Jul 13, 2021
Dr. Jane Vella and Peter Noteboom – President of GLP – talk with Dwayne Hodgson, a longtime member of GLP’s Certified Network about the axiom “How do they know they know? They just did it.” Listen as they talk about how designing for accountability in learning helps build capacity in community initiatives. The unique focus on achievement-based objectives helps organizations make critical decisions on investing resources in training and understanding why some projects don’t achieve goals.
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This show is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton Jr, with theme music composed by Kyle Donald.
Read the transcripts for the episode below.
JANE
Welcome to Simply True. with yours truly, Dr. Jane Vella. On this podcast, we sit down with dear friends and colleagues from over the years. To do one thing. Explore the simple truths behind some of my favorite sayings in dialogue education.
PETER
Hello, I’m your host for today’s episode. My name is Peter Noteboom and I have the incredible privilege of serving as president of this company, Global Learning Partners. And today, Jane and I are joined by Dwayne Hodgson, who’s now serving as an education officer with the Canadian Association of University Teachers. And together we’re here to explore the axiom: How do they know they know? Well they just did it? Welcome, Dwayne and Jane.
JANE
Thank you, Peter.
DWAYNE
Thanks, Peter.
PETER
Let’s just start briefly with just checking, Dwayne, how you came to connect with this community. Let’s begin by rooting ourselves a bit in that history. So can you tell us about yourself and how you came to know Jane, and how you came to know Global Learning Partners?
DWAYNE
Yes, it was probably back around 1999, 2000. And I was working in Tanzania with a community development organization, and my partner Trish and I were coming back to North America for a bit of a break. And Trish was asked to attend a course at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University down in – I think it’s Harrisonburg, Virginia. I took a look at the calendar and I thought, whoa, that’s the interesting course. And I knew nothing much about Dialogue Education, I did find a copy of Jane’s book, and had the pleasure of a four day course with both yourself and Jane. That kind of rocked my world, both in the sense of confirming what I’d seen done or had tried in terms of different techniques and approaches for learning, but grounding them more in a theoretical basis. And then, in some cases, providing a good antidote to some bad habits I picked up at graduate school, where we try to deluge people with too much information, maybe show off a bit – those kinds of things. Techniques that were not serving me well in Tanzania, so when I did go back to Tanzania for the remainder of my time there, I had chance to apply that and stayed in touch. Just was really helpful, just changed everything for me – gave me a different position as a facilitator, a lot more confidence and could start to see better results for my friends. And then towards the end of our time, Trish and I for family reasons had to come back, and I got this very curious email one day entitled, subject line, “Your Future” from this guy named Peter Noteboom. I was quite, it was quite a godsend, I must say, because we left for reasons unrelated to work, cause of a family situation, a relatives health. And I didn’t have a job. So when I saw basically, “hey, we’ve come back to Canada, let’s talk,” I thought “great!” And then I had the great pleasure of working with GLP for about five or six years and had a full immersion experience in the world of Dialogue Education – both in using the techniques in the work that I was doing, but also helping other people learn these approaches from the principles and practices of Dialogue Education and applying them to their work. And then since then, it’s been kind of a recurring theme. Everything I’ve worked on over the years has been influenced by that, in any kind of role where I’ve been able to provide support to others who do training or do facilitation of workshops and processes. I’ve lived and breathed these aspects of Dialogue Education, I think they sort of become part of your- your fiber at some point. You know that when you kids, three years old, say, “Daddy, how about?”
JANE
Oh Dwayne, you’re wonderful.
PETER
I know I have such wonderful memories of those years. And you know, the feeling’s mutual. We learned so much from you too, and really enjoyed working together. So Jane, I think, you know, we’re here to talk about that axiom: “How do they know they know”, which is more than an axiom, it’s even the title of a book.
JANE
Yeah.
PETER
Where did that- where did this axiom come from?
JANE
Well, I think we were trying to put into a phrase the- what I’m saying virtually every day these days, give them an experience. That’s our job. That’s why we design, and we design an experience. Oh, it’s so powerful. Because again, I’m using what I learned most recently for our friend, James Zull, and his two books that tell how the brain works. And the brain always works with our past experience. Wow. So what we got to do is give them a new experience, that’s NOT graduate school, Dwayne.
PETER
Right.
JANE
I think that’s what happened Peter. That’s a short form.
PETER
Right. What about you, Dwayne, how does it resonate with you?
DWAYNE
Well I think it resonates in in sort of from two directions in the work that I’ve done. One is around, I’ve done a lot of work in monitoring and evaluation of community development programs. And a lot of those programs increasingly over the years have been in what they would call capacity-building. It’s not necessarily looking to build a bridge for people, we’re looking to help people develop their own capacity or organizational abilities to solve their own problems, for example, it’s a bridge or something else they want to do. And the question then becomes “well, we’re doing all this training all these kinds of workshops, what’s the benefit of that?” And I think a lot of development NGOs and health organizations have struggled with that, if they don’t have a chance to do follow up and don’t have a chance to do data. Or in other cases, they tend to be telling people a lot of information, and then wonder why it didn’t work later on. So when I say it from like, from the teaching perspective, it’s still very much about, I can tell you lots of things, but I have no idea what you’re saying, what you’re agreeing with which we’re understanding, how are you going to use it, and then we kind of train and hope, and some people love hoping that they’ve heard it, so they can do it. And it’s just so seldom the case. The fact that you may have heard ways to prevent, prevent transmission of a disease or something, but without any chance to really think it through and apply it and even have a simulation of that. It’s very problematic. And I’ve seen so much training where they tell and tell and tell. People listened. Trainers thought they’ve done a great job, the teacher thought they did a great job, but there’s really no retention. People haven’t really done anything to apply that learning. And so love this axiom in the sense of “how do they know that they know?” that’s the one hand for us as instructors or facilitators or community development practitioners, we want to know that they know. But the they can also be how do they – the learners – know, because they did it. I think that’s really confidence-building for learners in a situation, because not only did they hear it, but they had a sense of you know, I actually applied that tool, I actually planned out my community garden plot together, I actually practiced this technique, CPR. All these things that were- you know, if you really want people to practice something, then as much as possible, let’s try to get them a chance to do something as close as possible to that situation.
JANE
Exactly.
DWAYNE
I’ve taken a number of first aid courses over the years. They have- you know, you learn a lot, you listen, you watch a video, but I’ve never been to a situation as a responder where there were four choices of possibilities. Why is this man lying on the ground? Did he have A) a heart attack, B) you know, a stroke. It doesn’t work that way, you really need a realistic simulation during the learning to help you have a chance to think it through, and as much as possible, anticipate the situation that you’d be applying that later on.
JANE
So important, Dwayne.
PETER
You know, I so often think of the axiom in terms of its accountability part.
JANE
Yes.
PETER
And how it is the first step in some ways of evaluation?
JANE
Yes.
PETER
Or I think of it on the backside. I hear on the front side, Jane, you know, give them an experience. Or you know, “what would they really do with it?” in Dwayne’s language. But I also think, on the backside, how it’s actually, you know, in the past tense, how do they know they know?
JANE
Yes. And Peter, again, we’ve mentioned this in other podcasts, one of these axioms seems to connect to all the others, it’s almost like it’s arteries in the, in the, in the body. And this connects for me immediately to not only give them an experience, design an experience, teaching what they need to know, but first know their previous experience. And that’s where we get into the what- what you call Dwayne that Lovely Lady Eleanor Rae. Because without that study of where these people are coming from and what they expect and what their previous experience before this session has been, we’re not meeting them – let’s put it that way.
PETER
For those of you not in the know Eleanor Rae is is another name for learning needs and resources assessment – L N R A – sometimes known as Eleanor Rae.
JANE
That was Dwayne’s addition to our lexicon.
DWAYNE
It was more by accident, because, as I have probably demonstrated, I tend to speak quickly. And everybody thought, “who is this Eleanor Rae person?” The other place for me, where it comes back is in terms of the designing of learning experiences, partly the experiences – so you want people to have the opportunity to practice something, which is great – but sort of the step associated with that, for me is around defining achievement-based objectives. Which are defined again, I’d say how will the learners engage with the content, skills, and attitudes during the learning experience in a way to demonstrate that they have had a chance to learn and master this. And that’s a huge shift, I find, because often when I see curriculum designed in other situations, they talk about learning outcomes or learning objectives – they will be able to, they will understand – those kind of big words, big verbs that are really hard to determine. I can’t, you know, in many cases determine if you are understanding, often there’s no test in an adult learning situation, there’s no final exam. So I think if you build in this opportunity to practice, there’s a demonstrable skill or demonstrable task that someone’s going to complete with a product that provides evidence of learning. And I find those two things together are super powerful, because that struggle to determine how do they know? Well, they just did it. Yeah. And then we can see how well they did it. Did they meet the criteria? Did they follow the steps, and then their own reflection upon that as well. So it’s a concrete experience of experiential learning. But to really ground that back into the design around the achievement-based objectives, I have to say, in 25 years of doing this, I really haven’t seen that anywhere else, that whole piece around the ABOs.
JANE
No, that’s unique.
DWAYNE
And it’s so subtle that “Oh, can’t- I can’t quite get it.” It takes a while, it took me a couple courses and a few years to really understand that. And I remember the moment when the penny dropped for me. But it does make such a huge difference, so now even if we’re coming in to say an established curriculum, I often kind of reverse design it and look to see, okay, we are these are your learning objectives. But actually, what are your de facto learning achievement-based objectives? What are people actually doing? And is there a gap there? So you say that they’ll be able to apply this approach to community activism. But if you go back and see what did they actually do? Well, they sat and watched a PowerPoint for two hours. And so I don’t have a lot of confidence in the ability. So we then redesign that and say, well, can we do a simulation? Can we have them look at a case study? Could we have them develop a plan or do a roleplay? And make that an objective that can be done during time together, while we’re there together, while we can determine if it happened, we can celebrate it, we can document it, and then we have a good basis for determining whether it was effective – well before we worry about the transfer to the-their environment, or the impact that comes later on. If we don’t have learning happening and documented, I don’t really look for a lot in terms of transfer and impact later on.
JANE
Beautiful. And also, when you have that achievement-based objective, when you finally get it and can design one, you actually have your learning task. The- the achievement-based objective that can be turned into, alright, in pairs, dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah dah.
DWAYNE
Yeah because it often defines the product, or the- the ultimate- ultimate step of that process, right? It’s the application or the synthesis often of a 4A learning task. And yeah, it does help with the design, and then helps you then focus on, “Well, we could do 20 things. But these four things really are the ones that drive us towards this ABO that will give them that kind of sense of achievement. And like I said, if we’re confidence-building too, it’s- there’s a lot of people who I think they’re pretty jaded about training. They’ll go, because it’s time off work, in some cases it may be because it’s easy, compared to maybe what they have to do. But they don’t necessarily expect to learn a lot. So I think if you can provide that experiential transformative experience that- where not only did you take part for a couple of hours, you actually felt you accomplished something. And hey, you even did some work towards what’s on your desk on Monday morning when you go back to work. Fantastic. So we’re designing as Valerie Uccellani would say, we’re sort of designing for transfer. Thinking about the changing behavior you want to see later, then we work backwards to say how do we prepare people during that session to to be able to do that later on? I think that’s- it’s a simple, but really, really important way of thinking about it.
JANE
I have a wonderful story of a moment when I was teaching at the School of Public Health, UNC Chapel Hill, and the students in that graduate course were at tables in teams, and they were working. Oh my goodness, they were doing a learning task and you could hear them in- on the coast. You know, they were going at it, and the head of department came into the room, and he came over to me, I was sitting in the corner as a resource – ready to come and- when I’m called. And he said to me, “Jane – Why are they always so excited?” And I said, “Jim, I think it’s because they’re learning.” And it was- it was such a- because they were having an experience that they knew was valuable. And that I had designed, because I knew their context. You see what I mean? It was a learning task. But it was also, as you were saying, Peter, there was accountability. They wanted to come up with something that they could use. Wow. But why are they always so excited? I love that question.
PETER
You know, this is a pretty helpful for me, I’m making a connection in a new way between, you know, what we’ve been teaching and designing and facilitating and modeling over the years and, you know, the phrase experiential education, and how that’s linked to- to this axiom, and to another one that’s closely related: learning is in the doing and the deciding. That’s one that resonates for me, too. I wonder, Dwayne, in this new virtual world that we’re in? What is this axiom mean? How do we, how do we design or give experiences through a screen that model this- this particular axiom?
DWAYNE
That’s a really good question. I was thinking the same thing, a lot recently, in this last year, where we’ve been forced online, there’s a low investment for people to come to an online session. They can turn their cameras off, they can multitask, they have other understandable distractions at home with pets, or the kids, or people making a house nextdoor as in my case here. So there’s a real- engagement, I think has been really difficult. And it’s just another time on screen for people, they’re tired. And so I think it really is incumbent on us to think about how to make this more than PowerPoint on the phone. How do we make this more than simply another Zoom call where you can sit passively and really not pay attention – you kind of warm the chair, but you’re not honestly doing anything. So it really push us to those opportunities for praxis. And it’s possible, I think, to do certain things in the same way – you can use breakout rooms, breakout rooms with poster boards. For example one, we used one the other day on Jamboard for- for Gmail. There’s some excellent tools out there that can provide for different types of tasks that people can go and work on. But it might also mean looking at, you know, the design parameters that surround that and seeing the limitation might be the platform, the flexibility though might be the time. And perhaps even have three hours on a zoom call, maybe we say we’re going to give you a learning task to go and do – go for a walk outside, observe this, have this reflection, or you know, be on the phone with another one of your colleagues for a bit and discuss this work together, and come back later on. And break things up where people have a chance to do some of the praxis together – action with reflection. Or think about stretching the learning. So it’s not all happening in that synchronous time together. What can you do before and after to advance the learning and to provide opportunities for multiple points of contact or multiple points of engagement? And then using asynchronous platforms in combination with that, and kind of a blended learning approach. So I think those to me are the workaround so far. But I’m dying to be back in actual workshop with post-its on walls, and Play-Doh! Can we have some Play-Doh, please, Peter?
PETER
Yeah, no, I think this is a challenge that we’re all facing now with our virtual learning environment. How do we give folks- give learners an experience that will invite them to show us what they know and- and how they’re using new context, things that they will have done. And it does seem to me that – you know, turning off the cameras, going for a walk, practicing a new framework, completing it together on a- on a jam board, or a different kind of- of online tool – I think there’s a whole new category of active learning that we- we’re discovering.
JANE
And Peter, if I may, it bears out a wonderful phrase from my dear friend, Sue Button, who had done the course. And we’re walking around the lake and all of a sudden, Sue stopped as we were chatting, and she said, “Oh, Jane, I see. A learning task is a task for the learner.” And we laugh so hard. I said, “By George, she’s got it.” And the point is, this changes, the online framework changes the role of the educator, the designer. You could get into a group, go into a group, go into a pair, and do the job, do the task. And then when you come out your task is to say, “okay, you- let’s hear what you either said or you heard in that group, as you were doing that learning task.”
PETER
You know, it’s so interesting to me how in talking about this axiom, so many other parts of the design experience, and the facilitation experience, and the learning assessment experience, and the evaluation all somehow circle back and are connected to this axiom.
JANE
It’s a whole, dear. Yes.
PETER
It’s a really essential, core thing. Interesting. Well, if I may, I would like to close this out with this podcast. It’s been wonderful speaking with you about- about this axiom and connecting with you. Thank you so much, Dwayne, for joining Jane and- and me today.
JANE
Thanks, Dwayne.
PETER
Really, really appreciate it.
DWAYNE
It was my pleasure.
PETER
Yes, I’d love to give you the last word, Dwayne. As someone who’s been practicing, you know, this kind of education, experiential education, Dialogue Education, Popular Education for years now. What’s one final wisdom you’d like to leave us with today? Maybe a new insight or a new axiom that- that’s become simply true for you?
DWAYNE
I don’t think I have something quite as elegant and pithy as “How do they know that they know? They just did it?” That’s a- that’s very wise words. I don’t know, I think it’s partly as a teacher or facilitator, it’s, you may struggle with this, but you may also have this similar experience of how do you know that you facilitated or created the space for this kind of learning through dialogue. And there are those moments of “Wow, this actually happened. This worked.” I think one time I was teaching a course with the Citizens for Public Justice, some years ago, and they were doing a practice teaching. This is in the Dialogue- Foundations of Dialogue Education course. And these were timed sessions, we’re supposed to be very strict with time. And they’re talking about, I think, how to support people in their work for social justice. And I was there, taking my notes, watching. And they were really into the task. They were really going deep. They had long forgotten that this was actually a simulated exercise. They were really engaged in the topic. And I just turned off the clock, and I sat back and I thought, “yeah, we just did that.” It’s a sort of magical moment where they had taken charge. And that was a feeling of “Yeah, how do we know that dialogue happened? Well, they just did it. And it’s the evidence is there.” I think they probably went 10, 15 minutes over before I finally had to wrap it up. But that was a moment of, “Okay, this does really work. And this can be translated. Amazing.” So look for those experiences, and I’ll try to think of a pithier way of saying that, but you know, the learning happens for all of us, all the time.
JANE
Beautiful Dwayne.
OUTRO (MEG)
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Simply True with Dr. Jane Vella. This podcast is produced by Global Learning Partners and Greg Tilton, with music by Kyle Donald. If you enjoyed the show, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast player. To find out more about Global Learning Partners, whether it be our course offerings, consulting services or free resources, go to www.GlobalLearningPartners.com. We invite you to sign up for our mailing list, subscribe to our podcast and find us on social media to continue the dialogue.