Erik Jentges

You can guide your focus with this framework when you encounter new learning material that you want to understand better.

We tend to rely on habitual patterns when asking questions about new stuff. In this context, it is important to de-bias yourself so you don't get one-sided views. Broaden your horizon for understanding new learning material with these four types of questions - adapted from HBR's "Relearning the Art of Asking Questions."

Let's dive in.

Ask Clarifying Questions

The intent of the question is to affirm what you already assume to know. You narrow down. Questions like "Can you explain in more detail?" or "Why to do you come to this conclusion" are clarifying questions. Ask this to avoid missing crucial details.

Ask Adjoining Questions

Here the intent is to explore a learning transfer: "Would this work in a different context - and if so, how?" You widen your view on the subject you are learning and test its validity against other things you already know.

Ask Funneling Questions

With these kinds of questions, you dive down to root causes and analyze individual components. You can begin with questions that start with "How may this have come about... " to discover something new, but with laser-sharp focus on the matter that is in the center of your attention.

Ask Elevating Questions

With this strategy, you take a step back and train a soft gaze that is widely attentive to context. You reach a meta-level of asking questions, such as "Is this the right question at all?" Ascending to a birds-eye view perspective helps to map connections and scan for emerging patterns.

Use Questions to Improve your Systems Thinking

Refining your portfolio of go-to questions will help you ask smarter questions when interrogating new learning material - textbooks, articles, books etc. Such a stance as a critical learner will help you improve your systems thinking. It'll unlock unique perspectives, which is rewarding because you get to experience a special reward: the delight of your own curiosity.

Making notes is a personal affair.

That's why it can be hard to imagine who you are writing for. Here is a suggestion, inspired by Sören Kierkegaard's view:

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Write for who you were; publish for who you'll become.

Write to explain to your past self

Imagine yourself two years ago. Remember how little you knew about the topic you are thinking about now? You still had the curiosity of a beginner. Channel the excitement of discovery into your explanations, into your notes. Make notes to let your past self understand.

Write with an audience in mind.

But also write to publish.

Edit before you do.

Edit to catch the attention of your future self

Edit your text with the future in mind. Increase the chances to catch the attention of the person you'll be in 2 years. You will have most likely forgotten your note when you stumble across it. So make sure that the idea can intrigue you once more. Edit to let it speak for itself.

Your past self listens patiently.

Your present self finds the right words.

Your future self will thank you for your efforts.

For learning to be effective, students need to do something with what has been taught. One way of letting them apply their learnings and checking their progress is peer feedback. Peer feedback involves learners in different roles. Besides being students, they also become co-teachers when they give feedback to peers. When students need to explain what they learned, we approach a deeper understanding of what they have been taught. It sounds good, right?

Unfortunately, a lot of things can go sideways with peer feedback that frustrates instructors and students.

Peer Feedback isn't teaching. True. But it's learning.

Many subject matter experts are reluctant to try peer feedback activities. But there are a few principles that instructional designers can use to set up peer feedback activities for them that help students understand the rationale for learning with this method. Here is what to watch out for:

Step 1: Instructors need to trust the process.

I've seen subject matter experts read every piece of text in peer feedback activities, scanning all submissions, all feedbacks, and all reactions. Why? Sometimes, they don't trust their students, sometimes they don't trust themselves. Do not proceed unless you've had this conversation and you know that they can trust the process.

Step 2: Control the frame, not the flows.

A peer feedback activity creates a framework that structures the students' communication flows. Mapping the different phases and a showing a few examples help calibrate expectations. Let them assert their role as learners, especially when giving and receiving feedback, then let it flow.

Step 3: Tell students why they have agency in the process.

Instructors need to tell students that they are in the driver's seat of their education. Improving the skills of giving and receiving feedback will help them at the workplace, many years after graduation. A peer feedback activity is an opportunity to hone their skills together in a safe environment.

Online education has a promise - and a danger. A very short essay on power in the learning experience.

tl;dr: Power organizes the chaos and hides in the technology that structures the communication.

As kids, we have experienced the power of teachers. Growing older, we may have even - at times - opposed them. With mixed results.

But we've grown up to become self-directed, empowered learners.

We remember that the power differential between instructors and students matters. We know it from sitting in assessments and waiting for our final grades.

But what about power in cohort-based online courses? How much does it matter for shaping the learning experience?

Without trust, forget about learning.

Power helps structure social relations. It gives order to chaos. In groups that form to learn, trust is needed to agree on who gets to share knowledge. There are different ways to establish trust in the (online) classroom.

There is the sage on the stage and the coach on the sideline. In frontal lectures, experts share their knowledge and learners sit, take notes, and comply. Coaches support active learning and students give it a try. But without trust, forget about learning.

It is a dynamic affair.

The silent agreement between experts and learners fluctuates. The more mature the learners, the more it can become a conversation. True authority respects the learners' independence. In online courses, instructors are comfortable being guides, not gurus.

A classroom is not a democracy. But there are votes.

A class, a cohort of learners, is not a democracy. Science and learning are not democratic. If 70% agree that the world is flat, we shouldn't agree on this to be correct. The common understanding is that the scientific method

has precedent to find the most elegant, lucid and plausible explanation.

But learners do get to vote.

With their feet.

They have the choice to come, stay, or go away.

Online education has a promise - and a danger.

The abundance of knowledge with the emergence of new platforms and institutions has the promise to make education affordable. That'll be great, because education is the premise of progress in every society.

So what's the danger?

In cohort-based courses, power does not seem to play much of a role. Nobody is forced to learn. Come as you are.

But power is still there and organizes the chaos.

It hides in the technology that structures communication.

And it hides in the pull of learners coming, in the retention of learners staying, and in the exit of learners turning away from other choices for their education.

It hides in the absence of accreditation institutions.

I ask myself: will teachers and their institutions continue to champion the scientific method? Will they keep their oath to seek the most plausible explanation?

This is for the instructional designer, educational developers, and teaching assistants out there who, once in a while, have to set up an online exam. Moodle is feature-rich and clunky. Things can go wrong, but they better not.

Suppose you already have the draft of the exam in a word document. Now it needs to go into your university's learning management system. Fight the urge to rebuild the exam in moodle by starting with page one. This is my workflow:

Fill up the question bank before setting up the exam.

First create all questions in the question bank. If you have a lot of them, use IDs keep an overview. Don't mess with automatic import. One missing comma will trip up your import. Instead, copy and "paste without formatting" (Command+Option+Shift+V). Or the moodle editor will drive you nuts and you end up cleaning html code.

If you need to randomise questions, build categories first.

Students don't all write the exact same exam. Questions can be randomised, meaning some students answer 2+4, others 3+5, and others 2+5. Same principle, similar complexity. For this to work, questions are pulled from the same question category. It is wise to build these categories first. It's like creating a folder structure before filling in the questions.

Document your progress & organise quality control

Once you are done, push the questions into the exam. Document what you're doing by color coding and commenting in your word-file. Minimise the margin for error - and your risk for headaches - by using a big screen to have the word document with the exam draft and the browser with moodle side-by-side. Important: have someone else check the exam content and the moodle settings before students start their assessment. Organise quality control.

A few months back I had an onboarding meeting with a highly experienced industry professional. He'd be teaching a course to our students as external faculty. And he had many questions about the students' expectations and if he was doing it the right way like the "real" professors. In our conversation, we touched on a few core principles.

Be clear about your expectations.

You have a treasure trove full of experiences and yes, please do share some of them. But it is more important that you have a clear vision of what you want your students to be able to do, or do better, after they participated in your course. Communicate what you expect from students, what you expect from yourself, and what your ambition is with teaching them.

Work with what students bring into the room.

Students are not like empty pages. They have life experience and possibly prior knowledge about what your are teaching. Once you make the effort to get to know some of their stories that are relevant to your course, it'll be much easier to connect with them and teach with impact. Before your first class, let them share what they already know. This way, your teaching starts even before you meet them.

Share the story of your professional journey.

Students already know you are the expert. But how did you become who you are? This, they don't know. So tell them! They'll better understand that a) you've been a student once, too, and b) they can imagine themselves taking a similar journey. Build rapport by being personal and approachable. Work on creating trust in the classroom and you'll feel comfortable. Students will, too. Then it is going to be a fun ride. Enjoy it.

In the last 20 years, the profession of research has changed. It still involves a lot of reading and taking notes. Here are a few memories from the pre-digital era with hard earned wisdoms on how NOT to collect your references:

Don't keep your references in an excel file

When I was a young student, this researcher showed me his one large excel file that had all his literature references and his notes. And I remember wondering: "Impressive! So this is part of the professional work? There must be a better solution." In fact, there are many solutions. Some are dangerous.

Don't take a shopping cart to the library

Once I had to fetch every volume from the last 5 years of some printed journals. I needed a shopping cart. Back at the office, the professor skimmed the abstracts and took a few notes which we had to copy by hand into a reference manager. Then, I pushed 200 pounds of research back across town and almost killed someone when the cart wanted to go down the metro stairs by itself.

Don't lock yourself in to a reference manager

During my studies, I tried many different reference managers. The danger of lock-in is still considerable. I started on Endnote, but then I changed institutions and no longer had a license. I tried Sente. It was discontinued. I used Papers by mekentosj. It was bought by a publishing house. I went to Bookends. It was Mac only and my new university workplace only had PC. I started on citavi. But it is PC only and when I went back to a Mac, I was stuck once more.

Choose wisely. Choose Zotero.

When doing research, collect your references and use a reference manager. Go digital and paperless. Trust an open source community to avoid lock-in. In case you are still looking around, Zotero is a good choice.

Imagine you are waiting for your class to start. There are a few things you can do to set yourself up for a successful learning session. Don't expect the teacher to do the learning for you. Learning is an activity, and it starts before class starts. Here is a warm up routine.

Prep your notes.

Before you sit down for your lecture or online class, ask yourself a few questions. What can I expect to learn in the next hour? What do I already know about the topic? Which links might there be to previous course contents? And what am I already familiar with? Jot down a few points.

Prime your head for keywords.

Each lecture has a structure, but you often can't see it clearly in the beginning. Being able to identify keywords will help you tremendously to preliminary map the material and structure your notes. Ask yourself: what might be the key concepts and keywords in the next hour?

Ready your brain for questions.

Journalists would ask "what is the story here?" before going into a press conference and taking notes. They know that having a few question ready sharpens your focus. As a student, you come into class with your own questions about your understanding of the material.

Draft your game plan for learning.

For activities that require effort (such as learning) it is good to have a game plan. With your mind and your notes prepared, it will be easier to follow the lecture, because you know when to focus your learning efforts and when to just listen. A game plan decreases your cognitive load during the lecture.

You'll see the returns of your investment into learning in the quality of your lecture notes. Being prepared means approaching what your are learning with purpose. And that always pays off.

Who are you learning for?

When in school and later in college, what was your answer to this question: "Who are you learning for?" Let me give you these options:

• Parents. Because they told you do sit down and do your homework.

• Teachers. Because they will give you a grade in the exam.

• Friends. Because you want to hang out together next year, too.

Once we graduate from the national education system, the question becomes trickier to answer. The education system loses its grip. The force of compliance dissolves and accountability disappears.

You are your own accountability buddy

Now the person that really matters for why we learn gets easier to see. For you, the answer is most probably: me. You are your own most relevant accountability buddy. And it has been you all along.

Have you also experienced phases of I don't care, I don't want to learn, or why? and what for? It's difficult to be your own accountability buddy.

Take "me, in 10 years" as your North Star for learning

What we need maybe more than an accountability buddy is a North Star to help us self-direct our personal education and keep our motivation intact. Especially for lifelong learners, what follows is interesting:

Matthew McConaughey, in his 2014 Oscar acceptance speech, thanked a particular person, a person he chases. His hero. Guess what he came up with, when asked who that was at age 15? It was "me, in 10 years". It was him at 25 when he was 15, and him at 35 when he was 25. This him keeps his distance, but gives him imaginary footsteps to follow. He retains motivation to keep on chasing him.

Learning for your future self will always mean progress

You are learning for your future you. That'll be the person who give you a slap on the back and tells you "Good job, I'm proud of you!" The point of learning is to grow and become a better version of yourself. If you learn for your future self, you will always progress.

Have you tried to learn a new piece of software lately? That is where I am right now. I've been struggling. I've seen myself get stuck and lost in the settings. Too complex. Too powerful. I was about to move on to the next shiny thing, because I could not master it. Sounds familiar?

We know that learning requires effort.

It needs repetitions to achieve mastery. Muscle memory doesn't build from reading about a thing - I have to do it. Here's how I'm doing:

My training manual provides exercises that are baked right into the tool. Then comes a brutal test. I failed it on the first try. But I have my baseline now and will take it - probably several times - again.

Testing repeatedly is a super-efficient way to learn.

Testing focuses on active recall. It is retrieval practice - getting stuff out of your head. The first try took me 4x longer than allowed. Finding the right keyboard shortcuts haunted me in my dreams. I'm fascinated by how immersive it is. And in this case, speed is a good indicator of mastery.

Explain what you are doing.

Learning is even better when I explain what I'm doing. Even to myself, for example in a screencast recording. Simple to do with tools like Loom. In addition, it is a communications training for free.

This kind of learning by leaning forward has me excited. The process checks many boxes with regard to the key findings from learning sciences. Now it is about putting in the effort consistently to get results.