Virtual Schools and Web 2.0

One of our clients, a well known virtual school in US is trying to use Web 2.0 tools in their online courses. I have used widgets and polls in my blogs. Years ago when I was working for a large social networking site, I enjoyed adding the social interactivity bit to the site. O'Reilly was just catching up at that time and Facebook was a fetus.

In virtual school curriculum when the students don't meet up then polls and gadgets do enhance the learning process. It adds the stickiness to the content and technology is used to create widgets like mortgage calculators etc. Poll responses used to help a lot in understanding online statistics and opinions and teachers can use them to know the students in a virtual environment.

There are also games and simulations that prepare the students to face a practical situation and be motivated to use whatever they have learnt in the lesson. Wow that sure sounds cool...I wonder why we need to commute to school everyday :)

Lone ID on Project

I am compelling myself to write this blog-post even in the middle of a very busy schedule of juggling multiple projects on very varied topics, but from the same client.

Over the years as an ID (Instructional Designer) I have worked on several projects. Many times I have handled projects on my own and have been the lone ID on the project. Now that’s a potential risk in every way. As IDs we are supposed to handle several project specific roles smoothly. When we are working alone it becomes more important to set priorities to task.

Some of you might know how we set priorities when we send a service request to admin or IT. These priorities enable us to finish our work on time, attack other work, go for discussions on the topic, ask for help or schedule meetings. Lone ID does not mean that you have to work all alone. Look out for resources outside work or projects to give you inputs on your work. It can be through social networking tools, your team members, who might be creative designers or programmers or peers. However when you are sharing information, see to it that you do not violate any confidentiality issues. Be discrete. I remember when I was once assigned to create assessments for an organization level training program. I wanted opinions on the questions and scenarios but the material was highly confidential. I created dummy stuff and parallel material which I could share with peers and ask for feedback without sharing the actuals.

If you are working on technical courses or stuff which is like Greek to you unless and until you are from Greece, maintain a good rapport with the SME. This comes very handy in understanding the content and also in some cases to find about client expectation.

It’s good to get a lot of feedback or opinion but end of the day it’s YOU who delivers so take care what you keep and what you throw. Prepare well, know the scope and expectation of client and audience and then set sail. Stay with your manager or project lead always and take care there’s no communication gap developing.

Once in a while you might get lost but don’t feel bad. It happens to all. Columbus got lost and discovered America :).

M-Learning on Ipod Touch

There is an existence of rapid authoring tools for M-Learning as well. When I say as well, I mean standard rapid authoring tools for WBTs.

For the last 1 week, I have been munching on chips and french fries and have been neck deep in submarines, hot dogs, sandwiches, mixed salads and soft drinks. Now you must be wondering what I am talking about. I was working on a course for US high-school kids and the course had limitations as to the application through which it will be created. I call them limitations as I am habituated in working for WBTs and ILTs and not M-Learning.

The application is called MOBL 21. Among other things, instructors and teachers can create quick learning materials and quiz and make them available to students. The students have access to the material through a device like Ipod Touch. So I was working for a US audience and feeling very very pseudo American for my diet and work which are totally self inflicted if I may say.

I have an Ipod touch and have used it for movies, games, and music but seeing the potential of the device for imparting education completely charms me. Thanks to applications like MOBL 21.

By the way the diet's doing wonders to the skin on my face. If I don't stop, even the craters and undulations on the moon will be put to shame.

Observations on Story-based and Game-based Learning for School Kids

A few days back, I was checking some e-learning modules from company archives. In terms of graphics some courses were great. However, there was a severe lack of good instructional design in several modules.

For example, in some of the modules, a story and a game based approach were used while providing teach. However, I found a distinct jerk when a learner or viewer transitions from the story into the teach.

Now ruminating on the same, I can understand the strategy which has been used which is similar to my mom telling me a story while she fed me when I was a baby. The story which will tingle some quarters of the brain is meant to distract me from the eating process which is mechanical. So in the long run I will forget all my antics and finish my meal.

This strategy will not work in e-learning for youngsters. The reasons are listed below:

1. The story is taking attention away from the teach which is appearing as plain text.
2. The story, game, and the teach are not integrated harmoniously. This means the teach is not woven into the story.
3. High quality graphics are used for the story telling which grabs attention away from the teach.
4. The story, for example, a pirate story is not integrated into teaching algebra.
5. Unlike the storytelling during feeding strategy, the story and the teach both requires brain and cognitive involvement.
6. The vital portion of the course is the teach but the story takes the attention away and does not help the learner to remember or retain what he or she has learnt.


So when you are using game based learning or story based learning, do make sure that all the elements blend harmoniously. You might just end up creating a course, which is visually brilliant with a good navigation interface but fails in satisfying the learner’s needs in an adequate manner.

Starstruck

I get into my start struck mode whenever I talk to an entrepreneur who have created a business or an enterprise and have seen it growing over the years.

I have been working in the field of Training and Education for the last few years and can still consider myself as a baby in the field. I have however come across quite a few people who have created a mark in the industry with their out of the box thinking.

Vikas Joshi of Harbinger Group is one such individual. Mr. Joshi is the founder of the Pune based company called Harbinger. This company is the creator of tools like Raptivity and Yawnbuster among others. These tools are innovations which have sprouted up from the Indian soil and hence make me proud. I have the good fortune of collaborating with Vikas and team on another interesting Harbinger product called Teemingpod.

Talking about innovation in Learning brings to mind another Indian company called Emantras. The website of this company itself gives you the feel that its alive and thinking. I have heard about the vision of this company from the big man, Seshkumar, who is the creator of this very young company. Emantras is touching new heights in M- learning and K12. They are into Game based learning and Virtual Learning Environments among others.

So when I think about my experience of falling just in front of a battery car inside Infosys and looking up to see Narayan Murthy’s humble smiling face, I also remember visionaries like Vikas and Sesh among others who may not have created a massive company like Infosys but have contributed in an wholesome manner to innovation. Innovation which remains a hallmark in the success of an enterprise.

Transformers and Learning

Most of you must have watched the movie ‘Transformers’. A few days back I went to Chennai and saw the second part. I was extremely sleepy and on top of that the storyline seemed to be extremely convoluted. There were also three of us occupying the same bed.

I came back to my current city of dwelling and to my surprise found the first part of ‘Transformers’ in my Ipod touch…thanks to friends. So there I was watching the movie for the first time and wondering what’s all the noise about Megan Fox?

I was however in awe looking at the giant robots. So as soon as the movie ended I started googling and found some information about the creation of these robots. The humanoid shaped robots can change forms. I was thinking about the concepts that went into creation of the robots on screen. The details of the transformations are also captured and there lies the beauty. The structures of these robots must have been created in metal and in miniature forms and there must have been scores of sketches for each. This brings us to the field of multimedia.

Can stuff like these be used to impart learning or training? Whether it’s classroom based or online it’ll be great if there is a robot instructor who can transform into a car while teaching a student about cars. While thinking about robots or mechanical puppets, I came upon a blog maintained by the company called emantra. They have written about stop motion puppet armature or skeletons of puppets which very much look like robotic skeletons. It made me feel good that such type of work and service is offered in India.

Do check out the post:

http://emantras.com/blinkingbulbs/

Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG)

A few days ago while in a discussion with peers from the eLearning industry, I came upon Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG).

I will share some of my views on this. Before I do that, let me borrow a line from Wikipedia which explains what ARG is about:

“An alternate reality game (ARG), is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions.”

As you can see from the explanation, ARG can be used to impart learning but how effective it will be? The story in ARG moves forward based on the decisions of a participant. Isn’t this similar to real life? Our future is based on the decisions we take today. What distinguishes ARG from all other gaming is that the game itself did not acknowledge that it was a game. There was no existence of an acknowledged rule set for players. The participants determine their own rules by trial and error method. The narrative in an ARG will present a fully-realized world. In this world any contact information that is provided is authentic like phone numbers or email addresses, websites. The game takes place in real-time and cannot be reset or replayable.

There can be a sort of puppet master who controls the characters in the game. These characters function like real people and respond authentically. Some events can involve meetings or live phone calls between participants and characters. No artificial intelligence(AI) controls the characters.

Some important reference sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

http://www.seanstewart.org/interactive/args/

What is a Mashup?

Daniel Nations has provided a nice explanation of a mashup:
“A web mashup is a web application that takes information from one or more sources and presents it in a new way or with a unique layout. The key driving power of the Internet is information, and a mashup is an application that takes that information and shows it to you in a unique way.”

When I was reading this definition somehow the ‘newspaper’ came to my mind. The only thing is, it is a solid product. The web is becoming a social space. So you can find many websites opening up programming interfaces (API's) that allow developers to get at their core information.

Google Maps is a good example. Google allows developers to access their maps through API's. The developer can then combine these maps with another stream of data to create something new and unique.

The name "mashup" is derived from the idea of combining data from two or more sources and displaying it with a unique look. However, newer mashups sometimes only use a single source of information for example TwitterSpy.

Do Blogs Influence Purchasing Decision?

Recently I came upon an article (eMarketer) on blogs and purchasing decision. According to that article, blogs do have influence on purchasing decision of consumers. Now it can be anything...Its been over three years since I started writing in a review site which is really a consumer blogging site. It is amazing to observe there how you can influence the minds of a consumer. For example a movie which has bombed in box office may be portrayed in a positive light. And if the review comes from a star writer of the site...then just imagine?

The eMarketer article, Blogs and the Purchasing Decision states:

“For a portion of Web users, blogs rival search as a navigation tool, which has really interesting implications for advertisers,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic, in a statement. “Blogs are becoming trusted guides, steering users who are seeking very specific information to places of interest online.”

The number of consumers influenced by blogs will rise, based on overall blog readership projections. More than two-thirds of Internet users will read blogs in 2012, up from one-half who did so last year.

....

Now survey results like this sounds very sunny during recession when there is hardly any extra money to spare in ad campaigns for products.

Oops Most Sites are Blocked at Work

Unlike my current organization, in my last organization, we used to have an open internet policy, which meant that anyone can access any site from work. Now there may be a lot of unwanted activities if such is the case. On the other hand banning sites especially social networking sites like orkut, facebook or sites like youtube can take away a lot of good things from the young workforce. Under proper supervision a lot of learning can happen from these sites and productive collaboration too. But who will supervise it?

Harbinger Knowledge Products' product Teemingpod which is a social interaction tool for closed groups are not used among their employees. Even Infosys works on several Web 2.0 projects but they necessarily do not test them among their workforce. They also have a strict internet policy. Now if I am thinking about global collaboration...interaction...how is that gonna happen with most Web 2.0 sites being blocked?

The picture is taken from elearning guild survey reports.

Web 2.0 Approaches to Learning for the New Generation

I was thinking about that generation which has grown up with internet, computers and cell phones. They can very well connect with Web 2.0 and in that case learning for them can be supported and augmented with Web 2.0.

I was trying to put together material to train my team on M-learning and as I looked around I realized that how about supporting the instructor led exercise with some Web 2.0. I am still thinking and meanwhile you can take a look at a survery report I found on the Elearning guild site which shows percentage of usage of certain sites by Web 2.0 savvy people.

Learning Theories Supporting Collaboration

Dillenbourg (Dillenbourg 1994) identifies three different theories of learning that could be employed in collaborative learning systems:
-socio-constructivist theory
-socio-cultural theory
-shared cognition theory

Each theory relates the student's learning to a typical learning environment. These three approaches are classified as cognitive developmental approaches that focus on the interactions among peers around appropriate tasks in a given environment that would increase the mastery of critical concepts. Socio-constructivist theory advocates that students master new approaches of learning through interacting with others (Doise1990). This theory is an extension of Piaget's (Piaget1928, Piaget1932) theory that focused on the reasons for cognitive developments in individuals. In socio-constructivist theory, emphasis is given to interactions rather than actions themselves. A given level of individual development allows participation in certain social interactions which produce new individual states which, in turn, make possible more sophisticated social interactions, and so on (Dillenbourg, 1994).

The socio-constructivist approach focuses on the individual's development with respect to the social interaction, without really differentiating or identifying the underlying factors that enhance collaborative learning. Here the social interaction is assumed as a black box that boosts collaborative learning.

The experimental setup for the socio-constructivist approach follows a three stage process of pre-test, individual or collaborative learning and post-test. The differences between individual and collaborative learning are identified with respect to the difference between the performances on the pre- and post-test. A number of empirical studies have been reported to validate this approach (Doise & Mugny 1984, Blaye 1990, Blaye 1989, Durfee, Lesser., & Corkill 1989, Gasser 1991).

Socio-cultural theory focuses on the causal relationship between social interaction and the individual's cognitive development. This approach is derived from Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky1978). In this approach, each internal cognitive change is mapped onto a causal effect of a social interaction. In Vygotsky's own words:
The Zone of Proximal Development is the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Vygotsky1978).
This essentially means that a learner would use the technique(s) that are learned during the collaborative effort with the companion when the learner tries a similar problem independently. That is, self review by the student is the internalization of peer review. The zone of proximal development defines meta-conceptions that might evolve as learned concepts after a period of social interactions. Thus, the inter-psychological processes are internalized during social interactions. Based on this theory, Dillenbourg and Self (Dillenbourg & Self 1992b) developed a computational model. In general, the socio-cultural approach supports collaboration as the means that would prove to be the catalyst to help the meta-conceptions mature into learned concepts.

Shared cognition theory is different from the other two theories in the sense that the environment in which learning takes place is given the focus rather than the environment-independent cognitive processes. The environment consists of both physical context and social context. The previous two approaches attributed the learning only to the physical context. But the shared cognition approach places the focus squarely on the social context that is claimed to make the collaborations happen and not just the presence of the collaborators. Shared cognition aims at letting the peers learn knowledge and skills in contexts where they are applicable (Brown, Collins, & Duguid1988, Lave & Wenger1991). Some advantages of the situated cognition approach are:

1. By linking together specific contexts and the knowledge to be learned, peers learn conditions under which the knowledge should be applied.
2. Situations foster creative thinking. Peers often learn how the knowledge they have can be applied in new situations.
3. Situatedness leads to the acquired knowledge being more practical in nature.
According to this approach, collaboration is viewed as a process of building and maintaining a shared conception of a problem, thus ensuring a natural learning environment.

Moore (1996) describes the importance of distinguishing between three types of learner interaction – learner-content, learner-instructor, and learner-learner.

In learner-content interaction, learners effectively “talk to themselves” about the information and the ideas they encounter. An extreme example would be self-study from a text in a library.
In learner-instructor interaction, learning effectively takes place from a “sage on the stage”, who supposedly imparts knowledge and wisdom to the students. This is still by far the most common method employed by most educational institutions, from primary schools through to universities.
In learner-learner interaction, students help themselves to learn, by sharing ideas and discussing problems, often in a real or virtual group setting. This is clearly the least common and least conventional of the three modes of interaction, but one of the most exciting for those interested in online delivery, since the use of online forums and email lists generally enable group discussion to a far greater extent than is possible in a conventional lecture / tutorial environment.
Granger and Bowman (2003) give the following as essential for building a
learning environment:
-Learner centeredness created within a context familiar to the learner.
-Individual construction of knowledge directed toward goals important to the learner.
-Contextual or experimental learning characterized by authentic interactions within the learning context (or community).

Informal Learning and Collaboration

Coombs (1985) defines informal learning as "the spontaneous, unstructured learning that goes on daily in the home and neighborhood, behind the school and on the play field, in the workplace, marketplace, library and museum, and through the various mass media, informal learning is by far the most prevalent form of adult learning".

Informal learning is what happens when knowledge has not been externalized or captured and exists only inside someone’s head. To access that knowledge, one must locate and interact with that person. Examples of such informal knowledge transfer include instant messaging, a spontaneous meeting on the Internet, a phone call for information, a live web meeting introducing a new product, a live chat-room, a webinar.

Thus collaboration of some form becomes integral to informal learning. As a social animal, the human being's behavior is per definition a form of collaboration according to the standard dictionary definition - 'working together with one or more in order to achieve a common goal.' From this perspective, collaboration is a naturally occurring phenomenon, embedded in our DNA. Charles Darwin argued that cooperation and collaboration must have evolved as an evolutionary advantage.

Collaboration may be instinctive and selected-for in evolutionary terms because it succeeds. But we collaborate not because it succeeds, necessarily, but because it is fun. Collaboration thus becomes a joyous experience and gives a feeling not achieved in any individual pursuit. It also provides a feeling of collective accomplishment. Thus there is a necessity to create tools which supports collaborative learning.

Web 2.0 Affecting Students

"Web 2.0", a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2003 (O’Reilly, 2005), refers to a perceived second generation of web-based interactions, applications and communities.

It is considered to be inclusive of a shift from a World Wide Web that is “read only” to a Web that is being described as the “Read Write Web” (Gillmor, 2007). The Web is evolving to become more like an area for social and idea networking.

Students negotiate meanings and connections within Web 2.0 social spaces or idea networks, exchange bits of content, create new content, and collaborate in new ways.

In summary, O'Reilly (2005) indicates that, "Web 2.0" stands for the idea that the Internet is evolving from a collection of static pages into a vehicle for software services, especially those that foster self-publishing, participation, and collaboration

User-centered Web 2.0 phenomena are disrupting traditional ideas about how students
interact online and how content is generated, shared, and distributed.