Month: April 2019

I’m going to talk about research. No, research is not very fun, and it’s never glamorous, but it matters. A lot.

Why research?

via https://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing-research/

Maybe you’re not a writer or a blogger. But, we’ve all found ourselves in a position where we need to convince people to do things they are not inclined to do.

When force is not an option, what do we do? We use the next best thing: persuasion. And when it comes to persuasion stories are important.

Anecdotes are persuasive.

Data dominates.

These things do not appear from thin air, or fall in our lap. We must search for them like a professional.

But as I’ve shown, this doesn’t need to consume your life. It can be done efficiently and expertly by focusing our efforts on the right levers. With preparation, we lengthen our runway. By eliminating noise, we drastically reduce the size of the search. With serendipity, we set ourselves up to be lucky and by relying on the classics, we give our arguments more weight. And by organizing and collecting this information properly, it is there wherever (and whenever) we need it.

Even if our research isn’t used today — or even tomorrow — it can still have immense value for us throughout our lives. I’ll leave you with Seneca’s persuasive case for noting, repeating and memorizing material …

My advice is really this: what we hear the philosophers saying and what we find in their writings should be applied in our pursuit of the happy life. We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application — not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech — and learn them so well that words become works.

Twitter’s  decision to double its character count from 140 to 280 characters last year hasn’t dramatically changed the length of Twitter posts. According to new data released by the company this morning, Twitter is still a place for briefer thoughts, with only 1% of tweets hitting the 280-character limit, and only 12% of tweets longer than 140 characters.

Brevity, it seems, is baked into Twitter – even when given expanded space, people aren’t using it.

Only 5% of tweets are longer than 190 characters, indicating that Twitter users have been for so long trained to keep their tweets short, they haven’t adapted to take advantage of the extra room to write.

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

— Albert Einstein

Enter the labyrinth and embrace serendipity.

Montaigne kept what he called a “common place book” — a book of quotes, sentences, metaphors and  miscellany that he could use at a moment’s notice.

Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before its death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.

— Jorge Luis Borges

The whole idea of a labyrinth of hidden knowledge, of messages in a bottle, and so on and connected with the research this is maybe an idea that could help us attract students to this concept it’s so fundamental to academia.
The question becomes how do we get students excited about research? Not in the stodgy old way that the term tends to imply.

A knock-on effect of this additional question is what is research’s relevance for today’s students whom are overwhelmed with the relentless torrent of information for which they primary challenge is to filter stuff out rather than dig like an archaeologist.

The labyrinth is now the torrent of information that the valuable stuff is immersed within thanks to digital and mobile to a large extent.

In Flaubert’s Bouvard and Pécuchet, the folly of pursuing exhaustive knowledge is revealed to the reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouvard_et_Pécuchet

Taxonomies are, nevertheless, an incredibly useful— read: highly relatable— tool for collecting constellations of information that appear to be related, but for which their interrelationships are not yet apparent.

What it is? What it was? What it shall be?

It’s anyone’s guess about when to invest in Bitcoin, but block chaining, micro credentials, and nano degrees as a future proof model for education appear to be here to stay.

What if in addition to the printed cards in our deck being tools students can use to solve creative or interpersonal challenges after graduation they were also micro certifications that demonstrated proficiency in various areas? In other words, both the proof and reward of playing and winning at the game— the evidence demonstrating newly acquired skills.

Even individuals uninterested in using the deck as intended (a tool for getting unstuck) would likely be pleased to display collectible certificate cards from the program.

At present, the idea is to present the cards within the gaming environment digitally which should help mitigate objections to the random tasks they will represent for students that might otherwise be unwelcome. In other words, cards presented with in the gaming context are more likely to be accepted as part of gameplay and less likely to be perceived as a trespass.

Human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and exercise their capacities, to explore, and to learn.

—Edward Deci, psychologist 

How long does it take before ideas actually stick?

How frequently do concepts need to be reiterated to accomplish deep learning?

Intervals, pacing, and continuity of learning… As with integrals, the closer the nodes (touchpoints of learning) become, the closer we get to continuity— to connecting the dots into a thread of meaning.

Preferred paths vs. exploratory trajectories— efficacious approaches to sustainable inspiration?

“Delight, unfortunately, doesnʼt last.”

-Raph Koster, Game Designer