the screen for 4 seconds. They did cycle through them though, so you had the chance to review them again. It seemed a little tacky that the only ones that were up on the screen for a readable amount of time were promotional in nature. Whereas the technical advice on how to participate and check your internet speed cycled through very quickly.
There were many slides that were not 508/WC3 Accessible for learners with disabilities, and they wouldn't address any of the many comments on that. The presenter had lots of suggestions for use of color specific treatments (bad for color blind), blinking/flashing graphics (bad for seizures), and no support for the non-sighted such as descriptive text, or how to translate infographics for those with disabilities.
The last several webinars I've attended have been a bit on the boring side (especially the one on creating learning engagement), and have seemed like self-promotion rather than educational. As much as I love attending webinars, it seems as though solid education is the exception, rather than the rule.
Although I have worked on many teams throughout my life, I have never received any formal training/education on how to be a strong team leader, or member for that matter. As an extroverted, organized, and ambitious person, I have naturally fallen into a leadership role multiple times. I have been a project manager many times but have not been a manager of people directly reporting to me yet. One of my personal and professional development goals is to become a stronger leader: one that is persuasive, inclusive and motivating to others.
The following links are resources that I've found useful in my leadership journey. Rather than an abbreviated list, I've chosen to provide notes for each entry on why I chose the link, and what especially resonated with me.
FYI: For Your Improvement (5th ed.). This is a professional competency tool. It's very easy to go down the rabbit hole in this book. I ended up ordering 5 more books just by looking through pages on motivation and groups.
The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization A thorough examination of corporate teams. The authors found that commitment to common goals, and an official team status was crucial to success.
People Skills: How to Assert Yourself, Listen to Others, and Resolve Conflicts. Emphasis on communication skills, assertion, and conflict management.
The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living by Randy Komisar. I stumbled upon this book suggestion from a business owner. I have found that when you go to work with a positive and mindful attitude, meetings and interactions are less effort, and you are respected more. This book is about mindfulness.
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. Wonderful advice for how to be vulnerable and strong during times of stress. We all have a fear of being criticized, wrong, rejected, hurt, and misunderstood. I feel that those fears really distance us from others, perhaps especially in a workplace setting. I used to hide behind attempts of perfectionism to avoid feeling shame or embarrassment. Perfectionism is a total illusion, and we should all work to embrace our vulnerability, and learn from our mistakes. If you're not failing, you're not growing.
6 Steps to Build a Strong Team, Cynthia Johnson, Entrepreneur.com. Easy steps for prioritizing team values. I enjoyed her suggestion that you get to know your teammates. The best jobs I've ever had were those that I became friends with my team members. We spend so much time together (more than with our actual family) that it's a shame when people don't want to take the time to get to know each other at work.
6 Ways Successful Teams Are Built To Last by Glenn Llopis, forbes.com. I like the sections on knowing your own management style, and being clear with the goals and responsibilities.
Leadership by Persuasion – Four Steps to Success, impactfactory.com. This article seems like an overview of Resonate by Nancy Duarte (love that book).
Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. How to Lead When You're Not in Charge Part 1. Notes: Find your domain, what you are in charge of, and make it as great as possible. That demonstrates ownership, and will show managers you can handle being in charge. Leading yourself is your first major challenge. Don't wait for the perfect situation/manager/opportunity. Set your own goals for yourself, and bring a high level of positive energy to work. It's important to be honest with yourself: why don't I want to go to that meeting? Why do I feel the way I do? Nothing proves to management your ability to lead more than leading yourself well.
Coaching for Leaders Podcast by Dave Stachowiak. Since discovering this resource, I've been consuming as many of their podcasts as I have time for. One that was especially applicable was Episode 334: How to Be a Happier Person. They discuss the major problems with the concept of retirement, how to find your "Ikigai" or purpose in life, the concept of embracing a positive demotion as you age and reducing that stigma. The guest suggests that our brains are programmed for three things: 1) look for problem, 2) find problem, 3) solve problem. Rather than making happiness the end goal, make it the starting place.
Leadership and Managements Skills for Non-managers & Aspiring Leaders. I took this 3-day course in May of 2017 at DOIU. It's geared towards training federal employees who are interested in one day becoming a supervisor. One of the most interesting group projects was to build a sculpture out of Lego's, and then design an instruction sheet for your partner to recreate the shape. It highlighted the value of providing clear instruction. My solution included a contents list with drawings of each Lego's shape and color, a numbered list of how to assemble, and a completed sketch of the end product with callouts to each Lego on it. There was a very short section devoted to typing your conflict approach. I was evenly spread among all 4 types, so it was inconclusive. One positive suggestion was that if you can address both needs/wants and fears/concerns in an employee, then you can have greater influence on their behavior.
The following image is a graphic representation of the notes I made from the Influencing section of the course.
Personality tests are a heated topic these days. In fact, I was just listening to NPR's The Hidden Brain, and there was an episode discussing their merits and downfalls. Unfortunately, some people have been discriminated at work due to the outcome of tests such as these. They have missed out on opportunities because, "that's just not your personality" reactions to assigning work. I do find value in introspection though, and suggest their use as a personal development tool. For example, the Myers Briggs test (MBTI) is one that describes me very well. The other two popular tests listed below were inconclusive when I took them.
The Myers Briggs Personality Type. I know there are a lot of folks out there that don't buy into this (or personality tests in general), but this one resonates with me. I love the book Please Understand Me II. If you don't have any familiarity with Myers Briggs, and are just curious, there are a lot of free sites out there to choose from. 16 Personalities, Psych Central, etc. I'm very much an ENFJ. But it's not always conclusive for others.
One that was recently suggested to me was the 4 leadership personalities. There's a link there to the Insights Discovery website, where you can take a test. Interestingly, it's also based on Carl Jung's theory. I didn't pay for the full test, but the quick freebie says I'm a "Motivator." I don't take much stock in the free test though, since I was drawn to all of the 4 choices.
DISC personality test. My husband is fond of this approach, as the MBTI didn't type him. I struggled with this test, as many of the choices were difficult to make. I scored high on Dominance and Influence.
Much of my findings revolved around the power of being positive and mindful. I had expected to learn a plethora of specific approaches to "rally the troops," but instead there were many more suggestions on not only modeling the kind of behavior that you want your team to display, but also extending empathy, recognition, and trust as a powerful motivational tool. One of the quotes that most resonated with me is the opening quote for the Coaching for Leaders Podcast, "Great leaders are not born, they are made." Having had quite a bit of leadership and teamwork practice on a wide variety of projects, I've learned a lot about myself, and about the power of great teamwork. I'm looking forward to one day becoming a manager/team leader in an organization with direct reports.
Bolton, R. (1979). People skills: How to assert yourself, listen to others, and resolve conflicts. Simon & Schuster, New York, New York.
Brown, B. (2012). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Penguin Random House, New York, New York.
Duarte, N. (2010). Resonate: Present visual stories that transform audiences. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance organization. Boston, Mass. Harvard Business School Press.
Keirsey, D. (1998). Please understand me II: Temperament, character, intelligence. Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis.
Komisar, R. (2001). The monk and the riddle: The art of creating a life while making a living. Randy Komisar, US.
Lombardo, M. M, & Eichinger, R. W. (2009). FYI: For your improvement : a guide for development and coaching. 5th ed. Minneapolis, MN: Lominger Ltd.
Found a stark white feather resting on some dormant winter grass this afternoon. So beautiful.
In order to address cost concerns from students, Boise State developed high enrollment online courses, in addition to their existing online courses. Their goal was to maintain a high level of learner engagement, address the realities of competition from other educational institutions and reduced State funding, and to reduce bottlenecking of student enrollment. It was a mixed-method study of 3 high enrollment online health studies classes.
When I first began reading this study, I thought the tone was one of maximizing the school's profit. But as I read on, it was more about trying to deal with their explosive growth, and ensure that their students wouldn't have their graduation delayed because they couldn't enroll in a required course due to high enrollment.
Another strength was how thorough the college acted in rolling out the approach. The teachers of the courses and their TAs designed the courses, they partnered with experts at Blackboard to troubleshoot technical issues, each course was thoroughly reviewed by instructional design experts, and then reviewed again by instructors at the school before it was offered to students.
The course discussion, quizzes and study guides were designed to be self-graded. I wondered how the students could consider that engaging. I also think there is a good reason why the students thought the online course was better described: that as an online student you can go back and review materials as many times as you like, whereas ILT course understanding depends on initial comprehension and notes. As a student that strives to get A's, I found it interesting that more students got A's and less received B's than usual. They explained this by addressing how online learning requires a higher level of participation and attention/study habits. Overall the online students reported spending less time in class online than suggested in the syllabus. That was also of interest to me, as I usually spend twice the recommended time in online courses. The biggest limitation, by far, was that the data was collected after the fact, not during.
I really loved that the courses were standardized in their layouts. Each course included a weekly summary of readings, quizzes, and learning materials. That's been one of the issues I've had with our program, is the lack of consistency in course outline and expectations. It frustrates the learner when they have to spend (often) precious time searching for due dates and parameters.
The study was of 167 minority students in 6 different online undergraduate classes. The overall findings were, "learner–content interaction and learner–instructor interaction were significant predictors for student satisfaction in online settings in which group activities were not provided." Providing interaction with the content, other students, and with the instructor seems to boost the perceived value of the course, and the learner outcome (ie. grade).
I haven't found many reports on minority student studies for online learning, so I consider that to be a strength: that they approach a little-covered topic.
I found myself wondering about the learner-instructor interaction in this study. They emphasized the importance of that relationship for motivation and comprehension. I wanted them to quantify how much interaction was given in the online course vs. a comparable instructor-led course. There were many classes in my undergraduate program that provided very little interaction with the instructor. In contrast, I've actually had more interaction in this online graduate program.
This study argued that the two most important factors for positive student perception, and therefore learner success, were the learner-content and learner-instructor interactions, rather than learner-learner. With solid instructional design theory applied the content, rather than specific interactions such as games, the learner will be able to succeed. Equally important was that the instructor had quality and regular interaction with those in the course. Since the majority of the courses I develop are self-paced and asynchronous, I will look for opportunities to humanize the learning. Some of the ways I can do that: provide a video intro, use narration, provide robust feedback to testing and practice testing, to provide help and resource links, and continue to use a conversational tone in the instruction.
A common, and often accurate, perception of online courses is that they are boring for the learners. Recently, I was interviewing for a position, and at the end of the second hour I was asked, "What would you do in technical courses in order to make them more engaging for the learner?" It was actually the hardest question of the day to answer, as it can depend on the course itself. How I answered was by describing my process of aligning objectives, providing opportunities for practice, creating visually rich GUI's and downloads. As I was answering, I was really thinking to myself, "But how do you ensure that the learners are engaged and aren't bored out of their minds?" I haven't stopped thinking about it, as it really is one of the most crucial questions an eLearning Developer can (and should) ask themselves.
There are many elements that I like to include in the courses that I build. For yearly compliance (such as Ethics) trainings, I prefer to allow the learner test out, rather than suffer through an hour long course. This isn't always an option though, because most HR departments want legal proof that every employee has viewed each page, and passed the test. Supposing that's the case, how would you make that course more engaging for the learners? My first inclination would be to suggest the use of professional, current photography; to use realistic scenarios that are specific to the company's workplace; to provide a 'choose your path' style navigation so that the learners could see the repercussions of their choices; and to provide downloadable/printable resources of value for future reference.
Having had some experience with building engaging courses, and many that are less than, I was curious what other methods I would discover to engage my learners.
This article turned out not to be in line with what I was searching for. I added the word 'adult' to the search query, since this was for K-12 learners.
The author suggests that discussion boards are a key component of online learning. If the instructor fails to consistently support constructivist theory, discussion boards won't be useful, nor will they be supportive of learning.
Smith, S. P. (2017). Adult learners: Effective training methods. Professional Safety, 62(12), 22-25.
Emphasis on allowing adult learners to identify their own training needs, completing needs assessments with employees to ensure alignment, choosing proper delivery methods for the training, and assessment. The author states that the learners own experiences are the most important training took, and they must be involved in their own training.
The test subjects were online graduate program students. The authors encourage teachers to learn the capabilities of their LMS, and to use all available features of it. They also encourage a great deal of interaction with the students where possible. They argue that students with a great deal of interaction are more engaged, and therefore better students.
This article spoke to long online courses, such as our graduate program. It contained great advice for the teachers here at CU Denver. The author emphasized the importance of a well-designed course, and clear support materials for learner success.
The authors suggest providing options for users to explore different paths, and to keep things non-linear. They suggest that using stories combined with interactivity will increase curiosity and enjoyment for the learner. Specifically, to include not just text, but images, audio and video.
I feel as though I just discovered a whole new internet. This is my first course on research, and I didn't realize how important peer reviewed materials were. I learned several things during my search. The first would be that you need to be pretty specific in what you are looking for, since there is such a massive amount of material to source from. I feel like the range of the 6 papers I downloaded was too wide, and I will need to narrow them a lot more for the final project. I read each of the papers completely, and found it interesting the wide range of tone. I had expected them to be quite stuffy. Perhaps because this is my field of interest, I didn't struggle with digesting the majority of materials. There was one example that was written very conversationally (as compared to the rest), and another that was extremely technical. The second major thing I noticed was that all of the materials mentioned Constructivism Theory. I will be looking more into that theory with a renewed interest, as it appears to be the most popular approach when it comes to engaging online learners. While I didn't learn any new methods for making my online courses more engaging (they touched on methods I am familiar with), I did learn a lot about the research process.
I was struck with how beautiful this sidewalk salt was last night as I was walking to my car. It's little details like this that really stop me in my tracks.
Chilly but beautiful morning walk with Murphy.