Thick and Chunky Instruction

[Britt Watwood]

I posted more at my blog, but in a nutshell, I described one of my favorite TED Talks where Malcolm Gladwell talked about what we can learn from spaghetti sauce. He described a food industry consultant who uncovered a key secret to what eaters like. Running huge focus groups to find customers’ truest tastes, Gladwell’s hero drew a radical conclusion, an epiphany that has defined food marketing ever since. When people were asked to describe the perfect spaghetti sauce, they typically talked about runny sauces. But when taste tests were conducted, they overwhelmingly chose “thick and chunky.” At the time, thick and chunky did not exist. This consultant found that people did not know to ask for thick and chunky…but it is what they wanted. He convinced Prego to not come out with one best spaghetti sauce but dozens…and the food industry was totally changed.

I see the Web 2.0 world as the “thick and chunky” side of web applications - one which most faculty are oblivious.

Check out my blog post and leave some comments on ways we can help faculty see what they are missing!

Thanks!