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Author: kiranjohny007@gmail.com

  • Tweet: Problem with Lean Startup

    The logic of finding Vs creating

    Re-posted from previous 

    The concept of lean startup provides a process framework for creation of companies. It takes agile development model and apply it into startup domain in which the process gets primacy over scattered thoughts and contextual intelligence. 

    Its a goal oriented action which focus on feedback loop through experimentation, MVP, customer development etc.

    While i think this framework has some inherent value, there are also some potential drawbacks. Following are some of them that comes to mind: 

    1. Lean method gives preference to process than contextual intelligence to gain intelligence from the context(paradoxical). Using a process oriented causal logic in a domain(entrepreneurship) were no variables are known and everything is a bunch of unknowns may constraint potentially rewarding actions. 
    2. Framing effect and consolidation of conceptual models related to the lean method may limit the cognitive diversity of participants. Thoughts are limited by frames. 
    3. Against the User Innovation Model which worked perfectly for may successful companies like Facebook and Dropbox. User innovation refers to innovation by users rather than by suppliers (producers or manufacturers).  According to Eric von Hippel of MIT Sloan User Innovation contribute a lot more innovations than we give it credit for.
    4. Not optimized for serendipity and luck. 

    5. Andrea Contigiani, a researcher at the Mack Institute for Innovation Management studies Lean method and suggest that the effectiveness of lean startup depends on “boundary conditions.” According to him, there could be situations where going lean is optimal, and other situations where it’s not, and maybe in those situations if you want to go lean you have to also take some other strategies to make that work. And so I wanted to try to understand those boundary conditions.

    6. According to Andrea Contigiani,  the potential likelihood of intellectual property related issues like, competitors stealing the product idea or adapting to the gap could also happen in case of publicized experimentation which is one of the central theme of lean method. 

  • Tweet: Recognition based test Vs Recall based test.

    The findings suggest that while both types of learning aid proved to be effective, there is no evidence that the recall-based learning aid was more effective than the recognition-based learning aid.

     In this study ” A Comparison of the Effectiveness of Two Computer-Based Learning Aids”, Piers D. L. Howe, Jason M. Lodge, and Meredith McKague concluded two important findings.

     
    • Both recall-based and recognition-based learning aids are effective,
    • there is no evidence to suggest that the recall-based learning aid was more effective than the recognition-based learning aid.
    This finding paints a different picture against numerous lab-based studies that have shown that recall-based quizzes promote more learning and result in higher performance in a later exam/test than recognition-based quizzes.
     
    The study looked at Recognition based test via PeerWise and Recall based test via Cram.
     
     
     

  • Tweet: Singapore children will no longer be ranked by exam results.

    Singapore has long been an educational high-achiever, Scoring high on PISA scores, promoting rote learning and long study hours to propel school children toward exam success.

    However, in a strategic shift Singapore decided to abolish exams for primary years 1 and 2 students will starting from 2019.

    Discussions, homework, and quizzes are set to replace marks and grades as the favored method of collecting information on the performance of primary school students.

    Older primary and secondary students will also study in a less competitive environment.

    Listen to the following video in which Stanford professor and noted researcher Linda Darling-Hammond discusses what the United States can learn from high-achieving countries on teaching, learning, and assessment — from Finland to Singapore

     

     

     

  • Tweet: Desirable difficulties under working memory stress.

     

    “Desirable difficulties” (bjork) suggests that introducing difficulties in learning will benefit long term #learning. The empirical literature indicates that desirable difficulty effects may not work in conditions where working #memory is already stressed.

    In the paper “Undesirable Difficulty Effects in the Learning of High-Element Interactivity Materials”  John Sweller et al discusses theoretical and empirical work in the context of cognitive load theory to argue that the effectiveness of desirable difficulties in learning may be moderated by the working memory load imposed by the instructional material.

    The review looked at three types of desirable difficulty effects: testing, generation, and varied conditions of practice.

    The findings indicates that desirable difficulty effects are not always obtained and that cognitive load theory may be used to explain many of these contradictory results.
     
    Many failures to obtain desirable difficulty effects may occur under conditions where working memory is already stressed due to the use of high element interactivity information. Under such conditions, the introduction of additional difficulties may be undesirable rather than desirable.
     
     
     

  • Tweet: Early evaluation,early feedback and early intervention for student success by @AliceSNKim

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    In the paper“Early, But Not Intermediate, Evaluative Feedback Predicts Cumulative Exam Scores in Large Lecture-Style Post-Secondary Education Classrooms”, researchers Alice S. N. Kim and Sharry Shakory investigated whether early and intermediate evaluative feedback on in-class quizzes were predictive of students’ scores on a final cumulative exam in a third-year Psychology course at a large North American university.
     
    The results of the regression analysis showed that early, but not intermediate, evaluative feedback was predictive of students’ scores on the final cumulative exam.
     
     

  • Tweet: How domain experts react to technology ?

     

    The above article analyzes the job skill outlook report by World Economic Forum named “The Future of Jobs Report 2018” .

    My tweet include two things.

    The predictions done by various experts and the reaction from domain experts are both problematic because of the complex nature of modern problems.

     
    He collected 82,000 forecasts against real-world outcomes from nearly 300 academics, economists, policymakers and journalists.
     
     
    In his seminal 2006 book Expert Political Judgment he presented crucial findings of this study.
     
    Tetlock asked a group of pundits and foreign affairs experts to predict geopolitical events, like whether the Soviet Union would disintegrate by 1993.
     
    Overall, the “experts” struggled to perform better than “dart-throwing chimps”, and were consistently less accurate than even relatively simple statistical algorithms.
     
    This was true of liberals and conservatives, and regardless of professional credentials.
     
    However, Tetlock found one particular type of thinking that produced much better prediction.
     
    The experts who considered multiple explanations and balance them(average) together before making a prediction functioned better than those who relied on a single perspective.
     
    Tetlock called the first group foxes( Multiple perspectives) and,
     
    the second group hedgehogs( single perspective)

  • Tweet: Classroom retrieval practice

    ​A new study conducted by Dr. Lisa K. Fazio, “Retrieval practice opportunities in middle school mathematics’ teacher’s oral questions.”, shows that many teachers promote more active forms of learning like retrieval practice, but the research suggests that some of the other hallmarks of active learning, like waiting for students to respond, are not occurring. 

    The study attempted to examine how often and what type of questions teachers ask that require retrieval practice.
     
    It also looked if teachers whose students showed high growth in mathematics achievement used retrieval questions differently from teachers whose students showed low growth.
     
    The researchers found, on average, that middle school mathematics teachers asked a whopping 210 questions per hour, or 3.5 per minute.
     
    The study also pointed to three hypothesized areas that are necessary for student learning and, unfortunately, are often missing from the classroom:
     
    • time to respond,
    • a norm of participation, and
    • questions that require effortful retrieval.
     
    Time to respond: Ideally, teachers should wait a few seconds for students to process a question, think, and formulate a response.
     
    A norm of participation: It’s the idea that the majority of students need to be engaged in the classroom if retrieval questions are to improve classroom performance.
     
    Effortful retrieval: The level of difficulty often corresponds to the quality of learning. In other words, harder retrievals are more valuable for students.

  • Tweet: Effectuation, What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial? Saras D. Sarasvathy

    Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurial, as differentiated from managerial or strategic.

    Opera Snapshot_2020-02-17_213102_www.effectuation.org1

    Opera Snapshot_2020-02-17_213329_www.effectuation.org

    Opera Snapshot_2020-02-17_213413_www.effectuation.org3

  • Tweet: Insights from sports science

     I think sports science offers a lot of insights about real world learning. This includes learning in teams, in complexity, in diversity, in volatility. 

    It acknowledges the presence of other parties and players.

    It acknowledges the complex nature of the context and game.

    It prepares for variability and diversity.

    Its feedback and outcome focused.

    These insights are very valuable and can be applied to academic learning contexts.

    The separation of disciplines and departments need to be blurred for the sake of better outcomes and it need to happen sooner than later.

  • Tweet: A summary of different entrepreneurial learning approaches

     

    In their paper” Demystifying the Genius of Entrepreneurship: How Design Cognition Can Help Create the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs” Massimo Garbuio, Andy Dong and others illustrate how they train students to apply four well-established cognitive acts from the design cognition research paradigm to opportunity creation. They are:
    • Framing,
    • Analogical reasoning
    • Abductive reasoning, and
    • Mental simulation
     
    The design cognition theory emphasizes creating preferred situations from existing ones rather than applying a defined set of tools from management scholarship.