Podcasts in Education and Training

Podcasts provide a rich source of information in a platform that is flexible for all types of users.  They can be downloaded and listened to at the leaner's convenience.  Podcasts are also capable of being distributed through a variety of mediums.  Podcasts can take the form of the traditional audio cast as well as the newer video cast.  The content of the material included in a Podcast can vary in which each end user can find most anything he/she is interested in.  Podcasts also vary in content, providing entertainment as well as educational material.  

Some of the educational / training Podcast's, that I have found useful, are provided below:

The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) provides Podcasts on their webpage: ASTDPodcasts

Great e-learning tips can be found at The Rapid E-Learning Blog: Practical, real-world tips for e-learning success.  Podcasts are provided from this The Rapid E-Learning blog page at: Download Podcasts from The Rapid E-Learning Blog

Another great site for Podcasts, and other e-learning materials (audio books & videos) can be found at the Learn Out Loud website.

Xyleme Voices: A Podcast Library on the Evolution of Training provides a rich source of information with a Podcast provided for each blog post.

Advantages to using Podcasts in education have been documented in recent research projects.  Evans (2008) identified podcasting as a form of m-learning.  Research from Malan (2007) described research studies where lectures were recorded allowing students to download the lectures as they wished.  These lectures were found to be used more as a review tool rather than as an excuse to miss class.  Additionally, they found that by downloading the lectures more free time was allotted during class time to discuss specific issues and for problem solving (Milan, 2007, as cited in Evans).  Other studies promoted well designed materials (in m-learning formats such as a podcasts): "by increasing the amount of control learners have over their learning process, can be more efficient and effective than traditional alternatives" (Evans, 2008, Introduction).  Thus, Podcasts and other m-learning tools can be advantageous to the learner when used as a tool for learning.

Alternatively, just as writing helps one learn more about a subject, so to can developing a podcast.  Developing a podcast requires a student to research a topic, outline their talk around that topic, and persuade the audience that their information is authentic.  One drawback to creating a podcast for the learner, especially if it is their first time, is the learning curve associated with learning to create a podcast.  Spraque and Pixley (2008) indicated: "podcasts have a steep learning curve.  The most difficult part is learning how to use an editing software program" (p. 232).  Once this learning curve has passed, learning the subject matter will improve.  Creating a Podcast can also be advantageous to the learner once they overcome the learning curve associated with developing a Podcast.

Training and Development have incorporated the use of Podcasts in a variety of capacities while training.  Some of these uses include: providing a Podcast to give additional information to the learners after the training project is complete, providing additional training material for learners to review prior to certification testing, and incorporating Podcasts into lessons as an additional source of information.  

Podcasts are easy to use and provide numerous benefits to Education and to the Training and Development industry.  As the use of Podcasts increase I believe we will see additional benefits for the end user, the learner.

References:

Evans, C. (2008). The effectiveness of m-learning in the form of podcast revision lectures in higher education. Computers & Education, 50(2), 491-498. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2007.09.016

Spraque, D., & Pixley, C. (2008). Podcasts in Education: Let their voices be heard. Computers in the schools, 25(3), 226-234. doi: 10.1080/07380560802368132

Lewin and Historical Traces to Change Management

It is often good to trace the historical threads from where certain concepts originate.  One concept, change management, is one such concept that is worth remembering in today’s complex environment.  

Kurt Lewin is often identified as the father of social psychology with contributions to the theory and practice of planned change (Coghlan, Brannick, 2003).  Lewin added to the scientific management practices of Frederick Taylor by adding the human dimension.  This shifted managements focus from scientific management to a social-psychological way of thinking (Gilley, Dean, & Bierema, 2001). Papanek (1973) identified Lewin’s concept of job enrichment:

The worker wants his work to be rich, wide, and Protean, not crippling and narrow.  Work should not limit personal potential but develop it.  Work can involve love, beauty, and the soaring joy of creating.  Progress, in that case, does not mean shortening the work day, but an increase in the human value of the work (p. 318).

Through work from the Harwood studies, Lewin developed the following core elements to action research:

1. Understanding the interplay between the work environment and the individual worker is critical for change in organizations.
2. To understand the system, you must first seek to change it.  Lewin called this action research.
3. Wed scientific thinking to democratic values for organizational change (Gilley et al., 2001, p. 145).

The core philosophy behind Lewin’s planned approach to change focused on changing group behavior rather than changing individual behavior.  This planned change took the form of action research which can be viewed as an eight-step processes:

1. Entry
2. Start-up
3. Assessment and Feedback
4. Action Planning
5. Intervantion
6. Evaluation
7. Adoption
8. Separation (Rothwell, & Sullivan, 2005, p. 43).

Action research should be viewed as a systematic way of thinking embedded in a cyclical process of questioning, assessing, investigating, collaborating, analyzing, and refining (Schoen, 2007).

References:

Coghlan, D., & Brannick, T. (2003). Kurt Lewin: The “practical theorist” for the 21^st century. Irish Journal of Management, 24(2), 31-37. Retrieved from ABI/INFORM Global (Document ID: 650633441).

Gilley, J. W., Dean, P. J., & Bierema, L. L. (2001). Philosophy and practice of organizational learning, performance, and change. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.

Papanek, M. L. (1973). Kurt Lewin and his contributions to modern management theory. Academy of Management Proceedings, 317-322. doi: 10.5465/AMBPP.1973.4981410

Rothwell, W. J., & Sullivan, R. (2005). Practicing organization development: A guide for consultants (2^nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Schoen, S. (2007). Action research: A developmental model of professional socialization. Clearing House, 80(5), 211-216. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Cloud Based Service

HP recently announced that they were discontinuing their TouchPad tablet (Jaenke, 2011).  Additionally, HP is considering, after acquiring Compaq a decade ago, to sell off its Personal Systems Group, its PC division.

The announcement of discontinuing HPs TouchPad tablet may not come as a big surprise to most since they were a late entry into an already competitive market.  However, why would a large computer manufacturing company, as HP is seen from most, discontinue or sell off its PC division?  The bottom line is that HP is looking to buy Autonomy Corporation plc.  Autonomy Corporation is currently the second largest software company in Europe (Introduction to Autonomy).  Autonomy provides 'access to information' so people can form and understand their data and automatically process it.  This is provided by Autonomy's "pan-enterprise software infrastructure that automates advanced operations" (Introduction to Autonomy).

General statements from HP indicated that they wanted to concentrate on software and enterprise.  This move shows HP as one of the companies leading the push toward cloud software platforms.  Additional signs that corporations are growing their cloud based services can be found in Asia.  Google is looking to invest $200 Million in Asia Data Centers.  Google is planning on building their own data centers which house computers, telecommunications and storage systems (Kim, 2011).

New cloud based services are being introduced as features in new devices.  Look at the new iCloud being offered by Apple Inc.  This new service will provide backup for a user’s “music, TV shows, apps, books, devise settings, app data, messages, ringtones and images in Photo Stream” (Mossberg, 2011, D3).  In addition to these free service backups user’s email can be stored as well, although the email will count against the allotted 5GB of free storage per user.  Any user with an Apple device (iphone, ipad, ipod, macbook) will be able to view the data saved on their iCloud account from any device as they choose.

Anderson, (2010) provided futuristic outlooks, from technology experts, relating to cloud computing.  Their opinions ranged from the desktop computer will be replaced with cloud software peripherals, to a hybrid cloud/desktop in the future, to no further expansion of cloud based services than what exists today.  The majority of opinions agreed that cloud based platforms will play a major role in the future.  From Anderson's (2010) Pew Institute Research Report on the future of cloud computing,  71% of the participants agreed with the following:

"By 2020, most people won't do their work with software running on a general-purpose PC.  Instead, they will work in Internet-based applications such as Google Docs, and in applications run from smartphones.  Aspiring application developers will develop for smartphone vendors and companies that provide Internet-based applications, because most innovative work will be done in that domain, instead of designing applications that run on a PC operating system" (p. 2).

The move from HP, looking to sell their PC division and acquire Autonomy, is indicative of a larger move from PC manufacturing to designing and maintaining cloud software platforms.  

References:

Anderson, J. Q. (2010).  The future of cloud computing.  The future of the Internet series, retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/The-future-of-cloud-computing.aspx

Autonomy.  Retrieved from http://autonomy.com/

Introduction to Autonomy (2011).  Retrieved from http://www.autonomy.com/content/Autonomy/introduction/index.en.html

Jaenke, P. (August, 18, 2011). HP buys autonomy, also drops TouchPad and ponders spinning off PC business.  Icrontic.  

Kim, Y-H (September, 29, 2011).  Google puts $200 Million into Asia data centers.  Wall Street Journal, B10.

Mossberg, W. S. (October 12, 2011). The iPhone finds its voice. Wall Street Journal, D1 & D3.

SlideShare uses and Resources for HPT

SlideShare is “the world’s largest community for sharing presentation.  With 55 million monthly visitors and 120 million pageviews, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world” (http://www.slideshare.net/about).  SlideShare is a great way to save all your presentation slides in one location where you can access them with a common URL anytime you need access to them.  Additionally, each presentation can be either linked to or incorporated into a blog, a post, a web page, a report, etc…  Hart (2011) indicated that presentations could be:

• ·      Viewed at the site – where you can see status on usage
• ·      Individually embedded into a web or blog page
• ·      Embedded as a SlideShare Playlist (p. 154).

Bozarth (2010) highlights that SlideShare is useful for trainers who want to distribute either a powerpoint slide presentation or a pdf file via Facebook, Twitter, or any other social networking application.

In my blog post on August 26, 2011, Metacognitive Model for HPT.  I included a link to the pdf slide presentation that I used to report my journal article.  There were two versions of this pdf slide presentation.  The long version, which can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/metacognition-pres and the short version, which can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/metacogn-pres-2

Additionally, in my blog post on May 25, 2011, Complexity Leadership Theory, I also included a link to the powerpoint slide presenation for this post, http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/complex-ldrtheory-8097228  Other presentations can be found at my SlideShare URL.

One effective use of adding SlideShare presentations to a web page, or a blog page, can be found at Harold Jarche’s web page, Life in Perpetual Beta.  Jarche has a separate tab for all of his SlideShare presentations incorporated into his web page.  These presentations can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/jarche  Another use of incorporating SlideShare presentations in a blog can be found at Clive Shepherds’ blog page, Clive on Learning.  Clive add a link to his SlideShare presentations which can be found at http://www.slideshare.net/clives.

Another effective use of incorporating SlideShare into your web page or blog is to include the actual presentation into the post.  One example of this can be found at Jane Hart’s blog, From “Command & Control” to “Encourage & Engage”: the presentation.

When it comes to developing slides there is no better source than Garr Reynolds’ blog on issues related to professional presentation design.  Garr provides examples and tips on how to develop productive and attractive slides for a memorable presentation.  Additional tips and examples can be found on Garr’s blog, Garr’s posterous. 

References:

Bozarth, J. (2010). Social media for trainers: Techniques for enhancing and extending learning.  San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

Hart, J. (2011). Social learning handbook. Center for Learning & Performance Technologies, C4LPT.

Blogs and Wikis relating to HPT

Many Web2.0 platforms available today provide opportunities for businesses to obtain and retain technical information.  The transition from Web1.0 to Web2.0 includes the implementation of interactive applications.  Hart (2011) distinguished Web1.0 as read-only web and Web2.0 as read-write-web.  Some of these applications include Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, blogs, wikis, and YouTube, to name only a few.  I have concentrated on two of these Web2.0 platforms, blogs and wikis, as they relate to the Human Performance Technology (HPT) field.

HPT related blogs

Numerous blogs are content driven, meaning their written for the sole purpose of publishing content related to a specific discipline.  A blog, as described by Bozarth (2010), is “an online space for posting chronologically ordered comments or ideas that can include text, photo, video, audio, and links to other sites, blogs, or documents” (p. 83).  McAfee (2009) highlighted blogs as being easy to update, easy to view or reference as a separate web page, and are permanent records.   

I searched for five blogs relating to the HPT discipline.  One such blog was Donald Clark’s Big Dog, Little Dog blog, designed to post content related to instructional design and performance (http://bdld.blogspot.com/).  A second blog is Jane Bozarth’s blog titled bozarthzone, which covers a variety of topics relating to e-learning and social media (http://bozarthzone.blogspot.com/).  A third informative blog is Donald H. Taylor’s blog dedicated to performance, learning, human capital, and talent management (http://donaldhtaylor.wordpress.com/).  A fourth blog is Harold Jarche’s blog with the mantra of ‘Life in Perpetual Beta’.  This blog is dedicated to informal learning principles in the workplace (http://www.jarche.com/).  The final blog researched was Mitch Joel’s blog titled Six Pixels of Separation – The Blog which is dedicated to marketing but covers a vast amount of information relating to social networking (http://www.twistimage.com/blog/).

One interesting and effective twist to blogs is a blog carnival.  Blog carnivals are where bloggers interested in a common content area pool together and post monthly, or quarterly, posts on a specific topic (check out my blogpost on blog carnivals at http://johnrturnerhptresource.blogspot.com/2011/07/blog-carnivals.html).  The host for a blog carnival varies from month to month.  This is a great way to find other bloggers interested in the same content and it adds a new way to get your content out to different viewers (http://blogcarnival.com/bc/).

HPT related wikis

Wikis provide a different type of interaction than blogs.  A wiki is a web page where everyone with access can change the content (Bozarth, 2010).  McAfee (2009) made the point that wikis have the ability to capture and spread knowledge as well as being an effective tool supporting strongly tied coworkers.  In the area for training and development, Bozarth (2010) identified 4 ways to employ a wiki:

1.     include learner-built development of a permanent, takeaway record of the particular course session;

2.     a record of the course over various iteration or offerings across time;

3.     a compilation of FAQs or good practices for those coming into the role that the training targets;

4.     or a single project aimed at improving overall company or work-unit operations (p. 109).

One of the most popular wikis is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/).  The content on Wikipedia can be changed by anyone by selecting the ‘edit’ button next to the written content on the page you wish to change.  The ‘discussion’ tab gives you a history of what changes were made to the content, when they were made, and by whom.  A second wiki is Psychology Wiki, which provides almost anything related to psychology: learning, cognition, personality, statistics, education, and industrial (http://psychology.wikia.com/).  A third wiki is called Human Science and provides knowledge from a human perspective.  Topics covered on this wiki include development, personality, management, and spirituality, to name a few (http://humanscience.wikia.com/wiki).  A fourth wiki is an index of wikis called WikiIndex (http://wikiindex.org/).  Here you can find other wikis, wiki communities, wiki ideas, and wiki people.  Another new twist to the original format of a wiki can be found at WikiAnswers.  WikiAnswers allows you to type in a question and it will give you a list of answers that have been provided by others (http://wiki.answers.com/).

Precautions

Security is always a concern with regards to corporate knowledge.  Prior to deciding which platform you want to utilize you will need to determine whether you want an open access platform or a restricted platform.  One thing to remember when deciding who you want to access these Web2.0 applications is that the more restricted you make a platform the less it takes on the features of a Web2.0 application.  The advantage of a Web2.0 application is the ability to have outsiders view the content so they can comment and add to the conversation.  If you restrict access this too much, you are defeating the purpose of using an open access platform.

Within a corporate setting specific policies and guidelines should be made available so that everyone understands what is an acceptable contribution and what is not an acceptable contribution.  It should be made clear that participants should respect the opinions of others and that all references to ‘other’ content should always be referenced or a link should be provided to the original content.  These policies and guidelines can be a working document, which can be added to as the Web2.0 platform becomes populated.  In most cases, these policies and guidelines will become self-regulated among the users of the Web2.0 platform.

  

References

Bozarth, J. (2010). Social media for trainers: Techniques for enhancing and extending learning.  San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Hart, J. (2011). Social learning handbook: A practical guide to using social media to work and learn smarter. Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies.

McAfee, A. (2009).  Enterprise 2.0: New collaborative tools for your organization’s toughest challenges.  Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.

Media Multitasking and Memory Processes

Media Multitasking refers to the number of media a person consumes simultaneously (Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009).  Research shows that people who are rated as high media multitaskerss (HMM) have "greater difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli from their environment… are less likely to ignore irrelevant representations in memory… and they are less effective in suppressing the activation of irrelevant task sets" (Ophir et al., 2009, p. 3 of 5).  With HMM being more common today, especially among younger generations, how can HMM effect the memory process?  Listed below i have listed a couple of potential effects to consider.

Memory

Memory is load based, indicating that once the load reaches the cognitive capacities of the subject the processing suffers.  One example is when one has reached his/her cognitive abilities, he/she is unable to organize the material to store in their long-term memories.

Memory is selective, meaning that there are a number of stages that information needs to go through before it reaches your long-term memory.  There are various memory models but the simplest is that information is scanned via your sensory processes, then only some of this information enters into the short-term memory, then only a select few pieces of information get transferred to the working memory.  This information in our working memory, in turn, has a small chance of entering our long-term memory only if it has made the right associations and connections to existing memory.

One final short note about memory is that our brains and memories are constantly evolving.

HMM and Memory Processes

With that said, I believe that multitasking does have the potential to change our memory processes.  People have been multitasking for years, the more active we become the more we multitask.  Only recently, however, have we been using technology to multitask - hence the term media multitasking (MM).  

The first point to make is the effect that HMM can have on long-term memory processes.  Our long-term memory is where we store our knowledge.  This knowledge is retrieved by searching through various categories, concepts, associations, and experiences that are in our long-term memory.  This information is retrieved best if they are recalled by the same method, congruency.  If technology becomes a source of your retrieval process, then you would not be able to retrieve information from your long-term memory without the use of this technology.  This problem was identified in Lin Lins' (2009) commentary when she highlighted that the hippocampus was not involved in learning when using multitasking.  This could be problematic when learning is the primary goal.  However, if technology is used to assist one to store information to their long-term memory, to learn, then retrieval without the technology is more likely and learning is more likely to have been achieved - the hippocampus is involved.  Dependency would then be the key.  As long as we are not too dependent on any one technology we can benefit from it and our memories can continue to evolve.

This second point refers to how the Internet and HMM can reflect our memory processes.  Learning is not linear, our brains are more representative of networks, nodes, synaptic connections, etc…  Internet programs have developed tags to represent the content of the material we are interested in.  These tags, in most programs today, are created by the user (by us).  Thus, the internet is evolving into representation of our own memory and thought processes.  This point was highlighted in Lin Lins' (2009) commentary when she introduced Weinbergers' point: "that individuals exposed to a concept in multiple decentralized sources may gain deeper and more complex understanding of this concept" (Lin, 2009,Commentary).  I feel that as the internet becomes more like our own memory processes HMM can be beneficial to our learning.  

To benefit learning by using technology, including HMM techniques, one should consider two things.  Keep the dependency of the technology to a minimum, use technology as a guide and a tool.  The second consideration is to design your Internet connection to model your own memory processes to benefit your learning.

References:

Lin Lin (2009). Breadth-biased versus focused cognitive control in media multitasking behaviors (Commentary).  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 106(37), 15521-15522.  doi: 10.1073/pnas.0908642106

Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitasks.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 106(37), 15583-15587.  doi: 10.1073/pnas.0903620106

Metacognitive Model for HPT

My latest journal publication is out. Check out New Metacognitive Model for Human Performance Technology in the August issue of Performance Improvement Journal (PIJ), see above model.

ABSTRACT:

Addressing metacognitive functions has been shown to improve performance at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Metacognition is beginning to surface as an added cognate discipline for the field of human performance technology (HPT). Advances from research in the fields of cognition and metacognition offer a place for HPT to expand its theoretical base. This article summarizes current theories of metacognition and presents a new metacognitive model for HPT.

Check out my powerpoint slides for this article on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/JohnTurner5/metacognition-pres

Reference:

Turner, J. R. (2011). New metacognitive model for human performance technology. Performance Improvement, 50(7), 25-32. doi: 10.1002/pfi.20229