Working People of Holyoke IV: Holyoke Heritage State Park
Wikipedia provides the
basic information:
Holyoke Heritage State Park celebrates the history and culture of the City of Holyoke, Massachusetts. It is operated and managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. Park features include a visitor center with exhibits about paper manufacturing and Holyoke's industrial and cultural history. Admission to the park and visitor center is free.
The Holyoke Merry-Go-Round, the Children's Museum at Holyoke and the Volleyball Hall of Fame are located in the park.
The site in which Heritage State Park has been built was once the land used for the William Skinner Silk Mill. Heritage State Park was planned after Skinner's mill burned down [in 1980].
William Skinner's Silk Mill
Holyoke, Massachusetts (1887)
(Digital Treasures)###Labels: Documentation, Innovation, Learning resources
Measures of Employment and Unemployment
With so much attention and policy discussion nowadays understandably focused on high unemployment, it's important to have a reasonably clear idea of how overall employment and unemployment are measured.
In the US, producing the relevant data is the job of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which conducts two surveys each month:
The January 2010 issue of the
Economic Letter published by the
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reproduces a BLS
chart comparing the two:
Universe surveyed CPS: Civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and older.
CES: Nonfarm wage and salary jobs.
Type of survey CPS: Monthly sample survey of approximately 60,000 households.
CES: Monthly sample survey of approximately 150,000 businesses and government agencies covering 390,000 establishments.
Major outputs CPS: Measures labor force, employment and unemployment with significant demographic detail.
CES: Measures employment, hours and earnings with significant industrial and geographic detail.
Reference period CPS: Calendar week that includes the 12th of the month.
CES: Employer pay period that includes the 12th of the month.
Employment concept CPS: Estimates the number of employed persons.
- Counts multiple jobholders once.
- Includes individuals absent from work without pay.
CES: Estimates the number of nonfarm payroll jobs.
- Counts multiple jobholders for each payroll job.
- Includes only those receiving pay for the reference period.
Employment definition differences CPS: Includes unincorporated self-employed persons, agriculture and related workers, private household workers, unpaid family workers (persons working without formal pay in their family’s business) and workers on leave without pay.
CES: Excludes all the groups listed above, except for the logging component of agriculture and related industries.
Benchmark adjustments CES: No direct benchmark for employment; adjustments to underlying population base revised annually to intercensal estimates and every 10 years to the decennial census.
CES: Employment benchmarked annually to employment counts derived primarily from unemployment insurance tax records.
As the accompanying
article explains,
Both surveys have their strengths and weaknesses. The CPS provides a broader picture of nonfarm employment because it includes the unincorporated self-employed, unpaid family workers, private household employees and workers absent without pay. It may even partly capture off-the-books employment not reported in the CES. However, the CPS employment classification is based on interviewees’ descriptions of their jobs and doesn’t always agree with employers’ reporting in the CES ...
Analysts often view the CES as a better gauge of cyclical movements in employment by sector because of its higher sampling ratio. However, it’s subject to double counting because it may include persons with more than one job or those who change jobs in a given payroll period.
Because the CPS and the CES often diverge to a marked degree, the BLS also publishes an adjusted CPS that brings its definition of employment into closer alignment with that of the CES. Discrepencies between the two remain,
mainly related to differences in definition, size and concept of the two surveys. These differences range from sampling errors and benchmark revisions to off-the-books employment, the birth of new firms and varying job-to-job movements.
By taking the trouble to learn the basic differences between the CPS and the CES, you equip yourself to make sense of such seemingly contradictory data as those in the opening sentence of the BLS
Employment Situation News Release of February 5: "The unemployment rate fell from 10.0 to 9.7 percent in January, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-20,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today."
###Labels: Learning resources
When to Consider Agent-Based Modeling
As a follow-on to yesterday's
post about using agent-based simulation to model the economy, I'd like to suggest that the technically minded have a look at a
paper (pdf)
Charles M. Macal and
Michael J. North, both at
Argonne National Laboratory, presented at the 2009
Winter Simulation Conference.
The paper discusses both how to think about agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS), and how to actually do ABMS. The latter portion of the paper includes guidance on software and toolkits specially designed for ABMS.
Even the non-technically minded can benefit from reading through Macal and North's list of criteria for considering an agent-based approach to simulating a dynamic system. The eleven criteria — any one of which is sufficient to suggest an agent-based approach — are:
- The problem has a natural representation as being comprised of agents
- There are decisions and behaviors that can be well-defined.
- It is important that agents have behaviors that reflect how individuals actually behave (if known).
- It is important that agents adapt and change their behaviors.
- It is important that agents learn and engage in dynamic strategic interactions.
- It is important that agents have a dynamic relationship with other agents, and agent relationships form, change, and decay.
- It is important to model the processes by which agents form organizations, and adaptation and learning are important at the organization level.
- It is important that agents have a spatial component to their behaviors and interactions.
- The past is no predictor of the future because the processes of growth and change are dynamic.
- Scaling-up to arbitrary levels is important in terms of the number of agents, agent interactions and agent states.
- Process structural change needs to be an endogenous result of the model, rather than an input to the model.
Note that items 3 and 9 are particularly relevant to the argument for agent-based macroeconomic modeling put forward by Doyne Farmer and Duncan Foley, as discussed in yesterday's
post.
###Labels: Learning resources, Simulation, Systems thinking
Two Helpful Sales Tools
Back in April 2009
Geoffrey James posted "
The Ultimate Cold Calling Tool" at BNET.com. I just stumbled on it and like it, so I'm passing the link along.
James followed up in August with "
The Ultimate Prospect Qualification Tool, which you might also want to look at, though I'm afraid you'll find the format awkward.
###Labels: Learning resources
Academic Earth Update
Last February, I wrote a brief
post calling attention to
Academic Earth, a portal for videos of college lectures that was then in beta. The site is now fully functional and has notably expanded the number of universities and courses it covers.
The unversities — with the added schools marked with asterisks — are:
Berkeley
Columbia*
Harvard
Michigan*
MIT
NYU*
Princeton
Stanford
UCLA*
Yale
The list of subject areas is also a bit longer now (added subjects are marked with asterisks):
AP Test Prep*
Astronomy
Biology
Chemistry
Computer Science
Economics
Engineering
Entrepreneurship
Environmental Studies*
History
International Relations*
Law
Literature (broadened from "English")
Mathematics
Media Studies*
Medicine
Philosophy
Physics
Political Science
Pre-Med*
Psychology
Religious Studies (used to be "Religion")
I haven't personally sampled many of these courses, but can recommend "
Building Dynamic Websites," taught by
David J. Malan, a lecturer on computer science at Harvard College, to anyone interested in relatively advanced website development. The syllabus is
here.
For a more basic treatment of computers and the internet, you can try Prof. Malan's Harvard Extension School course, "
Understanding Computers and the Internet." The syllabus is
here (pdf).
###Labels: Learning resources
The CGIAR Knowledge Sharing Toolkit
As with any wiki, the
Knowledge Sharing Toolkit launched in March of last year by the
Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a work in progress. Though there are still plenty of blanks waiting to be filled in, the wiki already is a valuable compilation of tools and methods for facilitating knowledge sharing (KS).
Examples of the
tools for which the wiki currently has templated pages are blogs, intranets, language translation technologies, mobile phones, Skype, social media, tagging and social bookmarking, video, and, of course, wikis.
Examples of
methods (processes) covered are after action review, appreciative inquiry, critical moments of reflection, impact pathways, mediation, mentoring, Samoan circle, storytelling, speed geeking, and the World Cafe.
The designers of the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit offer help to users in identifying tools and methods of particular relevance to their needs by making suggestions for a number of contexts (not mutually exclusive) in which knowledge sharing is important:
- Planning, monitoring and evaluation
- Listening, gathering input, stakeholder involvement
- Supporting communities and networks
- Working, researching and collaborating together
- Meeting
- Creating, publishing and sharing content
- Advocacy
- Learning and training
- Improving impact through knowledge sharing in research
The page devoted to each of these contexts lists the sorts of questions that typically arise, and suggests tools, methods, and tags of likely relevance. (Each tool and method can be tagged by users. The list of tags is
here.)
As an example, you might look at the page for people undertaking
advocacy. You will see these four questions and the associated lists of tools, methods, and tags suggested as likely to lead to good answers:
How do we get input on our issues from key constituents?Tools and Methods: The World Cafe, Listening
Tags: relationship, collaboration, alliances
How do we make our issues visible to the people we want to reach? Internally and externally?Tools and Methods: Storytelling, Knowledge Fairs, Intranets, Blogs, Microblogging, Workplace Knowledge Sharing Tips, Rural Radio, Wikis
Tags: content, dissemination, information, offline
How do we use the web to inform our key publics on issues?Tools and Methods: Blogs, Microblogging, Frequently Asked Questions, Language Translation Technologies, Ritual Dissent
Tags: content, dissemination, information, offline
How do we make it easy to get people to act on issues and spread the word themselves?Tools and Methods: Blogs, Microblogging, Mobile Phones, Online Surveys, Rural Radio, Social Media, Social Networking Sites, Yellow Pages, Samoan Circle, Wikis, Peer Coaching, Peer Assists, Graphic Facilitation, Good Practices, Community Interactive Theater, Chat or Talk Shows
Tags: relationship, collaboration, online, offline
To polish off the guidance on sources of knowledge about how best to pursue advocacy, the page concludes with a list of additional tags with a decent probability of leading to useful pages in the wiki — namely, advocacy, alliances, collaboration, content, dissemination, information, networks, offline, online, relationship, and stakeholders.
For more of an overview of the thinking behind the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit, you can read a June 2008
report written by Gerry Toomey, who has worked as a consultant for CGIAR and the Knowledge Sharing Project.
###Labels: Knowledge management, Learning resources, Persuasion, Taxonomy and tagging
HP Intermediate Excel 2007 Course
I have now worked my way through the Intermediate Excel 2007 course mentioned in my
post of a week-and-a-half ago outlining the content of the introductory Excel course offered at Hewlett Packard's
Learning Center.
The intermediate course matches the introductory course in terms of quality. It is well-organized, offers plenty of well-designed hands-on examples, and provides learning checks at the end of each lesson.
The four lessons are:
- Functions — Reviews some of the most commonly used Excel functions (e.g., SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, COUNT, PMT,ROUNDUP, TODAY, and NOW) and explains the Help functionality that eases use of any of the innumerable functions available in the program. The lesson also covers absolute cell referencing and its role in formula copying; and creating named cell ranges.
- Working with multiple worksheets — Teaches use of multiple worksheets within a single workbook. Covers naming, creating, and deleting sheets; displaying and arranging sheets; copying and moving sheets; formating sheet tabs; creating formula and function references to cells on multiple sheets; and linking to content from other workbooks.
- Finding, sorting and filtering data — Covers Excel's most commonly used sorting and filtering capabilities. Other topics include using Excel to create a flat file database, importing data from other applications, finding and replacing data, splitting data into multiple columns, and concatenating data.
- Advanced formatting — Topics include themes, cell styles, sharing custom styles between workbooks, (e.g., by creating a template), creating conditional formatting (e.g., showing a number in red if it is negative), and using custom number formats.
Once you're done with the intermediate tutorial, you might be looking as I am, for the next level of instruction. HP promises that a two-part advanced tutorial is on its way. The first part deals with data analysis, and the second with creating charts and graphics.
You can sign up to be notified when the advanced tutorial becomes available
here (Part 1) and
here (Part 2). (Judging from what Google turns up, it appears that this course is already available from other sources, but not on-demand and for free.)
###Labels: Learning resources
MIT Course on Project Management IV: Online Textbook
The final item from
Fred Moavenzadeh's course in Project Management that I want to call attention to is its use of an
online textbook by
Chris Hendrickson, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.
The book is
Project Management for Construction: Fundamental Concepts for Owners, Engineers, Architects and Builders. The most recent updating to the text was done in the summer of 2008.
Prof. Hendrickson and Tung Au, a former professor of civil engineering at Carnegie Mellon who was Hendrickson's co-author for the original 1989 edition, emphasize that the book is written from the project owner's point of view. They explain that
Some profound implications for the objectives and methods of project management result from this perspective:- The "life cycle" of costs and benefits from initial planning through operation and disposal of a facility are relevant to decision making. An owner is concerned with a project from the cradle to the grave. Construction costs represent only one portion of the overall life cycle costs.
- Optimizing performance at one stage of the process may not be beneficial overall if additional costs or delays occur elsewhere. For example, saving money on the design process will be a false economy if the result is excess construction costs.
- Fragmentation of project management among different specialists may be necessary, but good communication and coordination among the participants is essential to accomplish the overall goals of the project. New information technologies can be instrumental in this process, especially the Internet and specialized Extranets.
- Productivity improvements are always of importance and value. As a result, introducing new materials and automated construction processes is always desirable as long as they are less expensive and are consistent with desired performance.
- Quality of work and performance are critically important to the success of a project since it is the owner who will have to live with the results.
In essence, adopting the viewpoint of the owner focuses attention on the cost effectiveness of facility construction rather than competitive provision of services by the various participants.
I've reproduced the table of contents for the book below. The first three chapters provide an overview of construction project management, while the remaining chapters cover specific project management functions and techniques.
1Chapter 1. The Owners' Perspective1.1 Introduction
1.2 The Project Life Cycle
1.3 Major Types of Construction
1.4 Selection of Professional Services
1.5 Construction Contractors
1.6 Financing of Constructed Facilities
1.7 Legal and Regulatory Requirements
1.8 The Changing Environment of the Construction Industry
1.9 The Role of Project Managers
Chapter 2. Organizing for Project Management2.1 What is Project Management?
2.2 Trends in Modern Management
2.3 Strategic Planning and Project Programming
2.4 Effects of Project Risks on Organization
2.5 Organization of Project Participants
2.6 Traditional Designer-Constructor Sequence
2.7 Professional Construction Management
2.8 Owner-Builder Operation
2.9 Turnkey Operation
2.10 Leadership and Motivation for the Project Team
2.11 Interpersonal Behavior in Project Organizations
2.12 Perceptions of Owners and Contractors
Chapter 3. The Design and Construction Process3.1 Design and Construction as an Integrated System
3.2 Innovation and Technological Feasibility
3.3 Innovation and Economic Feasibility
3.4 Design Methodology
3.5 Functional Design
3.6 Physical Structures
3.7 Geotechnical Engineering Investigation
3.8 Construction Site Environment
3.9 Value Engineering
3.10 Construction Planning
3.11 Industrialized Construction and Pre-fabrication
3.12 Computer-Aided Engineering
3.13 Pre-Project Planning
Chapter 4. Labor, Material and Equipment Utilization4.1 Historical Perspective
4.2 Labor Productivity
4.3 Factors Affecting Job-Site Productivity
4.4 Labor Relations in Construction
4.5 Problems in Collective Bargaining
4.6 Materials Management
4.7 Material Procurement and Delivery
4.8 Inventory Control
4.9 Tradeoffs of Costs in Materials Management.
4.10 Construction Equipment
4.11 Choice of Equipment and Standard Production Rates
4.12 Construction Processes
4.13 Queues and Resource Bottlenecks
Chapter 5. Cost Estimation 5.1 Costs Associated with Constructed Facilities
5.2 Approaches to Cost Estimation
5.3 Type of Construction Cost Estimates
5.4 Effects of Scale on Construction Cost
5.5 Unit Cost Method of Estimation
5.6 Methods for Allocation of Joint Costs
5.7 Historical Cost Data
5.8 Cost Indices
5.9 Applications of Cost Indices to Estimating
5.10 Estimate Based on Engineer's List of Quantities
5.11 Allocation of Construction Costs Over Time
5.12 Computer Aided Cost Estimation
5.13 Estimation of Operating Costs
Chapter 6. Economic Evaluation of Facility Investments6.1 Project Life Cycle and Economic Feasibility
6.2 Basic Concepts of Economic Evaluation
6.3 Costs and Benefits of a Constructed Facility
6.4 Interest Rates and the Costs of Capital
6.5 Investment Profit Measures
6.6 Methods of Economic Evaluation
6.7 Depreciation and Tax Effects
6.8 Price Level Changes: Inflation and Deflation
6.9 Uncertainty and Risk
6.10 Effects of Financing on Project Selection
6.11 Combined Effects of Operating and Financing Cash Flows
6.12 Public versus Private Ownership of Facilities
6.13 Economic Evaluation of Different Forms of Ownership
Chapter 7. Financing of Constructed Facilities7.1 The Financing Problem
7.2 Institutional Arrangements for Facility Financing
7.3 Evaluation of Alternative Financing Plans
7.4 Secured Loans with Bonds, Notes and Mortgages
7.5 Overdraft Accounts
7.6 Refinancing of Debts
7.7 Project versus Corporate Finance
7.8 Shifting Financial Burdens
7.9 Construction Financing for Contractors
7.10 Effects of Other Factors on a Contractor's Profits
Chapter 8. Construction Pricing and Contracting8.1 Pricing for Constructed Facilities
8.2 Contract Provisions for Risk Allocation
8.3 Risks and Incentives on Construction Quality
8.4 Types of Construction Contracts
8.5 Relative Costs of Construction Contracts
8.6 Principles of Competitive Bidding
8.7 Principles of Contract Negotiation
8.8 Negotiation Simulation: An Example
8.9 Resolution of Contract Disputes
Chapter 9. Construction Planning9.1 Basic Concepts in the Development of Construction Plans
9.2 Choice of Technology and Construction Method
9.3 Defining Work Tasks
9.4 Defining Precedence Relationships Among Activities
9.5 Estimating Activity Durations
9.6 Estimating Resource Requirements for Work Activities
9.7 Coding Systems
Chapter 10. Fundamental Scheduling Procedures10.1 Relevance of Construction Schedules
10.2 The Critical Path Method
10.3 Calculations for Critical Path Scheduling
10.4 Activity Float and Schedules
10.5 Presenting Project Schedules
10.6 Critical Path Scheduling for Activity-on-Node and with Leads, Lags, and Windows
10.7 Calculations for Scheduling with Leads, Lags and Windows
10.8 Resource Oriented Scheduling
10.9 Scheduling with Resource Constraints and Precedences
Chapter 11. Advanced Scheduling Techniques11.1 Use of Advanced Scheduling Techniques
11.2 Scheduling with Uncertain Durations
11.3 Calculations for Monte Carlo Schedule Simulation
11.4 Crashing and Time/Cost Tradeoffs
11.5 Scheduling in Poorly Structured Problems
11.6 Improving the Scheduling Process
Chapter 12. Cost Control, Monitoring and Accounting12.1 The Cost Control Problem
12.2 The Project Budget
12.3 Forecasting for Activity Cost Control
12.4 Financial Accounting Systems and Cost Accounts
12.5 Control of Project Cash Flows
12.6 Schedule Control
12.7 Schedule and Budget Updates
12.8 Relating Cost and Schedule Information
Chapter 13. Quality Control and Safety During Construction13.1 Quality and Safety Concerns in Construction
13.2 Organizing for Quality and Safety
13.3 Work and Material Specifications
13.4 Total Quality Control
13.5 Quality Control by Statistical Methods
13.6 Statistical Quality Control with Sampling by Attributes
13.7 Statistical Quality Control with Sampling by Variables
13.8 Safety
Chapter 14. Organization and Use of Project Information14.1 Types of Project Information
14.2 Accuracy and Use of Information
14.3 Computerized Organization and Use of Information
14.4 Organizing Information in Databases
14.5 Relational Model of Databases
14.6 Other Conceptual Models of Databases
14.7 Centralized Database Management Systems
14.8 Databases and Applications Programs
14.9 Information Transfer and Flow
__________
1 In the table of contents above, I have omitted (1) the section for references that appears in every chapter, (2) the section for footnotes that appears in every chapter except chapter 6, and (3) the section for problems that appears in chapters 4 through 14.
###Labels: Learning resources
MIT Course on Project Management I: Training
This past spring
Fred Moavenzadeh, a professor of systems engineering and civil and environmental engineering at MIT, taught a
course in Project Management whose PowerPoint lecture notes (along with other materials) are now available at MIT's
OpenCourseWare website.
In this and a few subsequent posts, I'll highlight items that I found of particular interest that are also understandable to someone accessing the PowerPoint slides online without the benefit of hearing Prof. Moavenzadeh talk about them in class.
The graphic below, from
lecture 22 (pdf), shows a three-tier program for training engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) project managers.
Training for EPC Project Management
(click to enlarge)
(Infrastructure World LLC,
via Prof. Fred Moavenazdeh)If I were in Prof. Moavenazdeh's class, I would ask for details about the curriculum for Tier III, a matter of some importance since moving engineers more or less smoothly from technical roles to general management is a notoriously
###Labels: Employee development, Learning resources
HP Beginning Excel 2007 Course
If you want a well-structured introduction to Microsoft's Excel 2007, I can recommend the
course Hewlett Packard offers at their
online learning center.
The course consists of four lessons, which you can complete in just a few hours (or, if you wish, tackle at a more leisurely pace). The lessons are:
- Getting started with Microsoft Excel 2007 — spreadsheet basics.
- Creating your first worksheet — entering data, editing existing data, entering repeating data efficiently, selecting and manipulating ranges (groups) of cells, and moving and copying data within a worksheet.
- Formula and function basics — introduction to use of simple math formulas (involving addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and exponentiation) and Excel's built-in functions (e.g., calculating an average).
- Formatting basics — simple text, cell, and page formatting.
Having worked through the course myself, I can attest to its clarity, intelligent choice of material to cover for beginning learners, good illustrations, and accuracy.
Once you have finished the introductory course, the HP Learning Center has several options for learning more about Excel, including an
intermediate course. (Several of the Learning Center's Excel offerings are brief video clips showing how to complete specific tasks, such as creating a
pivot table.)
###Labels: eLearning, Learning resources
Writing that Makes a Winning Impression
Back when I was in fourth grade, I got a homework assignment that involved writing about Abraham Lincoln. I loved Mr. Lincoln and plunged right in.
The result was a nice long text, largely cribbed from our family's encyclopedia, that I proudly showed my mother. Instead of being bowled over by my dedication and industry, she read the first few sentences and then looked at me and said, "Karen, you know, when you write something, it's supposed to be interesting."
I was mightily taken aback. The idea of being interesting had never crossed my little nine-year-old mind. However, as soon as my mother brought it up, it became firmly implanted. I've been highly conscious of the "make it interesting" criterion ever since.
This idea applies to just about everything one writes, including, for instance ... cover letters.
At the beginning of the month,
Dan Heath wrote a brief column, "
How Do I Make My Resume Stick?" for FastCompany.com. The whole half-page is worth reading. Let me just note his key point:
... the cover letter is the hero of our story. It's the place where you can make yourself memorable. Ideas stick because they are full of concrete details, emotion, surprises, etc.
Heath provieds a two-item checklist:
- Give headlines.
- Defend the headlines with stories.
Clearly, the task confronting a jobseeker trying to create a sticky cover letter / resume combo is not conceptually difficult. What's needed is plenty of practice in meeting the requirements for stickiness.
You can think of such practice as a convenient by-product of the job search process itself. The important thing is to set a firm standard for yourself of being not only responsive to individual employers' job specs, but also of presenting your match to those requirements in compelling fashion. Dashing off formulaic cover letters is not going to do make you stand out. Presenting a vivid, concise, and engaging pitch for yourself will.
Another, somewhat longer set of guidelines for making winning pitches is available in a short Hewlett-Packard Learning Center course called
Marketing Writing Tips: Five Mistakes to Avoid. Though the course is addressed to product marketers rather than job seekers, much (not all) of the advice it offers is applicable to written communications with prospective employers.
There is a short section for each of the five mistakes alluded to in the course title:
- Writing headlines that fail to lead
(Recall that headlines are item 1 on Dan Heath's checklist.)
- Taking the wrong tone
(The course text reinforces Heath's advice to combine use of a prospective employer's preferred vocabulary — even if it includes buzzwords — with concrete detail concerning how you fit the employer's needs.)
- Creating content without focus
- Using too many words, too few details
- Failing to include a clear call to action
(Something to be appropriately restrained about in a cover letter to an employer.)
I'd mention that there are a couple of typos to overlook in the course text, and a quote attributed to Einstein that is usually credited to Edison, but these are minor miscues. In terms of overall quality, I rate the advice in the course as well-presented and well-modulated.
###Labels: Communication, Hiring and getting hired, Learning resources
The Harvard Business School Version of Participant-Centered Learning
Harvard Business School has made a
collection of video and text materials available that elucidate the school's approach to helping students develop skills and powers of judgment that business managers need in order to be effective. This resource was produced in 2004, drawing on sessions of a
colloquium on participant-centered learning that the business school continues to offer every year.
There are three sections to the resource:
- "A Case Study Teacher in Action"
The teacher in question is David Garvin.
(Content map here.)
- "Answers, Insights, and Advice 1"
– A 34-minute video clip making the case for participant-centered learning, along with eight shorter clips (all less than three minutes) dealing with such topics as two-way learning, advice for first-time teachers, and qualities of effective teachers.
– Fourteen short clips (the longest is just over four minutes) offering advice on how the teacher and students should prepare for classes that use the participant-centered learning approach.
– A nine-minute clip on the challenges of implementing participant-centered learning, along with six short clips (all less than four minutes) offering further advice on how to adopt and support the technique. There is also a compilation of challenges a school faces in introducing participant-centered learning, and a collection of comments about their own experiences in transitioning to participant-centered learning that members of the colloquium offered.
(Content map here.)
- "Answers, Insights, and Advice 2"
– Thirteen brief clips (none more than two-and-a-half minutes) on how to create a climate for learning.
– Thirteen brief clips (the longest just over two-and-a-half minutes) on teaching techniques.
– Eight brief clips (the longest just over two-and-a-half minutes) on evaluating how well learning is proceeding.
– Seven brief clips (none more than four minutes) on pacing and on soliciting and acting on student feedback.
(Content map here.)
Transcrips are provided for all the video clips. You can read bios of the eight professors who appear in the clips
here.
###Labels: Classroom training, Learning resources, Teaching
Michael Sandel's Course on Justice
The fabled course on "Justice" (aka Moral Reasoning 22) that Michael Sandel has been teaching at Harvard since 1980 is now available in a video version that you can access
online or on
PBS. Harvard and WBGH Boston co-produced the series of twelve hour-long episodes.
1Each episode is divided into two half-hour segments, as summarized in the listing below. Please note that the brief descriptions I give here the barest sketches of the content. Fuller synopses are provided at the "Justice"
website. The dates in the listing let you know when a particular episode becomes available online. The first two episodes are already available, and a new episode will be added each Sunday through November 29.
The Twelve Episodes of "Justice"- 9/13 The Moral Side of Murder
Would you kill one person if you knew doing so would save five other people?
The Case for Cannibalism
Is the principle of utilitarianism right? Should we always do what ever will produce "the greatest good for the greatest number"?
- 9/20 Putting a Price Tag on Life
Is it possible to put a price on a person's life? If so, how exactly do you do it? Do you follow the principle of utilitarianism? some other principle?
How to Measure Pleasure
Is John Stuart Mill right that utilitarianism is compatible with protection of individual rights?
- 9/27 Free to Choose
What are the arguments for and against libertarianism?
Who Owns Me?
Is progressive taxation defensible?
- 10/4 This Land is My Land
How valid is John Locke's view that all people have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property?
Consenting Adults
Is Locke right that tax laws passed by a majority, but not by 100% of the people in a society, are legitimate?
- 10/11 Hired Guns
Should a nation's army be formed via conscription, or on a volunteer basis?
Motherhood for Sale
Is surrogate motherhood OK?
- 10/18 Mind Your Motive
Is Kant right that a good act has moral worth only if it is done for the right reason, namely out of a recognition of duty?
The Supreme Principle of Morality
Is Kant's concept of the categorical imperative sound? (The categorical imperative directs us to "identify the principle expressed in [an] action, and then ask whether that principle could ever become a universal law that every other human being could act on.")
- 10/25 A Lesson in Lying
When, if ever, is lying OK? When is being misleading equivalent to lying?
A Deal is a Deal
Is John Rawls right that we can derive fair principles only if we do so by imagining ourselves behind a "veil of ignorance" that prevents us from knowing our own personal socio-economic position?
- 11/1 What's a Fair Start?
Is Rawls right that the only fair distribution of income, wealth, and opportunities is one that is equal for all members of society?
What Do We Deserve?
A recap that compares libertarianism, the meritocratic principle, and John Rawls's views concerning the distribution of income, wealth, and life opportunities.
- 11/8 Arguing Affirmative Action
What are the pros and cons of affirmative action?
What's the Purpose?
Is Aristotle right that "justice is a matter of fitting a person's virtues with an appropriate role"?
- 11/15 The Good Citizen
Is Aristotle right that "those citizens who contribute most to the purpose of the community are the ones who should be most rewarded?" What is the purpose of any given community?
Freedom vs. Fit
Does Aristotle give too little consideration to individual rights?
- 11/22The Claims of Community
Do people have obligations to their community, above and beyond obligations to humanity in general?
Where Our Loyalty Lies
Can obligations of loyalty to a community or country outweigh universal duties?
- 11/29 Debating Same Sex Marriage
How do you decide if same sex marriage is OK?
The Good Life
"Is it necessary to reason about the good life in order to decide what rights people have and what is just? If so, how is it possible to argue about the nature of the good life?"
Accompanying MaterialsThe video for each episode is accompanied by a number of collateral resources:
- Synopses of the two segments
- A public discussion circle (forum)
- A particular justice or fairness issue on which you can vote Yes or No
- A quiz to help you review
- A short list of related readings
- Two discussion guides, one at the beginner level, the other advanced
- Teaser questions for the next episode
If you'd like to watch a trailer for the "Justice" course, with beautiful footage shot in Harvard's Sanders Theater, you can go
here.
As a final note, if you're interested in knowing more about Sandel's book to accompany the course,
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?", published this month, you can read about it
here.
__________
1 As explained in an
article in the September 26, 2009 edition of the
New York Times, the video footage of class sessions comes from 2005 and 2006.
###Labels: Classroom training, Critical thinking, Learning resources
The Rural Finance Learning Centre
As a follow-on to yesterday's
post, I'd like to call attention to the excellent training for microfinance organizations that is available at the
Rural Finance Learning Centre. RFLC is
a web site hosted and managed by the rural finance specialists in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The RFLC is currently funded by FAO, GTZ [Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit], IFAD [International Fund for Agricultural Development] and World Bank as part of a project called "Improving Capacity Building in Rural Finance" (CABFIN). The project objective is to encourage wider access to the extensive resources which are available for capacity building and training in rural finance.
RFLC, publicly available since 2004, has collected and organized, by type and topic, a wealth of learning resources — 1,804 "knowledge objects" as of today. Visitors can navigate the site in English, Spanish, French, and Russian.
I've browsed through all the sections of the site and would encourage anyone with an interest in learning about microfinance to do the same. As examples of what's available I'd cite two of the online lessons RFLC has posted. The entire set of lessons is divided into four sections:
1. Basic concepts1.1 New paradigm rural finance - what is it?
1.2 Microfinance - the hope and the hype
1.3 The importance of savings
1.4 Financial service providers and the law
1.5 Commercial banks and microfinance
2. Understanding client enterprises2.1 The financial reality of enterprise
2.2 Collecting and analysing financial information from enterprises
2.3 Rates of return and the cost of money
3. Managing financial services3.1 Understanding the accounts of financial service providers
3.2 Moving towards self-sufficiency — subsidies and profitability planning
3.3 Avoiding the "downside" of microfinance
3.4 Managing arrears and defaults
4. Choosing strategies4.1 Using and promoting groups
4.2 Taking gender into account
4.3 Adopting a client-driven approach
The lessons I reviewed were
3.2 Moving towards self-sufficiency — subsidies and profitability planning, and
3.3 Avoiding the "downside" of microfinance. Both were exemplary in their use of accessible, colloquial language; incorporation of interactivity in a way that encourages active learning (snd without resorting to extraneous bells and whistles); and solid grounding in the practical aspects of microfinance.
###Labels: Business acumen, eLearning, Learning resources
A Dreamweaver Tutorial
I've been gearing up to author a new Streamline website, and in the process have been familiarizing myself with what I can do with Adobe's
Dreamweaver software.
A
tutorial I found helpful (despite its sprinkling of typos) is available at BestWebDesignz.com. The tutorial's eighteen brief sections cover the ten steps it defines for creating a web site with Dreamweaver:
- Define the new web site (Section 2 of the tutorial).
- Create a template (Section 3 of the tutorial) — Note that the tutorial does not mention the availability of predefined templates in Dreamweaver for users who do not want to begin from scratch. For more information, see Adobe's Help section on predesigned layouts.
For users who do intend to start from scratch, the tutorial recommends first designing the layout in an image editor such as Fireworks CS4.1 As you create your template, you access your Fireworks images from wherever you have stored them on your hard drive.
- Design your template page (Sections 4, 6, 7, 8, and 16 of the tutorial) You need to understand the concepts of floating an element, clearing a float, defining classes, and repeating a background image.
- Design your CSS style sheet (Section 5 of the tutorial) — You need to understand the concepts of division and box. Note that Dreamweaver provides sample style sheets to help those who don't want to start from scratch.
- Insert editable regions (Section 9 of the tutorial).
- Create the pages of your site using the template (Sections 10, 11, and 12 of the tutorial).
- Link all the pages together (Section 13 of the tutorial).
- (optional) Create a form (Sections 14 and 15 of the tutorial).
- Check your site in the browsers you are supporting (Section 17 of the tutorial).
- Upload your site (Section 18 of the tutorial) — Note that if you're working with collaborators who may be editing the site files, you should enable checking in and checking out to ensure proper version control.
In order to be manageable, the BestWebDesignz tutorial covers only a basic portion of Dreamweaver's functionality. For more complete information, you can consult Adobe's
online help. There you will find guidance on such topics as:
- meeting accessibility requirements
- head content — elements that describe the information concerning the page (used by search engines and for accessibility). Head content includes such items as page title, content type (i.e., document type), keywords, description of the page content, and author.
- tips for ensuring that web pages created in Dreamweaver display well on mobile devices.
__________
1 The "CS" in CS4 stands for "Creative Suite." CS4 is the current version for Adobe's Creative Suite family of software, which, in addition to Dreamweaver and Fireworks, includes Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Flash, Contribute, After Effects, Premiere, Soundbooth, OnLocation, Encore, Bridge, Device Central, and Version Cue.
###Labels: Learning resources
The Maturity Model for DITA
As a follow-on to yesterday's
post dealing with DITA (the Darwin Information Typing Architecture), I'd like to call attention to a
white paper (pdf) explaining how an organization can adopt DITA incrementally.
(click to enlarge)
DITA Maturity Model
(JustSystems [pdf])The above graphic shows the six levels that
Michael Priestley (IBM) and
Amber Swope (DITA Strategies), authors of the white paper, define for gradually expanding the scope of an organization's implementation of DITA.
Level 1: Topics — Migrate existing XML content to DITA — using the appropriate topic type for each chunk of information — in order to establish a single source for each topic. "You can easily generate the same information in multiple formats by specifying a different output type when you publish."
Level 2: Scalable reuse — Enable flexible reuse of information by using maps to assemble each deliverable, such as a manual or a Web page. "Because each map is specific to a deliverable, you can optimize the content to include the organization of the content and the links between the topics for each deliverable type."
Level 3: Specialization and customization — Achieve quality and consistency by defining the content types required to meet different author and audience needs and specifying how to meet those needs using structured, typed content. "In addition to creating new structural standards, organizations may choose to customize transforms to provide customized output deliverables, such as training materials or data sheets."
Level 4: Automation and integration — Adopt a full content model by explicitly defining the different types of content required to meet different author and audience needs, and specifying how to meet these needs using structured, typed content. "Organizations need a CMS [
content management system] to effectively control and automate the content development life cycle. In addition to storing content and providing versioning control, the CMS provides workflow automation support that assists authors in creating, reusing, and publishing. ... In addition, you need to define a robust metadata model to support the content model and apply it to all topics. Lastly, you must have agreed-upon content development processes in order to automate them with workflow control."
Level 5: Semantics on demand — Achieve dynamic personalization by using DITA as a cross-application, cross-silo tool. "This ... becomes a strategy that covers every source of semantic data or content: DITA becomes the common currency between semantic applications. Data can be exposed as DITA maps; structured or semi-structured content can be exposed as DITA topics at various levels of specialization; and unstructured content such as PDFs, images, or multimedia files can be wrapped using DITA maps to provide a common interface for associating and storing titles, descriptions, and metadata."
Level 6: Universal semantic ecosystem — Achieve universal knowledge management. "DITA becomes the semantic interchange standard for cross-organization, cross-standard, universal content use. ... [O]rganizations that make the move to DITA become part of a semantic ecosystem that enables information sharing and collaboration where and when it’s required, without expensive infrastructure negotiations."
You can read a Q&A with Priestley and Swope, in which they talk about the ABCs of the DITA Maturity Model,
here. Note that Priestley and Swope acknowledge that Levels 5 and 6 are pretty much aspirations at the moment. Even Level 4 implementation of DITA is infrequent, so far.
###Labels: Documentation, Knowledge management, Learning resources, Taxonomy and tagging
Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA)
If you are involved in production of documentation that can benefit from chunking and reuse of various modules, you should know about DITA — the Darwin Information Typing Architecture.
DITA was initially developed by IBM, which donated the system in 2004 to
OASIS — the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. OASIS is now the body that maintains DITA standards.
As explained in IBM's 2001 "
Introduction to the Darwin Information Typing Architecture," DITA
is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating "information-typed" modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web.
Over the years, the variety of materials produced using DITA has expanded beyond technical documentation. Also, aesthetically aware authors have advanced beyond spare, default formatting. You can see a sample of recent DITA Web output that includes video
here. This sample is an appealing contrast to more heavily text-based documentation, such as that
here.
DITA's core design principles are:
Topic orientation — DITA is used to create discrete units of information, each of which covers a specific subject with a specific intent.
Topic aggregation — Self-contained topics are combined with other topics to produce documents suited for particular purposes and audiences.
Strong typing — Document type defintions (DTDs) and
schemas guarantee that DITA topic types follow identical information structures.
Specialization — DITA enables extending basic topic types to new types adapted for a particular use.
Common base class — A top-level topic type provides “fallback” for all specialized types. This ensures that content that contains specialized types is compatible with DITA implementations that do not include these particular types.
Once topics have been created, how some or all of them are used in a particular document is defined by a
map. The map organizes the chosen set of topics into a hierarchy (topics and subtopics) and sequence. Use of maps enables a different organization for different deliverables. It also enables reuse of topics.
OASIS's DITA
FAQ provides a good complement to the DITA knowledge base you can access
here. For a practical guide to using DITA, you can read and work through
Louise Kasemeier's 2007 manual and tutorial,
DITA for Solo Writers (pdf).
One last point: The reason this architecture is named after Charles Darwin is explained
here.
###Labels: Documentation, Knowledge management, Learning resources, Taxonomy and tagging
The President of the New York Fed on Lessons Learned from the Financial Crisis
On June 26,
William C. Dudley, the President and CEO of the
New York Fed, spoke at the annual
Bank for International Settlements conference in Basel, Switzerland. His topic was lessons learned from the financial crisis we've experienced over the past two years.
Since Dudley's
remarks, as posted at the New York Fed website, are clearly organized, and only about 4½ pages in length, I'll simply recommend that you read through them. To whet your appetite, here, slightly edited, are the summary recommendations with which Dudley concludes:
- Do a better job understanding interconnectedness. This means changing how we oversee and supervise financial intermediaries.
- Change the system so that it is more self-dampening.
- Improve incentives.
- Increase transparency.
- Develop additional policy instruments. For example, we might give a systemic risk regulator the authority to establish overall leverage limits, or collateral and collateral haircut requirements, across the system. This would give the financial authorities the ability to limit leverage and more directly influence risk premia, and this might prove useful in limiting the size of future asset bubbles.
###Labels: Learning resources, Risk management, Systems thinking
Browser Compatibility Best Practices
The learning aids at
developer.com are generally more technical than trainers need for their work, but there is one particular item I've benefited from because it addresses questions I've had concerning how to develop the Streamline Training & Development website in a way that ensures compatibility with all major browsers.
Jeff Ryan, an
enterprise architect, has written a
tutorial about six printed pages long that explains how the creation and widespread adoption of Web standards has simplified the process of developing a website that will render correctly for visitors using different browsers.
The key portions of Ryan's article for me, and I suspect for other people who are not hardcore software developers, are the sections on best practices and pitfalls.
Ryan describes eight best practices:
- Use Firefx as the primary browser for development because Firefox adheres closely to W3C standards.
- In development, periodically test the application in Internet Explorer and other supported browsers. This testing should encompass different versions of the browsers.
- Use Internet Explorer as the primary browser for quality assurance. This will help catch errors that slipped through the testing done during the development phase.
- Specify a DOCTYPE to explicitly declare the structure of the webpage. Ryan recommends specifying strict use of HTML or XHTML. "The strict DOCTYPE keeps you honest in adhering to standard and valid markup document structure."
- Utilize global CSS to separate document structure from presentation and to abstract browser presentation differences.
- Use third-party libraries in lieu of custom JavaScript code for cross browser support.
- Utilize Firebug and web developer plug-ins. "It is very easy to inspect and manipulate the structure, presentation and behavior elements of your web page at run time using these tools."
- Develop a browser compatibility knowledge base. For an individual such as myself, who is doing light-duty web development, this means keeping track of lessons learned in any convenient way that allows easy retrieval and review.
There are three pitfalls that Ryan highlights:
- Using browser-specific plug-ins (e.g., ActiveX controls). Doing this is obviously asking for compatibility problems.
- Using code forks. This is an old-fashioned, time-consuming way of catering for multiple browsers that produces hard-to-maintain code.
- Not considering the implications of any CSS hacks you use. CSS hacks, which take advantage of browser departures from adherence to standards, may be adopted to work around browser compatibility issues. "However, care must be used to ensure they do not create maintainability issues, nor impede behavior in future browser versions."
For me, the bottom line in seeking to understand best practice in achieving browser compatibility for my website is: I end up with pages that my visitors find user-friendly, that have been produced as efficiently as possible, and that can be maintained efficiently.
###Labels: Learning resources
Sloan Course: "Communication for Managers"
The
MIT OpenCourseWare site recently added materials for a Sloan School of Management course in
Communication for Managers, taught by Neal Hartman during the Fall 2008 semester.
Though the materials are not complete — lecture notes for nine of the fourteen class meetings are missing — there are a number of items that anyone interested in this particular skill area will find helpful, even if only as a refresher.
I'd suggest starting with the
notes for the course wrap-up (pdf), which provide an overview of the principles Hartman emphasizes in the course:
- Four types of leadership:
- Visioning.
- Relating.
- Inventing.
- Sensemaking.
- How to do a situation analysis as the basis for devising a communication strategy:
- Define your purpose.
- Analyze your audience.
- Assess your credibility.
- Analyze the cultural context.
- Factors to consider in deciding on your communication strategy:
- Managerial style — distinguished in terms of writer/speaker control and the degree of audience involvement.
- Structure of the communication — direct statement of your main points or recommendation, followed by rationale vs. indirect approach that begins with subsidiary points or with arguments that set the stage for your recommendation.
- Content.
- Communication channel.
- Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion:
- Liking — People are inclined to say yes to requests of a person they know and like.
- Reciprocity — People repay in kind.
- Social proof — People follow the lead of others who are similar to them.
- Consistency — In response to personal and interpersonal pressure, people tend to follow through on their clear commitments.
- Authority — People defer to experts.
- Scarcity — Opportunities seem more valuable when their availability is limited.
- The Minto Pyramid (see graphic below, which you can click to enlarge) is a good device for organizing your ideas when you are recommending a change of some sort.
- Principles of effective design of visual aids:
- Consistency in formatting.
- Appropriate titles.
- Purposeful use of color and special effects.
- Clear and uncluttered layout.
- Principles of effective document design:
- Use of subheads to show structure.
- Use of lists to highlight important and conceptually parallel information.
- Use of white space to highlight material and to create transitions through indenting, columns, and lines.
- In-text highlighting of key words and phrases.
- Use of tables and graphs to make evidence more legible.
- Principles of effective cover letters for resumes.
- Importance of awareness of values and perceptions that differentiate cultures around the world.
- Developing your ability to listen actively.
Hartman provides several tools to assist you in preparing your written and oral communications, notably a
Strategy Checklist (pdf), a
Communication Planner (pdf), and a
Presentation Planner (pdf).
###Labels: Communication, Documentation, Hiring and getting hired, Leadership, Learning resources, Persuasion, Upward influence
