What poker can teach you about business

Saturday marked our first, and hopefully last, annual boys weekend that had to be held virtually. A group of people who mostly work in tech played poker over Zoom with real cards instead of a virtual poker table to save the £20 fee (it cost more to buy and post the cards). This was my first ever real game of poker and to say I was not a natural is an understatement.

I am a third of the way through Tony Hsieh’s book and used my first commute in 8 months to listen to more of the audio version, read my Hsieh himself. During today’s section of the book, Tony talks about rediscovering the game of Poker one sleepless night after selling LinkExchange to Microsoft by reading a community website for regular poker players.

Tony writes that he was ‘fascinated’ by the mathematics of the game. He discovered that luck did not matter so much in the long run as there was a mathematical way to calculate the ‘pot odds’ from the ratio of people still in the bet, the number of chips in the pot and the statistical chance of winning. After noticing the similarities between what he was learning in poker and what he knew about business, Tony made a list of lessons that he could apply in his work.

The two biggest lessons that poker taught Hsieh were 1, ‘Focus on what’s best for the long term, and 2, the most critical decision is to pick the correct market to be in.

Quote: One of the most interesting things about playing poker was learning the discipline of not confusing the right decision with the individual outcome of any single hand… Tony Hsieh

A small selection of Hsieh’s poker rules for business

Evaluating market opportunities – “Table selection is the most important decision you can make.”
Marketing and branding – “Act weak when strong, act strong when weak. Know when to bluff.
Financials – “Always be prepared for the worst possible scenario.”
Strategy – “Don’t play games that you don’t understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them.”
Continual learning – “Educate yourself. Read books and learn from others who have done it before.”
Culture – “You’ve gotta love the game. To become really good, you need to live it and sleep it.”

I really should have paid attention to rule four, but alas, I started the book too late. I have dusted off my copy of Play poker like the pros that I bought years ago and never used, and I am heading to an online poker table to start my Tony inspired journey.

Send a message to me on Twitter with your best poker tips!

Creating a running training programme

At the start of the year, I aimed to get serious about my running. I have been running on and off for around five years, but I have never done anything more than 30+ miles in a training week and never followed a programme or put in any consistent volume. I completed several big races including the 69 mile Rat Race Wall in northern England, the 66km long, 4,400m of accent, Pirin Skyrun in Bulgaria, and the 49km long, 3,600m of accent Matterhorn Ultraks with my relaxed approach. Still, the aim has always been to finish rather than to race.

I decided in December 2019, with the help of a Percy Ceritty book, that if I was going to invest time and energy into doing long mountainous races, then I need to respect them by preparing correctly. I chose the Tromso Skyrun, a beautiful and remote event on the edge of my current ability as my target race and set about getting serious. I set an annual target of 2000 miles and got the five times winner of the event to coach me for the six months leading up to the event (The organisers cancelled it in the end). Jon Albon helped me build a strong running foundation, so after the six months under his coaching ended, I wanted to create my plan for the rest of the year.

Creating a training plan

In the book ‘Run Faster from the 5k to the Marathon: How to be your own best coach‘, Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald suggest eight steps to creating your training plan:

Choose a peak race and a race goal
Pick a start date and plan duration
Decide on appropriate running volume, frequency and weekly workout structure.
Divide your plan into introductory, fundamental, and sharpening periods
Plan your peak training week
Schedule tune-up races and recovery weeks
Schedule progressions for intervals workouts, threshold workouts, and long runs
Fill the rest of the schedule

For most people, picking a race and a goal for it in step one is going to be based on an event that gets them excited, but if you are looking for inspiration, check my post from Sunday last week on the progression of a distance runner.

If you want to get faster at running and do not have a coach, you should pick up a copy of Brad Hudson and Matt Fitzgerald’s book. The book is full of useful advice, training plans, and more importantly, guidance on how to adapt a plan for your context and how you react to the training load on a day to day basis.

Contact me on Twitter if you have any questions or want to discuss ideas creating your own running training plan.

Happiness Delivered: Tony Hsieh

I am listening to Tony Hsieh’s book Delivering Happiness: A path to profits, passion, and purpose today after the sad news of his passing. Hsieh sold his first big company LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million, and then Zappos to Amazon for over $1 billion. There are two things I remember about his work; The first is Zappos’s relentless and genuine focus on excellent customer service, the second is his project to revitalise downtown Las Vagas into a thriving tech centre.

DTP is a $350 million privately funded regeneration project of downtown Las Vagas. Hsieh started the project to support the area around the Zappos HQ and provide an environment for his employees to live and work. The project has since grown to support an extensive network of new businesses and tech start-ups. The DTP website states the project was inspired but Triumph of the city by Edward Glaeser, and that ‘…the best way to accelerate learning and innovation is to maximize serendipitous interactions…’ through the three C’s: Collisions, Co-learning, and Connectedness.

We believe the best way to accelerate learning and innovation is to maximize serendipitous interactions, density in the office, density in the city, and to prioritize collisions over convenience.
dtplv.com

Like Google and other Silicon Valley companies campuses, you can draw many similarities between the ideas of the DTP community building with the set up of universities. We make a lot of effort to maximise ‘collisional hours’ when students are on or around the campus to increase students interactions with each other. We design modern courses around co-learning, with active learning, group work and small group seminars, student mentorship schemes, a variety of talks and workshops from external speakers, shared study spaces, and opportunities to support student start-ups. We also try to build a strong sense of connectedness, belonging, and emotional connection to the university outside of courses through activities with the Student Union, clubs, and sports.

There are some great communities of learning on cohort-based university course studied online, but with the mass move to blended learning at universities across the world, what more can do more to increase serendipitous interactions? Contact me on Twitter if you have ideas.

You should read Delivering Happiness, or better, listen to the audio version that read by Tony Hsieh himself.

Revenue and expenses for a world class independent online course

Tiago Forte, an expert in personal productivity and the creator of the ‘Building a second brain‘ online course, released his revenue and expenses for the first two years of his course on his blog in Febuary 2019. Over the first two years, he had 712 enrollments, each paying between $400 to $1200. The course included a standard edition with the core materials and live sessions and a premium edition that provides for additional content and personalisation. An Executive edition was recently added that includes a coaching session and private Q&As with Tiago himself.

According to the post, Building a second brain has brought in $256,839 from seven cohorts and cost $45,920 to set up and run, giving a profit of $210,919. The costs and income are laid out in detail in the post and include the $9,853 (4.16%) of refunds to students. The expenses include a part-time course manager, IT support, a marketing agency and Facebook ads, coaches, a videographer, Discourse as an online forum tool, graphic design from 99designs, Teachable for the course platform, Unbounce for the landing page, and Zoom for video conferencing.

Forte ideas are important. His productivity methods are highly effective, and his views on building a portfolio life are well thought through, he believes everyone should create an online course to share their unique ideas after building an extensive email list (6000+) through blogs and social media. He has exciting ideas that he is testing in his three courses, on how online education will evolve over the next ten years to be more focused on social learning and use emerging technologies in interesting ways.

Read the blog post on the Forte labs website. Find me on Twitter if you want to talk about online learning.

Sharing tasks in Microsoft To Do

The Microsoft productivity suite has seen significant integration improvements over the last year or two. The institution I work at uses Office365, so to reduce friction, I have been making the jump from the stack of third-party tools I have using for some time to their Microsoft equivalents. Two of the essential tools I use to manage my work and keep my email controlled is Microsoft’s Calendar and To Do apps. To Do is a simple app but its best feature is its ability to create tasks from emails by merely dragging them into the ‘My Day’ pannel., that email is then easily accessed from that task later.

Now I am used to managing my on tasks with this new app, and I am getting the benefits, I want to extend this to my team but have found that it is not as simple as solo task management.

You have to:

Create a sub-list
Share a web link to this sub-list
Assign tasks to members of the sub-list (only once that person has accessed the sub-list via the link)

It would be much easier if you could use the institution’s Active Directory to assign any task in any list, or a whole sub-list, to someone else, but this may come shortly.

To start with, I have created and shared a task list for each of my direct reports but moving forward, once the habit has been established, it will make more sense to have a shared list per project and include all members of the broader team in the relevant project task lists too.

You can find guides on sharing tasks and everything else on the Microsoft To Do support pages.

Get in touch with me on Twitter if you are using O365 and have tips or have any questions.

HE teaching staff want more Edtech

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Jisc, a not-for-profit organisation for educational digital services and solutions in the UK, released its annual Digital experience insights survey on 23 November. The 2020 survey received 2,677 responses from teaching staff from 14 universities between October 2019 and July 2020. 48% of submissions came after the UK went into lockdown on 23 March 2020.

Results I found interesting:

95% said they either enjoyed trying out new and innovative technologies or were comfortable using mainstream technologies, but 4% preferred not to use technology unless they had to.
72% were either ‘very’ or ‘quite’ confident at trying out new technologies and 12% were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ confident
79% are motivated to use it in their teaching, and 6% were not very or not at all motivated.
43% rated the quality of support to develop digital skills provided as either ‘excellent’, ‘best imaginable’ or ‘good’.
33% of staff asked for more training, and 25% asked for an organisation strategy, recognition, and culture when asked what one thing could be done to help you develop your digital skills
Only 7% agree they receive reward and recognition for digital skills developed.
Since lockdown, there has been an increase in staff discussing their digital skills informally with managers (+5%), in meetings with colleagues (+7), and staff meetings and CPD sessions (5+).

Opportunity

The forced move to blended learning with social distancing in the UK has increased online delivery at universities. There has been massive investment from both institutions and technology companies to support academic staff to develop their digital skills and improve the technologies they use. The survey report suggests that staff need now to be given time to innovate and be creative to build their digital teaching. In response to only 7% of staff feeling any recognition for digital skills they have developed, Jisc also suggested that creating an organisational culture that recognises and rewards these endeavours is a priority. The commitment and time staff have dedicated over the last six months to adapt their teaching practice to use technology has moved the sector forward many years. However, organisations still have a lot to do to consolidate this progress and support the 4-12% of academics that are either not confident or prefer not to use technology.

“Moving forward, we need a stronger focus on supporting staff to gain and nurture the skills to embed digital within curriculum design and redesign. This will help students to develop a preparedness for remote teaching and learning, supporting their digital capabilities and increasing their confidence in the digital workplace.”
Sarah Knight, Jisc’s head of data and digital capability

key challenges:

Jisc suggests three priorities for future developments:

Strategic leadership is vital in driving digital transformation.
More resource is needed to support staff to develop pedagogically informed digital practices.
The digital environment and infrastructure require further investment.

Successful digital transformations require the organisation’s leadership team to make a clear signal of the digital vision and its purpose. It could be argued that the reason for the successful large scale adoption of digital learning this academic year has been due to a critical mission to provide students with the best possible educational experience in a time when they need it most. The next step is for leadership is to evolve this from a message of necessity to an aspirational one. This strategy needs to be underpinned with a robust implementation plan and investment.

Teaching online or blending online and campus-based delivery requires new skills and practices. More resource is needed to support staff to develop high-quality teaching. Jisc’s survey suggests that academics are motivated to use technology, and most have confidence, but they want more support and guidance. Universities need to create more opportunities to discuss digital skills in informal settings such as meetings and embedding them into formal ones, including recruitment, induction, and appraisals. Demand is high for regular, continuous professional development (CPD) and ongoing support, in a variety of formats, on effective teaching with digital technology. Staff want this CPD to be collaborative with other academics to learn, share, and develop practices specific to their context or subject area.

Finally, for digital learning and teaching to be successful in the long term, Universities digital infrastructure will require significant ongoing investment. The quality of available technologies and teaching spaces are highly variable across universities in the UK. The more emerging digital practice is shared, and technology is used at home becomes more seamless, student and staff expectations will continue to rise. Staff tend to be less satisfied than students with University technology, wanting good quality and consistent provision across all their teaching environments and a suitable personal device that works reliably with university systems. Virtual learning environments need to continue to updated and improve, become more usable, be better integrated, and be appropriately implemented with staff.

UK universities have invested heavily in resource and infrastructure over the last six months to support staff and students in the move to blended learning. They have provided clear leadership in the rapid move online. This leadership will need to work even harder and be backed up with resource and infrastructure to maintain staff motivation and goodwill towards digital learning once social distancing rules are removed.

Get the full report here on Jisc’s website, and get in touch with me on Twitter if you want to talk about what happens next in digital learning.

Initial mapping of Learning Designer competencies

Photo by Startup Stock Photos on Pexels.com

I spent some time a few months ago mapping the knowledge, skills, and behaviours of a Learning Designer. I separated the role into three areas; learning, technology, and design. The learning competencies cover having a clear definition of quality and what good learning and teaching look like. The technology competencies focus on the development of learning materials and the use of multimedia. The design competencies cover the process of working with subject matter experts, usually academics, to co-design learning with an understanding of the other two areas.

This list is not exclusive, and I sure it has changed since my team has taken my rough workings and corrected it based on their practice.

Learning (Quality)

Learning theory/models
- Kolbs learning cycle
- Blooms [Digital] Taxonomy
- Spaced learning and the forgetting curve
- SAMR
- Active Learning inc. SCALE-UP
- The PAR model (Presentation, Activity, Review
- Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction
- eTivities (G.Salmon)
Accessibility (WCAG 2.1)
Quality frameworks
- Quality Matters
- Online Learning Consortium Scorecard

Technology (Development)

Typography
Images/photography
Audio
Video – hardware and software, production process
HTML & CSS (Javascript?)
Theory
- Dual coding
- Mayer’s principles for multimedia learning

Design

Design thinking
Student centered design
Personas
ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation)
Rapid Prototyping (agile)
Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation
Design workshop structure
Design workshop facilitation
Module Storyboard/map
Scheduling & Project Management
Good practice examples

Scholarship and continuous improvement

On top of these three skillsets, it is essential that a Learning Designer working in higher education maintains personal scholarship and operates in continuous improvement cycles. Scholarship is a set of principles and practices that allow a practitioner to ensure their methods are valid and trustworthy through rigorous enquiry. This may be through applying published research or carrying out structured research on their outputs. Continuous improvement cycles ensure that the Learning Designer gets better from every course they develop through reflecting on what has worked, what hasn’t, learning from this and then experimenting with new and emerging practices.

Let me know what I have missed via my Twitter account.

Micro-credentials

The need for higher education and ongoing skills development is increasing. People are living longer, working longer, and many of the traditional middle-income jobs are being replaced by higher-skilled, higher-paid roles that take advantage of automation and computer power. Existing qualifications work well for those that are lucky enough to get them at the right time but there are many poeple that need an easier entry point and more flexible delivery to take advantage of what universities can offer.

Higher education participation for 18-year-olds is at an all-time high in the UK and set to grow in line with the increasing numbers of young people. Three-year full-time Undergraduate and one year full-time Postgraduate degrees have worked to prepare students for the workplace and as signals of capability that employers understand and trust. Most universities have worked hard over the last five to ten years to work closely with employers to make qualifications more relevant and invested in training staff to improve the quality of instruction to make the courses more accessible to a broader set of students.

Still, many people in the workforce need knowledge, skills, and behaviours as well and qualifications that signal these capabilities. This need may be to maintain high paid positions as they are digitally transformed or to transition from middle-income roles to higher-income ones that require a greater level of specific knowledge. More importantly, study is needed to get out of low-income positions into more profitable and fulfilling careers. Once working full-time and starting a family, barriers to full-time qualifications including money, time, energy, ability, and insufficient entry criteria stop people from taking the first step to get on existing part-time programmes with 5-8 year commitments.

Smaller qualifications more flexibly delivered

In the Higher Education National Credit Framework for England, one credit is equal to 10 notional learning hours. Notional learning hours includes all the time a student would spend working towards achieving the credit from the contact time, activities, essential and recommended reading, and working on assessments.

An undergraduate degree is worth 360 credits or 3600 notional hours of learning at Level 4,5, and 6 and can be achieved in a maximum of 8 years. A masters degree is 180 credits at level 7 and can be completed in a maximum of 5 years. These can currently be further broken down into certificates (60 credits at Masters level and 120 credits at Undergraduate level) and Diploma (120 credits at Masters level and 240 credits at Undergraduate level)

The full qualifications at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level are still needed, and demand for these delivered as full-time campus-based courses continues to grow. Something additional is required for those that do not take this traditional route.

Micro-credential: A Sub-unit of a credential or credentials (could be micro, meso, mini, etc.) that could accumulate into larger credentials or be part of a portfolio
https://microcredentials.eu/

New, smaller, and more flexibility delivered qualifications are needed that are interoperable with the established larger awards. These micro-credentials should take advantage of the long-established and trusted existing signals of achievement and provide the opportunity to stack them into full Undergraduate or Postgraduate qualifications. Micro-credentials should be delivered in a way that removes current barriers and where possible awards credit for prior knowledge and skills.

What is needed?

Microcredentials need to be credit-bearing for the signal to employers of their value, smaller than an existing qualification, and flexibly delivered to fit around existing barriers and commitments. It must be possible to stack several micro-credentials together to gain a current, recognisable, formal qualification or used as entry criteria for full degrees or Masters degrees.

Many universities have started to deliver ten credit micro-credentials over ten weeks for a total of ten hours per week of study. Two of these short courses could be put together to form the first module of a full qualification or six of these at level 7 could be used to gain a Certificate at Masters level.

Professor Beverley Oliver in the paper ‘Making micro-credentials work‘ recommends requirements for students and providers to implement micro-credentials.

Learners require:
- Certification of new and prior learning
- Consultation about future work and education
- The facility to stack and bank lifelong learning credit
Employers, policymakers, and providers require:
- Definitions. standards, credit framework
- Partnerships for learning-integrated work
- A sustainable system of funding and incentives
- Well-planned national strategies created in partnership

There is an enormous opportunity for providers to create some inspiring opportunities for students that do not have the knowledge, skills, or behaviours they need. This might be due to not getting the chance to study a traditionally delivered HE qualification at 18 or to improve their abilities to get more out of their career. The question of whether these qualifications sit within existing Universities alongside traditionally delivery or in new purpose build specialist providers remains.

Get in touch with me on Twitter if you have any questions or want to discuss any of the ideas presented here.

A distance runner’s progression

This year is the first year I have taken running seriously. In previous years, I have done some significant challenges, including Sky runs, ultramarathons, and 70.3 Ironman triathlons. I am not a naturally fast runner, I have done ok at the longer events, but I have not been fast, and not fully committed to the training so I never got near to seeing how good I could be.

This year I committed to becoming a better runner. I signed up for the Tromso Skyrun and several warm-up events, I convinced the five-time Tromso winner and OCR world champion Jon Albon to coach me, and set an annual distance target of 2000 miles (over twice the total I had done in the year before).

For the first month of the year, I built up to 40 miles per week and then ran a local half marathon event in early February, setting a slow 1:50 minutes, and a 48 minute 10K time trial solo on local roads. With these benchmarks set, I began working with Jon to build intensity in 2-3 runs per week and then slow down the rest of my running to comfortable distance pace. Events had been cancelled, but I managed to get my Half-marathon time down to 1:37 in a solo time-trial before my time with Jon ended.

The lack of events got me thinking about the progression of a distance runner. What benchmarks should I target at each stage of my training to keep it interesting? I started to look through books and read online about some targets to direct my training towards achieving.

The progression of a distance runner

The term distance running tends to cover events from 5km to Marathon. traditionally younger competative runners would start at the shorter distances, get fast, and then work up to the marathon later in thier career but as I am in my 30s already I can be a bit more created with my running progression. Run Britain have programmes for the following distances and target times. On their website, they list the events by distance, but I wanted to order them based on difficulty to create a ladder of events to target. I have listed these distance and time benchmarks in order of difficulty according to the equivalent race time tool of the Jack Daniels calculator:

10k in under 60 minutes
Marathon in under 4 hours
5k in under 24 minutes
10k in under 50 minutes
Half-marathon in under 95 minutes
10k in under 40 minutes
Marathon in under 3 hours
Half-marathon in under 85 minutes
5k in under 18 minutes

On the 20th December, I am going to time trial a half marathon to get under the 1:35 time. I had planned to do this in an event, but this has cancelled too. I have been following a Half marathon programme from Brad Hudson’s ‘Run Faster’ and can highly recommend this book and its included programmes.

Contact me on Twitter if you have an alternative set of targets that make training more exciting or to share your running progress. I am back to work tomorrow after a week off so the next few days will be focused on Learning Design. I will keep Sundays for running-related blogs.

The best kettlebell programme

I like to do my heaviest lifting on a Saturday, It is currently my rest day from running, and it allows me not to rush the rests between heavy sets of deadlifts or bench press as I tend to have less going on. I have been building up a home gym over the last few years and makes Saturday workouts even more straightforward. Ever since I moved into a house with a garage, I have picked up a second-hand gear including a barbell and bumper plates and have taken advantage of sales to pick up smaller items including kettlebells.

Gyms have been closed in the UK for most of the last seven months, leaving many people unable to train. I have been suggesting a simple kettlebell workout and progression from the Deadlift legend Andy Bolton that can be completed in 10-15 minutes (just 1% of your day) that I found in Ross Edgley’s ‘Fittest book in the world’. I tried the programme two years ago when I was getting back into strength training after preparing for an ultramarathon and found it quick, easy, and useful.

The ladder

Day 1: 5 swings every minute on the minute for 5 minutes.
Day 2: 6 swings every minute on the minute for 5 minutes.
Day 3: 7 swings every minute on the minute for 5 minutes.
Day 4: 8 swings every minute on the minute for 5 minutes.
Day 5: 9 swings every minute on the minute for 5 minutes.
Day 6: 10 swings every minute on the minute for 5 minutes.
Day 7: 10 swings every minute on the minute for 6 minutes
Day 8: 10 swings every minute on the minute for 7 minutes
Day 9: 10 swings every minute on the minute for 8 minutes
Day 10: 10 swings every minute on the minute for 9 minutes
Day 11: 10 swings every minute on the minute for 10 minutes – 100 swings total in 10 minutes!
Day 12: either get a heavier bell and start back at day one or if you are not ready to make the jump to the next size, start the ladder again but cut the time in half so every 30 seconds rather then every minute.

Which Kettlebell?

Start with a 16kg kettlebell, then progress to a 24kg, then 32kg, then 40kg, and finally ‘The Beast’, at 48 kilograms. The big jumps shock the body to encourage growth. It can be tempting to make smaller jumpers, so 20kg for your second kettlebell but you will quickly outgrow it, and you will end up spending more money than you need. Many people are happy with just 16kg, 24kg, and 32kg Kettlebells and never feel the need to go heavier. If you do choose to go heavier, 100 swings with the 48kg kettlebell in 10 minutes represents an impressive level of strength and conditioning so send me a video on Twitter if you manage it (I have completed the ladder with a 32kg bell and have ordered a 40kg).

Ideas on how to do it

The beauty of the workout is its simplicity, train when you can and gradually work up the ladder until you complete it with your current weight. I have included some suggestions of how you might want to get started for those that what extra help.

When you start, especially with the 16kg bell, and depending on your level of fitness, you could probably do the workouts five days per week, skipping a day when you are too busy. As you get further up the ladder and the bells get heavier, you will need to add more rest days or start to introduce different exercises on the days do not swing. For example, once you reach the 32kg you might do your swings on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday, then go for a run on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. If you need to keep your workouts short, you could introduce some overhead pressing or snatches with the 16kg bell on the non-swinging days.

Don’t be stupid

I am not a qualified doctor or fitness professional and you are swinging a cannonball with a handle around so do this at your own risk. If it hurts stop, and if you are injured, wait to recover before you start. Check out Ross Edgely’s book for more ideas on getting fit and lookup Strongfirst on their website or on youtube for all things kettlebells including technique, different programmes or to find a certified coach.

Get high quality coated kettlebells; if you look after them they will last a long time, probably longer than you will, so it is worth paying an extra £30 to get something that has a smooth and even handle. You get what you pay for! Brands that make high quality coated Kettlebells and sell in the UK include Bulldog gear, Primal Strength, Strength shop, and Again Faster. Rogue Fitness for everywhere else in the world.

Find me on Twitter if you have questions or if you have a go and want to share the results.