TiER1 Participated in Movember 2009

Movember is an annual, month-long celebration of the moustache, highlighting men’s health issues – specifically prostate and testicular cancer.

According to the Movember Web site,

The idea for Movember was sparked in 2003 over a few beers in Melbourne, Australia.  The guys behind it joked about 80s fashion and decided it was time to bring the moustache back.  In order to justify their Mos (Australian slang for moustache), they used their new looks to raise money for prostate cancer research… never dreaming that facial hair would ultimately lead to a global movement that would get men talking about a taboo subject – their health.

A Mo Bro starts Movember – the month formerly known as November – clean shaven, and grows a moustache all month long, garnering support from friends and family in the form of donations.  What’s more, a Mo Bro is a walking billboard for the cause as his new look opens the door for him to talk about cancers affecting men – making the moustache a symbol, much like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer.  Each Movember culminates in a Gala Partè in major cities around the globe where Mo Bros dress up to match their Mo, channeling the likes of Tom Selleck, Gandhi and Ron Burgandy, vying for the ultimate accolade:  Man of Movember.

While growing a Mo is left to the guys, Mo Sistas (women who support their guys) form an important part of Movember by recruiting Mo Bros, helping to raise funds and attending the highly anticipated Gala Partés.

This Movember, the money raised in the U.S. will be split between the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

This year TiER1 participants rasied $175.00for Movember. To date, Movember has raised $47 million globally making it the world’s largest charity event for men.

Mark, Roman, Jeremy, and Craig

Of course, you can still make a donation if you’d like at the Movember Web site

How can corporate training programs make their learning more effective?

Eye-Fi and Evernote

Evernote is a great tool for taking notes and keeping them where they are easy to access. The team at Evernote has teamed up with Eye-Fi to create a solution that has a lot of implications. This video demonstrates the power of both tools.

Escher’s Perspectives on Visualization

Back in college my friend Byron introduced me to M.C. Escher, the artist famous for some unique perspectives on symmetry and his mathematical prints. Some of his most popular works include Belvedere, Waterfall and Ascending and Descending. These three (and many of his other works) provide unique perspectives of a 3D world on a 2D canvas.

The M.C. Escher Web site has provided some interesting “Virtual Rides” through these three works to help see the perspective Escher brings out in his work. The Virtual Ride through Belvedere gave me a new appreciation for this work, which I never gave much thought to before. And the Virtual Ride through Waterfall is equally interesting. As for the Virtual Ride through Ascending and Descending, I thought it was somewhat less interesting, but maybe you will see something in it I haven’t yet seen.

If you have any interest in Escher, these Virtual Rides are worth a few minutes of exploration.

How do you think different unique perspectives like these from Escher, help us to see real life differently?

Brain and Behavior Blog No. 6 Getting neuro-educated

Overheard at a cocktail party:
Person 1: “What do you do?”
Person 2: “I’m a Neuroeducator.”
Person 1: “Oh, how interesting. I’m the Principal of a Teaching School.”

Hey. If you know what that conversation is about, you’ve really stayed up with your neuroreading! But, you’re getting a lot of help from the media.

It’s getting less likely that you can pick up a newspaper or listen to a news broadcast today and not see (or hear) the word “neuroscience” a dozen times. And, that’s the way it should be – because it would be difficult to overstate the importance of the insights that have come out of neuroscience research in the 00’s.

Of course, the B&B Blogger goes out looking for that stuff. That’s how he came across a Dana Foundation (www.dana.org) online newsletter by Aalok Mehta focusing on the emergence of “Neuroeducation” as a formal field of study.

Apparently, education departments/colleges in major universities haven’t been deaf to the neuroscience buzz. Johns Hopkins, Harvard, U. Cal – Santa Barbara and the University of Texas are among the schools that have created “Neuroeducation” faculty positions in Education. Harvard, in fact, has an entire program (major) called “Mind, Brain and Education.”

Ken Kosik, a professor of neuroscience at UC-SB, says that not only should universities have neuroscientists in their education departments, every school should have one on staff. And, he draws a clever metaphor to make his point: “We need neuroscientists in schools. Just like we have teaching hospitals, we need teaching schools.”

So far, however, neuroeducational research has had a fairly narrow focus. It’s primarily been directed toward uncovering the causes of learning problems such as dyslexia or autism. There’s been spillover into teaching in general. But, progress here has been slowed by a disinclination to expose children to rather strict experimental brain-mapping regimens if they don’t have a problem that needs solved.

One consistent finding is music to the ears of some neuroeducators: Studies comparing kids who are learning to play an instrument vs. those who are not has consistently found that the “instrumentalists” establish massive “brain connections” that are believed to make them better students in other subjects. That’s NOT to say that (commercially available) classical music CDs for babies have any effect on learning. But, that’s for another day and another blog.

BTW: From here on out, when the B&B Blogger gets the “What do you do?” question, the answer is going to be, “Why, I’m a Neuroblogger!”

How do you wrap an e-book?

Sesame Workshop announced that they will offer digital books online this week @ ebooks.sesamestreet.org. Walt Disney already launched a subscription site earlier this year for their e-books @ disneydigitalbooks.com.

With e-books going mainstream and now targeting kids, I just had to wonder, especially this time of year, how do you wrap an e-book? More importantly, how do you wrap an e-book for someone who’s still making a list for Santa?

A google search providing surprisingly few insights. Sure, you could wrap your Reader, Kindle, or Nook, but a child is likely to be unimpressed (since they don’t have color yet). Same with your computer – it would be impractical to wrap up your laptop. You’d have to explain to the child that you gave them something online, not the physical thing with the pretty screen and interesting buttons all over the place. And a piece of paper with a screen shot or gift certificate is certain to provide no satisfaction to a 3 year old.

At TiER1 we develop lot’s of e-learning, and it’s cool stuff that we’d argue is pretty effective. I’m even working on a web based learning project right now. So perhaps digital gifts are the future, but there’s still something novel about having gifts wrapped up under the tree and opening them with your family and friends. Either I’m old fashioned or materialism has gotten to me, but I’m still stuck with the question, how would you wrap an e-book?

Technology Training and Instruction: Designing Instructional Materials That People Will Use

Have you ever read a user manual or training manual cover to cover?  Very few users of technology manuals or any instructional artifact read from start to finish or  follow a linear step-by-step reading process through a document.

Human computer interaction (HCI) and technical communication research has consistently shown that users will hunt and gather information as they go – rather than consistently work through supporting materials in a linear fashion.  Still, most user manuals and software training continues to consistently follow a “systems” approach where every feature and function is documented – whether anyone will actually use it or not.

As technical writers, instructional designers, and digital designers we can help users more if we provide them with less.  How? I advocate a minimalist approach of design and instruction that is based on the notion that users need useful, but not comprehensive information to learn.

First articulated by former IBM researcher John Carroll, the principles of minimalism were first developed to help novice users learn how to get to competency faster:

“Our strategy in developing training designs was to accommodate, indeed to try to capitalize on, manifest learning styles, strategies, and goals…we became committed to minimizing the obtrusiveness to the learner of the training material –hence the term minimalist.” (Carroll, 1990, p. 7)

Three key aspects of the minimalist instructional approach are:

1. Allow learners to start immediately on meaningfully realistic tasks
2. Reduce the amount of reading time and other passive activity in training
3. Help to make errors and error recovery less traumatic and more pedagogically productive

Carroll’s research (along with that of Janice Redish and Jo Ann Hackos) has determined that users are “reading-to-learn-to do” and want immediate opportunities to act-not reading about how to manipulate the tools that will get them there.  Designing usable content requires a constant attempt to balance the learner’s desire for knowledge with the learner’s desire to accomplish the task at hand.  The priority in designing minimalist instruction is to invite users to act and to support their action.

How do practitioners make this active learning approach work in their designs?

To design minimally we need to know the maximum about our users: 

• Are they novices, intermediate or expert users? 
• Do they have any preconceived notions about the tasks or outcomes of those tasks?
• What previous experience do they bring to the tool, interface or the instruction?
• What can we determine about the users’ motivation for using the technology and taking the training or reading the documentation? 
• What errors are users likely to make in the use of a tool or process? 
• How can the designer best help them quickly recover from an error and learn from that mistake to become a “better” user?

A minimalist approach requires a significant investment of designer/writer input and time in the development process, a motivation (and the freedom) to move beyond standard audience analysis techniques, and a willingness to advocate for instructional materials that are more useful than they are “complete”.  Practitioners often run into resistance to a technique that calls for giving users incomplete information, documenting real tasks versus documenting system features, and presents tough choices about how and when to integrate comprehensive documentation with other kinds of support.

Next post: Is a minimalist approach to technology instruction always the right approach?

$40k Prize for 40th Anniversary of the Internet

On Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 10 a.m. ET, the DARPA Network Challenge will launch, literally. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet, the DoD research agency is hosting a contest to see how social networking can aid in solving time-sensitive problems with a geographically dispersed team.

To claim the $40,000 prize, you (and presumably some some friends spread across the country) have to be the first to find 10 red weather balloons tethered to the ground. So if you’re in need of $40k (you’ll have to split it with your friends, of course) and weekend plans, check out the official DARPA link above. CNN also has a story about it here: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/04/darpa.balloon.challenge/

Good luck!

TiER1 Performance Solutions Awarded Research Grant for Human Factors Evaluations with NASA

Covington, Ky. – TiER1 Performance Solutions announced today that they received a Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) award from NASA. The Phase I contract will develop an innovative knowledge management solution to support engineers in identifying and resolving human factors integration issues early in the design process.

TiER1 will be working with Alion Science and Technology to identify the requirements, develop and implement this project, known as the Human Factors Evaluation Automated Tool (HFE-AT). HFE-AT, which will include a knowledge warehouse and customized content, will help NASA engineers improve human-system integration without overburdening human factors specialists.

According to Dr. Terence Andre, Principal Consultant for TiER1, this is a significant win for the company. “This Phase I contract with NASA partners us with a national leader in human factors engineering tools (Alion Science & Technology), and allows us to deliver innovative knowledge management solutions to NASA.”

TiER1 has received multiple SBIR research awards in 2009 for their innovative technology. This Phase I award from NASA represents a growth area for the company and the state of Kentucky. “We are thrilled to have another strategic opportunity to expand our business, create jobs and bring exposure to Kentucky as a national thought leader in knowledge technologies,” said Dr. Kevin Moore, TiER1 Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer. “This win is a testament not only to our team, but also to Kentucky’s commitment to the SBIR Program and to small businesses in general- no doubt a winning combination.”

Brain and Behavior Blog No. 5 – To learn more, learn about less – and start earlier

Social critics have ruminated for decades about U.S. students’ continually falling science and math scores when compared to the scores of students in other countries.  The most recent international comparisons place the U.S. in about the middle of 50+ participating countries in science, and worse than that in math.  One thing is certain.  Scores aren’t falling because educators are stuck in their ways.  One of the only consistencies in the American educational system is that yet another reform is assuredly just around the corner.

There is finally emerging, however, an approach to teaching science and math that is based on the most recent research in neuroscience about how the brain learns* in addition to examining what is working well in other countries.  The two sources of potential guidance point in the same direction:  1) You’re never too young to learn, and 2) Students should spend more time repeatedly studying fewer topics.

Never too young 

It has traditionally been believed that students need to reach a certain level of maturity (generally around the age of 12) before they can understand science (as opposed to observing science or memorizing scientific facts and findings).  However, research has shown recently that even first graders are capable of working in pairs to “do” science, that is, to design ways of testing their ideas and to progressively improve those tests and their understanding of the ideas being considered.  Other research has demonstrated that doing research at younger ages helps students “get” the idea that science doesn’t just uncover the “truth” in one shot – a common misunderstanding among U.S. students.  Rather, it takes a progression of studies, ever refining the theories that they test, to obtain improved answers – but never to obtain an absolute and final answer. 

Learn more from fewer topics 

This is where neuroscience research has been a major influence.  Objective studies of brain functioning have shown that students develop a much deeper understanding of science when they study only a few major scientific ideas in a progressively more sophisticated way.  Recent reports from the National Research Council (titles below) recommend that science teaching should focus on a small number of core ideas such as atomic-molecular theory, evolution theory, cell theory and force and motion.  Learning about these core topics would be “scaffolded” from grade to grade by adding progressively deeper “doing science” experiences with the same topics.  This contrasts sharply with many current approaches that emphasize learning about as many scientific facts or fields of study as possible. 

Of course, all of this is very much easier said than done.  The new approach calls for nothing less than a complete make-over of science education from grade k to grade n.  Is it worth the effort or would this be just another passing fad?  Worth the effort gets the B&B Blogger’s vote.  This view didn’t just pop out of some academic’s head.  It’s based on objective evidence of what is actually going on in students’ heads.

 

 *Three reports from the National Research Council compile these results:  Taking Science to School,” “Ready, Set, Science!” and published in 2009, “Learning Science in Informal Environments.”