Doing What I Do Best: Thinking Different – Part One

It has been exactly six months since my dissertation defense. Where has it gone?

The first three months it seemed I had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. My immediate goal was to restore a sense of holistic balance to a life that had been very OUT of balance during the proposal-data-dissertation phase. It was during the second three months that I have been able to find my particular voice and determine what I can offer the world with my research and experience. The question then becomes, “Where does it fit?”

As an educator, I am passionate about learning – not what is learned per se, but the identity and heart of the learner. While I don’t have the research background – at this moment – to offer anything more than an opinion, I believe that we all have innate interests and talents that give a hint to our “calling.” This isn’t a calling in any religious sense, as much as it is a basic genetic wiring for a particular vocation. For example, when I was very young (<10 years old), I would sit at the kitchen table and take apart watches using my mother’s eyebrow tweezers. I was fascinated with how the watch worked (this was back in the days of wind-up watches), and how it could be taken apart and put back together. I was a geek before geeks has a name!

My problem wasn’t a lack of ability or interest – it was cultural. When I was growing up career women became nurses and teachers – not mechanics or geeks. There was an identity conflict between what I showed an innate ability to become, and what accepted cultural norms were in place. When it became time to enter college, I was one of only two women in the architecture program at my university. The gender pressure, plus my own insecurities about my ability to compete, caused me to leave the program – and the university. I was years before I returned to school.

While my identity conflict seemed to be monumental for a teenager growing up when I did, what about the conflict that arises when the individual has a more “noticeable” separation from the cultural norms of the society where they are raised? What happens when our innate wiring goes against sexual preference or other norms?

This discussion will continue in Part Two of this series. I welcome others to join in this conversation – not as comments – but contributors to a collaborative discussion on the subject.

A Life Vision for Holistic Learning – Part 2

In my last post, I wrote about my life vision for holistic learning. I wrote that holistic learning should engage the mind to think creatively, it should incite the body to activity, and it should transform the soul and establish a voice. My own research in social media and virtual worlds leads me to be convinced that these tools offer an opportunity for holistic learning that hasn’t existed in mainstream education, and the productive use of these tools will transform both educators and students.

The first aspect of holistic learning is to engage the mind. Who hasn’t immersed themselves in a well-written novel that seems to jump off the page and makes us part of the story? While the enjoyment of reading as advanced through audiobooks and now electronic means such as Kindle and the iPad, interactive media can engage the mind in ways that traditional books cannot. Research done by Bartle, Castronova, Turkle, Gee, and McGonigal (among others) have proven that social media, virtual worlds, and whatever come after them have the capacity to change human behavior because the mind tends to believe what it can see. When we create a customized 3D avatar and develop an alternative life, we believe that alternate life is just as valid as our physical life. Technology has afforded educators tools that can engage the mind in ways not available previously. Rather than keep these tools out of the classroom, we should enthusiastically embrace them.

The second aspect of holistic learning is to incite activity. This has roots in Activity Theory (Vygotsky, Luria, Leont’ev) and Experiential Learning Theory (Kolb, Zull, and others). Before there was an Xbox Kinnect, students learned through a system of apprenticeship or other on-the-job training. If I wanted to become a baker, then I apprenticed under a master baker, either through a colonial system of payment for room, board, and training, or through a more modern apprenticeship program. It was through iterative activity that a student adopted the identity of the goal. Vygotsky’s work with children was in the observation of play and the child’s use of available tools to assist in making play more real. In adults, this iterative activity forms the basis for vocational training. What technology enables us to do, and do better than any other method, is FAIL. If anyone has joined the Angry Birds craze on their mobile device, it is clear that there are a large number of failures before a success. Why do we continue? Because it is playful, there is no risk in failing, and oddly enough we reduce stress in the activity. I recently bought an Xbox Kinnect; this takes interactive activity to entirely new level.

Lastly, holistic learning should transform the soul and establish a voice. If engaging the mind and inciting activity can be considered inputs, then transformation might be considered an output or product. My own dissertation study looked at transformation as an output of virtual world activity. I observed virtually performing musicians who live using streaming audio and video from his or her physical home into the virtual world of Second Life. Through repeated activity (the performance) and interactions with fans over time, the performers reported an emboldened voice on social issues, better stage presence (if they performed outside of virtual worlds), and physical sales of their music. At the Virtual Human Interaction lab at Stanford, Jeremy Bailenson and Nick Yee studied what they called the Proteus Effect: The ability for someone to migrate positive social aspects of a virtual identity into their physical personality. This same effect was apparent in the graduate level course in entrepreneurship I developed and taught in Second Life. Students who had never been in a virtual world become entrepreneurs by determining a market, developing and launching a product, and marketing that product, using tools available in Second Life and through social media. The result? Students said the class was more “real” than any other class they had taken, because they “felt” more like true entrepreneurs than anything they had experienced in a traditional classroom. They holistically experienced the role of entrepreneur in an environment that engaged their minds, incited low-risk activity, and transformed them as learners.

Technology has enabled educators to simulate experiences and activities that previously were either impossible, or involved high costs or risk. Social media, virtual worlds, and whatever comes after them can make education easily scalable, easily distributable, and can dissolve what was once considered cultural or geographic barriers to learning. I am fortunate to have an understanding of how this type of learning can be designed, delivered, and measured to prove its effectiveness.

A Life Vision for Holistic Learning – Part 1

It is with great pleasure that I rejoin the living after a summer of post-graduation contemplation. My last post chronicled the final, stressful months of my dissertation and defense, leaving me with an energy and emotional void once it was over. Rather than feeling excited about the future, I was struggling with who I was and what to do next.

Some in my position might take a week off and then dive into CV writing, publishing, and making contacts, in order to find an assistant professorship for fall. I did apply for positions that looked like a good fit, but found I was foggy about exactly where to apply what I had learned, and so exhausted by the academic process that I didn’t think I would present myself at my best if given an interview. Clearly, it was time to search my soul.

For the next three months I read about the soul: nourishing it, leaving behind what no longer mattered, and articulating my own life purpose. A purpose statement shouldn’t have been difficult to develop; I had been a student for the last five years, studying a subject that seemed to be cutting edge and innovative, with the promise of future research. What should be difficult about that? My problem was that I had developed interests in three different areas and couldn’t decide which area to ultimately pursue. It was only after taking the time to reflect, that I was able to more clearly see that rather than choose among my areas of interest, I was in a unique position to combine them.

My first area of interest, before I even thought about an academic career, is that of life balance. I have always been a proponent of establishing harmony among mind, body, and spirit. I am among those that believe that an imbalance among the three areas can lead to stress, which has a hand in diseases of all kinds. It is my observation that modern life has caused most Americans to live in a perpetual state of imbalance, with obesity, heart problems, and cancer as some of the products of that lifestyle. My own life has lost any sense of balance during the last two years of my PhD program, and was the first area to readdress once I finished.

My second area of interest regarded what I had done professionally before returning to school for the PhD. I was a geek, and loved the use of media and interaction in shaping behavior. My graduate work was in Global eManagement – something of a digital MBA – causing me to move toward ecommerce and web marketing after graduation. The advent of Facebook and YouTube (among other outlets), have given a voice to just about anyone with an Internet connection and has changed the way we behave – as friends as well as consumers.

Finally, my research area during my PhD program observed what we become when we go online – who we are when we enter, how we interact with others while we are there, and how our lives outside of cyberspace change as a result. It was incredibly rewarding to work with subjects who were open, and sometimes tearful, about how becoming an avatar had helped them find an identity that eluded them in “real” life. My dissertation made liberal use of digital storytelling and media – even live streaming – in an effort to capture the essence of the hearts of my subjects. The subject videos that were created as part of my blended reality research efforts may be viewed on YouTube.

My post-graduation struggle was in determining what to pursue; it seemed these areas did not share a lot of overlap. But after months of reflection, I realized they all pointed to something that was very deep in my own convictions. My life was about balance, about education, and about helping people find their voice (transformation). I then realized that learning should holistic: it should engage the mind to think creatively, it should incite the body to activity, and it should transform the soul and establish a voice. The areas I had been interested in all my life weren’t divergent – they were complimentary!