Should learning be a challenge?

I recently came across this short article. It's a nice reminder to not spoon feed your learners. Give them some tough meat and a dull knife instead :-)
If You Think Training Should Make Learning Easy, You Are Doing It Wrong

How does this relate to your own experience as a learner?

And here's a related video referenced at the end of the article:

The Surprising Dynamics Behind How We Learn: Implications for Performance Support

For those of you that learned about booster questions at CALMet 11 in Seoul, it provides some insight on why booster questions can have an impact on learning.

A Simulator Exercise: the Elevator Pitch

As previously mentioned in the article of “Spreading the Conceptual Model Virus into Researcher Community”, the last but the most thrilling session in that training for researcher community held on early April 2016 was the "Elevator Pitch” session facilitated by Ardhasena Sopaheluwakan. Aiming to stimulate researchers in BMKG to be “ready at any time” to promote their work, the session challenged the participants to prepare a strictly 3-minutes-talk. Initially considered a dreadful announcement, it had become a wow moment for all 35 participants, when they eventually learned how crucial it is to have this communication skill within their daily work life. After all, one could not expect when he or she would bump into their supervisor in an elevator type of situation and being questioned, or meet with someone else who would ask on the work that he or she is doing at the moment J.

The session started by showing a video of Dos and Don’ts in an elevator conversation, which clearly showed that simple things like body language or gesture, could stimulate interesting conversation and also on the contrary could end a conversation. For this Session, a digital alarm was set automatically to ring loudly after exactly 3 minutes run. We called it “the ring of death.”  

Then the learning process began. Participants, who are researcher in the field of meteorology, climatology, and geophysics, gave their best effort to present their works. There are research posters, 1-slide-presentation, and even a complete research presentation thrown to the audience to fulfill the task. It was completely a new experience for most of them, and pretty much challenging, so everybody paid respect and full attention to whoever came forward to take their turn.

At the end of the session, all participants were very pleased to have learned to present their work in 3 minutes time. Subsequently the participants were invited to reflect together on some of the key lesson-learned from this first time experience of presenting an elevator pitch. To conclude, the session emphasized the importance of having at least these four points during the pitch:

•   Global description of the work, what has been done, and the key highlights / outcomes
•   Who we are, to make people remember us
•   Future target for accomplishment
•   Aiming to have follow-ups with the person we meet

It was also noted that it is important to show proper gestures during presentation, such as touching the screen if he or she feels it necessary. Recognition was given to the five best presenters, in terms of punctuality, clarity and conciseness of the presentations. 

-Ardhasena Sopaheluwakan & Asteria Handayani-

Exposing the Conceptual Model of the Northerly Cold Surge into Researcher Community

In the training for researcher community in BMKG, Indonesia, held on early April 2016, Wido Hanggoro has introduced the conceptual model of Northerly Cold Surge (NCS) which was developed during the CM4SH project Phase 2 on 2015/16 to BMKG researchers and delivered its scientific content. Within his talk, he conversed how the NCS is found to be a favorable environment for convection in the Maritime Continent and how crucial it is for BMKG forecaster to have a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. Besides schematics and graphics describing physical processes of the phenomenon, a meteogram has been produced as well as an applicable guidance for forecaster in identifying the phenomenon.

In this opportunity, Wido guided the participants to make a meteogram by themselves using GFS Ensemble from 22 models and running the key parameters using Grid Analysis and Display System (GrADS). He took the data from COLA Indian Monsoon Data (www.monsoondata.org) for this exercise. For the real CM work, he was using the ECMWF gridded data, which he stored in our R&D data server. Our colleagues were very happy with the openly shared GrADS script and data required, and they came up with ideas to analyze the NCS more thoroughly based on what they have learned in the meteogram. 

As the final touch, Wido emphasized that collaborative research can be done successfully virtually, unbound to time and location. This undoubtedly fact is based on our CM4SH work, since we have proven that although our member team is very much mobile and be in different countries almost the entire work, but with online discussions using online collaboration tools and virtually shared data in dedicated server, we have nailed it.  

Now we are ready to work on our next CM J

-Asteria Handayani (Tya) & Wido Hanggoro-

Spreading the Conceptual Model Virus into Researcher Community in BMKG, Indonesia

In the previous training for BMKG researcher community, Tya and Wido from CM4SH Team had the opportunity to talk on our current work in the Conceptual Model for the Southern Hemisphere (CM4SH) project. With the spirit of sharing our experience in developing a conceptual model (CM) on Northerly Cold Surge, we wanted to introduce the term ‘conceptual model’ and its deliverables. To our surprise, our talks had brought many positive comments from 25 weather and climate researcher participated, and even inspired them to do similar things in their own divisions.

The training, which was held in Depok, West Java on 29 March – 1 April 2016, aimed to enhance researcher competencies and updated us with new skills related with weather, climate, and earth sciences. Conducted annually with different topics, this event had managed to improve researcher’s knowledge and capacities with its specific curriculum.  This year, various topics around the latest issue in BMKG R&D Center had been given. My part was on sharing the general description of a CM, whilst Wido’s was on the phenomenon itself. Beside our sessions, there are also a session on the ice core research in Puncak Jaya, Papua, to learn about paleoclimatology, and a session on using MATLAB to visualize NetCDF data. At the end of the training, Ardhasena conducted a kind of speech simulator in his session, the Elevator Pitch.

Frankly, it was my first opportunity to talk in such event. By reflecting my experience during CM4SH work and what I have learned from CALMet Online 2014, and by using a trainer’s approach in delivering the material, I described about conceptual and mental models, and showed to participants how fun it is to develop one. I added an exercise on how to draw a schematic out of an overlaid satellite image and weather parameter graphic as well.   As the reaction, there were colleagues who retold the meaning of CM by their own words, who summarized my presentation, and who proposed a follow up idea among our community. It excited me that I found them so engage, unlike with other lecturers. Not only having an understanding of what a CM is and its significance for our work in BMKG, but also that they have developed initiatives to make CMs or schematics by themselves in their own divisions! Some colleagues from BMKG regional stations even have asked us to assist them in the near future with the implementation. The excitement went on when Wido talked about the Northerly Cold Surge afterward.

Follow-up actions inspired by our presentations:

• -          New CM topics to be developed
• -          New research topics to be analyzed
• -          Improved way in documenting work and research findings
• -          Improved way in disseminating forecast information to the public

Overall, we loved the CM work and determined to share it out, to open up new opportunities, to infuse a spirit to do positive and productive things in BMKG.

:)

Big thanks to our team mates in CM4SH, Roro Yuliana Purwanti, Adityawarman, Muhammad Rezza, and Ardhasena Sopaheluwakan for the whole fun things; to our expert team, Veronika Zwatz-Meize (ZAMG) and Ab Maas (KNMI) for all their kind advises and support throughout the process; and to Vesa for his generous advises whenever we nudged him with queries.

-Asteria Handayani (Tya)-