Important Update for my Readers and Subscribers

You must’ve noticed that my blog is looking different today. The dark leather diary of the Choco theme is gone. The blog has brightened up and is trying to ape its cousin, the Ignite blog at the Creative Agni site.

1. My Book on Instructional Design is Coming Soon

The book has arrived and is now available on Amazon. Please visit the Amazon page at the following link for the details. You can also read the book’s details at the Creative Agni Website.

Available on Amazon

I spent a substantial part of the last three years working on my book, “For the Love of Instructional Design – The Non-Textbook for Learning Professionals.” You can read a few (short) excerpts from the book here. The book is a little more than 600 pages that bridge the gap between ID theory and practice, and it achieves this through the use of storytelling as its primary instructional method.

Coming Soon

If you’d like to be notified of its arrival, let us know.

2. The IDCDT Course now has an AI-Module

Last year, we reviewed the impact of AI on learning and decided that the IDCDT course must include a robust AI module. So, it’s now a 2.5-month course with its Sunday sessions (2 sessions of 1.5 hours each) on Zoom. The course is still offered with the same intent and follows the same philosophy that it did, when it began 25 years ago. Keeping pace with the emerging technologies, the course has been evolving continuously, and yet it remains unchanged in soul and spirit. You can visit the IDCDT-AIM (The Instructional Design for Content Development and Training (with the AI Module) Certificate Course to see how the course has evolved.

Those were the important updates 🙂 And yes…

If you haven’t been to the Ignite blog, do check it out. It’s written by me (I don’t use AI for writing, and here’s why), and it brings you my thoughts on learning design and artificial intelligence.

Join us for a live audio talk on Gestalt and Learning.

Why do we –

1. wait for the next episode of our favorite show?

2. want to discover the end of an unfinished story?

3. make assumptions about people and situations?

4. see things that aren’t really there?

and how does all this connect to the beautiful process of content design and delivery?

This Saturday (June 25, 2022,) at 11 am, join me and my cohost Sangeeta Srinivasan for a talk on how we instructional designers can use the Gestalt Principles to make our content more appealing and effective.

Click here to join us.

If you are already on Clubhouse, join the Instructional Design Junction Club.

As always, we will start basic and go advanced, so don’t worry if you haven’t heard this term ever before. However, if possible, bring along a notebook and a pencil 🙂

Feel Instructional Design

My Dear Followers of The Zen of Learning,

I invite you to go beyond knowing and using instructional design. I welcome you to Instructional Design Junction, a place where the concepts of instructional design, training, elearning, gamification, and cognitive psychology will not only be discussed from an academic viewpoint, but experienced holistically. I invite you to be the first visitors (and hopefully, inhabitants) of an exotic just-discovered planet.

Visit the Instructional Design Junction to feel instructional design and be ready to welcome the future of learning.

Check it out, and if you like it, please click the Follow button there. If you have wordpress.com blog, you’ll be able to read the new posts in your Reader.

Thank you!

• Shafali

Free Online Workshop on Blogging on Aug 29 (Sunday.)

If you are just starting out as a blogger, or if you know someone who is, please checkout the Free “Blogging for Personal and Professional Growth” Online Workshop by Creative Agni. If you are interested, please head over to the workshop page and register for it.

This is all for now.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Free Emotional Intelligence Primer (EIP) Online Workshop – Aug 08, 2021 (Sunday.)

My dear readers of this blog,

It’s my pleasure to invite you to my 3-hour Free Emotional Intelligence Primer Workshop on Sunday, August 8, 2021. The Timings are 2 PM to 5 PM Indian Time or GMT+5:30. If the time suits you, please visit the workshop page to read the details of the workshop and the testimonials of the previous rollout participants. Then register for the workshop using the registration link available on the page.

If you are on LinkedIn, I also invite you to follow the Creative Agni Page on LinkedIn here. The page posts updates on articles, presents Instructional Design Quizzes, and announced our free and paid workshops and certificate courses.

Creative Agni’s Free Cartooning for Trainers Primer Workshop on Aug 08, Sunday.

Dear Visitors,

I’ll be conducting a 3-hour Free Cartooning for Trainers Primer (CTP) online workshop on August 08, Sunday. The workshop timings are 2 PM to 5 PM (Indian Time, which is GMT+5:30.) If you live outside India and want to register for it then I’d request you to review whether the timings of the workshop would suit you.

If the workshop interests you, then please visit the workshop page here to read the details and register for it.

Here’s a quick visual synopsis for you.

I’ll look forward to meeting you 🙂

Have a wonderful day!

Shafali

Free 3-hour Online Workshop on Instructional Design – July 11th, 2021 (Sunday.)

Folks,

If you are interested in finding out what Instructional Design is, what it tastes, feels, smells like, and how it helps you content content that truly fits your learner’s learning requirements, I recommend that you register for Creative Agni’s Free 3-hour Instructional Design Primer Workshop. Registrations are on until noon tomorrow (Friday, July 9th, Indian Standard Time.) I’ll be conducting this workshop on Zoom.

Register for the Free IDP Online Workshop by Creative Agni.

Have a Great Day!

The Evolution of Adult Learning – A Poem.

Long ago, students learned before they earned,
And teachers sat up high and taught.
There was never any confusion,
And the real gurus were widely sought.

Then all hell broke loose, when
Oxford was founded in thousand ninety-six,
Adults found their calling in learning and
In 1833, Andragogy entered the learning mix!

When education left the universities
And followed adults into work,
Confusion brewed, then bubbled over,
And training became its new and dashing form.

“Shame that I should be trained!”
Simmered the trainee on the training burner.
“You see, I am a not a circus animal.
I am a self-directed, adult learner!”

Cried the experienced, self-aware adult,
“Don’t teach me. Don’t tell me.”
“I shall choose my own learning path,
If I only knew, ‘What’s-In-It-For-Me!’ ”

So trainers turned into learner-centric facilitators,
And learning became the overt-mantra,
Training changed into Learning & Development,
As trainers mastered the learning-tantra!

– Shafali R. Anand

Our brain – the Illusionist and the Laws of Gestalt.

Our brain is forever engaged in the act of simplification…it’s always trying to cut a long story short – and in doing so, it creates illusions.

So, what do you see?

In this podcast, I talk about Gestalt and its five laws.

• The Law of Figure & Ground
• The Law of Proximity
• The Law of Pragnanz
• The Law of Good Continuation
• The Law of Closure

If you don’t know of Gestalt, I promise that you are in for a cognitive treat.

Check out my Gestalt Laws Podcast here.

Finally…Twitter!

Dear Readers,

I’d like to tell you that I recently discovered my Twitter Account that I made in 2009 – and I’ve started tweeting seriously about some serious matters, such as Instructional Design, eLearning, Training, and Creativity. If these topics interest you, please follow my account here.

Tweets by shafalianand

My new love is Gestalt, and I’ll be talking about it in the next episode of the Learning Lights podcast 🙂 Don’t miss it! It’s going to be super-awesome!