Jim McGee comes up with a good question that could make your head explode...

Which probably needs to start with some hard thinking about what constitutes productivity in knowledge work. Output/input isn't going to help very much now is it?

I would compare the difficulty of attempting to measure Knowledge productivity to three other areas: learning, security, and nuclear physics. The seeds for how to accomplish this task may lie within how those in these other areas accomplish their 'impossible' tasks.

It is similar to nuclear physics since we can't actually see knowledge, per se, only artifacts of it or other tangibles that it has influenced. This is similar to the physicist's conundrum of how do you measure things (quarks, for instance) that your measuring devices are too crude to measure accurately, if at all. So physicists examine the things they can measure, to see what effect these other particles may exert on them.

It is similar to security in that the most obvious, and reported examples come from when it breaks down. We rarely hear about the success of security efforts, since the success is largely invisible, but failure of it is usually writ large...

It is similar to measuring learning, since we can't actually see the learning, only make attempts to probe around the edges of it -- some examples for probing include exams (pre- and post-intervention), writing assignments, forced blogging... These are all attempts to get learners to display their grasp of the information presented, and we hope this represents the actual knowledge imparted. (Disclaimer: this is an extreme and incomplete oversimplification of what I consider learning to be and how to recognize it.) What we do know is that these are incomplete measures, and often have large gaps in displaying what we hope they might. Repeating exams often is a better measure of exam taking skills rather than the learning, writing assignments can carry a host of their own problems that can shift the focus to other areas.

I think I'll let McGee's students weigh in on the evils of forced blogging, though....

1:18:13 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this    [ blinked via McGee's Musings ]

A warning for those who didn't see it the first time around. Be careful, this one may cause the need to clean your screen...

What with Bill Gates on the witness stand I figured it’s a good time to point to my bong hits with Bill Gates story from earlier this year. Just in case you missed it.

12:13:38 PM  [] blah blah blah'd on this    [ blinked via inessential.com ]