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PRESENTER: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
We've been just having a wonderful
time since we've come.
I do want to introduce my Operations
Manager, Tim Seller.
And when I talk about ideal situations--
Tim, could you stand up, please?
If you--
he has to remember who signs his paycheck.
You've got to remind them, right?
But he'll tell you the truth about all the mistakes that I
make as well.
So what we're going to be talk--
I always like to do all the legal stuff.
Since we're a business and not a nonprofit or government
agency, we're real careful about what we use.
Everything's in the public domain.
And I have an account with Flickr, and if any of you like
some of the things that we use for this particular program,
you're more than happy to friend or whatever we do on
Flickr to take a look at what my fave list is, which is
about 1,300 really good kind of story book photos-- they
tell a story.
Be more than happy to share them.
And we also, of course, remind those of you who like to Tweet
that I love the sidechat--
even if you say bad things about me it's better than
nothing, OK.
So please feel free to comment as we go through.
There's a key idea today.
So if you're surfing programs and you're deciding whether or
not you're going to say, here's the key idea--
which is not to stop learning.
I'm going to tell you something, and I would like
shocked, crowd noises.
Do you notice that some educators and teachers, once
they get tenure or get to a point, they stop learning?
Kind I have shocked crowd-- not, no, very, very good!
And a lot of us who've been doing it for a while, it's
human nature.
We get a little tired.
We get a little smug, particularly if we're
successful.
And one of the problems with being successful is it sort of
petrifies us.
It kind of grows this little shell around us as well.
So I'm really into behavioral outcomes.
And the kinds of things that we want to happen here, I
think of them almost more like assignments than outcomes.
So this is sort of your homework.
And at the end, we're going to review these very quickly
again and see if anyone says, yes, I think I see a couple
things here I want to do.
We also have created a PDF for this, and it's going to be
downloaded.
So you'll have access to all this information as well.
But there's a couple things on the list that I think are
important to consider for the program
we're going to be doing.
The number one thing is learning to
break your own rules.
How many people--
this is sort of like your Oprah moment.
How many people besides me have pontificated to other
people about the right way to do instructional designer
classroom teaching?
OK.
This is the kind of thing if you know the person next to
you, and they haven't raised their hand and you think they
should, you can point at them, OK?
Or take their hand and raise it.
I think that once we get to a certain age, we do the soap
box once in awhile.
So one of the things that I hope you get inspired after
today is to break one of your own rules, or the rules.
In the soft sciences, there's soft sciences because we're
not counting boulders.
We're talking about human behavior.
And I'm the kind of person that when I hear someone point
a finger at me, and say, this is the way you're supposed to
do instructional design, and here's the
study that proves it.
I'll call up the person who did the study.
I'll look at the original research.
And I find it's five kids in some obscure school in
Kenosha, Wisconsin, right?
And the person did it for a master thesis, but they did
such a good job at presenting at that national conference,
now it's kind of the law.
And so I'm hoping that we come out better
risk-takers as well.
For those of you who didn't read the description, this is
not about technology.
We're talking about human behavior today.
And the last one on the list I think it's real important, and
I'm going to bring this one up again.
For those of you who've been teaching for a while or been
instructional designers, and you're good at what you do.
You're really good.
I bet people look up to you.
I bet that you're the person who models the behavior for
everyone else.
And we hit these plateaus of learning.
One of the things I learned from my mentor,
who is in her field--
not nationally known, internationally known--
she's the kind of person who's beautiful, single mother,
commutes from Colorado to Singapore and Hong Kong and
London-- you just want to throw acid on her, you know.
And, she's nice.
she's nice.
And she hit a plateau.
So you know what she did?
She went and took singing lessons because she's really,
really bad at singing.
So she could be the worst person in the class because
she had been so successful for so long she had forgotten what
it feels to fail.
And I really appreciate the studies that have been done
about smart cookies who very carefully avoid anything that
challenges them, consciously or unconsciously.
So by the time they're 30, 40, 50, they haven't been
experiencing those very healthy failures, where they
learn to grin and smile.
And they lose that empathy with the subject matter
experts and with the students they work with as well.
This study, if you want to call it, this program today
was inspired by our cousin Toby.
And Toby, for 40 years, was working in
maintenance and railroads.
And he became the top guy in charge of the operations of a
major railroad system in the southeast.
And you might know, this is commonsensical, that the
railroad industry has one of the highest level of accidents
and deaths and stuff.
So they have the best, best, best research
on what causes accidents.
So they were doing a study a few years ago.
I heard this all at Christmas over adult beverages, and Toby
said that what they were looking at were patterns of
behavior based on longevity of how long
someone had worked there.
And it was the classic bell curve.
And I bet some of you already can anticipate what
I'm going to say.
The first two years out on the job, people are dangerous.
Like you don't want to be in a train with people who've only
been on the job two years, trust me.
After three or four years, they do pretty good.
And there's a period between seven and 15 years on the job
that they do excellent work.
They do excellent work.
The accident, the error rate goes way, way down.
And then this is what shocked everyone.
Starting 15 years out, the error rate went up.
So that when someone had been on the job 20 to 25 years,
their error and accident rate was almost identical to
someone who had been on the job for two years.
So this idea that the longer you do something, the better
you get at it.
That's not necessarily true.
And I can speak for myself that it's--
I have been paid to stand in front of audiences and do
programs, whether it's college instructor or workplace
learning for 40 years now.
And my absolute dead fear is that I'm going to turn into
one of those old biddies with the mimeograph machine, like
we had in the '50s in Chicago, right?
And I don't know if anyone else here experienced that,
but my older sister could actually give me the complete
semester's work for our geography teacher at Horace
Mann grammar school on the south side of Chicago because
the woman had not changed anything she
had done for 30 years.
Did anyone else have a teacher like that, K through 12?
OK.
Now here's the Doctor Phil question.
Does anyone think that there's someone at their school or
university who's doing the same thing right now?
Yeah.
We know.
We know.
So this is nothing new.
So cousin Toby really inspired me to start doing research on
the subject.
But just to be clear, when I did the first version and
handed it to my husband, who's a very scholarly man.
He looked at it very seriously.
And he said, well, sweet heart, this is a list of all
of your character flaws.
What is this program for?
So, I want to be real clear that I do a good job because I
make all these mistakes myself.
So I'm not trying to stand up here and say that I'm immune
from the same things.
But first we're going to do a little survey because I'd love
to know who's in the room.
And when I do it you can stare at the other
people in the room.
How's that?
And turn around.
And by the way, we'll just do this real quick.
This is for my benefit and for your benefit to see
who's in the room.
And I realize you might raise your hand more than once.
And I was raised in Chicago--
vote early vote often.
So how many of you--
how many K through 12 people do we have?
Could you raise your hand?
OK, very good.
And higher ed?
This is the higher ed track, very good.
Do we have any people who are also independent consultants,
maybe you do a little on the side?
Oh, good.
You're raising your hand-- you just got fired, of course,
from your institutions, but what the heck.
Do we have--
I didn't know how you referred to yourselves, folks.
I always liked the Oxford Oxonion.
So I came up with the Canvas-onians.
Are there Canvas-onians in the room who work for Canvas?
Very good.
Let's see what we have here.
So we have the K through 12.
We have higher ed folks.
We have the independents.
We have the Canvas-onions.
And we have the others.
To put yourself in an other position.
OK, for those of you who didn't raise your hand, we
call it conference amnesia.
I suffer from it.
A couple of days in a hotel and I forget
where I am, my name.
I'm thank-- this is what these badges are for, right?
So what this does--
we're also going to take a look.
And this is the fun part for me, how long you've been an
instructional designer.
And let's do the broadest definition.
So let's include webinars and teleconferences and any of
those old school kinds of things we did years ago.
And obviously you'll be raising your
hand more than once.
So we may have some newbies who've come.
How many people can say, yeah, I've been doing it
for a year or less?
OK.
Five years or less?
Great.
10 years or less?
20 years or less?
More than 20 years?
More than 20 years.
OK.
Now here's the extra credit things.
How many people have actually used the Jones International
University interface?
They were the first online university accredited--
100 percent online university in 1993.
And it sucked.
Alright.
And then, for--
and I'll tell you how bad it was.
And this is why I'm so qualified
to teach the program.
I was so bad at it that I had to hand back the
money to the project.
It was a big project for the Department of Education in
Colorado in our state library, big statewide project.
And I sat in my house and wept because I couldn't figure out
how to do it.
And the person who was my supervisor was wonderful and
very strict and a good friend.
So she said, this sucks.
And she would send it back.
So I wept and sent back all the money.
Publicly humiliated myself 20 years ago in Colorado because
I couldn't figure out how to use it.
Now here's the extra, extra credit.
The New Jersey Institute of Technology Electronic
Information and Exchange System, Murray Turoff system,
that was set up in 1976.
And we were part of the experimental program in '78.
And you'll love this.
Instructional design in that case was university professors
basically downloading their doctoral theses at a time that
we had 300 dpi printers.
And we would set the printer to run at night and come back
in the morning and it was still chugging away.
And I said to my husband, if this is online education, I
don't want any part of it.
Is there anyone here who remembers it
or was part of that?
Very good!
Very good.
Do you remember that?
With the chug a chug a chug.
I wanted to go find these people and shoot them.
It was just terrible.
So what this brings us to is the first point.
And the first point is assuming
you know your audiences.
Assuming you know, simply because you've taught at an
institution you think you know your students.
You make assumptions.
And when I say you, of course, I don't mean
anyone in the room.
I mean those people who didn't come today, the
ones you left at home.
They haven't noticed that their traditional 18 through
22-year-old students are being replaced
with commuter students.
They've had so much experience with people who live in dorms,
they forget that a lot of their students have jobs and
families and are doing their work at 3 o'clock in the
morning and need really clear instructions.
That was something that ticked me off.
About 10 years ago, I started working with the University of
North Texas online university's--
a particular program--
called the LEAD program.
And everyone was telling me all these wonderful statistics
about how they did online education.
And I looked and found every single study was about
classroom students.
There was nothing that addressed the people that I
did, people who were working with families.
It was all about classroom.
I was irritated about that because it wasn't giving me
the information I want.
And some places of higher ed I visit, the instructional
designers and the instructors themselves have not had a real
conversation with a student in years.
So what do I want you to do to kind of cure this stuff?
Obviously we have surveys and we have polls and interviews.
But I am not even a fan of focus groups anymore.
I want people to leave their office and go out into the
commons and sit down--
not in the fancy faculty cafeteria--
but sit down with students and chat with them and listen to
what's going on and what do they care about.
Maybe go in disguise so they don't know you're faculty or
an instructional designer and say, so what do you think of
the online programs we have here.
Right?
What do you think about how it is?
And prepare to be dismayed because that's where you're
going to hear this stuff.
The kids-- and I'll say kids here--
are really good at telling people what they want to hear.
And, do you know that not all colleges and universities have
adequate feedback systems so that we are able to safely
have students communicate with faculty?
Did you know that?
Another shocked crowd noises?
I know, I know.
It's sort of terrible about it.
So that's ones that's really important to me.
The second thing is-- and I have to admit, I have been
brainwashed as much as anyone else--
I went to one of those notorious hippie colleges in
Vermont in the late '60s and early '70s.
Yes, I was a country hippie.
Yes, I lived in a farming commune.
And it was one of those places, Goddard College, where
if it wasn't experiential education and if it wasn't
John Dewey it didn't count.
And so I was programmed, just like you imprint a duck, at 17
that that was what education was about.
How many people think they were imprinted in a particular
field of education, right?
And you get that little thing in your mouth if you're at a
party and someone brings up your opponent about things.
So I've been very, very much brainwashed in behavioral
and-- but more cognitive psychology than behavioral.
I have--
I've dated behaviorists, you know, that's, that's cool.
But you get that thing, and you get that edge in your
voice, and pretty soon people don't seat you with them at
dinner parties and things like that.
So holding to one theory only, one ring that
rules them all, right?
One theory that rules them all.
So what I had to learn how to do was to explore, regardless
of how old I was, to start looking at new
systems, at new theories.
And we're going to talk a little bit about looking at
the literature.
But one of the hardest things I had to learn how
to do was to risk.
And I have a friend named Laurie Ewing who's a
psychotherapist and behaviorist who
works with big companies.
And she said, success is very dangerous because, after a
while, you're really afraid of losing your core constituency,
the people who trust you and like you because you do a
predictably successful product as an instructional engineer,
because you know what to do and how to do it to satisfy
most people most of the time.
Right?
And you sort of start doing things where the truth is not
that the other theories are wrong, but you don't want to
take the risk of saying, I tried something new and I
failed in front of the campus and God and everybody else in
the faculty senate and such.
And the truth is that maybe the reason you're successful
is not just because what you're doing is competent, but
people are used to you and they forgive you a lot.
That's kind of a scary thought, isn't it?
That, it's like, oh yeah, that's how
Fred does his classes.
And there's this little network of people, say, oh, if
you take one of Pat's classes, this is
what's going to happen.
This is what's going to happen.
And she hasn't changed for 10 years, so you'll just have to
go along with it.
And you think you're doing great.
So one of the things I like to remind people is that there
are over 50 major conflicting theories
about how people learn.
And that's the website.
Isn't that nice.
So you can go to that website.
And a wonderful man over the years has accumulated the URLs
so you can whip through and look at dozens of practical
theories related to instructional design.
That's my gift for you today.
To go through.
And it's really fun.
Some of them are pretty similar, I have to admit.
I would say maybe there's closer to 25 than 50 plus.
But it's a great place to say, I'm going to take some risks.
And maybe I'm going to switch out.
Maybe I'll find a friendly faculty member or teacher, and
say, let's play a different game, in effect.
Let's try something different.
And get me a friendly audience that if I fall on my face, I'm
not going to be in trouble.
And that's why I like the word experiment.
Could you repeat after me, it's an experiment.
One, two, three.
AUDIENCE: It's an experiment.
PRESENTER: Very good.
That gets you to get away with a whole bunch of stuff.
It's an experiment.
And then you say, I really want a
lot of critical feedback.
Just tear it apart.
And you can even disavow it, say, I'm testing someone
else's theory right now.
So let's be vicious.
So you don't have to be the one who feels
the thing about it.
And then if it's a success, you might say, well actually
it was my idea about things.
So that tip, that
psychology.org place is wonderful.
It's not the best website in the world.
You can see that it's a little aged.
It's a little rough around the edges, but it's just, it's got
so much great information.
The next thing is that eventually we stop listening
to instructors.
Now my main role right now is that I'm dealing with subject
matter experts.
Some of them are experienced university people.
A lot of them are consultants, they're trainers.
Most of them have years, if not decades, in
front of us, a class.
Many of them, I would say, a good third of the people are
working with right now have never done a class before.
And they're terrified.
But the ones who have, have opinions about what works and
what doesn't.
And we do a little orientation at the beginning, saying, we
all hate blackboard and we want you to hate it, too.
So unless they're willing to hate blackboard as much as we
do, they don't get to work with us.
But, does anyone here know of a rumor there's at least one
instructor or subject matter expert in your university
who's like annoying.
OK, two, two.
OK.
Now here's the, again, the Doctor Phil question.
How many of us in the room, particularly those of us who
teach, think that maybe once or twice we've been the
annoying instructor?
Yeah, OK.
So what I have found is, is that the annoying people tell
me truths that the people I like never will.
They'll tell me things that it's like your best friend
won't tell you.
So they're the ones you have to take off for coffee or tea,
take a breath, and say, give it to me.
Because one reason they're annoying is because people
don't listen to them.
They may not be very good communicators, so it's really
easy to discount what they're saying, even know what they're
saying is really important.
So what do we do?
When my husband and I were first married, he realized
that he had married a pushy broad from the
south side of Chicago.
And he had something to say that really helped me, which
was, Pat, shut up.
But he said it nice.
He went to like really good eastern school, so he said it
like really nice.
And so what I have learned is that the more difficult that
person is, the more I'm going to learn about what I need to
do as an instructional designer and producer.
So if I know somebody's going to be difficult, I think
that's the person I'm going to learn from.
Not the easy, peasy ones as well.
Dismissing student concerns.
Unfortunately--
and I, I'm not a tenured faculty.
In fact, I have no credentials to do what I do for a living,
but I haven't been an instructor at the
undergraduate and graduate level at five very good
universities and colleges.
And I notice that in many places students are at the
bottom of the food chain.
They're dismissed.
They're demeaned.
And they do what we want them to do because they've paid a
lot of money, or their families paid a lot of money,
and are desperate to get out as quickly as possible.
So I take student concerns seriously even if I can't
address them.
And by taking them seriously, they appreciate that we're on
their side.
And they'll give us the benefit of the doubt when
things go wrong.
It's not a warfare.
I have to be on their side.
And if I have a loyalty, it's to the students.
I'll tell you that right off.
That's where my loyalty lies.
So again, invest, hush, ponder.
And share.
And sharing--
one of the things I like about this conference is sharing is
a subject that has come up before.
Of giving--
we do too much of our stuff in secret.
So I want to empower the people who work with me and
for me as much as possible.
Those of you in the room who have master's degree and PhDs,
I think your first duty is to be teachers and give it away.
Give it away.
So find all sorts of opportunities to say, here's
the cool stuff I know.
You get to learn it, too.
And the more we empower them, I think the more
we understand them.
And it's not an age thing.
In our little office, the age range is from 25 to 72.
And we're a meritocracy.
If you know it, you teach it.
So our 25-year-old teaches stuff.
Our 35-year-old teaches stuff.
Our 52-year-old teaches stuff.
The 62-year-old teaches stuff.
And the 72-year-old teaches stuff as well.
We're all students.
We're all learners.
You're forgetting what it was like your first time.
You're forgetting what it was like-- oh, these smirks here.
Clean it up, guys.
I'm embarrassed for you.
You're forgetting what it was like.
Now--
I already told you.
I know--
I can remember very clearly what it was like with my first
big serious platform, with the Jones platform, how I totally
screwed it up.
So my subject matter experts know that we will go the extra
mile to help them because we know what it's
like to feel lost.
I've had people break down and cry.
They said, I'm a smart person.
I've been doing this work for 30 years.
How come this is so hard?
I said it is hard.
I don't tell them it's easy.
I say this is really, really hard.
And once you get it, it's going to be a
great skill to have.
So we hold hands on this stuff, which I
think is very important.
Don't demean the smart cookies who don't know how to do it.
So we listen, listen, listen, listen, watch.
Not refreshing your knowledge in the field.
And even if you're teaching something like analytical
geometry, which doesn't like change from year to year,
nonetheless, there's new ideas, new presentation skills
about stuff.
So going back to the new literature, even if it sounds
the same, you may get a new way to present it.
That's the stuff that I know pretty good.
That's why I go back and read new stuff.
Not that I'm going to learn something new, but I'm going
to learn a new turnover phrase, a new
model, of new metaphor--
something that's going to freshen the work that I do so
that it's new and fresh as well.
So I have to get rid of my hubris.
I couldn't think of a good-- that's like
hubris isn't a verb.
I know that.
But I just had to think.
We have to get rid of that kind of smugness, and say, I
can learn stuff new.
I could learn stuff new.
Never taking classes online is one of the big ones, too.
And then the one that really disappoints me is hiding
behind technology.
It breaks my heart.
We just had someone come to our office and ask for
information about a project.
And we exchanged ideas.
And I said, are you an educator.
And he immediately start talking about technology.
It's really about people, folks, trust me.
I'm a geek.
I love the tools as well.
So we have to stop hiding out.
Here's the outcomes again.
Here's a little wonderful thing.
The universe is full of magical things patiently
waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
And no it wasn't Bertrand Russell who
said that, thank you.
There's the source.
So here's my connections.
I want to thank you.
We've got our five minutes.
And I'm saying we have our five minutes.
I'm looking back and I'm--
thank you for nodding.
Thank you very much.
And what I'm interested in to see if
anyone has any comments.
Maybe you have a trick that has worked for you to refresh
your skills or you have a question about what we did.
It's fun to take a day's worth of stuff and
put it in 25 minutes.
Does anyone have a comment about what we've gone through.
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: I would say that I work for my students by
getting in and doing their work.
PRESENTER: Can you say more about that?
AUDIENCE: Like, I'm a math teacher, and so they will come
to me with problems.
And I'll say, OK let's look at it.
Let's see if there's a different way of doing it.
And if I show them, well just do this, they'll go, is that
all you have to do?
I'll say, yes.
But it said in the lesson--?
Don't worry about what's in the lesson.
This will work.
PRESENTER: Oh my goodness!
You mean, you go outside of what's online to teach them?
Is that allowed?
I thought there was like federal legislation
preventing--
AUDIENCE: I get in trouble for it
sometimes, but I do it anyway.
PRESENTER: Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I'm the rebel.
I grew up in the '60s and '70s.
PRESENTER: Oh, I can see that.
I can see that.
Anyone else?
This is wonderful.
You know, let's align with the students about things.
And I think no matter how well we do our courses, we cannot
anticipate everything that's going to happen, right?
Right.
Anyone else have a comment, something that you do that you
say, yeah, this is how I refresh myself.
You can lie.
Nobody's going to know.
AUDIENCE: I have a question.
PRESENTER: Yes, sir.
AUDIENCE: I work as a faculty developer, and there's a lot
of people that I wish were in this room, but they would
never attend this seminar because they look at the
title, and say, that's not me.
PRESENTER: Right.
AUDIENCE: I'm just curious as to how you communicate these
ideas to people with a tremendous amount of hubris
who have been in their field, they're multi-published,
they've brought in $12 million in grants and
done all these things.
And, who are you, you know, all of 35 years
old, to tell me how--
PRESENTER: And I thought you were 25 to do that.
Well, there's three things I suggest.
First thing is that when you're doing behavior change,
you have to recruit champions within the institution.
So I remember a medical school that I was working with, and
it was like the senior and emeritus of the medical school
was a total sweetheart, very well
respected, loved new ideas.
And when people saw that the bull goose of the medical
school was adopting them, it was much easier to use him to
leverage the other people.
So you build that kind of champion thing about stuff.
Another thing, which you can do is to be really annoying
about how much fun you're having.
It's like, oh we're having fun.
We're going to have cookies and brownies and we're going
to work on this.
Oh, we'd love for you to come, Fred It's going to be--
oh, we understand.
It's probably a waste of your time.
Well, we're going to have fun, bye--
to put their toe in.
And the third thing is, that no matter how stodgy they are,
there's probably something they're doing right that's in
this context.
So if we can con them into doing a little brown bag or
mini-thing on, this is that thing you do so well.
And they get to sit there for that like five minute round
robin and hear the other people.
That's a way of honoring them for their successes and then
very sneakily getting them to say, I'm part of this new
group who's doing best stuff.
It's a short distance from being
avant-garde to the old guard.
And a lot of old guard people, to tell you the truth, they're
a little scared, aren't they?
They're a little afraid they're
going to be left behind.
So let's honor them for the good stuff they do.
Good question.
OK.
We have one minute.
Anything else?
Anything else?
Oh, now the hands, right?
What we'll do is, I'll grab one question
because we have to flee.
And then I'll go outside and chat with whoever wants.
And let's grab someone over here.
This lady.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: One mistake [INAUDIBLE] is that, never
taking class online.
And that's a common mistake I see from instruction designer
is that, they have never taught online class
themselves.
PRESENTER: That's right.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
PRESENTER: I work a lot with health institutions, and, most
recently, I have been working with some medical schools and
hospitals around the country.
I would say a fourth of the people in the class themselves
were instructional designers who had never taken an online
class since college.
And as one of them said, oh, this is so tedious.
Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen very much.
Thank you.