SOME OF THE KEY BEST PRACTICES as presented in the latest Nielsen Norman Group report, ”Intranet Design Annual 2009: Year’s Ten Best Intranets“, are:

• Company and industry news
• Integrating internal and external information sources
• Editorial control of the intranet homepage
• Keeping the intranet up-to-date
• CEO blogging
• Employee and department weblogs
• Onboarding of new employees
• Consistent navigation
• Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
• Multimedia and video on intranets
• Data visualization
• Web 2.0 features on intranets
• Community
• Polls
• Collaboration tools and discussion boards
• Internal wikis
• Employee self service
• Search
• Governance
• Development process for intranet redesigns
• Web analytics for intranets
• Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
• Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
• Intranet branding
• Promoting new intranet features
• Staff directory and employee profile pages
• Corporate calendars
• Personalization
• Customization
• Alerts
• Working with external design agencies
• Intranet budgets and staffing

FOUND THIS INTERESTING LINK ON a Facebook friend’s profile when I was about to post a birthday greeting to her. I agree with the author, Dan York, who wrote:

The only reason I visit a web site these days is generally if either:

1. The website turns up in a search result.
2. I get notified that there’s something interesting there that I should look at.
3. Random times when for some reason I decide to go there, perhaps remembering a URL for a site I wanted to check out.

 
That’s it. (Note that I do get the content of many websites through the ways I mention below, but I don’t actually go to those websites and see their page.)

As I think about it, my consumption of information online really comes down to five ways:

1. E-mail, although I get too much of it to read it all. [Me: Exactly!]
2. Twitter, where I see links from people or services that I follow. [Me: Now, it's the FriendFeed (or NewsFeed) on Facebook.]
3. RSS feeds where my reader pulls it in and I quickly scan through the posts.
4. Skype persistent group chats where I’m connected to several different groups of people on various topics.
5. Searching for data, typically using Google.

 
The key thing is that, with the exception of search:
All the data comes to me!

The group exists as a platform for discussion, advocacy and action to uplift, improve, and perhaps solve Singapore Malay issues using New Media.

For more details on Millennials (a.k.a Generation “We”), check out this thought-provoking American video:

It’s interesting to see how problems (in this case, various crises in the USA such as the 9/11 incident, Hurricane Katrina and the recent subprime financial crisis) can be effective triggers for deeper learning and a firmer resolve to unite and to collaborate among the young. It would be even more interesting to see if a Generation “We” New Media group could be set up across race and religions in Asia, and NOT just for Malays in Singapore. Hey, Hazman, would you be game to do this?

An extract from Sarah Burris’ blog:

GenWe was Greenberg’s project to help the Millennial Generation empower itself against much scrutiny. The book also makes the case that Millennials are:

• Dedicated to improving the common good over individual gain, a sentiment that crosses all racial, ideological and partisan lines.
• Reject fundamental principles of modern conservatism – primary focus on individual rights and trickle down economics.
• Welcome innovation and are eager to establish a new paradigm.

Most likely, your class is NOT going to be as exciting as this one (left), where the professor gamely laid on a bed of nails while someone else tried to break a cement block on him with a sledgehammer! In such a case, you are likely to be distracted by a backchannel.

As Chris Lott put it, “…regardless of what a participant has at hand– a backchannel, a laptop, a cell phone, a book, or a set of Legos– they are not and never will direct 100% of their attention forward and they will find ways to create the attention cycles that characterize engagement. I was able to ignore… incompetent teachers just fine back when the only thing digital [we] had access to was a watch.”

ON JUNE 9, ELLIOT MASIE posed a similar question to teachers and learning designers on LearningTown and received over 80 responses. It’s interesting to observe how Masie kicked off the etivity with a great “spark” (italicized emphases are mine):

Initially, some of the respondents expressed concerns of “how do we know where they are”, and that “It is distracting to the trainer and students sitting near you”.

Then one respondent Ray Eisenberg turned the tide by quoting George Siemens (”ERN – Social Media, Theory and Practice, Backchannel, Laptops in Classrooms” May 31, 2008):

“When I don’t have a laptop at a conference, I learn differently, not more. I learn what the speaker is saying, rather than the resources she is citing. When I have a computer, I don’t play solitaire … I use the opportunity to find related resources, follow up on information presented, and generally enlarge the sphere of what would often be a single-perspective presentation. I’m sympathetic with the concerns of laptop mis-use. Yet I wonder if the problem isn’t partly with our lack of modeling proper technology use. Perhaps we ought to utilize these tools for academic purposes, rather than continuing lecture models and seeing laptops as add ons to learning rather than a key contributor. “

Eisenberg then added, “I agree with Siemens. In a standard lecture, sage-on-the-stage format, there are probably going to be issues. If you bring the internet to center stage then I think that we will be able, as architects have long been successful in doing, convert a problem into a feature.”

Personally, some time last year, I’ve observed the same professor teach the same lesson to two classes of students in two different settings. One class was in a tutorial room while the other class was in a computer lab. The attention the students in the tutorial room gave the professor was much more. As a result, the professor’s level of confidence and energy in the tutorial room was correspondingly higher, and he managed to speak much more fluently and crack a few more jokes in the tutorial room than in the computer lab.

As for myself as a participant, I’ve often gone online while attending lectures and seminars. I’ve noticed that I’m able to add notes online and check out related resources quickly. However, I would often miss a few words here and there. If the speaker is a boring one, most of what he said would have escaped me.

FOR SOME TIME I’VE BEEN WONDERING: What’re the best ways to encourage comments on one’s blog? And not just any comments, but those that promote meaningful exchange of insights and experiences. I’ve found 10 techniques and 10 plugins through a Google search. Could you add a tip or two here please?

According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, one needs to:

• Make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop.
• Make participation a side effect. For example, Amazon’s “people who bought this book, bought these other books” recommendations are a side effect of people buying books.
• Edit, don’t create. Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch.
• Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants. Although money is always good, you can also give contributors preferential treatment (such as discounts or advance notice of new stuff), or even just put gold stars on their profiles.
• Promote quality contributors. …give extra prominence to good contributions and to contributions from people who’ve proven their value, as indicated by their reputation ranking.

According to problogger Darren Rowse, one could use these techniques:

• Invite Comments...new readers that are unfamiliar with blogging don’t always know about comments or how to use them.
• Ask Questions. I find that when I include questions in my headings… you set a question in their mind from the first moments of your post.
• Be Open Ended. While you don’t want to purposely leave too many things unsaid there is an art to writing open ended posts that leaves room for your readers to be experts also.
• Interact with comments left. If you’re not willing to use your own comments section why would your readers?
• Set Boundaries. I noticed that shortly after I set the rules for my comments section (with a comments policy) that my comment numbers jumped up a little… and that comment threads generally stay constructive as a result.
• Be humble. I find that readers respond very well to posts that show your own weaknesses, failings and the gaps in your own knowledge rather than those posts where you come across as knowing everything there is to know on a topic.
• Be gracious. There are times where you as the blogger will get something wrong in your posts… spelling or grammar… crux of your argument or some other aspect of your blogging… a graceful approach to comments where you admit where you are wrong and others is right can bring out the lurkers and make them feel a little safer in leaving comments.
• Be controversial? …it doesn’t always work (and I personally avoid it as much as I can these days) – but there’s nothing like controversy to get people commenting on your blog.
• ‘Reward’ Comments. There are many ways… that range from simply including a ‘good comment’ remark through to highlighting them in other posts that you write.
• Make it Easy to Comment. …there is one situation where I rarely leave a comment – even if the post deserves it – blogs that require me to login before making a comment. Keep your comments section as simple and as easy to use as possible.

According to Caroline Middlebrook, we could use some of these WordPress Plugins (comments in [] brackets are mine):

• DoFollow plugin: [I've stopped using this because this attracts visitors who drop in just to add some inane comments and a plug for their sites.]
• Top Commentator plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• CommentLuv plugin: [I've installed and activated this. But it's not working on my blog. Probably incompatible with some existing plugins.]
• Most Commented Posts plugin: [Maybe I'll use this too.]
• Recent Comments plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• Subscribe to Comments plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• Threaded Comments plugin: [Hey! How many plugins does one need to use?]
• Gravatars plugin: [ditto]
• Custom Smileys plugin: [ditto]
• Edit Comments plugin: [ditto]

When I gave a talk on Web 2.0 & Its Business Impacts at COM1, NUS last month, I cited various real-life examples of how the blogosphere “chatter” could affect a company’s corporate image positively or negatively. Also discussed briefly the people (how they get younger and younger!) and the milestones behind successful Web 2.0 apps such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. This slideshow provides a quick overview, featuring famous Web entrepreneurs such as Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Kevin Rose (Digg), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)… and Ping.sg celebrity Uzyn Chua (slide 19) :

Related Articles:

• Top Posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg Reveal That…
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg!
• Live Coverage of Flea Mart On Ping.sg
• A video guide to the Ping.sg celebration – by an absentee …

1. Non-Standard GUI Controls
   1.a. Looking Like a GUI Control Without Being One
2. Inconsistency
3. No Perceived Affordance
   3.a. Tiny Click Targets
4. No Feedback
   4.a. Out to Lunch Without a Progress Indicator
5. Bad Error Messages
6. Asking for the Same Info Twice
7. No Default Values
8. Dumping Users into the App
9. Not Indicating How Info Will Be Used
10. System-Centric Feature

Useful note: “Application usability is enhanced when users know how to operate the UI and it guides them through the workflow. Violating common guidelines prevents both… Usually, applications fail because they (a) solve the wrong problem, (b) have the wrong features for the right problem, or (c) make the right features too complicated for users to understand.”

• I cannot simply enter “Rochester Park”. I must enter a block number. So, I plucked a number from the air: “9″.
• After x seconds of inactivity, map.gov.sg would show a timeout message and then a timeout screen (!) as follows:
  
• As TedFox noted, “[map.gov.sg does] not provide any bus/mrt directions (which can be taken from the sbs website though)”. It also does not provide other useful information such as “Satellite Image”, “What’s nearby”, “Analyse Loc”, “Related Editorials” at the top of the StreetDirectory.com page:
  
• Nor does it provide this useful titbit of information at the bottom of the page:
  

  “Streetdirectory.com Rochester Park is located in Dover, Singapore. The Dover district is a small one filled with schools and tertiary institutions. Private schools such as Anglo Chinese School (Independent), or ACSI, and Anglo Chinese Junior College are located here, as well as public schools such as Fairfield Methodist Secondary School. Many locals study in ITE Dover to obtain technical certificates or go for a diploma education at Singapore Polytechnic. Many expatriates sent their children to United World College Southeast Asia (UWCSEA), one of Singapore’s international schools. These expatriates also enjoy going for a drink at Rochester Park, a popular cluster of restaurants and wine bars in Dover.”

• Finally, the location map itself look like this on Map.gov.sg:
  and the location map on StreetDirectory.com looks like this:
  

Disclaimer: I have no vested interest in either Map.gov.sg or StreetDirectory.com. Neither am I aware of having any friend (or foe) in these two organizations.

Related Articles:

• Is this the end of StreetDirectory.com?

1. Begin sentences with subjects and verbs. Make meaning early, then let weaker elements branch to the right.
2. Order words for emphasis. Place strong words at the beginning and at the end.
3. Activate your verbs. Strong verbs create action, save words, and reveal the players.
4. Be passive-aggressive. Use passive verbs to showcase the “victim” of action.
5. Watch those adverbs. They can dilute the meaning of the verb or repeat it. Use them to change the meaning of the verb.
6. Go easy on the ‘ings’. Prefer the simple present or past. For example, “wish and hope and think and pray” is better than “wishing and hoping and thinking and praying“.
7. Fear Not the Long Sentence. Take the reader on a journey of language and meaning.
8. Parallel Lines – Establish a pattern, then give it a twist. Build parallel constructions, but cut across the grain.
9. Let punctuation control pace and space. Learn the rules, but realize you have more options than you think.
10. Cut Big, Then Small. Prune the big limbs, then shake out the dead leaves.
11. Prefer the simple over the technical. Use shorter words, sentences and paragraphs at points of complexity.
12. Give key words their space. Do not repeat a distinctive word unless you intend a specific effect.
13. Play with words, even in serious stories. Choose words the average writer avoids but the average reader understands.
14. Get the name of the dog. Dig for the concrete and specific, details that appeal to the senses.
15. Pay attention to names. Interesting names attract the writer – and the reader.
16. Seek Original Images. Reject clichés and first-level creativity.
17. Riff on the creative language of others. Make word lists, free-associate, be surprised by language.
18. Set the pace with sentence length. Vary sentences to influence the reader’s speed.
19. Vary the lengths of paragraphs. Go short or long — or make a “turn”– to match your intent.
20. Choose the number of elements with a purpose in mind. One, two, three, or four: Each sends a secret message to the reader.
21. Know when to back off and when to show off. When the topic is most serious, understate; when least serious, exaggerate.
22. Climb up and down the ladder of abstraction. Learn when to show, when to tell, and when to do both. (At the bottom are bloody knives and rosary beads, wedding rings and baseball cards. At the top are words that reach for a higher meaning, words like “freedom” and “literacy.”)
23. Tune your voice. Read drafts aloud.
24. Work from a plan. Index the big parts of your work.
25. Learn the difference between reports and stories. Use reports to render information and stories to render experience.
26. Use dialogue as a form of action. Dialogue advances narrative; quotes delay it.
27. Reveal traits of character. Show character-istics through scenes, details, and dialogue.
28. Put odd and interesting things next to each other. Help the reader learn from contrast.
29. Foreshadow dramatic events or powerful conclusions. Plant important clues early.
30. To generate suspence, use internal cliffhangers. To propel readers (to turn the page), make them wait.
31. Good questions drive good stories. Good stories need an engine, a question the action answers for the reader.
32. Place gold coins along the path. Reward the reader with high points, especially in the middle.
33. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Purposeful repetition links the parts.
34. Write from different cinematic angles. Turn your notebook into a “camera” — shifting focus to capture both landscape and character.
35. Report and write for scenes. Then align them in a meaningful sequence.
36. Mix narrative modes. Combine story forms using the “broken line.”
37. In short pieces of writing, don’t waste a syllable. Shape shorter works with wit and polish.
38. Prefer archetypes to stereotypes. Use subtle symbols, not crashing cymbals.
39. Write toward an ending. Help readers close the circle of meaning.
40. Draft a mission statement for your work. To sharpen your learning, write about your writing.
41. Save String. For big projects, save scraps others would toss.
42. Turn procrastination into rehearsal. Plan and write it first in your head.
43. Do your homework well in advance. Prepare for the expected — and unexpected.
44. Read for both form and content. Examine the machinery beneath the text.
45. Break long projects into parts. Then assemble the pieces into something whole.
46. Take an interest in all crafts that support your work. To do your best, help others do their best.
47. Recruit your own support group. Create a corps of helpers for feedback.
48. Limit self-criticism in early drafts. Turn it loose during revision.
49. Learn from your critics. Tolerate even unreasonable criticism.
50. Own the tools of your craft. Build a writing workbench to store your tools.

1. Speedlinker: Roundups, Comments, Trackbacks, etc of interesting posts. E.g. Problogger.com
2. Quoter: Blockquoting an interesting point of view, extract or news snippet and add a short bit of opinion and sourcing information. E.g. Susan Mernet’s “Quote of the Day”.
3. Entertainer: Amusing video, cartoon, image or joke. E.g. CartoonStock.com, BLaugh.com
4. Questioner: On-topic, interesting and conversation generating question. Insightful and interactive.
5. Updater: Ongoing project statistics or status.
6. Newsreader: Interesting news from press releases or grapevine. E.g. TechCrunch.com
7. Recycler: Dragging out some old goodies from the archives and reposting them for your new readers. (Collis didn’t have any example here, so I’ve added one. This “recycler” is a good online friend of mine. Her blog, a model for me at one point, also contains other types of posts.)
8. Guest-Poster: Your guest gets an extra plug, you get a day off and your readers get some variety.
9. Announcer: Own local blog news, short and sweet. E.g. what you plan to do, a new competition, reset of top commenters.

I think I’ve done 1-4, 6 and 9. Which about you?

This is a new design challenge in this age of information anxiety and abundance of meaning. More and more people, myself included, are doing many things at the same time. However, decades of research (and common sense) have indicated that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. For example:

• “We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can,” says René Marois, neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, quoted in a recent NYTimes piece about how multi-taskers max out their brains, creating neural network bottlenecks and causing confusion and mistakes (thanks, Susan Mernit).
• When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer–often double the time or more–to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially, says David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan: “The toll in terms of slowdown is extremely large–amazingly so.” (thanks, DeedsDoing 2006)
• “Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run,” says Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, quoted in a CNN report last year.

IN MY EXPERIENCE FOR EXAMPLE: During Nexus 2007 last Saturday, I found myself switching among three screens on my laptop most of the time. We were using Twitter.com for message sending, Campfirenow for chatting, and Nexus Live/Interactive to view Twitter messages from everyone. I could barely pay attention to the speakers/panel on the stage. Probably listened to only half the words. One possible way to reduce distraction could be better to replace Campfirenow with a shoutbox hooked onto Twitter via its API, the way Uzyn managed to hook Ping.sg shouts into pingsg_shouts on Twitter. Open Tweetbar on the sidebar and everyone would have two less screens to distract their attention — in other words, Let everyone look at just ONE screen.

Recently, Bjorn Lee twittered: “i have ADD, maybe i shld enrol in that china camp where they reform internet addicts.. oops, thats called NS in spore.” (ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder here, I think.)

What other solutions are there? Listen to former Microsoft VP Linda Stone perhaps (thanks, Mike Rohde):

“Continous Partial Attention (CPA) is different than multi-tasking, where the motivation is productivity: giving equal attention to many activities. CPA’s motivation is being a live node on the network, gaining meaning from the network, being ready for new opportunities at any moment…”

“But this always on, anytime, anywhere, anyplace era has has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. The adrenalized fight or flight mechanism kicks in. It’s great when we’re being chased by tigers. How many of those 500 emails a day is a tiger? Or are they mostly mice? Is everything really such an emergency? Our way of using the current set of technologies would have us believe it is.”

And learn from Jakob Nielsen (thanks, Beth):

1. Don’t check your email all the time. Set aside special breaks between bigger projects to handle email. Don’t let email interrupt your projects, and don’t let the computer dictate your priorities.
2. Don’t use “reply to all” when responding to email. Abide by the good old “need to know” principle… send follow-up messages only to those people who will actually benefit from the reply.
3. Write informative subject lines for your email messages. Assume that the recipient is too busy to open messages with lame titles like “hi.”
4. Create a special email address for personal messages and newsletters. Only check this account once per day.
5. Write short.
6. Avoid IM (instant messaging) unless real-time interaction will truly add value to the communication. A one-minute interruption of your colleagues will cost them ten minutes of productivity as they reestablish their mental context and get back into “flow.” Only the most important messages are worth 1,000 percent in overhead costs.
7. Answer common customer questions on your website using clear and concise language. This will save your customers a lot of time — thus making you popular — and will keep them from pestering you with time-consuming phone calls and emails.
8. User test your intranet. Clean it up so that employees can find stuff faster, and make the intranet homepage their entry point for keeping up on company news and events.
9. Don’t circulate internal email to all employees; instead put the information on the intranet where people can find it when they need it. (This obviously assumes that you’ve fixed the intranet’s usability.)
10. Establish a company culture in which it’s okay not to respond to email immediately. This frees employees from the pressure of incessantly checking email and lets them get more work done.

Finally, run 5 miles or do a spin class like Beth does. She explained:

“For some reason, vigorous cardio exercise helps clear out the information anxiety Maybe it is the just the stepping away from the reflected light dancing across my eyes coming from the monitor.”

Related Posts:

• Web of Mass Distraction I

This is what I DID:
I added another username, hoping to have TWO CHANNELS (or usernames) on the SAME PHONE LINE: One for business subscribers and one for friends/fans/family.

This is what I EXPECTED to happen:
I truly hope that Twitter would give TWO CHANNELS on the SAME PHONE LINE: One for business subscribers and one for friends/fans/family. Possibility: Use prefixes to separate business from personal. E.g. [BIZ] for business and [PERS] for personal.

This is what ACTUALLY happened:
The system informed me that the phone line has already been used by another username. I’m a rather private person. I also hope to receive only business tweets from many of the people that I’m following. But many of them are getting too personal, sending out many tweets that are useless/meaningless (er, to me).

“… I get about twice the pageviews of mattcutts.com, but his Alexa pageview ranking is about 25 times more than mine (I got this by looking at the 1 year, most highly smoothed graph, and then squinting to guess at the mean).

“What that means is that people with the Alexa toolbar installed are 25 times more likely to view a page on Matt’s site versus mine, but overall, all users view twice as many pages on my site.

“That’s a 50 to 1 difference introduced by the selection bias of Alexa. Presumably this is because Matt’s site is really appealing to a core group of SEO enthusiasts, many of whom also like the Alexa toolbar.”

IN A SIMILAR VEIN, John Chow wrote:

“Alexa is a tool that many webmasters and advertisers used to gauge the size of a website. The Alexa ranking is based on a three month running average. The number shown is where a site ranks on the internet… The main problem with Alexa is its rankings are based on users who have installed the Alexa toolbar onto their browser. If you do not have the toolbar running, you do not affect the rankings of the sites you visit. The next big problem with Alexa is it is very easy to cheat the system. Just get a few friends to install the toolbar and have them surf your site everyday. It does not take many people to break into the top 100,000. You can even do it all by yourself by refreshing your site over and over again. Get a dozen friends to do it and you’re break into top 20,000 easily.”

Alexa, by the way, works only on Internet Explorer. Now, perhaps all these explain why this blog’s Alexa ranking is 6,588,931? However, why two particularly trivial links which have nothing to do with this blog are listed in Alexa — they are totally different from the many links recognized by Technorati and 10,500 found via a Google search? Also, how is it that an empty blog such as one that’s created by default in an Elgg community blog and my Elgg profile could be ranked 64,954? Hmmm… just because both are on Elgg.net (also ranked 64,954)? Sheeeshh… no wonder! My test blog at Blogger.com has a rank of 15, just like Blogger itself!

When I scrolled to the bottom of an Alexa page, I found this statement, “Alexa’s directory listings are provided by Open Directory and enhanced by Alexa”. At the Open Directory (a.k.a. Dmoz) site, I read that it apparently has 75,151 editors and 4,830,584 sites listed in over 590,000 categories. According to one of its Help pages, “Depending on the activity level of the editors in your area, it may take up to 2 weeks or more for your site to be reviewed.”

However, I’ve tried for months and my blog is still not listed on this Open Directory. The oft-repeated reason given on support forum had been along this line: There has been a huge backlog and the editors couldn’t find enough time to clear that yet.

Likewise, I’ve tried for months to claim my blog on Technorati, but to no avail. The reason (given by Admin) looks familiar: My blog (along with many others) apparently could have been flagged for review, the support staff are facing a huge backlog and couldn’t find enough time to clear that yet.

I wonder. When I cannot claim my blog on Technorati, is my blog considered non-existent to Technorati? A search among the blog posts in Technorati yields 11 links, but a search in the blog directory yields this error message:

“Huh?

There are blogs, and then there’s whatever you just typed in. If it’s a blog, we don’t know about it. Maybe you made a typo. Or maybe it’s a blog that doesn’t exist. Maybe you don’t exist. (In which case, please ignore this.)”

While I truly appreciate the invaluable services that Alexa, Dmoz and Technorati provide, I also truly don’t understand what is meant by “flagged for review”. Who flags a bona-fide blog for review by Technorati and thereby stop it from being claimed even by its legitimate owner? In any case, is there a way to open up this listing of blogs that have been flagged for review, Digg-style perhaps, so that more people can comment on them and thus help the editors/admin guys speed up and clear this site-listing backlog?

Afternote on 2007-03-16: Please HELP ME claim my blog on Technorati. Add me as a Fave on Technortiat by clicking this -» and then feel free to delete it later.

So, my PageRank (PR) is different for the same URL with and without www? Is my PR = 2+3 = 5?

SUBSEQUENTLY, I entered the Google Webmasters Help group. Was typing a query in the “Crawling, indexing, and ranking” category when Google very intelligently displayed this thread, Different page rank for the same URL with and without www.

According to Webado (aka Christina):

“The difference in PR between www and non www versions of the same url, also between example.com/ and example.com/index.html (for instance) has existed ever since PR has been reported. PR is always relative to the url, NOT to the page content that a url points to. All those url’s are as different as if they were totally different sites.

“At times the PR might appear to be equal – that would be because both forms are being used to about the same extent, and have incoming links of about the same quality and quantity.

“It makes sense to consolidate into one url alone all accesses meant to be for one particular page – the result will also be a consolidation of pr, with a possible increase in the final pr value for that chosen page.

“The new option in Webmaster Tools is there to take care of what’s already been indexed – but you, the webmaster, also have to do your job of redirecting url’s to one single preferred url format.

“Assuming you haven’t done either of these 2 things, and assuming your 2 url’s used to have the same PR and now are different, thats’ due to changing conditions. The incoming links to one form must have dwindled, been discounted for some reason, while the incoming links to the other form must have picked up. PR gets recalculated every few months from data a few months old. PR is also not necessarily the same across all Google Datacenters which are numerous and not in sync.”

In another similar thread, Richard L. Trethewey wrote:

“PageRank is calculated through a combination of factors beyond the simple number of links. The exact method Google currently uses is not public knowledge, but in the founders’ original thesis they describe a formula which is widely believed to still be the fundamental method. For each link that points to a page, the PageRank of that target page is increased by an amount roughly equal to the PageRank score of the page where that link resides divided by the number of links on that page. You also need to keep in mind that the PageRank score shown on the Google Toolbar is taken from a publically available database that is only updated periodically (recently, its been every 3 months or so). But Google has an internal PageRank database that they use for ranking purposes which is updated continuously as they crawl the web. There seems to be a PageRank update in progress, so you should wait a couple of days to see if your PageRank score improves.

“But the best thing you can do for your site is to set up a server code 301 redirect for all requests for pages from the old .com domain and redirect them to the new .org.uk domain. In a few weeks, all of the major search engines will merge their records of the two domains and your rankings should improve. It would also be a good idea to ask thewebmaster of any site that still links to the old .com domain to link to the new .org.uk domain to help speed up the process. But installing that 301 redirect is very important.”

And so, that’s what I have done recently, adding a 301 redirect to channel all requests for the URL without www to the URL with www. Now, waiting and hoping that my PR will be doubled (almost) soon.

(See also Matt Cutt’s SEO advice: url canonization and Michael Bloch’s Giving search engine spiders direction – 301 redirect.)

Healthbolt has done some nice analysis of the layouts of top 10 blogs at Technorati and comes up with the following Composite Map. It gives a unique insight at how a small group of top blogs arrange themselves.

See it at full size and with a key to interpret the colors here  but before you go and look at it, see if you can predict what each color signifies in the following categories:

• Advertising
• Search
• Email/RSS Subscription
• Header/Site ID/Branding/Logo
• Content
• Internal Links/Navigation

THEN I found Paul Allison wondering aloud in a “Teachers Teaching Teachers” post:

…perhaps those of us using digital photography, podcasts, Google maps,webcasts, wikis, video, del.icio.us, tags, blogs, Bloglines, Google Reader, online word processors, digital stories and poetry, and other Web 2.0 technologies need our own department, our own discipline, our own field of study… “Web Studies” would address new literacies that are not presently being taught in the traditional, core subjects. Web Studies needs to become more central in schools… I’m wondering if I’m still an English teacher. Probably not.

Checking out the comments section, I found Tom Hoffman’s response (“It’s All English”) in his Tuttle SVC blog.

Initially, I shared Paul Allison’s sentiments. However, suddenly, it seems obvious. It’s NOT about English, Math or Web Studies anymore. Just look at the graphic above again.

ACTUALLY, none of us got the right answer, although I did come quite close (the answer is in the Dutton & Aron link above, just scroll to the middle of the page). The Capilano story was one of many concrete examples (and experiments) which Professor Henck Schmidt used during a talk at Republic Polytechnic yesterday, to illustrate six key principles of learning and teaching, namely:

• Learning is basically construction of meaning, e.g. coherent theories about the world.
• Activation of prior knowledge facilitates the subsequent processing of new information.
• Elaboration of knowledge at the time of learning enhances subsequent retrieval. E.g. use of paired assocation.
• Organization of Knowledge: E.g. “Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when news on 911 broke out?” (Note: Actually, I kinda puzzled by this illustration. Didn’t get to clarify my doubts though.
• Contextual Dependence: Matching context facilitates recall.
• Intrinsic Interest: External rewards does not steer the learning, in fact it may reduce intrinsic interest and make the subject matter studied less interesting.

We (the audience), including many instructional designers from various IHLs in Singapore, were asked many interesting questions in order to trigger more questions and activate critical thinking. Truly gratified to have attended a talk by a man who models what he teaches. And to leave with an adrenaline rush…

The theme seems to be “Fear blocks people’s ears”: Fear in the patient and fear among the patient’s relatives and friends. So marvellously executed. Constantly bombarding the audience with multiple points of views — a young woman, a middle-aged one, an elderly one; the whiner, the “never-say-dier”; the the mother, the daughter/son, the husband, the neighbour, the doctor(s); how others’ apparent concern and advice could be “smothering” or “just wanting to know ‘You’re feeling fine’ “; becoming “invisible” once perceived as sick; issues of “control” versus “no control”; “hope” for cure, less pain, longer life, emotional support…. Truly thought-provoking and ever so witty.

Spent time deliberating on the topics which each student will work on — doing literature review and making presentations — individually and in small groups. For example, “Using Stories to Teach English”, “Play Making with Children”, “Labovian Analysis of Narratives” (cheem)… Still wondering what I should do. Borrowed a practice-oriented book called “Stories: Narrative activities in the language classroom” by Ruth Wajnryb (2003). The stories in the book are based on Labovian analysis, the associate professor said. Revisited Toulmin’s model of argument… aha!

The evening ended on a splendidly inspiring note with an animation movie called “The Man Who Planted Trees”. Wow! What one man can do! Makes me wonder how hard I’ve tried to be part of the solution instead of the problem. How easy it is to destroy! How easily we forget about the creative prowess within us! And how easily we tend to give up! :-p

Dear Learning & Training Colleague,

You have watched me, as reader of Learning TRENDS, experiment my way through the design of a very different event, Learning 2005, over the past 12 months. (Me: “It has been truly interesting to watch.”)

In just 3 days, I’ll have the incredible honor of welcoming 1,500 learning colleagues from two dozen countries around the world to the start of a very different type of “conference”. We changed a lot of assumptions during the design process and I wanted to share those with you, as a personal reflection:

• Focus on conversations and dialogues rather than presentation. People want to have focused and meaningful conversations with peers.
• Take away the overhead projectors in most sessions and limit facilitators to one slide. As slides go up and lights go down, interaction and engagement go down.
• Don’t solicit a RFP for presentations, rather reach out to colleagues and ask them to lead a conversation or kick off a case study. Inviting gets a much different and richer level of participation vs. the same people presenting the same stuff at all events in our field.
• Drop the trade show. Put supplier materials in a backpack and create some one hour face to face case study sessions. Paid participants don’t want to be forced into the trade show. Exhibitors are frustrated with that format. And, over 78 top suppliers signed on as sponsors and are coming as learners, as well.
• Ask people to do something rather than just listen. So, we are creating 24 communities and 12 task forces.
• Shift from keynote presentations to interactive interviews with 15 thought leaders, like Malcolm Gladwell and Marshall Goldsmith. Speakers love being able to interact with a host, the audience and each other. I will bring Steve Johnson back on the stage to mull the future with Malcolm.
• Use technology for an Extreme Learning Experience:

• RSS Feeds of all content.
• PodCasts for three months before and three months afterwards.
• Social Networking System to make new colleagues.
• Put all content into an open wiki and allow participants to evolve the session focus.
• Give everyone a radio interactive device to carry around.
• Leverage SMS Text Messaging.
• Have a dozen bloggers throughout the event, documenting it all live.
• Create a Jam Band with two dozen music oriented colleagues.
• Place all content in the public domain, using the Creative Commons License.
• Build a virtual world called LearnLand to experiment withe 3D Learning.
• Honor the need to revitalize the classroom rather than replace it. Invite Bob Pike and others to dream about the future of the classroom.
• Create the entire event as a Sandbox, with a spirit that says let’s experiment and most will succeed, some will change and some might fail. Learning innovations requires that risk.

I have learned so much during this past year. I am moved that 1,500 of you will be in Orlando starting on Sunday. I know that dozens more will decide at the last minute to join us at Learning 2005 and we will welcome you at the door. And, I appreciate that the 60,000 readers of Learning TRENDS can be a part of this experiment with us, by accessing all of the content on-line after the event and perhaps planning to come to Learning 2006 (Nov 4 – 8 in Orlando).

Thank you and I look forward to continuing to learn with you, my learning colleagues.

Elliott

“Things change dramatically when a learner feels Content Abundance vs. Content Scarcity. A few years ago, we were often teaching learners who felt a sense of scarcity. They often viewed our classes or e-Learning modules as the primary or only solution to their information and knowledge needs. As the power of the internet is extended, I have noticed a major shift from Scarcity to Abundance.

“Many learners now feel information rich, or even overloaded. They know they can go to their search engine, type a few words and get an up to date list of links to knowledge resources. This is often viewed as better than the list of links that the classroom instructor hands out at the end of the class.

“AS WE PROVIDE resources in the Age of Content Abundance, it becomes even more important for learning professionals to address these dimensions:
* Invitation – Emerging models for inviting specific learners to learn specific content – aligned to personal, project or performance motivational factors.
* Personalization – Emerging models for allowing the learner to perceive (and predict) an efficiency of getting to the “just right” content.
* Granularization – Emerging models for helping the learner gain access to smaller and more targeted sets of content.
* Sequence Options – Help our learners to take one of several sequences through the content, based on needs and priorities.
* Context – In the age of abundance, learners have easy access to loads of content. It is more difficult for learners to access “Context”, the stories, best (and worst) practices and organizational realities.
* Performance Tools – Learners still want great job and performance tools. Give them digital or plastic laminated Job Aids.
* Calibrating Expectations – Trainers and instructional designers should recognize that learners feel Content Abundance. We should acknowledge that this shift has occured for many of our learners. Our courses and language should help learners calibrate their expectations of how much of the needed knowledge will come from formal vs. informal learning.”

DBR subscribes to the sociotechnical systems theory and the activity theory. It studies learning in context, taking into account the impact of contextual factors on the measured outcomes of specific interventions (which in turn are based on certain theories, hypotheses or methodologies). It integrates design practices and academic research, so as to make the outcomes both relevant and rigorous for all stakeholders — teachers, students, researchers, designers and policy makers. Somewhat like Action Research (Lewin, 1946) with a contextual and design focus, as well as a longitudinal and multi-party view.

“The conjunction of problematic and determinate characters in nature renders every existence, as well as every idea and human act, an experiment in fact (reality), even though not in design (intention). To be intelligently experimental is but to be conscious of this intersection of natural conditions so as to profit by it instead of being at its mercy.” — John Dewey

REVISITED the tensions between ‘Industry’ and ‘Academia’, this time with more sophisticated (or distinguished) vocabulary.

For example, ‘Research-Based Design (RBD)’ vs. ‘Design-Based Research (DBR)’, ‘practice’ vs. ‘research’, ‘relevance’ vs. ‘rigor’, ’short/quick vs. long/slow’, ‘high/low theory vs. high/low applicability (Stokes, 1997, see diagram on the right), ‘awful reputation of ed research (Kaestle, 1993), ‘methodology and the research practice gap’ (Robinson), ‘problems and possibilities’ (Shulman, 1999), ‘usable knowledge’ (Lagemann) and finally, ‘Aristotle’s three types of knowledge: episteme, techne and phronesis’ (Flyvbjerg, 2001).

And like design methods, DBR is purposeful, creative, open-ended, iterative (continuous, on-going), robust (incomplete predictability, e.g. see-move-see [Schon], participatory co-construction of meaning [Ehn]), inherently empirical in epistemology, and involves local science/wisdom (diSessa).

Will the gap between ‘Industry’ and ‘Academia’ be closed with DBR? After 100 years of educational research, have research findings been of great relevance to teaching practices yet? Perhaps we need another 15 years more, A/P H. said.

SIXTH-GRADE teacher Ellen Berg desperately wanted to show her students the true meaning of a fairy tale, but [how to] organize an activity that would encourage them to develop their own definition of the term, willingly? The “jigsaw method” provided the backdrop for the dynamic and engaging lesson that her students still recall!

Berg began by having her students divide into five equal groups, each with one fairy tale to read: “The Ugly Duckling,” “Snow White,” “Hansel and Gretel,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” or “The Three Little Pigs.” Each was responsible for collecting information such as: Who are the characters in the story? Where does the story take place? What are the major events of the story? Are there any supernatural events? If so, what are they?

After the students read, discussed, and recorded the above information, one person from each fairy tale assembled in a new jigsaw group. Each spent three minutes to tell the other new members the story they read and researched. After that, every group created a poster and gave a presentation addressing two points: (1) What do all five stories have in common? (2) Using what you found in common, write your own definition for a fairy tale.

FIRST HEARD of the “Jigsaw Classroom” technique when somone mentioned it during a Social Psychology class. Encountered it again yesterday upon finding a ‘Group Dynamics” file at the University of Delaware PBL Clearninghouse site.

Aha! So, this is how it works. Just that the explanations are a little different. The ‘home groups’ illustrated here are equivalent to the ‘jigsaw groups’ in the story above:

(Extracted from a paper by Yusra L Visser (2002), Effects of Problem-Based and Lecture-Based Instructional Strategies on Problem Solving Performance and Learner Attitudes…)

“LEARNING SPECIALISTS generally agree that problem solving, together with several other core competencies (e.g., comprehending and composing, critical and creative thinking, and metacognition) is among the most important dimensions of thinking and learning (Jonassen, 1994). Nickerson (1994) has pointed to several of the reasons why the ability to engage in effective and purposeful problem solving is critical to the development of individuals and their communities.

“… Despite the acknowledgement of the importance of developing problem solving skills, relatively little research has been conducted on this theme in the field of instructional design (Jonassen, 1994). Moreover, within the existing research base, even fewer contributions have been made to the development of instructional design approaches for ill-structured or complex problem instruction. The majority of the instructional design literature in the area of problem solving instruction points to the use of particular instructional strategies to support the acquisition of problem solving skills (e.g., cognitive apprenticeships and microworlds). However, these strategies have rarely been researched with sufficient rigor to ascertain their effectiveness in achieving the desired outcomes.”

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?” — Albert Einstein

THE PAST TWO WEEKS had been rather anxious ones because a once-promising thesis seemed in danger of becoming an impractical one. Perhaps this thesis is ahead of its time right now.

The idea came from an interesting discussion with a professor. What would motivate students to want to solve a problem? The initial answers seemed straightforward enough. Something that Maish Nichani mentioned at a Knowledge Management seminar months ago came to mind: a story problem needs ‘PHAT’ — ‘P’ for Passion, ‘H’ for Hero, ‘A’ for Antagonism and ‘T’ for Transformation. In other words, Identification (PHAT) and Tension (PHAT) factors. A great thesis can written based on this, the professor had said.

With mounting pressure from my pre-dissertation module instructors, for lack of a better idea, I was intrepid enough to try to tackle this for my Masters thesis. I saw that I would need plenty of problems to conduct the study. So, my ideal subject was: two classes in a Republic Polytechnic (RP) since they solve a problem a day — that would give me 14-16 problems a semester!

Was told that I had excellent research questions: (1) How to write engaging story problems that polytechnic students can identify with and want to solve with all their hearts and minds? (2) What types/levels of engagement are desirable? (3) What types/levels of Identification (PHAT) would engage polytechnic students appropriately? (4) What types/levels of Tension (PHAT) would engage polytechnic students appropriately? (5) Do the students’ problem-solving performances improves with greater engagement?

Spent lots of time over the past month: reading up papers (such as Bangert-Drowns & Pike’s taxonomy of engagement modes, Ahmad Ibrahim Etheris’ Computer-supported collaborative problem solving and anchored instruction…), contacting the RP CED director, discussing with my research partners, observing a PBL class in progress, mulling over appropriate research methodologies, and so on. Finally realized what a mammoth task this is. Yes, this can be a lifetime’s work, as the professor had added then. But I didn’t register that then.

A problem with this PBL thesis is: How does one define the Tension and Identification factors, now that most problems written in RP are not really story/scenario problems (and i thus cannot simply use “PHAT”)? Another problem: The existing process logs, such as reflection journals, self and peer evaluations (often known to be a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” kind of thing), facilitator’s assessment and observations, seem too sketchy and unreliable for drawing conclusions.

So, how does one track the students’ problem solving processes in enough detail to gauge the levels of engagement among some 20-odd learners for 14-16 problems over a semester in a polytechnic where i don’t work? Interviews and observations would not be enough.

Video recording? We would need to aim four cameras at four groups of students over 14-16 days in a term since they tackle one problem a day. If we have two classess, the resources would need to be multiplied by two! Knowledge forums? Why would the students discuss online when (1) they can simply talk to one another at once, (2) they need to move from one stage to the next within one or two hours, and (3) these are not very motivated learners in the first place? Concept mapping? “Maybe, but only one pre-test and one post-test are feasible,” my research partner asserted. “We don’t want our students to get ‘research fatigue’.” We are still looking at the outcomes and not the processes.

Furthermore, RP is simply not ready to start using new IT tools at the moment. They have one major new tool to introduce the next semester, Axon Idea Processor. And it is complicated.

i could almost see all my annual leave evaporate in the midst of frequent visits to RP.

While racking my mind for a new angle to the thesis or even an alternative one, i was suddenly struck by the fact that right here under my nose (in this polytechnic where i work), is a groupware experiment that i had conducted with a lecturer recently and it has been progressing quite smoothly!

Talk about opportunities in a crisis (危机)! Now i have a better and more stable thesis to work on! No need to take leave. And finally, there’s a technology component!

Was quite struck by the statement. It wasn’t new. But so it is. When we write learning objectives for a desired attitude in an earlier module (”MID801 Instructional Design Models & Practices”), we had been taught to write, “The learner will choose to behave [in a certain way].” Yes, regardless of whether s/he likes or dislikes that particular behavior. And often, when someone has a bad attitude, it’s not so much that s/he does not know how or does not have enough practice, but rather s/he is not convinced by the why.

OTHER VERBS often used for writing attitude-related learning objectives include: “accept, adopt, advocate, approve, assess, challenge, characterise, criticise, defend, evaluate, formulate, judge, justify, manage, model, persuade, recommend, resolve, select, specify, value, re-assure, empathise.”

An extract from Instructional Design, a book by Patricia Smith and Tillman Ragan:

“An attitude is a mental state that pre-disposes a learner to choose to behave in a certain way (G. Gagne, 1985). Gagne describes attitudes as having cognitive, affective and behavioral components that interact. Attitudes influence the choices that learners make. For instance, an individual’s dislike for math may cause him to choose to avoid all courses that contain a math component. A child who loves animals may choose to purchase a pet. Certainly attitudes play a strong role in learners’ motivation to initiate and persevere in learning. (p.68)

“… The basic idea of attitudes is captured in the idea of choosing to do something… they are generally “affective” in nature … [that is,] the “knowing why” … The most fundamental condition achievement of the affective component is provision of a role model … a respected person who demonstrates the desired behavior. (p.252)

“… Gagne (1985) underscores the utility of modeling as an instructional technique … [and] presents a four-step procedure for the use of human models in attitude learning:

a. Establish the appeal and credibility of the model.
b. Stimulate the learner’s recall of relevant knowledge and concepts.
c. Demonstration or communication of desired action by the model.
d. Demonstration or communication of reinforcement of the model as a result of the action taken.

“… According to Gagne, in addition to particular role-playing methods that may be employed, such as case studies and simulations, conventional group discussion is also a legitimate means for practice of a desired behavior. In a discussion, as each student contributes from the point of view of the attitude at hand, that student serves as a role model for the attitude. The discussion leader has the opportunity to provide reinforcement for the discussion participant/role model, and as the discussion progresses, the attitude may be expressed with more and more precision.

“… the most powerful reinforcers seem to be those that we can call “natural consequences.” The thanks from someone you have helped, the safe passage through a dangerous situation, and observation of the benefit gained from help you supplied are all much more direct and powerful reinforcers than praise or reward from a teacher. In fact, in many situations, praise and reward can be worse than no attempt to reinforce at all.” (p.256)

(See also Attitude Is A Choice II. By the way, according to research, “persuasive messages” and “dissonance” are two other fundamental sources of attitude change besides “modeling” (p.252).)

First, to ‘Analyze’ audience, context and content is more appropriate than to ‘Explore’ the same. Second, to ‘Evaluate’ is also more appropriate than to ‘Track’. And ‘e’ (Evaluate) should sit right in the middle of the cycle like the spoke in a wheel. All stages shall move to and fro ‘e’ because the designer/technologist need to continually evaluate the effectiveness of every stage (whether ‘Analyze’, ‘Strategize’, ‘Produce’, ‘Rollout’ or ‘Influence’). And to be more complete, instead of KirkPatrick’s Reactions, Learning, Transfer and Results, the last stage should be based on Stufflebeam’s CIPP model — ‘Context’, ‘Inputs’, ‘Process’, and ‘Products’.

Finally, with new insights from a new paper by Drs C & H, the Strategize (S) and Influence (I) stages also need to be fine-tuned. The design of one or more activities (called ’spark’ by Dr Gilly Salmon, and termed Interactions in my model) is of primary importance — it motivates the student into action and learning (Motivate). As the C & H paper noted, the “designed activity should be situated in the real world context and should always be associated with an identifiable outcome (e.g. the activity of building a bridge has an identifiable outcome, that is the built bridge).”

There should also be rules of engagement, complementary roles as well as timely scaffolding (Engage) to encourage meaningful interactions, exchange of useful information and eventual development of community and personal identity (ties back to the Strategize (S) stage). Finally, appropriate knowledge tools (to use a Jonassen word, “mindtools”) are also necessary to enable the learners to collaboratively make sense of knowledge learnt/found and to construct new/integrated/transformed knowledge (Empower).

TO SEE A SUCCESSFUL COP (Community of Practice) in real life that embodies these principles and those in the C & H paper, check out Wikipedia.

The community there has good leaders and the right ingredients — good Situatedness, Interdependence, Commonality and Infrastructure. It is a living example of a very vibrant online community. The online outcome (a free open-content encyclopedia on the Web) actually better represents the community’s collective knowledge and perspectives, and is much more accessible to all members of the community than is possible for a F2F community.

Members collaboratively share and construct knowledge (in hundreds of thousands of quality articles — a highly complicated task which normally cannot be accomplished through F2F organizations, let alone communities). A wiki such as MediaWiki is their tool. The site’s Policies & Guidelines are their rules. All members take on the roles of writers AND editors. Anyone can change what anyone else wrote. Some (about 200-300 out of many thousands — a significantly larger pool of participants than is possible F2F), however, are administrators who can ban IP addresses and protect pages from abuse.

Finally, because of all these as well as their common goal (or object) and complementary strengths, they (the subjects) all have a common identity now — they are known as Wikipedians. And I’ve just become a new member of the community.

(See also Replies To Common Objections in Wikipedia and About Wikipedia in my MediaWiki.)

(Click here to see full-sized mindmap.)

STARTED ON TWO interesting and complementary modules this semester (late July to end Oct): Training Methods & Strategies and Multimedia Development I. Thanks to a great idea by new project mate L., i’m now looking forward to working on an old subject dear to my heart with an unusual and fun perspective: a comic one!

Read a very interesting book by Scott McCloud over the last few days. As the overview on the author’s website put it, “A 215-page comic book about comics that explains the inner workings of the medium and examines many aspects of visual communication along the way. Understanding Comics was a Harvey and Eisner winner, was praised in The New York Times, Publishers Weekly and Wired, and is in over 13 languages. A favorite of interface, game and Web designers despite the fact that it doesn’t mention computers once!”

SOME CHOICE QUOTES from the book, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud:

“…you might say that before it’s projected, film is just a very very very very SLOW comic!

“Why…are…we…so…involved? Why would anyone young or old, respond to a cartoon as much or or more than a realistic image? … cartooning as a form of amplification through simplication…. Simplifying characters and images toward a purpose can be an effective tool for storytelling in any medium. Cartooning isn’t just a way of drawing, it’s a way of seeing! …”

“But, most striking of all is the substanitial presence of the fifth type of transition, a type rarely seen in the west. Aspect-to-aspect transitions have been an integral part of Japanese mainstream comics almost from the very beginning. Most often used to establish a mood or a sense of place, time seems to stand still in these quiet contemplative combinations…. Rather acting as a bridge between separate moments, the reader here must assemble a single moment using scattered fragments…

“The art of comics is as subtractive an art as it is additive. And finding the balance between too much and too little is crucial to comics creators the world over.”

Many people tend to veer from one extreme to another extreme, often following the letter rather than the spirit of the law. More than three years ago, behaviorist or cognitivist Computer Based Training (CBT) used to be the norm. Now, behaviorist terms have become taboo in many circles. The buzzwords now are almost all constructivist: “collaboration”, “problem-based learning”, “experiential learning”, “service learning”, and so on.

Yet, sometimes, wouldn’t constructivist approaches can confuse more than teach? And didn’t Ragan point out in his paper, Good Teaching Is Good Teaching, regardless of the label one may use?

BRENDA MERGEL NOTED in her paper [paraphrased], Instructional Design & Learning Theory, “Behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism — what works where and how do we knit everything together to at least give ourselves some focus in our approach to instructional design? First of all, we do not need to abandon the systems approach, but we must modify it to accommodate constructivist values. We must allow circumstances surrounding the learning situation to help us decide which approach to learning is most appropriate. It is necessary to realize that some learning problems require highly prescriptive solutions, whereas others are more suited to learner control of the environment. (Schwier, 1995)

“In A Manifesto for a Constructivist Approach to Technology in Higher Education, Jonnassen & Mayes stressed that it is still important to consider the context before recommending any specific methodology. They identified three levels of knowledge acquisition and matched them with appropriate learning approaches:

1. Introductory. Learners are at the initial stages of schema assembly and integration. They have very little directly transferable prior knowledge about a skill or content area. Classical instructional design is most suitable because it is predetermined, constrained, sequential and criterion-referenced. The learner can develop some anchors for further exploration.

2. Advanced. This is an intermediary stage. Constructivist approaches may be introduced.

3. Expertise. The learner can make intelligent decisions within the learning environment. A constructivist approach would work well.

“Reigeluth’s Elaboration Theory which organizes instruction in increasing order of complexity and moves from prerequisite learning to learner control may work in the eclectic approach to instructional design, since the learner can be introduced to the main concepts of a course and then move on to more of a self directed study that is meaningful to them and their particular context.

“After having compared and contrasted behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism, Ertmer & Newby (1993) feel that the instructional approach used for novice learners may not be efficiently stimulating for a learner who is familiar with the content. They do not advocate one single learning theory, but stress that instructional strategy and content addressed depend on the level of the learners. Similar to Jonassen, they match learning theories with the content to be learned:

“… a behavioral approach can effectively facilitate mastery of the content of a profession (knowing what); cognitive strategies are useful in teaching problem-solving tactics where defined facts and rules are applied in unfamiliar situations (knowing how); and constructivist strategies are especially suited to dealing with ill-defined problems through reflection-in-action.

1. Behavioral. … tasks requiring a low degree of processing (e.g., basic paired associations, discriminations, rote memorization) seem to be facilitated by strategies most frequently associated with a behavioral outlook (e.g., stimulus-response, contiguity of feedback/reinforcement).

2. Cognitive. Tasks requiring an increased level of processing (e.g., classifications, rule or procedural executions) are primarily associated with strategies having a stronger cognitive emphasis (e.g., schematic organization, analogical reasoning, algorithmic problem solving).

3. Constructive. Tasks demanding high levels of processing (e.g., heuristic problem solving, personal selection and monitoring of cognitive strategies) are frequently best learned with strategies advanced by the constructivist perspective (e.g., situated learning, cognitive apprenticeships, social negotiation.

“Ertmer & Newby believe that the strategies promoted by different learning theories overlap (the same strategy for a different reason) and that learning theory strategies are concentrated along different points of a continuum depending of the focus of the learning theory – the level of cognitive processing required.

“The duo’s suggestion, that theoretical strategies can complement the learner’s level of task knowledge, allows the designer to make the best use of all available practical applications of the different learning theories. With this approach, the designer is able to draw from a large number of strategies to meet a variety of learning situations.”

WHILE BROWSING IN THE LIBRARY two weeks ago, i happened to pick up a book published in 2002 by Diana Laurillard entitled, “Rethinking University Teaching — a framework for the effective use of learning technologies”. Was quite excited when i learnt about Laurillard’s five media forms for supporting active learning. They overlap almost neatly with Nichani’s four Interactive Visual Explainers (2003).

‘NARRATIVE’ is the same in both, ‘Interactive’ is equivalent to ‘Explorative’ and ‘Adaptive’ to ‘Simulative’. Laurillard’s ‘Communicative’ and ‘Productive’ are not in Nichani’s classification, but they coincide with the ‘Collaborative’ and ‘Constructive’ in my extrapolation last year (see ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ III).

Just now, during a lunchtime talk, when the manager of the eLearning Competency Centre mentioned Dr Ruth Clark’s Four Learning Architectures, my curiosity was piqued. Other than the different names, ‘Receptive’, ‘Directive’, ‘Explorative’ and ‘Guided Discovery’ seem to be identical to Nichani’s ‘Narrative’, ‘Instructive’, ‘Explorative’ and ‘Simulative’!

Just whose classification came first? Did one know about the other’s work? Or is this a case of great minds think alike?

i began to search for information on Clark and her work. Found a number of interesting things, among them: Clark’s learning architectures have been adopted by Cisco in its learning objects model. Clark also has a book entitled E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. Must borrow this book soon.

These days, as i continued working on the InfoGraphics Design projects for my part-time studies, different theories are beginning to fall into place as in a jigsaw puzzle. Gagne’s Nine Instructional Events (1985), Keller’s ARCS model (1987), Lave & Wenger’s situated learning (1991), Clark’s architectures (2000), Nichani’s explainers (2003), Laurillard’s media forms (2002), Miller’s Cognitve Load theory (1956), Merrill’s Component Display Theory (1983), Reigeluth’s Elaboration Theory (1983), Horton’s layering tactics (2000) and Wurman’s chunking tactics (2001).

After so many wild goose chases, the trail is finally getting hot!

Excited that Information Design was finally introduced to e-learning practitioners, and Maish has done it very well, with lots of diverse and interesting examples. Particularly liked revisiting the first two — Charles Joseph Minard’s Mapping Napoleon’s March, 1861 and The New York Times’ From One Hotel Guest Many Infections (SARS) infographic.

Concerned though about a few probable issues: (1) The examples were mostly CBT-like, with little indications of actual information design principles at work (perhaps not enough time), (2) Maish’s focus had been wholly on visual design and nothing on the writing, (3) How are we going to teach this complex stuff to our academic staff (or students) who have very little time and motivation?

Is this a problem of academic theory vs. industry practice again?

LATER, BACK in the office, browsed the Features section of Maish’s elearningpost.com site and found a very neat classification by Maish Nichani and Venkat Rajamanickam called Interactive Visual Explainers (IVE) which postulates that interactivity in an interactive visual explainer can be either (1) narrative, (2) instructive, (3) explorative, or (4) simulative.

Interestingly, with a recent Learning Object competition organised by the e-Learning Competency Centre, the Cisco Learning Object (CLO, a legacy of technical writing and a derivative of Information Mapping) has now become a key reference point for e-learning practitioners in Singapore.

However, when i map what i understand about Bloom’s taxonomy to the IVE classification and the content types in CLO, i see some inadequacies in the two classifications to enable learning of higher order skills in Bloom’s taxonomy:

*E.g., structured discussions, virtual chat, virtual classroom, collaborative mindmapping
**E.g., Jonassen’s mindtools and constructive learning environments (CLEs)

Aha! One up for ‘Academia’?

(See also ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ and ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ II.)

Each letter in the word stands for one of the six recommended stages, namely:
- Explore: Audience, Context & Content
- Strategize: Identity, Interactions & Information
- Produce: Prepping, Building & Testing
- Rollout: Time, Cost & Scope
- Influence: Motivation, Engagement & Empowerment
- Track: Reactions, Learning, Transfer & Results

BASICALLY, E.S.P.R.I*.T. seeks to integrate the traditional A.D.D.I.E. model (Explore) with:
- Clement Mok’s Information Architecture model (Strategize),
- Kelly Goto’s Web ReDesign workflow (Produce),
- the well-known ‘project management triangle’ (Rollout),
- Gilly Salmon’s e-Moderating model (Influence) and
- Kirkpatrick’s 4-level Evaluation model (Track).

In particular, the Influence stage in E.S.P.R.I*.T. injects a very crucial people-oriented element into the system-oriented ADDIE model.

(See also ASPRIe for CoPs.)

For some time, many researchers and practitioners would support one school of thought and criticize the other school of thought. For them, this is often a mutually exclusive (’either or’) choice and not an inclusive (’both can do’) choice.

The Reflective Practitioner is probably another paradox.

…more later

(See also Discipline vs. Freedom I and Discipline vs. Freedom III.)

This is getting clearer and clearer, especially after the video conferencing session that we had with G., S., et al, on one side (in Australia) and with our in-house Instructional Design (ID) program participants on our side (in Singapore) yesterday morning.

THERE WAS a certain unexpressed angst in the air. The Australian team knew that they have put together a great ID program, but somehow participation level in the online program was quite low, especially in the online forum. We the Singaporean team knew that we have made available to our academic staff one of the best programs (if not the best) in Australia and we have tried our best to be good co-facilitators — but the question remained.

Our academic staff participants knew that they wanted to learn. But somehow they couldn’t bring themselves to plough through the excellent papers and then post their insights or comments in the forum. They cannot yet see how the theory or insights gleened from the papers would help them design good online learning courses in practice. And they cannot understand why they were not taught ID in a jiffy.

This evening, after a virtual chat with B. and M., it gets even clearer. It’s a problem of ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ — ‘practice’ vs. ‘theory’. It’s through no conscious fault of any party. Yes, good ‘practice’ flows from sound ‘theory’. However, like the proverbial East and West, ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ are still having difficulties trying to ‘meet’ — even with much vaunted constructivist approaches.

More about this later. Gotta run for Bible study group now.

(imported from Blogger.com, see also ‘Industry’ vs. ‘Academia’ II)