Innovator’s Mindset MOOC (#IMMOOC): Down the Blended Reading Rabbit Hole Again

The new-to-me practice of reading intensively beyond the page as part of my participation in the third season of George Couros’s #IMMOOC (the Innovator’s Mindset massive open online course) struck gold again this morning.

Slowly making the transition from Week 2 to Week 3 of the six-week virtual voyage in this highly-interactive, rhizomatically-expanding course, I was rereading the section of The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity detailing the eight characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset and decided to spend a little more time with the fourth item, which centers around the idea that “Networks are crucial to innovation” (p. 52). Because I was following my newly-established habit of reading a print copy of a book while sitting in front of a laptop computer or with a mobile device handy ­so I would have immediate access to online resources, I made the leap from printed page to an online resource to learn more about a writer Couros mentioned in that section of his book. The result was that instead of having only a passing familiarity with Tom Kaneshige through Couros’s one-line reference to his work, I ended up reading the entire (short) piece Couros mentioned. Picked up a new, wonderfully evocative phrase (“Liquid Networks”) that connects with other familiar but differently-named ideas (including Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the third place as a place where ideas are exchanged, are nurtured, and thrive). And walked away with a much richer, deeper appreciation of Kaneshige’s work than I would have had if I had stayed within the confines of the print edition rather than making the piece by Kaneshige an integral part of the book I am re-reading.

I almost made it through the next paragraph without again weaving print with online content, but wanted to know more about Couros’s next reference—to Steven Anderson’s remark that “Alone we are smart, together we are brilliant.” With little more than Anderson’s name and the knowledge (from Couros’s writing) that Anderson is a “well-known educational speaker and writer,” I had little difficulty tracking him down with the keyword search “Steven Anderson educator.” And was completely surprised to find the full quote at the top of Anderson’s Twitter account. Which struck me as being a bit odd since the tweet was posted in September 2013 and it is October 2017 as I write these words.

“Could he,” I wondered, “be one of those people who rarely uses Twitter, so hasn’t been active since that four-year-old post was written?

“Did someone just finish retweeting it so it again appears at the top of his feed?

“Or is something else going on here?”

It only took a few seconds to see that there were more recent—much more recent—tweets there, including four posted within the last 24 hours…one of which was a link to a magnificent resource (a chart displaying “12 Principles of Modern Learning” and including short descriptions of the “principle,” along with a “reality” and an “opportunity” for each principle).

My head is spinning. I have, in less than 10 minutes, gone from being completely unfamiliar with Anderson’s work to seeing that he has a tremendously valuable (free) online resource (his Twitter feed) for any trainer-teacher-learner-doer. Exploring that resource in the most cursory of ways, yet walking away with another resource (the 12 Principles chart). And taking the natural step of following that Twitter feed so I will have Anderson’s wisdom and resources as additional elements of my own ever-expanding blended (onsite-online) learning environment.

And the learning doesn’t stop there. I’m still curious about why that four-year-old tweet is at the top of the feed. So I go back to the top of the feed, look at it a little more carefully, and realize that he has used the “pin” function within Twitter to assure that it remains in that top-of-the-feed position so any of us visiting his feed will see that tweet before we see any others. Which makes me laugh at myself because I have been using Twitter for several years. I help others learn how to explore and use Twitter. And am seen as being fairly adept at using Twitter. But. This. Is. The. First. Time. I. Have. Noticed. That. I. Can. Pin. A. Tweet. And it’s very simple: highlight a tweet I have posted. Choose the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the tweet on display. Choose the “Pin to your profile page.” Accept the “Pin this Tweet to the top of your profile” option that has now popped up on my screen.”

There’s one final step to take before I return to re-reading that chapter of Couros’s book. I’m doing this for #IMMOOC as much as I’m doing it for myself, and a central element of participating in a connectivist MOOC like #IMMOOC is to connect with my course co-conspirators, so I use tinyurl.com to create a link to the tweet with the “12 Principles,” transfer it into a tweet I am composing, then add the #IMMOOC hashtag to the tweet and send the whole thing out into the Twitterverse so my MOOCmates, friends, and colleagues will have access to it. Learn from it. And retweet it so this latest personal learning moment grows rhizomatically and helps change our view of our world—one tweet at a time. Then return to The Innovator’s Mindset to finish my morning reading.

N.B. — This is the fourth in a series of posts inspired by Season 3 of #IMMOOC.

Malcolm Knowles, The Adult Learner, and Revisiting Cherished Resources

Reading the sixth edition of The Adult Learner (in which Elwood Holton and Richard Swanson further build upon what Malcolm Knowles wrote in the first four editions) reminds us why the book justifiably carries the subtitle “The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development” (added to the fifth edition)—and why a seventh edition is also available.

It’s thoughtful. It’s thorough. It’s engaging. It acknowledges its limitations. It surveys a variety of other seminal learning texts produced over a period of several decades and leaves us with nearly 40 pages of additional resources to explore. And, most importantly, it reminds us of how consistently we have identified and sought solutions to the challenges learners of all ages face and also reminds us how far we still have to go in effectively responding to those challenges.

Current calls for finding alternatives to our antiquated approach of facilitating learning through lectures, for example, seem to place us at the cutting edge of contemporary training-teaching-learning efforts—until we reread (on p. 44) an educator’s call, first published in the Journal of Adult Education in 1940, for change: “Not only the content of the courses, but the method of teaching also must be changed. Lectures must be replaced by class exercises in which there is a large share of student participation…” (Harold Fields, acting assistant director of Evening Schools, Board of Education, New York City). Fields might have been fascinated by what Michael Wesch accomplishes through experiential learning with students participating in his mediated cultures projects at Kansas State University. Or by what some of us are experiencing through webinars with interactive learning opportunities for participants rather than relying on the one-way-transmission-of-information model that only occasionally takes a break for brief question-and-answer sessions before returning to the teacher-as-center-of-learning experience and often leaves learners uninspired. Or by the possibilities for engagement in connectivist massive open online courses (MOOCs) if learners are properly prepared to take advantage of what those courses can offer. Or what learners experience through flipped classroom efforts that at least partially move lectures out of the classroom to make space for more engaging experiential learning, with Kahn Academy videos being one highly recognizable example of how the process works.

Furthermore, those of us who mistakenly believe that formal lifelong learning is a new concept precipitated by the need to keep up with our rapidly-changing tech environment gain, from revisiting The Adult Learner, a more accurate appreciation for how long lifelong learning has been part of our learning landscape. We read the observation made by a college president in 1930 in the Journal of Adult Education that “[a]t the other end of the traditional academic ladder the adult educational movement is forcing recognition of the value and importance of continuing the learning process indefinitely”—a lesson some still don’t appear to have absorbed as we read about reduced funding for community college programs that can be an important part of the adult learning landscape. Adult learning, the college president continues, “is recognized not so much as a substitute for inadequate schooling in youth as an educational opportunity superior to that offered in youth…” (p. 41).

Even the term for adult learning—andragogy, as opposed to pedagogy (“the art and science of teaching children”)—that is at the heart of what Knowles built into the first edition of his book has far deeper roots than many of us suspect. The earliest citation found for andragogy was from a German educator who used the term in 1833. Subsequent citations include those from a German social scientist in 1921 and a Swiss psychiatrist in 1951 before Knowles included it in the first edition of what was then titled The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species.

Knowles eventually created the now-familiar model of andragogy grounded in a series of assumptions including the idea that adults “need to know why they need to learn something before undertaking to learn it,” “resent and resist situations in which they feel others are imposing their wills on them,” “become ready to learn…to cope effectively with their real-life situations,” are “task-centered or problem-centered” in their approach to learning, and are effectively motivated by “the desire for increased job satisfaction, self-esteem, quality of life, and the like” (pp. 64-68). I suspect many of us also note the same assumptions with many of the younger learners we serve.

It’s an approach that’s compatible with what others, including Eduard Lindeman, Carl Rogers, and Robert Gagné, have written in their own classic works on learning. It’s an approach that appeals to us at a personal level and that can easily be recognized in our own experiences and drive to remain immersed in learning. And it supports a wonderfully inspiring philosophy expressed by Canadian psychologist Sidney Journard in 1972 and included in The Adult Learner: “Learning is not a task or problem; it is a way to be in the world” (p. 15)—words that might help all of us be more effective in our efforts to facilitate training-teaching-learning that produces positive results.

N.B.: This is the first in a series of reflections on classic training-teaching-learning resources.