The Painting is Never Done

 

Imagine your life is one large painting canvas.  What part of it are you working on right now?  Are you focusing on a particular corner, or are you adding detail to several areas at once?

I don’t believe there is a correct answer.  There are times in life where we need to concentrate on specific areas.  Other times we need to step back and see if the entire painting is in balance. 

The truth is that we will probably never get everything “just right”.  But that’s okay.  There is no such thing as perfection.  What we call perfection today is meeting the standard.  Take, for instance, a “Perfect Game” in baseball.  The definition of a Perfect Game is that the opponent does not get any hits, there are no walks, and there are only 27 plate appearances (3 outs per inning times 9 innings).  There have been 23 Perfect Games in Major League Baseball at the start of the 2021 season.  That means 23 times, the pitcher or combination of pitchers, only faced 27 batters.  What if the standard got tighter?  What if we said that for a perfect game, there can be only strikes thrown?  And what if we said that the batter cannot ever hit the ball, not even if the contact results in an out such as a flyball that gets caught by the fielder?  You can see that the definition of the Perfect Game can be even more restrictive.  Chances are that after the first inning there would be no possibility of a Perfect Game.  And I haven’t even touched on the offensive side of the equation.  A Perfect Game offensively in baseball would never end.

Clearly, the definition of perfect is…well…imperfect.  But it does set a standard.  In life, we need to set our own standards for each area such as physical ability, cognitive ability, spirituality, communication, etc.  Then we can measure ourselves against those standards and determine if we need to “up our game” to make the picture clearer.

There will always be someone that is better than us in some respect.  The idea wouldn’t be to try to be like the standard that someone else set, but we can use others to help us set our own standards.  For instance, if we wanted to be better physically.  We could look at someone near our age and say that we wanted to be able to run as far and as fast as them.  Then, we can set ourselves on a training regimen that would get us to meet that standard.  And let’s say that we achieve the standard…does that mean that we are done?  We may see someone else that can do 50 pull-ups.  We have to decide if that is a standard we are wanting to go for.  The idea is that there is always something else to do.  But if we concentrate on one area, we may have to miss out on other areas.

We can’t be constantly worried about meeting a physical standard and neglecting the rest of ourselves.  If we stop learning or communicating with others, we may find ourselves alone, staring at our bodies in the mirror.  If we take our whole selves as a large picture, we can have a richer, fuller life. 

The painting of your life is never done.

How do you ensure that you are nurturing all parts of yourself?

The 3 "R's" Become the 4 "C's"

As Yuval Noah Harari stated in his book, 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century, one of the big changes that are needed involves what we teach in schools.  While reading, writing and arithmetic adequately prepared children to work in the industrial era, in the technological era vastly different skills, are needed.  We will be moving away from “right” and “wrong” answers, moving toward probabilities and likelihoods instead.  Workers of the future will need to seek out unique ways of solving problems and be able to justify those solutions to others.  The skills Harari says should be taught include:

• Critical Thinking
• Creativity
• Collaboration
• Communication

The question now becomes “how do we pivot?”  Our education system has many years of experience in the old way of thinking.  It’s chock full of lesson plans, tests, curricula, and teachers that are familiar with the 10-month timeframe to “teach” what is needed for the students to move to the next step in the process.  And when that process is done, out pops a unit of labor.  But that unit of labor needs to go into the world and find a way to fit in.  And if it can’t it has other choices to make. 

Let’s start with the assumption that children want to grow up to contribute to society.  To do that they will need to provide skills that society values (at least part of the society).

I believe the first step is to move from Students to Learners.  Students are people that attend educational institutions with Teachers.  While Learners are people trying to gain knowledge or skill by studying or practicing.  Do you notice the slight difference there? 

       Students                                              Learners      

                >Educational setting                       >Anywhere

                >Have teachers                               >Are responsible for their own education

What would that mean for Teachers?

Teachers need to become the coaches for the Learners.  They need to assist the Learners in identifying their goals and assist them in reaching those goals.  One problem with this scenario is each Learner will have different goals and timeframes.  While it’s easy for an Educational System to say Student A is going to be in Math from 8:00AM to 8:45AM, 4-days per week, one of the keys to Learning is obtaining the knowledge when and where it is needed.  Is a Teacher supposed to be available at 10:45PM if that is when the Learner needs assistance? 

I would argue that a key would be for the early part of education to involve allowing Learners to struggle.  Developing the muscle of grit (resilience) early in life goes a long way toward creating successful Learners.  If Learners get stuck in an issue and need help, they need to be able to try and figure it out on their own.  Maybe it involves contacting peers, checking online for solutions, or actually sitting in the discomfort and allowing their minds to work on the problem.  I have often been working on a crossword puzzle, getting stuck on a clue, leaving it for a while, and coming back to have the answer come easily.

Once we are able to “teach” Learners how to sit in the discomfort of not knowing or use other resources to answer their own questions, the next step will be to bring those skills to solving problems.  How do we do that?

My first thought would be to ask a simple question: “Who were all the people involved in making your last meal?” 

This would get us into the 4-C’s right away.  I think back to the Ted Talk from A. J. Jacobs wanted to thank everyone involved in creating his morning cup of coffee.  He started with the barista, went to the roaster, the farmer, the trucker, etc. and you can see that none of these people would be able to do their job without the other people.  Applying that to the last meal would allow the teacher to coach the Learner to think about other things that had to happen as well. 

Critical Thinking – While we might just think that a parent cooked the meal, coaching could push the Learner to think about

• how the parent got the food to be able to cook
• how the stove became hot 
  
• where the pans came from
• where the stove came from

I think you can see where this is going.  And each of those bullets above can be used to introduce new topics.  Such as, how does heat transfer from the stove to the pan?  Why doesn’t the stove get colder because we put cold food in the pan?

Creativity – By asking these questions, the teacher can push the Learner to come up with creative solutions.  They can ask where would you find similar things happening?  Where are things different?  For instance, let’s say we add electricity to a toaster oven.  The food inside gets hot.  But we also add electricity to a refrigerator and the food gets cold.  Why do we have such different results from the same process?

Collaboration – When it comes to producing the meal, there are several opportunities to talk about collaboration.  One would be just the collaboration of all the entities involved in creating the various items involved.  Then, how they have to work together to get the goods to the stores.  Next, how we all agree on this story of money (that could be a whole semester right there!).

And to take this to a meta-level, having the Learners work together to come up with the ideas also allows them opportunities to collaborate themselves.  They can determine how they are impacted by working with others.  Did they see things differently by getting another’s perspective?  How were they working together as a group to put their ideas out there?

Communication – The final part of the lesson would be around how to get their points across to others.  What seemed to work?  What did not work?  Whose ideas were you open to?  Why did their opinion sway you?  Why did other opinions not sway you? 

This model would allow for many of the other subjects currently taught to be incorporated into the lessons as well.  There are plenty of areas where science, math, economics, social science, history, geography, etc. can be added to the discussions to enrich the lessons being learned.  The key to this would be in the teachers being flexible in their approach to the lessons and adroitly identifying the “learning moments” in each meeting to ensure that they are not lost.  That will be difficult when the existing teachers have been raised in a system that used “sage on the stage” methods.  However, there are many great teachers out there that would love to get away from the “teaching to the test” mentalities that some education systems demand.

IF IT WAS EASY, WE’D ALL BE ROCKET SCIENTISTS

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” ~Albert Einstein 

We create heuristics to help us make sense of the world. It’s a shortcut. A way of easily putting things in buckets so that we can move on to other things. But that can also cause us to have to go back and re-think why things are the way they are in our minds. So, is that the most efficient way of getting things done? 

Let’s take meeting a person for the first time as an example. Before a word is spoken there are judgements made. 

 • What are they wearing (fashion-sense, proper fit, clashing colors, ethnic)? 

• Are they tall or short (if they are significantly different from “normal height” what was it like for them to be tall or short)? 

 • Are they overweight or skinny (do they have a self-control problem, are they vegetarian, do they work out a lot, take care of themselves, etc.)? 

Then we talk with them and either re-enforce our initial impressions or maybe start to have other impressions. 

 • Are they educated? 

• Do they have an accent? 

• Are they like someone else that we know? 

It may take some time for us to get to know them and determine if we like them, do we have common interests, etc. We may iterate on the above several times and move them into different boxes as we continue to learn more. 

 Now consider that what happened to you previously (either earlier in the day or your life) and how that shapes your attitude going into the conversation. One little thing may change your overall impression right from the start. (They are wearing a Yankees hat. That will cause some sort of immediate reaction either positive or negative.) 

You can see how complicated this can get. As we all get older and have more and more life experiences, we become even more complicated. People that we thought we liked several years ago, we suddenly find out that we don’t share the same view on some hotly debated topic, for instance. What does that do to the relationship? 

Professor Robin Dunbar’s research has shown that humans can maintain around 150 relationships and around 5 close relationships. So just imagine the number of “topic” areas and the number of positions that can be held on a topic (because there are usually more than 2) and then figure out for the 150 relationships you have, what are the chances that you actually agree with anyone on everything? 

We quickly get to recognize that we probably don’t agree with anyone 100% of the time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But you can see where this can cause friction in a relationship. And, since a lot of us (me included) are conflict avoidant, how we can have some hidden or repressed resentment. 

While we have these heuristics to help us, I am proposing that we step back a bit and slow down to process things more effectively rather than efficiently. To do that we need to: 

• Determine which battles we want to fight – Just because someone is a Yankees fan doesn’t make them a bad person (really!) 

• Be open to rethinking our own stance on issues – We only know a small portion of what there is to know of many of the issues of life. Taking time to listen to someone else’s ideas may give us additional information that would change our position if we let them. 

• Seek out opposing viewpoints – This is similar to the item above, but sometimes we have to actively search out other perspectives and not just hope they come our way. 

• Try something new – Make it a goal to try at least 1 new thing. You can do 1 new thing a week or a month, whatever suits you. But either gaining insight as to what it takes to do that can give you an appreciation for those that do it consistently or professionally. 

• Take time to think and rethink – Avoiding distractions to give your mind time to process all of the inputs is essential. Set aside time to write down your thoughts on a topic and send it to yourself a year in the future (there are ways of doing that in Gmail or Outlook) and see if your thoughts have changed over the time period. 

• Put time on your calendar to learn something new each week – If it’s scheduled, you have to do it right? 

We all have a lot to learn. Learning comes from finding that things aren’t as easy as they look. You need to have a bit of struggle to deeply understand a concept, an idea, or to get really good at something.

Why I Am No Longer Busy

A recent walk on this path prompted my thinking about today's topic.

Over the past 3 years or so, I have changed my response to “how are you?” I am no longer busy. Does this mean that I am no longer doing anything? Not at all. Having things to do is a normal part of life. We all have things that we need to do. I recently heard Susan David on Armchair Expert explain “busy” as a Meta-emotion. A meta-emotion is one that encompasses other emotions. That means that busy is: 

Stress-from having several meetings to prepare for and attend 

Anxiety-from not knowing if how we will get through this quarantine

Anticipation-of having time with friends and family

Sorrow-thinking about the loss of time or loved ones

Desire-to be able to go anywhere we want without health restrictions

Excitement-for new people or items in our lives

Boredom-from not wanting to get off the couch

Grateful-for the nouns (people, places, things and ideas) in our lives. 

 

When we are feeling all of these emotions at the same time, it’s easy to feel like life is moving at a million miles per hour. Having the ability to slow down and experience each emotion separately allows us to identify which emotion is most pressing at the moment. Each emotion is important but needs to be handled in a different manner. Allowing ourselves to try and deal with all emotions at once, in the same way, will cause us to be “busy.” My suggestion would be to step back and not see the forest but look at each of the trees that make up the forest. 

How is each of the trees showing up? Can you deal with each tree individually? If you are walking through a forest how would you do that? You would pass by each tree individually. So let’s handle our emotions individually. When someone asks you “how are you?” take a moment and assess yourself to determine which emotion is “leading” your life. If you can get a handle on that emotion (good or bad) it will allow you to work on other emotions that you may be experiencing as well. 

It’s been said that Stress (and Anxiety) is about living in the future and Depression (or Regret) is about living in the past. To be happy is to be in the present. I believe we need to not forget our past or only think about the future but we need to learn from our past and plan ahead. Keeping that in mind will help us to live a meaningful life. 

Don’t be busy; be aware of what you are feeling.

Applying Deliberate Practice to Online Courses

 

Last week I wrote about the steps to Create Education that Sticks.  With a lot of education taking place online for a number of reasons, I wanted to suggest some ideas for creating learning experiences in online courses.

 

The biggest hurdle for creating meaningful experiences is well…creating experiences.  Showing a video is one way of creating an experience but does that experience lead to learning?  And how do you know that?

 

• In one of my previous jobs as the online Learning Management System administrator, I had an internal customer that had created videos that demonstrated how to use a software package that is needed to request purchases.  The videos showed each click that was needed to find a vendor, determine if the product had been purchased before, determine the quantity previously purchased and make another purchase.  Pretty dry stuff.  They asked how they could test that the people taking this course actually understood what they had just watched.

•  My suggestion was that they have the students actually, step through the process and determine if they can use the software.  For instance, the question they can ask in the test is:  What is the address of the vendor with Vendor Code A123?  They can give 4 possible vendor names as the multiple-choice answers, however, the students would have to actually use the software to determine what the vendor address is.  There were hundreds of vendors available to choose from, so they could copy each of the questions and just change the Vendor Code, a couple of the addresses, and you could have many questions for the Learning Management System to choose from.  This would reduce the chances that students could "guess" at the answer and not really learn how to use the system.  If they did make a bunch of guesses, the passing criteria could be set such that they had to repeat the test.  And the Learning Management System could be set up to not repeat the same questions so there could be no "process of elimination."  Once they did THAT a couple of times, they would find it easier to just learn the software (i.e. pay attention to the video) than just try to pass the test.

 

• How about for other courses like biology?  Students could be asked to find a leaf of a plant and determine the biological classification.  They could be asked to create the process they used for finding the classification.  Once all the students had presented what they found and their process, they can develop their own process and use that to determine the classification for other plants.  That way they can determine if their process is sound or needs some adjusting.  Creating their own process is a powerful way of getting them away from memorizing and more toward becoming independent, critical thinkers.

• I was a math teacher at a High School.  On my first day, the department head told me that my main focus was to prepare the students for college.  With that, I set out teaching an Algebra class.  Using examples of where algebra shows up in real-life (e.g. If an apple costs $1 and an orange costs $2, how much would 4 apples and 3 oranges cost?), I would help the class change the actual objects to variables, and then see how that would work to find answers.  Then, I would give them examples to try on their own.  One day, the department head came in and told me that a parent called complaining that I didn't collect and grade the homework.  My response was, "I thought you wanted me to prepare them for college?  In college, there won't be anyone collecting their homework and grading it."  I also told him that I was testing their ability to think on their own and by giving them new problems to solve that they had not seen before, I was testing their knowledge of the material versus their ability to memorize and regurgitate what they were told.  By the end of the year, my classes had scored an average of 20 points higher than other classes on a standard test that was used by all of the Algebra classes at the school. 

 
While the Algebra example is not from an online course, the concept of deliberate practice is what we as educators can provide to assist students in gaining knowledge.
 

• One last example.  I had a colleague that provided nurses with an annual electrocardiogram (ECG) test.  The test was to show that the nurses could recognize some 20 heart rhythms.  The colleague was very protective of the test saying that if the answers got out, the nurses could cheat.  I asked what the goal of the exam was?  I was told it was to verify the 20 rhythms.  So, if they print out all 20 rhythms and learn all 20 so they are ready for the test, doesn't that accomplish the goal?  I said to make it more effective, you can get 40 different rhythms that are possibilities for being on the test and let them cheat away!  That way they are showing that they can recognize 40 rhythms instead of just the 20. 

 

It is very important to identify what the goal of the education is and then learn how to determine if that level of knowledge is met. 

Creating Education That Sticks

 

How do spiders learn to do this?

With all of the issues related to schools being closed and conducting classes online, there is a question about how effective these classes can be.  This post will talk about the education process.  I will cover how to do it effectively in an online setting in a future post.  Classes need to follow some principles of a good education.  These include:

·         Building on existing knowledge, experiences, and other classes

·         Reflect on experiences

·         Teaching models, frameworks, and concepts

·         Limit lesson to include 5-7 topics that you would like the student to grasp

·         Providing practice that includes critical thinking

 

Existing Knowledge, Experiences, and Other Classes

Were you ever told to write about anything you wanted and sat there staring at a blank screen or page?  But if someone hands you a topic sentence and you can explain what it means or expand on the topic it is much easier.  Similarly, if a student is receiving a totally new concept without having a context, they generally have a lot more difficulty in grasping the concept than if it relates to something they already have some knowledge about.  There are several ways of to accomplish that.

·         Have the students think of a specific topic about which they have knowledge (their favorite teacher)

·         Create an experience for everyone (show a video)

·         Link to other classes ("Recall from your cardiac class that cardiac cells have a property called automaticity…")

 

Reflect On Experiences

Through a structured reflection, students can begin to think more deeply about a topic.  Let's take the example from above regarding their favorite teacher.  Asking for the characteristics that made that teacher their favorite gets them to think more deeply about the characteristics that make good teachers.  

 

Models, Frameworks and Concepts

There may be some courses that have rules or facts associated with them.  Science, history, and language arts for instance.  These rules and facts may be important to the overall mastery of the topic, however, having a deeper knowledge of the framework will assist in putting the information to use in other contexts.  Students need to be able to move from one example to another and determine if the new issue fits into that model or not.  Models allow us to simplify thinking and (I would argue more importantly) apply that thinking to other topics.  For example, using an analogy about a baseball team to talk about the different roles that people play on a resuscitation team can get the point across about needing to be highly skilled in a particular area, as well as knowledgeable about other areas without having to be an expert in all areas.

 

Limit Learning to 5-7 topics

There have been many studies about how many items the human mind can retain.  For short-term memory, 3-5 is ideal.  (Think about phone numbers XXX-XXX-XXXX.)  Longer-term 5-7 is generally shown as the maximum for most of the population.  So if there are 15 items that need to be retained in order to get the overall concept, it will need to be broken up into smaller chunks.  I have heard several educators talk about needing to get all of the information into a single course.  To me, this does not make a lot of sense.  If students will not retain the information at a high volume, then forcing it on them is not going to help the situation.  If the goal is to get them to know the topic, put it in a package that they can understand.  What good is it to give them 15 items if they are only going to remember 7?  And which 7 are they going to remember?  If you give them 5 items that they can incorporate into their knowledge and that they are able to use, that becomes the Existing Knowledge for the next set of items.

 

Provide Practice

Just giving information does not ensure its retention.  There has to be a structured practice that allows the student to utilize the concept in various situations, learn from what works and what does not work, and apply the concepts in different contexts.  The key idea here is to have the students exercise this new muscle that they have been given to make it stronger.  In medicine, there is an adage of "see one, do one, teach one."  Each of these steps helps the student become more familiar and comfortable with the topic.  While it may take more than one "doing" time before they are ready to teach, the idea is that they will be questioning if there is an easier way, is this the best use case, are there other techniques that can be used, etc.

 

By following these 5-steps, students will be able to increase their knowledge incrementally and avoid the frustration of feeling like they are drinking from a fire hose.

How to Test for Critical Thinking Skills

 

Deciding which way to go can really alter your results. This is a map of a hiking trail near my home.

"The value of a college education is not the learning of facts, 

but the training of the mind to think." ~ Albert Einstein

 

You have an education but how does that make you prepared to think critically?  And how do employers that claim they want critical thinkers to evaluate that ability in candidates?

 

There are 4 elements to Critical Thinking:

• Observation
• Evaluation
• Application
• Conclusion

 

Observation

This is perhaps the most important element of critical thinking.  It involves not only what we see but also the other senses as well.  I am going to use the evaluation of a patient as my example here.  Let's say you are a nurse or paramedic and you are tasked with evaluating a patient.  You walk into the room and see the patient looking at you with wide eyes (like they had just seen a ghost).  Is that patient critical?  Well, it depends on a lot more than that.  There are a lot of other factors to consider. 

• Are they having trouble breathing? 
• Is their skin color normal? 
• Do you see blood, vomit or other fluids around them? 
• Are they alone? 

 

The bottom line is you need more information.  Your other senses may help with some of that information.  You may see them struggling to breathe or having sweat on their skin.  They may be pale etc.  All of that information will go into making a decision.

 

Evaluation

This is where you can separate Experts from Novices.  With all of the information that is available, how do you decide which information to use?  How do you decide which treatment path to start down?  What other relevant information do you need?  Do the various data line up with a treatment plan or do they contradict each other?

 

Application

How to proceed in some situations may depend on experience.  If there are conflicting data knowing which takes precedence for the situation is important.  To get that level of understanding and see how it fits into your treatment algorithm will depend on the number of times you have been in similar situations or seen similar cases.  A person suffering from an asthma attack looks a lot like a person suffering from a panic attack.  However, the treatment of the 2 situations can be completely different.  (And when you have treated a panic attack with the asthma treatment protocol you will quickly understand the difference!)

 

Conclusion

Once you have made your decision on which path to follow the last part of critical thinking is evaluating how you did.  This can be a little tricky because you will need to look at the decisions you made, not necessarily the outcomes.  You can get lucky and have the outcome be okay while the decision-making process was flawed.  For long term success in any career, you will not want to have to rely on luck to save you from poor decision making.

 

So how do we test for Critical Thinking Skills?

One way is to put people in situations and see how they respond.  With the ubiquity of computers and videos, this has become a much easier task.  We can create several scenarios, make changes to them, and have candidates be evaluated on the success criteria in a much more objective fashion than in the past.  Candidates can provide their rationale for the decisions they made, request additional data points, and that can be compared to the outcome.  The key to making these assessments valuable is having ambiguous situations where it tests the ability of the candidate to not only review observable data but also request additional data that is relevant to the situation that is not provided.  They should also be questioned as to why they are requesting additional information.  Because as important as it is to find information that reinforces the decision to proceed with a treatment plan, there also needs to be information gathered which reinforces the decision NOT to proceed with another treatment plan.