Infinite HQ
  • Home
  • About us
  • Our model
  • Success stories
  • Our insights
  • Contact us
  • GIVE US A CALL
  • Menu

Avoid the Hamster Wheel

June 23, 2022/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Ailsa Leacy

 

Those moments you wish you could bottle.

In an introductory walk and talk for a regional workshop, I was fortunate to have Tagie as my learning buddy. He shared with me the story of his journey of overcoming literacy barriers and how, as a proud Torres Strait Islander man, he was very conscious of wanting to be a good role model in his family. He talked about his goals and how he was continually working towards being the best version of himself.

Tagie embodies the principle of learner agency. He took his role seriously as an active participant in his own learning. During the workshop, he, along with other participants, was present, honest and willing to share his experiences. He was able to acknowledge areas he was good at and what he could work on. He was open to new ideas and feedback from others. Read more

https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/infinite-hq-logo.png 0 0 Ailsa Leacy https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/infinite-hq-logo.png Ailsa Leacy2022-06-23 15:07:372022-06-23 15:09:29Avoid the Hamster Wheel

“Action expresses priorities” (Mahatma Ghandi)

May 18, 2022/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Ailsa Leacy

My son in Year 12 was revising his biology concepts for the  external exam (that’s a discussion for another day). He was demonstrating very good knowledge and understanding of cells. I asked him the ‘so what’ question. That is, what difference does this make, how might this apply. He said “We don’t need to do that for the exam”. We then discussed how it might be different if the question was something like, “How might you apply your understanding of cells to treat disease?”. This might immediately make the learning more relevant, more interesting and activate higher order thinking skills. It is a harder question to answer with multiple potentially good responses. Wouldn’t working with uncertainty and creating new options based on present understanding be more relevant skills for the future?

People have told me that I think too much. Is the opposite not thinking enough? What I think they mean is that I question, I wonder, I try to make sense of things. The best way I can describe this is alignment. Are the things we do genuinely doing what we claim? When a school for example states they are preparing students for the future, how are they really doing that? How are we intentionally planning for, teaching and assessing graduate attributes at universities? Will we not pass someone in a leadership course who can’t get on with others?  Do awareness raising programs reduce violence against women?

I worry about education marketing claims. How are you designing for your outcomes? How do you know you are succeeding? Where is the evidence? Student engagement surveys are quite limited and are not focussed on measuring genuine change in behaviour. Standardised testing has also proved problematic.

In working over the years across schools, vocational education and university settings, I have found that alignment is a fundamental issue. All of our programs should begin with identifying what we want the learner to do. What does it look like? And to what end? Vocational education and training is the closest to their need for demonstrable skills. However, as we get to more complex environments and more intangible human skills, we are often defaulting to ‘learning about” rather than “learning to”, across all education sectors.

“Learning to” doesn’t need to be that hard, but it does require more than rehashing content.

There is common argument that human skills are difficult to assess and measure. It makes us uncomfortable where interpersonal and intrapersonal skills intersect with personality and attributes, trampling on notions of personal identity. However effective person-hood I believe involves accountability about how our behaviour impacts on others and striving to do better. This includes accepting unfavourable feedback. While I have found people can describe very well what these human skills look like, we are less willing to accept that we can teach and assess them.

If we are investing more in creative ways to sell our programs to markets than in intentional design and evaluation, then we are accepting that spin is more important than substance. While revenue and profit may rely on convincing people on your product, if you are not delivering on your promise, long-term, you create disengagement and cynicism in the market. I suspect this is starting to impact education, with increasing scepticism of claims that education programs are making us safer, job-ready, richer, happier or more productive.

The pursuit of pure knowledge may be worthwhile, however, it is only through doing something different that we are actively contributing to a better outcome, whether at work or in our personal lives. Avoiding the complexity of program design and evaluation of genuine behavioural change and more complex human skills because it is difficult, is intellectually lazy. Just because we don’t exactly know what it looks like, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to do better.

Ailsa Leacy

https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Screen-Shot-2022-05-18-at-9.26.36-pm-1.png 567 1643 Ailsa Leacy https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/infinite-hq-logo.png Ailsa Leacy2022-05-18 21:45:322022-05-19 10:23:15“Action expresses priorities” (Mahatma Ghandi)

Beware the Lobby Effect

October 22, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Ailsa Leacy

I may be coining a new term, the Lobby Effect (capitalisation makes it a thing, right?). It refers to the illusion that the work and ideas that occur in buildings that have an expensive and impressive lobby are better than those that happen elsewhere. In about 2014 in such a building,  a well-meaning consultant asked […]

Read more
https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-22-at-12.22.52-pm.png 431 1701 Ailsa Leacy https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/infinite-hq-logo.png Ailsa Leacy2021-10-22 14:34:222021-10-22 14:39:36Beware the Lobby Effect

Online does not equal good

October 9, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Ailsa Leacy

    With the current necessity to move even more learning online, we need to refrain from over-complicating this transition. We might need to learn some new skills, however the principles of how people learn are fundamentally the same. Just like when we moved from slates to pencils, the move to online is neither a […]

Read more
https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/online-zoom-small.jpeg 1181 1772 Ailsa Leacy https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/infinite-hq-logo.png Ailsa Leacy2021-10-09 15:40:512021-10-22 15:13:37Online does not equal good

The Polystyrene Box

October 8, 2021/0 Comments/in Uncategorized /by Ailsa Leacy
Read more
https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-08-at-8.43.35-am.png 640 1417 Ailsa Leacy https://infinitehq.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/infinite-hq-logo.png Ailsa Leacy2021-10-08 08:48:462021-10-22 15:12:39The Polystyrene Box
Page 1 of 212

Pages

  • About us
  • Contact
  • Digital Content
  • Home
  • Online Course Design
  • Our insights
  • Our model
  • Our solutions
  • Our success stories
  • Our Work
  • Privacy Policy
  • Services
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Video & Multimedia
  • Working with us

Categories

  • Uncategorized

Archive

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • October 2021
  • July 2021

Contact

0448 884 516

hello@infinitehq.com.au

READY TO DISCUSS

©2020 Infinite HQ | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions

ABN 89 635 651 348

Scroll to top