What makes teachers great? (survey data)

Introduction
I spent a lot of time last month thinking about what it is that makes teachers great. My graduate schooling focuses on the value of instructional design--which is to say that we're primarily concerned with the curriculum rather than its delivery. The actual concept gets a lot fuzzier than that, but there it is.

I really believe in the power of teachers, though. Although it makes me crazy when teachers claim credit for their students' accomplishments (we need to avoid the savior complex, folks), I think that good teachers offer truly marvelous gifts to their students. I had a few teachers who fundamentally altered the way I saw my place in the world, and at least one who saved my life. For Mr. Bryan Thompson, my first-grade teacher, I offer this thanks: I would probably not be here today if it weren't you. Thank you.

In thinking about teachers like Mr. Thompson, I started wondering: what is it that students value in their teachers? Is it the same thing that school boards value? See, teaching is a funny thing. We rely on teachers to offer us all kinds of subject knowledge, but some of them seem to go further and share wisdom or hope or compassion or something more than the simple result of focused intelligence. Some of them change more than our brains. How do they do it?

I trace the path of my life through several branching points where a truly great teacher helped me find my own way. I wondered if other students shared this sense of having been "guided" by their teachers, not in the sense of "guidelines" that we have to follow, but of a "guide book" that shows us what's possible.

So I created this survey. I was surprised by how quickly the responses came in--it turns out that people love to talk about their favorite teachers! (I was also surprised to learn that SurveyMonkey starts charging you money after you receive a certain number of responses). The results surprised me.


Caveats, disclaimers, and it's-not-our-faults
The survey is not perfect. I did the best I could with it, but I have not yet taken research methods or statistics. I tried to reduce bias in the questions, but it's imperfect. I'm also not going to show you all the free-text responses directly, since people wrote some astonishingly personal things about themselves. So the analysis on that stuff is mine.

Also, if reading this analysis ruins your life (or makes you want to become a teacher), it's not my fault. Srsly.


Survey design
Method. The survey was conducted using SurveyMonkey, a free Internet-based tool that allows, well, free surveys. It provides rudimentary statistics (deeper ones are available for a fee) and allows the tracking of individual responses (i.e., it's possible to see each respondent's answers to all the questions, separately).

I tried to eliminate bias in the phrasing of questions, and also tried to make sure that choices were similar in scope and tone. I also set the survey to randomize the presentation order of most choices. Some questions allowed free-text "Other (please specify)" options. 

Confounding variables. I posted the survey address to my Facebook profile and asked my friends to fill it out and then share it with their friends. Initially, most respondents were first-order friends of mine. As time drew on, more and more responses came from nth-order friends (those with distant, unknown connections to me). The issue here is that I am not friends with a random distribution of people, nor are my friends. Some themes that run through my friends list: students at elite universities; musicians; actors; people who volunteer or work at crisis hotlines; backpacking aficionados; people who live in northern New York, Scotland, or Philadelphia. Make of this information what you will.


Survey data and analysis
In total, 111 people responded to the survey. SurveyMonkey will only let me see the results of the first 100 responses without paying a fee. Given the relatively small difference in responses, I am reluctant to pay--but I would be willing to buy in if people felt it was important, especially if they were willing to contribute to the cost. In any case, this analysis draws only on the first 100 responses (which means that all percentages are also raw counts).

Question 1 asked for simple demographic information. 66 people provided it; 34 chose to skip the question.


Question 2: Highest education level
2. What's your highest level of formal education?

• Middle school (finished 8th grade): 0%
• High school (finished 12th grade): 2%
• Partial college/university: 12%
• Associate's degree: 3%
• Bachelor's degree: 24%
• Partial graduate school: 8%
• Master's degree: 30%
• ABD doctoral studies: 5%
• Doctoral degree: 10%
• Post-doctoral studies: 1%
• Other: 5%

Of the "Other" choices, one had an unusual doctoral degree, one had a pair of bachelor's degrees, one had partial medical school, one had partial college plus a professional degree, and one had a master's degree plus a lot of extra credits.

The interesting thing here is that our sample size is highly educated and, to my eye, unusually so. 57% of respondents have done some form of graduate education, which seems high for the general populace. There exists the possibility that this group of people holds especially passionate views about teachers, given its predilection for advanced education.


Question 3. Type of schools
3. Looking at your primary and secondary education (before college), what kind of schools did you attend? (check all that apply)

• Public school (usually organized by geographic boundaries): 93%
• Private school: 19%
• Home schooling: 3%
• Summer camps focused on a learning topic (music camp, sports camp, art camp, math camp, CTY, Scout camp, etc.): 25%
• Other (please specify): 5%

Choices for "Other" included specialized forms of public schooling, foreign language schooling, Catholic school, and law-enforcement/military training.

The interesting thing here is that nearly everyone spent some time in public school. Since this is "check all", the totals add up to more than 100%. It would be interesting to see, in follow-up research, where the highest incidence of "really great teachers" occurs (in terms of school type) after normalizing the data for population size. I think a lot of us hold the belief that the best teachers are found in private schools, and that homeschooling isn't as focused on teachers. It would be interesting to see.


Question 4: Number of great teachers
4. Think back to the best teachers you've ever had. Think of the people who really changed your life in some way, or inspired you, or gave you the kick in the pants you really needed. They might be formal classroom teachers; they might be mentors; they might be employers; they might be neighbors. How many great teachers did you have BEFORE college?

•  0: 1%
• 1: 5%
• 2: 18%
• 3-5: 49%
• 6-10: 18%
• More than 10: 9%

This is a badly-designed question, because the intervals are different. My bad. Still, it's interesting that nearly everyone had at least one teacher they felt was "great", and that most (76%) had at least three great teachers. Note that the person who responded "0" went on to say that all her great teachers were in college.

I left this question deliberately open to interpretation because I wanted to isolate the variable (presented later) of what went into being a great teacher. This is just a count.


Question 5. What subjects great teachers teach
5. Thinking of those great teachers, what subjects did they teach? Alternatively, what was their field of expertise? Check as many as apply. If you had several great teachers, or your teachers had many specialties, check as many boxes as you like--but only think of the _really_ good teachers. 

• Mathematics: 34%
• Physical sciences (physics, chemistry, earth science, biology, etc.): 37%
• Technology/shop class: 4%
• Agriculture: 1%
• Physical education/sports: 5%
• Music (music performance, music history, etc.): 45%
• Dance: 2%
• Art (studio art, art history, etc.): 12%
• Social studies/history/government: 44%
• English: 57%
• Economics: 3%
• Foreign languages: 21%
• Health: 2%
• Elementary school (where you had the same teacher for every subject all year): 42%
• Vocational skills: 2%
• Religious studies: 4%
• Extracurricular activities: 18%
• Other (please specify): 15%

Choices for "Other" included college professors, home and careers (home economics) teachers, librarians, mentors, camp counselors, parents,  theatrical directors, journalism teachers, and martial arts instructors. I chose the options for this question by thinking of the different classes available in my pre-collegiate schools and then adding a few I knew other people had taken elsewhere.

Teachers everywhere, take heart! No matter what you teach, there is room for good teachers. Every category had at least one really great teacher in it, which was interesting given how few students take classes in, e.g., agriculture.  Remember, also, that these statistics are not normalized: I did not think to ask how many students took each class. So, for example, I can't tell whether English has a high percentage because English teachers are especially amazing or because everyone has to take English.

That said, I was surprised by the results here. I expected to see that "creative" disciplines like music and art would take the lion's share here, which probably reflects my own bias as an occasional music teacher. But the neat thing is that every field of study across a typical school had quite a few great teachers.

The top five: English (57%), music (45%), social studies/history/government (44%), elementary school (42%), and physical sciences (37%). Mathematics is just behind, with 34%.

To me, this says pretty clearly that, in the eyes of learners, great teaching is about the person, not the subject.


Question 6: What makes teachers effective
6. What was it about those teachers that made them so effective for you? Do you have a sense of why their messages really got through for you? Alternatively, what made the great teachers different from the mediocre ones? This question is optional, but I would love it if you would answer!

This was a free-text question, so I have no statistics to offer you. A few general themes emerged, though, and I'll present them with quotations from respondents.

"What made it exceptional was their love for what they were doing". "The positive energy they gave out and obvious sense of wanting students to succeed." "Teachers that found a way to challenge me." ". . . it was simply teachers that demanded my own thought and effort to the practice . . . in order to be successful." "She had faith in me." "She gave me confidence and the where-withall to ask why? I don't think I had a real 'Me' personality before her."

"They were creative, enthusiastic and passionate... And had a great sense of humor" ". . . took extra time with the kids that needed it. They sacrificed their time, to make sure that the kids knew the material before moving on with the rest of the work." "I think she tricked us into thinking that [subject] was easy." "No one ever felt stupid in her room." "They went out of their way to help me." "Because of his encouragement, I am a [professional] today."

"Teachers who enjoy teaching can make learning magical." "They were both curmudgeons. They didn't bend over backward to make the class 'enjoyable' for every single person, but if you invested time/attention you would get a lot out of their classes." "Great teachers challenge you to leave your comfort zone." "They responded to the unique in me." "My great teachers held us up to high standards, [and] gave praise only when it was due". "The great teachers saw that I was bored and preoccupied, rather than disrespectful or 'bad'." "They were also fearlessly quirky, and had great senses of humor." 

"They didn't just teach the subject content, they taught about life. They were able to put the content aside when necessary and teach life lessons - while they were passionate about their subject, they knew that there was life beyond it." "I could always tell the difference between a teacher who was there because it was their 'job' and a teacher that was there because they really loved to teach and cared if they made a difference."

If you're a teacher, you've probably spent some time wondering whether it really matters how hard you try, and wondering whether your students notice. They do. Really. The responses for this question were 20 pages long, and I wish I could share them all with you. Students notice, they care, and they remember for their entire lives. It matters.

I find it interesting that, although I didn't impose any structure on the responses, they fell into broad categories that pretty much mirrored my later questions. One general theme that wove through a lot of responses was the concept of treating students as whole people: learners who also have to live in the world, who are trying to puzzle it out, and who need sturdy guides. Respect is a pretty big theme in many responses, as is love. Love is a dangerous word in schools these days, but we seem to need it--and it seems like we withhold it at some peril. Note that I'm not advocating anything untoward here--I'm just saying that we seem hungry for the knowledge that our teachers care about us.


Question 7: Influence on profession
7. Was your choice of profession (or direction of study) directly influenced by one of those great teachers?

• Yes, and I chose to do what they do: 33%
• Yes, even though I chose to follow a different path: 32%
• No, they didn't influence my decision: 19%
• Other (please specify): 16%

Choices for "Other" included people who don't yet have professions, those who weren't certain,  a substantial number of people who chose their path based on college professors, and those who chose their path based on all their great teachers, not just one.

Depending on how you count the "Others", we see somewhere between 65% and 81% of respondents choosing their life directions based on a few great teachers. That's a pretty hefty impact. Follow-up studies might explore what people mean when they say that someone influenced their decision, and what that means in terms of actions.


Question 8: What matters most
8. This is a total cheap-shot question, and it's exactly the kind that we all hate survey designers for writing. Sorry. Assume for the sake of discussion that all teachers are adequately qualified to teach their subjects, meaning that they possess adequate subject expertise and sufficient teaching ability to convey that expertise in a classroom. Above and beyond that, which of these qualities is MOST important for a truly great teacher? (i.e. which of these best differentiates great teachers from adequate ones?)

•  Mastery of the subject (as evidenced by knowledge): 3%
• Mastery of the subject (as evidenced by advanced degrees): 0%
• Visible excitement about/passion for the subject: 42%
• Strong personal rapport with students: 27%
• Ability to provide instruction that reaches most students: 13%
• Other (please specify): 15%

Most people who chose "Other" used it to get around the question's "choose only one" requirement, and most of those selected both passion for the subject and personal rapport with students. Some went on to state that it doesn't work if teachers "try too hard" to seem passionate, while others focused on meeting each student's needs (which is basically 'instruction that reaches most students').


Wordiest. question. ever.  Seriously, I should have made the question shorter. But there it is.

I think it's fascinating that visible excitement about the subject trashes all other options, especially when we consider the variety of subjects taught (Question 5). Not only do we love the music teacher who's out gigging on the weekends, but we also love the chemistry teacher who's giggling in the corner as she makes baking soda volcanoes, the math teacher who runs a website on how to solve brain teasers, the history teacher who publishes analyses of thirteenth-century combat tactics, and the gym teacher who plays five sports and coaches six more. We love teachers who show us something of themselves, who make it obvious why they chose this profession.

And we love teachers who connect with us on a personal level. We don't seem to care as much about whether they're geniuses in their subjects, although several people expressed scorn for teachers who didn't seem to know their craft and, e.g., gave credit for history papers about fictitious battles between countries that don't exist. But subject area knowledge seems like a sufficiency condition, not a demand in itself.

This question forced people to rank their priorities, which was uncomfortable for many people. I got a number of nasty emails for making people choose. Whatever else it shows, it seems clear that we rank the "soft" skills (passion and personal connection) vastly higher than the "professional" ones, at least when it comes to separating the truly great teachers from the rest of the flock.


Conclusions
I'm fascinated by the results, and I would love to study this more. I expected that visible excitement would be important, but I had no idea it would be such a clear winner. I wonder how we measure it. How do you tell whether I care about my subject? Is it the same way someone else would figure it out? How did those teachers establish a good rapport with students? I teach crisis counseling and suicide intervention in my day job, which means that I spend a good part of my professional life teaching people how to establish rapport. Should I be offering to help teachers keep that skill polished?

Lots of teachers wonder whether their work really matters--it's so hard to know whether we're doing a good job, especially since our "products" tend to move around and defy categorization. For 100 Facebook users, it seems like teachers really did matter. Every one of us had a teacher who fundamentally changed some aspect of our lives for the better.

So what do the results mean we should do differently? You're free to make your own choices about that, but for me? I'm going to make sure I show my students why I care so much about teaching them. I'm going to tell them why I turned down more lucrative job opportunities so I could share what I know. And I'm going to keep making it a priority to know them on a personal level.


Epilogue
Did you learn something from this? Tell me! Leave a comment on the blog, or email me at hollis easter at g mail dot com. Have some ideas for the next thing to study? Let's hear 'em! I would love to see whether the same results hold true for a larger data set. If you're interested too, let's see if we can find funding to make it happen. It won't take a lot of money.

I think these results are pretty interesting, and I hope you do too! Pass the link on to a teacher you know, or post it to your Facebook page. Let's talk.

There was one really neat side effect of this project. A lot of respondents wrote in afterward and told me that the survey gave them the push they needed to go thank those teachers who meant so much to them. There's a challenge there for us all: to give thanks for the gifts others offered us. I'm going to work on doing it more; will you join me?

Finally, I triple-dog-dare someone to cite this research in an academic paper.

Thanks for reading.
Hollis

Surveying people: what makes teachers great?

Hi friends!

After a fantastic conversation with Jasmine and Meg in Burlington this weekend, I've got a question burning inside: what is it that makes teachers great?

We've all had them: teachers whose presence in our lives marked a turning point, an alchemical moment when we were transmuted into something different. Teachers without whom we would have ended up in very different places from where we are today.

I'd like to ask you some questions about yours, if you don't mind. I put together a brief survey (which you can find here) with a few questions about your experience with teachers. It shouldn't take you more than about five minutes. Will you help? Feel free to pass the link (or this page) to friends--I'd love to have a bigger data set.

Once I've gotten a bunch of responses, I will post some data analysis to this blog. I think it will be interesting to see.

Here's the link to the survey again. Thanks so much for your help!
Hollis

ADDIE vs. HPT

ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) and HPT (Human Performance Technology) have broad similarities, but there are enough differences to merit a deeper look. The biggest difference, for me, is that ADDIE focuses explicitly on building training programs, while HPT aims to develop an appropriate solution, which might be "training, performance support tools, a new or re-engineered process, the redesign of a workspace, or a change in compensation or benefits" (ISPI, p. 3). HPT advocates a systems view of performance improvement, in which training is one potential tool.

Both models include evaluation, but ADDIE (as classically defined) places it at the end of the process whereas HPT welds it into the middle portions of the system as well. HPT also explicitly asks about retention of information by including a "Confirmative" evaluation of learners ("Continuing Competence"), organizational goals ("Continuing Effectiveness"), and value ("Return on Investment (ROI)").

To some degree, it seems like a red herring to compare ADDIE to anything on a fine-grained level since, as Morrison et al. (2007, p. 13) point out, ADDIE does not exist as a formal model and it has never been written down in an authoritative way. The beauty of ADDIE--its simplicity--is also its downfall here, since it tends to morph into whatever some author wants to call it. ADDIE takes a lot of flak because authors want straw men to argue against. At its heart, ADDIE offers a reminder to consider certain kinds of tasks when designing instruction, and its value as a "mental checklist" is high.

I think HPT is valuable for the same reason: it offers a systematic, visible way of thinking about performance deficiency and improvement. As Reigeluth says, it reminds us to ask important questions about the solutions we propose, and gives us tools for knowing whether the process is finished.

For my example of ADDIE versus HPT, I will take a real-world example that actually crossed my desk a few months ago. In my work at the hotline, I spoke with a woman who was very upset about her husband's habit of leaving the light on in the bathroom after he left the room. His habit was very firmly ingrained, and the woman found herself being significantly annoyed every time she saw the bathroom light left on. She asked me how she could teach him to turn the light off.

ADDIE might have me analyze the situation, determine that the husband did know how to use the light switch, and eventually design some sort of training that explained the deleterious effects of light-switch-left-on syndrome on their marriage and their shared bank account, and went on to teach light extinction skills. Had I done this, I suspect my evaluation would have shown a failure to change anything.

HPT addresses this as a performance problem. In analyzing the learners, I determined that the husband, though very good-hearted, was often absent-minded. The problem wasn't that he chose not to turn off the light--it was that he didn't notice the light at all. Is training the right solution? No! I suggested a workplace modification: that she install a motion-sensing light switch in the bathroom. Evaluation will show that the original performance problem--leaving the light on--was eradicated immediately and did not recur.

A few other thoughts that interested me:

Gram (2009, September 9) feels "Adherents and crankites alike view ADDIE as an 'instructional design' methodology when in fact it should be viewed more as a project management process for learning projects. Viewing Instructional Design as synonymous with ADDIE does both a disservice. There is loads of ID going on inside ADDIE but it is primarily in the Design phase of the process, and it can be much more creative than the original model prescribes." This meshes nicely with my own observations: most experts learn a model and then improvise using its tools, rather than slavishly following the model.

Bhattacharya (2006) argues that structural models like ADDIE and HPT are losing their relevance because they demand adherence to a relatively strict procedural model in an era where rapid development is the norm. He also argues that most actual developers follow something he calls a "seismograph" pathway through models like ADDIE, rather than the linear "waterfall" other authors sometimes describe. Although some of his points involve arguments with straw men, the central tenet is valuable: instructional design ought to stay in touch with its learners and employers throughout the process, not merely during Analysis and Evaluation.

Jarche (2006, November 7) points out that models like ADDIE and HPT are, by nature, better suited to _training_ tasks (those with specific end-point goals) than to _educational_ tasks (those that aim to increase general knowledge, skills, etc.) because these models demand specific measurements. He goes on to argue that models like ADDIE and HPT are still valid today, but that they need careful application. He writes, "too often we see training as a solution looking for a problem." At its heart, this favors HPT somewhat, since HPT explicitly includes non-training solutions. But the over-arching admonition is to analyze the situation, determine what kind of solution is needed, and _then_ choose a model for getting there.

References:

Bhattacharya, A. (2006, November 8). Big question: ISD / ADDIE / HPT: still relevant? Retrieved May 12, 2010, from http://incsub.org/soulsoup/?p=739

Gram, T. (2009, September 9). ADDIE is dead! Long live ADDIE! Retrieved May 12, 2010, from http://gramconsulting.com/2009/09/addie-is-dead-long-live-addie/

International Society for Performance Improvement. (2009). What is human performance technology? Retrieved May 12, 2010, from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/courses/46324/CRS-CW-4119171/What_is_Human_Performance_Technology_%28HPT%29.pdf

Jarche, H. (2006, November 7). Whither ISD, ADDIE & HPT? Retrieved May 12, 2010, from http://www.jarche.com/2006/11/wither-isd-addie-hpt/

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Designing effective instruction (5th ed.). San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

AIRS 2010: Strength In Numbers

I'm teaching a workshop at this year's national Alliance of Information and Referral Systems conference. It's called Strength in Numbers: Bringing Effective Group Work to Training Programs, and it's a workshop I've done at several other conferences... inasmuch as any participatory workshop can be "done before"! I'm a different person now, with different experiences.

Among the things I plan to do around the periphery of the workshop:
- give them digital (online) media to use during the workshop, if they wish
- provide tools in concept-map format as well as traditional formats
- provide a reading list for people who want to learn more

Here's a working list of things I think might be relevant to their needs:

stuff about Robert Gagne
stuff about instructional design
stuff about ARCS motivation theory
the importance of elaboration for cognitive storage
stuff about constructivism
Armstrong or Gardner on multiple intelligence theory?
stuff about managing time in class
stuff about Socratic questioning
tools of the trade
stuff about Vygotsky/ZPD
stuff about Bloom's taxonomy

Malachowski, M. (2002). ADDIE based five-step method towards instructional design. Retrieved from http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~mmalacho/OnLine/ADDIE.html

The Hammer and the Hacksaw: Choosing the Right Tool for the Job

My family has a love affair with tools. My father started teaching me to work with tools before I could walk, and my grandfather’s tool collection was legendary. As he put it, “I just like ‘em.” My relatives instilled the belief that a well-rounded person has many tools and knows their capabilities, and I carry that mindset forward into my study of learning theories. Over the past two months, I have tried to look at learning theories not as being “right or wrong”, but with an eye to “how is this useful?” and “what can this teach me?” The hammer and the hacksaw are both valuable tools, but one is clearly better for pounding nails and the other excels at cutting timbers. So, too, with learning theories: each is valuable for certain tasks, and we need the right tool for the job.

I was surprised to learn how divergent some of the theories are—I expected a Grand Unified Theory of human learning. In retrospect, that was an odd expectation to have. I was struck, repeatedly, by how slippery the concept of “learning” is. A behaviorist’s idea of learning looks rather different from a connectivist’s idea, but both claim to describe the same thing. I also learned to beware the seductive habit of assuming that everyone else learns the way I do—I now believe that the mark of a good instructional designer is that he tries to understand how everyone else learns too. This leads toward an eclectic view of learning: if a theory explains how anyone learns, we should pay attention to it.

This course has shown me the huge role technology and connectivity have played in my learning over the past twenty years. Although I am a cognitive constructivist at heart, my habits tend strongly toward connectivism. I spend much of my life researching things or sharing things on the Internet, and my life would be poorer without it. In pondering this, I have come to see the Internet (and its associated technologies) as a new constructivist environment: a rich context full of authentic tasks that have meaning for learners. Generational diversity plays into this, and I have spent much of this class thinking about what people of different ages expect about learning and educational technology.

In designing instruction, I tend to ask “why” a lot. Why do it this way? Why do the learners need to know this? Why is this class failing to teach what I want my learners to know? Learning theories help to give me answers to these questions, because they break down the nebulous “learning process” into more manageable chunks that I can diagnose and debug. I came into the class with some strong ideas about what constituted “good instruction”, and I still hold many of those views; the learning theories have helped me to understand why “good instruction” succeeds, and why “bad instruction” fails.

Theories provide a foundation for understanding how instruction works. Like most foundations, their structure is sometimes hard to see, but without them, the house falls down. We may not interact with the foundations every day, directly, but we rely on their support. Learning theories make me a better designer because they help me to know what I am trying to achieve and how to get there. The theories also offer strategies for fixing problems—these different approaches and lenses give me new tools to try when designing instruction.

Where is this going? Part of me now wants to study educational psychology at the doctoral level, because it fascinates me. More immediately, I plan to continue asking how the training programs I develop support learning, motivation, and transfer. In that sense, learning theories have already been valuable to me: I used motivation theory in developing a presentation last week, and I have been getting rave reviews about it. I used connectivism to explain why social services need to adapt to the habits of today’s users, and I used constructivism to develop an assessment tool that really works. It all comes down to having the right tool for the job.

Dipping from many wells

I've spent the last two months studying learning theories at Walden University, and it's been a fascinating journey. The class forced me to get involved with blogs, and it made me jump head-first into the pool of Web participation. Talk about a lesson with wide-reaching effects!

Photo by Diego_3666

When I dipped my toe into studying learning theories, I classified myself as a cognitive constructivist, and I think my first instincts were good ones. Although aspects of behaviorism hold true for me (as they do for everyone), that theory doesn't explain the way I learn higher-order skills and knowledge. Cognitive theory, with its focus on connections between related concepts and emphasis on metaphor, is an obvious choice for me; it pairs well with constructivism, which explains the fact that I learn best in rich environments where I can see the problem, work at it from different angles, and draw on different resources to find solutions.

As I've learned about later theories like connectivism, social learning, and adult learning theory, the water has grown a bit muddier.

Connectivism--the focus on a network of resources, rather than one person's knowledge--has played a tremendous role in my intellectual development. I adopted technology early on, hit the Internet well before the Web had been invented, and never really looked back. The network of resources has been a feature of my learning since elementary school. I still spend hours each day immersed in the Internet, connecting with friends and colleagues, researching new ideas, communicating, and learning. I only recently learned about connectivist theory, but I've been doing what it describes for years.

I'm not sure where I stand with social learning theory. Some of my best experiences have been with other learners, but I tend to gravitate toward learning on my own. Perhaps this stems from years of being interested in things that bored my classmates, or maybe it grows from my native introversion. When I can find groups of people with similar interests, I learn a lot by discussing and debating with them, which is why the 'net is such a wonderful tool for me. I also learn through teaching.

Adult learning theory seems more like a collection of descriptions than a coherent theory, but it has a lot of merit. It points out that adults tend to be self-directed learners (I am!) and tend to prefer forms of instruction that explain why the learning is useful. We also draw heavily on our past experiences and pre-existing knowledge, and use technology to aid our learning.

I rely on technology for many things: I use a computer to stay in touch with friends and colleagues; I participate in forums, blogs, and email lists where I both learn and teach; I schedule my time with the aid of a BlackBerry; I make music on electronic instruments and record the analog instruments with a computer. Technology plays a big role in my learning because it makes it easy to find information and it also simplifies the task of preserving what I've learned and publishing new ideas. Discussion boards are very helpful to me, as are the few close friends who'll indulge me, because I often cement learning by summarizing it and explaining it to someone else. Internet connectivity facilitates this. I also find a simple word processor valuable in taking notes--I can type at around 100 words per minute, which is more than three times the average handwriting speed (31 wpm). Faster note-taking means less time away from the material I'm trying to drink in.

My learning theory preferences seem to relate to the letter 'C': the more 'C's, the better. So I am strongly constructivist and connectivist (both have two 'C's), still quite cognitivist and interested in social learning (one 'C' each), and not very behaviorist (no 'C's at all). Since every family needs a black sheep, mine is adult learning theory, which lacks a 'C' but still enjoys my warm regard.

You may have noticed the water theme running through my post. That's intentional: one of the things I learned from cognitivism is that attaching metaphors to things can make them easier to learn. I feel like my understanding of learning has flowed through each theory, sipping from each, drinking deeply from a few. In the end, I find it difficult to say which influences me the most--so much depends on context. I think they all serve useful purposes, and I intend to continue dipping from each well.

Geolocation in learning

I am intensely interested in the ways location affects learning and development, as I've written in the past. I think the rise of geolocation technologies will have profound and subtle effects on the way we teach. I'm using geolocation in two senses here: one being the (relatively broad) sense of using GPS and other technology to describe two-dimensional position in latitude and longitude, and the other being a more general term for electronically-mediated spatial awareness: a sense of "knowing where things are".

Some of the technology here doesn't exist yet—but that's the nature of technological prediction. I owe a debt to Educause's 2009 Horizon Report for getting me thinking about some of these issues in a new light.

NatureMapping (as referenced on Edutopia) is one sort of educational use, but there are others. I found relatively little information about geolocated learning on Edutopia; perhaps the field is so new that little has yet been written. With luck, I'll be able to contribute something one day.

Maps have always helped me learn. From the day I discovered them, they fascinated me. They help me understand topography and illuminate historical trends and wars, but I realize now that the map is one of my fundamental metaphors for interacting with the world. Here, then, are a few ideas about how new mapping tools—geolocation tools—could be used for instruction.

Tracking

There are obvious opportunities for tracking and data collection. But what might that mean? Students in libraries could be automatically directed to the nearest open study carrel, and music students could be automatically sent to the nearest available practice room.

A mobile phone with a store map and Hamiltonian circuit calculator could read your shopping list from your email (or, e.g., RememberTheMilk.com) and help you find and follow the quickest route to getting all of your groceries; it could also help you determine where to park for optimal shopping speed. If we combined fine-grained geolocation with communications ability, we could have shopping carts scan RFID tags when you placed groceries into the cart. When you arrived at the checkout counter, your cart could just communicate its contents to the cashier, saving time for everyone.

Location as metaphor

There are other exciting possibilities, too: we could also use geolocation to provide metaphors for teaching other concepts, in a cognitive theory sense. We can use geolocation to unlock other ideas for our learners, giving them a scaffold to hold onto.

Imagine a whole class of high school students wearing location trackers. We run several iterations of an exercise where all of the high school students start in one location and race to another—the first n students receive a reward. The iterations:

1. We put the students in a hallway and give a reward to the first students to reach the classroom at the other end.
2. We put the students in a hallway and give a reward to the first students to run down the hallway, up the stairs, and into the classroom.
3. We put the students in the same hallway as (2), but we allow them a choice: run down the first-floor hallway, then climb the stairs; or climb the stairs, then run down the second-floor hallway. Reward the first ones to arrive.
   

When we've finished, we come back into the classroom and upload all of the location tracks into a computer and superimpose them on a map of the building.

What are we teaching? We're teaching electrical concepts in physics class. We've given people kinesthetic experience with a few important physics concepts—which is important because kinesthetic intelligence is underused in most science classes—but there are some other parallels too:

Scenario (1) simulates flow of electricity in wires of different gauge. Students run with low resistance through the wide wire (hallway), but the resistance changes when they all try to cram through the narrow wire (doorway), and they slow down. I bet some of the students would jostle in the doorway, too, which illustrates the principle that added resistance leads to heat (or arguments). By giving a reward for the first ones to finish, we've gotten the students to behave kind of like electrons (or molecules in an ideal gas): they're all moving as fast as possible in whatever direction they're pointed.

(2) does the same thing, but it's a longer race, so some of the front-runners get tired and fall back; here we might still be talking about electricity, but we could be talking about the movement of sperm in biology class or the changing fortunes of political campaigns. In looking at the position traces over time, students might come to understand the group dynamics in flocks of geese, or the positional strategy of car racing. We could use the example to talk about chemical diffusion, too.

(3) runs back to electricity: increase the number of paths, and you decrease resistance. But the same concept has applications in plumbing, civil engineering, event planning (bathrooms), packing algorithms (math)... and you might then relate it back to educational theory and talk about how multiple-intelligence instruction offers multiple paths and makes it easier for more students to move more quickly through material.

In each case, the students will have a bunch of concrete memories to associate with the new concept, and they may start to hook together such disparate topics as electron flow, fluid dynamics, crowd behavior, and plumbing. By letting us show the individual movement within the crowd, geolocation offers a lot of interesting opportunities for "real world" simulation of complex topics.

The rise of geolocation technology also offers the opportunity to talk about trust and privacy issues in terms that are relevant to today's learners. Today's students are comfortable sharing their personal lives on sites like Facebook, and my students often laugh at me for talking about privacy concerns—but how would they feel about a smart bathroom stall that published the user's name to its data log? Geolocation is neat, but do you want your girlfriend and your mom to be able to look up where you were last night? What if your boss can tell that you were in the bar all afternoon even though you claim that you were at an important meeting? Are these things privacy concerns? What if police could use your cell phone to track how fast you were moving and send you speeding tickets automatically?

We could use geolocation to start a discussion about critical thinking and information sources, too: we frequently assume that location data is "true", somehow. What if the photographs of Rodney King being beaten in Los Angeles had included location tags showing that they happened in the Mayor's parking lot, or if someone published a Photoshopped picture of Tiger Woods and his mistress and geocoded it to be taken from her house?

Conclusion

Location underpins a great deal of our society, and geolocation devices offer a great opportunity to make that underpinning visible. They could be used in behaviorist contexts (imagine a weight-loss program that wouldn't let you leave the gym until you had spent five minutes on each machine), but the best uses are cognitive and constructivist contexts. Location can help us to develop rich metaphors that connect learners to the concepts in the world around them, and geolocation tools can also help learners to create knowledge and seek out things that interest them. When we include geolocation within the greater sphere of always-on communication devices, it becomes a real tool for connectivist theory, because it allows us to pull relevant knowledge from our networks whenever we need it.