The Model Doesn’t Work Without Content

The model doesn’t work without a base of content.

And since quality is subjective (it always has been) and quantity is overwhelming (it has been ever since Google pushed the argument of search to its logical conclusion), the only considerations in online learning that matter are the ones based on the efficacy of the content you’re offering.

But, when building a model for online learning, too many educational institutions are trapped in the Industrial Revolution conception of content, consisting of lectures, tests as performance measurements, grades as a “stick,” accreditation as the “carrot” and conformity as the ultimate goal.

The Industrial Revolution education model works well with accreditation (“Will this get me my degree?”) and supports the creation of graduates with minds that aren’t focused on the skills that matter for the future (“soft” skills) and instead are focused on reinforcing doing things that no longer have much value to organizations:

Like hiding from responsibility and accountability.

Like placing blame when a project or initiative fails.

Like competing in a race to the bottom on price.

Like sacrificing personal ethics for a public paycheck.

Like working for organizations and in industries where professional decline is considered the “norm.”

If the model for your educational organization’s online learning experience doesn’t feature robust, peer-to-peer learning opportunities (projects), “speed to market” dashes (short time frames), high quality student participation (we don’t take everybody because we are neither “massive,” nor all that “open”), and technology as an assistive tool rather than a crutch (email as a messaging service rather than a time waster) then your model of online education and learning will resemble every other model of online learning currently available.

And then you’ll attract exactly the kind of students that you have attending your brick and mortar institution.

But maybe that’s the audience and consumer your educational organization wants to attract, recruit, retain, and ultimately graduate.

But if it is, please be clear on that focus in your organizational head when building the content model for your online learning experience.

[Advice] The Life Long Learning Myth…Busted

Implementation, coaching, mentoring, and supporting through experiences matters more to adult learning in a corporate setting, than sitting in a room for four hours listening to a facilitator.

The drop-off in retention after such an experience is 50% after participants leave the room, and without immediate changes, immediate implementation of the learning outcomes, coaching along the path of uncomfortability, and supervisory mentoring through the tough times, the retention drop-off is 75%.

So why do many organizations still offer corporate training opportunities in all kinds of topical areas, within a formalized “sit down, and absorb” learning structure, syllabi, certificates, and experienced trainers and facilitators who drone on and on for—at most—half a day?

There are three reasons:

Most organizations—whether corporations, training organizations, or higher education institutions—are unwilling (and many times unable) to do the hard work of challenging, breaking, and remaking the foundation of learning established through the last 150 years of K-12 schooling. Schooling which was designed in conjunction with corporate leaders and influencers, and codified with the support of intellectuals and educators, to produce compliant workers, who would sit (or stand) all day and do widget based, industrial work, while leaving the thinking and innovating to others up the chain. The kind of work that was hollowed out by those same individuals starting 40 years ago and now no longer matters much in America.

Many supervisors, managers, bosses, CEO’s, COO’s, and others in the hierarchical structure of many organizations, have come from a background of schooling that they either internally rejected because it was too rigid, or found comforting and conformed too. Such engrained mindsets around the value of learning (and education) do not advance and innovate organizations. Instead, they continue to produce leaders who believe that training (and life-long learning) is either a “nice to have” (rejection mindset) or a “necessary evil” (acceptance mindset). Either way, the mentality shaped through that rejection or acceptance, is reflected in buying, internally developing, or advocating for models of learning for employees based in an Industrial Revolution K-12 schooling model.

Trainers, facilitators, consultants, and others in the wide and deep field of corporate training (myself included) aren’t doing enough of the hard work, often enough, of breaking our own mindsets of how information, experiences, and content is delivered to audiences (online, F2F, etc.). We also aren’t engaging with the hard work of breaking institutional, corporate mindsets from the outside by creating offerings and client deliverables that will transcend the dying model of K-12 education. This means having the courage to stick to our principles around peer-to-peer learning, advocating to organizations that we serve for mentoring and coaching for our learners, encouraging accountability, and at the furthest end, treating adult learners like adults in the training room, rather than continuing to train them (i.e. treat them) in the K-12 learning mold they’re familiar with.

The feedback I always get when I write (or talk) in these three areas typically focuses around the inability of organizations to change, the unwillingness of employees to actually be motivated to do the hard work of working on things that are hard (i.e. engaging with emotional labor) and the inability of trainers, consultants, and others to feed their families based on selling what the market is not progressive enough to demand.

These are all legitimate concerns, but the facts of the 21st century are clear for anyone with two eyes to see:

The workplace, jobs, labor, and other tasks that people need to be organized into groups to accomplish, must still be done, or else there will be chaos in the world. Hard work—manufacturing work, “blue collar” work, etc.—will still be done in the world, but increasingly due to automation and algorithms, that work will be either outsourced or done by machines. And when it’s not, the people who will do it, will charge an even higher premium for it, to support their continued learning to become better artisans.

An acknowledgement that work matters, that tasks should be meaningful, rather than meaningless, and that employees should be treated like adults rather than like children in the workplace, is growing rather than going away. Calls from researchers, thought leaders, influencers, advocates, and others for more pay transparency, flexible family leave policies, and “flat” hierarchical structures, are only the tip of the iceberg.

The rewards to organizations in terms of prestige (Top 10 Best Places to Work), revenues (The World’s First $2 Billion Company), and public goodwill (Anyone See What Apple Made Today) in America, are drivers for success (or determinants of failure in a transparent media market) more now than ever. And these drivers become outsized to organizations that are willing to take risks, to supervisors that are willing to challenge the status quo, and to vendors who are willing to sell with courage.

Unrest will continue among employees who believe that they are not getting paid what they are worth, are increasingly mobile, and are calling the bluff of the industrialist mindset that has dominated every sector of life for over a century now. This unrest will grow in continued calls for a basic income, the cries against income inequality, and the accusations of a new “Gilded Age” of wealth and prosperity for some.

Wihout meaningful changes the conflicts that will arise if life-long, continuing, robust education is not increasingly, innovatively, and creatively integrated into the work lives of employees in all organizations in all sectors (from small businesses to the Fortune 1,000 companies), will be massive and unmanageable.

And bosses, managers, supervisors, shareholders, CEO’s, CFO’s, communities, civic leaders, politicians, business owners, corporate training organizations, and others will have to explain in plain terms to their constituencies, employees, followers, and others, the reasons (and their mindsets) for why they rejected or ignored the golden opportunity to implement, coach, mentor, and support in order to transform corporate learning into something meaningful and valuable, in the early 21st century.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Podcast] Earbud_U Episode #9 – Anastasia Pryanikova

Earbud_U Episode #9 – Anastasia Pryanikova, Linguist, Coach, Entrepreneur, Writer, Transmedia Storyteller and Visionary

earbud_u-episode-9-anastasia-pryanikova

[powerpress]

Marketers tell stories and mediators hear stories. And this is just the beginning of the story.

Many folks in the field of peacemaking and peace building are trying many different things to get the attention of a world that is changing all around them.

When this works, it’s beautiful, like with our guest, Anastasia Priyanikova.

Her and her partner have developed a start-up focused on all the most interesting parts of the mediation and storytelling experience. The learning part.

And she and her partner are working with a unique collaboration of artists, writers and other creatives helping them produce their best work.

Check out Anastasia Pryanikova online at http://brainalchemist.com/ and check out her learning company start-up, Bookphoria at http://www.bookphoria.com/

She’s got a special offer for all Earbud_U listeners at the end of the interview, so stay tuned for that.

Check out all the additional ways to get in touch with her below:

Email: ana (at) brainalchemist.com
Web:  http://brainalchemist.comhttp://bookphoria.com/http://www.lawsagna.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lawsagna; https://twitter.com/bookphoria
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PryanikovaAnastasia
LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/apryanikova
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AnastasiaPryanikova/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/SelfHelpBookMuse
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/lawsagna/
Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/Stamford-Brain-Book-Club/

Download the Latest Episode of Earbud_U!

Emotions in the Machine

At a neurobiological level, the facts and triggers for emotions in the human mind are complicated and diaphanous.

6 Billion Likes

If human societies create functioning, artificial intelligence, the chance of human level emotions evolving within those machines, will be slim to none.

Machines, even intelligent machines, can’t rise any higher than their creators.

The emotions that we have as human beings are too complex to be codified into streams of code—with the results streaming out as observable, quantifiable data points.

Data comes about as a result of an action; emotions come about as the evolutionarily developed responses to external stimuli.

One is external (data) the other internal (emotions).

Jealousy, hatred, envy, wrath, lust, love, appreciation, gratitude, respect, duty, honor, sacrifice and on and on, come from the result of constant, human-on-human conflict and rigorous A/B testing, from birth to death.

How, exactly, are we planning on codifying that into mathematically based code, so that adaptive learning, long-term evolution and short-term development can happen?

Powering down an intelligent machine won’t be murder—unless human beings decide that it is.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] Politik With The Addition of Other Means

The Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz noted, about 230 years or so ago, that “War is the continuation of Politik with the addition of other means.”

In a digitally connected world, hacking, data thefts, downloading intellectual property without previous permission, plagiarism without appropriate attribution, are all “added on means.”

Depending upon your frame of reference— of the person or organization being victimized, or of the person or organization doing the victimization—these acts can also be framed as war.

Students of peace in the digitally connected world should become students of the new boundaries of warfare in the 21st century, in order to educate the masses on the nature, depth and breadth of future conflict.

Because someone is going to have to stop the black hat actors, before they become black hat actors in the first place.

To join our email list, please, head on over to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/hsct-offers  page and sign up today. After you do that, download our two FREE offers: [download id=”2414″] and [download id=”2390″]. 

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Why Go to College: For the Rest of Us

Since the economic collapse of 2008, there have been many articles and blogs written about the importance (or lack of importance) of attending higher education for young people.

This talk has taken place amid a backdrop of ever rising tuition costs, zero wage increases, artificially suppressed inflation, a boatload of student loan debt burdening the 18-22 year old cohort and the dim post-graduation employment prospects where an average job search takes 6-9 months.

Hope and change indeed.
All of these writers, bloggers and opinionaters on both sides of the debate have one thing in common: They all hail from middle to upper middle class households and backgrounds, where at least one parent (and in many cases both parents) have already attended college.
In particular, they hail from backgrounds where they grew up with the suburban (and in some cases ex-burban) comfort that at least if they graduated from an overpriced college with an undervalued education and an economically meaningless degree, that somehow, someway, it would all work out in the end.
Now, in principle, we here at  HSCT have no problem with people carrying such assumptions and even acting on them in the real world.
We have no problem with people writing long, effusive, opinion pieces on the lack of efficacy of a college education and worrying about the debt attached to obtaining it, in the context of a world where student loan debt cannot be disgorged through a bankruptcy process.
We also have no problem with questioning why it is important for people to have college degrees and even the tenuous link between a college degree and economic success based in secure post-graduate employment.
Make no mistake, yes our background is in higher education, but we would be blind and foolish if we did not admit that there are real structural problems and cracks in the mighty edifice constructed since post-World War II.
We get off the train though, when we think about the “please take the college years and go off to ‘find yourself’” type advice, being given to minority high school students.
We have a problem when very well meaning, successful, wealthy people, who did not attain degrees, but attained a measure of success, stand in front of diverse audiences and make the audacious claim that can be summed up as “we didn’t go so you don’t have to either.”
We’re sorry, but too many folks in those diverse audiences come with backgrounds from racial minority groups in this country that have experienced systemic, institutionalized, historical racism. And some of those students’ backgrounds are from communities still experiencing the results of such racism, racialism and racial prejudice. Thus, some of the worst advice that they–as well as their younger brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews–can possibly hear is “don’t attend college, because it’s too expensive, too much student loan burden will be upon you at graduation, etc., etc.”
This is not a statement based in social justice, social re-engineering or any desire for any form of social gerrymandering.
This statement comes out of a recognition that more African-American males are in jail in this country than even have completed high school.
This statement comes out of a recognition that Hispanic, Asian and Eastern European populations have traditionally valued education as the only way to advance in America.
This statement comes out of the recognition that the only way to open the doors and unlock opportunities if you are not from an upper class or even a middle class structure, is through the hard work of education, monetary sacrifice, and doing the right thing for the most people possible.
Of course, when there have been three to four generations of racial, ethnic and class minorities that have attained college education in America, we will be the first to write all about how going to college is a fool’s bargain.
We promise.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/