It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and it’s probably going to be a while before I really get back into blogging in any serious way. I’ve taken on several projects for the eLearning Global Giveback Competition from LINGOs, which has recruited instructional designers (and aspiring ones, such as myself) to develop learning solutions for a variety of charitable NGOs pro bono.

Also, I’ve really gotten into reading every single thing that Cory Doctorow has ever written. Eventually, I’m certain to mine some of the wonderfully weird and amazing things that he brings up in his books for this blog.

Getting really annoyed, however, always seems to inspire something for this blog, and it’s no different this Sunday morning. My employer recently distributed some really nice coffeemugs to everyone in the company. Normally, “really nice” is not a word combination I’d use to describe a coffeemug, but this one earns it due to its extra big handle that affords room for 4 of my fingers as I hold it.

The only problem is, I can’t train myself to actually use all 4 fingers. Since 99% of all the coffeemugs I have ever used have been designed for only 3 of my fingers, I instinctively grab this one in the same way. It’s uncomfortable as hell, and I am made aware of this mug’s (supposedly) accomodating design everytime I reach for it.

Even though the designer of this coffeemug has intended a comfortable, (dare I say) luxurious beverage experience for thier end user, it fails miserably because the user has developed an adaptation for living without it that simply cannot be unlearned.

Maybe when human evolution has gifted us a sixth finger, I’ll be okay. For now I’ll just have to use this mug for a pen holder.

With the new year upon us, I suppose it’s not surprising that media outlets everywhere have been killing us with “best of” lists, for both the year and the decade. I’ve been trying to think of an interesting thing to post, but seeing as I’m no less lazy than most media outlets, all I can think of doing is my own decade wrap up:

Moore’s Law still a law: electronics get cheaper, faster, smaller, etc. Was it really a surprise that this age-old law pretty much kept pace? There were a couple pundits on the most recent episode of TWiT who brought up how Moore’s Law has managed to continue. I suppose it is personally mindblowing that I can buy a 1 TB drive for about $100, or that broadband internet has finally reached a price that I can afford (at the start of this decade I was still slumming it in 56K). But I really hate it when people start saying stuff like, “back in my day sodas cost just a nickel.” Just because people do it with tech doesn’t really make it interesting. So I’ll leave this one alone.

The power of “good enough”: I suppose this is not as surprising, given the shambles our economy has been in, but it’s interesting how it has changed the computer industry. Nearly all non-Mac computers sold in the past year falls in the super low-priced and small-sized netbook category, from which we can probably infer a couple things: 1) When it comes to computers, people (aside from gamers and the one or two graphic designers who haven’t had their jobs outsourced) don’t really need much power. 2) The web/cloud has taken over much of what we do on our computers. I won’t go so far as to say application-based computing has been completely replaced by the cloud (I doubt it ever will be), but it’s likely that the more interesting things that come out of the next decade will be cloud-based.

It’s also interesting what this will mean for the education space. Historically, the drive is towards bigger, better, faster, but I think this move towards “good enough” may drive down the desire for more complex, immersive learning spaces. Whenever there is talk about the future of learning, it almost always ends with some discussion of virtual reality, Second Life, etc. (I know I have been guilty of writing some papers that end like this). It’s not surprising, since I think we all yearn in our hearts for that super-cool holodeck experience that science fiction has taught us to hope for (we all yearned for the flying car, and look how that turned out). But reality is a bit more complex. Second Life is not exactly the most intuitive system – both for the end-user and the developer – and it demands a computer with some power behind it. The few Second Life classes I have been in have been in were so wracked with technical difficulties, I barely got anything out of it. I think by the end of the next decade, we’ll drop the hype surrounding immersive learning and realize that it’s only worth the hassle for a few specific applications.

Of course, this doesn’t apply if you happen to be a student athlete at USF, where they give away computers for nothing.

The ubiquity of mobile devices: This is probably the single biggest change that we’ve experienced in terms of technology. Cell phones were already pretty common back in 2000, but now they’re everywhere (case in point: I now have one), and they do far more than just make phone calls. For this, we can probably thank the iPhone for making simple and user-friendly what was previously complex. Browsing the web with Mobile Safari is nearly identical to browsing on the computer, and it is a far cry from the clunky, tiny, text-based mobile sites that you would have to access on a dumbphone. Additionally, the growth of low-cost applications for the iPhone platform has transformed the phone into what is essentially a handheld computer. There’s some interesting movement in the education space with this aspect, as some medical schools are using iPhone apps to provide instruction and Stanford is using iPhones to make music.

In terms of cost of access, however, the cost of a mobile data plan is still to high for the likes of me. This is probably the reason that, despite its impact on technology as a whole, the use of mobile devices in an educational context is still fairly limited. There’s been a lot of hype about podcasts, mobile applications, etc. in this space, but it hasn’t amounted to any significant change. A lot of podcast in education research found that even though students can listen to them practically anywhere on their mobile phones or media players, most of them still listened to them at home, on their computers. In order to take advantage of the mobile nature of these education technologies, the context still has to be right – if you’re just listening to a lecture, you’re probably going to get more out of it while listening in a quiet room than anywhere else. With some of the more advanced GPS capabilities on Android phones, I’ll be intrigued to see if educators will take advantage of these technologies for more location-based instruction.

That’s a video from Penn State professor Christopher Long (via Cole Camplese). Nothing new, but it efficiently sums up everything there is to know about the use of blogging as a teaching tool.

I’ve read multitudes of blogs for years, but the motivation for doing one myself came out of a Distance Learning course I took several years ago. If nothing else, I’m grateful to have learned that the web is a powerful medium for not only consumption, but also creation.

I used to listen to podcasts of speakers at educational conferences on a fairly regular basis. This was, of course, until I came to the realization that I would fall asleep at regular intervals in the course of listening to them (I probably would have been okay with this, were it not for the fact that I was listening to them at work).

There wasn’t anything about them that was particularly awful, but I definitely noticed a tendency for them to turn into hour-and-a-half ramblings that involved dropping as many buzzwords as humanly possible.

Web2.0openlearningsocialnetworkingfacebooktwittergoogle.

So it was a pleasant surprise to hear this talk by Jim Groom, Brian Lamb, and Tom Woodward from the recent NMC symposium. In the format of a late-night call-in show (a la Art Bell), they host a chat with a man from the “future” to discuss where education is headed. In a word, that future is: insurance.

Just like health care, insurance becomes a necessity for obtaining an education, given both its skyrocketing cost and its importance of education in determining one’s success. Additionally, you’re protected if you can’t finish your studies, or your degree turns out to be useless in landing you a job.

*coughcough*artdegree*coughcough*
*coughcough*studentloansfromprivateschool*coughcough*

Excuse me.

During the discussion, future man also manages to rip to shreds the arguments of every wacko caller who drops all those buzzwords that we know and love.

Open education? Sounds wonderful, but higher education generates such an incredible amount of money, that it doesn’t make sense for institutions to open things up and provide instruction for free. In fact, they profit primarily from their exclusivity, the source of their prestige.

Innovation in teaching? Beaten down by standardized testing (as well as the divestiture of funding after the Zombie Apocalypse of 2012).

Technology? Google owns everything.

It’s an unsettling vision, and one I hope never comes to pass. And as silly and entertaining as it is, the sad thing is that it’s certainly plausible.

I just hope the deductible’s low.

Some more info from Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo about design thinking.

For the record, I don’t own any turtlenecks.

Despite all the pontification about how learning online is “THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION,” this SNL sketch (as well as the comments section on any article regarding online education) certainly points to a continuing belief that anything short of a face-to-face education is somehow second-rate.

This is rather curious, seeing as the University of Phoenix (the logo of which is spoofed in the sketch) is the largest institution of higher education in the U.S. by enrollment. Add to that Kaplan University’s brilliant ad campaign arguing for education on-demand and the popularity of the state-supported, entirely online Western Governors University.

I bring this up mainly to compare it with my own recent experience at a large public university. The mix of classes between online and face-to-face was roughly 50/50, and I honestly wouldn’t give an edge to one or the other. This despite the pretty obvious bias I have favoring the online side (given both my academic concentration and the content of this blog).

I’ve never taken a class at an entirely online university, but I highly doubt this fact is necessarily an indicator of quality. Many state schools even tout the fact that they have entire academic programs online to appeal to those who live too far to commute to campus.

The thing about the SNL sketch that really caught my eye was the bit about them sending your diploma via email. A few days after my graduation this summer, I got an email with a link to a website where I could see my diploma in a choice of lovely yet ridiculously overpriced frames. Of course, the company that made this website used a CSS trick to try and keep me from downloading it.

I’d rather have the printable diploma, but I guess I should just be happy they made the university font legible. Thanks University of Mumblemumble!

When I heard a story on NPR last week about the use of “clickers” to engage students in college classrooms, my opinion of the technology swung wildly: when they teased the story, I thought it was idiotic. “Clickers?” Isn’t that what they use to train pets?

When I heard how they were used in the class, I thought it was brilliant. Students, instead of just passively absorbing content, are forced to interact – primarily through answering multiple choice questions. Answers are then graphed out so the instructor can see what percentage of students is understanding the material. At the end of the story, they go into some detail about the more “advanced” clicker that allows for open-ended responses.

Wha? I’m sorry, that last sentence seems kind of odd to me, seeing as I was able to type it on a laptop, which if you enter a college classroom, everyone seems to have. Which makes me wonder why on earth these developers are trying to reinvent the wheel. Cole Camplese had a post on his blog recently about using Twitter in the classroom. Wouldn’t that be so much simpler (and cheaper) to implement? And wouldn’t it allow you to do more than just pick from a predefined set of answers?

Ah yes, I forgot. The point of higher education is to get students to think, but not too hard. They are, after all, preparing us to enter a challenging world where how far we go in life is determined by how well we answer multiple choice questions.

My mistake. Does this mean I don’t get a treat?

I’m not referring of course, to the bullets that come out of a gun, but rather the ubiquitous bullet point: •

I was told 4 years ago to have my wisdom teeth taken out, which I put off (a brilliant move on my part) taking care of until today, when I found myself sitting in an oral surgeon’s office watching a video that is to inform me all about the process. At the point that the presenter is discussing possible complications, a bullet point list comes up on the screen. Here’s what I see:

• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• blahblahblahblahblah
• POTENTIALLY FATAL

WHAT???!!!!

At its best, the bullet point list is an easy shortcut that helps to properly organize your ideas – particularly for presentations, which are all about talking points. At its worst, the bullet point list is for lazy bastards with no imagination.

Dan and Chip Heath had a related column in Fast Company a few months back (yes, I realize I reference this magazine a lot, but it’s the only one I read on a regular basis):

We’ve all had the experience of being in the audience as a presenter clicks to a slide with eight bullet points. As he starts discussing the first one, we read all eight. Now we’re bored. He’s lost us.

He’s lost us? Or killed us?

This past week, I received a strange piece of mail. It was a paper I wrote for one of my classes, one that I have been finished with for almost 2 months.

This is the first time that I’ve ever had anything like this occur, so I don’t want to blow this up and pretend that stuff like this happens all the time. It really doesn’t. I also don’t want to sound like I’m totally trashing this professor. He made it fairly clear (admittedly not until before the midterm) that he was not really down with delivering the class online, and much preferred lecturing. This became evident the few times I saw him in person, when he was engaging, passionate and funny – really an all-around great lecturer. The Blackboard site for the class, however, was a bit of a mess. Content was scattered, disorganized, and confusing.

I’ve come to understand that professors are busy: they’re under enormous pressure to do original research, teach classes, answer questions. It’s a 7 day a week job where they have to constantly be at the top of their game, demonstrating their expertise. With other such lofty concerns, I can imagine organizing Blackboard content and grading papers probably falls pretty low on the priority list.

I think it just may be a symptom of a systemic problem within higher learning that really has never been addressed. Andre Malan, a student at the University of British Columbia, gave this really fascinating talk about the future of education, where he discusses the paper grading problem.

His argument is that the traditional mode of doing so relies on one person – the professor, who may or may not grade papers reliably or accurately (his picture of papers thrown down a staircase, with the heaviest papers at the bottom and most deserving of an A – is freaking hilarious). He cites Jon Beasley-Murray’s Murder, Madness and Mayhem Wikipedia project as an example of a community-based grading system. In this project, the articles students wrote stayed relevant, even months after their completion. In many cases, student articles became top search hits for particular topics.

I appreciate the 100% the professor gave me on my paper. But 2 months out from finishing it, that grade just doesn’t seem relevant anymore.

This month’s issue of Fast Company has a really nice profile of designer David Kelley, founder of the design firm Ideo and the Stanford d.School, who has been battling cancer. He’s gone from being an expert designer to being an expert on design thinking by helping companies improve their processes for developing or refining products. One story in particular jumped out at me:

It took Kelley a while to appreciate the power of stepping back before forging ahead. In the mid-1980s, he says, he used to write proposals with the various phases of the process — understanding, observation, brainstorming, prototyping — priced separately. Clients invariably would say, “Don’t do that early fooling around. Start with phase three.” Kelley realized that the early phases were where the big ideas came from — and what separated his firm from a bunch of management consultants. “That moment was really big for me,” he says. “After that, I’d say, ‘No way, I won’t take the job if you scrap those phases. That’s where the value is.’ “

Beautifully said. As designers, we’re so motivated by the desire to do, we can easily fall into the trap of imposing our own will on the design problem.