When you’re designing a learning event, such as a workshop, seminar, or class, one of the most important components of your design is your learning tasks – the invitations for learners to do something with the content they’ve set out to learn.
When I was in 9th grade I attended an encounter group weekend designed to get us teenagers more comfortable with ourselves. The first thing we did was a “warm-up” exercise so we could “get to know each other.” What did we do? We stood in a circle and passed an orange...
Usually we’re talking about workshops or courses or change initiatives when we talk about Dialogue Education, and the fact is, for as much as Dialogue Education is about learning, its roots in Paulo Freire’s theories of “liberation education” mean it’s also about...
When designing any learning event, the Dialogue Education method demands that you develop in advance a deep understanding of who will participate, taking into account their individual experience and needs so that you can tailor the design specifically for them; any...
Too much information (TMI), or information overload, is a spot many curriculum designers find themselves in when preparing for a new workshop or course; even the most experienced person can hit TMI when he or she is taking on a new teaching topic. Sometimes...
I find that sometimes Learning Needs and Resource Assessment (LNRA) work can be limited to sending some questions to the people coming to a course/learning event. In my experience, it's helpful to see LNRA work in phases. How does this strike you? Here is a chart that...
It seems to me that DE offers a systems-approach to adult learning. This is different than a system for adult learning, although I think DE provides that too, to a point. But you decide! Often when we think of a system, we think of linked items, perhaps we might even...
For Trekies and casual viewers of Star Trek, the command "Engage!" brings memories of that point where the engine-power was unleashed, propelling the Enterprise into light-flash. As teachers we too hope to engage, to engage students most fully, that they too can take...
The proper aim of education is to promote significant learning. Significant learning entails development. Development means successively asking broader and deeper questions of the relationship between oneself and the world. –Laurent A. Daloz (1999) Just for fun,...
Teasing-Out Why teasing-out, because research indicates that we aim towards our values, but we may behave differently, and, we may behave differently from one circumstance to another*. So to “tease” or sift, allows us to gently observe, apprehend and reflect upon our...
Welcome to, and hip-hip-hooray for the first, the one, and the only, Global Learning Partners, Inc. blog!!!! I am excited about this opportunity to reach out into the field of adult education and educators. As we all know, I will learn lots in the work to prepare,...