Michael Bugeja’s opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Reduce the Technology, Rescue Your Job,” struck a nerve today.  He started by noting that for “most of this decade, professors embraced the pedagogy of engagement, wooing students via technology and ignoring the costs because traditional methods, from textbooks to lectures, purportedly bored students who multitasked in the wireless classroom.”  He then noted the massive cuts occurring across higher education, and suggested that these “facts alone merit an immediate technological and curricular assessment, or else hundreds more professors and staff members could lose their jobs in the coming weeks and months. You may lose your job.”

Bugeja raised the valid point that too often technology decisions are made without factoring in true costs, but he then suggests that teaching centers (like the one at which I work) are part of the problem for pushing the use of technology for teaching and learning.  His final paragraph reads:

• “I challenge anyone objecting to these arguments to look in the eye of secretaries, janitors, adjuncts, advisers, and professors of eliminated programs and say that avatars, clickers, social networks, and tweets—and the pedagogies, IT expenses, and teaching centers supporting them—are more important than feeding their families. To believe we can afford both indicates how incapable many of us are of making the difficult choices that the times require.”

It would be easy to dismiss this article if I did not think that his way of thinking was not reflective of many in mainstream faculty.  I have seen a number of faculty in higher education, as well as teachers in K-12, who see technology as an evil.  In many ways, they want to wall off their classes from the outside world.

That image of a wall is particularly relevant today, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  President Reagan has always been one of my favorites, and one cannot think of him without hearing his exhortation:

“Mr. Gorbachev…tear down this wall!”

That is the line most remember, but I like his comments later in the same speech, in which he stated “this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.”

Bugeja’s comments to reduce technology in order to save jobs ignores the realities of a changing world…much as the Berlin Wall did.  Technology in and of itself is not evil, and technology integrated into education is opening minds, not closing them.  The participatory web and open access to information has created freedoms that never existed in the past.  Those freedoms directly and positively impact learning.  As Derek Bruff noted in a comment to Bugeja’s piece:

“…point out that Bugeja has focused here on the cost of instructional technology, but not on the benefits to student learning. There’s plenty of research that shows that student learning is positively affected by instructional methods that involve more active student engagement before, during, and after class. Technologies that support or facilitate such instructional methods are certainly worth exploring, if our goal is student learning. When conducting a cost-benefit analysis, it’s only appropriate to spend as much time thinking through the benefits as it is thinking through the costs.”

“…if our goal is student learning…”  Well said, Derek!  If one shifts the microscope from technology to student learning, one might find many traditional classrooms in trouble!  President Reagan made his speech in 1987, and during that same period, Chickering and Gamson developed a seminal work on teaching and learning, their Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Instruction.  They synthesized fifty years of research on teaching to develop these principles:

Good practice in undergraduate education:
1. Encourages contact between students and faculty
2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students.
3. Encourages active learning.
4. Gives prompt feedback.
5. Emphasizes time on task.
6. Communicates high expectations.
7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

Rather than cast technology as an evil, I would suggest that technology is a powerful tool that encourages contact between students and faculty, provides avenues for reciprocity and cooperation among students, creates new venues for active learning, enables more timely and prompt feedback, and gives new opportunities to keep students on task.  High expectations can now be communicated in multiple ways across social media that students are using, and these diverse and multiple paths respect the talents and new ways our students are learning.

We certainly need to be fiscally prudent with taxpayer and tuition-funded monies, but now is not the time to build walls and isolate our students from a 24/7 wired world.  Instead, we need to actively help our students create the learning networks that they will need to thrive in the 21st Century.

So to Mr. Bugeja and others who agree with him, I say “Tear down this wall!”

I just finished reading Curtis J. Bonk’s new book, The World is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will tell you that Wiley, the publisher, emailed me after I reviewed Dan Willingham’s book in a previous post and asked if they could send me Bonk’s book for possible review (with no strings attached).

I said yes and the next week received a copy of this book at no charge.

With that said, this book has resonated with me and I found Bonk’s approach interesting.

In many ways, Bonk is as much a fan boy of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat as I am.  Just as Friedman had ten flatterners, Bonk has ten openers:

Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN)

1. Web Searching in the World of e-Books
2. E-Learning and Blended Learning
3. Availability of Open Source and Free Software
4. Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
5. Learning Object Repositories and Portals
6. Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
7. Electronic Collaboration
8. Alternate Reality Learning
9. Real-Time Mobility and Portability
10. Networks of Personalized Learning

WE-ALL-LEARN provides a framework for his book and the premise that anyone can now learn anything from anyone at anytime.  Bonk  spun out chapters on each opener, illustrating each concept with stories, a bit of research and statistics, and implications for education in the future.  Working in the field, I recognized some of the people he named, but I also learned new pioneers.  Bonk continually reinforces that these openers ought to be changing education as we know it, as our world is quite different from our parent’s world.

In Bonk’s view, these openers need to viewed through three overarching trends.  First, the pipes are getting bigger allowing access to tools and infrastructure.  Second, more and more pages of content is becoming available as free and open content. Third, a participatory learning culture is evolving around social media.

One of the things I found fascinating was my own reaction to the book.  I buy the basic theme that openness ultimately improves education, and I consider myself someone who is part of a participatory learning culture.  I was pleased that Bonk provided a companion website with hyperlinked references and other resources.  But my first inclination was to begin following Curt Bonk’s Twitter account…and I could not find one for him!  Other than his blog, I did not see Bonk participating to the same degree that he discusses in his book.  I have never met him and may be way off target, but I was somewhat surprised that I could not immediately connect with him the way I did with some of the people he mentioned in his book like Stephen Downes, Vicki Davis, Clay Shirky or Dave Weinberger.

So I was thrilled with the content and miffed a bit by the author!  Weird reaction!

I also found that increasingly with books like this one, I read it with a laptop nearby, so that I can quickly go look at something new and immediately start the learning process for myself.  I had never seen Dancing Matt before, so really enjoyed viewing his Youtube video while reading that section of the book.  This bouncing between the web and the written word is a new but interesting process…and it suggests that in many ways, this should have been an e-book as opposed to a print book.

His final opener has to do with personalized learning…something we reflect on often in faculty development.  Bonk stated that we should be striving to move from where we see personalized learning as the ideal to a culture where personalized learning is the accepted norm.  With the pipes, pages, and participatory culture, anyone can establish their own learning path on any topic, whether it be improved teaching, learning a new language, or finally programming the VCR (…just kidding).  The implications for faculty development are huge!

Bonk has fifteen predictions at the end.  I will leave it to you to check them out, but I liked that he is questioning the status quo.  With the availability of all the world’s knowledge in our pockets/cellphones, the typical four-year college process no longer makes sense to Bonk.  He suggests that formalized education will expand rather than contract.  But informal learning with global partners will play an equal role to the formalized higher education model.  Learning will be authentic from passionate teachers…but those “teachers” may no longer be credentialed.  Bonk also served up a dozen issues that will have to be solved for openness to succeed.

I work with faculty daily on best ways to incorporate the internet into their teaching practices.  In the past three years since I came to VCU, the access to learning on the web has exploded.  Bonk’s book is pushing me to reconceptualize how I should facilitate faculty development in an open world.  I recommend the book to you and would be interesting in your thoughts on the evolution/revolution of faculty development in these exciting times!

Yesterday was the final day of Blackboard World 2009.  It was an enjoyable conference.  I met some interesting colleagues who are all grappling with best ways to teach online.  It was great seeing old friends from Georgia Virtual Technical College.  Twitter as a backchannel was going strong, and I added quite a few new contacts in Twitter.  The hashtag #bbworld09 allowed us to attend a session but keep up with several other sessions simultaneously.  Yet, as compelling as the digital links were, I think I enjoyed most the quiet retrospective back in the hotel room with my colleague Bud Deihl about what the two of us were experiencing.

Thursday was only a half day.  I started the day the way I start every day – up before the sun, coffee, and a review of emails, tweets, Google Reader, and Facebook.

Before the closing keynote, I attended two sessions.  Kathy Keairns of University of Denver discussed leveraging Web 2.0 tools for teaching, research, and fun.  I liked that she provide her wiki handout link.  She focused on four tools:

• Jing

- A great screencast tool that I frequently use
- Free but limited to 5 minute videos

• Picnik

- Free online image editing tool
- Works in the cloud, no downloads
- Good for quick resizing, cropping, and neat effects like Polaroid view

• dVolver

- Cute and quick animated video program’
- Text based cartoon – no audio (other than canned music)

• Gabbly

- Chat Box on the fly
- Just add ‘gabbly.com/‘ in front of any URL

After her session, I attended an interesting session by two gentlemen from England.  Mark Kerrigan and Mark Clements discussed using Web 2.0 as an assessment process to improve institution retention and learning.  They noted that students come to college to get a degree, but the reality they find is that they are enrolled in 24 siloed courses.  At University of Westminster, they have integrated a process where by every student is assigned a “tutor” – what we would call an academic advisor.  After every major learning event in each course, the students are automatically sent a questionnaire/ survey, with the results forwarded to their advisor.  The students are also encouraged to blog about their learning journey after each learning event.  The advisors use the survey results and the blog reflections to help the students see the relevance of their course work and the interconnections with their chosen degree.

U of Westminster is much smaller than VCU, yet I could see parallels between their effort and our Focused Inquiry program for first year students.  Their use of social media could enhance our process in which our students are together with each other and the same faculty member for both FI One and Two.  Food for thought!

The closing keynote was Lester Holt of NBC News.  He gave a very engaging presentation on the parallels between how journalism has been evolving and how education has been evolving. One comment I liked is that both good journalists and good teachers are in the business of informing and provoking deeper understanding.  He said that Brian Williams reminded them all the time that they were writing the first draft of history.

He focused on the timeshift that was occurring, where the new generation of students expect and demand both their news and their learning on demand 24/7.  NBC is partnering with Blackboard to provide its archived news material for online learning (details and costs about NBC Learn to be provided later).  Lester noted that he was not a super student, preferring hands-on to book learning.  He suggested that he might have had better grades if he had had the online opportunities today’s students have!

His keynote was upbeat and a nice way to end three days of learning at Blackboard World 2009.

{Photo Credits: Sheila Chandler, Glenn Harris}

I thoroughly enjoyed this second day at Blackboard World 2009.

Bud Deihl and I presented this morning on weaving the social web into learning while still using the Blackboard learning management system for the things for which it was good.  We used the class that Jon Becker and I taught last spring as an example.  In that class, Delicious was used to share resources found by students.  Wikispaces was used for collaboration and sharing.  And Wimba Classroom was used to bring in both guest speakers and total strangers who connected with us through Twitter.  Blackboard allowed for effective class management of rosters, grades, and safe discussions in the discussion board.  The web allowed for connections with other professionals involved in educational technology in K-12 settings.  It was not an either-or situation but a both-and.

We had around 130-140 people attend our session, and the dialogue was excellent.  Several reinforced our notion that social skills are a necessary literacy for the 21st Century.  When one person remarked that these skills were needed for 21st Century jobs, I reminded all that we have been in the 21st Century for nine years now!  I pointed them to danah boyd’s post from yesterday that nicely summarized some of our frustrations with faculty negativity about using social connections in education.

Needless to say, Bud and I thoroughly enjoyed both our presentation and the rich discussion it generated.

During the day, I attended several other sessions.  Connie Weber of Blackboard discussed the new Bb Grade Center, which has a quite different look and feel from earlier versions of Bb Gradebook.  I liked some features (locking columns, sorting features, special views) but saw other features as problematic.  Where you used to be able to simply click on a student’s name and see all grades associated with that student, you will now have to create a special report to achieve what one mouse-click did in the past.  As with any “progress”, we will adapt and learn to live with it, but faculty traditionally do not deal well with change…and this is quite a radical change!

I was disappointed with the Birds of a Feather session for Faculty Developers.  It turned out that no one was designated to moderate this session, and so after ten minutes of quiet, we all started sharing some practices, but it was not a session in which I gained much.

I then attended a session entitled “Social Networking, Text Messaging, and Web Technologies to Support Web-Based Teaching and Learning.  From the title, I thought the key words were “teaching and learning,” but it turned out the key word was “support” – in that this was a session about Help Desks targeted at other Help Desks.  Interesting use of social media that I sent back to VCU’s support staff via Yammer…but not what I expected.

The final session of the day was our own Sheila Chandler’s discussion of how Virginia Commonwealth University manages its Blackboard environment to ensure 24/7 availability of a system that is now considered mission critical.  I can only add my thanks for our support team who do an excellent job!

The day ended with a Client Appreciation Party.  The look-alike Barack Obama and George W. Bush had to be seen to be appreciated.  As “W” told Bud, he liked his name because he did not need to come up with a nickname for him!  I did complement “W” and told him I voted for him 3 times, and he asked “Which election?!?”  Good food, good humor, good music, and me with a bum knee!  Oh, well!  The conference wraps up tomorrow.  Overall, it has been a very valuable experience.

There has been an active Twitter backchannel linked here, so check that out.

Seth Godin of Tribes fame gave the keynote, substituting for Sir Ken Robinson.  While I hated to miss Sir Ken, Seth gave a great talk.  In many ways, it was an expanded version of his TedTalk earlier this year.  But one take away was that education was the one industry Ben Franklin would have no problem recognizing.  He likened those of us in education to workers in a balloon factory.  It is nice work and we enjoy creating our balloons, but every now and then, a unicorn comes along and makes us nervous.  I would like to think that our work in online learning is one of those unicorns…and I kind of like the analogy!

After the keynote, I attended “Back to Basics: Five Elements of Exceptional Technology Enhanced Learning,” by Stephen Laster, CIO, Harvard Business School.  It was a good session and about 120 attended this session.  His five elements:

o Styles
* Learning Styles
* Cannot give every student every choice, but you can drive expectations on how learning will be delivered
* Also consider Teaching Styles
o Designs
* Course design is like creation of symphony
* A flow that comes naturally
* Design starts with objectives and outcomes and navigates based on learning and teaching styles
* BIg Question – How much mass customization can be support?
o Context
* Relevance
* While not perfect, students are pretty good at finding info
* My comment to him – all learning is now online  – he agreed
o Community
* New notion of teams
* Tribes
* Collective learning models
o Adaptability
* Leveraging Unplanned Opportunities
* New communication norms

Laster suggested that these elements gave a common language that geeks and non-geeks could get behind.  He did note that there was no need to mention technology – that technology should now be assumed to be transparent.  He also suggested that the overhead in education is administration, and that the internet makes higher education ripe for consolidations.

Jarl Jonas of Blackboard discussed Creative and Proven Ways to Keep Students Engaged.  It was somewhat a sells pitch for Release 9, but I did agree with his roles of instructors in an online class:

o Space Planner (Suggested students see our classes as blindfolded musical chairs)
* Consistency, flow
* eClass online model – Explain, Clarify, Look, Act, Share, Self-Evaluate
o Host
* First Impressions
* Keep Out the Welcome Mat
* Banners
* Orientations
* Icebreakers
o Pace Setter
* Manageable Segments
* Vary Discussions
* Individualize
o Connector
* Connect to Content
* Alternative Assessments
* Connect to Each Other
* Students as Teacher
* Groups
* Blogging
* Connect to Faculty
o Mirror
*Model what you are expecting of students

The corporate keynote after lunch was focused on welcoming Angel, as well as discussing strategic direction for Blackboard NG – universal access, increased ability to measure results, and increased mobile applications.  Ray Henderson discussed customer support and transparency, and Michael Chasen announced that Blackboard had just acquired TerriblyClever Design, creator of the iStanford mobile phone apps.

We attended two more sessions in the afternoon.  The one on Constructivist Approach to Distance Ed showcased some interesting use of videos but never really discussed constructivism.  The other was on faculty development and why faculty fail to come to training.  Their bottom line was that one cannot force training, so they have shifted their efforts to web tutorials and tip sheets.

We wrapped up the day at the poster receptions.  Bud and I talked to some interesting folks from Valdosta State University (smartphones in ed), West Virginia University (course design), and Texas Womens University (Quality Matters assessments).

Looking forward to tomorrow – Bud and I are on first thing in the morning discussing weaving the social web into Bb to make it more of a learning portal.  I hope we pop some balloons!

In the past three posts, I have covered the first 39 “rules” from Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb.: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009).  I found this book to be relevant not only for entrepreneurs in business, but for those changing the paradigm of teaching by moving online.  This post will complete my review of his rules and their application to online teaching and learning.  Here are the last thirteen:

Rule #40 – Technology is about changing how we work.

Webber makes a great point that directly ties into our work in online teaching and learning – “It’s never about the technology – it’s always about what the technology makes possible.”  Technology is a moving target.  The online environment today is totally different than just five years ago due to the increased two-way interactivity now possible.  Rather than adopting “a” technology, we should be about adopting technological concepts that allow us to bring learning alive.  The question is never Wordpress versus Blogger or Moveable Type, but rather whether blogging can improve dialogue and connections in your class.  This rule also suggests that it is okay to try new approaches to teaching and learning due to new affordances technology grants rather than trying to shoe-horn our old course into an online learning environment.

Rule #41 – If you want to be a real leader, first get real about leadership.

In business, leadership is not attached to a single job title.  It is also not attached to a specific gender or race.  In classes, the same can be said.  Leadership is a way of thinking and acting, and we do our students a disservice if we do not cultivate that.  Real leaders grow new leaders, and real teachers grow the next generation of leaders as well.  How is your class organized to recognize and cultivate thinking and acting as leaders?

Rule #42 – The survival of the fittest is the business case for diversity.

Webber noted that diversity is the key to adaptation and the way to tap new ideas.  It is a way of learning new ways of thinking and operating.  Much has been written about the anonymity of students online, but I would suggest that one can also create opportunities that expose the diversity of thought.  I will never forget an early online class I taught in which college leadership was being discussed.  A white American male posted a lengthy comment about authoritative leadership, and then one male student from Guam started his post with “I am a Chamorro and that is not how we think…”  Online classes open up wonderful opportunities for cross-cultural, gender, or racial discussions in a safe environment.  Exposing our students to diversity of thought equips them for success in the flat world.

Rule #43 – Don’t confuse credentials with talent.

In business today, particularly with the speed of change that is occurring, it makes sense to hire for attitude and then train for skills.  I wonder if we are guilty of the reverse in education.  We (and our students) place great value on degrees and grades.  The number one question we tend to get in class (online or F2F) is “Will this be on the test?”  If we were in the talent business rather than the credentialing business, we faculty and our students would be focused more on learning and less on grades.  Do our classes help or hurt our students’ future job prospects when it comes to attitude?

Rule #44 – When it comes to business, it helps if you actually know something about something.

The same can be said for teaching online.  Our role as faculty has definitely changed.  We now live in a world where Scantron tests are obsolete if students can enter the question into Wolfram Alpha or Google or Wikipedia and ascertain the correct answer.  But that is not learning.  Our role has evolved from knowledge giver into a knowledge guide, which does mean that we have to know something about something…so that we can guide those who only check the first five returns in Google.  We should want to move our students beyond information to knowledge.

Rule #45 – Failure isn’t failing.  Failure is failing to try.

Webber noted that the articles in FastCompany magazine that garnered the greatest reader responses were the ones where authors talked about their failures and what they learned.  One cannot take risks without having failures, but the question becomes what one does with the lessons learned.  That is true of online teachers and it is true of online students.  Regardless of the myth of the digital natives, the truth is that the online environment is still outside the comfort zone of many students (as it is for many faculty).  Yet, this new environment offers rich opportunities to try things that could never be tried face-to-face.  I recently required my graduate class of technology-frightened students to research a Web 2.0 tool and then post a multimedia presentation on that tool in a wiki to their fellow classmates in a two-week period…with no instruction on “how” to do that.  But I also told them that anyone who successfully posted a multimedia presentation passed the assignment.  They ended up amazing themselves, posting a combination of YouTube, Jing, and Camtasia videos on 25 separate tools.  They also learned that the lesson was not the presentation but the journey in preparing and posting the presentation.  After that two-week period, I no longer had a class of students scared of technology.  Almost all of them ended up applying their new skills in the K-12 classes they taught.  What excites me most is the spirit of experimentation that has suddenly erupted in these teachers.

Rule #46 – Tough leaders wear their hearts on their sleeves.

Webber noted that the kind of leaders the world needs are those who exercise tough leadership with warm hearts.  I believe that the worst mistake an online faculty can make is to be invisible.  It is okay to have a tough course but your students should “see” you as someone who is passionate about the subject matter and caring about their success in the class.  The social presence of the faculty impacts learning, retention, and ultimately student success.

Rule #47 – Everyone’s at the center of their map of the world.

I am currently in Boston visiting my daughter and grandkids.  One of the lesser known tourist attractions is the Mapparium, a three-story tall stained glass globe that you walk into and stand at the center of the world.  It certainly is a unique view of geography.  Yet, unique views are common.  I was talking with my good friend Bruce Robinson last night.  Bruce is Headmaster of the British School of Boston and was my roommate at University of Nebraska as we worked on our doctorates.  Bruce is also originally from Australia, and he had a world map that (to me) was upside down and showed Australia as center of the world.  Technology has given us all the ability to construct our own personal learning environments in which we are the center of the world, with linkages to information and knowledge being generated all around us.  This concept that not only are we at the center but also we are responsible for our own learning is a great literacy that we need to pass on to our students.  Webber makes a great point in Rule #47: ”

“It’s a big world-and getting smaller all the time. It’s not so much that the world is flat.  It’s that we are all connected…you’re in the middle, and so is everyone else.”

Rule #48 – If you want to make change, start with an iconic project.

Everyone talks about “change” yet few really believe in it of do it.  The concept of change is too nebulous for most people.  So Webber suggests that the road to change is to pick a doable project that provides proof of concept and makes change believable.  So if you would like to add online courses to your education delivery mix, don’t try to do all of them immediately.  Pick one course that has impact and do a proof of concept design and delivery.  When we started the online delivery at Gwinnett Technical College in Georgia, we started with three courses and 41 students.  Within five years, we were offering 200 courses a quarter with the largest online technical college enrollment in the state.

Rule #49 – If you want to grow as a leader, you have to disarm your border guards.

It is an unwritten law of business that the higher you rise, the more inaccessible you become.  Webber points our that business today is more than numbers and rationality; that emotional intelligence plays just as important a role.  In a similar view, faculty who teach online need to be accessible and real to their online students.  It is too easy to put up barriers to access – rigid office hours, unreturned email, no use of social media like Facebook or Twitter.  Think about how accessible you are and what barriers may be blocking students from getting to you.

Rule #50 – On the way up, pay attention to your strengths; they’ll be your weaknesses on your way down.

We are all fascinated by lists of the best…but when it comes to businesses, those in the Fortune 500 today probably will not remain there.  Take a look at the Fortune 500 from fifty years ago – the top company was General Motors!  Every strength also has the potential as a vulnerability.  There are lessons from GM that can be applied to higher education.  We need to examine our strengths today with new lens of digital connectiveness, ubiquitous access to information, and open publishing.

Rule #51 – Take your work seriously. Yourself, not so much.

Great advice…whether you run a company or a class.  I start all of my online classes with an icebreaker to get to know my students…and to let them get to know me.  There are a ton of interactive websites that can be used for ice breakers online. One I have used in the past with college-aged student is “Gone To the Dogs.” You click on GAMES (along the left side menu) and fill out the Dog Breed Calculator test to find out what breed of dog you are!  Turns out I am a “Azawakh” (or Tareg Sloughi)…a large but very skinny dog from the sub-Sahara. It is “rangy, leggy, lean, rugged, and elegant”…and my wife might suggest that I am three out of the five and leave it to me to figure out which!  My students love it – and we begin that first week making connections with each other.

Rule #52 – Stay alert!  There are teachers everywhere.

Wonderful way to end the book!  Webber suggests that we should all stay open to what we are hearing and be willing to listen and learn.  I note in my syllabus that I expect to learn as much from my students as they do from me, because I set my online classes up with the expectation that we are all co-creators of knowledge who learn from each other.

Webber ends his book by noting that the old rules no longer apply and that we need new rules of thumb.  That suggests a continuing evolution.  He asks that we all share our Rule #53, and has set up a website – http://www.rulesofthumbbook.com – to facilitate that sharing.

So – four posts covering 52 rules.  What do you think?  What would be our Rule #53 for online teaching and learning?  Leave a comment here and let me know!

Earlier this week, I posted the first two posts reviewing Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb.: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009).  I got a nice note from Alan at his website:

“I just read your blog on Rules and I can’t thank you enough! Taking Rules and applying it to the concept of achieving excellence in teaching is a terrific way to migrate my (mostly) general rules to a very specific (and very important) context. As you say at the end of your blog post: do they hit the target, or are they off the mark? It’s good learning for me, by the way, to watch you port the rules into your own work/life and test them to see if they actually offer practical, useful, helpful guidance. Thanks for the posting here and the serious application on your own site!”

I agree that it is useful to take books like Alan’s and reflect on their merit in the context of one’s own work.  So with that in mind, here are the next thirteen rules:

Rule #27 – If you want to be like Google, learn Megan Smith’s three rules.

Megan Smith is Google’s VP of new business development and strategy.  Her three rules that got Alan’s attention:

• The customer participates.
• The customer drives,
• Open systems beat closed systems.

These relate directly to online teaching.  Even more so than in the classroom, the role of faculty shifts online to facilitation of a learning journey in which the students are participants and co-developers of knowledge.  As Michael Wesch has pointed out, no one knows as much as all of us, so let your students drive and see where it takes you!  And of course, to let them drive, you need to leave the walled gardens of course management systems and venture out into the open web, taking advantage of open systems like Twitter, Ning, and even Wikipedia.

Rule #28 – Good design is table stakes.  Great design wins.

Webber noted that today design is what differentiates companies.  The same can be said for online courses.  Good design should be the norm.  Great design differentiates courses.  To me, design means a lot more than just loading content.  It means you have thought through your course objectives and designed the content, interactions, formative feedback, and assessments to clearly deliver the learning objectives.

Rule #29 – Words matter.

Webber quoted Mark Twain who said “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.”  When faculty move their courses online, they have created an environment for online learning, but have they created an environment where learning occurs online?  Look at how you communicate to your online students.  How are your expectations communicated?  How are the students’ voices communicated?

Rule #30 – The likeliest sources of great ideas are in the most unlikely places.

In business, great ideas do not necessarily emerge from R&D centers, but rather from the trenches or the fringes.  Tom Peters quoted Jack Welsch on this, who said, “You can’t behave in a calm, rational manner.  You’ve got to be out there on the lunatic fringe.” In teaching online, do you see yourself as the only source of ideas, or do you set your students free to seek new ideas from unlikely sources?

Rule #31 – Everything communicates.

Your online design, your “Faculty Information”, your syllabus, your communications in discussion boards, blog comments, and wikis…they all send messages about you, your passion for teaching and the subject matter, and your openness to connecting with your students.  Equally important, what you decide not to use or do also communicates.  How do you brand yourself?

Rule #32 – Content isn’t king. Context is king.

I love the quote by Walter Wriston that every day “I’m presented with three types of information.  Facts, wrong facts, and damned lies.  My job is to know which is which.”  That same rule can apply to online teaching.  The internet is awash in facts, wrong facts and damned lies.  Teaching our students how to navigate and analyze this massive pool of data is a key literacy for this age.  As Webber noted, context is how we add value.

Rule #33 – Everything is a performance.

We faculty know this from teaching in the classroom, but have you considered your “performance” in an online class?  How do you come across to your students?  Do you have an authentic voice and social presence online?  Great teachers are known for their delivery, and that is as true online as in the classroom.

Rule #34 – Simplicity is the new currency.

In the Center for Teaching Excellence, we spend a lot of time examining new Web 2.0 applications.  Some are just cool, but at the end of the day, we always need to ask ourselves – Do they make our life easier or more complicated?  Would it solve problems for me or make problems for me?  The same can be said for your online course design?  Do you make it simple for students to figure out the flow, or is finding assignments a problem?  Is your course flow consistent week to week?

Rule #35 – The Red Auerbach management principle: loyalty is a two-way street.

Arnold “Red” Auerbach was the coach of the Boston Celtics who won 938 games.    When talking about why the Celtics were successful, he stated that you should not reward players on statistics but on contributions to the team; don’t con the players and they will not con you; and remember that loyalty is a two-way street.  Trust and loyalty go hand in hand.  In business, Webber talks about how many managers demand loyalty from employees but do not give loyalty back, preferring instead to use fear and intimidation over leadership.  It makes me wonder about how we as faculty come across to our students?  Do our online policies make it clear that we mistrust our students, or do our policies show respect and trust as their foundation?  To me, this goes hand in hand with high expectations.  Expect much of your students, trust them, and they will rise above your expectations.

Rule #36 – Message to entrepreneurs: managing your emotional flow is more critical than managing your cash flow.

Webber’s message to entrepreneurs is that one should not get so focused on making money that one loses one’s mind.  His solution – great partners, lots of laughs, loud music, and comfort food.  This is a tough one to map to online learning….and yet, it resonates with me on several levels.  I work hard to make my courses meaningful…but fun nonetheless.  I tend to have Pandora playing when I am working online.  In other words, if I continue to have fun teaching online, my students will enjoy the experience more as well.

Rule #37 – All money is not created equal.

Webber is focused in this rule on not just raising capital to start a new business, but in also creating relationships as part of that process.  While we do not necessarily raise money in our online teaching, we do need to raise social capital.  Our students will relate to us and our content much more if they have connected with us.  This relationship stuff is very important – it underlies any community of learners.

Rule #38 – If you want to think big, start small.

Webber interviewed Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus about his work with microcredit.  In answer to the question on how to pick problems to work on, given so many problems in the world, he said, “Start with what ever is right in front of you.”  Many faculty are intimidated about moving their courses online, as the issues seem too numerous.  This advice works equally well for them.  Start small.  Create simple interactions to connect with your students initially, and then build on the experience over time.  I am currently thoroughly enjoying the graduate course I teach in School Leadership, but this course evolved over the four semesters in which I have taught.

Rule #39 – “Serious fun” isn’t an oxymoron; it’s how you win.

Webber quoted Dan Pink, who said that “People rarely succeed at anything unless they are having fun doing it.”  Yet we tend to load our courses down with the rules on what students cannot do, as opposed to the freedom to learn and learn well.  I take it as a real complement when my students tell me in course evaluations that my course was “fun.”  That meant that I got it and they got it – the subject matter is serious but the learning journey around that serious subject matter can be darn fun!

And I have to admit, it has been fun mapping Webber’s rules to the context of online teaching and learning.  I will finish up his Rules of Thumb in the next post.

Yesterday I started an examination of Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb.: 52 Truths For Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self (2009).  As Webber noted, these amazing times require one to rethink, reimagine, and recalibrate what is possible.  In other words, it is time to rewrite the rules.

I looked at the first thirteen rules yesterday, using as a lens our initiative to help faculty move their classes online.  Continuing today:

Rule #14 – You don’t know if you don’t go.

Webber suggests that we all need to get out of our comfort zone and experience new things.  How many of us as faculty spend time in the social media that our students use?  How do we add relevance to our students’ lives if we do not understand their culture?  You don’t know if you don’t go!

Rule #15 – Every start-up needs four things: change, connections, conversation and community.

Webber noted that these four words are not just a cute mnemonic device, they represent a foundation for a new type of business plan.  They also form a nice foundation for an online course.  In moving courses online, teaching (and learning) practices have to change.  Online courses work best when students make connections with the content, the faculty, and each other.  Learning occurs through conversations (synchronous and asynchronous).  The goal in online learning is to create a community of learners.

Rule #16 – Facts are facts; stories are how we learn.

Nothing is dryer than just the facts.  Facts come alive when coupled with stories that touch us.  My colleague Bud Deihl has been working with faculty at VCU to start a digital storytelling initiative.  Technology provides some wonderful tools these days for faculty to tell their stories…and for students to tell theirs.  Learning becomes more personal when stories are used, and more learning-centered if students become involved in telling those stories.  In my classes last year, I had quite a few online students who were frankly scared of technology, and yet when I pointed them to CogDog’s 50+ Ways to Tell a Story and let them begin telling theirs, magical things began to happen in the class.

Rule #17 – Entrepreneurs choose serendipity over efficiency.

There are safe ways to teach and there are creative ways to teach, and the two rarely coincide.  Online teaching and learning has opened new creative approaches for both my students and myself.  It is work, but it is also fun, exciting, and more vibrant than recycling the old lectures I used to use.

Rule #18 – Knowing it ain’t the same as doing it.

There are a lot of “experts” who theorize about best practices for teaching online.  But the critical component for me is whether these experts have actually done it – taught online themselves.  In a like manner, faculty will learn more the first semester they actually teach online, and there are no manuals or websites that can replace that crucible of experience.

Rule #19 – Memo to leaders: focus on the signal-to-noise ratio.

The signal-to-noise ratio comes from electrical engineering – the higher the ratio, the clearer the message being transmitted.  It is also a term I heard in my Navy days.  When hunting submarines, our job was to pull their signals out of the acoustic noise in the sea.  We used technology to improve the signal to noise ratio.  Today, our job as faculty is to still improve that signal-to-noise ratio.  The internet is awash in noise and distractions.  We do have tools such as RSS feeds that can help us improve our signal strength and focus on finding those bits of information that enhance the learning process.  Webber suggested that leaders need to do self-assessments about themselves, their company, their values, and their metrics in order to improve their signal-to-noise ratio.  Good advice also for faculty and the course they teach.  Particularly online, how clear are we on goals and objectives?  What processes are we using to help students critically examine our subject matter?  Do the metrics we use map to our learning objectives, and do our students understand that?

Rule #20 – Speed = strategy.

In an age where change is happening at a dizzying pace, the winners will be those who can see the change and adapt the swiftest.  This may not be true for every course, but every course can benefit from developing students who are critical thinkers and adaptive thinkers.  It raises the question as to how we unleash our students to question old models and create new ones.

Rule #21 – Great leaders answer Tom Peters’ great question: “How can I capture the world’s imagination?”

Is your course “insanely great?”  If not, why not?  Timid approaches to learning do succeed every day, and imaginative experiments in learning do fail everyday, but which excite you and your students more?  Considering how to have one’s course capture the students’ imagination is a great exercise in keeping at bay the status quo.

Rule #22 – Learn to see the world through the eyes of your customer.

The learning is a class changes when the faculty stops being a salesperson for her or his discipline and instead becomes a partner with students in knowledge creation around the discipline.  We faculty are guilty of being so passionate about our course that we fail to examine our course through our students’ eyes.  If we want them to want more than a grade, we have to work at creating opportunities so students see the relevance of the course to their own lives, lighting their own passions about the subject matter.  Some of the social media open new opportunities for making our students’ thinking visible.  It is one of the reasons I feel I get closer to my online students than my face-to-face students.  In the 24/7 online environment, I end up spending more time seeing the world through their eyes.

Rule #23 – Keep two lists: What gets you up in the morning? What keeps you up at night?

Webber noted that some people have jobs while others have something they really work at.  The first question really gets at what are you passionate about, while the second is about being honest about what works and what does not.  What would be on your two lists?

Rule #24 – If you want to change the game, change the economics of how the game is played.

I love the quote from Jerry Garcia that starts this chapter – “You do not want to merely be considered just the best of the best.  You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.”  I have always considered that great advice for an online teacher as well.  Rather than looking for the same ways of doing what you used to do in the classroom in an online class, look for new ways of teaching that the online environment and social media open up.

Rule #25 – If you want to change the game, change customer expectations.

John Tagg noted in The Learning Paradigm College that students are equally guilty at low expectations (you feed me what will be on the test, I’ll regurgitate it).  But as Chickering and Gamson noted in their classic Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education, high expectations lead to improved performance.

6. Communicates High Expectations – Expect more and you will get more. High expectations are important for everyone — for the poorly prepared, for those unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright and well motivated. Expecting students to perform well becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when teachers and institutions hold high expectations for themselves and make extra efforts.

In the online environment, expectation management is critical.  Rubrics are an excellent means by which your expectations can be crystal clear.

Rule #26 – The soft stuff is the hard stuff.

Does your course focus on the bottom line (grades) or investing in the future?  Do students leave your course motivated to continue their learning journey or glad the course is done and the box is checked for graduation?  What do you focus on?

These rules are resonating with me.  Are they with you?  I’ll continue my examination in the next post.

We wrap up our Center for Teaching Excellence annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Institute tomorrow, and it has been a wonderful week of discovery for ourselves and our 18 participants.  It is always fun to immerse yourself with colleagues in explorations of teaching practices built around the web and networked learning.  From delicious to digital storytelling to RSS to Slideshare and Jing, we have heard a lot of excitement and brainstorming on practical applications.  One of my high points was being a part of a panel discussion on blogging with three of my colleagues.  Laura McLay blogged about it here.

Check out the Twitter hashtag of “#tlwt09” to gain some appreciation for the week!

As energizing as this week has been, it has been equally fun to reflect on how far I have come in the past year.  I just went back and looked at my blog posts from one year ago.  I had forgotten that just one year ago we both changed our office locations and I bought my scooter!  More importantly, I have had the opportunity to continue learning and growing with my colleagues Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl.  The three of us spent from December to May brainstorming and then publishing the White Paper on online teaching and learning.  We also totally revamped this Institute, such that the current year focused on networked learning hardly resembles the previous more tool-oriented institute.

As an example, this afternoon was focused on “Casting the Net”.  In a three hour period, we took our participants on an exploration of first podcasting, then screencasting, and finally webcasting.  Our focus was on using these techniques to communicate and connect with students and colleagues.  While each is useful for disseminating material to students, we also demonstrated how each could be equally useful as student-generated material.  As one participant noted in Twitter, she sort of liked the concept of shifting from grading 30 five-page papers to grading 30 five-minute videos!

I illustrated how Jon Becker had put together an impromptu webcast with colleagues nationwide and our students, then Twittered a link for the web meeting, which allowed others outside our walled garden of Blackboard to join the conversation.

As something tangible to take back from their week with us, at the end of the day we gave each participant an iPod Touch.  It was totally unexpected and you could feel the boost in energy and excitement (and goosebumps) from the crowd as we began to hand them out.  We feel confident that this is a group that will make good use in this investment in technology!  This institute has really been an opening commitment to building a relationship that is going to evolve and grow over the coming years!

As I said, it was a nice Touch! 

{Photo Credit: Apple}

Bud Deihl and I traveled north a few miles to attend the University of Mary Washington’s Faculty Academy 2009 in Fredericksburg, VA.  It was a chance to reconnect face-to-face with some of my Twitter friends like Martha Burtis (see her reflections on this day here), George Brett and Laura Blankenship.

One of the highlights for me was the lunch debate between the Right Reverend Jim Groom and John St. Clair on “Is the CMS Dead?“  In a lively back and forth, the original Edupunk Jim suggested that the course management system was only good for management, not learning, and as such, SHOULD be dead … but appeared to be more undead (I knew zombies would appear at some point in his talk).  John countered that he thought the talk was about CMS – conservative mid-sized sedans – and that he thought most people wanted a sensible automobile and not some do-it-yourself hovercraft!

Both gentlemen gave great passionate arguments to their side.  I talked to Jim afterward and asked why the question had to be CMS “or” open systems?  In the past two semesters, I have used the Blackboard CMS for the things it does well (document and link management, rosters, grade management), but also used blogging, Jing and wikis for collaborative work with my students.  In other words, Blackboard served as a portal and launching point for my students into the open web.  This seemed to me to be a case of “AND” rather than “or.”

I enjoyed the lunch debate, but in reality, the whole day was fantastic!

James Boyle gave an invigorating keynote on “Cultural Agoraphobia: What Universities Need to Know About Our Bias Against Openness.”  Having just come off the Board of Directors for Creative Commons, he was uniquely qualified to discuss this issue.  He started with a history of the internet and how openness was a bug meant to be fixed later, but the internet grew more rapidly than anticipated and openness spawned many wonderful opportunities and profitable enterprises.  It definitely caused problems and concerns, but also amazing positives in the business world, entertainment, government, and education.  Yet, Boyle stated that education has yet to deal with its concerns and instead simply is biased against openness.  He noted that openness meant not only the ability to copy but also the ability to improve.

Thoroughly enjoyed the talk.  Jeff Nugent has recently had us at the CTE discussing licensing our Center organizational web material with a Creative Commons license.

I attended a great panel discussion by UMW faculty on their use of blogging in their classes.  It was a chance to see a very diverse mix of blogs associated with writing classes, art classes, science classes and math classes.  One of the take-aways was that blogs allowed time for students to reflect on critical issues for which there just was not time in 50-minute classes.

Cole Camplese of Penn State University gave an excellent talk on emerging trends impacting teaching and learning.  I loved his observation that we view what our students do as “technology,” but that it is only technology to those of us born before technology.  To the students raised in a wired world, it is simply a means of communication and connection.  I was blown away by the fact he listed that 40% of students at Penn State no longer bring a TV to campus.  They get their “TV” and entertainment straight off the web.  He noted that our universities are still designed as if our students are going to receive our wisdom and reflect it back to us, when in reality, through their own content and knowledge creation, our students act more as amplifiers than reflectors.  At Penn State, they have cast blogs as a form of digital publishing and are exploring ways for students to keep their own digital content.  If blogs are viewed as personal content management systems, then digital expression is seen as a form of scholarship that must be systematically supported.

I was also impressed that a third of PSU faculty reported using YouTube instructionally. 

The last session of the day was a workshop run by Laura Blankenship on “Creating a Personal Learning Network for Yourself and Your Students.”  We will be discussing the same topic at our upcoming Teaching and Learning with Technology Institute in June, so I was interested in seeing how Laura presented this concept.  She did a great job by first focusing on problems that needed solving, and then brainstorming from the group web applications that could be used to solve these problems.  In the course of the discussion, we discussed RSS feeds, Google Reader, delicious, Jott, and a host of other tools.

One last side thought – Twitter was very active among participants, and the hashtag #umwfa09 made note-taking unnecessary.  However, Twitter had scheduled maintenance today which hit right at the end of Cole’s talk, and it was momentarily frustrating to lose it mid-conference (so much so that I complained about it in Facebook!!!) 

Great day – looking forward to Day Two tomorrow!