Atul Gawande wrote the Checklist Manifesto (http://gawande.com/the-checklist-manifesto) which goes into a lot more detail about all this. I would thoroughly recommend reading it if you want to improve how you get stuff done.
It's a fantastic book that literally changed my life. I've incorporated checklists deeply into my workflows, to the extent that when I start a new project, the first thing I do is generate a checklist to work against. The number of casual errors, oversights and other preventable errors I make has dropped precipitously. Call it Checklist-Driven-Development (CDD).
From that same site [1], you can see a collection of checklists [1], one of which is the actual checklist that Pronovost created at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
I second-thirded-n'ed this recommendation...the closing chapter in which Gawande describes how a checklist prevented a patient from dying on him in surgery is just gripping.
There's also excellent sections on construction...such as how project managers make and disseminate decisions at a breakneck pace in skyscraper construction.
+1 for the Checklist Manifesto. Gawande is an excellent writer. I liked his other books, particularly Complications (http://gawande.com/complications).
``I have a physical checklist for when I’m doing a deployment. It’s, off the top of my head maybe six commands long; one, two, three, four, five, six. I check them off; dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. And then after I do that, I have the other checklist to verify that it actually took, you know the things that I did that had the expected effect. I missed doing that once because I was exhausted at the day job and, sure enough, that was my biggest down time in four years. So I’m trying to be better at it in the future.''
Sometime some type of technology does not not lend itself to 100% automation. So there will be certain steps that would require a bit of human intervention.
Of course, we all wish that all software is written according to the UNIX philosophy.
Project Follow Through contained several major problems, but it doesn't take a researcher to recognize the biggest problems of Direct Instruction.
Scripted curriculum might sound good to some people, but it has two major flaws: first, it destroys any possibility of differentiated instruction. Secondly (and related), it insures mediocre performance by students.
Scripted curriculum tells teachers exactly what to do during every moment of the day, from hand gestures to exact words. In most places that implement this, any deviance from the script is grounds for reprimand.
How many HN users would like to learn in this environment? How many of you think you could learn like this? I'm willing to wager that many of you would answer 'no' to both of these questions.
Project Follow Through contained several major problems...
For example?
...first, it destroys any possibility of differentiated instruction.
No, it merely destroys the possibility of ad-hoc differentiated instruction. I know a girl who teaches DI. She showed me her script and it contained differentiated instruction - "Try { block (a) } catch { try block (b) }."
Block (a) and Block (b) are different instructional scripts. They are also told to directly answer questions when the student has them.
Secondly (and related), it insures mediocre performance by students.
I'd love to see some sort of argument for this.
How many HN users would like to learn in this environment? How many of you think you could learn like this?
Actually, I suspect many HN users learn from a method like this. I certainly do, although I skip the middleman and just read the book directly.
This is also the exact same method that, for example, Salman Khan or ai-class.com uses. The only difference is that he performs the script as well as writing it.
However, you are correct that punishing deviation from the script is a bad idea. Rather, teachers should be punished for bad performance. This gives teachers an incentive to stick to the script, unless they are quite sure their ad-hoc methodology is superior to the expert methodology.
Direct Instruction is fundamentally opposed to differentiated instruction because it only allows for one way of learning. With differentiated instruction, the teacher recognizes that each student learns differently and that there are many avenues to learning.
Direct Instruction insures mediocre performance by forcing the class to move at the same pace. Students who could do much more are prevented because the structure does not allow it.
Finally, Direct Instruction cannot even come close to touching active instruction. I know Salman Kahn is held up as some great person around here, but Kahn academy isn't all that great for most people, and it definitely cannot come close to the effectiveness of learning by doing.
I'm a person who learns very easily from books, but in my time as a teacher, I've found that I'm an edge case. Most people need specific, hands-on time, in order to really learn the material. Otherwise, what you tend to get is a lot of short-term, cram for the test results that don't really matter because they don't represent real learning.
There is not enough space here, nor do I have enough time to do a thorough critique of Project Follow Through, but they're easy enough to find.
Direct Instruction is fundamentally opposed to differentiated instruction because it only allows for one way of learning.
No, DI only allows for one way of teaching. The one way of teaching can incorporate multiple ways of learning, as I mentioned in my previous post.
Regardless, it doesn't matter whether DI is opposed to differentiated instruction - all that matters is whether it works. All the data I've seen suggests it does. You've provided no evidence to the contrary.
Direct Instruction insures mediocre performance by forcing the class to move at the same pace.
This is an argument against all lecture-based classes, not DI specifically. Are you arguing against all lectures?
Finally, Direct Instruction cannot even come close to touching active instruction.
HN-ers, listen to this business proposition (this is not a sarcasm, but this is an idea, a perspective if you will).
Find one of the productivity books, preferably ones that are quite popular. Implement a software, web-app, mobile-app, desktop-app, plugins, whatever, based on such books.You'll get instant userbase that love your software.
Rinse-and-repeat.
There are a few productivity tools based on GTD out there. Looking at the checklist-for-checklists link that adolph mentioned in this thread reminds me of Trello. Seems like a simple money making scheme don't you think?
It's a good idea, but not so simple to actually get traction...
A couple years ago I was hired to build a checklist web app based on Atul Gawande's book, The Checklist Manifesto. Being the very idea that you're referring to here it's a very relevant example.
The guy who hired me has invested a lot of time and some money into trying to get traction but nothing has come of it. Granted he's probably not done everything perfectly, but he's put a lot of time into seeding the site with public checklists for different subjects and trying to get people using it.
As far as I know nobody uses the site. It's not that great but it provides some basic value and is definitely a minimum viable product including revisions, public and private checklists, ability to share and collaborate with others, pdfs, etc.
I have a number of checklists I use, from deployment to form design, but the practice that has had the biggest impact for me is creating on-the-fly checklists while I'm coding. I often set out to do one thing and realize there are four or five other things that need to be implemented or changed. I used to try to keep track of everything in my head, but when your mental todo list starts looking like a complicated digraph, that just isn't effective. Now I don't code without a scratch pad by my side.
I guess that a hospital is like the military in that there has to be clearly delineated chain of command, but some points raised in the article could be solved by empowering doctors and especially nurses:
"chlorhexidine soap, shown to reduce line infections, was available in fewer than a third of the I.C.U.s. This was a problem only an executive could solve"
If nurses and doctors were empowered, that problem probably wouldn't have arisen.
I agree that other solutions are more in executives' territory: "they persuaded Arrow International, one of the largest manufacturers of central lines, to produce a new central-line kit that had both the drape and chlorhexidine in it."
I think all of these checklist ideas are great, but does anyone have any suggestions regarding how to make the decision makers in the medical community pay attention? It sounds like there are possible opportunities here.
I used to travel a lot for work. My "Master Packing List", has meant I no longer find myself meeting clients without, say, a belt, or socks, or laptop charger, etc.
