Monday, September 27, 2010

Teaching strategies can be used for innovation, too.

Reading this week in Wlodkowski, Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, I am again struck how there are parallels of strategies for teaching and techniques suggested for facilitating creative brainstorming and ideation sessions. One of the first similarities I noticed was the need to create a safe environment.  Eliminating negative conditions, such as pain, fear and anxiety, frustration, boredom (p.177) are all emotions that need to be minimized to allow for an individual's ability to think in new ways for innovation.

Confronting erroneous beliefs of the learner,  is similar to activities in ideation sessions in which the group seeks to uncover orthodoxies and the route causes of these orthodoxies.  For innovation, orthodoxies are those deeply held beliefs that may be blocking the possibilities of new ways of thinking and doing.  With a learner, these negative learned attitudes impede the learners way of acquiring new information.

In the future, I am going to use the positive question suggested, "What might have to happen for you to believe you could do well or change your attitude (belief) in a positive direction?"  This could be adapted to for an innovation session in which the team is asked, "What might need to happen for the company to believe it can be innovative?" or something similar.

It seems like motivation techniques are often cross situational.  Something I am going to keep an eye on over the next ten weeks of class.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Principle #2 of Andragogy: The learners' self-concept.


This principle is basically asking instructors to treat adults like adults. This principle reinforces the idea that a lack of knowledge does not equate to a lack of intelligence.

An example of a bad experience with this principle occurred with a young teacher (22 years old) in the ESL school in which I taught in Japan.  She was teaching a more advance English class, and the context, but not the lesson, was a scientific subject dealing with cells.  Because she was biology major, she resorted to explaining the parts of the cell, instead of addressing the grammar issue.  In her class was a medical doctor. Because he is Japanese, he did not express his frustration, but I could only imagine.  It wasn’t a vocabulary lesson as most scientific names are universal.  My advice to her was that next time, she could invite the doctor to explain the parts of the cell as a way to practice English, specifically the grammar point of the lesson.

A way to execute against this principle is a technique used in business presentations, and that is to ask overtly what people know about the subject and what they want to learn.  This is often a good introduction. It makes people feel heard and acknowledged, as well as allows the speaker to adjust the content appropriately to make it more meaningful.

Another technique is peer teaching, in which students work with other students to develop parts of the lesson or provide feedback on a lesson point.  Personally, as a learner, this type of activity is a little frustrating for me, perhaps because it takes me some alone time to think something through, but as a teacher, this type of activity is usually gold.

Because I want to relate all my posts to applied creativity and innovation, I thought about how this principle may be related to brainstorming techniques.  Some interpret brainstorming techniques to mean dismissing what you know, often called assumptions or orthodoxies, in favor of clean slate thinking.  Perhaps it is not as much about abandoning these restrictions, as it is about providing opportunities to combine things you know in ways not tried before. Or combining things you know that seem unrelated into new solutions. Thus there is a tremendous respect for adults with previous knowledge in brainstorming. In fact, it is suggested, for successful brainstorming groups, to bring together people with deep knowledge about unrelated topics in order to achieve new ideas and new ways of thinking.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Let's talk about me! with Marianne


I am totally new to the blog-o-sphere, but it's about time! Thank you to Allison for making this our first assignment.  Talking about yourself is a little uncomfortable, so hopefully you will all post, so we can talk about you for a while.  Or other equally interesting topics.  Cheers!

What is your current professional position (student/job title/company) and how are you involved, or not, with adult learners? 
I am a consumer insights strategist, putting my career on hold for a bit while I go to grad school.
I have taught adults in the past (ESL/EFL) and loved it.  I have also done training in corporate environments, including course development, for creative problem solving, career and life planning, and research protocol.  This is my last semester before I work on my capstone.  My program is Leadership and Organizations with a specialty in Strategic Innovation and Change.

How do your future plans (career/personal/etc.) involve knowledge about adult learning?
It's my hope to do more teaching at the adult level in marketing, as well as begin on-going programs to teach other professionals in creative problem solving techniques.

How would you rate your current knowledge of adult learning theories? What are some of the things you already know about adult learning theory (theories/theorists/general concepts)?

In doing our reading for this week, it was surprising to be familiar with some of the names - Skinner, Maslow- to name just two.  It seems like I may have forgotten more than I ever knew.

What do you already know about yourself, or not know about yourself, as an adult learner?
I haven't really been able to define myself as an adult learner.  In the past, i.e. undergrad (many, many years ago...) I was best at lectures, note taking, and review, with little patience for reading on my own.  Although I love to read for pleasure.  Now, in grad school, I am finding that the reading is so much more enjoyable, I am able to commit to this part of the work.  But, I still have to take notes on what I read.

What do you hope to get out of this course? 
I want to be better at customizing my materials to fit the needs of students, thus making it easier for them to enjoy and retain what they learn.  It would be great to make these kinds of changes on the fly as needed in real life situations. I am also really into visual communication of knowledge and am interested in how this intersects with adult learning theory.