Building Elementary Curriculum that’s Competency-Based

I’ll warn you now if you came here looking for expertise in competency-based education. I’m not an expert in this area, but we are exploring how to make it happen for our K-12 program. Also, since this is something we’re considering in terms of generating more business, I won’t give away too many secrets and will talking generalities.

What do they say about people and opinions? Everyone has an opinion and a blog or something like that.

There is a need for online learning not connected with one of the 2-3 private online course providers. Schools, educators, and families are in-search of online learning opportunities from organizations that don’t just look at students as potential profit. They want courses that are not correspondence courses or worksheets moved online. Highly interactive courses from an R-1 institution carries a special cachet for those stakeholders looking for academic integrity. The need is there.

What’s out there for high school students is fairly robust. Between MOOC’s and more traditional online course providers, the market is overwhelmed. While there’s a need for competency-based education at this level, there are plenty of high-quality options that don’t necessarily fit this model. Plus, my team just spent most of the last year migrating ~220 courses from two separate LMS to one, new LMS. So, I’m not looking to reinvent the wheel at this moment.

Competency-based education just makes a lot of sense for elementary education, but it’s not easy to implement online (or anywhere, really). You have a competency to build to, using learning objectives to provide some scaffolding, and assessments and performance opportunities that demonstrate mastery. Instead of a student moving on to the next grade every year, a student moves on to the next learning objective or competency. Advanced students fly through content while others move at a more methodical pace. One student may jump ahead to something that is more challenging while another slowly advances through, eventually catching up. Students move at their own pace on material that’s appropriate for their individual capabilities.

Now, that sounds great, but from what I have heard and seen, there’s a missing component. Take Khan Academy for example. This isn’t a critique of Khan, although I have my issues with it. This is a complaint on how Khan is often implemented. Khan’s system is competency-based. You take a pretest, move to the appropriate level and advance when you’re ready. However, for all the value of automation, there’s a missing human component. Who’s there to guide students or keep them on task? Who’s there to support them when they fall behind or don’t understand a concept?

Based on some of the things I’m learning from a representative from Western Governors University, it all falls apart without some coaching. There has to be that individual, generalist touch from a coach or mentor. Without someone filling this role, students lose engagement and motivation. They may even lose some efficiency. Course providers not offering some sort of coaching might as well not offer their courses.

That’s just one obstacle for us to make a competency-based elementary program.

Another is actually writing the curriculum. We can come up with competencies. There are learning objectives, assessments, and learning activities. The mapping would take some time. Now, imagine putting it together as a K-5 program without segmenting into grades. How do teachers raised, trained, and practiced in this system wrap their heads around the idea of no grade levels?

The time and resources to make this happen are immense, but the more I think about it, the more I see competency-based education as the route we must go. And this will set us apart even more than the fact we are the only K-12 course provider embedded in a R-1 College of Education.

There will be more on this for sure.

I should write here more often

Yep. It’s all in the title. I need to write here more often. I need to work with the ideas swirling around in my head and see what comes out at the end.

Who cares if I don’t have the capacity for a PhD program? I’ve watched enough people sacrifice their time with family to work on a PhD. I’m not that guy. I mean, I have the job I thought I needed to the PhD to acquire. I can write about work without an eye on a fancy piece of paper. Not that there’s anything wrong with a doctorate. My wife has one and she’s the smartest person I know.

I’m rambling. I should get to some sort of point, shouldn’t I?

Okay, here’s the point: like this blog post, I’m rambling, sort of metaphorically. I have a job which I love even though it feels like I’m constantly climbing uphill while those above me keep adding to the hill, piling on one new idea or opportunity after another.

And strangely enough, this is all somehow exciting. It’s an exciting terror. What if we can’t do all the things we come up with? Is there a limit and what happens when we find it?

We don’t have enough instructional designers to keep up with our current load. There’s currently no money in the bank to develop a new program we know we need. On the other hand, someone’s throwing money at one of our ideas and we have to make it work.

And I feel as if I’m rambling again. All I want to do is write and fill 25 minutes of my day…

And that’s why I need to get back to this, back to feeling out some ideas. “Spitballing” as some might say. It’s an exercise in brainstorming. You throw ideas out there and see what sticks.

Sorry. I’m really all over the place, but that’s how my year’s gone.

First, we looked for a way to systematically move an ungodly number of courses from two separate learning management systems into a third LMS. We did this with a handful of grad students and some staff that had no idea what was in store for us.

Then, my partner and I had a baby. This might seem trivial, but it’s important because I manage this team of instructional designers and developers who were to migrate all these courses, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200. Of course, I’m not sure of that number because 1) I was out on paternity leave and 2) I was barely present after said leave. Luckily, there are good people on my team and one person who took the reins. So, we got through that with no help from me. (I’m being modest. I got my hands dirty and pulled my weight, but I wished I had been around to do more.)

At some point, I took over the project I had merely supported before August. My laissez-faire style nearly derailed the project, but I recovered and made another’s system work for me. It mostly went fine, but I had to clean up my own mess, something I don’t mind doing.

Now, I reshape processes and assign new tasks. We’ve adopted some project management software to track our team’s progress. There’s a new ticket system so those efforts are tracked as well. I have played parts on NSF grants and a major project backed by a corporate donor. I call meetings that are optional so that the people who want to be there, who want to be a part or our progress will participate.

What am I rambling about? What am I doing?

I manage. My title says “instructional design coordinator”, but I manage. And that’s where I am at the moment and what I am writing about. Zac Early is an instructional design manager.

So, maybe I’ll write more about that. I need an outlet and it probably needs to be explored.

25 minutes are up.

Today’s soundtrack: http://believersbelievers.com/music

Turning Instruction Upside-Down

I thought about titling this post something like “Flipping Your Classroom” or “Flipping Your Instruction” or whatever. However, the “flipped classroom” has a completely different meaning in our modern world. To most, the flipped classroom means you watch a video of a lecture at home and then interact with your teacher in a more productive way in the face-to-face classroom. Of course, the at-home portion could be a reading or film; it doesn’t have to be limited to a lecture. However, the in-class part has to be interactive with the instructor playing “guide on the side” (or “sage on the side” as I like to think about it). Students do their homework at school and their lectures are delivered at home.

Sounds great, but I don’t think it’s a truly flipped classroom. It’s still the banking system of education, just now you have at-home banking thanks to technology! To truly be a flipped classroom in my mind, the bank must be replaced with a co-op. Instead of front loading students with content delivered by the teacher, why aren’t we placing the content acquisition in the hands of students (with help from a capable teacher, of course)?

In a Facebook debate over a Clay Shirky piece, this guy Mark suggested a metaphor that I believe perfectly encapsulates what’s holding us back in education from truly flipping teaching and learning. He compares our education system to an old tractor, stating, “I’m driving a tractor built 500 years ago and people have added attachments to it..but it still just drives down rows.” In another comment, Mark writes, “I can hook a planter up to the back or a harvester up to the front…but that’s about all it’s made to do.”

Yep. Our education system is a broken-down, 500-year-old tractor. It basically does one thing, depending on what it’s pulling. It’s old and rusty. We might drive it in reverse, but it’s still just doing the same thing.

We need a new tractor. (And I need to quit using so many half-assed metaphors and get to my point.)

Why don’t we flip classrooms differently? Let’s turn instruction upside-down. Try this: assign the final project to students before giving them the content. Don’t front load with lectures. Don’t assign hundreds of pages of reading. Give them a goal to create something and see what they do. Break that piggy bank…sorry with the metaphors.

Of course, the students can’t do this on their own. They need a guide…a guide on the side. No, as I suggested earlier, they need a sage on the side, not on the stage. These blank minds need an expert who can guide them to success, address misconceptions along the way, and provide the necessary scaffolding as they construct their knowledge. With this teacher’s help, students can construct their own processes. They can shape the content around their own lives or even pull the content from their unique backgrounds.

Now, this isn’t easy. It actually takes a lot more work to prepare and organize. A teacher willing to turn instruction upside-down has to be prepared for anything. Problem-based learning and inquiry provide good models, but they’re not the only ones. A teacher just needs to figure out why a particular curriculum needs to be taught learned. What are the authentic outcomes? If there aren’t any, is it even worth learning?

The one where I take on Clay Shirky and promptly duck

A few caveats…

I’m not doing this as a grad student anymore. I don’t want to be a full-time researcher or an academic. Instructional design is my game and I just have to get better at that. Well, that and managing a bunch of other designers and developers.

Two, I’m not really taking on Clay Shirky. The dude is smart, way smarter than I am. That and he says a lot of things with which I agree. So, this is not an attack on Shirky. Rather, it’s an attack on one thing he wrote that will be taken out of context and used for evil, sorta like the Bible. My beef isn’t with a guy who could burry me in a rhetorical bloodbath. It’s a beef with an idea, which I’ll get to soon enough, but there’s yet another caveat.

C) This probably won’t take me 25 minutes. I’m guessing longer, but it will probably be shorter. Also, I’m not doing this every day. Of course, I wasn’t doing this every day before this post either.

Now, back to Shirky…

Shirky wrote this piece which showed up in the Washington Post before making an appearance on my Facebook wall. Read it. It’s super-thought-provoking as is with most anything this guy writes tends to be, but I have a beef with the central idea: restricting laptops and other devices from the classroom.

Here’s the basic argument: technology is distracting for students when Clay Shirky is talking.

Well, that was a bit harsh. Basically, Shirky, an expert in new media, has opted to restrict technology that actually interacts with said “new media” from his classroom because they are too distracting for students. He goes on to cite research about how multitasking is a really inefficient way to learn; software is designed to demand our attention; and devices are distracting even to those who aren’t using them if they can see them. All this adds up to none of Clay Shirky’s students are listening to them.

Now, I find this all hard to believe. First of all, how does Clay Freaking Shirky not engage his audience when he speaks? I mean, he’s a TED talker. Of course, this is one of the biggest problems with his argument, but I’ll come back to that…

Okay, so social media and their ilk are too distracting. These technologies engage our emotions/elephants and provide us emotional gratification. Little ol’ Clay (or any teacher for that matter) just can’t appeal to students who are drawn to this sort of distraction. Well, why not appeal to these emotions? Shirky snarks briefly about Maria Montessori’s naiveté, but he misses the point that constructivist learning pedagogies work. Instead of the content originating from where the academy or its representatives stand, start from the student’s place. Engage that emotion in leading them to the knowledge.

Now, how is there time to spend on all of these distractions while sitting in class? Multitasking, y’all. Well, yes, he’s right. Multitasking is possibly the single worst thing to ever happen to learning and productivity. I won’t even steal any of his citations to prove this, because we all secretly know the truth. Multitasking might save time, but it ruins our cognitive abilities.

So, why not teach students how to “multitask”? I don’t mean ignore all the research that says multitasking sucks. I mean teach students how to use back channels. Busy students with applications of what is being discussed in class. Hold them accountable to one another through cooperative learning. Teachers know how to combat distractions. Just teach, Mr. Shirky.

Now, back to Clay Shirky’s gift for public speaking. If anyone can deliver a lecture that is engaging, informative, and meaningful, it’s the guy I’m bashing. To his credit, Shirky admits that he and his colleagues tend to overestimate how interesting they are as lecturers. I could’t agree more. However, what some academics will take away from his essay is that they don’t need to engage technology or their students through technology. Just ban the devices and tell them what they need to know and how to think about it. And the biggest problem with this thinking is that none of them are Clay Shirky. Students aren’t ignoring them because they’re on Twitter. It’s because they suck at speaking.

For me, the most disappointing part of the piece is that the guy who’s supposed to know how all this technology will work to advance our society can’t use the same technology to advance his own students and their learning.

(It should be noted that I have no idea what Shirky does in his classroom with his students. For all I know, they’re putting down the computers and moving around in cooperative groups. Also, he’s restricting technology, not banning it. I realize this is very different.)

This Instructional Design Model We’re Using

In case you aren’t up to speed, I am the lead instructional designer for a virtual lab school trying to develop online courses that don’t look like online courses everywhere else, even at our own university. We follow – or attempt to follow – a specific design model that is constructivist in nature and fairly well-regarded among educators. That model is Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.

Why do we use this model? Well, as I mentioned above, it’s constructivist and student-centered. Most online courses are not written this way. You have your correspondence course model where students read some materials and email/snail-mail their work to instructors. There’s also the “flipped classroom” model made famous by the Khan Academy where students move through content at their own pace, watch videos of lectures, and take assessments that either allow them to move on or require them to try again. These approaches do little if nothing to overturn the banking system of education where schools and teachers are the bankers handing out knowledge as they see fit. Yes, this all goes back to Friere somehow, but I digress.

UdB is the model we use. The model prescribes a process of backwards design which most instructional design models (ie lesson planning) would support in one way or another. By “backwards design” I mean that we start with standards or objectives, develop summative assessments that meet those standards, create formative assessments that build toward the summative assessments, and finally develop instructional activities to support the skills and knowledge measured in the assessments. Honestly, it makes sense.

Additionally, UbD includes components to a lesson or unit of study that insure students’ needs are met. There are sections dedicated to engaging students’ interests and background knowledge; building the skills and knowledge necessary to meet lesson goals; providing opportunities to explain or reflect on their learning; presenting activities for application; and assessing the learning. This of course is the abbreviated version. You should do yourself a favor and check out the UbD manual we employ.

Anyway, as we move forward with new instructional design challenges and possibly implementing a new LMS in the coming year, the model appears to need some tweaking. Now, the philosophy and guiding principles of the model will stay in tact, but there are challenges that are not always neatly tied up with this particluar model. For one, we have struggled to find content matter experts (CME) who understand the model. While this might be a case of providing better professional development, it might also mean that we have to meet CME’s where they are. Secondly, we are taking a lot of existing courses that were never intended for this model. It’s the whole fitting a square peg in a round hole scenario.

Of course, this doesn’t even begin to address the research aspect of our project. Since we are a part of the college of education at a R1 institution, we will be conducting research on our courses, instructors, and students. (Not to mention the research that I will eventually have to do as a PhD student.) What if our research shows that this model doesn’t work in this context? What if we test some different approaches and find something else along the way? These are real possibilities.

What I expect is that we will design a new model, one that remixes the original UbD model to fit what it is we do. That’s kind of exciting. I love UbD, but find the template we have to be frustratingly limited. Of course, I test the boundaries whenever I can, but it’s not always easy. (I’ll have to remember to tell you about doing the “Ms. Yetts version” when I write next about instructional design. Don’t let me forget.)

So, for now, we use UbD –  a really close version to the original, in fact. Does it fit perfectly? Not every time. Is it the best thing we’ve got that gets us close to our vision? Sure is. And maybe with some well-conceived research down the road we may find that it does fit. Maybe it’s just we who need to be remixed.

Is that 25 minutes? This is nearly 10.5 minutes…

Qualitative Research Designs Compare and Contrast

I realize I haven’t written many 25-minute posts here, but that will change. Eventually. In the meantime, it seems like a good idea to post some homework assignments. This one isn’t very good, but I figure putting it out there may (or may not) attract some feedback. For one, I barely included any resources. I don’t know that this was necessary, but it’s certainly lacking in that department. Secondly, I really don’t have a handle on this academic writing at all. Thirdly, I’m not totally sure I understand either qualitative research approach well enough for this assignment and it probably shows.

Feel free to critique, just be polite about it.

Introduction

Mizzou K-12 Online is venturing into new markets throughout Asia and South America. This is new territory for an organization that has mainly designed instructional activities for students in the United States of America. The instructional design team has a theoretically sound model based on Wiggins and McTighe’s “Understanding By Design” which is constructivist in nature and values how students create their own meaning instead of having it handed down from an instructor or resource (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). However, the organization’s commitment to designing student-centered courses fails to address cultural differences among these new populations of students that may not be addressed in this framework. Ignoring cultural learning differences and power dynamics does not adequately address student needs. In Howard Gardner’s book Frames of Mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, he points out that certain domains of learning are more valued in some cultures than others and that students living outside of those domains will find little or no success (Gardner, 2011). Additionally, Paulo Freire’s critique of the “banking system of education” suggests that a teacher-delivered content places the student in a subordinate position to the teacher’s or school’s role as distributor (Freire, 2000).

The goal of this research project is to assess how effective Mizzou K-12 Online’s instructional design is in supporting student learning needs in various cultural contexts and how student-centered it may or may not be. A better understanding is needed of these needs. For the purpose of this project, two research approaches were considered: participatory action research and ethnography. These two approaches give researchers a better idea as to what students need to succeed. The following table details how these two approaches may be carried out.

Qualitative Research Designs

Participatory Action Research

a.     A major component of this project is to learn what online instructional approaches are most effective in addressing the needs of students in particular cultural contexts. The most direct way to garner this sort of information is from the participants themselves. Where test scores might reveal which approaches deliver desired results, students could contribute information to address how such scores were achieved or what approaches to instruction best suit their learning styles. A participatory design provides a sense of ownership that allows the students to help shape instructional design to meet their needs.

b.     Research questions consistent with this design will likely be determined after trust is established with the subjects (Krishnaswamy, 2004) and then developed by the subjects. However, the following questions might be anticipated:

• What are the most effective approaches to online instructional design in addressing the needs of students within a particular cultural context?

c.      The role of the researcher in this approach resides in the design of student and instructor interaction as well as the collection of data. The researcher insures that the instructional design provides scaffolding to support a student-led process with both instructors and instructional designers ready to design the research and determine which data to collect. Without the proper scaffolding provided by the researcher, it is hard to depend on participants to follow through with a successful research project.

d.    Student and instructor artifacts are collected from the LMS as chosen by students. Researchers will also conduct interviews so as to gain further insight into the impressions of participants.

e.     The most important part of data analysis will lie in its nature as an agent of change consistent with this method. As the data commands it, the researcher, instructors, and instructional designers will need to actively make revisions to the learning objectives and activities of the course as they develop.

f.      In order to address ethical issues, validity checks will be carried out to insure that the analysis is free of bias and accurately reflects the wishes of the subjects. Additionally, it must be made clear that the researcher is not seen as an authority figure. It may even be helpful to insure that an instructional designer or instructor who is not also the researcher not be assigned this project.

Ethnography

a.     The purpose of an ethnographic study is to describe and interpret members and actions within a cultural group. It is difficult for one to understand the cultural needs of those from a different culture without directly observing practices and artifacts from within that culture.

b.     Research questions consistent with the design may include:

• How do students within a particular cultural context respond to the Mizzou K-12 Online instructional model?

• Which components of the instructional model do students of specific cultural contexts react to in the most positive ways?

c.     The researcher’s role in an ethnography is primarily as an observer and data collector.

d.     Data collection will come from artifacts within the LMS and interviews conducted with instructors and students. Additionally, the researcher may observe chat logs in real time or as a transcript.

e.     Data analysis procedures consistent with the design include organizing and coding the data in order to understand how the culture functions within this particular context. From this work, the researcher should be able to write a clear description of just how the students react to the instructional interventions in place within the online learning environment.

f.      An ethnography requires an extreme amount of access for the researcher which produces a certain ethical dilemma that is particular to an online setting. It will be easy for subjects to forget about the presence of the researcher, letting their guards down in a way they might not in a face-to-face situation. Additionally, the researcher would have access to nearly all forms of communication within the LMS. Few if any correspondences would be truly private. The most effective ways of preventing these ethical issues would be to provide definite boundaries as to where and when the researchers may access student communications. Additionally, some sort of notification process to allow the students to know that the researcher is present could be created. Finally, a very detailed consent form should be provided to participants and their parents or guardians.

Conclusion

Both of the proposed approaches offer insight into the needs of students in a particular cultural context, but each provides different final products for the instructional design team to consider. These differences can primarily be found in who carries out the research procedures and makes the key decisions for the study.

The primary goal of discovering which elements of instructional design best meet student needs is collected from either the students’ perspectives (participatory action research) or that of the embedded observer (ethnography). In a participatory action research approach, the data collected as well as the design of the research is mainly dependent on the wants and needs of the subjects. What is revealed are the values and priorities of these subjects, something outside researchers would struggle to properly note. An ethnographic study would paint a clear picture of what takes place in this online learning environment from the Perspective oppere instructional designer conducting the research. The former approach provides insight from within the study while the latter gives a slightly less biased, outsider vantage point. Still, this information is invaluable in either instance, providing a clear picture of what students may need.

The largest difference in the two approaches may come from the results of the study. The participatory action research approach provides a model for how instruction should be designed for a particular group of students. The participants decide which aspects deserve the most attention and how the data is to be collected. The resulting analysis will give researchers a model of instruction preferred by the students. Conversely, the ethnography provides clear evidence as to how students respond to various factors in the design of the courses. This provides crucial information in understanding how Mizzou K-12 Online’s instructional design fits the cultural needs of the students subjects. When choosing a method, the researcher should consider whether he wants an instructional design model that meets student wants and needs or whether he wants to better evaluate an existing model in need of revision to meet those needs.

Since the ultimate goal in this study is to design effective online instruction that meets the specific needs of a culture different from the one in which the instructional design team resides, the participatory action research is the preferred approach. This approach aligns with the student-centered philosophy held by Mizzou K-12 Online without depending on the unbiased interpretation of the researcher and outside validity testers. Allowing subjects to participate and actively make decisions in the research design insures that their learning is a priority over instructional designers assessing their own product. Additionally, participatory action research provides solutions to the very problems it helps uncover. An ethnography merely paints a picture of how the students react to the instructional design already in place. The solution that should conceivably come from this study would be an instructional design or possibly elements of instructional design that best meet the needs of the cultural group in question. Depending on what the subjects determine to focus their energy, the study could be generalizable for similar groups of students in the same country or region. At the very least, the results would provide new avenues of research or minute fixes for the existing instructional design.

The choice to conduct a participatory action research study meets Mizzou K-12 Online’s commitment to student-centered, constructivist instructional design. The participatory approach firmly places the students (subjects) at the center of the research and provides them a sense of ownership of the process instead of relegating them to subordinate status. Constructivist learning principles are also supported in that students participate in reflective and metacognitive processes in order to design both the research as well as the instructional design. Conducting an ethnography does not accomplish these goals. Participatory action research is void of hierarchy and achieves goals that benefit the subjects.

 

References

Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Gardner, H. (2011). Frames of mind : the theory of multiple intelligences. New York, NY: Basic

     Books.

Krishnaswamy, A. (2004). Participatory research: Strategies and tools. Practitioner: Newsletter

     of the national network of forest practitioners, (22), 17-22.

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Also…

The Remix

There are things I want to remember.

I saw a post on Facebook that has since been deleted. I suspect it’s not supposed to be public knowledge. So, I’ll leave out the details so as to respect what seems to be a need for anonymity. Either way, this is basically what was said: “[insert brewer] is working on a remix of [another brewery]’s such and such beer. Could this be a new trend?”

This made me think as I was sitting in Mikkeller & Friends, a beer bar featuring my favorite brewery. Mikkeller remixes traditional styles and unique flavors all the time. I often say that I may not like every Mikkeller beer, but every Mikkeller beer is at least interesting, worthy of discussion.

Well, it is a trend. It’s a big trend in the academy. Despite the fact that the remix has been around for quite some time, its place in intellectual circles is just now becoming apparent for me. Welcome back to graduate school, I suppose.

I encountered the term in the Ørecomm workshop on ethnography. In fact, the workshop was more about remixing one’s research process (or traditional qualitative research processes) in general. I’m not sure if remixing is postmodernist, constructivist, critical theory or some combination of all three, but it certainly isn’t post positivist. It’s making the process work for the data you have available or the methods with which you’re comfortable. Whatever it is, it certainly makes qualitative research seem a whole less intimidating and more inviting for the novice.

Of course, I suspect there’s a whole lot of writing out there on why remix works in the academy or how the DJs who once remixed records are influencing modern thinking in many ways. It’s a cool concept, one I hope to explore more in these daily reflections.

Now, back to the beer…

Ørecomm, Copenhagen, and Other Musings

I planned to start this blog a while ago with writings, reflections, musings – 25 minutes worth for every day. That hasn’t happened. Well, now it is. I just needed something to write about, I guess.

We just finished attending the Ørecomm Festival in and around Copenhagen. It’s 5 in the morning and I couldn’t sleep, still buzzing about the conference and my time here in Denmark and Sweden. There’s a lot to process.

For one, this is honestly my first academic conference or conference abroad. I’ve attended and presented at professional conferences, but this was different. It was eye-opening for the sheer diversity presented. I now have a better sense of what a career in the academy means. I mean, I’m married to a tenured professor. So, I know something.

Anyway, the first thing I need to do is clean up my writing (if that wasn’t already obvious). I’m a little loose with the grammar and syntax. It’s time to tighten up these ideas I possess. Do a little more showing and a lot less telling, etc.

Research is at the forefront of my mind at the moment. Aside from the ethnography workshop I attended, there were many approaches and theories to consider. First of all, I’ve learned that I can make up my own process. I just need to support my ideas. There’s this idea of remixing the research process, and idea I’ve heard/seen in numerous ways. The difference is that now I have some conceptual framework to consider. Then, there’s always IRB, but I think from the little experience I’ve had, that won’t be a problem.

Second, the word “participatory” came up over and over. This really got me thinking. How can I design courses that are participatory for our students? Then, once the instructional design is out of the way, how will I research it? I have some ideas for a self-paced course based on issues or topics and linked to standards (always with the standards). Students would shape their own curriculum, revising the standards and identifying what actions they will take meet those standards. There’s more to it than this, but this is where I am at the moment. There’s a paper in there, but more on that later.

There’s so much more I can take from this conference. I constantly found aspects of instructional design in the papers and projects presented. Whether it was from the ingenuity displayed in presentation styles or the ideas that took me back to the global education days of my MA program at Ohio State, my mental and electronic notebooks are full.

The next step is to find a way to present next year. It will require another grant (one I’ve found should do the trip) and lots of writing. I have ideas that need shaping and organizing, but this is a good start. In fact, I’ve had two (joint) papers accepted for two separate conferences accepted recently. The CV builds.

Of course, we also had some fun while in Copenhagen.

I visited both of the Mikkeller bars. For those who are unaware, Mikkeller holds a special place in my heart. A Google search of my name will probably tell you all you need to know.

What Mikkeller does is challenge convention while sticking to a tried and true process of crafting fine beer. All of their beers are interesting and most are delicious. Their attention to detail and design is inspiring. The alcohol levels of their product doesn’t hurt either.

Of course, this is in the larger context of Copenhagen itself. A beautifully complicated city, Copenhagen has left its mark on us. Bicycles and baby buggies fill the streets instead of SUVs and minivans. Folks are friendly and party late into the night regardless of the day. The weather is cool and wet, not unlike the Pacific Northwest (my other favorite place).

I feel energized from Ørecomm and its host cities. Something my studies and work both needed. I feel a bit recharged and ready to take on some monumental tasks which include re-invisioning our organization, contemplating global entrepreneurship, and how will I research it all.

It’s an exciting time. Hopefully, I will have 25 minutes worth to write every day, possibly more about Ørecomm. Things to do. Things to say about the things I do. And maybe I’ll even learn to say them better than I did here.

This: