Dan Pink on motivation and what psychology shows vs what economics thinks it knows. He cites some of Dan Ariely's work.

Bottom line:
Business is not doing what science knows works in regard to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

I really want to get to TED someday soon.

Reading Accelerando by Charles Stross...

It deals with the advent and results of the Singularity, and is consequently odd and very deep scifi.

One aspect of the book that intrigues me is that humans in the future start sporting meta- and then exo-cortexes. Instead of just a cerebral cortex for memory and rational thought, people can outsource trains of though to smart agents that report back later. Eventually, entire conversations can be put out into these exocortexes.

Far fetched, but the last week I have used my iphone to remember what row I parked in at Sesame Place (Green Snuffy), used a gmail note system I set up to remember the nbame of hte guy doing some major tree work for my mother, and used one note to kep track of readings for my dissertation. I already outsource some of my memory work. I can imagine being able to do the same with inquiry and research.

I used to scoff at relying on external technology for memory like this, seeing it as a sign of cognitive weakness. However, now I am much more relaxed about the idea. Originally, I was thinking of it as a response to a scarcity model - a cognitive miser approach. Now I realize that by offloading some of that memory work, I can still keep that information handy and also keep more urgent and/or permanently relevant information on my internal memory bank. I see it more as having an unlimited resource - cognitive spendthrift approach.

Simulations as Interactive Narratives


I just had a great hallway encounter with Elisa Alabaster this afternoon. She is a director at Ososim, a simulation company based out of the UK. We had a quick conversation about our respective work, and her description of how Ososim thinks of simulations gave me a great inspiration.

Elisa and I were discussing a maxim of mine "When you buy a sim, you buy the assumptions of the designer." And the model of the designer. Because sims are based upon some model of human interaction, the designer's model constrains an educator using the sim.

Elisa had a different idea, though. She said that Ososim creates a simulated environment, event, encounter and that the models come form the educator. IN her descrioption, I realized something powerful about how they design sims:

Simulations are less a game and more an interactive story. The program sets up a context and some events, but it is less about solving specific problems than a game. I'll talk about the definition of a game later, but a good summary of definitions can be found on Ian Schreiber's Online Game Design Course from Summer '09 (scroll down to "So, what is a game, anyway"). In its simplest term, a game is goal oriented, with obstacles and conflict. Most importantly, games are about overcoming challenges.

Interactive narratives allow people to change a story as they experience. We, the reader (or player) help create the story as we go along. The author (designer) has part of the story specified, and creates further story along with the reader. Or, in the case of simulations, the designer has considered several options that are included in the interactive story. In the most effective simulations, not only does the program provide a base for interaction and story development, but a facilitator is able to adjust in order to handle the truly innovative player.

Narrative development is a point I emphasize in my design, and a lot of that has to do with the constructivist writings of Jerome Bruner. If you are interested in looking into the role of narrative in education, here are two good resources - infed and TIP


I haven't had a chance to work with Ososim yet, but look forward to getting deeper knowledge of their approach to simulations.

Note that the way I have described simulations here does not describe all of them - Ososim specializes in simulations for complex issues like strategy and leadership. Simulations for simple tasks can and do play more like a game than an interactive narrative.

A question

NOt a real post, but a question that is going through my mind with my reading on informal learning:

Why do people resist reframing an event as a learning event? What is it that makes 'learning event' a dirty word?

Back to the blog


I've decided it's time to revive this meager attempt at blogging. I have too many thoughts floating in my head, getting in the way of writing my dissertation. The plan with the blog is to subvert those tangential thoughts into something that is productive and contributes to the larger discussion of Learning and Education in the corporate world and Adult Education.

I am going to stick with three main categories - as much as I can - that reflect the new brand of my company, Brass Ring Training. Those categories are Experience, Design and Expertise.

Experience encompasses experiential learning in many forms. It is the traditional experiential education such as ropes courses and adventure learning, and also game-based learning or serious games, simulations, Metaphoric Experiences, and other educational events. However, the Experienc0e tag also encompasses learning through experience - informal learning in the workplace, Action Learning events, and the inspired (or mundane) learning that occurs every day.

Design is educational design, but also design in general . Updates on my design model as well as thoughts on the interaction of people, content and method will be many of the posts in this. Other topics that may come in include teaching and instruction, but also design from other domains. My design philosophy has been informed by architecture, product design and game design, so those thoughts will go into the blog as well.

Expertise is meant to cover the content ares that I work in. The areas I plant a flag in and claim for my company are strategy, leadership and distributed teams. Besides those topics, I will also explore content areas that are coming in as one-offs for clients or that just tickle me on a given day.

These tags are clearly not distinct - I will have posts on designing experiential learning for leadership - but each post that comes out here should fit into one of those categories.

On to blogging!

Constructivism is a learning philosophy, not a methodology



Constructivism writings get caught up with methodology. However, methodology is irrelevant to learning theories (which constuctivism is). If you are a constructivist, you believe that people create meaning even when in a lecture.

Lectures are problematic for constructivist supporters, possibly for two reasons. First, lectures are power-filled events, and the constructivist could be rebelling against the lack of personal power in the situation. Second, the constructivist advocate could be an idealist and closet social constructivist and be frustrated by what they see as a sub optimal education technique. However, there are two problems with this: first, lectures are social learning, just not completely democratic social learning. And, in fact, if one assume knowledge differential = power differential, there is always a power dynamic in learning. Second, there is no ideal group learning situation, because of the idiosyncrasy of learning and the social nature of education.



So, what do we do? As students in a lecture, become an empowered constructivist. Make meaning aggressively. Ask questions of the lecturer, ask questions over the web, have discussions with yourself, the book, your classmates. As an educator, design lectures to facilitate the construction of meaning rather than the reception of data. Build a framework, pull people in with a narrative, give explicit permission to explore.

Training the trainer

I am running into problems with a train the trainer for the third time in as many programs - its funny how much attention we put into the design of programs for participants when I look at how little time we spend focusing on the required learning for educators.

I guess we just figure that educators are ready, and don't need any new knowledge or skill in order to deliver the program we have designed.

OR maybe we think that the number of educators is small (often n=1) so designing training is too much work. However, with only one person, it makes the need for proper preparation even higher.

I am not sure that we will solve this anytime soon, but I would be excited to see a T3 actually designed as deliberately as a program overall.