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.