EDUC 682 Update! In the Home Stretch - Entry 5

Over the past several weeks we discussed reviewing and background editing (July 17th), including the use of Photoshop. Seems like a handy little trick to have up your sleeve!

I especially enjoyed class on July 24th. It had serious shades of 689 (Campos) - Social Media and Learning. One of our classmates presented, and several of us shared information on twitter, facebook, and many tools, including the 10 tools I learned about at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy meeting.

For the past two weeks we've been hard at work on building out the projects we inherited from another group. It's been an interesting exercise in group dynamics (ok, enough said about THAT!). We finally finished our project and I think it turned out well. I was especially excited to see what the group did that inherited our design plan. Who doesn't love a Betty White Medicare Fairy? Rock on Group A!

The end is in sight!!

Interview with David Kelly (I'm sorry ADDIE!)

We had an opportunity to speak with David Kelly this week, program director for the eLearning guild. I was struck by two things in this interview. First, I asked how he personally achieves professional development. He asked "have you heard of a personal learning network." Oh, have we heard of a PLN! Clearly his soul is nurtured by informal and social learning (twitter is his drug of choice). Mr. Kelly stated that he enjoys reaching out to colleagues, and uses their recommendations to build his personal library.

The second thing that struck me was his discussion of how the ADDIE model of instructional design has evaluation at the END of the process, and that's too late. But wait - I can hear Chuck Hodell in my head saying "even though E is at the end of the pneumonic, evaluation takes place THROUGHOUT the process!" Mr. Kelly mentioned a recent move away from ADDIE, toward SAM. He recommended the book "Leaving Addie for SAM: An Agile Model for Developing the Best Learning Experiences" by Michael W. Allen. The SAM model refers to "Successive Approximation Model" and the Savvy Start. I'm with one of the reviewers who wrote on Amazon "When I first read "leaving ADDIE" in the title, I had a mild panic - I consider myself an ISD disciple, so ADDIE is coded into my designer's DNA." I can sympathize with this sentiment. Oh well, at the beginning of this journey I shared that my goal was to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I've ordered the book, and I'll blog again when I've read it. Maybe there's room in my life for both ADDIE and SAM!

Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth!

Check out our very cool book report on Dr. Jane Bozarth's book titled "Social Media for Trainers: Techniques for Enhancing and Extending Learning." It was a great read, and a lot of fun coordinating with the group!

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/takinje-1897532-educ689-book-report-social-media/

What ARE the experts saying and learning in the workplace?

Being a rabid bibliophile, not only do I read regular old books with veracity, but my Kindle is surgically attached to my hand, and the back of cereal boxes hold great appeal as well! Imagine my delight when I boarded a Southwest plane on August 2, to find the NEW issue of Spirit magazine was in the seat pocket (I love their magazine). Further stretching your potential incredulity, imagine my reaction to read the title of the cover story - "NEW SCHOOL: How the digital revolution is turning learning upside down!"

The "experts" are saying that learners prefer smaller bites of information, and "just in time" learning. They predict social media and digital devices are the way of the future. Apparently traditional educators agree as well. While discussing the flipped classroom, the author (Jennifer Miller) discussed how middle and high school teachers are taking advantage of students' love of texting and using other electronic devices. One educator successfully campaigned to get the school system's ban on cellphones overturned, and every student in the school district (starting with kindergarten) has a Google account in which to store their work. Students take photos of their work (such as drawing the molecular structure of a chemical ON their lab table) and file in their Google account. Students also tweet about their work ("it has to be tweet worthy" says one science teacher). I especially liked the conclusion of this article. The author questioned "If a vast universe of information is readily available in cyberspace, what use is today's teacher to students." Science teacher Seigel wasted no time in replying - "To teach them to think." Whew, my job is safe for now!

As if this weren't exciting enough, yesterday I received my Family Circle magazine - yes, I know, a seriously "Mom" mag. It gets worse - being the September issue it was chock-full of "back to school" articles. I laughed out loud when I saw one prominent article titled "Yes, there's an app for that!" The article started right out acknowledging the need to purchase notebooks, printer paper and erasable pens, but went on to say "only ingenious moms know which apps can turn a tablet or smartphone into a bona fide educational tool." Quoting the fact that in May of this year, iTunes notched its 50 billionth app download, the article described 21 apps that would assist learners. Of course, I was gratified to see Evernote featured as an organizational tool!

So, from experts in training and development, down to Moms getting the kiddies ready to go back to school, technology is playing a huge role in education (and entertainment - let's not forget Candy Crush - can ANYONE help me with level 65?). I'll see you on the internet.

My Way or the Highway? The Future of Workplace Tools

I think many people in training and development in large corporations don't "trust" employees to "get it" through informal learning. Many educators at academic institutions think the same way! "If I don't teach it to them, they won't get it! I know what's best for them!" I have always been a rebel (and damned proud of it!) and I'm pushing HARD for a flipped classroom! Students don't need me to yap at them and they read as well as I do. Let them gain the knowledge transfer on their own time - read a book, listen to a podcast, watch a recorded mini-lecture. Then let's use class time for applied and informal learning. I'm all excited about the potential of wiki's now thanks to my book report. Maybe it’s time to send the teachers back to school and have them score a little informal learning! Maybe it would be easier to point out that all adults learn so much informally, and they don’t even realize they are doing it! The next time someone in my office watches me work on the computer and exclaims “Hey, how’d you do that?” before I answer them I’m going to tell they – “Hey – that’s informal learning! And it will be on the quiz!”

Say What? A Wordle? No - it's a McWordle!

Interview with Ms. Abigail Wheeler!

I was very excited to coordinate the "expert interview" with Ms. Wheeler this week. Our class certainly put her through her paces! I was most impressed with her common-sense, practical approach to instructional design. She is responsible for developing and delivering educational content for over 300 sales professionals, and she and her team use a blended approach. They minimize up-front training away from the employee's homes, and maximize the use of technology to continue orientation, and on-going development. She kindly provided insight into her own professional development (industry blogs, webinars, elearning guild, ASTD, learning solutions, Kathy Moore scenario-based learning, UK newsletter) and how she and her team developed bite-sized modules of instruction. I've already gone to several of the websites she recommended and downloaded a significant amount of material, and purchased on app! Thank you Ms. Wheeler!

McPherson UMBC 682 4th Entry

Last week in class we worked with master slides, themes and templates. We learned how to embed an image (e.g., your work logo) and reposition it; then it shows up on all the slides. Extra cool. You can even have more than one master slide. Whatever will I do with all the extra time now that I don't need for copying and pasting, and shifting and muttering under my breath?

I like the themed slides too (why were we all drawn to the fluffy white clouds?). It's a nice option from importing from PowerPoint (an option I'm still fond of). Captivate is one smart cookie!

Passion and Compassion? Who's with me??

So tomorrow I'm very fortunate to be receiving a very cool award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. In my acceptance remarks I discuss what I think are the two most important attributes of a faculty member and a student: passion and compassion. The following are my thoughts - I'm wondering who agrees, or disagrees with me?

"Speaking of passion, I think having and demonstrating passion and compassion are the two most important attributes of both a successful faculty member, and a student pharmacist. My area of practice is pain management and palliative care. Dr. Bob Beardsley and I teach an elective titled “Care of the Terminally Ill” – probably the only course at the school that engages their hearts, not just their minds. Treating students with compassion, and teaching them to extend the same courtesy to their future patients is a critical feeling skill in my opinion. Compassion is defined as a genuine concern for the welfare of others, or sympathetic consciousness with a desire to alleviate someone’s distress. This does not mean simply feeling sorry for someone. I believe we can teach our students about compassion by modeling the assessment of pain in a nonverbal patient, or showing patience with a dementia patient. Or perhaps acknowledging and working to minimize the shocking disparities seen in pain management for racial and ethnic minority groups.

In addition to teaching our students critical thinking and feeling skills, I think we should be proud to show the passion we all feel for our areas of expertise, and for teaching itself. Teachers who are passionate inspire students; they get excited about what they are learning. It makes them want to study more. Passionate teachers are perceived as being more authentic, and it’s contagious. When passion comes from both the teacher and student, learning is shared and valued together, resulting in lasting change. Robert Fried said “passion in teaching is not just something we offer our students. It’s is also a gift we grant ourselves: a way of honoring our life’s work and our profession.”

Ten MORE Cool Techno-Tools

As I write this, I'm attending the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in Chicago. I attended a session today titled "Top 10 Technology Tools" given by Jennifer Sparrow, really excellent. Here are her top choices (which kind of ran over 10!):

1. Google Moderator - a polling tool for collective intelligence gathering. Can use to see what's on student's minds before or after lecture.

2. Voicethread - can make anything into an image; can add audio to a posting. I frequently post readings for students and it would be helpful to add my thoughts on why it's a good reading.

3. Vizify - make graphics out of social media

4. Stormboard - can add images, post-it notes. Good for group collaboration.

5. Tagxedo - drop in any webiste and you get a wordle. You can even pick your shape. Students can do this and see if they have a good grasp on the big picture (and the smaller pictures!).

6. Google + Hangouts - good for online office hours, free for up to 10 users. Can record sessions and post (e.g., a review session).

7. Spicy Nodes - similar to Prezi (but easier).

8. Word Press - for blogs

9. StudyBlue - for flashcards, can add audio

10. Evernote - the speaker's absolutely FAVORITE tool! Can stores notes, photo's audio all in a project file. Can do shared notesbooks for collaboration.

11. Flikr - she loves this one!

12. Dropbox - a must for every human being on the planet!

13. Twitter and Tweet deck - natch!

14. She predicts the next huge things will be Google Keep and Tumblr!

An excellent session! So many apps, so little time!

McPherson UMBC 682 3rd Entry

For week 5 (June 26th) we used Adobe Photoshop and created Melon Man. Mine wasn't the most gorgeous Melon Man I've ever seen (his eyeballs were especially weird!), but it was cool learning about Photoshop.

We didn't have class this week, but we had an exercise where we were to take our quiz and practice publishing it as SWF vs. HTML5 vs. PDF. I tried to use the quiz I created a few weeks ago and of course I was not able to unclick SWF under the publish menu, and select HTML5. So I used a previous captivate file (one of the accessory files provided by our textbook) and I was able to publish it in all three formats. The file played in all three formats. Then I took a look at Jessica's project (who clearly, clearly puts me to shame) and her beautiful project played nicely in all three formats (although it ran a little slowly in one of the formats). I understand the purpose of the HTML5 format is so the file can play on devices (learned this last semester in 683!).

On another note, Group C is composed entirely of rock stars because we have FINISHED our design project. We get a little respite now until we need to build out the design plan we will inherit! On to bigger and better things!

Organization-Centric vs. Network-Centric - The Plot Continues

This week we are asked to contemplate the idea that the organization-centric model is characterized by our ability to tap expertise and share knowledge is constrained. In the network-centric model however, it is more expanded. The implication cited was "when we look for knowledge, leadership, and expertise, we will increasingly be able to access it in places that were once beyond our reach." When I consider my place of employment, I see elements of both models. I suspect the organization would PREFER the organization-centric model, but I think people are thirsty to push the boundaries and are unwilling to SETTLE for constrained knowledge and sharing. I believe the prevailing sentiment is "I don't need you to LET me seize the world, I can do it on my own." I wonder if organizations are a little intimidated to allow workers to go down paths that haven't been sanctioned by the organization? I know this sounds like "you young whippersnappers" but that's progress for you!

The second characteristic we were asked to contemplate is that in an organization-centric model, effectiveness is equated with longevity, while in the network-centric model effectiveness is equated with mobilization. I will admit that I am proud that the School of Pharmacy where I am faculty is one of the oldest in the country, and I am proud of our rich tradition. But we are ever mindful that we cannot rest on our laurels; I have witnessed first hand how beneficial transient team work can be - I agree that groups can come together to serve a purpose, then dissociate when the job is done.

Basically, whether organizations like it or not, I believe the network-centric model is being implemented, even if leadership isn't leading this charge!

More Organization-Centric vs. Network-Centric Models

When considering my current workplace, I believe I do see elements of both the organization-centric model and network-centric model. Working at a University, I believe it is mostly organization-centric; and admitedly, it CAN be extraordinarily difficult to coordinate meetings, and to collaborate. Case in point - our new campus President is REALLY fired up about interprofessional education. The problem is, it's impossible to find a TIME (short of 3-5 am) where all the students are available to participate in an interprofessional course. Yes, we could do it online, but I believe there still IS value to face-to-face time. After all, our student pharmacists will eventually be in the real world where they DO have to speak face-to-face with other health care professionals.

Even within our own School of Pharmacy, we are three departments, and after working there since 1990, I am still surprised to find faculty members in the other two departments whose professional interests align with my own to some degree. Who knew?

Steps toward a network-centric model are indeed in their infancy at my workplace. We have a robust IT department, but there is a disconnect with the faculty, who struggle with what to do with all this cool technology. Some feel the curriculum is there to support the technology, not the other way around! Perhaps we need to go back to the "WIIFM" model with faculty and network-centric opportunities - teach them what's in it for them!! Maybe all our faculty should take EDUC 689!

McPherson EDUC 682 Entry #2

An update on progress in EDUC 682. Last week we continued our work on including a quiz option that would post to adobe.com. There were (of course) some snafu's, but I was able to finish my quiz and post it. This week I took the quizzes posted by Jessica Emerson (I was surprised to see how much I knew about birds - seriously, how many species in North America?) and Mike Preston (fire stuff! I even remembered some of this from EDUC 681!). I am used to working in Blackboard which has a quizzing/gradebook reporting function but it's nice to learn that there is this option as well (well, it would be nice if it worked!).

Last week in class we did some "programming" according to our instructor. Me - doing programming? I don't know about that, but I was able to slog through and follow the directions. It's very impressive what a powerful program captivate is. I think you could spend years figuring out all the potential tricks in this program! No worries - I'm not giving up my day job any time soon!

Til next time...

Organization Centric or Network Centric?

My current position (and for the past 23 years) is as  Professor and Vice Chair for Education at a college of pharmacy. We have three departments: Pharmacy Practice and Science (my department; we are all clinicians, caring for individual patients), Pharmaceutical Science (basic scientists, mostly web lab type research) and Pharmaceutical Health Services Research (faculty who do research on public health initiatives). I would say that the College of Pharmacy is primarily an organization-centric entity. However, our new President is extremely keen on the idea of interprofessional education. We are in our infancy exploring this. We are still in the infancy of interprofessional education within MY school, let along collaborating with the other schools (medicine, nursing, dentistry, social work, law, graduate school). Even the faculty complain that we tend to work in silo’s, which is a darned shame. It's an organization environment that is very steeped in tradition.

As a clinical pharmacist, my areas of expertise are pain management and palliative care (caring for patients at the end of their life). Within the profession of pharmacy, notably within my specialty, I would say my personal learning curve has been drastically accelerated through social media and the decentralized organizational approach I have been involved with through several resources. First, other pain and palliative care pharmacists across the US and I participate in an invitation only Facebook page that does a brisk business. For example, I reached out to my colleagues about a month ago for any help in developing a proposal for a pre-operative pain clinic I’m developing. Within hours I had numerous resources that helped me develop the proposal that will hopefully lead to a significant grant. Just this week another colleague asked if I could pass along what I’d learned and developed so he could do something similar at his hospital in Florida.

Last, I not only follow learning and development professionals on Twitter, I also follow practitioners in pain and palliative care. This has helped me stay “cutting edge” with new developments, and in my practice the physicians and nurses expect me to be “a step ahead.” So, in summary, I believe within my profession we are network centric. Within my 150+ year old College of Pharmacy, we are clearly organization centric, but rebels like me are pushing the boundaries!!

Wikis, Texts and Blogs, Oh My!

Our first reading was titled “Working Wikily” – what in the world does that mean? The author used wiki’s as one example of the wave of social media options that are literally causing a revolution world-wide in how society of getting things done. Defining characteristics include principles of openness, transparency, decentralized decision-making and distributed action. This all describes the principles of networking, which is not a new concept, but IS different by virtue of new tools and technologies at our disposal.

Clay Shirky describes three key features of these emerging tools and technologies – they are “social” and allow “many-to-many” connections, and they allow both simultaneous and asynchronous interactions between people.

In a way, it’s a little intimidating thinking of what could come from this snow-balling effect in social media and networking. I have images of flash mob type networks running amok in society, with no way to throw on the brakes! The authors of “Working Wikily” admit that it’s still too early to know how all these different network experiments will turn out. But because it’s less expensive and arduous to launch a new endeavor, it’s easier and less risky to try someone new than in the past.

The authors pose a series of questions concerning these exponentially growing networks. How do we know whether networks really work? How do you balance the need for control with the productivity of networks? This is the one I’m really interested in. It seems to me that networking could easily devolve into social anarchy (did I mention I’m a tiny bit of a control freak?). Other questions include how do online networks translate into action in the real world, is this causing a shift in power between experts and amateurs (is everyone an expert now?), what the heck happened to privacy and security, and how will all this affect membership organizations? Am I the only one old enough to remember when AOL charged money to have an email?

All I know is my husband better get it in gear and get a new cell phone! The one he has now is the first model that came out after “the brick!” I want to be able to text him his “Honey Do” list!

The second reading was titled “Working Smarter Through Workscaping.” I have long espoused working smarter, not harder. Thinking it’s a great idea and actually operationalizing it is sometimes a horse of a different color!

I especially like the discussion regarding how in 1968 we carried 75% of what we need to know to do our jobs in our heads, but in 2006 we only carried around 8-10%! Yes, we all have “outboard brains” – smart phones with databases, iPads, laptops, and more. Today it is a more important skill to know WHERE to go to access information and to develop “critical thinking skills” to interpret the information once you find it. Although it’s interesting to note that older professionals are more likely to praise new learners in their field for NOT having to reach for their “outboard brains!” One of our pharmacy students on rotation recently shared with me that their pharmacist preceptor praised the student for knowing a series of facts without having to access their smart phone! There must be a good balance in there somewhere!

It was a little disheartening to read the passing on why school (in other words, my full time job) is not an effective way to learn things. I think the challenge for those of us in higher education is to now try to incorporate some of the principles espoused by this author regarding workscapes!

The last reading was about using Twitter for Social Learning – I’m just happy I’m up and running in Twitter – I think it will take me quite a while to slog through the explosion of readings on how to use twitter for presentations and events; classes, training and learning and other activities!

McPherson EDUC 682 Entry #1

So, I'm digressing to post blogs regarding progress in the other course I'm taking this summer - EDUC 682 (Instructional Technology Design & Development). This is actually the second in a three-part series but I'm taking it out of order due to a lack of a course manager last semester. But enough about that!

We've had three class sessions already (it's a synchronous course), as follows:

May 29th - mostly a "hey" session - making sure we were all able to log in, reviewing the course syllabus and schedule. A few technology snafu's already (natch).

June 5th - learned about widgets and variables. And discussed how to report quiz results from within captivate to adobe. Interesting to be able to do this - I'm used to working in an LMS like Blackboard that reports everything for me automatically. Reporting to adobe doesn't seem to be as fully functional as Blackboard, but it's certainly better than nothing! Some of us still having remote server issues (again, natch).

June 12th - continued discussion on how to report quiz results to Adobe. Talked about importing and modifying a powerpoint presentation - that's pretty cool since I'm WAY better at Powerpoint than Captivate. I see light at the end of the tunnel with this maneuver (and badly hope it's not the train!).

In this course, our team of 3 people will developing a design plan, then handing it off to another group to operationalize. I'm a little jealous; Cat, Lewis and I just spoke and we decided on our project idea - developing a captivate tutorial for older adults using the medicare online tool that helps them select their most beneficial pharmacy benefits plan under their part D benefit (http://www.medicare.gov/part-d/). I guess I'm already jealous because it's such a great idea, I want to keep it for us to finish! I'm such a greedy little hussy!

Meanwhile, I may be needing an anxiolytic soon because I can't get my quiz to report to acrobat correctly. Of course, it's probably something I'm doing wrong. Oh well...off to beat my head on the desk a little longer! Later!

Twitter Mania!

Wow! What a ride! I just participated in my first tweetchat - #lrnchat. Admittedly, I was a little intimidated at first, and I even took a few notes on things I'd never heard before - such as - epistemology. Huh? Is this a cousin to entomology? Because if so, I'm not a big fan of bugs!

Luckily it has nothing to do with insects - epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature and scope of knowledge. Yay - a new word!

Learning that is WINI - when I need it? Who knew?

The tweets were coming fast and furious - it was like being able to go point on point with five people at once! Being the shy, retiring little cupcake I am, I quickly overcame my intimidation and jumped into the fray. How exciting when someone responded they agreed with me!

I also carefully took note of respondents whose tweets made a lot of sense to me - I wrote their "handles" down so I can follow them in twitter. Building my network for sure.

A crazy hour, but a lot of fun!!

Who Am I and What Am I Doing Here?

Well, that's quite a question. Does this refer to what am I doing right now? Or is this the bigger Zen question similar to "what is the meaning of life?"

I think I'll go with the more here and now. We all play many roles in life. My roles are: teacher, student, preceptor, mentor, advisor, Mom, wife, daughter, sister, patient, health care provider, knitter, pianist, banjo player (but I'd like to be better and not have to cut my nails), jewelry enthusiast, bibliophile, calligrapher and more.

THIS blog was developed as a requirement for a course on Social Media I'm taking through UMBC. I'm several courses away from finishing a master's degree in Instructional Systems Design. My family think I'm crazy for pursuing this degree - why in the world do you want to do more work?? Because I am passionate about education - pharmacy education in particular. I am a Professor and Vice Chair for Education at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. Our school is one of the finest in the WORLD (yes, I'm very biased). Our graduates go on to do amazing things, and are leaders in the world of pharmacy. I am working with two other Vice Chairs of Education (other departments) to lead the effort of "curricular refinement" right now. It is our obligation to assure the curriculum meets our accreditation outcomes statemets, yet put a "Maryland brand" on it.

I am especially proud that leadership at our school, through word and deed, has demonstrated that they value teaching equal to the other two legs of the classic "three-legged stool" in academia (teaching, scholarship and service). I believe this is why our school is such a strong institution.

My goal is to continue to improve my ability to craft learning experiences that are meaningful, engage learners, and optimize their chances ot success. I want to see level 4 outcomes that rock your socks off. If using twitter and blogs, and skype and pinterest, and instagram and all the other things we're going to learn this semester help me do that, it's worth the pain of the learning curve.

Just think - my students think I'm uber-cool because I text. After this summer they won't be able to keep up with me!! That's down-right scary!

June 3, 2013

First post in McPherson Musings!

Where shall I go with this? I only started this blog as a requirement for a course in the master's program in instructional design I'm pursuing. So, should I talk about instructional development content?

Or, I could ramble on for three days straight about my passion - the appropriate use of medications at the end of life. Stop me already!

Or my passion for knitting! We could do a little stitch and bitch right here in the blog!

Clearly this deserves further contemplation! Stay tuned; I'll be ruminating!

LMcPherson