Personal Finance Workshop – Free and online on September 19, 2021.

This workshop is for those who suffer from finance-phobia, avoid personal financial decision-making – even botch it up at times, and feel horrible about it later. In other words, if you are like me, this workshop is for you.

If you do, and if you want to figure out the F of finance without feeling zoned out, attend Creative Agni’s Free Online Personal Finance workshop on September 19th (Sunday, 10 am to 1 pm.)

The Personal Finance Workshop by Creative Agni

Before you start wondering…I am NOT conducting this workshop but someone who’s brilliant at both finance and training, is.

Check out the details of Creative Agni’s Personal Finance Workshop here and register for it.

A Note:

This workshop is part of Creative Agni’s “Life Enrichment Workshops series.” These workshops are not related to Creative Agni’s core areas of instructional design, elearning, and training, but we do them anyway, because we believe that if we can, we should. Our Emotional Intelligence Workshops too are part of this series.

 

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.

 

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 AFR Learner Types – Learners of the Future – Thrive, Jive, Survive!

I wrote about the AFR Learner Types a few months ago and the article was received quite well within the learning community. I’m sharing it here because I believe that understand the three types and determining where our learners and we ourselves as learners fall, could be instrumental in our surviving, even jiving and thriving in the new post-pandemic world.

While you can download the Free PDF of the article “The AFR Learner Types – Learning in this Changing, Evolving World” here, here’s a quick synopsis.

My two-decades worth of experience with adult learners both in online courses and classroom programs taught me that based on their traits and corresponding learning behavior, learners can be classified into three groups.

• The Agile Learner
• The Flexible Learner
• The Rigid Learner

While most of us (almost 80%) fall into the Flexible Learner category, some of us are Agile Learners and a smaller fraction comprises Rigid learners – and as you can see in the following image, I’ve seen Flexible Learners turn agile, but the rigid learners, due to their inherent dislike for change, often stay rooted to their learning beliefs. However, through counseling they can be motivated to move left toward becoming flexible learners.

At this juncture, it’s important to review our capabilities and determine how we can evolve into the learning professional of tomorrow – and if we feel tied down by our expectations, self-image, and/or current beliefs, it’s time to take a hard look at ourselves and weed out anything that stops us from learning, changing, and growing.

If you like my articles and would like to hear my thoughts, I invite you to my Learning Lights Podcast.

 

Free Online Workshop on Instructional Design – Sunday, September 06, 2020.

Hello Friends,

Hope you are doing well and staying safe.

Creative Agni has just announced my free online workshop on Instructional Design. It shall be a 3-hour program that will start at 10 AM (Indian Time.) The program will be conducted through Zoom.

If you are interested in attending, please visit the IDP workshop webpage, read the details, and register for the workshop. The invites with the Zoom meeting link shall be going out on Friday, September 4th.

The next session of the IDCD session shall be conducted online, and you are welcome to explore it at the IDCD Course web-page.

Thank you,

Shafali

 

A First is always Fearful, sometimes Frustrating, but never Fruitless.

This morning I posted my first article on LinkedIn.

Are you wondering why this feat-o-mine warrants a dedicated post on my WordPress blog?

Well, it does, because this is indeed a victory of sorts for me.

You see, I had been planning to make this post for more than two weeks now. I had been reading posts done by my connections, and their connections, and wondering how with such meager accouterments (an extremely basic formatting bar and a minimalist environment,) could one make a reasonably good looking article? I was battling the fear of the unknown.

The Fear of the Unknown

My main cause of anxiety stemmed from the unknown. I didn’t know the interface and I didn’t know how the LinkedIn audience would receive my content, but I knew that I had to take the first step in order to take the next, and then the next…that’s how we learn to walk then run – don’t we?

The fear of the unknown is one of the most debilitating fears of all, and the only way to over come it to learn about the unknown. It may take a while, but it works. I’ve seen it work all through my life. So armed with this hope, I started writing “5 Instructional Weapons to Win the Microlearning War.”

About 5 Instructional Weapons to Win the Microlearning War

It worked with this article too. Microlearning has always intrigued me. Even in our online ID courses that I had designed for Wavelength, I had ensured that none of the learning interactions went beyond 10-15 minutes, and that they did their job in that time – gaining the learner’s attention, establishing relevance of the content for them, providing the learning/providing practice/quizzing them – as the case might be, and leaving the learner satisfied. True that each course had more than a couple of hundreds of those, but each of those learning interactions did their job, and the fact that we had happy and satisfied learners who remember us even after a dozen years, proves that those learning interactions worked.

But those were different times. In the last decade or so, smartphones have changed the whole learning eco-system. In fact, they’ve changed the learner’s persona as well as her expectations.

Never before we had a learner whose attention was so difficult to gain and retain – this obviously means that only those learning providers who would have the right arsenal will win – others will be left behind.

I thought I had something to say – and so I wrote and then made an infographic to go with it. Here’s it. Please head over to LinkedIn and read the full article.

About the 3 Avatars of the Micro-learner

And while I was at it, I saw the true persona of microlearning audience – the triumvirate with three different avatars. Read more about them in the article.

Meanwhile, I’m pleased to announce that I’m feeling rather comfortable with LinkedIn articles now, and if you have any question, I’ll be happy to answer (but remember that little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and I’m still learning.)

The Thrill of Discovery Replaces the Fear of Unknown

Now that I’ve gotten used to the basic format of the LinkedIn article editor, I’m looking forward to making my next post. I am not sure what I shall write about – but it’s definitely going to be a thrilling experience. I hope to meet you on this ride. If you are on LinkedIn and are passionate about making learning effective, let us connect. Find me on LinkedIn here.

 

Learning Adobe Captivate – Coffeebeans: The Trainer and The Trainee – A Comic Capsule.

As you may have noticed, Creative Agni’s REDAC (Rapid eLearning Development with Adobe Captivate) certificate course rolled out on August 5th. Traditionally, I’ve always participated in the first rollouts of all the courses that we create and bring to you, except when I’m the one conducting the course.

Two Sundays into the program, I created a small linear interaction (“Coffeebeans – The Trainer & The Trainee,” a comic-capsule that features Coffeebeans and her owner Froth,) and I am feeling mighty proud of it.

Click the image to view the Comic Capsule.

I hope you like Coffeebeans – she’s one heck of a smart pup 🙂

Since Creative Agni’s Instructional Design and eLearning Courses are engineered to learning experiences that don’t just enable but empower, their learning goals aren’t about learning but about doing – and this is why I can already use a wide variety of Captivate’s tools. Barely past the third class, I can already use most of the menu items; use text and shapes; stylize and animate them; record (or import,) edit and use audio; use buttons and actions; create advance actions (this week I created a click and view interactive all on my own, using advance actions;) and use the timeline like I was born to use it.

In the weeks to come, I’ll be learning tons of other interesting stuff and will be able to create learning interactions, record and use simulations, use videos, create different types of quizzes, figure out the responsive content bit, etc. It’s an exhilarating ride and I’m glad to be a part of this very smart and enthusiastic group of participants.

Do visit the Creative Agni eZine site and check out the Coffeebeans Comic-capsule.

 

Cognitive Dissonance and its impact on Learning.

“Let us say you ordered a watch online. The picture of the watch looked good (it looked like it had a curved glass and the dial had a silvery sheen) and it was available at a very affordable price. A few days later, the watch was delivered, and you opened the box with great expectations. You were hoping to find a watch that looked as classy as the one you had seen in the pictures. But when you unwrapped the box and opened it, you realized that the real watch didn’t look as good as its pictures. The dial was off-white and glass was plain. You realize that the pictures must have been touched up as the watch was the same model that you had ordered. Fortunately despite its not-as-good-as-expected looks, it still was a deal at the price you bought it.

So you tell yourself, that the watch is from a good brand, and that you anyway wanted a robust watch and not a flimsy wrist-candy.

When you engage in this behavior, you are trying to curb the cognitive dissonance that has arisen out of two conflicting ideas in your mind.”

Understanding cognitive dissonance and its impact on learning can prepare us to handle it in our classrooms and online courses. The following links will take you to a series of three posts:

1. Understanding Cognitive Dissonance – Explanation and Illustration
2. Cognitive Dissonance in Classrooms and Other Learning Environments
3. Cognitive Dissonance and Other Instructional Design Principles

BTW, this Easter, Froth bought a pair of Easter Bunny ears for Coffeebeans…

 

 

Returning…

Dear Readers,

It has been a while that I posted anything here. A medley of reasons kept me away – the most important being some critical health issues. Yet, every dark cloud that hovers over your head filling your view of the world with darkness and gloom, either explodes into a storm of rain and drenches you cold, or sails away in time. This cloud is sailing away, and though I can still see its tail on the horizon, I am confident that the wind won’t reverse its course to bring it back. At least I hope that it won’t.

So, in all probability I am back.

I intend to dust away the cobwebs and scrub this blog to make it sparkle again. I also want to thank the latest follower of this blog who inspired me to return. (If you followed this blog yesterday, you are the one I am talking about.)

As I couldn’t move about a lot, I spent the last whole year experimenting with some new learning mediums. I worked extensively on the mobile platform (specifically iOS) and this year I intend to work on development of Android apps. I intend to share my learnings on content development for the mobile learning or m-learning medium here along with my thoughts on e-learning. I am also experimenting with Kindle. Recently I have once again started accepting corporate training assignments in Instructional Design and eLearning. I also plan to share my experiences from those programs here.

This blog primarily focuses on the psychological principles that relate to learning (directly and indirectly) so expect to see the regular stuff on cognitive psychology too 🙂

I leave you with a link to my latest article on the Creative Agni Website.

• The Trainer & The eLearning Adventure
• And if you haven’t been there yet, check out the Creative Agni eZine.

 

Announcing the birth of the Creative Agni Instructional Design and eLearning eZine

I’d like to invite the readers of this blog to the Creative Agni eZine site. It was designed in my after-work hours. Those extra hours took their toll on my neck and shoulders, but when I was done, I felt that  it was all worthwhile 🙂

The Creative Agni eZine has the following five sections.

• ID Fiction
• The IDEAL
• ELearning
• The Creative Lounge
• Sloth & Froth

Do visit the eZine site here. If you like what you see there, subscribe to the Creative Agni eLearning eZine 🙂