TED: Educating the kids of slums in India

A very interesting talk by Shukla Bose about educating the kids of slums in India. She says it is more than just a numbers game. As a part of the talk, she shares her Parikrma Humanity Foundation story.

http://www.ted.com/talks/shukla_bose_teaching_one_child_at_a_time.html

Shukla Bose is the founder and head of the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit that runs four extraordinary schools for poor children.

Learning goals and learning objectives - Part II

As said in part 1 of this post, learning goals predominantly focus on the overall aims of the course. For example, consider that you are asked to create a course that enables tertiary students to critically evaluate and reason what they learn as a part of their academic education.

One of the learning goals for this sample scenario can be:
• Develop ability of using critical thinking to evaluate and reason your subject of learning in your tertiary education.

Notice that the above learning goal is not measurable and not clearly observable either. It is a generic and overall aim of the course/project. Now, it is up to the ID to determine whether this learning goal demands to be a topic or a course or a series of courses based on the content and level of details involved.

The learning objectives for this learning goal can be something like this.

By the end of this course as an academic student you will be able to:
• Define and clearly articulate the concept of critical thinking.
• Recognize the benefits of critical thinking.
• Identify all the five essential dimensions of critical thinking.
• List and define all the eight elements of reasoning and intellectual standards.
• Apply critical thinking to analyze the logic and reason the subject of your study.
Notice that the above learning objectives are specific, measurable and also observable. Again, it is up to the ID to decide whether each of these objectives will represent a sub-topic or a topic or a course. However, the content, audience and the level of the learning would also heavily influence this decision.


A learning objective often has four parts - action verb, condition/s, criteria (standards) and audience.

In the above example, notice that the condition is defined in the stem sentence because the conditions for evaluation will be same for all the learning objectives.

Similarly, since the audience is same for all the objectives, I defined that also in the stem sentence. However, it may not be the same case every time.

Criteria/standard is a part of the learning objective that measures and evaluates aspects such as ‘how often’ or ‘how well’ or ‘how much’ a learner must be able to perform the task learned in the course.

The action verb is a very critical and determining factor of a learning objective. You would choose an appropriate action verb based on two factors:
1. The domain of educational activity (ex: cognitive or affective or psychomotor) and
2. The level of learning in the specific domain (ex: Knowledge or Comprehension of Cognitive, Receiving of Affective domain).

In the above example since the objective chosen are from knowledge and comprehension levels respectively of cognitive domain, the action verbs define and identify are used. You can learn more about the three domains and levels in each of them here: Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains.

Although there are many benefits of writing clear, effective and explicit learning objectives, these would fundamentally help:
• you to clarify what you want learners to accomplish.
• you communicate expectations to students more effectively.
• you to select methods, materials and assignments that are most appropriate.

I would like to conclude this post with a small quote by John McDonald “A set definite objective must be established if we are to accomplish anything in a big way”.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

This is Sir Ken Robinson's four year old talk.

Mind blowing and ground breaking thoughts.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

Truly an inspiring and thought provoking talk

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

Learning goals and learning objectives – Part I

Often, I have come across the context where some of the course developers interchangeable use learning goals and learning objectives. I thought this would be a good topic to write on to differentiate and explain both of them. Firstly, learning goals have a different need from learning objectives. The scope and characteristics of both are quite different. I would elaborate first on what each of them are used and meant for.

Let me first define and characterize ‘Learning goals’. Learning goals are general in nature and non-specific. Goals are often not for measuring. Generally, goals are written for a complete course or a curriculum of study. They often define big picture or overall aims of the course or curriculum. Learning goals are aimed at answering questions such as:
• What will the students know by the end of the course?
• What will the students be able to do by the end of the course?

Learning goals are defined in some cases before conducting learning needs analysis and in some at the time of analysis. These learning goals and analysis give you a high level design document with details of audience, learning goals, course/curriculum structure, and delivery model/platform.

Once the learning goals are defined and both learner needs and task analysis are performed, the learner profile (audience) and learning needs are in place. If you apply Blooms Taxonomy to the course/curriculum structure and learning goals, you would have the learning level expected from the learners. Search for ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’ on web if you are uncertain of it or new to instructional designing.

Combining the learning goals, intended learning level, course structure and audience, you can develop detailed course outline or a low level design document. Developing a low level design document is something that is very commonly followed in industry as a best practice and process before you start writing a storyboard. Low level design document is used to define detailed course and topic structure, learning objectives for each of the smallest learning unit (preferably one level above page level). Based on the learning domain either cognitive or affective or psychomotor, you can use blooms taxonomy and few guidelines to define learning objectives.

Learning objectives are referred in different contexts and by different people as, ‘Outcomes’, ‘Enabling objectives’, ‘Terminal objectives’, ‘Educational objectives’, ‘Performance objectives’, ‘Instructional objectives’, ‘Aims’, ‘Competencies’.
‘Learning objectives’ are specific, measurable and observable definitions of your learning needs for your audience under specific conditions.

Before writing learning objectives it is very important to remember that you must have the end in mind. By this I mean, while writing learning objectives keep in mind how you would evaluate the specific learning objective i.e., what will be your assessment question for this learning objective. At least, have an understanding of what type of assessment question would you formulate to measure the learning objective.

A learning objective often consists of four parts.
• action verb
• conditions
• criteria or standard
• audience

Look for part-2 for more on how to write learning objectives and some comparisons between learning goals and objectives.

Social learning for organizations and technical learning

I was following discussions on how social learning can be helpful in the technical learning and for organizations. I have come across statements such as ‘The way organizations would learn in near future will be revolutionized by Social learning’, ‘The future learning is Social learning’ and many more. I concur to some of the arguments and statements that I followed. I also agree that 70% of learning is informal and the power of informal learning from your peers and subject matter experts is high. I also agree that learning is more valuable when it is relevant.

This made me critically evaluate the possibility of the future being driven by such unorganized and unstructured learning to replace the existing forms of learning.

So, finally here I am with findings of this medium - ‘Social Learning’ and its uses for learning in real world organizations. I would start with advantages and benefits to begin with.

• Social Learning is a good medium if the topic you are learning is evolving. That is, if the technology or the topic itself is in its very initial stages and people are trying to communicate and discuss the future of the particular technology or topic.
• Social Learning is also very effective if you are trying to gain basic knowledge about a topic by doing your part of research from different available resources. This could mean preparing for a session before going to attend it or to read some topic just to know how relevant it is to you and so on.
• The cost involved in carrying out such basic level of research or knowledge acquisition is very minimal. This could be a very good reason for organizations to encourage Social Learning bearing in mind the extent to which the learning can happen.
• One very interesting aspect of using the social learning platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook and so on is that organizations can create communities specific to a topic. The communities can be created either inside the organization or outside with panel of experts and subject matter experts. This will create a learning eco-system.
• On something like twitter, it is good to follow the subject matter expert or evangelist, department or a vertical to know the updates in the organization or for a technology.
• It is known that information (knowledge) is of two types, formal or explicit information and tacit information. We also know that formal information is easy to track and can be properly managed in an organization. It is often tacit information that is often very easy to lose and difficult to manage. Social learning and social learning platforms are a good way to at least record the tacit information into some form of content/information.

The disadvantages are the important aspects of social learning that can be viewed both as opportunities and short-comings. The opportunities would enhance the learning eco-system if improved.

• It is very important to properly organize the learning eco-system that is easy for learners to find their way in the system. Otherwise, the time invested by learners to find appropriate information/learning may go in vain.
• Lack of subject matter experts or mentors in communities can mislead learners. This would make the learners have difficulty in both understanding the subject and also maintaining their interest in the topic/technology.
• A very common problem in social medium for learning is lack of appropriate monitoring in the communities to see if the medium is not being misused for unnecessary discussions.
• Organizations must encourage and motivate the evangelists and subject matter experts to write articles, blogs, wikis and FFO (Frequently Faced Obstacles) for their respective topic/technology. Without appropriate content in the learning eco-system, learners might not be interested to use the social learning medium.

These few of the findings that I thought were good to write into a post. After my critical study of these facts, I realized that Social Media for Social Learning is here to stay and slowly become an integral part of the existing learning system in organizations. It can even gain prominence and can be impressive medium for learning if used appropriately and with efficient judgment and correct tools to implement.

Learning opportunities with technologies similar to iPad and Slate

Recently, I have been observing the improvements about Apple’s iPad and HP’s Slate. I also had a chance to read quite a number of reviews by eminent critics and observe their critiques. After reading so much, I decided to write my opinion adding a little to the heaps of content available on internet about this topic. I decided to compare two different products similar in nature and their common benefits for learning. I understand that HP’s Slate is not yet released in market. But, I chose to write based on what I have been reading about both these products.
Before I write anything more about this, I would like clarify that I do not believe that iPad is a big mobile phone to deliver m-learning. I hope many of you would agree with me. It is not meant to be mobile phone in the first place if my understanding is correct. I see this technology as a hybrid of mobile technology and a laptop. The big screen display and its mobility make me think of the big advantage it can be for learning. More similar products are coming up from giants like Google and others.

If you want to know the basics of these two products, I suggest you visit the links below. However, there are a lot more links to blogs, videos and articles critiquing these products.

iPad
Video 1 of Apple's iPad

HP Slate:
Video 1 of HP's Slate
Video 2 of HP's Slate
Video 3 of HP's Slate

While reading about these two products and trying to understand their feasibilities for learning or education, I decided to compare and identify the commonalities of both the products. I found a simple comparison of features between iPad and Slate at wired.com which was adequate for this post. Link at wired.com

I have categorized the advantages of this technology for learning under few heads.
1. Multi-touch screen / User Interface: The multi-touch screen is a good feature in this technology which would simulate the real world experience of a book/slate with digital technology. Tasks like drag and drops, choosing an option and many more simple and complex tasks can be very interesting for a learner. It would be useful for us Instructional Designers to leverage upon this experience and enhance the learning. Learning can be engaging if the technology can be used appropriately and intelligently without overdoing. However, if this technology seems to be very promising in the future. It is still in the very initial stages to comment on its specific advantages in the future.
2. Weight / Mobility / Portability: The built of this product is also a big benefit for learners. Both iPad and Slate are light in weight and in the size of a medium notebook. This makes it easy to carry. The display screen is a combination of both mobile and notebook which is easy to navigate and operate.
3. Wi-Fi / Connectivity: The Wi-Fi connectivity which is a common feature in both the products enables learner to use online courses and also to collaborate in a network.
4. Software supported: Most of the content for e-learning is in Flash these days. So, I had to mention this in my post. Slate supports Flash while iPad does not support Flash player yet. However, Abode CS5 has some features that can deliver applications for iPod and iPad. So, positively we can hope for better compatibility between iPad and Flash Player in the near future.
5. Storage and applications: Both iPad and Slate have storage starting from 16GB to 64GB in multiple variants. This disk space can also be efficiently used to deliver some downloadable courses and learning material for offline learning.
6. Internet / Collaboration: With Wi-Fi, internet can enable different forms of collaboration, which I think everyone of us already know (Mails, Forums, Blogs, Chats, Webinars, etc.). I would love to write more on this but may be in another post.
7. Camera: Camera is one feature which currently not available in iPad. But Slate promises of two cameras one for conferencing and one to take photographs. This would be a very good feature to expect, because then webinars with video would be possible from anywhere.
8. Speed: The speed is another aspect which we can expect to improve in the future to enable better performance for learners for multi-tasking. However, the current speed is sufficient for iPad since it does not support multi tasking equivalent to a laptop. For HP’s Slate it is very early to comment on this aspect yet.

To sum up, the technology is promising with different options and opportunities for enhancing learning and to develop and deliver engaging learning solutions. As an Instructional Designer I am excited to think of different ways to enhance the learning leveraging on the ever changing and improving technology.

The new face of corporate classrooms for technical training [Part-2]

In Part1 of this post, I have introduced you to the need of different types of course delivery for the same or similar content to different types of learners. In this part, I would focus on discussing and taking you through the model accomplishing this need. The below graphic is a pictorial form of the model.

In the phase 1 of the model, you can deliver the course content through an online learning module. Since the course that you would deliver in the online learning module is one sided content delivery package, you could choose to provide either a rapid e-learning course or a custom e-learning course which-ever is the most suitable. I would discuss the differences between a rapid e-learning course and a custom e-learning course along with their best fit cases in my near future posts. For now, the online learning module can be either a rapid e-learning course or a custom e-learning course.

The phase 2 of the model is to identify and segregate the learners into three or four categories as per your need based on their performance in the course. This phase of the model is aimed at identifying the learners’ learning level, expertise and learning need. For this post, I have tried to divided the learners into four categories based on their expertise with the subject and their learning need.
• Basic
• Intermediate
• Advanced
• Expert
Basic level learners are expected to:
• Learn new technical skills when required.
• Use the newly gained learning into their job.
Intermediate level learners are expected to:
• Learn fast and use the new technical skills and knowledge.
• Be enthusiastic to seek out ways to improve technical knowledge.
• Uses the newly gained technical knowledge efficiently in their job.
Advanced level learners are expected to:
• Be genius at learning, combining and applying new technical skills and knowledge.
• Actively seeks out avenues to learn about advances in relevant technical disciplines, including technical courses, seminars, conferences, professional journals, collegial learning.
• Effectively incorporates new technical knowledge consistently into his or her job; seeks out opportunities to apply new knowledge.
Expert level learners are expected to:
• Be preferably the SMEs or subject evangelists.
• Have a natural interest for quick learning, integrating, and applying the technical skills and knowledge
• Continuously indulge reading/writing relevant technical disciplines, including technical courses, seminars, conferences, professional journals, and collegial learning.
• Apply new technical knowledge towards innovation and performance improvement.

Now, once you have identified the learners into different categories, the learners could interact with each other if the details of the Advanced and Expert learners are provided or preferably highlighted on your LMS or CMS or your student management system. The learners can use forums, chats and blogs that are available in an LMS to collaborate effectively. This would help you to develop learner collaboration and also create a community of learners and experts in a controlled and managed system.

In the phase 3, you can arrange a Questions & Answer session. Imagine this session more like TV reality show where you would see a facilitator, panel of experts, some live learners and rest of the learners watching online. In this case, ID or the trainer takes up the role of the facilitator to conduct and drive the session. Based on the choice of the facilitator, he could take up at any unit level of the course in the curriculum to explain briefly about the unit and invite questions on that specific unit. Based on the criticality and technicality of the question, the facilitator can choose to either answer the question or direct it to the panel of experts. Not to forget, the questions can be either from the learners in the live classroom or from the students present online. For the learners who are used to a classroom kind of environment and those who like to ask more questions for gaining clarity would benefit heavily from this session. Do not forget to record the complete session including the questions from learners online. It is the responsibility of the facilitator to keep in mind the curriculum and the time available for the session while conducting the session.

Phase 4 is the best part and my favorite in the complete model. Once you have recorded the session of questions and answers for the course, you can expect to have an elaborate and exclusive experts’ answers to almost all the most commonly asked questions. A cherry on the cake would be a set of questions and answers voluntarily by the experts and SMEs that a learner could possibly come across while learning the course. If possible and needed the classroom sessions can be held at regular intervals to add more details the course or the curriculum itself. These sessions can also be used to update the course if the changes to the technology or the content are not many but need an update.

You can use this model with modifications and customizations to suit your organization’s training needs. If you consider implementing this model in your organization and you need any support or consultation, you are welcome to write in the comments section. You can also write your experiences if you have implemented a similar or equivalent model in your organization. Your constructive feedback or suggestions to enhance or improve this model are welcome.

The new face of corporate classrooms for technical training [Part-1]

Way back in 2001, the percentage of people using technology to deliver training and people using classroom for delivering training was 11.5 and 76 respectively as per ASTD. But, the recent study says that the percentage will be 50 – 50 in next five years. Even after so much change in the learners’ attitude towards the delivery format and their openness for new forms of learning in the last few years, I am still wondering if the e-learning courses and the packaging of them are as per the audience needs and their new learning styles. Is e-learning changing as fast as its learners?

Before we answer either yes or no, first lets’ do our audience analysis. For the benefit of keeping this blog as short as possible and easy to understand, I am making few assumptions about the learners. My assumptions are:
• The learners have understanding of how to use internet.
• The learners have technical background.
• The learners can be either internal or external customers seeking on the job training.

It is evident from the above assumptions that some of the learners could be learning from different locations on internet such as forums, blogs, twitter, vblogs (video blogs), articles and more learning media on need basis on their own before starting an online course. But, since the learners are learning all by themselves and on need basis, it is possible that they could have gained unstructured learning.

Now, while creating learning solutions for such audience, what kind of learning solutions and what kind of delivery formats would enhance their learning opportunities? Do you think traditional classroom training or an e-learning course or a rapid course can be the best suitable one stop solution for all the learners?

Before I answer this question, I wish to share what I have believed for a couple a years. I believe that the very way we look at the need of classrooms and the online courses would transform over the time. The most efficient use of both the medium will be the face of next generation efficient learning solutions. While thinking about such possibility of a new generation learning solution, I had a model in my mind for a couple of years now. I have tried to explain the same in this blog. Why now if it was in mind for couple of years? Because, now the technology enables us to implement this model, I decided to write about it. The model and explanation is a little too long, so I decided to write this in two installments/parts. However, the same model can be implemented for different audience as well to reap results with the same efficiency.

Let me clear few apprehensions you may have before I go ahead and explain the model. The new classroom that I am talking about is not an all new process or system into your training process. It is only few appropriate changes to the development and delivery process to enhance learning and yield effective results with the existing resources. In fact, you can consider this model as a flavor of blended learning in which you have the online learning and classroom learning in suitable phases of your learning solution to provide a more efficient way of learning.

The diagram below is the pictorial of the model that I foresee for the corporate classrooms delivering on the job training and/or technical training.


The above diagram is a very basic idea/flow chart of the model. This model can be improvised and developed to suit individual organization needs. I would explain the diagram and the model in detail in Part-2 of this post.

Mind Mapping :: A tool for all

I was aware of ‘mind mapping’ for quite a long time. But, recently I studied mind mapping or concept mapping for Visual Design. While doing so, I learnt various ways and uses of mind mapping.

For those who are listening to this term for the first time you can read more about Mind Mapping here. But, I would like to put down the definition as I got it from ‘Te Tawri Awhina’ (The Learning Development Centre at AUT), “mind mapping is a way of organizing thoughts and ideas that mirrors our brain function, particularly the way that intelligence is produced not by the number of cells in the brain but by the number of connections or pathways between cells”.

Based on my understanding Mind Mapping can be predominantly used in three ways.
• For notes taking.
• For revising the taken notes.
• For brainstorming ideas.

If you have read about the mind mapping by now, you would notice that for notes taking, mind mapping lets you write little and focus more on the lecture or the speaker as you may wish. Also, if the mind mapping is done carefully and properly, you can revise the notes very quick and process very precisely.

Here comes my area of interest ‘brainstorming ideas’. However, I may not be able to list down all the possible contexts for using mind mapping, I will try and name as many possible. Often, I have used mind mapping to easily understand and represent a structure or an organization or a system. But, recently while studying this topic in detail, I realized that mind mapping can also be used for representing ideas, tasks or words that can be connected or can be laid around your concept or idea. For example, if I was trying to create a logo for kindergarten, I might like to make a mind map of self brainstorming to generate as many related words as possible. The mind map can be something like this:

From the above mind map, anyone can understand different branches of the thought/idea kindergarten. Now for designing the logo, I would pick-up any particular aspect from the mind map and design using it as my concept for the logo. Designing ideas start like this for better and creative visual solutions.

Similarly, as IDs we can use this mind map to provide our thoughts and related words in similar format for the visual designers to come up with an appropriate graphic. In such mind map, you can also add colors, highlights, symbols, images, typography (different sizes of text), upper or lower case and so on to distinguish, emphasize and communicate your thought more clearly and precisely. The use of visual cues can significantly enhance the mind maps and their usage.

Mind maps can be used to visualize, generate ideas by brainstorming either in a group or individually, and also for problem solving.

I found the below guidelines very useful while making my mind maps.
• Using landscape orientation of the paper.
• Placing my central idea in the middle of the page.
• Adding details in the boxes and avoid writing on the branches to reduce confusion (not as recommended in the link I gave above).
• Using visual cues such as colors, symbols, images, different sizes, and typography to distinguish and emphasize.
• Using images and symbols wherever relevant.
• Using upper case letters for key words.
• Ensuring that the lines are connected from the central image/word/concept/idea (not necessarily directly).
• Try and work to develop your own style of mind mapping. However, while brainstorming in a group, standardize the style. You can choose to follow your style, since it is ‘your mind’ map.
• If you choose to use the branching style, remember to have each word/image sitting on its own line (one word/image per line).

Have fun and happy mind mapping.

Visual solutions to accelerate understanding

This week, I thought of writing a big long post about Education at different levels in New Zealand, but I am still in the research phase. So, for this week I will write a little about the blog of a consultancy that deals with visual solutions to accelerate understanding, drive actions and results to help their customers. As per their website, they are hired to develop visual solutions that motivate employees, drive sales, convince decision makers and improve processes. If you already know about this, yes it is Xplane. I have been a regular follower of www.xplane.com for a long time now.

Xplane has a blog http://www.xplane.com/xblog/ with numerous posts displaying examples of very effective and impressive visual solutions to present information.

For this week, I am signing off with reference to the new video on this blog post of Youngme Moon of the Harvard Business School in collaboration with XPLANE introducing her new book, DIFFERENT’.

Link: Youngme Moon's DIFFERENT

You can also watch this video on you tube at: Youngme Moon's DIFFERENT on YouTube

Enjoy the video.

Amalgamation of e-learning and Visual Communication

This is my first post on this blog and therefore I will try and keep this as simple and short as possible. After 10 years of experience in e-learning and multimedia, finally my journey has begun to learn & discover the underlying truths of e-learning and communication. I joined PG in Communication Studies at an Auckland University 3 weeks ago. As a part of the curriculum, we have a paper on Visual Communication in one of the semesters.

The study on visual communications involves details on how colors, signs, typography, illustrations, drawings, and even graphic designs can be used to communicate. My interest lies in identifying the enormous possibility of using these visual aids along with text to educate and communicate to larger audience.

I know, you would now be thinking that this is very much what we do in our e-learning courses. But, I would differ with you all on this. For most of the SMEs or Instructional Designers or Course Developers or those who create courses, foundation course or good understanding of visual communication is not mandatory. Lack of such understanding often leads to developing learning solutions with more text content and lesser visual content explaining the text content. Such learning materials or courses developed might not be good learning aids for larger audience and different kinds of learners, such as visual learners and kinesthetic learners.

So, I am here in Auckland studying Communication Studies and trying to understand better ways to develop powerful learning solutions by amalgamating visual communication, interactive media, animation, and instructions.

While studying PG, I am also working on identifying a possible solution for my fellow Instructional Designers to bridge this gap.

If this interests you, do not forget to come back to this page every week on Tuesday for new posts of my learning to enhance learning solutions with meaningful and powerful fusion of varied communication methods and instructions.

Have a good learning week ahead.