Joe's Jottings
Jottings Number 66, Reply B, by Alan Falk and Terie Robinson
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 96 08:44:34 -0800
One of the best things about Schulman's list is that it's a lousy acronym: "ARCGPC", so nobody's going to make it into the next industry buzzword. Or pronounce it easily! I wonder if some problems in the "education market" today really reflect other parts of the overall process. Students who actively participate in the after-school activities might be looking for the acceptance they don't get during the regular "workday". [sound familiar? do you have co-workers who don't exactly work like rockets around the office, but are very active in the outside-work areas? compare their psychological rewards at and not-at work?] ----- just reliving some of my past.... but thought it might be food for thought. ps. In many school districts, I've heard, the ratio of administrators to teachers may be either too close to 1:1, or even >1:1! How's that affect things...? pps. And remember the occasional issue at HP: collaboration? That means if I help someone else be successful, unless it's part of my job description to do that, I get negative Brownie-points (ranking) for doing that, because it may raise that person's ranking above mine, for having helped them be successful! Now THERE's a motivator for ya! The world had darned-well better match and reward what the schools teach, or else the lessons will be unlearned very quickly! ppps. I had several hero-teachers in my life. I can think of three or four offhand; in each case, they were the ones who encouraged me to try, even if I failed. The reward was in the learning: both what worked and what didn't. Success even in failure. Regards, Alan Falk GSY Business Development, Cupertino. +af
Joe, I've been educating adults who don't do this for a living on how to educate adults for about four years now. It's fun, but exasperating. You hit most of the key points well. Absolutely, if you are to learn anything, you must be introduced to the concept, given an opportunity to work with it, then get feedback to correct any misconceptions. This is especially true of novices to a subject. You mentioned a lot of what I think of as "the magic numbers." 20 minutes per lesson segment being one of them. Another one is 6 repetitions--that's the minimum number of times you need to repeat an item before it will go from short term memory to medium term memory. (This is why practicing and working with the subject is so important--it increases the repetitions.) There are two points in time in a class, though, that need to be added to your description of the ideal class. The beginning and the end. The beginning must contain five elements: The reason for the class (in the student's point of view--what's in it for me?), how the class fits in with other material the student may know or come to know, a list of learning objectives (what will he/she be able to do at the conclusion of the class that the student was not able to do before), an outline of the material (agenda), and a framework for the material to be learned (mental model). Without this preliminary, the course may appear confused. At the end of the class, the learning objectives should be reviewed to test for attainment, and a call to action added: What should the student do after walking out of the class? Put this beginning and ending around your course approach and you've got some pretty good training. Terie Robinson TMO Field Development Santa Clara site
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