Moving to my next interest: professionals beyond 50 changing projects

Learning and especially online and mobile learning was a passion of mine for years. Not only professionally, but also personally. I have spent many ours exploring, researching and disseminating best practices (as well as actions you better avoid 😀 ). This was an effortless and frequently non-paid activity. But now well into the Corona years, I can no longer enjoy looking at the current basic implementation of what was considered digital or online learning. 

My interest was waning in the last few years anyhow, as I like new things and once it becomes overly structured, I just loose interest. I like to explore, test out, gather with people that are passionate about a subject in learning or self-realisation themselves and ... join forces while trying to find optimal solutions. 

Given my personality, online learning is now overstructured, meaning it is now being built with a common denominator that is cost efficient, yet only reaches the basic implementation of what might work in what I would consider an ideal learning world. It is no longer the quest for Online Educational Resources, MOOCs, access for all, it is just another means of business. 

So I decided to close this blogging chapter of my life after more than 1000 blogposts from 2007 onward. I now know for certain I will blog about it again... I won't as the passion has faded. Writing to me is reflection, exploration while sharing... so I will use that energy for a new horizon that has caught my attention: professionals who change their lives beyond the age of 50 (no age limit). 

For those interested: I just started to build an awareness dissemination on the subject, feel free to follow my next chosen journey here:  https://secretshakers.com/ 

Free @eLearningGuild research on #generations in the #workplace @JaneBozarth

The inspiring eLearning Guild keeps disseminating great reports in relation to learning. One of their key authors is Jane Bozarth (= director of research @eLearningGuild), who is always an inspiration. You also know that a report will be of interest if she writes it.

In the eLearning Guild's latest report (19 pages) the focus is on Generations in the Workplace: how they see each other and why this is worth all of our attention. Interestingly, the report starts out with a clear framing on why all of us tend to have possible stereotypes confirmed when thinking about 'the other' in terms of age and what a person in a certain age group can do (see page 2 of the report). And the report concludes that little comparable research in terms of learning outcome is being done, diversity and inclusion of age groups is a concern, training might be affected by trainers encountering different attitudes towards their training, concepts that are being used as indicators (e.g. lifelong learning) to assume a strong will to learn might be based on different interpretations of those concepts by learners. The complete list of ideas and outcomes for L&D practitioners is pasted below. 

Basically, learners of all ages are more similar than different! So, erase any potential stereotypes and move on :) Get the report, it is free (if you register with the eLearning Guild, also free) and it is a really good read.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR L&D PRACTITIONERS?

It is difficult to find advice for L&D practitioners that is not rooted in often-unsubstantiated data from the popular press. A few takeaways from this review of the empirical literature base:
• It seems worth noting that while much research explores values and attitudes (Do people of different generations comply with rules? Do people of different generations like technology?), little of it compares outcomes. Is one generation more productive? Is one generation more prone to making errors? There is no evidence to suggest one person inherently performs better than another by dint of any grouping by birth year.
• Work has changed. More work is remote, more work is mobile, and people are becoming increasingly accustomed to finding quick answers and help. Workers need content that is available anytime, anywhere, and is accessible via any number of devices. The content may need to be less formal than it has been in the past. Workers may need help understanding how to access that content and how to use the devices.
• A number of researchers (among them Mencl & Lester, 2014; Urick et al. 2017; Woodward, 2015) tie concerns about generations in the workplace to the larger matter of diversity and inclusion. L&D workers involved in efforts in these areas may need to incorporate ideas about generations into that broader context.
• In their 2015 review of the literature, Woodward et al. found that younger generations placed greater emphasis on lifelong learning and personal development at work than older generations. Those in L&D might consider that similarities can take a number of forms. For instance, Mencl & Lester 2014 note that the Baby Boomer interested in “career advancement” and the Millennial interested in “lifelong learning” may be talking about very similar things.
• An interesting take comes from a 2018 Learning Solutions article by Joe Mayer, who reframes the conversation from “managing differences” to “avoiding generational bias”. Among his suggestions are using design thinking to take an empathetic view of the learner, to conduct extensive user-testing of your user base, to choose appropriate vehicles for content rather than try to accommodate some perceived generational preference for a particular medium or instructional approach, and to consider tenure rather than age.
• Finally, we should take care to check our own biases. In a lab experiment in which undergraduates taught a technical task (using Google chat) to learners of varying ages, researchers found that “ostensibly older trainees evoked negative expectancies when training for a technological task, which ultimately manifested in poorer training interactions and trainer evaluations of trainee performance” (McCausland, King, Bartholomew, Feyre, Ahmad & Finkelstein, 2015) p. 693. In short: Trainer stereotypes of learners based on age created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Older trainees received lower-quality training, which could ultimately affect job performance.

(p. 14, eLearning Guild, 2020) 

Academia & ageism?Looking for role models & #data #academia #ageism #success @EcTel19 @mLearn19

Iris Apfel overall fashion icon

As I am preparing to head out to mLearn/EcTel 2019, an issue turned up on potential ageism. Do you know of anyone who started their academic track at 50 or older and managed to gain access to a higher academic position? Please send me a message, I would love to interview them and know how they achieved that position. In case you have data regarding the below statements on age and academic positions, please inform me as well, would love to factualize my assumptions.

Academia is filled with older people!

If I look around at conferences, the biggest target population consists of older (old-ER) academics, who have achieved academic status, and doctoral students (mostly younger, present author and some of my friends excepted). So, if I walk around, it feels as though there is equal representation in terms of age.

But then I started to dig a bit deeper, while looking for successful role models within academia, who started their academic journeys later on in life. Now I wonder whether people that start their academic careers later in life, actually make it to higher positions within the academic world?

You just need a body of work …

It is a reality that you need to have some sort of body of work within a certain field to step up the professional ladder in most areas. But there seems to be a discrepancy in what is possible in the professional (read corporate) world and what is possible in the academic world. Or am I mistaken?

Forbes has this 30 under 30 people to follow. The list is comprised of people who are successful at a young age in something newsworthy. If you consider the age of 30, this means that even the ‘oldest’ ones only have 9 years maximum to reach this status of success. If you would translate this into academic tracks including bachelor, master, and phd finished, you have only about 4 to 5 years max to achieve potential success. This means you can achieve a successful status within this short amount of time: less than 5 years. Basically, if you start at 50+ you should be able to achieve success before keeling over and dying of old age :D

Now let’s get back to academia and tenure tracks for researchers starting their career later on in life.

Looking for numbers

We move towards a more data-driven world and with that, an increased belief that data is the final argument (not agreeing with this, just generalizing). So I wonder: what is the average post-doc age, and how does this average compare to average PhD age? Or better yet, how many 45+ people start a Ph.D. track, and how many 50+ people get into a post-doc function?

Just wondering, as I have the feeling that this doesn’t add up. And if this adds up, then how many of the tenure positions are held by academians starting out later in life? Can anybody get their hands on such numbers?

The reason I ask, is because some of us late academic bloomers can have a lot of citations (in open journals), written and published in a short amount of time. We also come in with transferrable skills: project leads (corporate), team skills, innovations… and I am just wondering whether these might be neglected when comparing candidates for academic positions. Could this be? Or am I wrong in assuming this? (again are there numbers?)

In a world where there is increasing pressure to combine academic with professional fields, this seems something that is missing. Because people with a prior corporate or governmental background, might be well placed in cross-over academic tenure positions? And in those countries where they urge people over 50 to stay employed or be employed, I just wonder if there are equal opportunities?

Or aren’t late bloomers part of academia status positions?

Who knows, excuses might be:

• Yes, but they don’t have enough high profile papers,
• Yes, but they didn’t supervise enough phd students,
• Yes, but you need the 10 years of prior experience (not true, certainly not for 30 under 30)
• Yes, but there is no ageism (without arguments to follow that statement),
• Yes, but if you start late, you cannot expect to move up the academic ladder (that would be a crushing answer, would not it!).

Just looking for role models or numbers

Do you know of anyone who started their academic track at 50 or older and managed to gain access to a higher academic position? Please send me a message, I would love to interview them and know how they achieved that position.

If you have numbers regarding the above, oh!!! Please inform me as well, would love to factualize my assumptions.

In the meanwhile, writingly yours from EcTel and mLearn. 

Blogphilosophy: ageism in #education

Ageism is one of the big taboos in Western society. We have huge prejudices towards people with a certain age.
The remarkable side of this prejudice is that it occurs in an era where the population’s average age is getting older by the year. And although we are all getting older, we – older people (= which age do you feel ageism kicks in? I think it comes too early) are confronted by ideas embedded in Western culture. Ideas that are unsubstantiated at that.

This is no different in education. In fact mainstream education is/was a bastion of ageism.
Let me list the first 5 prejudice mindsets that come to mind:

1. You go to school from X to X, x being <25.>As if we all are flabbergasted by the knowledge provided by the educational institutes for people of that age, or as if we knew what was going on at 20 (well, I did not). We only start to learn at that age (at best).
2. The older you get the less you can learn: if you agree with this, get a life! Experts are formed through ongoing learning processes ;
3. PhD’s are mostly young graduates: well, I am putting myself up to tackle that one.
4. The digital native – digital immigrant discourse: oh please, try to sell that to my mom, she would shoot you with her WII gun.
5. Old professors or famous people good (let’s shake hands and take a picture), old people stupid (let’s just avoid talking to them all together).

I wonder, is Roger’s diffusion of innovation theory ever tested throughout age groups of different (early adopters, laggers…) groups of techy people? If not, I will do it, I will research it and yes my hypothesis is: once an early adopter, always an early adopter (looking at my auntie Anna, who shook like a maple leaf all of the time; we used her multiple times as a sugar shaker for pancakes... yes, we did, but more importantly, she learned Italian via CD's at age 90).

So please let us really disrupt education, cut down educational ageism barricades in the process and lift a new open minded Phoenix out of its ashes. Education is build by all of us, not just the young one’s, we as older educationalists either uphold the conservative paradigm of ‘my young assistants - best assistants, for they do not contradict me as older one's would’, or we shatter it, exchange notes and embrace openness, all ages and willingness.

(Another great cartoon by Nick D Kim: http://www.lab-initio.com/)