Learning to be effective

After proposing an eventual M.Ed in Informal Learning last month, I created a new category on this blog: affecting learners to explore one facet of this competency. Since then I've explored four facets of pedagogical effects on learners:

• More curiosity
  
• Influencing self-confidence
  
• Cultivating self-motivation
  
• More creativity in your presence

Having effects on others can only be learned by feedback. We can only answer the question "How did I do?" if the people "we did it to" will tell us how we did. Knowing about the effect is almost entirely unrelated to having the actual effect. Trying to be effective with good intentions, clear concepts and articulate explanations "puts the cart before the horse".

We can learn by discovering what effect we're having, what change in effect occurs when we change our approach and what different effects occur among different learners. One way to learn from feedback is a scorecard that gets annotated by the learners we are affecting. Electronic voting systems can be polled with these scales also.

To use these metrics, the learners need to become "informed consumers". Power needs to be given to them to judge the effects on them precisely. We need to accept the increased accountability implied by measuring up to these standards.

We have an Academic Effect on learners when we make them dependent on our power, controls or authority. They will feel damaged in the ways I described in Asking to be kidnapped. When we have a Pedagogical Effect, the learners will be more curious, self confident, self motivated and creative.

We have a Hypocritical Effect when we contradict what we say with how we act, react or decide to respond. We lose our credibility as it becomes obvious that we cannot be taken at our word or trusted to provide an example worthy of imitation. When we have a Productive Effect, the learners have followed our example, tried out what they saw us do and now get the same results we produce.

We have a Controlling Effect when we trash the relationships with the learners. We may complain about them or blame them as if we have no effect on them. We may criticize, bribe or disgrace them in order to subdue their adversarial tactics. When we have a Relationship Effect, we are getting everyone understood. We are speaking their minds.

We have an Isolating Effect when we disregard the glaring disconnects. We fail to tie things together or develop context of their uses for the learning. The educational experience appears to have no relevant connections and we appear unrelated to the learners. When we have a Network Effect, the vast number of connections bring about emergent outcomes. Small efforts are amplified into big repercussions and the results we want fall into place easily.

By making ourselves accountable in these ways, the learners will show more respect to us, get more value from us and do more learning on their own in the future.

Technorati tags: effectiveness, learning, instructional design

More creativity in your presence

If you're learning from this, you're being creative. Making sense of new information is creating links, frameworks or containers in your own mind. You may have been given this information, but you are fabricating how it ties it into to your own network of memorable experiences.

If you wonder where creative ideas and inspired actions come from, you're being creative. With a picture of being open to receive what comes to you, you are in a frame of mind to get more creative. More experiences of vast possibilities and "freedom right now" will fall into place.

If you're thinking this experience is like something else, you're being creative. It will occur to you to use a metaphor to describe this. You will compare how this happens to other processes and see parallels between different ways this functions for you.

If you see learning happening to you, you're being creative. When you notice how insights dawn on your mind or come as sudden realizations, you'll experience this more often. You'll stop trying so hard to learn something and simply let it occur to you.

If you're feeling fluid, you're being creative. You will see others providing openings to pour yourself into. You will get more ways to express yourself, respond to others and share your gifts for other's benefit.

If you're moved by what shows up in your world, you're being creative. You will observe synchronicities that are showing you what's missing, overlooked or excluded by you. You'll receive better ideas, questions and hypotheses to explore when you're idle, daydreaming or awakening from sleep.

If you're grateful for what you're given to say, see and think about, you're being creative. You will find yourself basking in the flow of happenstance. One good thing after another will occur to you easily.

When you are being creative like this, others will become creative too. You will be affecting learners to learn more informally by amplifying their creative resources to freely explore, relate, discover and collaborate.

Technorati tags: informal learning, free range learning, creativity

Cultivating self motivation

Why bother? What's in it for you? How do you find this to be valuable? What difference does it make to you? How do you find the time and energy to pursue this? What does this do for you? What is worthwhile about this for you? How does this satisfy you or fulfill an ambition of yours? What are you getting out of this regardless of the recognition and rewards?

These are questions of intrinsic motivation. When we have great answers to these questions, we experience lots of self-motivation. I suspect that intrinsic motivation is contagious. When we obviously are fulfilled by what we are doing, others catch on and find their inner satisfactions too.

Numerous studies have shown that we lose intrinsic motivation around external rewards. Getting grades cheapens our inspired effort, creative outpouring or personal expression. Getting paid weakens our subsequent initiative to "go the extra mile". Getting gold stars downgrades our exuberance into people pleasing tactics.

I've proposed that cultivating more informal learning will affect learners' self motivation:

Effect on self motivation: The way we come across can free people from seeking approval or make them more needy, dependent and reactive to disapproval. We can restore their intrinsic motivation or dismiss their need to be inspired. They will show signs of doing their own thing with satisfaction or playing our game out of desperation.

One way to cultivate self motivation is to keep the questions of personal satisfaction on each learner's mind. Being allowed to question the value of experiences is rewarding. Being expected to find answers to questions of self motivation disrupts "playing our game out of desperation".

We also cultivate self motivation when we give learner viable choices. They can only make up their mind by going within or second-guessing the authority figure who dispenses external rewards. They can either do what they feel like or what they should choose according to someone else's expectations. As they become familiar with the choice between pleasing themselves and pleasing others, they can realize their intrinsic value.

When we expect others to come to these realizations, becoming self motivated happens faster and more easily. Yet we can only take others as far as we have journeyed ourselves. It takes self-motivation to induce self motivation in others. Cultivating self motivation in learners begins with having your own great answers to the questions at the top of this post.

Technorati tags: motivation, informal learning, instructional design

What's going on here?

I'm from a different planet. We don't do this back home. We don't even have people who call themselves SME's, instructional designers, classroom teachers or professors. Why don't you stop this?

Don't you realize the harm you're doing? Can't you see that you're messing up learners severely when you do this thing you call "instructing". I realize it looks harmless to be well informed and sharing expertise. It also looks harmless to fill your planet's upper atmosphere with carbon. We'll just see about that!

Where I come from, learners have a wonderful process cycling inside themselves. We call it "learning". We all do it. No one is excluded or judged to be inferior at it. This process gets stronger and more resilient whenever it's trusted, valued and supported. We care for this process in everyone of us. Learning is precious to our thriving and essential to our surviving.

Each of us is learning from everything that happens to us. We come to our own realizations about anything we've puzzled about. We formulate better questions to ask from what we've already figured out. We change our minds and unlearn half truths "at the drop of a hat". We're told we have open minds because we are so receptive to things that don't make sense to us yet.

When any of us visit another planet, we come back home very disoriented. We've been through experiences of "not learning". We've had this wonderful process inside us get disregarded and belittled. We've been pictured like we don't learn from everything that happens to us. We've been treated like we couldn't come to our own realizations if we tried.

We return to our planet with our learning process damaged, fragile and unreliable. We have trouble formulating better questions or unlearning whatever half truths we've picked up. We start to experience strange maladies that other planets call "motivation problems", "a lack of self confidence", "learning disabilities" or "a lack of aptitude". We feel like we've come down with some kind of disease while visiting other so-called civilizations.

As we debrief our voyagers on their return, we learn what happened to them and how they got so disoriented. In every case, they've had a run in with some SME, instructor, teacher or professor. They sat in a classroom or through a multimedia presentation where content was delivered. They all got controlled by someone who thought he or she was no longer a learner. They got mistreated by someone with no clue about the wonderful process going on inside her or him. They all got taught.

Our Council of Elders met last night. We've banned further travel to Planet Earth until you've ceased this aberration of continual learning you call "formal instruction". You'll be amazed at how many problems with your educational system will disappear when you stop this insanity. We'll wait for you to come to your senses before we return.

Runyon Albacran, Starfleet Commander

Technorati tags: effectiveness, learning

Influencing self-confidence

People gain self-confidence in our presence when we are curious about them and their thought processes. By being interested in their lines of reasoning, they become more interesting, resourceful and capable of acting confident. If we are also curious about how their confidence grows, we will explore different ways to have an effect on their esteem, resolve and efficacy.

People with self-confidence can make choices on their own. They rely on their better judgment. They have broken an unhealthy dependency on others' advice. They have discovered their own priorities to be a better guide. They go within to get a sense of direction. They have experienced being reliable in relationships that trusted them, saw their potential and valued their contribution. They have outgrown their hysterical, fearful and guilt-based ways to lack self-confidence.

You may choose to disagree with this. Some people think they can build another's self-confidence without being curious and inquisitive. Others think confidence is something fascinating that people grow on their own. It's up to you to choose between fixing people's broken self-confidence with your advice or trusting the effect of your showing an interest in their growth and experiences.

There's two ways to send a message of encouragement to people in need of more self confidence. One way is very direct and tells them to take pride in their efforts and to act more confident. The other way indirectly sends a message that increases their confidence by trusting them to make choices on their own. As you make up own mind as to whether a direct or indirect approach works best for you, consider which approach I'm using with you.

Some people see self-confidence as highly contagious. When they have enough confidence in themselves to show confidence in other people, the others become more confident. They let people catch on to where they are coming from, how they come across and how they see those others.

Others see self-confidence as highly elusive. They are plagued by people oscillating between self pity and grandiosity; too little and too much confidence. They cannot get others to find the middle ground or get the pendulum to stop swinging wildly. They know that other's self confidence has nothing to do with them or their own outlook. They disregard where they are coming from personally, how they come across and how they see the others.

I'm confident you can work through these issues and choose the ways to have a positive effect on others' confidence that make the most sense to you.

Technorati tags: confidence, influence, emergent learning

The effects of business models

Harold Jarche has been encouraging us to question the industrial models for business that are still in use. (It's the model stupid, Management is the problem, How our structures shape us). As more people discover the effects of current business models on themselves, their communities and the environment, the impetus and support for change will increase. Meanwhile the proponents and defenders of the "big business", "shareholder wealth" and "corporate greed" models will continue to spin their self-congratulatory story.

The effects created by antiquated (centralized, command & control, top down, hierarchal, short tail) models are very similar to the negative effects of formal instruction on learners. Let's see if you can discover what those similar effects are.

If a model is closed to outside inputs, criticisms and contradictory perspectives, does that have the effect of increasing stability or the effect of inviting disaster?

If a model is providing consistent information from a centralized source, does that have the effect of getting everyone on the same page or silencing the community of diverse contributors?

If a model is generating wealth for shareholders, does that have the effect of enhancing market reputation or increasing public resentment?

If a model presumes to maintain control over "powerless pawns in the system", does that have the effect of structuring effective lines of communication and accountability, or the effect of eviscerating most people's curiosity, confidence, motivation and creativity.

For more about changing models see:

The Long Tail of formal instruction

Moving into the long tail

High performance networks solve the problems

Well marked exits

Technorati tags: business models, change models

More curiosity

I wonder how learners come by more curiosity. Do you suppose it's contagious? Perhaps they get to wondering when someone else wonders out loud when they listen or in print as they read. I wonder if curiosity can be learned by example. Perhaps there is more curiosity after someone has demonstrated being curious and full of questions.

I'm questioning the effects we have on learners' curiosity. I don't know what makes people have more curiosity. I don't even know if we can make learners be more inquisitive. Perhaps curiosity is an autonomous function that cannot be influenced by others. On the other hand, curiosity might be totally dependent on how the learner is seen, related to and treated with information by other learners.

I'm amazed at how inquisitive youngsters are. They are full of questions and undeterred by a grownup's lack of fascination. I wonder if curiosity is a natural born trait that gets stifled by socialization and testing. I'd be amazed if teaching people "there's one right answer" does not have an effect on their curiosity.

I wonder if curiosity is irrepressible and we're merely pretending to be disinterested and bored. I wonder how it's even possible for someone to have their mind made up and say they have no further questions. Isn't everything too complex and mysterious to ever be so confident and closed minded?

I wonder if all this has made you more curious than a list of bullet points about having the effect of "increasing curiosity" like:

• think with questions
• wonder out loud
• say what you don't know
• demonstrate fascination and innocence
• raise doubts a dilemmas
  

Technorati tags: curiosity,

Affecting other learners

What effect do you have on the readers of your blog? What other ways could you affect them? What effect does it have to think of yourself as a learner like the rest of us? How might other learners affected by your thinking "you're not a learner: you're an expert, author or professor?"

These are questions about affecting other learners. The effects you're having on learners is something that can be learned, but cannot be taught to you. These effects have to be discovered for yourself. If you're a totally free range learner, that's all I need to say. You can take it from here and discover answers to every question about the effects you have on other learners.

If you're like me, you experience value in the combination of structure and personal freedom. I like guides on the side of my own exploration. I have many uses for frameworks to organize my discoveries. I don't need to be told what to think, but it helps to be given structures to think with. I am more likely to uncover what effects I am having on other learners if I have some ideas about what I'm looking for and how to discern what I find. Frameworks even help me formulate better questions for my own explorations.

Here's the first of many frameworks for discerning our effects on other learners. This one is the most straightforward. It deals with the most immediate effects on learning. This framework raises many questions.

Effect on curiosity: After we say or do anything, other learners will be more or less curious. We can feed or starve their sense of wonder and fascination. They will show signs of inquisitiveness or boredom. We can make their future seem like a mystery or the same old story.

Effect on self confidence: Our conduct can change how powerful other learners feel. What we say can increase their sense of efficacy, validity and self respect or diminish all that. Other learners will end up feeling more resourceful or more insecure. We can strengthen or weaken their capacity for feedback, criticism and contradictory outlooks.

Effect on self motivation: The way we come across can free people from seeking approval or make them more needy, dependent and reactive to dispproval. We can restore their intrinsic motivation or dismiss their need to be inspired. They will show signs of doing their own thing with satisfaction or playing our game out of desperation.

Effect on creativity: Whatever we say and do can either inspire variety or conformity. We give permission to deviate or threaten penalities to eliminate disagreement. We make it seem right to play with the meaning they create or right to play by the rules, established evidence and verified facts. We allow inventiveness or require adherence.

Having said all this, I'm now full of wonder about the effect that reading this had on your curiosity. I'm confident I can use what contradicts my understanding and wonder how resourceful you're feeling too. I'm curious how your motivation has been affected too. I wonder how creative you'll be about learning from this, making your own sense of it and inventing a personal approach to discovering the effects you're having on other learners.

Technorati tags: discovery learning, effectiveness, creativity, side effects