Acupuncture Is Easy

This is a longer than normal post.  It is a review of the only book I have found to deal well with on-line education.  While not of the quality of EricSotto’s When Teaching Becomes Learning on classroom teaching it is still very good.  The book is:

Lessons in Learning, e-Learning and Training: perspectives and guidance for the enlightened trainer by Roger C. Schank. John Wiley and Sons.  2005  280pp+index+xvii

Introduction

This is an easy to read book on the important topic of training and addresses online training in particular.  Roger Schank writes well and uses lots of illustrations (sometimes these are a little forced or stretched).  Many of the chapters end with a section, called “Jump Start Your Thinking” or “Jump Start Your Training” where the question, “So What?” is answered.

It is not a how-to manual,
which would take you through the steps of designing a curriculum, but is about how to approach writing a good curriculum.

Quibbles and Problems
(skip this part if you just want the positives to take from it)

1. There is a particular kind of intellectually nimble yet down to earth style that comes from American academics.  This book is written in that style.  It has its virtues: clear argument, a solid research base and accessible writing.  My only problem is that the tone gets on my nerves after a while.

Part of the agenda is to promote the virtues of his own approach and so is partly a very sophisticated marketing leaflet for his company.

2. It is written for corporations and universities.  If you are a small business person like me and want to use this book it will take some adapting.  We can’t just go out and employ experts as consultants.

3. If this didn’t start out as a collection of pieces it certainly reads like it.  This leads to some repetition and left me wanting something more systematic and detailed at times.

The Big Ideas

1. Never tell anyone anything: people learn by doing.

He tells a nice story about when he fell into this trap and was surprised that the students weren’t able to do what he told them.

There is a major qualification to this rule.  Once someone is an expert then telling them something about their area of expertise is pretty fine.  For beginners it is disastrous.

2. Make the curriculum a story made up of stories.

He calls his approach “story centred curriculum” abbreviated to SCC.

The curriculum as a whole is to be structured as a story which will take the student from where they are to where they are functioning in a new way in their situation (whether workplace, academia or private life).

The curriculum, itself a story, is also effectively a collection of well chosen stories, sequenced to lead people to learn how to do a particular action.  Each of the stories has a point – something that tells how an expert addressed a problem or what to do in a particular situation.

Each story should be chosen to fit a role in the situation that the student will eventually function in.  For example: if the role to be learned is a teaching role then stories from teachers, students and supervisors will be relevant; if a salesperson then stories from other sales people, managers and customers would be included.

3. If it’s not about telling; then its mostly about practise.

This isn’t as true for experts but it is very true for beginners.  People learn by doing and get better by reflecting on their doing and then doing again.  Imagine trying to learn to drive by reading a book!  And there are many areas that are far more complicated than driving a car in which we train people.

This requires not only time.  It also requires structured activities which allow people to learn the component parts of any complex activity and that lets people discover what they are doing – correctly and incorrectly.

Nice Aspects

1. He realises that e-learning (or learning or training) won’t solve every problem for everyone.  He tells some quite pointed and funny stories about what online learning or training in general won’t fix.

2. He does provide the relevant theory that his approach is based on.

This means that you can follow up on stuff that interests you and, if you wish, think about how else this could affect your online education.

3. He does recognise that high quality computer simulations and programs can be incredibly expensive – sometimes even beyond the resources of universities and corporations.

This is a nice touch of realism if you are devising an online education course.  His response, briefly put, is that a story-centred curriculum can be almost as good and far cheaper.

In Summary

• This is a great book for helping you think about how to start designing an online education course.  It is thorough, readable, stimulating and practical.
• As long as you aren’t looking for a how-to manual then it is very worthwhile and will reward you with a wealth of insight and should lead to a very high quality piece of online education.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 11:38 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.