lifeandlearning

This blog post is going to be a bit different. Instead of the usual learning theory concepts that I talk about, I will be talking about a concept which sounds familiar but one which most people lack a deep understanding about. I had recently had an opportunity to research about emotional intelligence. Before I started researching my mental thoughts were Oh I know about it and a lot of things that I came across were known to me but there were certain things that I had never thought about or associated with emotional intelligence. The term Emotional Intelligence was first coined by researchers Peter Salvoy and John Mayer in their 1990 article called Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality. In their article, they described emotional intelligence as “a set of skills hypothesized to contribute to the accurate appraisal and expression of emotion in oneself and in others, the effective regulation of emotion in self and others and the use of feelings to motivate, ...

In my last blog entry I talked about learning design. Today I want to talk about a related concept called UX. A part of me thinks that UX is and should be considered as a part of learning design but having talked to a number of people about this, I have arrived at the conclusion that these two concepts are thought of as related but separate so will happily leave it at that. UX refers to  u ser e x perience and is how a person (user) feels when they use a product or service or interface with a system. The key word here being experience. UXD refers to  u ser e x perience  d esign and encompasses factors such as: how usable (and useful) the product is how will the user interact with the product  how accessible the product is  how visually pleasing it is  how easily and intuitively it can be used by the customer.                                 ...

For the last couple of years, I have increasingly come across the words learning design. Superficially it appeared to me just another name for instructional design or perhaps instructional design underwent a branding exercise and is now reborn as learning design. However, on scratching the surface I found that there are differences, subtle differences perhaps but differences nonetheless. So, what is learning design and how is it different from instructional design? Actually, before we get to that let's think about what does a design do? A design aims to solve a problem for the user by taking in consideration the user's requirements. Think of interior design - It is a solution for how you want your home or office to be given your life/work style. Furniture design aims to solve a problem for the targeted users. And so on and so forth. So, learning design is about providing solutions to learning requirements of the learner. But isn't that what we do in instructional des...

Today I had a meeting with a prospective client regarding the development of some eLearning resources. During the meeting, the client mentioned that they wanted the resources to be interactive and asked me if I would be able to incorporate some gamification in them. Two simple requirements but at the opposite ends, from a functional perspective. I asked the client what was their idea of interactivity. Their response was that I should add in "some kind of tabs that the learners would need to click or some other things which would make the learner interact with the course". Now, granted, click on tabs would technically qualify as interactivity but is this really the sort of interactivity that actually leads to learning and retention? My view is that this type of interactivity would hinder rather than aid learning and is no better than courses that put the  next  button at the bottom of every slide. The end result being that the learner, instead of focussing on the learning...

The learning pyramid, also known as the cone of learning shows the different instructional methods and how much learning is retained by learners when employing those instructional methods. The development of learning pyramid is credited to Edgar dale. The top four instructional methods in the learning pyramid are described as passive methods and the bottom three are described as active methods. Also, I am not quite sure if group discussions should come under active methods, as I have sat through many group discussions just sitting there and listening to others and then promptly forgetting what was discussed in a matter of hours. A lot of interpretations of the learning pyramid can be found online. These interpretations accord a percentage weight to the level of learning retention that is facilitated by each different instructional method. There is some criticism of the learning pyramid around the order of instructional methods as well as the perce...

The 70:20:10 model is a learning and development model that combines experiential, social and formal learning and explains their relationship to each other. The model is said to have first been developed by Morgan McCall from the center for creative learning. Although there can be different combinations of the model (50:30:20 or 80:10:10) depending on organizational circumstances and requirements the usual interpretation of this model goes something like this: 70% of learning is experiential. People learn by doing something or reflecting on what they have done. It might be their regular job, it might be practice, it might be a simulation or a project or a task force or even simply interacting with clients, as long as it involves people doing what they need to do to do their job effectively. 20% of learning is social learning. Social learning takes place with co-workers, friends, and others in an individual's personal network. It may include asking a friend to show you how t...

In this blog post, i would like to talk about scenario based learning. Scenario based learning puts the learner in a real life scenario or in a situation/simulation that depicts real life as closely as possible. The central idea being that learner is put into a situation which requires them to consider a wide range of factors and take appropriate decisions. The advantage of this is that learners develop critical skills (and their confidence) that they would need in order to effectively do their job. Another advantage is that because the learning involves a particular context (one that the learner is likely to use in their actual job), the learner is able to better understand the learning and commit it to their long term memory. Scenario based learning is based on situational learning theory, which was first discussed by Jean lave and Etienne Wenger in 1991. Scenario based learning generally involves providing the learners with a narrative that introduces the learner to the scenario ...