Will at Work Learning

Poor New York Times piece on Education

Here is the comment I sent to the NY Times in response to their focus on a supposed research study that purported to show that gifted kids are being underserved.

I'm a little over the top in my comments, but still I think this is worth printing because it demonstrates the need for good research savvy and it shows that even the most respected news organizations can make really poor research-assessment mistakes.

Egads!! Why is the New York Times giving so much "above-the-fold" visibility to a poorly-conceived research study funded by a conservative think tank with obvious biases?

Why isn't at least one of your contributors a research-savvy person who could comment on the soundness of the research? Instead, your contributors assume the research is sound.

Did you notice that the references in the original research report were not from top-tier refereed scientific journals?

In the original article from the Thomas Fordham Institute (a conservative-funded enterprise), the authors try to wash away criticisms about regression-to-the-mean and test-variability, but this bone against the obvious--and most damaging, and most valid--criticisms is not good enough.

If you took the top 10% of players in the baseball draft, the football draft, any company's onboarding class, any randomly selected group of maple trees, a large percentage of the top performers would not be top performers a year or two later. Damn, ask any baseball scout whether picking out the best prospects is a sure thing. It's not!

And, in the cases I mentioned above, the measures are more objective than an educational test, which has much higher variability--which would make more top performers leak out of the top ranks.

NY Times--you should be embarrassed to have published these responses to this non-study. Seriously, don't you have any research-savvy people left on your staff?

We have scientific journals because the research is vetted by experts.

Great Article on How to Create Great Teachers...

Great article on How to Create Great Teachers. It's focused on K-12 education primarily, but there is wisdom in the discussion relevant to workplace learning.

Here's the major points I take away:

1. Great teachers need deep content knowledge.
2. Great teachers need good classroom-management verbalization skills.
3. Great teachers need their content knowledge to be fluently available to them in the context of typical classroom situations. To get this fluency, they need to practice in such situations---and practice linking actions (especially their verbal utterances) to specific classroom situations.

Will's Video: Job Aids -- Not Just Child's Play

Video Overview:

The following video provides an entertaining and, I hope, enlightening look at the humble job aid.

Featuring:

• This is only the second video that I shot and edited. See how I did.
    
• Allison Rossett, co-author of the book, Job Aids and Performance Support (with Lisa Schafer) is interviewed.
    
• Worldwide public introduction to incredible new talent, the incomparable Alena.
    
• Brewer the dog has cameo role.
    

Video Notes:

Because of YouTube size restrictions, it is divided into 2 parts.

Enjoy in HD (if your computer can handle it) by:

1. Starting the Video
2. Clicking on HD at Lower Right, AND
3. Clicking on the full-screen display (the box in a box) at Lower Right
4. IF the audio doesn't track, your computer can't handle HD.

Part 1

Part 2

Purchasing (or learning more about) Allison's Book:

Simple Solutions Work: Video in a 40-minute class

The linked NYTimes article shows how a simple 10-minute video used in a 40-minute class is helping to prevent kids from engaging in unsafe sex in Africa.

Some interesting insights I draw from the article:

1. Relatively inexpensive learning interventions can work.
2. Sometimes new technologies are useful because they grab attention.
3. Videos can facilitate learning. We don't necessarily have to create some fancy e-learning program.
4. Data matters. Even kids pay attention.
5. Researchers can make a difference. As the reporter (CELIA W. DUGGER) wrote,

   "A year after the researchers intervened, girls who had been given information about the greater risk of sex with older men were 65 percent less likely to have gotten pregnant by an adult partner."