Building Expertise by Ruth Colvin Clark

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When we find a great teacher, we prize them not only because what we learn improves our lives but also because good learning can be one of the most exhilirating things we experience. Unfortunately, a lot of teaching stinks. It’s boring, rambling, forgettable.

I’ve made a study of teaching. I’ve had to. For almost 20 years I’ve taught and designed courses in the private sector. And for many of those years my work has been in a revenue generating department. What that means is that if my classes are ineffective and dull, nobody signs up, revenue falls, and a lot of folks will stand around and wonder if it might not be better to just replace me with a potted plant. At least a plant would be something pleasant to look at, plus it would also clean the air.

Now not everything I do is stellar (I wish that were so). Sometimes in the quality, cost, speed triangle, quality is the thing that takes the hit. But the point is I have to be alert and try to miminize the schlock. But how do you do that? How do you develop and deliver effective and interesting education?

Luckily, the field of instructional technology (I’m not talking about computers, but principles of instruction) has come a long way in identifying what works and what doesn’t. This is important because teaching theories of the past (many of which are still used today) often relied on rules of thumb and anecdotal evidence. Their precriptions were often ineffective and sometimes counterproductive. What’s exciting is that in the last few decades researchers in this area have put techniques and principles to the test. We know better now than ever before how to structure learning that is effective and interesting. And I have yet to find a better explanation of the proven techniques and principles than Ruth Colvin Clark’s Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement, 3rd Edition.  

Don’t let the “training” part fool you. We often associate “training” with learning procedures and simple tasks (which is what leads to the “we want to provide sex education, not sex training” obfuscation). But Clark isn’t using the term that way. Training here includes all types of learning.

What Clark does is not only share the techniques that build expertise, but also the psychological reasons and research-based evidence for those techniques. This isn’t nonsense based on personality or political correctness. It’s practical and proven.

Among other things, you’ll learn:

  • Why working memory is key to instruction and how to overcome its limits
  • How to motivate learners
  • How to structure learning
  • When to use lecture and when to put learners into action
  • What methods work best

You’ll learn when taking notes can actually be counterproductive and what you can do about it. Or how making your delivery more personable (and what that means) can actually improve attention. You’ll see why lots of practice isn’t always the best answer–sometimes your child will learn more if you do half of their homework questions for them.

You’ll find that there “Is no Yellow Brick road” in teaching. Instead, you’ll see that the effectiveness of any method depends on whether it’s suited to the specific situation. And Clark will explain what the key factors in any situation are so you know which methods to apply and the trade-offs you’ll make when you do.

If you’re a teacher in any setting–family, job, church, school, or recreation–or if you’re trying to teach yourself, this book (specifically the 3rd edition) will be a goldmine for you. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories: Feb 20 @ BYU

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Mark your calendars!!

The free, 2009 Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium at BYU will run Thursday – Saturday, February 19 – 21.

The speical guests are Tracy & Laura Hickman (Dragonlance authors) and James C. Christensen (yes, the amazing fantasy artist). But there will be more than a dozen other authors there, including: L.E. Modesitt, Brandon Mull, James Dashner, Brandon Sanderson, David Farland, Mette Ivie Harrison, Eric James Stone, Howard Tayler, and a number of others.
 
Here’s what I’ll be doing:

  1. Panel: The Principles of Suspense. Fri, Feb 20, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
  2. Workshop: The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories. Fri, Feb 20, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
  3. Panel: Myth and Mythology in SF&F. Sat, Feb 21, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
  4. Reading: from the forthcoming novel and a few of my other published works, Sat, Feb 21, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

If you want to write fiction, you’ll want to attend the workshop. And if you’ve attended the workshop before, know that I’ve made some significant updates to the workshop content for 2009. I’m always learning, and so each time I teach this I’m able to provide more insight.

You’ll also want to carefully review the whole schedule. There are tons of panels with professional authors on them that are going to be both useful and interesting to writers.

My workshop focuses on three incredibly important things.  In the beginning, I didn’t know these key things, and that ignorance stymied all my writing efforts for years. Once I learned them, the way was opened. There was still a lot of work involved. But these principles increased my output of quality material 1000% (literally). The principles allowed me to write the story that got me my current three-book contract from Tor.

I’ve taught it now more than a dozen times to all sorts of fiction writers and they’re telling me they’re finding it very useful. You’re going to love this stuff, and I always enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with other writers. The three things are:

  1. What a story really is. We’re not talking narrative taxonomy, although that’s included. It’s focused on the story effect upon the reader. And why this is one of the most important things you need to understand when writing fiction.
  2. Parts & principles. Key principles of character, problem, plot, setting, and text as they relate to #1.
  3. The creative process. The simple but powerful principles of how to get ideas. How to develop them into story. Why writer’s block is a gift and how to use it to produce MORE. Plus a number of other creative principles I wished I’d known.

It’s a highly interactive workshop. Again, the whole symposium, including the workshop, is free. I don’t know another place where you can learn from so many professionals for such a great price.

Hope to see you there!!

New creatures & mystery in wonder fiction

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I love listening to writing excuses because I get to hear three smart and funny authors discuss interesting topics that get me thinking. This week’s writing excuse was on building non-humans in SF&F.

Here’s my take.

An alien race, if done right, can be a huge draw to a story. For example, Brandon Sanderson’s Kandra point of view in HERO OF AGES is one of the most enjoyable parts of that book.

However, I want to suggest that aliens (in fantasy or sf) create that draw only IF they’re kept sufficiently strange or mysterious. The minute they become common or too human, they lose their power to enchant.

That’s one thing I like about how Tolkien did the elves and orcs–we never got the National Geographic on them. They never became common. And so I always wanted to know more. Easterlings, ents, balrogs, the orders of wizards, dragons, etc. were the same. There were tons of tales Tolkien hinted at, curioisties raised, but those desires were never sated. This is part of what drove me to other fantasy books.

It’s the same thing that made me love mammoths and dinosaurs, bats and giant squid, and far-off places. However, once these things became common and explained, their magic departed. The curiosity generated by the wonder of things new is one of the key things science fiction and fantasy offer its readers. But I think authors can only keep it alive if they approach it in the same way a fan dancer approaches her work.

This leads me to another point. It’s true that focusing our world building on the conflicts and story touch points can keep us on track. And we do need to produce. However, I think if we strictly limit our alien development to the central story conflicts, we might miss many opportunities for that wonder. Some of what we develop might end up complicating the plot while other parts might only enrich the experience. And I don’t think that’s bad.

For example, one of the most poignant parts of the LOTR, of which there were many, was the tale of the ents and the entwives and Treebeard’s poem. Tolkien could have eliminated that and the story never would have been affected. But, O, how much richer the story was for that little side trail that still beckons. Or you might think of the ring Bilbo found. When Tolkien first wrote THE HOBBIT, it wasn’t THE ring of power. It was merely a ring that Gollum used. Only later, when he began to work on LOTR and was trying to figure out the main problem of the story did he work that detail into it becoming THE ring of power.

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

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Why I didn’t read Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography long ago is a mystery. I owned the book when I was a teen (and stupidly gave it away in my 20’s). But maybe the long wait was inevitable. Back then I wanted more hobbits and sweeping saga, not biography. Luckily, that’s not the case today. 

Folks, this is a marvelous read. I’m sure part of the reason I have not read a biography with more interest is because I love The Lord of the Rings so much. But I think there much more to it than that.

Tolkien had a story life as a child and young man. Not story as in wonderful and easy, but as in hard. He was orphaned early, forbidden to see his love when he found her. So Tolkien’s life is compelling on its own, not just because he’s famous.

Furthermore, Carpenter writes, not a dry list of facts,  but a narrative full of particular and interesting details, transporting you back to the very times and places Tolkien lived in. He also transports you, if only lightly, into the mind of the man and some of his opinions. You’ll learn why Mordor is not Nazi Germany. How the batmen of WW1 found their way into his work. And that Frodo was originally named Bingo (can you imagine?). Carpenter also attempts to point out cause and effect as he sees it, to sum up key factors in Tolkien’s life, but without being glib. Carpenter writes all this with such clarity and grace I found myself carried along.

If you’re a fan of Tolkien’s work, don’t miss this book. Get a copy. Find a favorite tree, if you can. And then read.