Dear XYZ,

After much consideration, we’ve decided that it is time to shutdown Amplify. On behalf of the team, I want to thank you for being part of our journey. It is important to us that we shut down the service in the most responsible and considerate manner possible. Towards that end there are two things that you should consider:

• First, we’ve arranged with Clipboard (a new service under entirely different ownership and management) to give you an account on their service, which is currently accessible by invitation-only. You can accept this invitation and register your account now.
• Second, from the registration page, Clipboard will allow you to easily request that your old clips be preserved in Clipboard. If you don’t want them converted, then do nothing. We can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to convert all of your older clips, but if the demand is sufficient, we will do our best.

They say, “We’ve had a wonderful run and we are grateful to everyone for taking the journey with us…….Clipboard will hold Amplify’s databases in trust and if there is sufficient interest they will provide a migration tool to import Amplify clips into Clipboard.”

Wonderful run? And no thought of the audience? Is this the birth of the death of social media?

Seriously, I do not want to join another Social Platform that predates to grow. Goodluck Clipboard!!!

Concept maps can be successfully used to teach conceptual thinking, thus increasing students’ competence in critical thinking. Plotnick defines a concept map as a “graphical representation where nodes (points or vertices) represent concepts, and links (arcs or lines) represent the relationship between concepts”.

Edmondson & Smith describe a concept map as “a tool for representing the interrelations between concepts in an integrated, hierarchical manner”. The map provides a way to connect concepts, allowing the student to visualize during the learning process.  Many times, new meanings are constructed about events or objects based on the students’ prior knowledge.

Infusing critical thinking skills into didactic activities requires the construction and reconstruction of meanings by students through actively seeking to integrate new knowledge with knowledge already existing in their cognitive structure. Cognitive structure is a term used by Ausubel (in Mellish, Brink & Paton 1998:28) to describe a person’s existing knowledge of a particular subject and how well organised and clear that knowledge is. Concept-mapping has been identified as a stimulating learning method to facilitate critical thinking by encouraging students to connect new knowledge to their prior learning, and to give students an opportunity to gain further, wide and varied knowledge of a number of concepts in a short period (Akinsanya & Williams 2004:41).

Courtesy: Dr. jack Yensen

A study was conducted to examine the effects of concept mapping and synthesizers as instructional strategies for nursing students encoding and recalling pharmacology concepts in an undergraduate pharmacology course.  Although results cannot be generalized, this study showed that using concept maps and synthesizers in the teaching environment is effective in increasing the students’ learning experience.

If students can link new information to their existing conceptual framework, they can construct new, meaningful interconnections so that their existing conceptions are transformed, enriched or revised and conceptual change occurs.

Sample Question for Knowledge Test:

Knowledge Test

Asking a learner to define Intravenous Urogram, (IVU) would test his/her knowledge levels.

Sample Question for Evaluation:

Complex Evaluation

A question is posed to the learner to  assess a request to perform an IVU on a patient allergic to iodine. Experiential activities/ simulations can be built to guide the learner in decision making. In this case, the learner gets to immerse in a simulated scenario, evaluate patient vitals, reports and assess the conditions under which an Iodine-allergic patient can be subjected to Intravenous Urogram.

Studies:

A baccalaureate nursing program study determined what proportion of terminal objectives for clinical nursing courses are high level objectives (analysis, synthesis, evaluation), and are the kinds of questions asked by teachers and students during clinical conferences of a high level also.  Despite the fact that stated objectives specified higher cognitive-level thinking, lower-level questions comprised 98.94% of the total number of questions asked by teachers and students in the clinical conferences surveyed.

Another study was performed within an Australian nursing program to examine clinical teachers’ use of questioning strategies.   The teachers’ years of classroom and clinical teaching experience, years of clinical experience, and academic qualifications were studied to see if an association between various qualifications and levels of questions existed.  Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain was used as a framework for the study.  The findings revealed clinical teachers asked more low-level questions (91.2%) than high-level questions (4.4%).

Lower level questioning do not promote critical thinking as they only trigger recall of information in the learner’s mind.  A simple recall of information does not enhance students’ understanding of the information in a meaningful way. Higher level questioning facilitates the development of critical thinking because it is aimed at higher cognitive levels, which involves application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.   Educators should take advantage of stimulating questions more often to help create meaningful active learning instead of just prompting the simple recall of knowledge from students.

Scenario- based learning has particular advantages for practice- based discipline areas where the experience of practitioners is especially relevant to what constitutes knowledge and understanding in the field. Using scenario-based learning in the field of Healthcare has brought forward many such advantages to learners that count on practical experience in everyday activities.

Let us consider a case where Indira Gandhi National Open University conducted such a scenario-based learning project. 10 academic programs were chosen to be included into this project.

The following frame work was given to develop the scenarios:
1. Define critical competencies for graduates of the program
2. Identify learning outcomes for students in the program
3. Identify learning context and develop suitable learning scenarios that reflect the events in life and work of persons who have acquired these competencies
4. Define learning activities assessable and non assessable tasks.
5. Identify all learning resources and instructional opportunities
6. Identify and define cooperative and collaborative learning opportunities using technologies.
7. Identification and definition of opportunities for feedback and remediation.

Let us study a sample scenario as an example:

Discipline: Civil Engineering

Topic: Structural Analysis

Learning Objectives:

1) To distinguish between static and dynamic loads
2) To conceptualize the influence lines
3) To differentiate between Influence Line Diagram (ILD) and Bending Moment Diagram (BMD)

Scenario:

It was a shining morning of October. All students of your class are in cheerful mood traveling to Roorkee in Jan- Shatabdi Express for educational trip with Prof. Dutta.
Suddenly, you feel a shock as train stops abruptly. While waiting for the train to re- start, it is leant that due to some accident on the bridge ahead, the train will not move at least for next 5 hrs.
Out of curiosity you all move to the accident site with Prof Datta. You observe that there is a lot of distortion of the track and even the rails have gone out of place. While discussing the reasons of track failure, Amit points out the presence of visible cracks in the side beam
of the bridge. Suresh asks Prof. Datta whether the bridge failure is due to excess loading.

In turn, Prof. Datta asks the students, whether they remember different types of loading on the structures. You all start naming the different types of loading, you have seen earlier.

Learning Activity 1:

a) List out the different types of loading on structures.
b) Categorize the above list into static and dynamic loads.

After going through the list, Prof. Dutta asks you that why the live loads are not considered as dynamic load when the movement of goods and human beings are considered in the live load.

Learning Activity 2:

Identify the characteristics of static loads and dynamic loads.

Prof. Datta asks the learners to tie a rope across two poles tightly. He then asks Suresh to hang four bricks at four different places and observe the deflected shape of the rope.

Simulation 1: Prof Datta asks you to remove the three bricks from the rope starting from the right pole and observe the deflection of rope at mid point.

Simulation 2: The he asks to repeat the same exercise by moving the brick at points B, C , D and E subsequently and observe the deflection at mid point each time.

Conclusion: The whole scenario-based learning program was developed to be very challenging and was able to completely immerse the learners into the learning cycle.

Training? Yes !!!

How are you Training without Marketing?

Marketing is the display of value to ‘intrigue’ a prospect. Training is intriguing the audience to embed knowledge and trigger response. In both the cases, an event is designed to trigger a mental process.

Training has to take a lot from Marketing. Potentially, Training and Marketing together promise a huge return on performance outcomes. In training, the maximum talk is done by the content. Technology brings action into the talk through engagements. Training experts need to learn and leverage from Marketing. History of Marketing, especially Content Marketing has a lot to give us.

Content Marketing-preage

Content Marketing has been the binder for the marketer since ages. Content Marketing began its journey ages before on cave walls. As the focus started building on tactical tools and technologies, birth of idea-based marketing took place.

The Sun

Beginning the August 25, 1835, The Sun,  a New York newspaper, considered the most politically conservative, published a series of articles describing a scientific discovery of life on the moon. Top of that it the discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, perhaps the best-known astronomer of his time.

Michelin Guide

In 1900, André Michelin published the first edition of the guide to help drivers maintain their cars, find decent lodging, and eat well while touring France. It included addresses of filling stations, mechanics, and tire dealers, along with local prices for fuel, tires, and auto repairs. Until 1920, when Michelin brothers found a pile of them under a garage workbench, they rolled a new idea of marketing. They started charging for the guides to maintain credibility. In 1926, they also started listing restaurants with star ratings.

G.I.Joe

The conventional marketing wisdom of the early 1960s was that boys would not play with dolls. Toy company Hasbro, went for the term “Action figure” eliminating the term “doll” to market the famous G.I.Joe.  In 1982, Hasbro relaunched G.I.Joe with a storyline to include a terrorist group ‘Cobra Command’, pioneering several tactics in toy marketing, combining traditional advertising with an animated television mini-series and an ongoing comic book.

GNN

The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog, by Ed Krol, was published in September 1992 by O’Reilly. The Global Network Navigator (GNN) was the first commercial web publication and the first web site to offer clickable advertisements, now commonly referred to as “banner ads.” Its still hosted at http://oreilly.com/gnn/.

Whitepaper, formerly a  government informal name for a parliamentary paper, was accepted widely in early 90’s for commercial and business information circulation. In 1991 Adobe Systems co-founder John Warnock outlined a system called “Camelot” that evolved into the Portable Document Format (PDF), which later became free.

Placeware

In 1996, PlaceWare—a spin-off from Xerox’s PARC Laboratory—started offering Web-conferencing services. In 2003, it was acquired by Microsoft and the today we see the services as Microsoft Live Meeting.

Hotmail

Launched in July 1996 as “HoTMaiL“, it became the first web-based email service. Later, Yahoo and Google launched free email platforms. By early 2000, email was one of the main forms of marketing outreach for corporations worldwide.

Purple Cow

In 1995, Seth Godin launched Yoyodyne which used contests, online games, and scavenger hunts to market companies to participating users. In August, 1996, venture-capital firm Flatiron Partners invested $4 million in Yoyodyne in return for a 20% stake. The site gained significant traction, with over one million viewers visiting the site, and companies like America Online, American Express, H&R Block, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Sony Music, Sprint, and Volvo using its services.

At Yoyodyne, Godin developed the principle of permission marketing and authored Permission Marketing: Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers. I

In July of 2000, author and blogger Seth Godin created the e-book Unleashing the Ideavirus and made it available for free.
Nexters no longer require describing.

2001:

iPod

Today and Tommorrow:

Social Today

So eLearning Makers, what have you learnt!!!

Collaboration Life

Perhaps Google took  a lesson to converge all sharing systems into one giant platform. Google is creating an unified army for battle. Google’s services are soon going to inter-collaborate into one giant social platform, and in the process steal some teeth from Facebook.

“We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. And so begins the Google+ project”, says  Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Engineering at Google.

+Circles: share what matters, with the people who matter most

Circle around life

What’s in it: You share different things with different people. So sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself – just like real life.

Google Speaks:  “What do people actually do?” And we didn’t have to search far for the answer. People in fact share selectively all the time—with their circles.
From close family to foodies, we found that people already use real-life circles to express themselves, and to share with precisely the right folks. So we did the only thing that made sense: we brought Circles to software. Just make a circle, add your people, and share what’s new—just like any other day.

+Sparks: strike up a conversation, about pretty much anything

Sparking Life

What’s in it: Tell Sparks what you’re into and it will send you stuff it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something cool to watch, read, or share.

Google Speaks: The web, of course, is filled with great content—from timely articles to vibrant photos to funny videos. And great content can lead to great conversations. We noticed, however, that it’s still too hard to find and share the things we care about—not without lots of work, and lots of noise. So, we built an online sharing engine called Sparks.

+Hangouts: stop by and say hello, face-to-face-to-face

Hangout with life

What’s in it: With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let specific buddies (or entire circles) know you’re hanging out and then see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until teleportation arrives, it’s the next best thing.

Google Speaks: Just think, when you walk into the pub or step onto your front porch, you’re in fact signaling to everyone around, “Hey, I’ve got some time, so feel free to stop by.” Further, it’s this unspoken understanding that puts people at ease, and encourages conversation. But today’s online communication tools (like instant messaging and video-calling) don’t understand this subtlety. With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts.

+Mobile: share what’s around, right now, without any hassle

Mobility in life

What’s in it: Taking photos is fun. Sharing photos is fun. Getting photos off your phone is pretty much the opposite of fun. With Instant Upload, your photos and videos upload themselves automatically, to a private album on Google+.  All you have to do is decide who to share them with.

Google Speaks: Getting photos off your phone is a huge pain, so most of us don’t even bother. Of course pictures are meant to be shared, not stranded, so we created Instant Upload to help you never leave a photo behind. While you’re snapping pictures, and with your permission, Google+ adds your photos to a private album in the cloud. This way they’re always available across your devices—ready to share as you see fit.

+Mobile-
+Huddle: Huddling your groups in

Huddle in Life

What’s in it: Texting is great, but not when you’re trying to get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle turns all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page all at once. Your thumbs will thank you.

Google Speaks: Phone calls and text messages can work in a pinch, but they’re not quite right for getting the gang together. So Google+ includes Huddle, a group messaging experience that lets everyone inside the circle know what’s going on, right this second.

Google Hopes you join in, but its entirely +You.

While designing an elearning program, or any training program, STANDARDIZATION is the last thing I would like to do. Standardization kills the excitement.

The brain is a high-speed assumptive device that loves to run ahead of sensory perception. Imagine watching a movie. As an exciting scene is percieved by our brains, our brain starts creating assumptions. It starts creating storyboards of future scenes. A stimulated brain learner more. The learning rate here is high. 

Only when it watches a dull and uninteresting scene, it lays dull and that is symbolic of low learning rates.

The brain is interested in reconstructing environments and is always looking for the surprising, unusual or different, says Michael M. Merzenich, chief scientific officer of Posit Science.

Life today is already so equipped- with tools, technologies and information availability. It has become more or less, so very predictable. We plan, we do, we get. There is a certain lack of unusualness, surprising and thrilling.

Learning and Training cannot be built or delivered with the standardized usual feel. “The more you engage your brain in ways that stimulate it, the more you’re doing to maintain your capacity to learn and to improve. It’s actually right at the heart of maintaining yourself in a fundamental sense”, Merzenich says.

People tend to take more breaks when they perform same, boring tasks- essentially predictable tasks. It is the nature of the task that prompts the engagement of the worker.

5 things that help eLearning maintain efficient learning rates

1. No to Standardization, Go to newness
2. Every minute be the First minute of your training program
3. Add distinctiveness to every chapter/ program
4. Challenge the learner brain with surpise-elements
5. Add variations in problems you let the brain face

Kenny Conley, a Boston police officer, was chasing a shooting suspect. During the chase, he ran past a brutal assault. Other cops were attacking an undercover cop because they mistakenly believed he was involved in the crime. Conley was eventually asked to testify about what he saw of the assault. He claimed he saw nothing. Jurors didn’t believe Conley’s claim that he didn’t see the fight. Instead they assumed he was part of a cover up of police misconduct. They convicted Conley of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Thankfully for Kenny’s legal battle, he is back at the police academy.

DO YOU WISH TO OFFER THAT DECADE FOR YOUR LEARNERS TO FALL BACK TO LEARNING?

Psychology professors Christopher Chabris (Union College) and Daniel Simons (University of Illinois) did an experiment that involved a video of a “gorilla” walking through a group of people passing basketballs. The unexpected gorilla stopped in the middle of the scene, faced the camera, thumped its chest and then walked off screen. When study subjects were asked to count the number of passes by players wearing white and ignore those of players in black, half of them did not notice the gorilla.

They asked people to run around a ¼ mile route on campus while chasing one of the researchers. The experimenters asked the participants to stay about 30 feet behind the researcher and to count the number of times he patted his head. Part-way through the route, they ran right past a staged fight about 25 feet off the route. They put the participants in either a low attention load condition (simply chase the guy) or a more difficult attention load condition (count the number of times he touches his head with both his left and his right hand). In daylight with the low attention load, 72% noticed the fight. But with high attention load, only 42% noticed the fight. Even in broad daylight, people can fail to notice a fight that occurs right beside their path if their attention is occupied.

That experiment is an example of what researchers call “inattentional blindness,” the failure to see something unexpected if one is focused on something else.

While you build your elearning course, you create your objectives and establish the objectives with learner in the beginning of the course. You then integrate instructional approaches that help your learners stay focused on the objectives and finally achieve them.

How many times have you thought what happens if learners get into “inattentional blindness”? Elearning programs are generally built to be intuitive. Intuition, however may have a side-effect, “inattentional blindness”. To prevent learners fall into inattentional blindness, mainstream instruction has to be delivered in a way that allows learners prevail the alertness of surrounding learning objects.

In an attempt and focus to achieve a result at the end of Lesson 2, try to hint back the learner of subtle take-aways of Lesson 1, failing which an elearning program will fall prey of inattentional blindness- a serious cognitive mishap.