Comfort Zone | Learning Zone | Panic Zone

"It all depends on what you believe." 
"You are a star of your own life." 
"Whatever you don't decide, others will decide for you."

You don't trust me??? Watch this informative and thoughtful video that explains in detail about how to be aware of some simple concepts to be able to dream and make "your" future.

Do you dare to dream? by inknowation

Hope you enjoyed this!!!

How-To Tutorials - Part 1

While designing and developing online learning modules for technical/software products, we must remember that different technical learners prefer learning in different ways.

Some may choose to learn from an expert in a classroom and some from a traditionally developed learning module.

However, most technical learners prefer learning in chunks based on their immediate need, preferably short and simple chunks. In addition, they would prefer an accomplishment (small and simple hands-on) by the end of each learning chunk.

 
A few months back, based on these understandings I worked out on a concept – ‘How-To Tutorials’.

How-To Tutorials is based on four main rules:

• Light in size
• Short lessons
• Quick to build and consume
• Template based development 
• Enable informal learning
• Need based learning
• A complimentary learning solution for in-time learning needs

How-To Tutorials has three sections:
Part 1 - Introduction: A brief introduction
Part 2 - Demonstration: A video demonstrating, how to use the feature
Part 3 - Exercise: Steps to implement the feature on live product

These tutorials can be delivered in two ways:

• Embed in the product (like Help)
• Host on a portal (such as LMS, communities, forums, YouTube etc.)

Coming next: 
In Part -2, a sample of How-To Tutorials (How-To Test a REST service in Mozilla FireFox).

TED: Changing Education Paradigms

Ken Robinson, questions the current education paradigm and suggests a new paradigm to be thought about.

Watch this for more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

I couldn't resist myself from appreciating the RSAnimate for the beautiful and informative graphics to support the talk.

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.