“Keeping up with the literature” is a constant, often challenging activity for those of us committed to evidence-based practice—that notion that current valid evidence must support clinical decisions. This poster abstract, presented at the AABB 2009 conference, offers one solution.

For the past two years, I’ve been conducting workshops exploring how web-based tools can support research and teaching activities in transfusion science. In each session, I asked participants to contribute custom PubMed search queries, which were negotiated and refined until they captured the interests of the whole group. These queries were converted into RSS feeds, compiled into a reading list and published online. You can view all these feeds in the Transfusion Reading List, which is periodically updated with new feeds. This way, anyone outside the workshop is able to download and modify the feeds to meet their own learning needs, and resubmit them to the List if they wish.

This poster explains the learning theory behind why this works so well if you want to stay up to date. No one person can generate all the analysis, debate, context and interpretation needed to create useful evidence. The interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of transfusion medicine makes the task of finding relevant knowledge especially daunting. Engagement is the critical point where community and individual information needs intersect. A collaborative transfusion reading list offers a simple structure and process that supports members’ engagement with information and each other.

Download: Using Web-Based Tools to Stay Current With the Literature poster (pdf)
Size: 21.94 MB
118 downloads so far!

Using Web-Based Tools to Stay Current originally appeared on Portable Learner on November 14th, 2009

Even though nearly everyone acknowledges some level of generic digital literacy is now fundamental to the performance in the workplace, it is extraordinarily difficult to talk about what that might entail. Literacy is a complex notion. For example, there are different kinds of literacies required for different job descriptions. There are varying levels of fluency that span from simple awareness to, say, abiding by ethical standards for participation. And there are multiple literacies. That is, literacy is evolving from a unitary concept to one seen as a range of interconnected skills and practices. So we have visual literacy, media literacy, critical literacy, numerical literacy and musical literacy among many others. Regrettably, these distinctions are easily confused, the skills unevenly distributed in the workplace, and some receive more prestige at the expense of others. There is almost always a struggle over what counts as literacy.

In fact it was the traditional literacy associated with text that made me realize this is more than just word play. In 2007 the Canadian Council on Learning released a report that revealed the fragile state of literacy in Canada. Astonishingly (to me), almost half (48%) of adults over the age 16 experience some degree of difficulty in their ability to read, write and understand effectively in English and/or French.* Despite various initiatives, this figure has not changed over the last decade and is predicted to remain unchanged through 2031. As Paul Cappon sadly noted:

Millions of our fellow citizens may learn to read but they cannot read to learn.

Much of the writing about the new digital literacies seems to imply that communicating through new media will somehow subsume reading and writing. But it’s hard to believe. The technology literate worker must also be information literate, and vice versa, since digital technologies are in a way changing what counts as knowledge. In this context, two other findings of the report are particularly sad signs of what is to come: Most adults with low literacy skills feel that their skills are adequate for their work. Many have negative attitudes towards computers.

Unfortunately, none of the aforementioned complex notions of digital literacy seem to provide an infrastructure for participants who resist meaningful participation. On the other hand, participatory culture practices, such as fan fiction, seem to offer incentives for acquiring traditional literacy skills, and other practices, such as those around gaming or YouTube, seem to provide an infrastructures that supports learning the skill to participate in the culture.

However, most workplaces bar what is most valuable about these participatory cultures. For various reasons, they limit or ban access to social software, blogging tools, YouTube, and other participatory tools and platforms. This is one of the issues I hope to explore in future posts in this series. On the other hand, I think it is fair to say that most organizations in fact embrace digital literacies, but only the extent that it contributes to their bottom line. Furthermore, they aren’t alone in adopting a relatively narrow, instrumental perspective. Governments release general statements about global competitiveness or active citizenship, but rarely back this up with any concrete policy objectives; educational providers concern themselves only with the skills that students need in formal education systems. It is notoriously difficult, of course, to unite such diverse stakeholders with an integrated approach.

Researchers are just beginning to identify the emerging digital literacies. We have only a broad sense of which ones matter to adults in the workplace. This will also be the topic of future posts in this series.

*Low literacy refers to literacy skills below Level 3. According to the OECD, Level 3 is the internationally accepted level of literacy required to cope in a modern society.

This post is part of Working / Learning blog carnival, March 2009 edition. This month’s host is Dave Ferguson of Dave’s Whiteboard.

Digital Literacies: Reading Signs Along The Way originally appeared on Portable Learner on March 16th, 2009

My colleague Keltie Cameron-Choi and I wanted to design a Standard Operating Procedure that fosters learning, specifically retention (remembering the steps) and transfer (applying the steps in new situations). The premise is that learners who understand SOPs are better equipped to apply the instructions appropriately and find new opportunities for improvement in a quality system. What emerged from the redesign was an SOP stripped of familiar conventions that often impede learning yet still agrees with good documentation practices.

This poster, which depicts a before and after SOP, and the list of evidence-based cognitive principles that informed the redesign, was presented this month at the AABB Annual Meeting and sums up our findings so far. But we ran out of handouts! So, we are making them available here in the hopes that they will help you design better SOPs.

This work is synthesized from studies by Richard E. Mayer, Jeroen J. G. von Merrienboer, John Sweller, Ruth Colvin Clark and many other cognitive researchers and practitioners exploring how people learn from words and pictures. Any errors in interpretation are ours alone. Kristina Vanderwoude drew the cartoons. (One of the benefits of projects like this is discovering the latent talents of your co-workers.) Finally, do note that the SOPs depicted in the poster are purely fictitious and are not implemented in any workplace, including our own.

We hope you find these useful. Do let us know how your SOPs turn out.

Download: Designing SOPs for Learners poster (pdf, 11.38 MB)
Download: Cognitive principles checklist (pdf, 504.01 KB)
384 poster and 231 checklist downloads so far!

Designing SOPs for Learners originally appeared on Portable Learner on October 31st, 2007

Design patterns and pattern language are a smart way to represent the analysis and solution of a problem in a way that is sensitive to context, and informed by theory and evidence.

Last year with the support of my advisor, Terry Anderson, I spent a semester exploring the ways in which information technologies support lifelong learning. I stumbled across two quite remarkable works that gave the independent study course its form: Philip Candy’s comprehensive 2004 report for the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training called Linking Thinking: Self-Directed Learning in the Digital Age, and the European Commission’s E-LEN project, which used design patterns as a way to collect best practices to establish a network of e-learning centres. Juxtaposing lifelong learning, information technologies, Candy’s Online Learning model and a method for creating design patterns, we came up with the wonderful collection of lifelong learning design patterns represented in the pattern map below. With the news that our paper has been accepted for publication, with minor revisions, I thought it would be useful to collect all this information in one place before I tackle said revisions.

What are Design Patterns?

Design patterns originate in the work of the architect Christopher Alexander. Software engineers have enthusiastically adopted them in their practice, and now other fields, such as educational design, are also showing interest. Alexander’s definition of a pattern is that it:

…
describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.

Patterns offer a way to integrate both both the analysis and solution of a problem, in a way that is sensitive to context and informed by theory and evidence. Their value is that they suggest, rather than prescribe, a solution. Solutions are intentionally incomplete: they offer guidance but require embellishment. This makes them deceptively difficult to write and, frankly, require a good deal of effort to use.

The Patterns

You can navigate the patterns from the pattern map (recommended) or directly from the pattern links that follow. All of these patterns were first published on The Common Loon, the weblog I used to support the independent study course. These patterns are designed for lifelong learners (not professional designers or educators) and are represented in the form created by Joseph Bergin and his colleagues on the Pedagogical Patterns project.

Links to patterns: Be a designer | Check for quality | Choose the well-marked trail | Extend your reach | Extract it! | Go berrypicking | Mark your own trail | Tag it! | Triangulate | Trust a secondary source

Patterns for Complex Learning originally appeared on Portable Learner on July 7th, 2006

January 2008-October 2009

I continued to learn about CSS and PHP, and mostly realized why everyone was frustrated with Internet Explorer 6. I loved the transparency effect of this site, but it was difficult to portray in IE6. Even worse, posts like this one about feeds were frustrating to explain since IE 6 does not support RSS. I moved domains again because this site was not about me, but about being a portable learner.

http://portablelearner.com/

March 2007-December 2007

I discovered Sandbox, the semantics-based WordPress theme by Scott Wallick and Andy Skelton, which is a great playground for learning CSS.

http://shantarohse.com/

February 2006-February 2007

Learning By Design, now at its own domain. Powered by WordPress and dressed with modified version of Florian Kriener’s Musil theme. Florian’s theme is still one of the best WordPress themes I have ever seen. Unfortunately, his site and theme are no longer available.

http://shantarohse.com/

September 2005-January 2006

Trips the Web Fantastic, the last static version.

http://web.ncf.ca/ej296/

November 2004-September 2005

Captain Shanta Trips the Web Fantastic, in which I discover how to import del.icio.us feeds into a static web site.

http://web.ncf.ca/ej296/

A Pictorial History of This Website originally appeared on Portable Learner on October 31st, 2005

The Common Loon is a weblog about technology supported lifelong learning. It meanders a little (let’s call it exploratory learning), but nonetheless stumbles onto something interesting: the use of patterns in lifelong learning design. Another product of Athabasca U’s Masters of Distance Education programme. If you visit, skip right to the patterns part.

The Common Loon Feed

The Common Loon originally appeared on Portable Learner on January 5th, 2005

Do we learn as we play games, and if so, what? We designed this games and sims portal as part of the Masters of Distance Education program at Athabasca U to examine the relationship between games and players, and the theoretical and actual implications for learning.

Are You Game? originally appeared on Portable Learner on November 30th, 2004

Listphile: Making Sense of the World One Item at a Time is a weblog that celebrates the list — that first line of defence against information overload, muddled thinking and run-on sentences. Recommended for those who prefer their complexity in point form.

Listphile Feed

Listphile originally appeared on Portable Learner on July 26th, 2004

In the Peripheral Visions Workshop: A Creative Thinking Workshop for Educators, we presented creativity models, processes and tools to help educators break down the barriers of conventional thinking and challenge traditional assumptions. The discussion board is closed, but all other resources remain. Another product of the Masters of Distance Education program at Athabasca University. Update: Lou has removed this site off his server, but it is still available courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine.

Peripheral Visions originally appeared on Portable Learner on May 8th, 2004

I drew these comics as a young, fresh graduate medical technologist during the midnight shift at a busy metropolitan hospital—a shift that is a right of passage for all new technologists. I’ve made them available here because they reflect period of transition in blood banking, when the discovery that the AIDS virus could be transmitted by blood became widespread knowledge and changed lab practices forever. These were originally published 1986–87 in the Canadian Society of Transfusion Medicine.

Some twenty years since I drew it, The Blood Bank Strip was featured in the February 2005 issue of the On TraQ News.

Like everything on this site, these comics are licensed under a creative commons license. This means your are free to copy, distribute and even change the work (to something funnier???) as long as you are also using them for non-commercial purposes, offer to share the work and provide proper attribution. My feeling is that there are just not enough blood bank comic strips in this world.

The Blood Bank Strip originally appeared on Portable Learner on July 18th, 2002