Book Review: The Mormon Way of Doing Business

I have been wanting to read The Mormon Way of Doing Business for a long time. I had heard a talk on CD by Jeff Benedict (the author) and really enjoyed it (my brief review of it is posted on the previous link).

This book chronicles how eight LDS businessmen live their lives and juggle the responsibilities they have with their families, church callings and their intense work assignments. I felt inspired by their examples and wanted to be better. Although they each had a different style of doing things, there are lessons to be learned from each.

One anecdote that impressed me was how Clayton Christensen defined when he would and would not work (you must read his talk here). Truly profound! Anyways, he was a new hire, working for a high-profile company. He was asked to come to a work meeting on Sunday. He said, "I've got a problem--I've committed not to work on Sundays." The manager was mad, but switched the meeting to a Saturday. When he informed Christensen, Christensen said, "I'm sorry but I have a problem. You see, I've committed to my wife that I will keep Saturday a day for the family." When the manager expressed displeasure, Christensen said, "If it won't work for you to have me spend time in this way than perhaps it would be better if I found other employment." In other words, he wasn't backing down.

Turns out the manager rescheduled the meeting for Friday and it became known that Christensen didn't work Saturdays and Sundays. He did however arrive at the office at 6 AM Monday-Friday, and didn't take lunch breaks.

Kim Clark worked a similar ethic; his rule was to always be home by 6:30 PM. In each case the men balanced their priorities differently, but it was neat to see how they had been successful by carefully putting first things first.

There is much more I could write by way of insights I gained from this book--I highly recommend you read it.

Friday Review

It's been another great week. Some of the highlights are as follows...

Distance Education: I woke up at 3:00 AM Wednesday morning thinking about my research project in this class. I'm really interested in learning about simple technologies for publishing one's research/classroom materials at a distance for others to take advantage of. What drives some faculty members to do so? What are prevents others from doing it? What are technologies that most easily facilitate the distribution of such materials? These are questions I am interested in exploring further.

Open Education: A question was asked about the usefulness of OERS: "If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear it?" --If I openly publish something, will anyone notice? David's response was, "If Google hears the tree fall, then yes, others will hear it." Profound. Also it was interesting to hear Dr. Osguthorpe's observation on how licensing ChemLab to Pearson had led to much wider distribution than it would have received had it just been "open." If one is interested in disseminating ideas it needs to remember that openness is one tool, but not necessarily the best tool for every situation. I believe it is often a good tool, just not one that is considered as often as it should be.

Assessment: We got the results of our test back, and I proved once again that I need to worry less about the grade and more about the learning. As I have said, "I don't care what grade I get, as long as it is an A." I have resolved to just focus on what I am learning and not stress about grades. I believe my learning goals are sufficiently high that they should meet the required bar.

Research: Spent some valuable time in the library learning about research tools. I look forward to meeting with Rachel, the education research librarian on Monday to learn more. I'm in the process of refinining my questionairre on scripture study.

Distance: Research Question

I've been thinking about the research question to study for this class. I have a few different ideas, but the one that I woke up thinking about at 3 AM a couple of days ago concerned surveying faculty to members to determine their attitudes towards and uses of tools that would help them distribute some of their ideas at a distance. I found this literature review regarding faculty perceptions of distance education and read through it to see what I could find. One thing I noted was that the focus was on creating complete distance education courses. I am more interested in studying how faculty perceive and use Web 2.0 tools to share part of their teachings at a distance. For example how do faculty members view podcasting their lectures? What prevents them from doing so?

My initial thought is to interview 5-7 faculty members asking questions such as...

1. What tools (if any) do you use to share your course content with those at a distance?

2. If they do use tools, ask about the ways in which they use them and why the use them. Also, why do they not use other tools.

3. If they do not use tools, why not? Is there a technical barrier, a low perceived value?

4. I will also ask them if they know of faculty members that they feel are successful in using tools to promote distance learning. This will help me find a wider variety of users.

I would hope that I could turn this study into a paper by the end of the semester. Actually doing the research would be very helpful for me.

Comments/suggestions?

Using ISI to measure journal impact

Suppose that you are trying to see the level of impact a specific journal has. Using the ISI web of science you can figure this out--

1. Go to http://lib.byu.edu/

2. Click Journal Citation Reports (ISI)

3. Click "social science" (in my case) and subject of interest.

4. Sort journals by impact.

--note--obviously this isn't the only important factor to consider in selecting a journal, I just thought it was cool. I still need to learn more about how to use this tool. If you have ideas, please let me know.

Distance: Transactional Theory

The transactional distance theory states that a "psychological and communications space" (transactional distance) exists between the instructor and student (22). Depending on the level of dialog and structure in a distance education class the transactional distance will vary. Increased structure The greater the level of transactional distance the more autonomy the students will need to have.

In one of the articles we read Moore focuses on three types of interaction (where these uses are strong "dialog" would be increased and transactional distance would be decreased). These three are "learner-content" "learner-instructor" and "learner-learner." Moore states that "the main weakness of distance education programs is their commitment to only one type of medium" (5). Those preparing distance (and other kinds of) education courses need to pay attention to the levels of these interactions.

I was particularly interested in the "learner-content" interaction as it reminded me of one of my favorite essays by David Hawkins (who served on David Williams' doctoral committee). Moore suggests that this may be one area in which Holmberg's conversational theory may be particularly applicable.

Thus far in this class we have focused on three theories--"industrialized education," "conversation" and now the "theory of transactional distance." Moore (the author of transactional distance theory) discusses the relationship between these theories as saying that Peters' (industrialized) model is the highest-level, with transactional theory nested underneath. Holmberg's (conversational) theory is a "lower-level system nested within the transactional distance system" (101). Thus we see that these theories do not need to conflict with each other but can come together in a whole.

One insight I gained while reading this article stemmed from Moore's argument that transactional distance is a matter of degrees and that (commenting on Holmberg's theory) "Rather than declare that all teaching should be conversational, it would be more helpful to describe what kinds of students benefit and do not benefit from such an approach, and what aleternatives are available to each" (101). Typically, I have tried to find "the one best way." This quote illustrates that there may not be a "best way" for every situation. In some cases high transactional distance is okay. At times, a conversational approach may be the best way to go. And perhaps even an industrialized mass-produced product also has its place. The key is to guage the needs of the learner and match them with the appropriate pedagogical tools.

Friday Review

This Friday review will be brief--but I can't stop a habit when I've just started it! Insights from this week:

Distance Ed: The conversational theory has lots of good insights both for distance education and instructional design in general. Try to think of teaching as having a conversation--what things are interesting in conversation? How does one have an interesting conversation (hint--it's not just from one person talking!)

Open Ed: I enjoyed the card game that we played and the Creative Commons quest really helped solidify my understanding of these different licenses. I am working to apply what I have learned by securing a CC license for a book I have published.

Stats/Research: I worked on an IRB proposal and am encouraged about the idea of measuring how students perceive their scripture study and how much they read and seeing if there is any correlation between this and grading structures in their religion classes. We also had some great readings and discussion about writing and publishing papers.

Assessment: Having a test in this class did lots of things for me. First, it helped me really focus my learning and stuff some fact into my brain. Second, it gave me a lot more sympathy for my students who have to take tests. Third, it made me question the validity of testing in general and think more deeply about the outcomes I am trying to help my students achieve and what sorts of assessment measures could promote that learning.

Other: I worked on a book review of Disrupting Class. As I thought about disruptive innovations I feel that within the intersection of my studies and publishing that is room to target nonconsumers in important ways.

There's more to say...but not now!

Open: Sustainability

This week I focused on Yochai Benkler's Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials (http://www.benkler.org/Common_Wisdom.pdf)

One thing that impresses me about Benkler is his commitment to open publishing because it is the right thing to do. The fact that he personally releases books free and openly say a lot about his commitment to open education.

With regards to sustainability it is interesting to note how he describes the power of free time. He says, "A billion people in advanced economies have between two and six billion spare hours among them, every day. In order to harness two to six billion hours, the entire workforce of almost 340,000 workers employed by the entire motion picture and recording industries in the United States put together, assuming each worker worked forty hour weeks without taking a single vacation, for between three and eight and a half years!"

With that kind of free time every day it seems like there are few problems that could not be solved! Indeed this surplus time is one of the reasons that Wikipedia has been able to be so successful. So some might wonder, why haven't Wikipedia style textbooks taken off?

Benkler states, "The main problem with even a successful project seems to be that textbooks that look and feel like textbooks, and, more importantly, that comply with education department requirements, are not quite as susceptible to modularization as an encyclopedia or a newsletter like Slashdot. The most successful book on Wikibooks, for example, is the cookbook. But the cookbook had 1301 “chapters” as of July of 2005. In other words, each module was effectively a single recipe."

So are there sustainable solutions for textbooks? Particularly in fields that are not changing rapidly? I am involved in a project right now concerning Flatworld Knowledge, a company that is creating and distributing open textbooks. There business model is such that profit can be gained even by books that they are allowing free (and open) access to (more on this later).

As I was researching open textbooks and looking at sustainability issues I stumbled across an article that talks about motives people have for creating free textbooks. I believe that sustainbility is important, but not necessarily financial sustainability. I am persuaded by the volunteer hour count that Benkler cites and believe that incentives can be set forth to harness the power of this leisure time.

Below are other excerpts from Benkler's work that I found to be particularly important:

[all of the below are quotations--I'm not trying to integrate them, just quoting them because I want to save these excerpts.]

The problem of quality is best exemplified by the K-12 textbook market.i Significant consolidation in the past decade has left four major textbook publishers in the United States. At the same time, statewide adoption practices have meant that decisions by government officials in California, Texas, and Florida control the demand in roughly a quarter of the K-12 textbook markets. The combination has led to the content of most textbooks being determined through intense lobbying in the three state capitals. Because of the benefits of economies of scale in not producing different texts for these states, and then for others, textbooks have become relatively homogenized and aimed at some lowest common denominator—which may be challenging for states with cultures as different as those of Texas and California.

Beyond the sheer potential quantitative capacity, however one wishes to discount it to account for different levels of talent, knowledge, and motivation, a billion volunteers have qualities that make them more, rather than less, likely to produce what others want to read, see, listen to, or experience.

This leads to the more general statement of the problem of motivation. Our standard economic models for productive human action tend to assume that motivation is more or less homogenous, capable of aggregation, and reflects a utility value capable of summing within a single individual, even if not for purposes of interpersonal utility comparisons. This simple model was useful for economic modeling, but is wrong. There is now significant literature on the diversity of human motivation, on the availability of different forms of social, psychological, and material gain, and on the fact that there can be “motivation crowding out:” that is, that adding money to an activity will not necessarily increase the activity.iv Intuitively, this is hardly news to anyone who has not been indoctrinated in economics. That is, sometimes we do things for money.
Sometimes, however, we do not. Ranging from trivial acts like responding truthfully and with diligence to a stranger’s request for directions on the street, to quite substantial efforts we go to in order to help friends and family, or pursue a fun hobby, or do what we believe we ought to do as well adjusted members of society.

In the mid-1990s firm-centric views competed as strategies for searching and indexing the newly growing Web. The first were search engines like Altavista or Lycos. The second was Yahoo. The theory behind the search engines was that smart software developers would write the best possible algorithm to extract human meaning and relevance from a mechanical analysis of text and metatags in webpages. Yahoo’s innovation was to add human beings—its employees would look at websites, decide on their meaning and quality, and include and index them in a directory of the Web. In both cases the idea was that firms would pay smart employees to map the web, each in its own way. Both were largely wrong, and each in its own way lost to a competitor that used peer production instead. Google’s search algorithm, we have already seen, is aimed at the best possible capture of the opinions of website authors about which sites are good and relevant, rather than aiming at having the software itself be good enough to make that judgment mechanically. As for Yahoo, its peer produced alternative was the Open Directory Project. While Yahoo continues to be a successful company, it has done so by moving in very different directions. Its staff of paid employees could not effectively compete with sixty thousand volunteers, each monitoring one or two areas of particular interest to them, including and excluding sites as they spent small increments of time reading and surfing things they might well have spent time on anyway, but adding their knowledge in small increments to a volunteer run and peopled directory.

...Horner, for example, is considering a new system based on xWiki that would allow the implementation of a system with much smaller chunks, that would not be posted into a text, but into a database for peer review moderation. These, in turn, would be moderated, accepted, edited and or included. Such a system would also require integration of a reputation system, through which authors who contribute regularly and at high quality can be recognized by the system and given a greater role in moderating and editing the text so as to smooth it out. The trouble with such controls, however, is that they make it harder to capture the power of very large numbers of contributors. Indeed, the question of the extent to which Wikipedia would be and remain free for anyone to edit, with or without logging in, and without hierarchical preference for “authorized” and authoritative users was a critical, self-conscious, and contentious decision at the early stages of Wikipedia. It led Larry Page, who had been originally employed by Jimmy Wales to edit and set up the encyclopedia, to leave and vociferously criticize Wikipedia from the outside. But it turned out to have been a critically successful organizational choice. Whether greater modularization does indeed require tighter technical controls on contribution to maintain consistency, or whether in fact, the greater the modularization the lower the barriers necessary because no single contributor is likely to make a very large mistake, and because the contributions of many are required to move the project forward in these newly-smaller chunks, is a critical design question for the next phase of open textbook development.

This brings us to the second question, of whether or not, given such an open engine, educational materials, learning objects and contexts will in fact be authored, by whom, and with what degree of openness to further extension.