The Ant and the Water Buffalo

Being a student of Chinese, I have learned many great lessons from my studies. One I will always remember is attributed to Confucius, China’s most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist. He said “If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.” (Confucius Quotes) I have found that I can learn from everyone around me. The wider the variety of people I associate with, the larger the number of lessons that I harvest. I have learned to look for training, education and lessons in all directions rather than just focus on the formal education channels. The formal education channels are being greatly challenged by all we see around us.

“In an era where it is possible to photoshop images, facebook people, and access an endless stream of knowledge by googling, the Internet Age offers both great promise and enormous challenges for educators.” (www.openeducation.net) The challenge is for educators and learners as well.

According to the Carnegie Foundations, “Everything is up for grabs—from the design of new curriculum; to who teaches; to how individual educators are prepared, enter the field of teaching and are rewarded for their work; to even who actually gets to run the schools. In response, we need to consider fundamental changes in the ways in which we support the development of school professionals and the tools, materials, ideas and evidence with which they work at every level of the education spectrum.” (Carnegie Foundation 1)

I applaud the great thinkers and educators for their effort at redefining the educational experience of this and future generations. As they continue to conceptualize twentieth century education models, we at LearningZen are engaged in creating the tools that will open portals of learning to the masses. We agree with the authors of Opening Up Education when they stated that too many innovative educational endeavors still remain in isolated and closed domains, rarely shared across classrooms, disciplines, or institutions. “Thus, educators find it difficult to advance their pedagogical practice and knowledge as a community.” (Iiyoshi and Kumar, MIT Press, 2008)

John Seely Brown, a visiting scholar and advisor to the provost at the University of Southern California and independent co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for Edge Innovation said “The unrelenting velocity of change means that many of our skills have a shorter shelf life, suggesting that much of our learning will need to take place outside of traditional school and university environments. We need to reconceptualize twentieth-century education models, and at the same time reinforce learning outside of formal schooling.” (Carnegie Foundation 2).



LearningZen will continue to build the premier site for study, education and collaboration. We realize our expertise is in the creation of free and easy to use tools for delivery of educational content. To return to my initial theme of Chinese wisdom, Lao Tzu, another great Chinese philosopher said “an ant on the move does more than a dozing water buffalo.” (Lao Tzu) Though we are small, we are definitely on the move. We welcome your comments and suggestions and will take them seriously, that is our commitment to the community.



Dennis Phillips, Ph.D.

The Times They Are A-Changin

So goes the popular song by Bob Dylan. The rate of change continues to increase too. I have found that the Internet gives us daily changes to the tools and tricks available to communicate, teach, learn, google and tweet. Even our language is changing as we try to stay on top of the ever changing landscape. The marketing slogan “Reach out and Touch Someone” has never been more possible in so many different ways.

How does one keep it all straight? I have recently discovered a web site that tries to help. Jane Hart, a Social Media and Learning Consultant of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies has created Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day. Every day she selects an item of e-learning interest and spotlights it on her site. LearningZen.com was recently spotlighted. Jane’s site is very informative and also provides several ways to keep current on the new tools available in the e-learning world.

In Jane’s own words “Having set up a number of web portals in the past, in 2007 I established the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies - now one of the world's most-visited and most popular learning sites on the Web. I am the author of a number of blogs including the popular Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day, where I post a daily item of e-learning interest. You can keep up to date with what I am bookmarking in a number of ways.”

We are glad to be in a community of passionate people such as Jane Hart. Learning and teaching is something that we all believe will have a positive impact on the world we live in. And we believe that there should be ways to study, educate and collaborate that are free and easy to use. That is what LearningZen is all about.



Dennis Phillips, Ph.D.

Managing the Training Investment

As an employer, I am faced with a growing challenge in the area of training. My challenges are not unique. They include reduced budgets, limited resources, limited learner time, rising costs of training and so forth. Utilizing e-learning resources is one way to overcome these challenges.

Large organizations with large budgets may not be hit as hard by these challenges. But for the organization of a few hundred employees, providing training can be a true challenge. As a result, less training is being delivered and the training that is being done is focused on mandatory and job-specific training.

Margaret Driscoll, Ed.D. and Matthew Dirks, Ph.D. recently published an article in Training (e-networks; Are You an E-Learning MVP?) that listed 10 tips for expanding e-learning in an organization. I have listed the tips below with a brief summary of how LearningZen can help achieve the objective.

Tip #1: Use training as an incentive and benefit for retaining and recruiting employees. Employees want to remain competitive and seek organizations that help them accomplish that goal. LearningZen provides an easy to use certification feature that will allow you to reward those employees that have mastered the content.

Tip #2: Use e-learning to drive adoption. Initial effort to change or adopt new ideas is generally not enough and can be supported by a training effort. LearningZen provides an easy to use course delivery system that will allow you to create additional material to assist in the adoption of organizational initiatives.

Tip #3: Use e-learning to address busy schedules. Bundling training in easy to digest courses will encourage people to start the process. Anything that over 60 minutes meet adoption challenges. LearningZen was designed for courses that were less than 60 minutes in length. Many of the courses that have been created can be completed in 15 minute, very digestible chunks.

Tip #4: Use the right technology. There are so many alternatives to the traditional face-to-face approach, many of which are very cost effective. LearningZen is completely free. And for organizations that have proprietary material, the cost of producing secure courseware will be extremely affordable.

Tip #5: Master and share the tools. The right tools can also be quite easy to use and with minimal practice can be mastered by all. LearningZen was designed so that if a person can create a word document, he or she can create a LearningZen course. There is no need to write HTML, or other code. In fact, material can easily be cut and pasted from existing electronic media.

Tip #6: Move all or part of a traditional instructor-led class online. Even with online training, collaboration tools, forums and online discussions can provide the hand-holding that some require to master the topic. LearningZen’s forums and collaboration allows for on-going discussions of any topic. Each course also has a forum so that those that have taken the course can interact with the instructor and other students.

Tip #7: Design for reuse. It is amazing what free material is available. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Taking material that already exists and creating a LearningZen course is a snap, thus reducing the investment to the organization.

Tip #8: Extend the impact of online learning classes. With the right tools, trainees can easily be given refresher courses and by keeping people current, the cost of training can be kept under control. LearningZen can easily be used for follow-p courses and additional discussions.

Tip #9: Tone down the bells and whistles. Keep it simple and cost effective. After all, mastering the content is the goal, not impressing the student with our great creative skills. LearningZen’s format is easy to keep things simple. Use of existing video and images makes the process quite simple.

Tip #10: Teach others how to use templates and style sheets. Sharing content and tricks for creating courses can pay dividends to the organization. At LearningZen we believe in “eating our own dog food” so to speak. You will find many courses and tutorials built within LearningZen to teach new users the skills need to create effective courses.

LearningZen was created to provide a free, easy-to-use tool for anyone that desires to deliver content and certify that it was learned. LearningZen has been in beta about a month and the response is gratifying. We are looking for experts and advisors to help build awareness for the new community. The site is free for both learners and educators.

LearningZen has a course creation editor and template built into the system. It also hase an exam and certification component as well so learners have the ability to prove that learning took place and educators know whether the students mastered the content. Learners and educators also have the ability to collaborate and we have forums to help shape the site and provide feedback.

We are really excited about the site and hope you will join us as we try to revolutionize the learning community. If you have a passion for technology and education, we invite you to join us in this undertaking.



Dennis Phillips, Ph.D.

Shouldn't We All be Certified?

As an educator, I have long been concerned with the process and result of grading. Not the least of which was my concern for grade inflation. I have seen some creative approaches to this problem. One I would mention is an approach by an institution to evaluate faculty by the grades they give. The standard is that the grade point average of all students in the class must be no greater than 3.2. This pretty well forces the instructor to grade on the curve. While that might not be a bad thing, society has pretty well told academic institutions that we should not fail our students. We have a tough time with failure in academia. Academia would much rather pass the part about telling a student that he or she sucks on to the employers. It is easier that way.

In an opinion piece date May 6, 2009, Walter Williams of George Mason University stated that due to grade inflation, possessing a college degree often does not mean much in terms of basic skills. Here is part of what he said:

"Last year, the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) published results of their national survey titled "Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions." The survey questions were not rocket science. Only 21 percent of survey respondents knew that the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people" comes from President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Almost 40 percent incorrectly believe the Constitution gives the president the power to declare war. Only 27 percent knew that the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States. Remarkably, close to 25 percent of Americans believe that Congress shares its foreign-policy powers with the United Nations. Other questions asked included: "Who is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military?" "Name two countries that were our enemies during World War II." "Under our Constitution, some powers belong to the federal government. What is one power of the federal government?" Of the 2,508 nationwide sample of Americans taking ISI's civic-literacy test, 71 percent failed; the average score on the test was 49 percent." (Williams)

College graduates, although gaining ever rising grade point averages, cannot pass basic skill tests. He recommended that employers deflate grades of applicants by one letter and interpret a C grade as an F. I would make another suggestion. There should be a certification for the basic skills needed to perform as an entry level employee. Who cares what the GPA is if the person can’t form a complete sentence, solve a basic math problem, or interpret data? For some reason, educational institutions want us to believe that a degree means something, but they seem to want to give one to anyone that can pay the tuition.

 

In order to get my Ph.D. I was required to take a battery of tests on educational theory and practice and then compose and defend a dissertation. My grade point average mattered for nothing if I couldn’t pass the comprehensive exams and convince five committee members of the validity of my research and conclusions. That to me is certification to the max.

One of the great features of LearningZen is the ability of the master to certify the student. Nobody questions Plato as he was "certified" by his master and mentor Socrates. Shouldn’t we all be certified? Dennis Phillips, Ph.D.