TED TALKS-Chieh Huang: How to know if it´s time to change careers

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


The Way We Work | February 2020


Chieh Huang: How to know if it´s time to change careers

Quitting your job can be scary, but sometimes it's the best thing you can do for your career, says entrepreneur Chieh Huang. He shares how to know when it's time to move on -- and what can you do to prepare.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Chieh Huang · Entrepreneur

Chieh Huang is cofounder and CEO of Boxed.com, a company that's disrupting the wholesale shopping club experience.

Transcript:


I was not one of those kids that knew exactly what they wanted to do when they were growing up. In the last 15 years of my career, I've been an English teacher, attorney, video game creator and now, a toilet paper salesman, selling millions of rolls of toilet paper a year.

[The Way We Work]

Life is about finding the intersection of what you really, really love with what you're really, really good at. As simple as it sounds, it's really not that easy to find.

After a brief stint as an English teacher, I went to law school and ended up becoming an attorney at a big law firm here in New York City. Like most Americans, for the next two, three years, I was holding on to my job for dear life, working really late hours at a job that I thought maybe I was good at but certainly not one that I really loved. I then came upon the epiphany that it takes years if not tens of thousands of hours to get really good at something. I really didn't have a lot of time to waste.

This talk isn't for those looking to quit their job because they don't like their boss or they had a long day at work. This is for those that are ready to make the completely scary leap into a brand-new career. So as you think about making a career change, here are a few tips I hope you consider and a few things I've picked up along the way.

First, there's three things to think about before you're ready to move on. Number one: professional life is about learning. If you're not even interested in learning anymore, that's a huge red flag that there might not be a future for you in that industry.

Number two: career changes are often gut-driven. If you constantly have sleepless nights where you're wide awake staring at the ceiling thinking, "Oh, man. I can't live with myself if I never try to make this change or if I don't even actually investigate it," then trust your gut. It might be time for that career change.

On the flip side, one reason to not move on is short-term pain. If you don't like your boss or people at the office are grating on you, that's actually not a good reason to absolutely change your career, because when you do change a career, you generally have to start from the bottom, and you'll probably feel a lot of short-term pain, whether it's through a lack of salary or lack of a title. Pain at any job is inevitable.

So now you're convinced that it's time to change your career. Then there's three things to do immediately. First: network, network, network. No one ever builds a career without a good mentor or a good support network. What I mean by networking is getting all the great advice that you can possibly get. Technology has made it so simple to reach out to new people to say, "Hey, I'm thinking about making a career change. Do you have just five minutes to chat with me?" That passion and that hunger and that ability to be a sponge really attracts awesome mentors and people willing to give you their time to give you some good advice. So go out there and meet new people.

The second thing you need to do immediately is shore up your finances. The reality is, when you change your career, you'll either start with a job with a lower title or lower pay or maybe even no pay, especially if you're starting your own business. So going out there and making sure your finances are in order to make the transition less painful is really, really important. For me personally, as I made the transition from being an attorney over to a video game creator, I wanted to have at least six to 12 months of personal runway in the bank. Six to 12 months might not be the right number for you, but be honest with yourself on what that number should be.

Number three, if you're not ready to make the full jump right at this moment, then get your side hustle on. Side hustles could be anything from volunteering with an organization that's in the new industry you want to go into, could be starting your business part-time on the weekends. It's a free way to get a taste to see if you really love something.

So you're ready to make the move or maybe you already made the move. Here are three things you should think about doing, right now. One: do not -- I repeat -- do not burn bridges. You spent years building those bridges, why burn them now? The world is such a small place, especially with all these online platforms, that, believe me, you will see these people again and probably in the most inopportune times.

Number two: take stock of what you've learned in your previous career or careers. Most likely, a lot of those things are really applicable to your new job and your new career, whether it's interacting with people, playing on a team or dealing with jerks and assholes. All those things are really universally applicable. You'll find jerks no matter what industry you're in; no one's immune to it, everyone's got to figure it out, and you probably know how to do it already.

Lastly, when you start your new job, you're going to be nervous. But don't worry, take a deep breath, because this is what I want to tell you: you're part of a new team now, and everyone around you is rooting for your success, because your success is their success. So welcome to your new career.


Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-LeeAnn Renninger: The secret to giving great feedback

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


The Way We Work | January 2020

LeeAnn Renninger: The secret to giving great feedback

Humans have been coming up with ways to give constructive criticism for centuries, but somehow we're still pretty terrible at it. Cognitive psychologist LeeAnn Renninger shares a scientifically proven method for giving effective feedback.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

LeeAnn Renninger · Cognitive psychologist

LeeAnn Renninger is the founder of LifeLabs Learning, a company that trains managers and teams at innovative companies around the globe. Her specialty is in rapid skill acquisition -- the fastest way to learn a skill that matters most.

Transcript:


If you look at a carpenter, they have a toolbox; a dentist, they have their drills. In our era and the type of work most of us are doing, the tool we most need is actually centered around being able to give and receive feedback well.

[The Way We Work]

Humans have been talking about feedback for centuries. In fact, Confucius, way back in 500 BC, talked about how important it is to be able to say difficult messages well.

But to be honest, we're still pretty bad at it. In fact, a recent Gallup survey found that only 26 percent of employees strongly agree that the feedback they get actually improves their work. Those numbers are pretty dismal.

So what's going on? The way that most people give their feedback actually isn't brain-friendly. People fall into one of two camps. Either they're of the camp that is very indirect and soft and the brain doesn't even recognize that feedback is being given or it's just simply confused, or they fall into the other camp of being too direct, and with that, it tips the other person into the land of being defensive.

There's this part of the brain called the amygdala, and it's scanning at all times to figure out whether the message has a social threat attached to it. With that, we'll move forward to defensiveness, we'll move backwards in retreat, and what happens is the feedback giver then starts to disregulate as well. They add more ums and ahs and justifications, and the whole thing gets wonky really fast.

It doesn't have to be this way. I and my team have spent many years going into different companies and asking who here is a great feedback giver. Anybody who's named again and again, we actually bring into our labs to see what they're doing differently. And what we find is that there's a four-part formula that you can use to say any difficult message well.

OK, are you ready for it? Here we go. The first part of the formula is what we call the micro-yes. Great feedback givers begin their feedback by asking a question that is short but important. It lets the brain know that feedback is actually coming. It would be something, for example, like, "Do you have five minutes to talk about how that last conversation went" or "I have some ideas for how we can improve things. Can I share them with you?" This micro-yes question does two things for you. First of all, it's going to be a pacing tool. It lets the other person know that feedback is about to be given. And the second thing it does is it creates a moment of buy-in. I can say yes or no to that yes or no question. And with that, I get a feeling of autonomy.

The second part of the feedback formula is going to be giving your data point. Here, you should name specifically what you saw or heard, and cut out any words that aren't objective. There's a concept we call blur words. A blur word is something that can mean different things to different people. Blur words are not specific. So for example, if I say "You shouldn't be so defensive" or "You could be more proactive." What we see great feedback givers doing differently is they'll convert their blur words into actual data points. So for example, instead of saying, "You aren't reliable," we would say, "You said you'd get that email to me by 11, and I still don't have it yet." Specificity is also important when it comes to positive feedback, and the reason for that is that we want to be able to specify exactly what we want the other person to increase or diminish. And if we stick with blur words, they actually won't have any clue particularly what to do going forward to keep repeating that behavior.

The third part of the feedback formula is the impact statement. Here, you name exactly how that data point impacted you. So, for example, I might say, "Because I didn't get the message, I was blocked on my work and couldn't move forward" or "I really liked how you added those stories, because it helped me grasp the concepts faster." It gives you a sense of purpose and meaning and logic between the points, which is something the brain really craves.

The fourth part of the feedback formula is a question. Great feedback givers wrap their feedback message with a question. They'll ask something like, "Well, how do you see it?" Or "This is what I'm thinking we should do, but what are your thoughts on it?" What it does is it creates commitment rather than just compliance. It makes the conversation no longer be a monologue, but rather becomes a joint problem-solving situation.

But there's one last thing. Great feedback givers not only can say messages well, but also, they ask for feedback regularly. In fact, our research on perceived leadership shows that you shouldn't wait for feedback to be given to you -- what we call push feedback -- but rather, you should actively ask for feedback, what we call pulling feedback. Pulling feedback establishes you as a continual learner and puts the power in your hands. The most challenging situations are actually the ones that call for the most skillful feedback. But it doesn't have to be hard.

Now that you know this four-part formula, you can mix and match it to make it work for any difficult conversation.

Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-Adam Grant: Are you a giver or a taker?

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TED@IBM | November 2016

Adam Grant: Are you a giver or a taker?

In every workplace, there are three basic kinds of people: givers, takers and matchers. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant breaks down these personalities and offers simple strategies to promote a culture of generosity and keep self-serving employees from taking more than their share.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Adam Grant · Organizational psychologist
After years of studying the dynamics of success and productivity in the workplace, Adam Grant discovered a powerful and often overlooked motivator: helping others

Transcript:

I want you to look around the room for a minute and try to find the most paranoid person here --

And then I want you to point at that person for me.
OK, don't actually do it.

But, as an organizational psychologist, I spend a lot of time in workplaces, and I find paranoia everywhere. Paranoia is caused by people that I call "takers." Takers are self-serving in their interactions. It's all about what can you do for me. The opposite is a giver. It's somebody who approaches most interactions by asking, "What can I do for you?"

I wanted to give you a chance to think about your own style. We all have moments of giving and taking. Your style is how you treat most of the people most of the time, your default. I have a short test you can take to figure out if you're more of a giver or a taker, and you can take it right now.

[The Narcissist Test]

[Step 1: Take a moment to think about yourself.]

[Step 2: If you made it to Step 2, you are not a narcissist.]

This is the only thing I will say today that has no data behind it, but I am convinced the longer it takes for you to laugh at this cartoon, the more worried we should be that you're a taker.

Of course, not all takers are narcissists. Some are just givers who got burned one too many times. Then there's another kind of taker that we won't be addressing today, and that's called a psychopath.
I was curious, though, about how common these extremes are, and so I surveyed over 30,000 people across industries around the world's cultures. And I found that most people are right in the middle between giving and taking. They choose this third style called "matching." If you're a matcher, you try to keep an even balance of give and take: quid pro quo -- I'll do something for you if you do something for me. And that seems like a safe way to live your life. But is it the most effective and productive way to live your life? The answer to that question is a very definitive ... maybe.
I studied dozens of organizations, thousands of people. I had engineers measuring their productivity.

I looked at medical students' grades -- even salespeople's revenue.
And, unexpectedly, the worst performers in each of these jobs were the givers. The engineers who got the least work done were the ones who did more favors than they got back. They were so busy doing other people's jobs, they literally ran out of time and energy to get their own work completed. In medical school, the lowest grades belong to the students who agree most strongly with statements like, "I love helping others," which suggests the doctor you ought to trust is the one who came to med school with no desire to help anybody.

And then in sales, too, the lowest revenue accrued in the most generous salespeople. I actually reached out to one of those salespeople who had a very high giver score. And I asked him, "Why do you suck at your job --" I didn't ask it that way, but --
"What's the cost of generosity in sales?" And he said, "Well, I just care so deeply about my customers that I would never sell them one of our crappy products."

So just out of curiosity, how many of you self-identify more as givers than takers or matchers? Raise your hands. OK, it would have been more before we talked about these data.
But actually, it turns out there's a twist here, because givers are often sacrificing themselves, but they make their organizations better. We have a huge body of evidence -- many, many studies looking at the frequency of giving behavior that exists in a team or an organization -- and the more often people are helping and sharing their knowledge and providing mentoring, the better organizations do on every metric we can measure: higher profits, customer satisfaction, employee retention -- even lower operating expenses. So givers spend a lot of time trying to help other people and improve the team, and then, unfortunately, they suffer along the way. I want to talk about what it takes to build cultures where givers actually get to succeed.

So I wondered, then, if givers are the worst performers, who are the best performers? Let me start with the good news: it's not the takers. Takers tend to rise quickly but also fall quickly in most jobs. And they fall at the hands of matchers. If you're a matcher, you believe in "An eye for an eye" -- a just world. And so when you meet a taker, you feel like it's your mission in life to just punish the hell out of that person.

And that way justice gets served.

Well, most people are matchers. And that means if you're a taker, it tends to catch up with you eventually; what goes around will come around. And so the logical conclusion is: it must be the matchers who are the best performers. But they're not. In every job, in every organization I've ever studied, the best results belong to the givers again.

Take a look at some data I gathered from hundreds of salespeople, tracking their revenue. What you can see is that the givers go to both extremes. They make up the majority of people who bring in the lowest revenue, but also the highest revenue. The same patterns were true for engineers' productivity and medical students' grades. Givers are overrepresented at the bottom and at the top of every success metric that I can track. Which raises the question: How do we create a world where more of these givers get to excel? I want to talk about how to do that, not just in businesses, but also in nonprofits, schools -- even governments. Are you ready?

I was going to do it anyway, but I appreciate the enthusiasm.
The first thing that's really critical is to recognize that givers are your most valuable people, but if they're not careful, they burn out. So you have to protect the givers in your midst. And I learned a great lesson about this from Fortune's best networker. It's the guy, not the cat.

His name is Adam Rifkin. He's a very successful serial entrepreneur who spends a huge amount of his time helping other people. And his secret weapon is the five-minute favor. Adam said, "You don't have to be Mother Teresa or Gandhi to be a giver. You just have to find small ways to add large value to other people's lives." That could be as simple as making an introduction between two people who could benefit from knowing each other. It could be sharing your knowledge or giving a little bit of feedback. Or It might be even something as basic as saying, "You know, I'm going to try and figure out if I can recognize somebody whose work has gone unnoticed." And those five-minute favors are really critical to helping givers set boundaries and protect themselves.

The second thing that matters if you want to build a culture where givers succeed, is you actually need a culture where help-seeking is the norm; where people ask a lot. This may hit a little too close to home for some of you.

[So in all your relationships, you always have to be the giver?]
What you see with successful givers is they recognize that it's OK to be a receiver, too. If you run an organization, we can actually make this easier. We can make it easier for people to ask for help. A couple colleagues and I studied hospitals. We found that on certain floors, nurses did a lot of help-seeking, and on other floors, they did very little of it. The factor that stood out on the floors where help-seeking was common, where it was the norm, was there was just one nurse whose sole job it was to help other nurses on the unit. When that role was available, nurses said, "It's not embarrassing, it's not vulnerable to ask for help -- it's actually encouraged."

Help-seeking isn't important just for protecting the success and the well-being of givers. It's also critical to getting more people to act like givers, because the data say that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of all giving in organizations starts with a request. But a lot of people don't ask. They don't want to look incompetent, they don't know where to turn, they don't want to burden others. Yet if nobody ever asks for help, you have a lot of frustrated givers in your organization who would love to step up and contribute, if they only knew who could benefit and how.

But I think the most important thing, if you want to build a culture of successful givers, is to be thoughtful about who you let onto your team. I figured, you want a culture of productive generosity, you should hire a bunch of givers. But I was surprised to discover, actually, that that was not right -- that the negative impact of a taker on a culture is usually double to triple the positive impact of a giver. Think about it this way: one bad apple can spoil a barrel, but one good egg just does not make a dozen. I don't know what that means --

But I hope you do.

No -- let even one taker into a team, and you will see that the givers will stop helping. They'll say, "I'm surrounded by a bunch of snakes and sharks. Why should I contribute?" Whereas if you let one giver into a team, you don't get an explosion of generosity. More often, people are like, "Great! That person can do all our work." So, effective hiring and screening and team building is not about bringing in the givers; it's about weeding out the takers. If you can do that well, you'll be left with givers and matchers. The givers will be generous because they don't have to worry about the consequences. And the beauty of the matchers is that they follow the norm.

So how do you catch a taker before it's too late? We're actually pretty bad at figuring out who's a taker, especially on first impressions. There's a personality trait that throws us off. It's called agreeableness, one the major dimensions of personality across cultures. Agreeable people are warm and friendly, they're nice, they're polite. You find a lot of them in Canada --

Where there was actually a national contest to come up with a new Canadian slogan and fill in the blank, "As Canadian as ..." I thought the winning entry was going to be, "As Canadian as maple syrup," or, "... ice hockey." But no, Canadians voted for their new national slogan to be -- I kid you not -- "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances."

Now for those of you who are highly agreeable, or maybe slightly Canadian, you get this right away. How could I ever say I'm any one thing when I'm constantly adapting to try to please other people? Disagreeable people do less of it. They're more critical, skeptical, challenging, and far more likely than their peers to go to law school.

That's not a joke, that's actually an empirical fact.

So I always assumed that agreeable people were givers and disagreeable people were takers. But then I gathered the data, and I was stunned to find no correlation between those traits, because it turns out that agreeableness-disagreeableness is your outer veneer: How pleasant is it to interact with you? Whereas giving and taking are more of your inner motives: What are your values? What are your intentions toward others?

If you really want to judge people accurately, you have to get to the moment every consultant in the room is waiting for, and draw a two-by-two.

The agreeable givers are easy to spot: they say yes to everything. The disagreeable takers are also recognized quickly, although you might call them by a slightly different name.

We forget about the other two combinations. There are disagreeable givers in our organizations. There are people who are gruff and tough on the surface but underneath have others' best interests at heart. Or as an engineer put it, "Oh, disagreeable givers -- like somebody with a bad user interface but a great operating system."
If that helps you.

Disagreeable givers are the most undervalued people in our organizations, because they're the ones who give the critical feedback that no one wants to hear but everyone needs to hear. We need to do a much better job valuing these people as opposed to writing them off early, and saying, "Eh, kind of prickly, must be a selfish taker."

The other combination we forget about is the deadly one -- the agreeable taker, also known as the faker. This is the person who's nice to your face, and then will stab you right in the back.
And my favorite way to catch these people in the interview process is to ask the question, "Can you give me the names of four people whose careers you have fundamentally improved?" The takers will give you four names, and they will all be more influential than them, because takers are great at kissing up and then kicking down. Givers are more likely to name people who are below them in a hierarchy, who don't have as much power, who can do them no good. And let's face it, you all know you can learn a lot about character by watching how someone treats their restaurant server or their Uber driver.

So if we do all this well, if we can weed takers out of organizations, if we can make it safe to ask for help, if we can protect givers from burnout and make it OK for them to be ambitious in pursuing their own goals as well as trying to help other people, we can actually change the way that people define success. Instead of saying it's all about winning a competition, people will realize success is really more about contribution.

I believe that the most meaningful way to succeed is to help other people succeed. And if we can spread that belief, we can actually turn paranoia upside down. There's a name for that. It's called "pronoia." Pronoia is the delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-being.

That they're going around behind your back and saying exceptionally glowing things about you. The great thing about a culture of givers is that's not a delusion -- it's reality. I want to live in a world where givers succeed, and I hope you will help me create that world. Thank you.

Source:www.ted.com

TED TALKS-Kare Anderson: Be an opportunity maker

The following information is used for educational purposes only.



TED@IBM | September 2014


Kare Anderson: Be an opportunity maker



We all want to use our talents to create something meaningful with our lives. But how to get started? (And ... what if you're shy?) Writer Kare Anderson shares her own story of chronic shyness, and how she opened up her world by helping other people use their own talents and passions.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Kare Anderson · Writer

A columnist for Forbes, Kare Anderson writes on behavioral research-based ways to become more deeply connected.

Transcript:


I grew up diagnosed as phobically shy, and, like at least 20 other people in a room of this size, I was a stutterer. Do you dare raise your hand?

And it sticks with us. It really does stick with us, because when we are treated that way, we feel invisible sometimes, or talked around and at. And as I started to look at people, which is mostly all I did, I noticed that some people really wanted attention and recognition. Remember, I was young then. So what did they do? What we still do perhaps too often. We talk about ourselves. And yet there are other people I observed who had what I called a mutuality mindset. In each situation, they found a way to talk about us and create that "us" idea.

So my idea to reimagine the world is to see it one where we all become greater opportunity-makers with and for others. There's no greater opportunity or call for action for us now than to become opportunity-makers who use best talents together more often for the greater good and accomplish things we couldn't have done on our own. And I want to talk to you about that, because even more than giving, even more than giving, is the capacity for us to do something smarter together for the greater good that lifts us both up and that can scale. That's why I'm sitting here. But I also want to point something else out: Each one of you is better than anybody else at something. That disproves that popular notion that if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room.

So let me tell you about a Hollywood party I went to a couple years back, and I met this up-and-coming actress, and we were soon talking about something that we both felt passionately about: public art. And she had the fervent belief that every new building in Los Angeles should have public art in it. She wanted a regulation for it, and she fervently started — who is here from Chicago? — she fervently started talking about these bean-shaped reflective sculptures in Millennium Park, and people would walk up to it and they'd smile in the reflection of it, and they'd pose and they'd vamp and they'd take selfies together, and they'd laugh. And as she was talking, a thought came to my mind.

 I said, "I know someone you ought to meet. He's getting out of San Quentin in a couple of weeks"— "and he shares your fervent desire that art should engage and enable people to connect." He spent five years in solitary, and I met him because I gave a speech at San Quentin, and he's articulate and he's rather easy on the eyes because he's buff. He had workout regime he did every day.  I think she was following me at that point. I said, "He'd be an unexpected ally." And not just that. There's James. He's an architect and he's a professor, and he loves place-making, and place-making is when you have those mini-plazas and those urban walkways and where they're dotted with art, where people draw and come up and talk sometimes. I think they'd make good allies. And indeed they were. They met together. They prepared. They spoke in front of the Los Angeles City Council. And the council members not only passed the regulation, half of them came down and asked to pose with them afterwards. They were startling, compelling and credible. You can't buy that.

What I'm asking you to consider is what kind of opportunity- makers we might become, because more than wealth or fancy titles or a lot of contacts, it's our capacity to connect around each other's better side and bring it out. And I'm not saying this is easy, and I'm sure many of you have made the wrong moves too about who you wanted to connect with, but what I want to suggest is, this is an opportunity. I started thinking about it way back when I was a Wall Street Journal reporter and I was in Europe and I was supposed to cover trends and trends that transcended business or politics or lifestyle. So I had to have contacts in different worlds very different than mine, because otherwise you couldn't spot the trends. And third, I had to write the story in a way stepping into the reader's shoes, so they could see how these trends could affect their lives. That's what opportunity-makers do.

And here's a strange thing: Unlike an increasing number of Americans who are working and living and playing with people who think exactly like them because we then become more rigid and extreme, opportunity-makers are actively seeking situations with people unlike them, and they're building relationships, and because they do that, they have trusted relationships where they can bring the right team in and recruit them to solve a problem better and faster and seize more opportunities. They're not affronted by differences, they're fascinated by them, and that is a huge shift in mindset, and once you feel it, you want it to happen a lot more. This world is calling out for us to have a collective mindset, and I believe in doing that. It's especially important now. Why is it important now? Because things can be devised like drones and drugs and data collection, and they can be devised by more people and cheaper ways for beneficial purposes and then, as we know from the news every day, they can be used for dangerous ones. It calls on us, each of us, to a higher calling.

But here's the icing on the cake: It's not just the first opportunity that you do with somebody else that's probably your greatest, as an institution or an individual. It's after you've had that experience and you trust each other. It's the unexpected things that you devise later on you never could have predicted. For example, Marty is the husband of that actress I mentioned, and he watched them when they were practicing, and he was soon talking to Wally, my friend the ex-con, about that exercise regime. And he thought, I have a set of racquetball courts. That guy could teach it. A lot of people who work there are members at my courts. They're frequent travelers. They could practice in their hotel room, no equipment provided. That's how Wally got hired. Not only that, years later he was also teaching racquetball. Years after that, he was teaching the racquetball teachers. What I'm suggesting is, when you connect with people around a shared interest and action, you're accustomed to serendipitous things happening into the future, and I think that's what we're looking at. We open ourselves up to those opportunities, and in this room are key players in technology, key players who are uniquely positioned to do this, to scale systems and projects together.

So here's what I'm calling for you to do. Remember the three traits of opportunity-makers. Opportunity-makers keep honing their top strength and they become pattern seekers. They get involved in different worlds than their worlds so they're trusted and they can see those patterns, and they communicate to connect around sweet spots of shared interest.

So what I'm asking you is, the world is hungry. I truly believe, in my firsthand experience, the world is hungry for us to unite together as opportunity-makers and to emulate those behaviors as so many of you already do — I know that firsthand — and to reimagine a world where we use our best talents together more often to accomplish greater things together than we could on our own. Just remember, as Dave Liniger once said, "You can't succeed coming to the potluck with only a fork." Thank you very much. Thank you.

Source:www.ted.com

La UCA, primera universidad privada en Argentina en el QS World University Rankings 2021

The following information is used for educational purposes only.

La UCA, primera universidad privada en Argentina en el QS World University Rankings 2021


Según el QS World University Rankings 2021 la UCA se consolida como la primera universidad privada en la Argentina por 2do año consecutivo y se encuentra entre las 350 mejores universidades del mundo, posicionándose en el puesto 326. Ascendió 18 posiciones respecto al año anterior ubicándose entre las 10 primeras en Latinoamérica.

En el indicador de cantidad de estudiantes por profesor la UCA está en el puesto 42º en el mundo habiendo ascendido 17 posiciones, encontrándose en el 2do puesto en Latinoamérica y ocupando el primer puesto en el país en este indicador tan relevante para nuestra universidad.

Nuestro reconocimiento y gratitud a los docentes por su dedicación y compromiso, ya que su valioso aporte contribuyó a que la Universidad se haya consolidado en un puesto tan relevante en el mundo, Latinoamérica y Argentina. La calidad docente es la base en que se sostiene el proceso educativo.

Asimismo, cabe destacar que desde 2014 la UCA es la primera universidad privada del país en el indicador de Reputación entre empleadores.

El Dr. Miguel Ángel Schiavone, Rector de la universidad, explica que "esta posición que ocupa la UCA en la educación es producto del compromiso de toda nuestra comunidad educativa". "Estamos trabajando en programas de mejora de la calidad educativa incorporando nuevas tecnologías, capacitando a nuestros profesores a través de la carrera docente, innovando en procesos, poniendo al alumno en el centro de la escena y fortaleciendo la relación alumno-docente. El proyecto iniciado en 2018 también incluyó las áreas de investigación con más publicaciones en revistas internacionales de alto impacto, avanzamos en la internacionalización de la enseñanza, sostuvimos las actividades de compromiso social y extensión que siempre caracterizaron a nuestra Universidad por su identidad y valores que reafirmamos diariamente. En 2019 ya nos habíamos posicionado dentro de las 10 primeras en la región avanzando 25 puestos en este ranking, en esta medición pudimos progresar aún más. Este es un proceso de mejora continua que seguimos implementado aun en medio de la pandemia. Para los docentes y alumnos este fue un cuatrimestre ganado en el que todos aprendimos a educar mejor, a estudiar mejor y a revalorar la vida".

El ranking, producido por la consultora internacional en educación superior QS Quacquarelli Symonds, evalúa a las 1000 mejores universidades del mundo, basándose en seis métricas:

Reputación Académica

Reputación entre Empleadores

Ratio de Estudiantes por Profesor

Citaciones por cuerpo docente

Ratio de Académicos Internacionales

Ratio de Estudiantes Internacionales




Fuente:Comunicación de UCA Graduados.

TED TALKS-Lýdia Machová: The secrets of learning a new language

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


TED Salon: Brightline Initiative | October 2018


The secrets of learning a new language

Lýdia Machová



Want to learn a new language but feel daunted or unsure where to begin? You don't need some special talent or a "language gene," says Lýdia Machová. In an upbeat, inspiring talk, she reveals the secrets of polyglots (people who speak multiple languages) and shares four principles to help unlock your own hidden language talent -- and have fun while doing it.


ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Lýdia Machová · Language mentor
Lýdia Machová teaches people how they can learn any language by themselves.

Transcript:

I love learning foreign languages. In fact, I love it so much that I like to learn a new language every two years, currently working on my eighth one. When people find that out about me, they always ask me, "How do you do that? What's your secret?" And to be honest, for many years, my answer would be, "I don't know. I simply love learning languages." But people were never happy with that answer.

 They wanted to know why they are spending years trying to learn even one language, never achieving fluency, and here I come, learning one language after another. They wanted to know the secret of polyglots, people who speak a lot of languages. And that made me wonder, too, how do actually other polyglots do it? What do we have in common? And what is it that enables us to learn languages so much faster than other people? I decided to meet other people like me and find that out.

The best place to meet a lot of polyglots is an event where hundreds of language lovers meet in one place to practice their languages. There are several such polyglot events organized all around the world, and so I decided to go there and ask polyglots about the methods that they use.
And so I met Benny from Ireland, who told me that his method is to start speaking from day one. He learns a few phrases from a travel phrasebook and goes to meet native speakers and starts having conversations with them right away. He doesn't mind making even 200 mistakes a day, because that's how he learns, based on the feedback. And the best thing is, he doesn't even need to travel a lot today, because you can easily have conversations with native speakers from the comfort of your living room, using websites.

I also met Lucas from Brazil who had a really interesting method to learn Russian. He simply added a hundred random Russian speakers on Skype as friends, and then he opened a chat window with one of them and wrote "Hi" in Russian. And the person replied, "Hi, how are you?" Lucas copied this and put it into a text window with another person, and the person replied, "I'm fine, thank you, and how are you?" Lucas copied this back to the first person, and in this way, he had two strangers have a conversation with each other without knowing about it.

And soon he would start typing himself, because he had so many of these conversations that he figured out how the Russian conversation usually starts. What an ingenious method, right?
And then I met polyglots who always start by imitating sounds of the language, and others who always learn the 500 most frequent words of the language, and yet others who always start by reading about the grammar. If I asked a hundred different polyglots, I heard a hundred different approaches to learning languages. Everybody seems to have a unique way they learn a language, and yet we all come to the same result of speaking several languages fluently.

And as I was listening to these polyglots telling me about their methods, it suddenly dawned on me: the one thing we all have in common is that we simply found ways to enjoy the language-learning process. All of these polyglots were talking about language learning as if it was great fun. You should have seen their faces when they were showing me their colorful grammar charts and their carefully handmade flash cards, and their statistics about learning vocabulary using apps, or even how they love to cook based on recipes in a foreign language. All of them use different methods, but they always make sure it's something that they personally enjoy.

I realized that this is actually how I learn languages myself. When I was learning Spanish, I was bored with the text in the textbook. I mean, who wants to read about Jose asking about the directions to the train station. Right? I wanted to read "Harry Potter" instead, because that was my favorite book as a child, and I have read it many times. So I got the Spanish translation of "Harry Potter" and started reading, and sure enough, I didn't understand almost anything at the beginning, but I kept on reading because I loved the book, and by the end of the book, I was able to follow it almost without any problems. And the same thing happened when I was learning German. I decided to watch "Friends," my favorite sitcom, in German, and again, at the beginning it was all just gibberish. 

I didn't know where one word finished and another one started, but I kept on watching every day because it's "Friends." I can watch it in any language. I love it so much. And after the second or third season, seriously, the dialogue started to make sense.
I only realized this after meeting other polyglots. We are no geniuses and we have no shortcut to learning languages. We simply found ways how to enjoy the process, how to turn language learning from a boring school subject into a pleasant activity which you don't mind doing every day. If you don't like writing words down on paper, you can always type them in an app. If you don't like listening to boring textbook material, find interesting content on YouTube or in podcasts for any language. If you're a more introverted person and you can't imagine speaking to native speakers right away, you can apply the method of self-talk. 

You can talk to yourself in the comfort of your room, describing your plans for the weekend, how your day has been, or even take a random picture from your phone and describe the picture to your imaginary friend. This is how polyglots learn languages, and the best news is, it's available to anyone who is willing to take the learning into their own hands.

So meeting other polyglots helped me realize that it is really crucial to find enjoyment in the process of learning languages, but also that joy in itself is not enough. If you want to achieve fluency in a foreign language, you'll also need to apply three more principles.
First of all, you'll need effective methods. If you try to memorize a list of words for a test tomorrow, the words will be stored in your short-term memory and you'll forget them after a few days. If you, however, want to keep words long term, you need to revise them in the course of a few days repeatedly using the so-called space repetition. 

You can use apps which are based on this system such as Anki or Memrise, or you can write lists of word in a notebook using the Goldlist method, which is also very popular with many polyglots. If you're not sure which methods are effective and what is available out there, just check out polyglots' YouTube channels and websites and get inspiration from them. If it works for them, it will most probably work for you too.

The third principle to follow is to create a system in your learning. We're all very busy and no one really has time to learn a language today. But we can create that time if we just plan a bit ahead. Can you wake up 15 minutes earlier than you normally do? That would be the perfect time to revise some vocabulary. Can you listen to a podcast on your way to work while driving? Well, that would be great to get some listening experience. There are so many things we can do without even planning that extra time, such as listening to podcasts on our way to work or doing our household chores. The important thing is to create a plan in the learning. "I will practice speaking every Tuesday and Thursday with a friend for 20 minutes.

 I will listen to a YouTube video while having breakfast." If you create a system in your learning, you don't need to find that extra time, because it will become a part of your everyday life.
And finally, if you want to learn a language fluently, you need also a bit of patience. It's not possible to learn a language within two months, but it's definitely possible to make a visible improvement in two months, if you learn in small chunks every day in a way that you enjoy. And there is nothing that motivates us more than our own success.

I vividly remember the moment when I understood the first joke in German when watching "Friends." I was so happy and motivated that I just kept on watching that day two more episodes, and as I kept watching, I had more and more of those moments of understanding, these little victories, and step by step, I got to a level where I could use the language freely and fluently to express anything. This is a wonderful feeling. I can't get enough of that feeling, and that's why I learn a language every two years.
So this is the whole polyglot secret. Find effective methods which you can use systematically over the period of some time in a way which you enjoy, and this is how polyglots learn languages within months, not years.

Now, some of you may be thinking, "That's all very nice to enjoy language learning, but isn't the real secret that you polyglots are just super talented and most of us aren't?"
Well, there's one thing I haven't told you about Benny and Lucas. Benny had 11 years of Irish Gaelic and five years of German at school. He couldn't speak them at all when graduating. Up to the age of 21, he thought he didn't have the language gene and he could not speak another language. Then he started to look for his way of learning languages, which was speaking to native speakers and getting feedback from them, and today Benny can easily have a conversation in 10 languages. Lucas tried to learn English at school for 10 years. He was one of the worst students in class.

 His friends even made fun of him and gave him a Russian textbook as a joke because they thought he would never learn that language, or any language. And then Lucas started to experiment with methods, looking for his own way to learn, for example, by having Skype chat conversations with strangers. And after just 10 years, Lucas is able to speak 11 languages fluently.

Does that sound like a miracle? Well, I see such miracles every single day. As a language mentor, I help people learn languages by themselves, and I see this every day. People struggle with language learning for five, 10, even 20 years, and then they suddenly take their learning into their own hands, start using materials which they enjoy, more effective methods, or they start tracking their learning so that they can appreciate their own progress, and that's when suddenly they magically find the language talent that they were missing all their lives.

So if you've also tried to learn a language and you gave up, thinking it's too difficult or you don't have the language talent, give it another try. Maybe you're also just one enjoyable method away from learning that language fluently. Maybe you're just one method away from becoming a polyglot. Thank you.


Source:www.ted.com

E-LEARNING-ONLINE COURSES-The best eLearning platforms for online courses, by N.F. Mendoza in CXO

The following information is used for educational purposes only.


The best eLearning platforms for online courses


by N.F. Mendoza in CXO


May 18, 2020


Online university programs get a boost, as schools determine the fate of the fall semester in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Online learning has come a long way since the first courses were rolled out for the mature students who needed to "attend" school on their own schedule. As the coronavirus pandemic sent employees and educators home, online courses have garnered more attention and relevance.

Online universities and those ramping up their online courses may be upgrading software to accompany an expected influx of students this fall, but the one common factor between them is the type of platform used, a learning management system or LMS. Generally, online courses are asynchronous and feature familiar elements, for example, an online lecture turned virtual, required weekly discussion participation , assignments, and exams. The LMS not only facilitates the curriculum, but informs instructors on student participation, who has fulfilled requirements and who hasn't.

Only half a decade ago, the dominant LMS programs were Angel and eCollege. Online platforms were costly for schools, and by offering discounts, administrators began considering other newer, up-and-coming platforms. Some colleges, like Western Governors University, which has an approximate 97,000 enrollment of fully online students, use portals specially designed for each course (it's actually an extended version of the Salesforce platform, combined with curated courseware).

Blackboard

Image: Blackboard

Blackboard is the grand dame of LMS and is still in use at many institutions of higher learning. Two schools best known for online courses, University of Phoenix (UOP) and Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), had long associations with Blackboard. SNHU lists more than 80,000 online students (of 90,000 total SNHU students). At UOP, 94,472 (of 95,777 students) are enrolled in exclusively online programs. More recently, SNHU switched LSMs to Brightspace.

"Blackboard is easy to implement and to tailor," said Elane Johnson, an award-winning online English instructor, who's taught online at several universities, and used various LMS.

Brightspace

Image: Brightspace

After years of using the stalwart Blackboard, SNHU switched to Brightspace. Initially, Brightspace may be more challenging to master, when compared to other products, Johnson said. Brightspace has "Release Conditions" in which a professor can hold content for a student until they've met certain conditions, then the held content appears to a student. Instructors can give feedback on assignments, automatically release new content or courses, as well as create or use rubrics, post announcements and assignments in an activity feed, and drag content directly into a course. The company has been making LMS products since 1992.

Brightspace is "very similar to Blackboard's fancier versions," Johnson noted.

LearnDash

Image: LearnDash

This LMS is used at University of Michigan, University of Florida, University of Washington, ProBlogger and DigitalMarketer, and is notable because it features an integration with WordPress. It has a reputation for being easy-to-use and geared toward beginners. For those easily distracted, it has "Focus Mode," which LearnDash says eliminates distractions as students navigate their course. Classes, group activities, and lectures are easily recorded, and users can also design interactive learning experiences.

LinkedIn Learning

Image: LinkedIn Learning

Affiliated with the workcentric social media site LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning offers video courses taught by industry experts with real-world experience. It offers free courses to build skills. Some of the free courses include Discover Your Strength, Pitching Yourself, Influencing Others, Excel Tips Weekly, Managing in Difficult Times, Transform Your Personal Brand, Entrepreneurship Foundations, Finding Your Productive Mindset, Cultivating a Growth Mindset, and more. There are also free courses to "help you land your next job," build mindfulness and resilience, succeed at remote work, for a total of more than 15,000 courses, with dozens added each week. Courses are categorized as business, technology, or creative.

Podia

Image: Podia

Podia sets itself apart from other LMS because podcasts are integrated as a teaching tool. Podia hopes to draw a range of learners using this element. At signup, users receive marketing tools, some of which include the ability to add coupons, and sales pages. Podia also gives users the ability to "drip" courses, which means the designer "feeds" classes to targeted groups. It can be connected with Slack and Facebook groups, too.

Sakai

University of Virginia
The University of Virginia, shown here, uses the eLearning platform Sakai.

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Sakai features the standards of a LMS as well as community-contributed tools, and external integrations available as add-on components. It offers an open-source flexibility, which allows configuration or customization. It's the choice LMS for schools such as Duke University, Pepperdine University, The University of Virginia, Notre Dame University, and Japan's Hosei University,

"Sakai was the easiest to navigate once a person is trained because it had the fewest options for each task," Johnson said. In addition to Blackboard and Sakai, she's used the Angel, Moodle, and eCollege.

Schoology

Image: Schoolology

This full-featured LMS boasts a number of built-in integrations, and comes with YouTube, Google Drive, and Dropbox, and each of the tools can be used while inside the system. Schoology calls itself "the only LMS that connects your campus," a solution that allows students and their instructors to communicate across the campus and across the world.

Skillshare

Image: Skillshare


It's an LMS, but it's also considered a "learning community for creators," with seven million creators and growing. Skillshare is designed more for those with a creative bent and those interested in interactive teaching. Photography, illustration, video, engineering, marketing, design, business and tech are some of the focal classes. Users choose from a bevy of courses at any given time, with 14 days of unlimited classes free.

Udemy

Image: Udemy

One of the "original" LMS (2007), Udemy offers 100,000 online courses, with new additions added monthly. Courses are primarily divided into categories like IT & software, development, marketing, photography, design, business and personal development. Instructors (there are more than 40,00) are professionals working in "the real world."

Udemy offers two option plans, "enterprise" and "team." The latter focuses on smaller groups between five and 20 people. The "enterprise" can handle more users and provides additional features.

An additional business account gives subscribers 2,500 business-related courses designed to "upscale your workforce," and analytics examine learning patterns, so employers can assess what works and what does not.


Source: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-best-elearning-platforms-for-online-courses/?ftag=TRE684d531&bhid=28519432474137426900123945798649&mid=12865122&cid=2132955468