December’s Big Question from the Learning Circuits Blog is “What I have learned About Learning in 2008?” Well, because I am a learning professional, I give a lot of importance to my personal learning. And owing to my profession, I am fortunate to understand and appreciate the value of learning.I started my learning this year on the perfect note - I wrote my first blog! I think this simple activity brought me closer to most of my learning this year. After I wrote my first blog, I found myself interested in exploring the world of Web 2.0, social networking, and collaborative tools and technologies. I started to write atleast one blog every month and use you tube, slideshare, twitter, delicious, and joined many online discussion forums to read and share my views. Through all of this, I felt completely responsible for my own learning. I extended my best practices to my training sessions and my trainees. I incorporated you tube videos in my classroom training sessions, referred to multiple e-learning and instructional design blogs to update my 'legacy training' in Instructional Design, incorporated online reading activities as pre-work and post training reflection activities as blogs for my trainees, subscribed to second life and shared the experience with many others, reviewed some powerful Brandon Hall E-learning Awards nominees (e-learning courses) as an independent judge, used many free web tools...and...developed my personal learning network.I also felt very satisfied and energized during the entire learning process. This learning was mostly self-directed. Blogging helped me reflect on the things that I was doing and allowed me to articulate my learning with each activity. It helped me connect with many other people all around the world. It helped me break the shackles of my own mind.
To sum it up, in the year 2008:- I learned that Web 2.0 is not about tools and technologies - it is about a new way to learn.
- I learned that the more I shared, the more I learned.
- I learned that the world is indeed a small place and its very easy to connect, if you want to.
- I (re) learned that to learn, I need to reflect, apply, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes.
- I (re) learned that learning is limitless.
"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” --Randy Pausch
If you haven't read 'The Last Lecture' by Randy Pausch, its time you did it now! This book is an inspiring tale of how to look at your life positively. For the uninitiated, Randy was a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. Randy had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. On September 18, 2007, he spoke to an audience of 400 people at Carnegie Mellon University to deliver a last lecture called “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” The book is based on the same principles. Although Randy lost his struggle with cancer, his legacy continues with the book...
While I wasn't there in the Carnegie Mellon University Hall to listen to Randy in person, his book helped me connect with him quite easily. Here's what I have learnt from watching the video and reading the book:
1) Have a dream! Childhood or otherwise.
It's important to know what you really want to achieve in life. If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.
2) Believe in your dream.
We often fail to trust ourselves. We find ourselves worthless at many times. The important thing is to for us to keep believing in our dream and ourselves. Only if we think we can, we can.
3) Take help from others.
How often we want to do something but are unable to ask for help. Call it whatever - ego, self-conscious, inferiority...there are many names for this one. We need to break the shackles of our mind and extend our hand - ask for help and take the help coming along our way. We can't achieve all our dreams by ourselves. We need others' contribution including family and friends.
4) Be positive. Period.
Much has been said and written about this already that more is not required. I think being positive is contagious and infectious!
5) Plan for your future.
It's important to acknowledge and accept the reality but still spend energy on planning for the future. It's easier to give up but tough to continue the fight. But if you do, it's worth it!
6) Have fun in life.
Don't take life too seriously because life doesn't certainly take you like that. It's important to spend 'fun' time with your family, friends, and try and make the best out of every moment. Laughing at your own self is a skill. Making people happy counts more than anything else.
7) Life is too short.
There is so much to do and not enough time! Get over petty issues and start living from today. Doesn't matter if you were born yesterday or have been around for some time - every moment is precious. Live life today like there is no tomorrow!Hope the book and the video inspire you in many ways too.
A couple of weeks ago, I designed and delivered training on 'how to develop effective instructor-led training (ILT)'. My audience was a group of instructional designers who had some experience with developing elearning but had not designed/developed an ILT. I had 3 days from 'conceptualization' to 'delivery' and it couldn't have been more rapid than it was!
So, I quickly put together a blended learning training plan. Here's how it was:-
1) Classroom session - Face-to-face (0.5 day) - Introduction to ILT - Development process/typical components/walkthrough of each deliverable/formats etc.
2) Self-paced reading - Offline - ( 2 days) Participants had to review cuidelines to create an ILT, sample ILTs, library of instructional strategies used for ILTs, specific formats/templates.
3) Applying the learning - Offline - (5 days) Participants were given sample content and asked to develop an ILT (all components - instructor guide/student guide/presentation deck). I offered some query handling and support here.
4) Group presentation/Review Workshop (1 day) - Face-to-face - All participants presented all the components that they had created for the sample content and the group reviewed and critiqued the same. I offered my expertise and guidance and led the discussion and the reflection activities. At the end of the day-long workshop - we generated guidelines/best practices for developing effective ILTs. The guidelines and best practices were used to create project-specific design and storyboarding checklists.
Not only was this the most practical approach to training, the participants also enjoyed the entire 'learning-by-doing' experience. I am glad that I didn't overload my audience with 'gyan' about what is effective classroom training. They went through one and enjoyed it and I feel quite confident about the group creating similar learning experiences for their audience!
At the time when I was designing this plan, my customers for this training were a bit apprehensive. They were not sure if I could not ‘tell’ and still make people ‘learn’. The trainees also expected a series of classroom training sessions where I would describe and explain things about 'effective ILTs'. But I stopped myself from following the rut. I stopped myself at all places where I was tempted to say the obvious, tempted to share my expertise and give a lot of information, or generally just talk about good things. Instead, by allowing my participants to learn by doing – by actually creating an ILT, I gave them opportunities to make mistakes and yet be open to learn from them in a non threatening environment. Instead of a trainer, I took the role of a facilitator and helped them learn from themselves…
I keep implementing a similar approach in many other training sessions. Learning by doing works every time!
December’s Big Question from the Learning Circuits Blog is “What I have learned About Learning in 2008?” 
