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 🙂

 

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

 

Sia’s Story or The Job of an Instructional Designer

Remember?

That first Instructional Design assignment…

Waiting for the ID Reviewer’s comments…

Then clicking open the document with your heart pounding against your ribs…

And then seeing… RED!

Was this what you HAD signed up for?

Or

what is it that you ARE signing up for?

Meet Siya…and Rajeev.

If you want to become an instructional designer and find yourself wondering what it would be like to work as an ID, you’ll find your answers at https://anchor.fm/learninglights/episodes/Siyas-Story-An-Instructional-Designers-Job-ens9lk

A heads-up…

This is a podcast – and so you’d need to keep the audio on.

In this episode, meet Siya, a mint-fresh instructional designer who is discovering what it means to be an instructional designer.

This episode is an introduction to what an Instructional Designer’s Job comprises, takes you through the fears and apprehensions of a new ID, and then puts them to rest through the knowledge of an experienced instructional designer.

With this episode, we are through with laying the basic groundwork. In the coming episodes, I intend to discuss a few concepts of instructional design and cognitive psychology within the context of their application in eLearning and/or training.

If you’d like to join me on this fun ride, do subscribe or follow Learning Lights on a podcasting app of your choice. It is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify too.

 

Creative Agni’s Online Courses, Training Programs, and Workshops – At a Glance.

Dear Knowledge-seeking, Knowledge-sharing Friend,

In the coming week, I’ll be posting a few articles here. However, today I bring to you a consolidated list of all of Creative Agni’s online courses, training programs, and workshops on Instructional Design, eLearning, mLearning, storyboarding, and creativity.

I quote from the linked page, a bit about Creative Agni’s offerings…

Why a Creative Agni Online Course / Program?

Creative Agni’s Online Courses and Training programs are designed to forge you into a strong and analytical elearning or training designer whose work is fueled by pure instructional logic. Our Instructional Design, eLearning & Gamification courses and programs (IDCD Online, IDST Online, IDML Online, and GeLT Online) ignite the spark of contextual creativity in you, burnish your natural writing or training talent, and transform you into a creator and deliverer of powerful and smooth content or trainings.

This, of course, is possible only if you have the will to dive into an adventure that’s not just thrilling but also challenging. In other words, Creative Agni’s offerings are for the cognitive brave-hearts, who want to earn a certification that fills them with pride.

Well, that’s all for now 🙂

A quick note, the last date to apply for our IDCD Online course is October 01, 2020, so if you haven’t yet downloaded your form and applied for the same, do so now. Application is Free – registration follows acceptance of your application for a particular course.

 

Re-introducing Sloth and Froth!

I am not sure if I’ve ever formally introduced you to Sloth and Froth. They appear in my posts off and on. In other words, they’ve been freelancing – but now I intend to offer them a permanent position here. Thus, it becomes all the more necessary that they are introduced to you, their real audience.

Meet Sloth.

He (yes, HE) is a personification of his name. He is lazy. He is someone who’d love to have a droid doing his work for him. Sloth hates to get up in the mornings, he abhors the idea of taking a bath (even of  brushing his teeth, but he won’t tell you that,) and his daily To-do list begins with the task of finding an unsuspecting mule who’d do his work for him.

Fortunately, Sloth is very intelligent. His huge body houses an equally huge IQ…and so he’s not a complete loser, but he is absolutely NOT charismatic…and he doesn’t care. He loves to complain, and he is of the opinion that the entire world has been paid to conspire against him.

Now meet Froth.

She (yes, SHE – what did you think?) is bubbly, quite like her name. She’s full of energy. She resembles a freshly uncorked bottle of Soda. She’s extremely energetic and you’d think that she’d never tire out – but she does, because she’s also a perfectionist. She is an extreme hardworker – to the extent that she burns every extra ounce of fat off her perfect body. Froth’s charismatic; she’s attractive, and she’s very lively.

Froth is a career woman. She wants  to do well in her career and she doesn’t want to do it by cutting corners (if you know what I mean.) She is always politically correct but at the same time  she’s also quite emotional. This makes her feel stressed at times.

Following are the posts in which Sloth and Froth have featured so far. I hope you like them, because you’ll be seeing a lot more of them on this blog:)

• Prior Learning in Adults – A Double-edged Sword?
• The Serial Position Effect and Its Use in Training/Course Design
• Learning About Twitter, Tweets, Followers, Hashtags, and Lists – with Sloth & Froth!
• Attribution Theory & Self-Serving Bias – Why People play down the Achievements of Others?
  

PS: Does this post smack of Reverse-Gender-Bias?

Froth says: This isn’t gender-bias, this is how things are. Women are blah…blah…and men are blaher…bhaher!
Sloth says: Who cares? Pass me the mustard!

 

Social Influence – Part 1 – Definition, Explanation, Factors/Forces!

This is a 3-post series on the nature of Social Influence and its impact in a Classroom.

• This is the first post in this series. It will define and explain the factors that constitute Social Influence.
• Read the second part, “Its Manifestation in a Classroom” here.
• Read the third part, “How Social Influence can be Applied by a Trainer” here.

As classroom trainers, we could make our training programs more effective if we could find the answers to questions such as the ones listed below:

• Why some people become leaders and other followers?
• Why a bully might be capable of disrupting a classroom full of adult learners?
• Why it’s difficult to regain lost learner engagement?

There’s a long list of whys that can be answered only if we understand the concept of Social Influence.

So,

What is Social Influence?

Before I fall into the trap of defining it in a crisp and concise way and lose your attention in the process, let me take you on a trip into your past.

• As a teenaged girl, you wouldn’t step out of your house in something that went out of fashion two years ago.
• As a teenaged boy, you had to be part of the cool-dude group in your college.
• As a daughter, you had to comply with your mother’s rules about the time you got home.

These or similar experiences happened because we were “socially influenced” – by the group of girls in the college, by those uber-cool dudes you were friends with, and by your own mother!

Social influence – The Definition:

Thus Social Influence can be understood as the influence that society (social groups, friends, family, and others) exerts either deliberately or unintentionally, and which brings about changes in someone’s behavior.

 

Social Influence – Factors / Forces:

As it’s clear from the above definition, Social Influence has many dimensions and it factors in different forces.

Some of these forces are:

• Charisma
• Authority
• Groupthink
• Expertise
• Emotions
• Trends

When we as individuals come across such forces, we change our behavior.  Let us take some examples:

Charisma as a Factor:

A charismatic person (the religious guru, the motivational speaker) might be able to influence our thought process by saying those very things that we’ve been hearing all our lives but never paid heed to.

Authority as a Factor:

Similarly a person who has some kind of authority recognized by the society (a policeman, a teacher, a doctor) can make us do things that we would probably never do if we didn’t know of their authority.

Groupthink as a Factor:

Members of group often begin to accept the majority view (despite their own views being different) because they don’t want a conflict.

Reflect upon the other three factors – it isn’t difficult to see how they influence the behavior of people, all the time:)

I’ll discuss more about these forces and how they manifest themselves in a classroom in my next post. Until then, keep an eye on what’s happening around you. I am confident that you’ll find many examples of social influence strewn around you as you navigate your way through your day.