Re: [p2pu-community] New drumbeat project: Learning Goals

[Michael Nelson]

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

There are several sides to project tracking, each needing certain tools. One big thing is progress visualization: the ability to measure progress before the big goal is achieved.

Yes! In my day-job we've been using Kanban, which is (now) a agile software development technique for visualising progress (individually and for teams). Here's a quick video demo'ing the tool that we use for visualising:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7mlJnzB6xk

but at home a simple pin board is even better...and has much more scope for the imagination ;).  Is it something similar that your family uses?

I'm hoping with the Learning Goals project to do something similar - visualise the progress of the steps and activities for a goal.

It's tricky because different projects have different measurement units (time, rates, steps and so on). This has to do with visual literacy and data analysis, and somewhat with psychology, because units have to be not too small and not too large.

Yes - a lot of which is used in game development (something you also mention below) - ensuring that reaching the "next level" is not to easy, but not too hard either. I hadn't thought of units other than time though... that is, I'm imagining a goal being a longer-term aim, broken up into the steps I'll take towards that goal (shorter term - 1-4 weeks), and only if necessary, actions/activities for each step.

Personally, I like to feel I've achieved something regularly, which is why I was thinking that a 'step' towards a goal would be a short-term item (1-4 weeks), and an action towards a step is something I just do (or do daily etc).

 

Then there is roleplay and beauty and design. It's hard to explain why calling something a "quest" instead of a "chore" makes such as huge difference, but it does. The balances (flow channels) between routine and adventure, and separately craft and art, help to maintain progress. So, using gamer terms have been a boon, because the vocabulary is fun and rather exact. For example, Dance-Dance Revolution has a five-dimensional rubric for songs, and a beautiful visualization/graph of it called Groove Radar. It shows particular challenge levels, such as density and amount of jumps. Again, different tasks have different "tags" - I often use cognitive and emotional difficulty, concentration, relaxation. Making tags visual and funny (we use homemade icons) helps a lot too.

That sounds great! If you have time, I'd love to see a screenshot (or photo) to visualise exactly what you're describing?

 

For example, recently my daughter and I worked on some encyclopedia articles. Starting first few articles required a lot of "mana" (emotional energy), as any new writing task in a new format. Writing all articles required high attention and a relatively clear head, which can be timed to rhythms of the day. Filling "See also" field with entries from the long list of articles was a low-energy, calm task - what we call a "grind" task or "meditative" task, which can be done, say, when you are almost ready to sleep.

Yep, sounds like a fun way of Getting Things Done :) I'd not thought about using those kind of categorisations with my kids, but will try it now...

 

Tagging tasks and warning collaborators about different task features makes or breaks group projects. When I work with students, simply letting them know that the next task has high mental energy demands or frequently makes you feel like you are stuck helps them persevere. I help people learn math and math education, so anxiety and frustration come up a lot.

Yes - this would be analogous to the 'priority' in the above video, but much more helpful for a learning environment (it sounds similar to the Pickle-jar time management stuff, but where you prioritise your big rocks not just on size, but also the type of energy required... great!)

 

I tried to vote for your project, but nothing happened. I even disabled AdBlock, but it did not help.

Thanks! I think it did work... it seems to take 5-10mins before the page updates with the new vote count - it might be cached.

Cheers,

Michael

 

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 2:41 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

Michael,

I'd like to follow this development. We've been doing something similar within the family - we call it "QuestBoards" because many tools came from goal tracking in World of Warcraft. I joined on Drumbeat - is there anything else to do?

Great, thanks Maria!

I would love to hear more about how you use QuestBoards with your family (and how/why you started using them)... if this thread is appropriate, great! I've also just created a google group specifically for chatting and discussing the use of learning goals (generally, not a specific tool) for self-paced learning etc. at:

http://groups.google.com/group/learning-goals

Also, you could click on the Vote button on the project page if you think it's worthwhile :)

Cheers,

M

 

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 11:54 AM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I've just been adding info about a new project on drumbeat that may or may not be relevant to some people facilitating p2pu courses:

https://www.drumbeat.org/project/learning-goals

If you have time, I'd really appreciate any feedback you have, whether it's things that need to be clarified or issues you can see, or ideas about how it could be improved etc.

The video there is just a demo of a very basic prototype, but the About page has more ideas about how it could be used and other possibilities it might enable.

I've also included more background info about the actual problem that I'm trying to solve on my bio page.

Thanks either way.

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Michael Nelson

http://liveandletlearn.net 

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Michael Nelson

http://liveandletlearn.net 

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Michael Nelson

http://liveandletlearn.net 

[Maria Droujkova]

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

 

On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 3:00 AM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

There are several sides to project tracking, each needing certain tools. One big thing is progress visualization: the ability to measure progress before the big goal is achieved.

Yes! In my day-job we've been using Kanban, which is (now) a agile software development technique for visualising progress (individually and for teams). Here's a quick video demo'ing the tool that we use for visualising:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7mlJnzB6xk

Looks light and interesting - thanks!
 

It's tricky because different projects have different measurement units (time, rates, steps and so on). This has to do with visual literacy and data analysis, and somewhat with psychology, because units have to be not too small and not too large.

Yes - a lot of which is used in game development (something you also mention below) - ensuring that reaching the "next level" is not to easy, but not too hard either. I hadn't thought of units other than time though... that is, I'm imagining a goal being a longer-term aim, broken up into the steps I'll take towards that goal (shorter term - 1-4 weeks), and only if necessary, actions/activities for each step.

Personally, I like to feel I've achieved something regularly, which is why I was thinking that a 'step' towards a goal would be a short-term item (1-4 weeks), and an action towards a step is something I just do (or do daily etc).

Here is an example of what I mean. Sorting through light emails, I spend maybe 20 seconds per message. But answering more thoughtfully, especially if media is involved, may take 10-20 minutes per email. So, if I set a milestone of "100 emails a day" I may run into obvious problems.
 

 

Then there is roleplay and beauty and design. It's hard to explain why calling something a "quest" instead of a "chore" makes such as huge difference, but it does. The balances (flow channels) between routine and adventure, and separately craft and art, help to maintain progress. So, using gamer terms have been a boon, because the vocabulary is fun and rather exact. For example, Dance-Dance Revolution has a five-dimensional rubric for songs, and a beautiful visualization/graph of it called Groove Radar. It shows particular challenge levels, such as density and amount of jumps. Again, different tasks have different "tags" - I often use cognitive and emotional difficulty, concentration, relaxation. Making tags visual and funny (we use homemade icons) helps a lot too.

That sounds great! If you have time, I'd love to see a screenshot (or photo) to visualise exactly what you're describing?

I made a little screencast - it looks EXTREMELY silly and is full of little references to things you may or may not know, but it was lot of fun: http://screencast.com/t/lwWm1DMF41vO It clarified some needs of a management system.

Cheers,
MariaD

[Michael Nelson]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 3:00 AM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 1, 2010 at 8:41 PM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's tricky because different projects have different measurement units (time, rates, steps and so on). This has to do with visual literacy and data analysis, and somewhat with psychology, because units have to be not too small and not too large.

Yes - a lot of which is used in game development (something you also mention below) - ensuring that reaching the "next level" is not to easy, but not too hard either. I hadn't thought of units other than time though... that is, I'm imagining a goal being a longer-term aim, broken up into the steps I'll take towards that goal (shorter term - 1-4 weeks), and only if necessary, actions/activities for each step.

Personally, I like to feel I've achieved something regularly, which is why I was thinking that a 'step' towards a goal would be a short-term item (1-4 weeks), and an action towards a step is something I just do (or do daily etc).

Here is an example of what I mean. Sorting through light emails, I spend maybe 20 seconds per message. But answering more thoughtfully, especially if media is involved, may take 10-20 minutes per email. So, if I set a milestone of "100 emails a day" I may run into obvious problems.

True - but what if you had two separate milestones/goals:

1) Each day achieve inbox zero (http://inboxzero.com/) (ie. processing, but not necessarily responding)

2) Each week ensure there are no emails requiring a response older than 1 week (or whatever suits your rhythm).

But right, now I see what you mean... both of the above are really measuring rate/throughput/flow, rather than time.

 

 

 

Then there is roleplay and beauty and design. It's hard to explain why calling something a "quest" instead of a "chore" makes such as huge difference, but it does. The balances (flow channels) between routine and adventure, and separately craft and art, help to maintain progress. So, using gamer terms have been a boon, because the vocabulary is fun and rather exact. For example, Dance-Dance Revolution has a five-dimensional rubric for songs, and a beautiful visualization/graph of it called Groove Radar. It shows particular challenge levels, such as density and amount of jumps. Again, different tasks have different "tags" - I often use cognitive and emotional difficulty, concentration, relaxation. Making tags visual and funny (we use homemade icons) helps a lot too.

That sounds great! If you have time, I'd love to see a screenshot (or photo) to visualise exactly what you're describing?

I made a little screencast - it looks EXTREMELY silly and is full of little references to things you may or may not know, but it was lot of fun: http://screencast.com/t/lwWm1DMF41vO It clarified some needs of a management system.

Thanks! That is really interesting... I love the "World of Lifecraft" title too :). And the tags are great too! I hadn't realised from our previous conversation that you do this using online tools (I was imagining a physical pinboard on a wall).

So, without the sound, it looks as though you've got a bunch of tasks that you like to do repetitively (each daily/weekly/fortnightly/whatever). Is each task related to various longer-term goals of yours? If not, why not use something like remember the milk (which, from memory, supports repetitive tasks with tags etc.) (but wouldn't be as creative of course!). Or perhaps a better question (for when you've time), how would you like to be able to manage these tasks - would it be helpful to see them as tasks potentially (but not necessarily) attached to a certain longer-term goal?

-Michael

 

Cheers,
MariaD

[Maria Droujkova]

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

So, without the sound, it looks as though you've got a bunch of tasks that you like to do repetitively (each daily/weekly/fortnightly/whatever). Is each task related to various longer-term goals of yours? If not, why not use something like remember the milk (which, from memory, supports repetitive tasks with tags etc.) (but wouldn't be as creative of course!). Or perhaps a better question (for when you've time), how would you like to be able to manage these tasks - would it be helpful to see them as tasks potentially (but not necessarily) attached to a certain longer-term goal?

-Michael

 There are several goals here, all related to time actually!

(1) Explore what is important in your actions, reflect on it. Basically, this is like qualitative research where categories emerge from data. "You are what you repeatedly do."

(2) Determine your speed of work and the units. For example, I can write 425 words per hour of a "technical text with required research." I know this because I tracked myself writing some articles. When next someone offers me a writing gig, I can estimate hours it will take. I also know (from tracking) that I write in "runs" that are 10 min to 1 hour, depending on other variables (like time of the day).

(3) Achieve milestones. Say, if I want to have "an active email group for discussing family math" I can define "active" as "X message thread per month, Y% of them started by people other than myself" and invite people (and do other such quests) till this happens. Time these milestones take may or may not be known from (2).

MariaD

[Michael Nelson]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

So, without the sound, it looks as though you've got a bunch of tasks that you like to do repetitively (each daily/weekly/fortnightly/whatever). Is each task related to various longer-term goals of yours? If not, why not use something like remember the milk (which, from memory, supports repetitive tasks with tags etc.) (but wouldn't be as creative of course!). Or perhaps a better question (for when you've time), how would you like to be able to manage these tasks - would it be helpful to see them as tasks potentially (but not necessarily) attached to a certain longer-term goal?

-Michael

 There are several goals here, all related to time actually!

(1) Explore what is important in your actions, reflect on it. Basically, this is like qualitative research where categories emerge from data. "You are what you repeatedly do."

Yep. Do you also try to plan what you do repeatedly (in a way, changing who you are). eg. I want to sit with Joe at least twice a week to work through his family math goals. (not a very good example, but hopefully you get what I mean). Would it be helpful if the system you were using provided an rss feed or iCal export or something helping you see (and postpone etc.) the tasks/goals you've planned that are coming up?

(2) Determine your speed of work and the units. For example, I can write 425 words per hour of a "technical text with required research." I know this because I tracked myself writing some articles. When next someone offers me a writing gig, I can estimate hours it will take. I also know (from tracking) that I write in "runs" that are 10 min to 1 hour, depending on other variables (like time of the day).

Nice - I've been trying the Pomodoro technique - http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ - lately for similar reasons (work-related), which helps establish easy units of time. I could then try translating into other units... I'll try that!

(3) Achieve milestones. Say, if I want to have "an active email group for discussing family math" I can define "active" as "X message thread per month, Y% of them started by people other than myself" and invite people (and do other such quests) till this happens. Time these milestones take may or may not be known from (2).

OK, so this is similar to the SMART criteria right? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria ) - well, at least the SMAR part, if you had a goal: "I want to create an active email group for discussing family math within the next 3 months, where 'active' means....." that would then fulfill the criteria.

Part of what I've added in Learning goals is the ability to define the above goal with a target completion (say, 3 months from now), but also annotate it as something that I want to review fortnightly (ie. review my progress). I'm hoping to add various options for review notifications too.

Thanks for these conversations - it's great to be able to interact around learning ideas that I'm excited about :)

[Maria Droujkova]

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 3:45 AM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 12:37 PM, Michael Nelson <absol...@gmail.com> wrote:

So, without the sound, it looks as though you've got a bunch of tasks that you like to do repetitively (each daily/weekly/fortnightly/whatever). Is each task related to various longer-term goals of yours? If not, why not use something like remember the milk (which, from memory, supports repetitive tasks with tags etc.) (but wouldn't be as creative of course!). Or perhaps a better question (for when you've time), how would you like to be able to manage these tasks - would it be helpful to see them as tasks potentially (but not necessarily) attached to a certain longer-term goal?

-Michael

 There are several goals here, all related to time actually!

(1) Explore what is important in your actions, reflect on it. Basically, this is like qualitative research where categories emerge from data. "You are what you repeatedly do."

Yep. Do you also try to plan what you do repeatedly (in a way, changing who you are). eg. I want to sit with Joe at least twice a week to work through his family math goals. (not a very good example, but hopefully you get what I mean).

When Dmitri and I talked about QuestBoard (we have some write-ups somewhere), the idea was to have cycles of reflection:
- What am I doing (life-tracking)
- What patterns emerge?
- How can I change the patterns?

It is extremely important to observe existing flow before trying to change it. The same is true in social interventions, by the way. Changes have to preserve some of the existing ecology, or they will feel painful and may not take.

Would it be helpful if the system you were using provided an rss feed or iCal export or something helping you see (and postpone etc.) the tasks/goals you've planned that are coming up?

I am not sure what are good ways to display existing and planned goals and patterns. Some social tools may be nice. Something to think about! I like iCal idea (mostly because my Google Calendar talks to it and I use it all the time), but where does it fit, is not clear yet.

(2) Determine your speed of work and the units. For example, I can write 425 words per hour of a "technical text with required research." I know this because I tracked myself writing some articles. When next someone offers me a writing gig, I can estimate hours it will take. I also know (from tracking) that I write in "runs" that are 10 min to 1 hour, depending on other variables (like time of the day).

Nice - I've been trying the Pomodoro technique - http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ - lately for similar reasons (work-related), which helps establish easy units of time. I could then try translating into other units... I'll try that!

I am reading the book - interesting! I especially like the list of data activities there:
Planning
Tracking
Recording
Processing
Visualizing 

I like the distinction between tracking, processing and visualizing.

It needs to be a cycle (the book calls it "iteration"0, with reflecting/planning AFTER visualizing, for the same ecological reasons.

I really like that a break is built into work.

When I was working on my dissertation, I wrote a little Flash applet called "two-timer" that tracked two times for two activities. I planned on two contrasting activities and set their times according to the variables of the moment (easy/hard research, tiredness, etc). For example, I could set 15 minutes per data analysis and 10 minutes for cleaning the kitchen. I still have it somewhere. I made the two sliders look like the blue and the red pills from "The Matrix" and the background was a black hole (of time).

(3) Achieve milestones. Say, if I want to have "an active email group for discussing family math" I can define "active" as "X message thread per month, Y% of them started by people other than myself" and invite people (and do other such quests) till this happens. Time these milestones take may or may not be known from (2).

OK, so this is similar to the SMART criteria right? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria ) - well, at least the SMAR part, if you had a goal: "I want to create an active email group for discussing family math within the next 3 months, where 'active' means....." that would then fulfill the criteria.

Yep, SMAR list is a good way to describe it.

Part of what I've added in Learning goals is the ability to define the above goal with a target completion (say, 3 months from now), but also annotate it as something that I want to review fortnightly (ie. review my progress). I'm hoping to add various options for review notifications too.

Thanks for these conversations - it's great to be able to interact around learning ideas that I'm excited about :)

Thank you! Likewise!

Cheers,
MariaD