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