Make It Easier To Learn

Posted on by
1

I am really enjoying listening to Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman.  It’s good enough I’m probably going to want it on paper by the end of the book. I was interested in it due to my interest in clear thinking, but I also had a predisposition to be interested in the author due to his fascinating work on happiness:

There are a number of interesting and useful concepts in the book, but today I’m thinking about the idea of cognitive ease.

Kahneman is also well known as a nobel prize winner for his work on prospect theory. This is, roughly, the idea that people are more likely to act to avoid loss than to achieve a gain. In his work is a warning that we are not the rational players that economists would believe that we are. Part of the discussion he has on this issue is that when we feel cognitive ease, we’re likely to focus on that, and believe it, rather than something that causes cognitive stress or strain. Obviously, in a book focused on helping the reader identify their own cognitive biases and how to think past them, Kahneman points out qualities of cognitive ease so we can be aware when we’re feeling them and be more skeptical of the information. However, I also heard in that section very specific instructions for a good user design/experience. So what produces cognitive ease?

  • Maximize legibility (clear fonts, contrasting backgrounds, use bold to emphasize the important points)
  • Use simple language when possible
  • Make a memorable message (slogans, catch phrases, etc)

Good design? It sets people up for cognitive ease. Good communication skills? Also sets people up for cognitive ease. User experience? The same. Which I’ve always focused on as an aspect of making it easier for people to learn and incorporate information.  Though from Kahneman’s work I now see something that should have been obvious before: that’s it’s not always employed for good.

That being the case, I’d like to think that libraries and educators are doing good, and any work we can do to create environments of cognitive ease for our patrons and students would be a good thing. And it appears I’m not the first person interested in design to make the connection between Kahneman’s cognitive ease and good design. Check out his stuff, at a minimum scan the wikipedia entry. It’s good context for our work!

100 Days At a New Place

Posted on by
Reply

I thought I’d wrap this week’s posts up with a summary of the first 100 days on the job as Associate Director for Learning & Outreach at Virginia Tech Univeristy Libraries. For those who have been following along, I’ve taken this position after nine years at Wake Forest University as Head of Instruction, Instructional Design Librarian, and Microtext Specialist.

The two institutions are similar in terms of geography, but otherwise quite different. In a way, the point in time in which I joined both is similar: soon after I came to Wake we got a new dean, and not long after that a new president. I came to Virginia Tech just after a new dean, and soon after I got there we got the announcement our president is retiring.

I’ve been at Virginia Tech long enough now to have a sense of the place, understand the general culture of the library, and I’d say at this point I know maybe three fourths of the people who work in the library and a dozen or so who work in other units. That kind of statement would have been unthinkable at Wake. Within this time frame you would certainly know the entire library (it’s about a third the size) and many people outside the library as well (the university is about a fifth the size).

Realizing it was time for me to move on was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. Yet at the same time, it was validated nearly immediately. It had taken me several years to get used to working at a small, private, teaching centered, liberal arts institution after attending a large, public, Research I, technical, land-grant university myself. That background served me well in this transition. As I told a colleague earlier today, on the very first day, when walking across campus, I was struck by how at home I felt.

Joining a place that is going through the early phases of change is very different from having some time on the ground before change happens. I was able to get to know the interests, motivations, wishes for the library of my colleagues at Wake before I ever imagined there would be a transformation. At Tech, I joined in once the changes were already happening, and it’s been harder to get to know how my colleagues feel about things. However, at Wake, on some level, I was always that kid right out of college, or a library school student, or that brand-spanking-new professional. Coming into Tech allowed me to shed that to some extent, and come in as someone with experience and professional reputation. Pros and cons to both those perspectives, I think.

The main thing that I’m still adjusting to at this point is missing the intimacy of working in a smaller library. Make no mistake: we were doing big things, and a lot of them, at Wake, but I was both positioned in such a way I at least knew what the big projects were, and so that I could seek out that information and get involved to whatever extent I thought made sense. Tech is so much bigger that you have to specialize (truly, a treat for me!) The size makes it impossible to keep track of everything going on in every part of the library. And with specialization comes a limitation to what you can get involved with. I know less of what’s going on in the library, but I have a much deeper knowledge of the part that I’m involved with.

As for the work? I had the luxury to focus on learning as much as I could about Virginia Tech and the University Libraries in my first few months. I spent a lot of time meeting people: going to lunch, and getting coffee. I read a lot of documents. I spent a lot of time on various websites. I attended a lot of meetings, as much to learn as to contribute. I’m involved in a handful of concrete projects that will have tangible outcomes as well as more heady, exploratory projects. We’re in the midst of hiring a few communication related positions and I’m extremely excited about that group spinning up.

My work largely focuses on the Learning & Outreach portion of the library’s work. I get to work closely with my boss and have a freedom to think about what we can be doing. I know in the next year we’ll spend a lot of time looking at pedagogies and literacies, and how the library can support the learning mission of the University in logical ways that we might not have traditionally considered. Renovations are underway. New services are starting up. It really feels like we’re inventing the future. And that is a very exciting thing, indeed.

You’ll note that I have completely left out the discussion of changing coworkers. Though I have gotten to know several awesome, smart, friendly, and supportive colleagues at Tech, and look forward to getting to know more of them, I also know I will continue to miss my ZSR friends and family as well. Luckily they’re only two hours away. :)

Maintenance Work and Creative Work

Posted on by
Reply

I recently came a realization that helped me to think about work in a very useful way. Some work is “maintenance work” (I originally thought “hygiene,” but “maintenance” sounds better) and some is “creative.”

When I’m thinking about work, I think about maintenance as:

  • Things that have to be done that don’t seem to add value to users (administrative documentation for leave, conferences, following up on previously discussed issues, etc)
  • Things that take a lot of time and don’t seem to contribute something new to what we’re doing (replying to email, going through inboxes, etc)
  • The things that just have to be done to keep the boat moving.

When I’m thinking about creative work I think of it as:

  • Increasing value for our users (new services, planning new events, building new relationships on campus, etc)
  • Moving the organization forward (participation in some types of meetings, strategic planning, etc)
  • Things that are not routine, and require us to think about what we’re trying to do.

I derive a lot of satisfaction from creative work, and much less from maintenance. I see that trend a lot in online discussions, though in face-to-face conversations I’ve talked to a lot of people who genuinely enjoy maintenance.

I’ve long wrestled with the idea that email takes so much time and doesn’t feel like real work. For a long time I tried to justify the time by reframing email as a *place where works gets done. Some work is done in meeting rooms, some in my office, some in the gmail client. After all, a lot of work that used to take place in meetings (ALA work, some internal, etc) happens in email.

But that didn’t ease the sense that I was losing a lot of time in it. Then, the other day, I was struck that everything I was doing in that big, open, unscheduled day, was maintenance. For me it’s not the most exciting work in the world, but on that particular day I had been so involved in the creative side of things (meetings, looking up what others are doing, thinking about things I could do here) that I had fallen behind in maintenance.

So now I’m thinking a bit more about how to fit maintenance and creative work into the same day. That way when I do get the rare unscheduled half day or day, I can use it, or at least some of it, on creative work. And I still will chip away at things while being creative each day as it goes along. That would be far more motivational.

In this context, I’ve been thinking about the 80/20 rule, and how that fits in with this. Should 80 percent of the day be creative? That’s the more valuable work for me to do. Though, at times, it feels like maintenance takes 80 percent…

How do you frame your work? Or make sure that you are able to carve out time for the work that gives you the most meaning?