Clayton Christensen explains why disruption in online learning is a reality now. He talks about MOOCs, on-the-job learning, threats facing universities and organizations (specifically, he wants all of us to pray for Harvard Business School and Apple 
), internationalization of innovation, and more. Great stuff!
Srinivas Krishnaswamy
I am delighted to re-post a blog from CLOmedia.com on 3D GameLab. Sify is proud of its contribution to get this platform up and running.
There is something fascinating going on at Boise State University and specifically the Department of Educational Technology.
Let me introduce you to 3D GameLab, arguably an actual example demonstrating the evolution of today’s antiquated learning management system.
The brainchild of Lisa Dawley and Chris Haskell, 3D GameLab is an online game-based learning environment facilitated by what are known as quests. What are quests, you ask?
Quests are individual learning components such as short videos, diagrams, activities, text, audio, etc., that (when combined together) can make up the learning requirements of a traditional class. Students, however, have choice in what quests they want to gobble up. Imagine students having a say in what aspects of a topic like cellular biology or World War II history they are interested in that can make up the pedagogy of the overarching learning outcome of a traditional course. The students are in charge of constructing their road; the teacher provides as many interlocking bricks as is necessary for the students to build their own meandering path to reach the destination.
Students can rank, rate, comment and provide feedback on each of the quests for others to view as well.
As an added bonus, dependent on the learner, those quests can be accomplished in isolation, cooperatively or competitively within the friendly game environment. As the learner completes each quest, he or she is not awarded a percentage or letter grade, but experience points instead. These points need to add up to the total point requirement for course completion.
And yes, in-game badges and awards are a big part of the environment as well.
The project, although conceived by Dawley and Haskell, seems to be intellectual property of Boise State University and through research it completed, a go-to-market business model looks to be in discussion. There is a closed beta under way and thus far, teacher feedback is positive and perhaps glowing.
You can read the entire blog here.
Srinivas Krishnaswamy
Continuing from my earlier post on the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, here is an important aspect of training delivery that often gets very little attention – The Stickiness Factor.
Sesame Street is a children’s television series created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its educational content, creatively communicated through the use of Muppets, animation, short films, humor, and cultural references. The program was conceived in 1966 and by 2008, it was estimated that 77 million Americans had watched the series as children. As of 2009, Sesame Street has won eight Grammy Awards and 118 Emmy Awards—more than any other children’s show.
So how did the show attain its legendary status in spite of the fact that it chose television as the medium? Television lacks several key aspects that determine learning impact and retention. It is neither interactive nor does it provide any sort of individualized content based on the audience’s aptitude, strengths, or weaknesses.
First of all, the producers of the show tried the hardest to make an impact. They hired the best creative minds for the show, they adopted techniques from TV commercials, they brought in celebrities to sing and dance among various other things. Their fundamental premise for the show was if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them. The producers of the show tried a number of different experiments before they launched an episode to find out if the show actually worked with children. Here are few examples:
In summary the most important point comes of out this unique experiment in educational television is that if you paid careful attention to the structure and format of the material being presented, you can dramatically improve its stickiness.
Srinivas Krishnaswamy
Reading Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen gives you the same effect Buddha might have felt when he meditated under the Bodhi tree! The book completely demystifies success factors that differentiate great companies from companies that fell by the way side. Understanding why a company is successful is no longer a mystery or based on half-truths. A must read book indeed. And if you don’t have the time to read this book, read this in-depth article from Fortune.
In this book, Collins and Hansen talk about the 20 Mile March. It refers to a model that requires companies to hit specified performance markers with great consistency, over a long period of time, without extending too much when times are good and without rolling back when times are tough.
The book cites an interesting case study on education of Latino children in the state of Arizona and cites a research study called “Beat the Odds”. The goal of the study was to identify public schools with Latino students that performed well and compare these schools to other schools with similarly large Latino student populations that did not do well. The study found that factors outside the Principal’s control such as class size, parental involvement or funding did not actually matter when it came to explaining the differences. What really mattered was a set of practical disciplines that lay within the control of the school even under adverse conditions.
According to the study, what mattered in schools was:
The book cites the phenomenal success of Alice Byrne Elementary School in Yuma, Arizona. Principal Juli Tate Peach implemented processes to measure performance of the school all through the year as opposed to just at the end of the year thereby allowing an opportunity for teachers to take corrective actions immediately. The school embraced a never ending cycle of instruction, assessment, intervention, kid-by-kid in a relentless 20 Mile March throughout the year. The improvements they saw as a result of this continuous cycle of monitoring performance encouraged them to be even more disciplined in their approach. We definitely have a lesson to learn from this case study. Anybody listening?
Srinivas Krishnaswamy
Continuing on my previous post, I am banking on another key insight from Malcolm Gladwell as an inspiration for this post. In his book, Outliers, Gladwell brings out another important insight on the impact vacation has on the performance of school children from low-income population in the US.
Karl Alexander, a sociologist from the John Hopkins University, had tracked the progress of 650 first grade children from the Baltimore public school system, on how they performed in the California Achievement Test. The test results were broken down by socioeconomic class – low, middle, and high and were recorded for five years starting with the first grade all the way to the fifth grade. Students from all three socioeconomic classes start off in the first grade with relatively no difference in their knowledge and abilities. However, four years later, the achievement gap between the poor and the rich was twice as much!
The popular misconception is that the poor children somehow don’t have the same ability as their wealthy counterparts or that the teachers have somehow failed in their jobs. However, further probing by Alexander revealed something that is startling.
It so happened that the city of Baltimore administered these tests once at the beginning of the school year and once again at the end of the school year in the following June. This allowed Alexander to measure the gains made by the children during the school year. The result of this analysis was that the children from the low-income group actually outperformed the high income group!!! So then why do we have this drop in performance at the end of the 5th grade?
The answer lies in what happens during the annual vacation between school years. The changes in score during summer vacation seem to hold the answer. The wealthier kids score significantly more and their learning gains seems to be much more than that of the poor children during vacations, thereby accounting for the overall achievement gap at the end of 5 years.
During vacations, rich parents make sure their kids are occupied with books, special classes, and meaningful activities that are geared towards their education. On the other hand, poor children are left to fend for themselves. Parents from the lower-income group don’t have the interest or the resources to keep their children on the learning track during vacations thereby hurting their chances as they grow older. So what’s the possible solution? Please watch this two-part video on KIPP Academy and how they are making a difference to low-income children. The cornerstone of KIPP academies is the emphasis on innovative teaching practices, discipline and hard work. The extra time that children spend on learning helps them a lot and completely erases any disadvantages they face because of socioeconomic status.
Srinivas Krishnaswamy
