Information overload, or filter failure?

There is no such thing as information overload.  If you’re overwhelmed by what you’ve got to read/consume, you have probably chosen to feel that pain.

The choice may not be intentional, but I doubt someone else is forcing you to consume too much information.  Even the compulsory reads on your reading lists shouldn’t be too much, even if it seems that way at the time.

[Note: Speed reading could help.  A quick search on Google brings loads of results.  At time of writing, the most recent speed reading piece I’ve seen is from Tim Ferriss.  To try getting a speed boost, give it a go.]

Imagine you see the Top 10 bestselling non-fiction books in a store.  Have you read all of them?  It’s unlikely.  Do you intend to?  I doubt it.

What you’ve done here is created a filter.  You have chosen to miss out on some reading material.  Even if you had the money, the chances of someone buying all the books and reading each of them are slim.  I’m sure you’d probably take something useful away from many books you’ve not read, but you can’t read every last thing that’s ever been written.  Even a fraction of one percent would be difficult to get through.  There’s just too much out there!

photo by B Tal

photo by B Tal

Your life is full of choices.  The data you wish to consume depends on how you choose to consume.  Some people, even uni students, claim never to read books unless they are practically forced to for an essay or exam.  Others can’t stop reading certain types of novels.  Others spend all day reading Facebook updates and blog posts.  It’s all a choice.

‘Information Overload’ occurs when you choose to consume too much.  It also happens when there’s such a backlog of reading that it’s too difficult to catch up with.  You then have to make another choice…do you give up something else in order to catch up, or do you discard some of the older material in order to lighten the load?

You’re likely to lose out if you take on too much.  When the ‘Information Overload’ feels like it’s about to strike, the simple choice is to get rid of a portion of what’s bringing you down.  Failing that, skim for the main points only and move on as quickly as possible.

It’s difficult to stop engaging with information that you’re used to reading.  It’s difficult to stop reading/watching the news if you’re used to that.  It’s difficult to stop consuming anything you have grown accustomed to.  That is why filtering is not easy, but always possible.  And not only is it a relief, it’s also surprising how little it matters once you’ve stopped.

One of my personal mottos is “Know when to stop”.  I find it important to read a lot.  It feels right in my personal circumstances and I use it to my advantage.  Once I start to find things tough, I step back and discard what I can do without. As I say, not always easy, but definitely possible.  The more I have practised this, the easier it has become to cut back and move on.

Sure, some of my choices may end up being mistakes.  Nobody’s perfect.  But it’s unusual to find a situation where you can’t rectify those mistakes and get back to the position you want to be.

Steve Pavlina has written about networking with busy people.  It’s worth reading what he has to say in relation to information overload, because he could have crashed and burned with the amount of communication he was getting.  As his site grew, so did the number of people contacting him.  Rather than continue responding to every single person, Steve decided to filter differently in order to cope.  He says, “I don’t have the capacity to accept deeper connections with everyone who wants to build a bridge with me, so I have to be selective”.

I’m sure he didn’t want to stop talking to each and every person, but there comes a time when it’s not possible to keep going.  When no choice is made to change the filter, that’s when the choice is made for you and ‘information overload’ occurs.

While some people insist on swimming further out to sea until they’re helplessly swept away, I’ll make do with paddling.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll take a short swim in slightly deeper waters, but I want to be sure I can get back to safety pretty quickly.

I don’t see that as weak.  I simply want to be able to make the choice myself.  It’s important to be in control of those filters and use them wisely.

How easy do you find filtering your information in-tray?  If you have any tips, I’d love to hear from you.

Thinking traps and trapped thinking

I enjoyed a great post about thinking traps by Luciano at Litemind a little while back.  It mentioned a survey on driving skills where almost every participant rated themselves ‘above average’.

photo by cindy47452

photo by cindy47452

I’ve heard this before.  I’m sure many surveys show the vast majority of drivers consider themselves pretty fantastic compared to most.  If only everyone else could get off the road, it would be okay, huh?

Actually, I don’t think that belief matters much.  What matters is when drivers don’t look to understand when they have made a mistake and then learn from it to become a better driver.

It might still be a porky, but a better attitude could be to say, “I’m a better driver than most, but I’m not perfect and I still need to learn each time I make a mistake”.

This can be said for almost any aspect of life.  It’s tough to admit a flaw, even though everyone’s got them. Noticing a flaw feels like exposing a weakness that will only make us even weaker.  And that’s crazy.

Other people can accuse us of flaws, but that’s not usually helpful (and not always right, either…).  The biggest life changes are up to us.

When you recognise a flaw, you’re already much closer to beating it and becoming a better person. The longer you leave it festering, the worse the flaw can get.  Don’t let it fester, let it out!

Student Experience is Heart of the Matter

“The experience of the student is at the heart of higher education.”

This sentence is the first thing you read in a recent report on “Students and Universities” that made the headlines on Sunday.  The report makes it clear that university is about YOU, the student.  No doubt about it.  Without you, life in higher education would be very different.

The report suggests many changes, including:

  • A national bursary system to “widen the participation of disadvantaged groups in higher education”;
  • Ensure universities make prospective students aware of all bursaries available and set out easy to follow information on its provision;
  • Improve the admissions process to “help ensure students get a fairer deal on access to all universities”;
  • Change of the current HE system so it can provide and safeguard “consistent national standards”;
  • Introduce of a system that allows students to transfer easily between universities (and further education institutions);
  • Improve the treatment of part-time and mature students.

It is welcoming to see a report that’s so focused on the student.  The authors applaud the National Student Survey (NSS) and call on the Government to expand it further to help prospective students even more.

Graduation Day Middx (photo by Goodimages)

Graduation Day Middx (photo by Goodimages)

One of the best comments in the report comes from a student.  They make a fantastic point, saying, “If I were to use one phrase to encapsulate which makes or breaks a student experience it would be getting involved. The endless opportunities available at university are wasted if students are not properly encouraged to embrace them and push themselves.”

This is something I firmly believe in.  It doesn’t matter where you go or what you study…it’s your level of involvement that can take you places.  Your uni and degree subject help in certain circumstances, don’t get me wrong, but you have a lot of power if you get stuck in and enjoy the opportunities out there.

Another student, Ricky Chotai (Vice-President for Health and Social Care at the University of Salford), makes a “famous quote” in the report.  He says, “There’s nothing more frustrating when you go to a lecture and you have a lecturer just reading Powerpoint slides, especially when they are available at other sources like on the internet and the virtual learning environments we have as well”.  Teaching is obviously a big deal when it comes to the student experience.  So you want each lecture to count.  And you want the teaching, as well as the subsequent degree award, to be in line with teaching elsewhere.

But Higher Education is such a beast that it’s practically impossible to bring everyone in line and have ‘consistent national standards’ based on the current method of awarding.  That’s why new grading systems such as the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) recommend a greater spread of information based on what was studied and achieved over the course of a degree.  To rely on a grade of 2:1 alone may no longer be enough.

Because of this, there is a lot of talk in the news about the difference between a 2:1 from Oxford and a 2:1 from Oxford Brookes.  I won’t talk about it here, because the links at the end of my post give more than enough detail.

League tables, institution choices, and entry requirements show a clear difference between universities and the wide choice given to students of differing ability, purpose, and situation.  It is comparing the degrees and the institutions at a later stage, especially by employers, that causes most problems.  Again, that is what the HEAR system attempts to cover.

Another current issue is that of tuition fees.  I’m happy to see the report calling for a national bursary system as this will give a welcome boost to the NUS calls for a new system of higher education funding.  The conversation has just become even more important.

On Sunday morning, I watched Wes Streeting (current president of the NUS) on BBC Breakfast, talking about the new report.  He later mentioned on Twitter that he had “Just been told off by Pam Tatlow of Million+ for shoehorning fees into news this morning”.  The authors of the universities report mention that they hadn’t set out to look at tuition fees and the controversy surrounding them.  But they “detected no evidence that variable tuition fees at current levels were driving up quality on campus”, so I think it was fair for Streeting to point this out, even if the report talks of much more.

So how can consistent standards and greater quality be reached across all universities?  Is such consistency possible in a community so diverse?  Probably not in its current guise.  The ‘unsatisfactory’ responses received regarding qualifications suggest the entire system may need to be changed to reach any effective conclusion.  Therefore, giving the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) greater power and introducing an independent standards watchdog may not be enough, even though it’s a welcome move in many ways.

The right support is needed for all students.  And there are many different ‘types’ of student.  The report makes this clear.  We go to university for different reasons, be they academic, vocational, social, or otherwise.  There are those studying part-time, as well as full-time.  There are mature students, as well as school leavers.  People from all walks of life attend university and the spread is likely to further diversify in the coming years.

If top class support can be given to all students throughout their uni life, the subsequent qualifications they achieve should be relevant and highly suited to them, no matter what their requirements are on the system.

With enough focus on the student experience, higher education in England can not only retain it’s world-class status, it can get even better.  I think this report hits the bullseye by placing students at the heart of HE.

Related Links:
BBC – Universities ‘fail on standards’
BBC – Are degree grades worth the same?
Guardian – ‘Dumbing down’ row over value of degrees
Guardian – How do we tell the good universities from the bad?
Telegraph – Universities told to lower their offers for poor students
Times Higher Education – Beef up QAA to police sector, say MPs
Times Higher Education – Opinion: Right questions, wrong answer

Academic procession (photo by Goodimages)

Academic procession (photo by Goodimages)

5 Reasons why you don’t get the most out of your degree

Freshers pile in to uni with all sorts of feelings.  Hope and excitement, despair and unhappiness, wanting a fresh start, wanting to make a point, wanting to save the world.  For everyone it’ll be slightly different.

Most of us have at least a fair amount of enthusiasm and may even be full of joy at the opportunities available and looking forward to finding many other opportunities along the way.  But it doesn’t stay that way for three years.

terrified sandwich (photo by Sakurako Kitsa)

photo by Sakurako Kitsa

As the days become weeks and the weeks become months, the initial excitement (not surprisingly) drops as ‘uni life’ becomes ‘everyday life’. There’s nothing wrong about that, but it does mean that all students need to remind themselves why they’re at uni in the first place.  When the rituals of daily life rudely interrupt your focus on the future, it may be time to make sure you’re still getting the most out of your uni experience.

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