Not in that order: but do you see the connection? I was stunned, reading William Isaacs’ 1999 book Dialogue: And the Art of Thinking Together to discover the correlation between our well-tested axiom “learning is always cognitive, affective and psychomotor” and the...
Intentionality in Communications
Sometimes writing flows like a river findings its natural path. We are clear about who we’re communicating with and the effect we hope it will have on the reader. This feels good to us as communicators, and feels right to the reader. Unfortunately, the river...
10 Ways to Minimize Resistance
Resistance is normal – both to what is being taught and to how it is being taught. What we want to do is minimize resistance so that it does not negatively interfere with learning.
Disability Etiquette!
A while ago I had the joy of reading a fascinating theological book called Copious Hosting: A Theology of Access for People with Disabilities. In that gentle and prophetic text, Catholic disability-advocate Jennie Weiss Block sets out to define disability and...
The Use of Dialogue Education in Community College STEM Courses
As a meteorology professor at a community college in southern California, I have students struggling with abstract, but important, concepts of the physical processes and impacts of weather and climate. Students at community colleges often lack skills and motivation to...
From Head to Heart
I was working with a small group of women executives in a peer exchange leadership development program. They had moved through two tumultuous and revealing days together, and had generated some real insights about their unique leadership styles. A capstone activity of...
Re-igniting a Passion for Teaching (and learning!)
It’s been a year since I was introduced to the principles and practices of Dialogue Education. When I think about the four days I spent at the cozy Stowehof Inn in Vermont during the Foundations of Dialogue Education course, one memory in particular stands out...
Participatory Decision Making: Dot-mocracy
Often when you are faced with several good ideas in a meeting, it is impossible or even undesirable to choose just one. Multi-voting is one way to poll the group about multiple options.
Getting Some Juice from the Data Chart
Numbers have a whole world of information beneath them. Making decisions on numbers alone can get you into trouble. At a recent meeting to evaluate and adapt the pilot of a six-week online course, my colleague Jeanette Romkema and I shared the numbers about level of...
Digital Training – Inevitable yet Inferior? (Part I of V)
One of my great passions in life is using adult education theory to create learning-centered training – working out how learners can best learn so they then go on to flourish. A significant addition to this in recent years is digital education, to which there...
Addressing the Uniqueness’s of Learners – Does Digital Really Help? (Part II of V)
I could sense around me that I was losing my learners. It was during an early experience of me training them to use software to help with language learning. But these learners had very different levels of experience of using software and while I was helping some who...
Digital Training – Enabling Better Discussion? (Part III of V)
One participant came to speak to me about how the training session had been for her. At this early stage as a trainer, I had thought it had been good, but I listened. I had engaged participants with the content and had facilitated good discussion, either in small...