You can guide your focus with this framework when you encounter new learning material that you want to understand better. We tend to rely on habitual patterns when asking questions about new stuff. In this context, it is important to de-bias yourself so you don’t get one-sided views. …

Making notes is a personal affair. That’s why it can be hard to imagine who you are writing for. Here is a suggestion, inspired by Sören Kierkegaard’s view: Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Write for who you were; publish for who you’ll become. Write to explain to your past self …

For learning to be effective, students need to do something with what has been taught. One way of letting them apply their learnings and checking their progress is peer feedback. Peer feedback involves learners in different roles. Besides being students, they also become co-teachers when they give feedback to peers…

Online education has a promise — and a danger. A short essay on ‘power and learning’. tl;dr: Power organizes the chaos and hides in the technology that structures the communication. As kids, we have experienced the power of teachers. Growing older, we may have even — at times — opposed them. With mixed results. But we’ve grown up to become self-directed, empowered learners. We remember that…

This is for the instructional designer, educational developers, and teaching assistants out there who, once in a while, have to set up an online exam. Moodle is feature-rich and clunky. Things can go wrong, but they better not. Suppose you already have the draft of the exam in a word…

A few months back I had an onboarding meeting with a highly experienced industry professional. He’d be teaching a course to our students as external faculty. And he had many questions about the students’ expectations and if he was doing it the right way like the “real” professors. …

Tools for Thought as a new category of knowledge apps This category — Tools for Thought — has seen incredible growth with the emergence of new apps. At the same time, techniques for knowledge work were rediscovered and adapted. Luhmann’s Zettelkasten approach became mainstream for those who are nerding out about knowledge work. Getting Things Done and the bullet journal…

Imagine you are waiting for your class to start. There are a few things you can do to set yourself up for a successful learning session. Don’t expect the teacher to do the learning for you. Learning is an activity, and it starts before class starts. …

Who are you learning for? When in school and later in college, what was your answer to this question: “Who are you learning for?” Let me give you these options: Parents. Because they told you do sit down and do your homework. Teachers. Because they will give you a grade in the exam. Friends. Because…