There's a psychological concept called locus of control. It refers to where the control of your behavior comes from--internal or external. For example, the adolescent relies on others to guide his/her behavior where the adult tends to guide their own behavior. Bad example maybe, but the adolescent smokes because it's cool and it helps the smoker identify with some group. The adult smokes because they to or need to--both reasons are internal to the person, one is emotional and the other physical.
We can see the same thing in learners. Some learners have an external locus of control. They need others, mainly the professor, to tell them what to do, maybe they work for grades or for approval of their parents. We see this mostly through the undergraduate degree. For graduates, we hope the motivation is intrinsic, a sort of hunger for information and knowledge brought on by the felt belief that the effort will be worth it. One of the reasons we encourage MBA students to have some business experience is to give them time to build up this hunger, to come to know what they want and to settle for nothing less.
As you are learning, of course I believe in the latter. My feeling is that you should be pushing me for answers, rather than me trying to pull information from you. We are going to conduct our class that way--push vs pull. You've sen that in the syllabus where I've asked you to tell me what you want. What information do you expect to accumulate? What decision making power do you want? What skills and attitudes do you want to develop? What capabilities do you have on your checklist? I have some ideas--good ones, I think--but I don't live in your shoes, report to your employer, have the same career ladder in mind. You have to tell me, er push me in that direction.
Sure, we have assignments, deadlines, grades, etc., but these are more mechanical in my mind, created by the necessity of giving you a grade as required by the University. I guess, they are also for the folks who need some external locus of control. If you are not hungry--and/or I don't make you hungry in the first few weeks--we need to talk. If you're intrinsic, my experience is that grades will take care of themselves.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Learning is Tough -- For Both of Us!
With September down the block I've been putting on my game face for this tussle called learning. Not teaching, mind you, but learning. Teaching is where I'm the "sage on the stage." I do my thing and, hopefully, you learn something, perhaps even in spite of me. No, I'm talking LEARNING; changing who you are, what you know, how valuable you are to your employers
Some have proposed a knowledge development matrix that has a learning sequence--the learning steps--on the Y axis and a continuum of learning as the X axis. The goal is for the student to move from the top left to the lower right. The steps are:
The continuum moves from awareness of the information, to understanding it, to applying it, to analyzing it, to synthesizing it, to evaluating it in the light of additional information. You might think of these steps as recall facts, explain facts, use this understanding in a new situation, manipulate the information (tear apart or put together) to form some new understandings, and finally match criteria of this information to a specific situation as a first step to starting the continuum all over again. Think of the continuum as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. For those of you whose brains are swelling just remember awareness, recall, application, and mastery. (There are similar notions for the development of affective objectives.)
The message here is that we--both oif us--need to work the matrix if anything is going to happen. My job, more or less, is to set the table and pull or push you as much as I can. Your job is to have a passion for getting from the top left to lower right. Are you ready?
Some have proposed a knowledge development matrix that has a learning sequence--the learning steps--on the Y axis and a continuum of learning as the X axis. The goal is for the student to move from the top left to the lower right. The steps are:
- Prior knowledge activation -- connecting what you know to what you are about to learn
- Information preview -- objectives, imagining the final goal, dealing with questions
- Motivation -- enough said
- Information acquisition -- student engagement with the information (you might call this homework)
- Practice and feedback -- this is where you test your understanding, assignments, if you will, but even more
- Closure -- learner reflection on what has been accomplished
The continuum moves from awareness of the information, to understanding it, to applying it, to analyzing it, to synthesizing it, to evaluating it in the light of additional information. You might think of these steps as recall facts, explain facts, use this understanding in a new situation, manipulate the information (tear apart or put together) to form some new understandings, and finally match criteria of this information to a specific situation as a first step to starting the continuum all over again. Think of the continuum as remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. For those of you whose brains are swelling just remember awareness, recall, application, and mastery. (There are similar notions for the development of affective objectives.)
The message here is that we--both oif us--need to work the matrix if anything is going to happen. My job, more or less, is to set the table and pull or push you as much as I can. Your job is to have a passion for getting from the top left to lower right. Are you ready?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)