Posts Tagged ‘programmed instruction’

About Learning Styles or Why Inventors are Always Bothering an Organization

Saturday, February 16th, 2008
At ABN AMRO I was responsible for one of the biggest training projects ever started. The complete IT-Staff and their customers had to be trained in “the ABN AMRO-way-of-working” after the merger took place.
 
We were able to use the most advanced people and tools to accomplish this aim. It made it possible to meet “the best minds on earth” and to learn about their vision and experience. Later we used this knowledge in every part of the bank.

One of the major targets we wanted to accomplish was to minimize training. People with IT-Skills are very expensive and every day they spend at a training costs a lot of money.

Minimizing training was translated into “Training on the Job”.

To minimize training we started to investigate where and why people were trained and we found many “hidden costs”.

People (mis-)used other people to learn. One of them was an Expert and the others phoned or mailed the expert to ask questions. The expert loved to do this but by “helping others” he (or she) was unable to their “real job”.

We gave them “time to help” but we started to investigate why (and how) one person became an expert and why the others did not spend much time to “learn the trade themselves”.

Experts are people who Explore everything in their own way. They have an internal priority to find out for themselves “how-it-works”. Experts are Explorers.

The others needed to be programmed (or a better term Instructed) and the best way to do this was (of course) Programmed Instruction. The funny thing is that “programmed instruction” can be programmed in a program.

When you create software you are able to create a kind of “meta-layer” that helps (it is called Help) the user. Creating a user-friendly help-system is very difficult to do. You have to balance between compact (Do This) and Extended Information (Why?).

When you develop a software-system the best way to do is to design the “help-software” first and the “real software” later.

Another category of “users” are the Inventors. They are sending a new Idea or Enhancement every day. Inventors are a burden to the organization because they are “way ahead” of the others and the “others” are a majority.

Most of the Inventors are “technology-watchers” and want “new gadgets” build into the System. With Inventors you have to apply the 80/20-rule. Skip 20% of their specification and the essence appears.

If you read this blog I have showed something called “Learning Styles”. Some people have to be Programmed to learn others Invent or Explore.

Learning Styles are created by combining the “Internal Organs” of the Human Being.

These organs are the Imagination, the Emotions, the Sensory-Motor System and the Cognition (“Thinking”). The fifth organ, Consciousness, monitors the balance between the other organs. It acts as the Observer.

When you combine the Four Organs you are able to create six (or twelve) combinations. When you want to put your Ideas in Practice you are an Inventor and when you want Apply the Rules you want to be Programmed.

The six combinations can be combined in a pattern (a triangle, a square) and if you arrange the people with different learning styles in the right pattern they can Help the others to learn.
 
If you arrange this pattern in the “wrong way” your Organ-ization will stagnate and Innovation will stop.
 
Perhaps the best way is to “let it go the way is goes” (the flow) but this is something Managers, People who want to Instruct, don’t like at all.

About Learning Styles

Friday, February 15th, 2008

E-Learning is one of the results of the E-Commerce Bubble. During the E-Commerce Bubble everything you can imagine would be changed into a booming business if it was combined with The Internet (a Website).

When you would use the Internet you could learn Everywhere at Every place at Any time. Every “old-fashioned” system that was supporting an Educational Institution was E-ed. It was provided with a “web-site”-interface. Behind this interface nothing changed.

The “old-fashioned” E-Learning packages were designed to automate a professional educational environment. The only thing that changed was that the books (or the PPT’s) were put on a screen.

E-Learning is an example of a technological view on Education. Every new technology that emerges has-to-be used because they (the learners) use it and because they use it it will help them to be educated.

We HAVE TO use the mobile phone and wiki and forums and web-cams and 3-D and games and web 2.0 (or 3.0) and …. If we don’t do that we will be out of the competition..

The big question is are new technologies really helpful to improve the current learning environment?

My answer is that it matters and it does not matter. It matters because we have to stay in contact with “real life”" and it does not matter because an effective learning environment has nothing to do with technology in general.

We learn by practicing and every environment that is related to the practice we want to acquire works fine. So if you want to become an account-manager and to sell you need an mobile-phone you have to learn to use a mobile phone.

But when you want to learn how to fight terrorists you need to learn to use other tools also.

Is it possible to learn “how to design” on a computer?
Is it possible to learn to meditate on a computer?
Is it possible to learn “to be creative” on a computer
?

We don’t learn to play the piano on a mobile phone and we don’t learn to use a mobile phone on a piano but a computer (or better software) could be programmed to simulate a piano.

Is it possible to learn mathematics on a computer?

I ask you these questions because I hope you feel that they are related to different “fields” of learning.

You could learn “how to meditate” on a computer but practicing meditation is something else.

You could use the computer to create but painting and singing and making poetry needs something else.

They need an “internal tool” that has to develop itself. This internal tool could be called a talent and a talent is a “given thing”. We are (by definition) born with a talent. Goethe called the “internal” tools organs.

We are not only equipped with fysical organs but are also equipped with other non-fysical organs. They make it possible to see and to hear. Organs or talents are specialized structures or functions that are there when you are born. They have to be trained by invoking them.

They are invoked by giving them a challenge. Sometimes the challenges is a “cognitive” challenge (mathematics, patterns) but others need a “manual” challenge. They are “handy”.

When “handy” people are forced to do “cognitive” training they are not challenged and they fail.

The current System is not aimed at developing a talent. Some Systems are specialized in certain talents (Art, Top Sport) but some talents are not recognized. They are not recognized and even “killed” by the System.

I was born with a Mathematical Talent. Later I found out that this talent was inherited from my mothers family (Van Biezen). My talent was merely killed by the System.

It was killed because my talent is a specialization and a specialization implies also short-comings. One of my short-comings is my memory. I am able to remember (and recognize) patterns but I am not able to remember lists. I failed school because I was unable to learn the lists in foreign languages.

The strange thing is that I don’t have problems learning to speak a language. A language is not a list of words and learning a language is not about learning a list that maps words. If translating one language in the other was that easy the perfect translator would be on the market for a long time.

The fact that people are different creates a big problem when you want to create an educational factory. The factory is only able to do its job when the Input is “the same”.

If the input is divers you have to create a diversity of production-lines and you have to navigate the resources through these lines at the right moment.

When everybody is different the problem is unsolvable but when we are able to determinate a limited amount of differences current logistic approaches are capable of solving the problem.

The current logistic system in the Educational Factory is aimed at optimizing the activities of the Teacher (Class, Subject). He (or she) is the most important asset and the pupils have to follow the planning of the Logistic System.

If we would change the priority and put the learner in the centre and we would recognize that the development of a talent is the most beautifull thing a human being is able to do we have to change the logistics. Computers are beautifull tools to help to accomplish this.

The interesting point is that it is possible to determine a limited amount of “learning-styles” related to certain classes of talents. To my surprise nobody is using this knowledge. Just one learning style is used called Instruction (Telling “How-to-do-it”).