How Many Points Should be on a Likert Scale?
Resolutions are fun, you should get some! This year, I resolved to produce some Metrics Geek Podcasts. Mostly these are my ramblings on various learning measurement topics (at least for now *cue ominous music*)
Metrics Geek Podcast.(8:15) Fewer than 10 minutes and you’ll be a Likert scale expert!
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Performance Support
So this Geek has had the chance, at the Learning2011 conference in Orlando this week, to attend some sessions and have some conversations about Performance Support.
Without getting all hyperbolic on you, I want to say that traditional training (ILT, WBT, Blended learning, yadda yadda yadda) is the equivalent of Neanderthal Persons while Performance Support is the equivalent of Homo Sapiens Persons. Which is to say, the speed and complexity of most business processes can no longer be served by taking employees out of the productive workforce for training (even for a few hours) then plopping them back in their jobs. The distance between knowledge and action is just too great.
Here’s the immediate example. I’m sure I learned the difference between Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens at many points in my education, but just a moment ago when I wanted to use that example because I was pretty sure it fit, I paused mid-sentence, went to Google, and looked it up. Two things happened:
1. I look like less of an idiot than I would have if I had gone with my first thought which was to compare Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. I would have just been wrong (and nobody wants that).
2. I would not have seen the NEW research that indicates that Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens weren’t actually separate species but that they inter-bred for some time before Neanderthal died out. This, of course, is a MUCH better metaphor for the relationship between traditional formal learning and performance support.
See what I did there? I used performance support to get the job done. Really folks…why are we still talking about this?
Enhanced Individual Assessment
Blogging today from the awesome Learning 2011 conference in Orlando! SO much sunnier than Seattle was when I left.
This morning’s first session was Sarah Bloomfield from Google who talked about, among other things, a different view of assessment. In the corporate learning biz, the focus for assessment (Level 2) is most often individual assessment…which is to say: having the learner react somehow from their own precious brain to see if they learned what they were supposed to learn. Of course, this enables us to know what was accomplished from a learning perspective. (Yay for checking knowledge transfer off the list!).
From a business perspective however, employees are often required to perform tasks with available resources (or as part of a group). So part of the conversation in the session was assessment of the “enhanced individual” or what in grade school (if I recall) was called an “open-book test”. In essence, assessing learners in more real-life situations with the resources that they would have on the job.
Now just then when I wrote “on the job” my inner Kirkpatrick (don’t we all have one?) thought well, if it’s on the job, it’s clearly a Level 3! Yay, you can do both!
But Sarah’s point was that individual assessment is of use to the learning team but not so much to the business. So then I wonder what an enhanced individual or group assessment would look like?
~Geek~
What’s The Story?
The below graph is the 2010 Quality of Life Index filtered for Cost of Living.
I haven’t validated the scale, although it appears to be 1 – 100, nor do I have any idea where the data comes from. But if you can keep yourself from being too distracted by that, take a moment to engage with the image. Note that Iraq is the darkest green, indicating the highest cost of living.
The most important component of this data (of any data) is not simply the statement “Iraq has the highest cost of living”, but the story that should be told from that statement. “Iraq has the highest cost of living because they’ve been at war for 10 years and bread is really really expensive.”
What other stories can be told from this data?
Learning Measurement: Taking the Easy Way
In response to an article in T+D Magazine about Learning Measurement, specifically about the difference between evidence and proof, I wrote a reaction here. It’s cool. You should read it.
Geek
6 Day Week
There must be some reason this isn’t viable, but to save my life I can’t think of it right now.
Microwave magic
I remember, as some of you also probably do, when microwave ovens arrived on the scene. Magically cooking things without heat, they were all the rage among the early-adopters, but they freaked me out.
I looked into the glass, through the protective screen to try to catch a glimpse of the microwaves being released from (I imagined) their pen in the housing. The little buggers flew pell-mell around the interior making the food heat itself up until it was, well, pasty and dry (ever try to cook a chicken breast in the microwave?).
These days, I still don’t yank the door open while it’s running because of my secret fear that the microwaves can indeed escape, but I do have one in my home and still manage to sleep at night.
Every morning, my coffee ritual involves microwaving about a cup of water until it’s just before boiling (I’ve managed to come up with the right volume of water to be able to hit the 30 second button twice and get what I need), but lately I’ve discovered a new bit of microwave magic!
No matter how many seconds I put the timer on, the turntable always returns my dish (measuring cup) exactly to where I placed it! I never have to reach in the back to get the dish! What amazing microwave technician determined the algorithm that makes this possible?
I may be more impressed with this than with the microwave itself, I don’t know.
~Geek~
It’s all Relative
Handily posted on the back of my M&M’s package, in lovely I’m-a-friend-of-the-earth-green, are the nutrition details for this little bag of magic.
Only 240 calories! 12g of fat! Dude, this is HEALTH FOOD! Must be the peanut. Makes it sort of like a vegetable, sort of like having a bag of green beans.
Wait. 240 calories per serving.
Wait. This is two servings.
Who gets to decide how big a “serving” of M&M’s is?
Bastards. Makes me want to cover my body image issues in an avalanche of peanut M&M’s. That’ll teach ‘em.
~Geek~
BP by the Numbers
Although reports differ, one estimate I read today said that 181 litres of oil had spilled since the BP spill (gush?) happened on April 20.
- Litre-to-gallon conversion is 0.264172051:1
- About 40% of crude oil is converted to gasoline
- So we’ve wasted about 19,126,056 gallons of gasoline*
- It’s 5000 miles from Fairbanks, AK to Miami, FL
- Assuming a conservative average of 20 miles per gallon, a fleet of 38,250 cars could make the round trip from Fairbanks to Miami.
- This is more than the population of Fairbanks. We could have sent them all on a spectacular vacation (in separate cars).
- Sent in Priuses, think of the side trips.
- What else could we have done with this resource?
*Not to ignore or discount the myriad other real costs in lives (11 at the explosion) or natural resources.
Reasons to be forgetful
The graphic description of why I mixed up the name of my friend Judy’s husband with my friend Cheri’s husband. Until this particular error I didn’t even realize that they were filed in the same category.
