James Drogan

...make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.  Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Courtesy John Mauldin's Thoughts from the Frontline, May 12, 2012

The folowing is courtesy of Martha Mangelsdorf at the MIT Sloan Management Review (Mangelsdorf, M. E. (2012, March 1). Six Skills That Will Remain in Demand).

"In the past few years, progress in information technology — in computer hardware, software and networks — has been so rapid and so surprising that many present-day organizations, institutions, policies and mind-sets are not keeping up. We used to be pretty confident that we knew the relative strengths and weaknesses of computers vis-à-vis humans. But computers have started making inroads in some unexpected areas — and this has significant implications for managers and organizations."

So write MIT Sloan professor Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business, in their article in the Winter 2012 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review, "Winning the Race with Ever-Smarter Machines."

While the article deals primarily with the implications of these rapid advances in information technology for organizations, Brynjolfsson and McAfee also touch on the very real implications for individuals — who may not be able, the authors point out, "to adapt as quickly as technology is advancing." What kinds of job skills are most resistant to automation? Here is a brief excerpt from Brynjolfsson and McAfee's article — highlighting six skills they expect to remain in demand in an age of ever-smarter computers:

"Applied math and statistics. Some think that the era of 'big data' and powerful software means that fewer people have to master the gritty details of statistical analysis. This is deeply misguided. Knowing which analyses to conduct and how to interpret their results is more valuable than ever. We think Google chief economist Hal Varian was on to something when he said that 'the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.'

 

Negotiation and group dynamics. Management is one of the most durable professions, even as computers advance. It turns out that organizations need dedicated managers working with teams, advancing their agendas and working with their members.

 

Good writing. Computers can only generate the simplest, most formulaic prose. While few people write for a living, lots of us do at least some writing. Getting good at it is a way to stand out from the crowd — and from the machines.

 

Framing problems and solving open-ended problems. Computers don't know what's wrong or where the next opportunities are. Solving open-ended problems entails both perceiving the challenge and addressing it. It's a major feature of primary and secondary educational systems like Montessori, which might explain why Montessori graduates are so common among the elite of the tech industry — the masters of racing with machines.

 

Persuasion. Does anyone seriously think that a great salesperson will be unable to find work, even in a highly digitized economy?

 

Human interaction and nurturing. We are biologically wired to react to human attention and the human touch in a way that no machine can replicate. That means that jobs that involve human nurturing and interaction, such as child care and nursing, will continue to defy automation."

Not a bad list to keep in mind as you think about your own career — and, if you have children, about the career choices they may make, too. If you haven't yet read "Winning the Race with Ever-Smarter Machines," I encourage you to.

Best,

Martha E. Mangelsdorf
Editorial Director
MIT Sloan Management Review

The following is courtesy of Faculty Focus (Weimer, M. (2012, February 22). My Students Don’t Like Group Work. Faculty Focus. Retrieved May 11, 2012, from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/my-students-dont-like-group-work/).

Students don’t always like working in groups. Ann Taylor, an associate professor of chemistry at Wabash College, had a class that was particularly vocal in their opposition. She asked for their top 10 reasons why students don’t want to work in groups and they offered this list (which I’ve edited slightly).

1. It’s hard to focus during small group exercises.
2. We are always rushed.
3. Group exercises mean we do the work and the teacher doesn’t.
4. We’re trying to work on material we didn’t understand in the reading.
5. If we want to work in groups, we can form them on our own; in class we would rather hear someone who understands the material explain it.
6. We’re all confused; getting in a group merely compounds the confusion.
7. I don’t like the people in my group.
8. Group members don’t show up or don’t contribute.
9. We’d get through more material if you lectured.
10. I can’t sleep during small group exercises.

A few of these reasons have convinced some faculty that not much learning occurs in groups. Others may be a bit more ambivalent but figure if students are opposed why bother with a questionable strategy and have their resistance to deal with as well.

Taylor responds as do many of us who use group work regularly. “Some of these reasons are exactly why I use small group work in class.” (p. 219) Group work engages students and forces them to work with the material. Of course, it’s easier, and from the student perspective preferable, if the teacher provides all the examples, raises all the questions, proposes and evaluates various solutions, i.e., does all the work. All students have to do is copy or download the teacher’s material.

It’s also true that working in groups is harder than doing it on your own. Groups have to cooperate, communicate, delegate and depend on each other. But for most tasks, groups can do more and do it better than individuals. In the professional world, there’s hardly a career where some (if not most) of the work is done in groups and not necessarily groups populated with your friends.

To students and some teachers, lecture looks like a “neater” way to learn. It certainly is more efficient, but the question is what kind of learning results from lecture? Too often lecture material is memorized—it hasn’t really been figured out, often it can’t be applied and regularly it’s quickly forgotten. Learning most things is a messy process. Confusion, frustration, even despair regularly occur. If students never experience those feelings, they also never experience the thrill of finally figuring something out, of really understanding and of being changed by what they’ve learned.

Does this mean group work should replace lectures? That teacher explanations are always ruled out? Of course not. It simply means that teachers need a repertoire of instructional strategies and that the decision of which to use when should be guided by a collection of variables that does not include whether students want to work in groups.

Taylor says she uses groups over student objections because they work. “By the end of the semester, there are improvements in their performance, teamwork and ability to solve problems. And this is what education is about: students’ growth and learning. Our role as educators is not as a performer or entertainer, but as a facilitator who guides students through the challenges of the learning process, whether they like it or not.” (p. 219)

What may be most useful here is her head-on strategy for dealing with student objections. If you ask students why they don’t want to work in groups and assemble their list, you can respond to their objections. Students may not like all your answers but at least the conversation introduces them to the educational rationale behind having them work collectively and it isn’t because you’re making them do the work you don’t want to do.

Reference: Taylor, A. (2011). Top 10 reasons students dislike working in groups … and why I do it anyway. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 39 (2), 219-220.

Here is a piece by one of my favorite bloggers, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, that you may find of interest.

Complex, unpredictable, people oriented systems are what we took up in this term's System Design and Control class.  We have struggled and I've tended to think that is good.  Its frustrating for the students, of course, because they have been generally trained that there is a correct answer; one only needs to find it.

That doesn't quite square with the way the world is and is likely to be.

From Age and Wisdom: Older and Wiser? (2012, April 7).The Economist).

willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict; willingness to search for compromise; recognition of the limits of personal knowledge; awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist; and appreciation of the fact that things may get worse before they get better.

Absolutely. Maybe it's a sign that there are very significant emotional elements in our decision making process. We try to be rational and to make considerate judgments, but in the final analysis may have limited time. We may have to make decisions based upon rules of thumb or generalizations. Decisions are overly hasty, emotional.

Lacy Hunt as interviewed by Kate Welling.  John Mauldin's Outside the Box, February 13, 2012

I'm a member of the Society of Creative Generalists.  On the society's blog is an entry, Generalists and Specialists - Creativity and Learning Viewpoints, to which I wish to draw your attention.  The source of the attraction are the following lines:

"...Expect the experts to be negative. The more expert and specialized a person becomes,  the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas,  their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can't be done and why it can't work. They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all..."

One should be wary of self-proclaimed experts.

You might also want to take a look at The Value of Introspection, particularly in light of the Costa Concordia.

From a student.

Mr. Drogan

I'm the one who sent you the wrong assignment on the Seatrain due on Friday. I wanted to talk to you after class however you were talking to someone else and i didnt feel the need to interrupt you. After todays lesson and what you said about the Cruise ship Captain to me I dont expect to recieve another chance. I just want to say you taught me something that nobody teaches on the board. I learned I have to pay more attention, stay focused, and for my sake and everyone else's " learn how to use the angel program better". Again I'm sorry, I learned a lesson and this will not happen again.

This morning, Greg Makew's Blog brings me a pointer to Art Carden's blog post named in the title line here.  While Carden is an economics professor, his sentiments echo mine (a professor of global business and transportation) as to what we, as teachers, are really all about.

I'll paraphrase a couple of lines I sent to a college official yesterday.

I've only so many ergs.  After my family, students have first draw on those ergs.

Teaching is a noble calling and most of us, I think, try to be noble.

After two and one-haf years I have closed my Twitter account.  The value exchanged over this communications channel was marginal at best.

The lesson here is not to use that which, for whatever reason, does not provide value.  I'm pretty confident I was not providing value to my followers; likewise, I found little value in what those I followed were providing.

There is not so much criticism here as there is a simple matter of fact.

I never owned a hula hoop either.