Bror's Blog

For White House Symposium on the Future of Education R&D and Digital Learning: Learning Engineers in Education

I wasn't able to attend this terrific meeting of minds last week about learning science, education R&D, and the interconnections with new technologies in education and big data learning analytics, unfortunately.  However, Katrina Stevens, one of the organizers, still suggested I contribute a piece about learning engineering, so (with her permission) here's the pre-reading piece I sent in.  The full range of pre-readings is fascinating - I hope the DoE releases them in final form, along with notes from what, by all accounts, was a fascinating day with terrific people! 

"Learning engineering" making its way in the world

I recently (re)stumbled across an interesting article in EdSurge about using educational impact to evaluate ed-tech companies and services. It seems an obvious thing, but as the article points out, it's not so simple to do. It reminded me of a range of efforts that are now popping up to assist us all with “learning engineering” work – applying good learning science and evidence-gathering at scale.

"I've got one word for you – Adaptivity." - Adapted from The Graduate (with ed-tech, could he have?)

I came across a couple of items talking about adaptivity, technology, and learning recently, and it got me thinking about this latest buzzword for learning improvement. It seems odd to question the idea that it is beneficial to adapt a learning environment to learners, yet a lot of things have to go right for any change in learning environments at scale to “work better.”

Lectures and Learning – How Much Together?

A recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by Molly Worthen talks about her view that long-form lectures are of real value to students, at least in the humanities.

What to make of this? “It’s complicated.”

I agree (especially in the middle of the political “silly season”) that we have to make sure our students can listen to extended verbal presentations critically and well, and be able to summarize, critique, and question in real-time. Long-form lectures may also well work efficiently enough for simpler outcomes (where “simpler” is defined by the audience having enough relevant long-term memory components to easily process a spoken lecture in real time). However, looking through the lens of learning science, this is not the same as thinking long-form lectures are an efficient method of instruction for most hard, important, outcomes.

The missing craft: “Learning Engineering”

There was a terrific article in the New York Times recently by Anna North. It starts out describing persistent myths about “learning styles” in instruction, and it picks up steam when it generalizes to explore why learning research is not having an impact on students.  Although she never uses the term, the article makes it clear we suffer because we have almost no “learning engineering” professionals in our industry – and don’t realize what we’re missing.

Background and approach:

Sarina Simon, founder and President of NorthSouth Studios, conducted a virtual interview of me recently. I thought you all might find it interesting as well!

Video from AERA 2014 - Future of Online Research Opportunities and Practical Implications at Scale

Just a quick note following up on the earlier announcement about our April 2014 AERA panel session.  We had some terrific participants - Dick Clark, Carl Dweck, Ryan Baker, Richard Culatta, Ken Koedinger, Rebecca Peterson, all talking about what the new on-line platforms can contribute to research, and also talking about the practical implications of having all this on-line dat and potential for research.  

The video is now up, available on our KAPx platform (sorry, you may have to register to see it!) - Enjoy!

Datapalooza event in Washington DC

I attended the Datapalooza event in Washington DC last month, celebrating a variety of quick-hit data deployment efforts by various companies, large and small, using data from the federal government to create innovative information for learners.  I was asked to do a quick intro to the section on learning, technology, and data, so I thought I'd post it here.  It's a little shy of seven minutes - not too long.  I talk about results from learning science that should be incorporated into our learning environments, and the role of technology:  not to "improve learning," but rather to take any learning solution (good or bad - hopefully good) and make it more affordable, reliablale, available, data-rich, and personalizeable. 

Enjoy!

Post-science professionalism: Training technology to heel

You know the cocktail party cliché, “Hey, doc, I've got this nagging pain in my hip. . .” I did have a nagging pain in my hip, and finally went to see somebody about it. It gave me a front-row seat to what you might call “post-science professionalism” - how a huge array of science, engineering, technology can be deployed (or not) to solve a human problem.

Wouldn't it be cool to get learning to be like this?

The short versions: Breakthrough Leadership book launch videos are in!

A quick note - Rick Hess and I over the last week ended up doing two launch events for the book we just published, Breakthrough Leadership in the Digital Age: Using Learning Science to Reboot Schooling.  Here are links to the videos: 

• iNACOL Blended and Online Learning Symposium, Oct 30, 2013, Orlando, Florida:  Closing keynote session, in which Rick and I chat about the perils of indiscriminate technology use in education - and the seriously good opportunities if we first apply learning science to find good learning solutions for our learning challenges, and only then deploy technology to make that good learning solution more affordable, reliable, available, data-rich, and customizable.
• American Enterprise Institute, book launch event, Oct 31, 2013, DC:  Morning event, where Rick and I chat about learning science, technology, and scaling up the right way with Mark Edwards, Superintendent of the Mooreseville School District in North Carolina, Rick Ogston, founder of Carpe Diem charter schools, and Rosa Atkins, Superintendent of the Chapel Hill School District in North Carolina. 

Good fun!