Items to Share: 31 August 15

Bit later than usual but includes the Bank Holiday

Education Focus

• Donald Clark Plan B: 10 bloody good reasons for using much-maligned text in online learning

• The sticky problem of threshold concepts in music | Musings of a music teacher 'Meyer and Land identify 'threshold concepts as portals that ‘open up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something’. Basically, these are the points at which students tend to become stuck, and if they remain stuck, they will not be able to progress further in their understanding. Identifying what they are is of enormous help in planning a good curriculum and sound teaching. [...] Of course, this got me thinking about what threshold concepts there might be in music. Where to start? With what music actually is?...' '

• Can we make learning permanent? | David Didau: The Learning Spy Didau reflects on his experience of a speed-awareness course, as an example of effective behaviour change.

• I’m Afraid of Personalized Learning « The Core Knowledge Blog 'For personalized learning to work, advocates will have to become far more careful about what students are learning and how they are able to revisit and build on their knowledge over several years.'

• Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test : Nature News & Comment Largest replication study to date casts doubt on many published positive results. [Not confined to education.] See also: We found only one-third of published psychology research is reliable now what?  [The Conversation]; This is what happened when psychologists tried to replicate 100 previously published findings [bps.org.uk] and  More than half of psychology papers are not reproducible | Times Higher Education.

• PARSNIPs, trigger warnings and coddling | Lifelong Learning Matters  On sensitive subject matter in adult education, particularly TEFL. 

• Research-based Principles of Instruction Applied to Workplace Learning  [3-star Learning Experiences] While it has been shown that there is absolutely no evidence in the scientific literature to support the idea that 70% of what we learn is via experiential learning, 20% learning from others and 10% formal learning (see De Bruyckere et al. in their Urban Myths about Learning and Education – Myth 3) it is of course true that informal learning and learning from and with others is very important, especially in the workplace. When we focus on social and experiential learning, it often remains unclear if employees are learning effectively, despite 360 performance reviews and subjective (manager and L&D professionals) opinions. Therefore, exploring to what extent proven instructional principles can be applied to the informal and non-formal ways of learning in the workplace, can contribute to making learning professionals more aware of what they need to be aware of, so to speak.

Other Business

• We’re All in Agreement, Right? - The Chronicle of Higher Education '[I]n these many hours of symposia, colloquia, and assorted fora, I’ve begun to dread a particular, coercive punctuation that has taken hold among the most-practiced speakers. [...] The problem is clear to everyone, right? So the only question is how to deal with it, OK? [...] I speak, of course, of those up-lilting, faux-interrogative, consensus-faking capstones to otherwise unsupported statements.'

• Oliver Sacks' Last Tweet Shows Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Movingly Flashmobbed in Spain | Open Culture