Recently in Leadership Category

James Gee = Ed games guru.
GLS = Games, Learning, and Society Conference. Held in Madison, WI.

This man is a genius. He gets games, is a great researcher, and knows how to communicate his complex, deep thoughts.

My notes:

In his recent book - ignored Sims and women gamers.

But, in research, the marginal things are often the most interesting. This is true here!

Women in the Sims are doing amazing things - the future of gaming.

Gamers can become designers with today's games and tools.

Nickel and Dimed challenge by yamx - To the Sims community.
 - Based on the book, but at a metaphorical level.
 - Must be a "poverty" mom.
 - Raise kids until they are old enough to be on their own.
 - They can't die or be taken by social services.

Rule book for challenge created. Limits what you can do in the game, set boundaries.

This game "mod" is building social engagement.
Example - community wrote back and discussed the rules, argued them, some made mods of this mod rule set!

This is a new form of modding - built on social tools as opposed to "hard" programing skills. It involves "emotional intelligence."

That skill is critical for solving the problems of today and tomorrow. Games are one way to foster it.

This is an example of 21st century leadership - fostering connections, building people up, and allowing other's leadership to emerge.

We need people to use their emotional intelligence to engage all socially to solve the problems of today and tomorrow.

General responses to audience questions:

The game must be fun first! Learning of content should emerge naturally from the fun.

Fun is not the same as engagement. We don't always have fun playing games, but we are engaged.

I've been involved with instructional design at PSU since 1984. More recently, I've become involved in Learning Design. It's a superset of ID, encompassing not only ID, but instructional technology, systemic change, administration, and (IMO) just about anything else that impacts on the educational experience, such as the physical learning environment.

We have over 100 Instructional Designers at Penn State, but no one, to the best of my knowledge, is listed as a Learning Designer. So I wonder if it would benefit the entire Penn State Community to start thinking about Learning Design? We already have taken steps in that direction via the Learning Design Summer Camp [http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/wiki/Learning_Design_Summer_Camp_2009], but we've not looked at Learning Design per se. We've not examined what Learning Design is, how it can and should affect how we plan instruction, how we work together in teams, and how it affects our career paths.

So what is Learning Design? Clark Quinn views it as the intersection of instructional design, information design and experience design. Earlier I alluded it's a superset of instructional design. I think if you step back from the doing and look from the balcony on what's involved in creating educational materials and experiences, you'll be closer to what LD is.

How does it affect instruction? How doesn't it? For an instructional designer, it means taking into account many things we simply ignore. Take the typical prerequisite skills diagram. In this type of analytical diagram, one lists the skills needed to perform the task at hand. At some point you draw a dotted line separating the skills into two sets. The skills that fall below the dotted line are considered already mastered - you don't need to worry about teaching them.



Now imagine vertical dotted lines on each side of the listed skills. Anything that lies outside those vertical dotted lines is not dealt with by instructional design, but rather by learning design. I've only included a few LD things in this illustration - hope you get the point I'm trying to make. Instructional Designers need to not only dig deep, they need to look wide to see what else impacts their tiny portion of the entire learning experience.


So how do we at PSU go about learning more about this tremendous challenge and opportunity? What does this mean for career advancement? I know many IDs at PSU feel their upward mobility is curtailed. Is a move into Learning Design a way to foster a stronger career path?

I'm asking these questions in the hopes of sparking a true dialog with anyone that works to develop instruction - what can/should we be doing and exploring in this space?

I just read an interesting (and short!) article titled "College 2.0: A Wired Way to Rate Professors--and to Connect Teachers." At the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (at which BTW my cousin just started teaching), Gerald Canfield, an associate professor of information systems, is publishing his use of their CMS (Blackboard), posting number of hits, etc. Why? he feels it's a way to reach other faculty:


and it's part of the new bragging rights of faculty - something they can put on their resume.

I totally agree on both counts. At PSU, we use ANGEL, A New Global Environment for Learning. At PSU, we don't publish individual numbers. In fact, unless you dig through dry, dusty reports, you'll be hard pressed to find any numbers. So here they are, as of Feb. 13, 2009:

There are currently 75,441 students with at least one course in ANGEL.

• At peak usage during the Fall 08 semester, there were 80,007 students with at least one course in ANGEL.
• At peak usage during the Spring 08 semester, there were 72,157 students with at least one course in ANGEL.

There are currently 9,809 active course sections in ANGEL, 69% of total PSU course sections offered. 

• At peak usage during the Fall 08 semester, there were 10,610 active course sections in ANGEL.
• At peak usage during the Spring 08 semester, there were 9,259 active course sections in ANGEL.

There are currently 277,298 student-course-section enrollments (e.g., if a student has three courses in ANGEL that would count as three in this number).

• At peak usage during the Fall 08 semester, there were 294,917 student-course-section enrollments.
• At peak usage during the Spring 08 semester, there were 254,385 student-course-section enrollments.

ANGEL Groups (A group is a self-initiated course-like space)

• There are currently 10,297 groups with a total of 136,457 group users (unique editors and members).

PSU has bragging rights as a whole, no question about it! But what about the individual? Should individuals be posting their stats? I think that's OK as long as those stats are followed by substantive examples of the course content and activities. Otherwise, you could give a false sense of CMS use. For example, just because you have a course space in ANGEL doesn't mean you're using it, or using it well. You may just have your syllabus online and nothing else.

So, just as is true with any technology, just telling the world you are using a CMS is not enough. You have to share how you are using it, what your observations are of that use, and gee, what do the students think of it? Just posting raw numbers may be an indication of leading, but it can also be misleading. We need to paint the whole picture when it comes to CMSs.

Recently, my wife has undergone a series of MRIs for a (hopefully) non-existent medical condition. Today as I waited for the (again hopefully) last test, I marveled at the machine she was in, the knowledge it took to build it, and the community of practitioners needed to support it. The MRI machine is a pinnacle of modern technology that sits on the apexes of knowledge and community.

What my colleagues and I are doing in higher education is similar. We are a community of practitioners attempting to discover the best uses of some incredibly complex technology and support another community of practitioners in these uses. Wow.

You don't just plop someone down in front of an MRI machine and tell them to have at it. You train them, mentor them, and build their skills in the use of the machine. I observed this today, watching an 18-year veteran instruct a 5-year apprentice and a newbie.

Similarly, you don't just plop an educator down in front of a blog platform, or a virtual world, and expect them to be successful. Educators need our community to guide and mentor their community in best uses and practices. Yet unlike the MRI folks, many professors and instructors in higher ed. may not see the necessity of this. After all, their professional success to this point has been based, in part, on their ability to function independently. So it's up to us to explain why such mentoring is not just needed, it's critical to the successful use of the machine we name education technology.

At ETS, we're always in the process of mentoring instructors and faculty. We have a myriad of approaches to do so. Yet we can and should do more. We need to find ways to reach out to the early majority of adopters of education technology, in addition to the innovators and early adopters we currently reach. We need to foster a community where faculty understand that it's OK to reach out for assistance.

Waiting for results on an MRI is the hard part. What about the results of an instructional intervention that utilizes education technology? While experiments can fail, we need to show faculty this "stuff" works up front when we know it will do so. That's one way to interest the early majority.

None of this is new. We know the formula for success. Identify the early adopters, work with them, mentor and support them to ensure success. Then help them spread the word to other faculty who would otherwise never engage with the technology (or us). Until now, this has worked just fine.

My concern is with the rapid pace of all technologies, and the acceleration of change, the tried and true formula may no longer be enough. If change is accelerating, then our ability to adapt to change  and make all this stuff timely must also accelerate. We need new models to reach faculty.

So, we're experimenting with just-in-time screencasts, dynamic knowledge construction, and many other tools and methodologies. The community to support the machine has suddenly become more complex. We need to mentor each other far more than ever before.  The old apexes we stood upon are rapidly becoming dull, flat plains. We need to reach towards new apexes so we can assist faculty in obtaining new pinnacles of education technology use.

Over the years I've constructed several web sites around instructional design and education technologies. I'm constantly amazed at how many people contact me about these sites. My one site, Writing Educational Goals and Objectives, is the second Google hit on an "instructional objectives" search, so I have to assume many people are linking to it.

I didn't set out to do all this. I just wanted to share what I knew with others. Yet the end result is the same. In today's world, if you share something over the net, you are leading by doing, even if it's by accident.

Carrying this forward, are today's leaders with an online presence providing leadership with every post they make? That's pretty scary, considering the breadth of social tools out there. Many (like Twitter) can be used for personal info (I just ate a steak at XXXX and loved it!) as well as professional info. Or are we just receiving a more holistic picture of our leaders, one that will allow us to better understand their thoughts, humor, likes, dislikes, hopes, and dreams?

Will the new generation of techno-savvy leaders that use these tools actively bend them to promote their leadership visions, or will they not think about it before they unwittingly share their leadership in this arena? I'm seeing both things happen here. I'm curious as to what others are seeing. How is the Web 2 affecting leadership, and how are leaders utilizing Web 2 tools, deliberately and unwittingly?

Today I rediscovered the importance of follow up. In December, we set up a plan for some game developments. Today I discovered the plan was not going as it should. Whose fault was it? That's the first, usual, thought we all have. Truth be told, I don't care to point fingers usually. In this case I have to point to myself.

Why? Because I didn't follow up with everyone to make sure the plan was understood and proceeding. It's not enough to plan; you have to follow up periodically with all, making sure all understand the plan and that it's working.

In this case it's not a big deal. We'll have another meeting early next week and get back on track. And you can bet I'll follow up on that meeting!

I'm fortunate enough to be working with some fine folks on a book about Nursing Education and Educational Technology. We've had several meeting via Skype so far to nail down the chapters, flow, etc. Now it's time to actually write something!

I've been waiting for an example or two upon which to base my approach, but I decided last week to step up, stick my neck out, and write a draft of one of my chapters. This could mean one of two things. The rest of the team will (at least mostly) like what I did and adopt my model for their chapters. Or, the rest of the team could politely tell me to hold my horses until one of them comes up with a working model for me to follow.

If the first case, I'm leading but could be burned. In the second case, I'm following but safe. A year ago I would have taken the second route without hesitation. Somehow over the years I've become more timid; more afraid to make a mistake.  This is a funny place to be for the guy that innovated cross-platform courseware design in the early 90's! Back then it was all high risk, and doom if we failed.

Leadership is about the possibility of failure. If you are innovative then you are taking chances, and that means you can fail. I need to keep reminding myself of this, take calculated risks, and be prepared to pick myself up if I fall.

I mean that literally, in the vacation sense. I was off most of the past two weeks recharging my batteries, doing all those odd jobs around the house, eating way too much, and learning about my new PS3.

It was a time of reflection for me. After a week or so I finally relaxed. Then I realized just how stressed I was. I know I realized this intellectually before the vacation, but it took a week for my body to realize it.


So what can I do? Well, I decided to enact the following:

• Schedule more of the short "to-dos" on my calendar so I can off-load them mentally until I work on them. This also gives me the time to work on them, let's people see what I'm doing, etc. The only downside here is I have to stick to the schedule. No slacking!
• Really start to use our Project Management Tool, BaseCamp. We starting using this in December; now it's time to make it a "can't do without" habit.
• Face difficult conversations head on instead of avoiding them. That doesn't mean I'll be nasty, but I won't leave things hanging either.
• My day, before I even get to work, is really hectic. I need to restructure my morning activities to reduce this stress as much as possible. For example, I can pack my gym bag the night before.

Most important, look for other opportunities to reduce my daily stress level. My job, like yours, has stress associated with it. Some of that is beyond my control. Some of it is caused by the way I interact with the world. That I can change.

I've written before about reptiles vs. mammals, and how I'm a mammal and need to be more like a reptile.

I think I've over adjusted. In the past month I've been nasty to several people when they didn't live up to my expectations. As a mammal, in the past I've always let things slide as bit too much here, and it's cost me. I've worried excessively instead of dealing with the issue. I'm not seen as leader material. A reptile would deal with the issue and resolve it. So that's what I've been doing, but not in the best way.

You don't have to be mean and nasty to be firm. You just have to state what your goals are, make sure people understand them, and ensure all understand the consequences for all if the goals are not met. Work to ensure success so failure doesn't happen.

Now I can blame several factors here - I'm REALLY stressed out both by work and personal factors. I'm ill and jumping the gun. Etc. All this is true, yet a leader (IMO) has to be able to set these things aside when communicating with others.

So to those of you out there that actually read this and have seen my dark side, my apologies.  I need to work harder in this area.

How are leaders adapting to the explosion of Web 2 sites? I recently subscribed to Listio, a site dedicated to listing the Web 2 sites out there. Then I forgot about it for two weeks. I was traveling and in training, plus finishing up the grading of the course I teach, IST 250. Imagine my surprise when I opened my RSS reader to find hundreds of posts, each one detailing a new Web 2 site!

Talk about a technological singularity! So, how do leaders deal with the explosion of information out there, the ability to hook up with others in a second and share information, and the resulting loss of control?

A good leader has to keep the pot bubbling but not overflowing. Too little push and things just sit. Too much push and the pot boils over, people freak out, quit their jobs, etc.

Now that's an internal push to keep the pot bubbling, designed and orchestrated by the leader to do so. What about outside influences such as the Web 2, that are beyond a leader's control? There are two obvious choices.

Choice 1 - Ignore all this; It Will Go Away. Don't encourage your staff to look at these stupid sites. In fact, limit internet access at work so it can't happen. That way you (the leader) is in control of the information flow. People see what they need to see, based on your expert decisions.

Hmmm. That doesn't sound like a place I'd like to work. Do places like this exist? You bet! How about Choice 2?

Choice 2 - Embrace the Web 2 stuff. It can only empower your staff to reach a higher level of, well, everything good. Intellectual processing. Sound decision making. Getting the big picture. Communicating with others on relevant topics. The flow of information is a controlled yet chaotic one. Sure new things happen every day, new sites, etc., but the individual has to filter all that and come up with strategies to cope with infoglut. People see what they need to see. People see what they don't need to see, according to your strategic plan, etc. So what? If they are truly invested in the organization, you trust them to bring their Web 2 experiences back to the organization, making it stronger over time.

Web 2  is the magazine of the new millenium. Just as there is a magazine for everyone on every subject, there is (or soon will be) a Web 2 site for everyone. As a leader, how will approach this opportunity for your people to bubble their own pots?