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January 30, 2006
What a Weekend!
I spent a good part of this past weekend mentally dangling on a line strung between the two poles of Ray Kurzweil and Thomas Friedman. Both incredible thinkers. Kurzweil is asking really BIG questions about the implications of the exponential growth of computational devices. Friedman addresses globalization in startling and refreshing ways. Friedman is easier to assimilate, so I'll start with him.
Posted by DavidK at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)
The World Is Flat
Last week Professor Rick Weibel of Marshall University sent us three great links. The middle one is to an MIT site where you can download Thomas Friedman's address on The World Is Flat. (Search the MIT site for Friedman to find the video). The talk is wonderful! Primarily because of the content, but also because Friedman is a superb speaker. Interesting to watch him warm into his talk. At first he seems a bit awkward, maybe a bit anxious, I think he's using his hands to displace energy and anxiety. (A trick a drama coach once showed me. Displace anxiety physically using props. Make big motions on the board, move chairs around, walk up into the audience, etc.) Anyway, once he warmed up, his talk is spellbinding.
Among many excellent and perceptive comments is his model of globalization. According to Friedman, globalization has proceeded in three stages:
Stage 1: 1492-1820ish Globalization via one's country. Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, England -- through imperialism and other forces, each country expanded its empire across the globe.
Stage 2: 1820ish - 2000 Globalization via one's company. IBM, Coca-Cola, Siemens, Mitsibishi, 3M expanded their global empires via business relationships, and in the process became multi-national companies.
Stage 3: 2000- to present. Globalization via the individual. Using the infrastructure of the Internet and emerging collaborative techniques, individuals globalize themselves. Open source is an excellent example.
How long will it be before we see worldwide collaborative teaching? Probably it's already happening somewhere. Anyone know where?
Posted by DavidK at 08:12 AM | Comments (0)
Globalization Close to Home
One of Friedman's many interesting points is that organizations always lag behind the social impact of technology. Here's an example close to home: I've just published an MIS book with Prentice-Hall. PH is owned by Pearson, the U.K. publisher, and Pearson is organized geographically. Pearson owns Prentice-Hall in the U.S., but there are also Pearson companies for Europe/Mid-East/Africa, one for Australia, and ones for other parts of the world.
My book was published by PH in the U.S., and it receives strong support from my U.S. editor and from the National (U.S.) sales manager and sales team. While those people are not opposed to international sales, they have no economic or other incentive to be anything more than polite to the international companies. As an author, however, I'd like to sell as many books around the world as I can.
Enter Friedman: Globalization via the individual. Email, modern technology, etc., make it easy for me, as an individual, to develop relationships with the international sales managers. I know, for example, the sales manager in Australia, and this Wednesday, I'll be speaking with her team at their national sales meeting via phone. (BTW, the Aussies meet in Surf City, Queensland! (Wow, here's a shocker: FrontPage thinks Queensland is misspelled!))
The Australian sales manager and I promoted this meeting ourselves -- no Pearson organizational structure opposes our meeting, in fact, everyone involved would say, 'Good job.' The point, however, is that nothing in the current Pearson organization actively supports such collaboration -- it just doesn't interfere with it. And, to Friedman's point: the sales manager and I can promote international cooperation on our own, as individuals. And this sort of collaboration is just the tip of the iceberg~!
Posted by DavidK at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)
Harry Dent, Again
Friedman doesn't mention Harry Dent, but he should. Dent is sometimes quoted (or discounted) because he predicted that the Dow will hit 35,000 to 40,000 by 2010. I, for one, don't want to discount that. (You know, 'Please, God, give me one more bubble. I promise I won't be such an idiot next time.') Probably shouldn't plan on it, though.
The reason I think Friedman should mention Dent appears in The Next Great Bubble Boom. Dent studies several centuries of technology and population trends and he states that technology always progresses in two phases. Phase I is characterized by irrational exuberance and the over-building of the new infrastructure. During Phase II, companies that have a legitimate need for that over-built infrastructure come along, buy it for pennies on the dollar, and leverage that technology to provide better value to their customers. (Dent, by the way, wrote all of this in the darkest days of the dot-com meltdown). He uses the examples of the railroads and of the automobile industry to support his claims.
Friedman mentions the overbuilding of optical fiber in his talk -- and how that overbuilt fiber is fueling international collaboration.
Posted by DavidK at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)
Ray Kurzweil
On second thought, I think wait until next week to write about Kurzweil's singularity. I'm still trying to untangle the broken neurological circuits he's left me. Besides, a blog shouldn't be a book in a day...
Cheers!
Posted by DavidK at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)
One Set of Answers to Last Week's Questions
Roy Dejoie responded with a set of answers to last week's questions in a comment. Roy has considerable experience with teams and I thought his ideas should be more visible. So, here is a copy of the comment that you'll also find below.
"I have been using teams in the classroom since 1993 or so. In responding to the questions put forth, I will weigh in with my own experiences.
"Size: If possible, student teams work best (for IS courses) with four to five students in them. Teams of three can function, but it typically takes three solid individuals. I have stretched as high as seven students and it was a disaster. The scheduling for seven students for anything that happens to be done outside of class just did not work for the teams.
"Duration: Whenever possible (and especially when the assignments will be graded), shoot for what is called "permanent work teams." My teams are assigned for the whole semester. That helps to build up the degree of accountability and responsibility. Students who know that after the current project they will have little, if anything, to do with their current team members are much more likely to freeload or shirk responsibility than students who recognize that they will be completing at least another four to eight activities with the same team members over the next three to four months. It also takes a while (actually measured in activity rather than just time) for teams to become cohesive. Assigning them for the semester fosters the growth of team cohesion.
"Grading: Grades are assigned to the whole team, but there is a peer evaluation component that is substantial. In my classes where I use the full team learning approach (see Larry Michaelsen’s take on the team learning approach), the peer evaluation component is often weighted, by the students themselves, at roughly 10-25% of the total course scoring. As such, teams wield huge carrots and sticks in these types of classes. Given that the students are graded relatively against each other for the whole course and that the range from the top student to the bottom student in the course, excluding the peer evaluation, is typically 20%, the peer evaluation is quite effective in giving teams the authority that is often lacking in most academic environments when teams are used. I’ve seen situations where a student who has not contributed to their team has been dropped substantially in their standing in the class to warrant a D or an F in the course. That type of team authority often means that instances of free riding and social loafing often are minimized.
"In my classes where I don’t use the team learning approach, but still use teams to some degree, the peer evaluation component weighs somewhere between a half and a whole course letter grade.
"Team Assignment – I assign the teams in my classes for a couple of reasons. Whenever possible, I like to break the potential for pre-existing dynamics to be introduced into a team. My method is not perfect, but the alternative usually assures that most teams will have some type of pre-existing dynamic in it from the very beginning. Additionally, I have never liked the “playground football team picking” dynamic in the academic environment. The idea that folks are “picked last” or that teams are created from whoever happens to be left has never appealed to me. When I have seen that dynamic at work, I have often see minority and international students as the “leftovers,” despite how strong a student they may be.
"I select teams on the first day of class using a process that allows the formation to be done right in front of the students to reduce an anxiety that students may have that the “teams are rigged.” The process requires that I must know what are the most important factors for team success in the class (in terms of skill sets). In my intro course, the two things that are most important are 1) familiarity and comfort with MSAccess and 2) work/business experience. Typically the first item is in shorter supply, so I start with the MSAccess comfort. Those are the base for the teams. Next comes the work experience, then things like major (hard vs. soft, analytical vs. behavioral, etc.). If needed beyond that, I also take into account in state vs. out-of-state, etc. To make the point that it’s all on the up-and-up I roll up my sleeves and invite the students to see that there’s nothing up my sleeve. They get a kick out of that, but it drives home the point: out in the open and fairly done.
"Project Assignments – Whenever possible, assignments that require more talking and less writing tend to be the best for teams. In my senior-level courses, where I use the full team learning approach, it’s not unusual for a one-hour, in-class assignment to yield a single page or a half-page of writing; however, those team members spend the majority of the time discussing, building, critiquing, etc. the document that will be turned in. The emphasis is much more focused on the decision-making activity and the process of getting the answer that will be written on that paper. Michaelsen would urge people to use problem environments that do not easily allow the project at hand to be carved up into individual pieces that do not need the whole team’s attention. Anytime you provide students something that is “carvable,” that they do individually on their own, away from the team, and then bring it back in at the last minute for the staple through the pages, is inviting them to do just that."
Roy said he'd be happy to share further details about any aspect of these points. You can contact Roy at rdejoie@purdue.edu.
