1. Some feature on the learning management system won’t work when I want it to, and I’ll fly into a millisecond of techno-rage in which I secretly wish the developer of the LMS bodily harm for making my life miserable. And then I’ll get over it.
2. The time it takes for the first virtual hand to go up after I’ve posed a question to the class will feel like an eternity.
3. I’ll be self-conscious about my appearance on the video camera, but will try not to let on.
4. I’ll forget to read the student comments accumulating in the chatbox.
5. I will love being able to send students off to watch videos, take online surveys, and browse websites without the hassle of projectors, dubious classroom web connectivity, or sending everyone to the computer lab.

My friends are a cosmopolitan mix of creatives, scholars, and business types. Most of them grew up on one of the coasts or overseas, and their early exposure to heterogeneous neighbors, rich cultural institutions, diverse media, and international travel afforded them a worldliness they largely take for granted.

But where I grew up, in rural southern Illinois, opportunities for multicultural and global exposure were rare. There was no Chinatown in my hometown. No Spanish-language television. Few of my neighbors had passports. An ‘exotic’ vacation was a trip to Michigan’s upper peninsula or central Florida. There were no exhibits by international artists or lectures by global thought leaders. My hometown’s event calendar consisted of high school sporting events and themed nights at the bowling alley. I am not implying that it’s impossible to be cultured in deep America, but it takes extraordinary personal effort.

Still, I grew up a reasonably cultured kid, which I owe to two things: 1) my parents, who traveled out of the country on occasion and took me with them; and 2) National Public Radio. NPR broadcasts introduced me to people around the world—South African freedom fighters, Chinese laborers, Cuban writers, native American artists, Dutch scientists, Middle East protesters—giving me routine exposure to foreign cultures and different value systems. NPR broadened my provincial existence well enough that when I went to college with kids of far more cosmopolitan upbringing, I didn’t feel culturally disadvantaged. I made friends easily with foreign students. I adjusted well the first (and second) time I lived abroad. The simple act of listening to the radio in my formative years had helped me to mature into a culturally aware citizen of the world.

So, when the U.S. House of Representatives voted to defund NPR last week, it felt like a personal assault. NPR may be a pleasing source of quality journalism for my fellow urbanites, but it (and public broadcasting in general) is the only meaningful source of world news, information, and cultural enrichment for hundreds of rural and exurban American communities. Without funding, none but the largest markets will be able to afford NPR programming, and one of the sharpest weapons we have to fight cultural insularity would be lost.

For me, public broadcasting was a singular source of multicultural experiences that were otherwise beyond my reach. The world desperately needs global-minded citizens; we shouldn’t kill the best means we have to cultivate them.

The Tech Guy

You’ll need decent computer skills to effectively use whatever online courseware your institution provides. Practice using the program in advance so you’re familiar with the features and comfortable enough to multitask (talk, point, click, upload, etc.). Always have a backup plan in case some aspect of the courseware fails, such as sending the day’s slides to the class in advance. Most importantly, be prepared to diagnose your students’ technical problems on the fly.

The Designer

Like any course, you’ll need to design an an effective online syllabus, structure the content, select appropriate media and modalities, and prepare effective aids. In an online course, however, you’ll have to craft activities that can be performed by students in a virtual environment, as well as adjust the timing and pace of activities to accommodate the features and idiosyncrasies of your courseware.

The Authority Figure

It’s your job to establish and enforce the boundaries of the online learning space—mutual respect, openness and integrity—as you would in a physical classroom. Emphasize to your online students that you expect no less from them in terms of quality, timeliness, and authenticity of their work. Be clear how you intend to communicate with students outside of class, and offer virtual office hours: a time when students can have private conference with you by phone, chat, or videoconference.

The Facilitator

Create a supportive online course community by encouraging and acknowledging participation from every student. Some students will feel very comfortable contributing right off; others may need to be drawn out.

The Guide

Model the behavior you want from your students by showing enthusiasm and personal commitment to the subject matter and your students’ learning journey. Foster student-centered learning and purposeful discourse. Guide discussions just enough so they don’t veer too far from the core content, intervening as needed to provide direction or manage disagreements.

The Subject Matter Expert

Online instructors should meet the same standard for content mastery as would be expected of a classroom instructor. Online and off, you are the conduit between your students and your field’s body of scholarship.

The Assessor

Solicit feedback from students on a regular basis. Ask how the course is going, what obstacles (technological or otherwise) they’re encountering, and request suggestions for improving the course experience. Most courseware comes with nifty polling features – use them to monitor your students’ progress against the learning objectives.

The Mentor

Encourage learners to take responsibility for their own learning by inquiring about their individual learning concerns and helping them personalize out-of-class work to their needs.

The Cheerleader

Show empathy for your students’ struggles, encourage their passions, get to know their perspectives and expectations, and make yourself available to them. If that sounds like too much of yourself to offer, you may want to rethink teaching—online or offline.

The Co-Learner

Share your own learning experiences with your class. Students are motivated and inspired by an instructor who genuinely enjoys learning and exploring new ideas within their field. 

“Adults lose brain cells and IQ as they age.”

“Learning a language after childhood is hopeless.”

Or consider the Grand Poobah of adult learning stereotypes:

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

It’s hogwash. The truth is that the adult brain is a cognitive marvel that is fully capable of growing, creating meaning, forming connections, and learning new things all the way through to the end of life. Here are three of the many qualities adults should covet about their maturing minds, attributes that seem only to increase with time.

Nuance. Scholars label this dialectical thinking; in laymen’s terms, it’s the ability to see shades of gray. Children cannot do this. Most young adults are just awakening to the possibility of multiple “truths” and learning to accept ambiguity. But the mature mind is capable of recognizing contradictions in everyday life, reconciling paradoxes and navigating an increasingly complex world.

Reflection. And add to that self-awareness, emotional independence, and moral courage. These milestones of adulthood, achievable by the seasoned mind, are the critical tools that allow adults to exercise sound judgment and engage with the world in powerfully constructive and meaningful ways.

Wisdom. The holy grail of the adult mind, the culmination of knowledge with experience and maturity. Caroline Bassett, a scholar in wisdom studies, proffers this definition:

“Wisdom is having sufficient awareness in a context or situation to behave in a manner most likely to produce outcomes that are satisfactory for all involved, including the biosphere.”

Sounds like something to look forward to.

When the question was posed to me last week, it was the first time in ten years of work in educational publishing and design that someone wanted to know how I learn. As in, me personally, not how learning occurs generally. It’s a daunting question; and one I’m grateful to be asked.

I figure, if experience as a patient improves a doctor’s bedside care, and if self-analysis is a prerequisite for practicing good psychotherapy, then I as an educator should benefit from thinking deeply about my own learning style.

My firm creates multimedia instructional materials for clients in academia (primarily graduate level) and industry (corporate training and professional certification). Most of my career has been in the arena of adult learning, but I spent a short time early on in K-12 publishing, and one striking difference between the two is how central pedagogy is to the delivery of instruction at the primary school level—versus how peripheral it is to teaching in college and beyond. The person at the head of a typical elementary school class is a pedagogist—someone trained in how children learn. The person at the front of a typical university classroom is a subject matter expert, who may know extraordinarily little about how learning occurs. Those of us operating at the highest levels of education would benefit to spend more time contemplating learning theory. At the very least, deeper insight into how we ourselves learn might remind us of the challenges of being a student and rekindle some useful empathy.

So How Do I Learn? The Neurological Perspective

Neuroscientists liken our brain to a computer: just like your laptop, the brain uses its working memory to process new information. The successful absorption of knowledge from its first entry point, short term memory, into the long-term storage part of the brain is called cognition. Cognitive load is the degree of effort a learner must exert to process the new information. Instructional designers spend much of their time devising programs that reduce cognitive load and accelerate comprehension.

Unfortunately, while neuroscience explains what occurs in the brain during learning, it doesn’t explain how learning is stimulated, nor does it suggest which outside interventions catalyze the process. Enter educational theory.

How Do I Learn? The Experiential Learning View

One measure that distinguishes adult learners from children is the degree of experiential learning we do: the wisdom we earn through life’s daily episodes.  David Kolb, a leading educational theorist, presented a model of experiential learning in the 1980s that endures today: the Kolb Learning Style Inventory. It states that learning comprises both processing (receiving) and perceiving (interpreting) information. Processing occurs on a continuum, with active experimentation (learning by doing) at one end, and reflective observation (learning by watching) at the other. Perceiving takes place along a second continuum, from abstract conceptualization (learning by thinking about things) to concrete analysis (learning through feeling things). Where you are on each spectrum suggests the circumstances in which you learn best. Do you learn by careful observation, and interpret new information based on how it feels to you emotionally and physically? Then you fit the description of someone with a diverger style. Or perhaps you are an accommodator: you learn best through trial-and-error.

According to this model, I am a converger, which is to say I have a strong preference for learning by doing the new activity, analyzing the outcome, and forming new hypotheses before going at it again. It explains why I study best in solitude, with space to think deeply and work independently. My husband, in contrast, is an assimilator: he learns by watching others, consulting experts, devouring technical material, and assimilating it in a highly analytic way. Any instructor hoping to engage us both (our first dance wedding choreographer, for example) must incorporate multiple methods of instruction, or risk inciting marital discord.

How Do I Learn? The VAK Response

I also examined my learning style through the lens of another popular model, this one from the field of childhood learning: VAK. VAK asserts that every student can be categorized as a Visual learner (favoring graphics and the written word); an Auditory learner (favoring lecture and audio materials); or a Kinesthetic learner (favoring hands-on activities).

The unambiguous results of the six independent online assessments I took confirmed what I’ve always known: I am a visual learner. My earliest childhood memories of studying involve doodles, sketches, and diagrams of lesson concepts. Today, I routinely use visual maps to break up new information into easily understood patterns, or to visually line up new data with what I already know. If I can visualize knowledge, I can absorb it. The research on visuals is evolving, but generally suggests that well designed visuals support positive learning outcomes among all types of learners: graphics minimize cognitive load, facilitate the transfer of learning, support attention and retention, and raise student motivation.

How I Learn

So there’s the answer: I am a visual learner. And a converger. A converging visualist? Or perhaps I have a different type of learning style altogether, a new label offered by one of the other countless models available to diagnose a student’s learning style. It turns out that the subject of how I learn, or how anyone learns, is a matter of great debate. For every study espousing a new theory of multiple learning styles, there seems to be another pointing to the dearth of evidence that such differences exist. Fortunate for me, that’s a matter for theorists to duke out.

The lesson for us practitioners, however, is clear. Whether or not learning styles meaningfully differ, the very nature of learning is sufficiently complex in a way that traditional post-secondary instruction (lecture+textbook) does not address. My firm works with clients to diversify the tools they bring to bear in their learning programs, specifically by adding rich multimedia―graphics, animation, video. We evangelize multi-modal learning (the use of various types of instructional material in the same program), not for it’s own sake or for entertainment value, but for its proven effectiveness and the value of pedagogic diversity. When most of us order dinner in a restaurant, it would never occur to us to order an entire meal of beets, or a three-course menu of raspberry tart. A far better choice is the meal that offers a variety of nutrients and flavors, a combination of foods that furnish the necessary calories and also appeal to the palette.

At least that’s how I eat. It’s also how I learn.

We could not agree more.

In the article, Thompson refers repeatedly to author and visualization guru Dan Roam, which got us thinking about some of our favorite Dan Roam moments. Watch, learn, enjoy.

Dan Roam on American Healthcare

Dan Roam on the Banking Bonus Backlash

Dan Roam on the Importance of Conveying Information Visually

Over a period of 30 days in 1942, Nazi propagandists sent cameramen into the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, the three-square mile area into which 500,000 Polish Jews were forced to live in the months before deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp. Simply titled “Das Ghetto,” the footage was discovered some years after the end of the war, tucked deep inside a vault in an East German forest.

While the filmmakers’ propagandist intentions were assumed, the footage was nevertheless viewed by scholars to be an authentic depiction of life in the Ghetto.

That is, until the 1998 discovery of a missing reel: an uncut version of Das Ghetto whose outtakes prove that several scenes once assumed to be true were actually staged, with the inhabitants forced into their acting roles.

A Film Unfinished shines a bright light on the film’s deceptions. Hersonski shows the footage in its entirety, providing a thorough autopsy along the way. She uses diaries from Ghetto residents, first-hand recollections from survivors, and frame-by-frame analysis to peel back the fictitious veneer and expose the gruesome reality underneath. “Under layers of deception lies the truth,” the film promises early on…and then delivers.

Students and scholars in these disciplines will find the material compelling:

• World War II History
• Eurpoean History
• Film Studies
• Media Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Communications

Availability

Now playing in theaters across the country. This film has not yet been released on DVD.

Notable Film Reviews

• New York Times
• LA Times
• Indiewire
• Huffington Post

Other Non-Fiction Films in this Genre

• Imaginary Witness
• The Last Days
• Survivors of the Holocaust
• Shoah

Other Narrative Films in this Genre

• The Great Dictator (1940)
• The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
• Holocaust (1978, Television Miniseries)
• Sophie’s Choice (1982)
• War and Remembrance (1988)
• Schindler’s List (1993)
• Life is Beautiful (1999)
• The Pianist (2002)

Educator Resources

None yet.

Other Resources

• Warsaw Ghetto wikipedia entry
• Treblinka Camp wikipedia entry
• Wikipedia list of Holocaust films

For more film and video recommendations, browse our media library, Mindgate OnDemand.

That’s the opinion of Geoffrey Nunberg, adjunct full professor at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley. His article presents numerous examples of the horrific job Google has done classifying and assigning proper metadata—the descriptive information attached to content that makes it searchable and usable—to books scanned into the Google Book Search project. One example: Google assigned a publication date of 1905 to a book on Peter F. Drucker—four years before the management consultant was born. Another: a search for books about Barack Obama written before 1950 yields 29 results. Barack Obama was born in 1961. These are not isolated “howlers,” Nunberg argues, but symptomatic of broad-based metadata errors.

Why is Google, the giant in intelligent, algorithmic search, such an unmitigated disaster at classifying text-based content? Shouldn’t this be an arena where they excel? The following example illustrates why the answer might be, “No.” When Google scanned a 1890 guidebook called London of To-day from the Harvard University Library catalog, it assigned a publication date of 1774, a 116-year oversight. It picked up the faulty year from a front-matter ad for an apparel manufacturer containing the line “Est. 1774″. Because Google’s classification process is a product of math and machine, not library and scholarly expertise, mistakes are all but assured.

This is a pretty big deal. Incorrect metadata is annoying for the casual web user. But for educators and scholars, improper metadata can render large swaths of data undiscoverable and unusable. And because Google is becoming the world’s de facto library, it is incumbent on producers and consumers of content to hold Google accountable for proper content classification, or take a more active role in tagging their own content.

For our clients—producers and publishers who market their content to the academic community—the lesson is clear: organizing and tagging your content with accurate, relevant metadata is the most vital step you can take to boost online presence, discoverability, and, ultimately, sales. Our metadata creation services involve a human component, not only because we work largely with video content (even more challenging to classify than text), but also because we understand the limits of math and machines.

Here’s one scene from the film in which the moms, played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, confront their teenage son (Josh Hutcherson) about his suspicious behavior.

Students and scholars in any of these disciplines will find the material compelling:

• Family Studies
• Family Science
• Family Relations
• Family History
• Adolescent Development
• Child Development
• Human Development
• Gay Studies
• Film Studies

Availability: Still in theaters.

Educational resources: Oddly, the film’s website doesn’t offer any, but here are a few related materials.

• Several articles summarize the latest findings from research into the emotional well-being of children with lesbian parents:
  • Psychology Today
  • New York Times
  • Time
  • Journal of Pediatrics
• Here writers from academia and the media discuss the significance of the film.
• This article examines the cinematic techniques used in the film.
• Rosie O’Donnell explores same-sex parenthood more directly in her 2006 documentary.

Watch the Kids Are All Right and let us know what you take away from the  film.

Sadly, many instructors do not make any effort to incorporate current events, popular media, and real-world examples into their classes, and they disparage colleagues who do as pandering dopes. Here’s why that attitude is dead wrong:

First, faculty, you are the ambassadors of the material. The amount of relevance a student assigns to the subject matter is directly tied to how relevant they think YOU are. If you can’t draw connections between your course content and the realities of contemporary life, how can you expect them to?

Second, integrating the occasional pop culture or news reference into a lecture is a sign of respect. Yes, respect. When you demonstrate your knowledge of the events and culture touch points that influence their lives, it is the pedagogical equivalent of saying to students, “you matter.” Students are more receptive to teachers and mentors who recognize the worth of their own life experiences. In that way, students are like the rest of us.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Try adding a few video clips to your syllabus. Video is a familiar and captivating medium for members of the YouTube generation, and a simple Google or YouTube search will generally yield hundreds (or more) video results on any given topic.  We have gathered several of best web videos available for teaching college-level courses here, and paired them with teaching notes for easy adoption.

1. Make sure the clip, article, etc., is carefully tied to the lesson objective.  You are trying to help students learn better, not turn your lecture into a standup routine or variety show.

1. Don’t force it. Use contemporary references that you and your students authentically share. For example, plenty of young people watch Mad Men, and plenty of older adults watch Jersey Shore. Don’t make yourself look foolish by pretending to know something about Justin Bieber if you don’t.

Finally, find cultural ambassadors—a group of young people in your personal or professional life with whom you talk regularly and who can administer regular doses of youth culture.  The generational divide is only as vast as we allow it to be.