Marking the end of Amplify- a social media child

I received an email today…

Dear XYZ,

After much consideration, we’ve decided that it is time to shutdown Amplify. On behalf of the team, I want to thank you for being part of our journey. It is important to us that we shut down the service in the most responsible and considerate manner possible. Towards that end there are two things that you should consider:

• First, we’ve arranged with Clipboard (a new service under entirely different ownership and management) to give you an account on their service, which is currently accessible by invitation-only. You can accept this invitation and register your account now.
• Second, from the registration page, Clipboard will allow you to easily request that your old clips be preserved in Clipboard. If you don’t want them converted, then do nothing. We can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to convert all of your older clips, but if the demand is sufficient, we will do our best.

They say, “We’ve had a wonderful run and we are grateful to everyone for taking the journey with us…….Clipboard will hold Amplify’s databases in trust and if there is sufficient interest they will provide a migration tool to import Amplify clips into Clipboard.”

Wonderful run? And no thought of the audience? Is this the birth of the death of social media?

Seriously, I do not want to join another Social Platform that predates to grow. Goodluck Clipboard!!!

Concept Mapping in Healthcare elearning

Concept mapping can be perceived of  representing visual knowledge in the form of a hierarchical graphic network composed of nodes and links. In the complex healthcare environment, it is very important for educators to cultivate critical thinking and judgement abilities in healthcare students. Concept mapping is an instructional strategy that requires learners to identify, graphically display, and link key concepts by organizing and analyzing information.

Concept maps can be successfully used to teach conceptual thinking, thus increasing students’ competence in critical thinking. Plotnick defines a concept map as a “graphical representation where nodes (points or vertices) represent concepts, and links (arcs or lines) represent the relationship between concepts”.

Edmondson & Smith describe a concept map as “a tool for representing the interrelations between concepts in an integrated, hierarchical manner”. The map provides a way to connect concepts, allowing the student to visualize during the learning process.  Many times, new meanings are constructed about events or objects based on the students’ prior knowledge.

Infusing critical thinking skills into didactic activities requires the construction and reconstruction of meanings by students through actively seeking to integrate new knowledge with knowledge already existing in their cognitive structure. Cognitive structure is a term used by Ausubel (in Mellish, Brink & Paton 1998:28) to describe a person’s existing knowledge of a particular subject and how well organised and clear that knowledge is. Concept-mapping has been identified as a stimulating learning method to facilitate critical thinking by encouraging students to connect new knowledge to their prior learning, and to give students an opportunity to gain further, wide and varied knowledge of a number of concepts in a short period (Akinsanya & Williams 2004:41).

Courtesy: Dr. jack Yensen

A study was conducted to examine the effects of concept mapping and synthesizers as instructional strategies for nursing students encoding and recalling pharmacology concepts in an undergraduate pharmacology course.  Although results cannot be generalized, this study showed that using concept maps and synthesizers in the teaching environment is effective in increasing the students’ learning experience.

If students can link new information to their existing conceptual framework, they can construct new, meaningful interconnections so that their existing conceptions are transformed, enriched or revised and conceptual change occurs.

Questioning Strategies in Healthcare Learning

Questioning strategies in Healthcare Training develop critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving in students. Bloom’s taxonomy of the six levels of cognitive learning can be used to provide a framework for creating questions. Bloom’s taxonomy starts from the simplest level of learning to the most complex level.  Simplest levels denote Knowledge and Complex levels denote Evaluation.

Sample Question for Knowledge Test:

Knowledge Test

Asking a learner to define Intravenous Urogram, (IVU) would test his/her knowledge levels.

Sample Question for Evaluation:

Complex Evaluation

A question is posed to the learner to  assess a request to perform an IVU on a patient allergic to iodine. Experiential activities/ simulations can be built to guide the learner in decision making. In this case, the learner gets to immerse in a simulated scenario, evaluate patient vitals, reports and assess the conditions under which an Iodine-allergic patient can be subjected to Intravenous Urogram.

Studies:

A baccalaureate nursing program study determined what proportion of terminal objectives for clinical nursing courses are high level objectives (analysis, synthesis, evaluation), and are the kinds of questions asked by teachers and students during clinical conferences of a high level also.  Despite the fact that stated objectives specified higher cognitive-level thinking, lower-level questions comprised 98.94% of the total number of questions asked by teachers and students in the clinical conferences surveyed.

Another study was performed within an Australian nursing program to examine clinical teachers’ use of questioning strategies.   The teachers’ years of classroom and clinical teaching experience, years of clinical experience, and academic qualifications were studied to see if an association between various qualifications and levels of questions existed.  Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain was used as a framework for the study.  The findings revealed clinical teachers asked more low-level questions (91.2%) than high-level questions (4.4%).

Lower level questioning do not promote critical thinking as they only trigger recall of information in the learner’s mind.  A simple recall of information does not enhance students’ understanding of the information in a meaningful way. Higher level questioning facilitates the development of critical thinking because it is aimed at higher cognitive levels, which involves application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.   Educators should take advantage of stimulating questions more often to help create meaningful active learning instead of just prompting the simple recall of knowledge from students.

Scenario Based Instructional Design- A Rational

Scenario- based learning stages a context, within which learners live and work in their everyday life. It’s based on the concept of situated cognition, which is the idea that knowledge can not be developed and fully understood independent of its context(Randall 2002). Scenario-based learning puts the student in a situation or context and exposes them to issues, challenges and dilemmas and asks them to apply knowledge and practice skills relevant to the situation (www.ucl.ac.uk).

Scenario- based learning has particular advantages for practice- based discipline areas where the experience of practitioners is especially relevant to what constitutes knowledge and understanding in the field. Using scenario-based learning in the field of Healthcare has brought forward many such advantages to learners that count on practical experience in everyday activities.

Let us consider a case where Indira Gandhi National Open University conducted such a scenario-based learning project. 10 academic programs were chosen to be included into this project.

The following frame work was given to develop the scenarios:
1. Define critical competencies for graduates of the program
2. Identify learning outcomes for students in the program
3. Identify learning context and develop suitable learning scenarios that reflect the events in life and work of persons who have acquired these competencies
4. Define learning activities assessable and non assessable tasks.
5. Identify all learning resources and instructional opportunities
6. Identify and define cooperative and collaborative learning opportunities using technologies.
7. Identification and definition of opportunities for feedback and remediation.

Let us study a sample scenario as an example:

Discipline: Civil Engineering

Topic: Structural Analysis

Learning Objectives:

1) To distinguish between static and dynamic loads
2) To conceptualize the influence lines
3) To differentiate between Influence Line Diagram (ILD) and Bending Moment Diagram (BMD)

Scenario:

It was a shining morning of October. All students of your class are in cheerful mood traveling to Roorkee in Jan- Shatabdi Express for educational trip with Prof. Dutta.
Suddenly, you feel a shock as train stops abruptly. While waiting for the train to re- start, it is leant that due to some accident on the bridge ahead, the train will not move at least for next 5 hrs.
Out of curiosity you all move to the accident site with Prof Datta. You observe that there is a lot of distortion of the track and even the rails have gone out of place. While discussing the reasons of track failure, Amit points out the presence of visible cracks in the side beam
of the bridge. Suresh asks Prof. Datta whether the bridge failure is due to excess loading.

In turn, Prof. Datta asks the students, whether they remember different types of loading on the structures. You all start naming the different types of loading, you have seen earlier.

Learning Activity 1:

a) List out the different types of loading on structures.
b) Categorize the above list into static and dynamic loads.

After going through the list, Prof. Dutta asks you that why the live loads are not considered as dynamic load when the movement of goods and human beings are considered in the live load.

Learning Activity 2:

Identify the characteristics of static loads and dynamic loads.

Prof. Datta asks the learners to tie a rope across two poles tightly. He then asks Suresh to hang four bricks at four different places and observe the deflected shape of the rope.

Simulation 1: Prof Datta asks you to remove the three bricks from the rope starting from the right pole and observe the deflection of rope at mid point.

Simulation 2: The he asks to repeat the same exercise by moving the brick at points B, C , D and E subsequently and observe the deflection at mid point each time.

Conclusion: The whole scenario-based learning program was developed to be very challenging and was able to completely immerse the learners into the learning cycle.

 

Training without Marketing? You’re nowhere near!

Marketing? No !! 

Training? Yes !!!

How are you Training without Marketing?

Marketing is the display of value to ‘intrigue’ a prospect. Training is intriguing the audience to embed knowledge and trigger response. In both the cases, an event is designed to trigger a mental process.

Training has to take a lot from Marketing. Potentially, Training and Marketing together promise a huge return on performance outcomes. In training, the maximum talk is done by the content. Technology brings action into the talk through engagements. Training experts need to learn and leverage from Marketing. History of Marketing, especially Content Marketing has a lot to give us.

Content Marketing-preage

Content Marketing has been the binder for the marketer since ages. Content Marketing began its journey ages before on cave walls. As the focus started building on tactical tools and technologies, birth of idea-based marketing took place.

The Sun

Beginning the August 25, 1835, The Sun,  a New York newspaper, considered the most politically conservative, published a series of articles describing a scientific discovery of life on the moon. Top of that it the discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel, perhaps the best-known astronomer of his time.

Michelin Guide

In 1900, André Michelin published the first edition of the guide to help drivers maintain their cars, find decent lodging, and eat well while touring France. It included addresses of filling stations, mechanics, and tire dealers, along with local prices for fuel, tires, and auto repairs. Until 1920, when Michelin brothers found a pile of them under a garage workbench, they rolled a new idea of marketing. They started charging for the guides to maintain credibility. In 1926, they also started listing restaurants with star ratings.

G.I.Joe

The conventional marketing wisdom of the early 1960s was that boys would not play with dolls. Toy company Hasbro, went for the term “Action figure” eliminating the term “doll” to market the famous G.I.Joe.  In 1982, Hasbro relaunched G.I.Joe with a storyline to include a terrorist group ‘Cobra Command’, pioneering several tactics in toy marketing, combining traditional advertising with an animated television mini-series and an ongoing comic book.

GNN

The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog, by Ed Krol, was published in September 1992 by O’Reilly. The Global Network Navigator (GNN) was the first commercial web publication and the first web site to offer clickable advertisements, now commonly referred to as “banner ads.” Its still hosted at http://oreilly.com/gnn/.

 

 

Whitepaper, formerly a  government informal name for a parliamentary paper, was accepted widely in early 90’s for commercial and business information circulation. In 1991 Adobe Systems co-founder John Warnock outlined a system called “Camelot” that evolved into the Portable Document Format (PDF), which later became free.

Placeware

In 1996, PlaceWare—a spin-off from Xerox’s PARC Laboratory—started offering Web-conferencing services. In 2003, it was acquired by Microsoft and the today we see the services as Microsoft Live Meeting.

Hotmail

Launched in July 1996 as “HoTMaiL“, it became the first web-based email service. Later, Yahoo and Google launched free email platforms. By early 2000, email was one of the main forms of marketing outreach for corporations worldwide.

Purple Cow

In 1995, Seth Godin launched Yoyodyne which used contests, online games, and scavenger hunts to market companies to participating users. In August, 1996, venture-capital firm Flatiron Partners invested $4 million in Yoyodyne in return for a 20% stake. The site gained significant traction, with over one million viewers visiting the site, and companies like America Online, American Express, H&R Block, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Sony Music, Sprint, and Volvo using its services.

At Yoyodyne, Godin developed the principle of permission marketing and authored Permission Marketing: Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers. I

In July of 2000, author and blogger Seth Godin created the e-book Unleashing the Ideavirus and made it available for free.
Nexters no longer require describing.

2001:

iPod

 

 

 

 

 

Today and Tommorrow:

Social Today

 

 

 

So eLearning Makers, what have you learnt!!!

 

Google+: Sharing online more like sharing in real life

Body Physics is where disparate systems share with each other under one single platform.

Collaboration Life

Perhaps Google took  a lesson to converge all sharing systems into one giant platform. Google is creating an unified army for battle. Google’s services are soon going to inter-collaborate into one giant social platform, and in the process steal some teeth from Facebook.

“We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. And so begins the Google+ project”, says  Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President, Engineering at Google.

 

 

+Circles: share what matters, with the people who matter most

 

Circle around life

What’s in it: You share different things with different people. So sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself – just like real life.

Google Speaks:  “What do people actually do?” And we didn’t have to search far for the answer. People in fact share selectively all the time—with their circles.
From close family to foodies, we found that people already use real-life circles to express themselves, and to share with precisely the right folks. So we did the only thing that made sense: we brought Circles to software. Just make a circle, add your people, and share what’s new—just like any other day.

+Sparks: strike up a conversation, about pretty much anything

 

Sparking Life

What’s in it: Tell Sparks what you’re into and it will send you stuff it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something cool to watch, read, or share.

Google Speaks: The web, of course, is filled with great content—from timely articles to vibrant photos to funny videos. And great content can lead to great conversations. We noticed, however, that it’s still too hard to find and share the things we care about—not without lots of work, and lots of noise. So, we built an online sharing engine called Sparks.

 

 

+Hangouts: stop by and say hello, face-to-face-to-face

 

Hangout with life

What’s in it: With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let specific buddies (or entire circles) know you’re hanging out and then see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until teleportation arrives, it’s the next best thing.

Google Speaks: Just think, when you walk into the pub or step onto your front porch, you’re in fact signaling to everyone around, “Hey, I’ve got some time, so feel free to stop by.” Further, it’s this unspoken understanding that puts people at ease, and encourages conversation. But today’s online communication tools (like instant messaging and video-calling) don’t understand this subtlety. With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts.

+Mobile: share what’s around, right now, without any hassle

 

Mobility in life

What’s in it: Taking photos is fun. Sharing photos is fun. Getting photos off your phone is pretty much the opposite of fun. With Instant Upload, your photos and videos upload themselves automatically, to a private album on Google+.  All you have to do is decide who to share them with.

Google Speaks: Getting photos off your phone is a huge pain, so most of us don’t even bother. Of course pictures are meant to be shared, not stranded, so we created Instant Upload to help you never leave a photo behind. While you’re snapping pictures, and with your permission, Google+ adds your photos to a private album in the cloud. This way they’re always available across your devices—ready to share as you see fit.

+Mobile-
+Huddle: Huddling your groups in

 

Huddle in Life

What’s in it: Texting is great, but not when you’re trying to get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle turns all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page all at once. Your thumbs will thank you.

Google Speaks: Phone calls and text messages can work in a pinch, but they’re not quite right for getting the gang together. So Google+ includes Huddle, a group messaging experience that lets everyone inside the circle know what’s going on, right this second.

Google Hopes you join in, but its entirely +You.

eLearning to Sustain Learning Rates

One of the basic objective for any  training program is to ‘maintain the capability to learn and grow’. Especially, in a set up where continous and multiple training programs are being developed and delivered, it becomes essential for the trainers to engage and stimulate the learner brain in a fundamental way, so that it keeps engaged, alert and adventure-seeking.

While designing an elearning program, or any training program, STANDARDIZATION is the last thing I would like to do. Standardization kills the excitement.

The brain is a high-speed assumptive device that loves to run ahead of sensory perception. Imagine watching a movie. As an exciting scene is percieved by our brains, our brain starts creating assumptions. It starts creating storyboards of future scenes. A stimulated brain learner more. The learning rate here is high. 

Only when it watches a dull and uninteresting scene, it lays dull and that is symbolic of low learning rates.

The brain is interested in reconstructing environments and is always looking for the surprising, unusual or different, says Michael M. Merzenich, chief scientific officer of Posit Science.

Life today is already so equipped- with tools, technologies and information availability. It has become more or less, so very predictable. We plan, we do, we get. There is a certain lack of unusualness, surprising and thrilling.

Learning and Training cannot be built or delivered with the standardized usual feel. “The more you engage your brain in ways that stimulate it, the more you’re doing to maintain your capacity to learn and to improve. It’s actually right at the heart of maintaining yourself in a fundamental sense”, Merzenich says.

People tend to take more breaks when they perform same, boring tasks- essentially predictable tasks. It is the nature of the task that prompts the engagement of the worker.

5 things that help eLearning maintain efficient learning rates

1. No to Standardization, Go to newness
2. Every minute be the First minute of your training program
3. Add distinctiveness to every chapter/ program
4. Challenge the learner brain with surpise-elements
5. Add variations in problems you let the brain face

Outstanding adoption of digital media for Healthcare Education-by Amgen

In this post, I express my heartiest wishes to Amgen, Inc over their outstanding efforts and contributions towards healthcare and medical learning and education. My intension is to present Amgen as a case study to all members of the industry and postulate some finer learning and training aspects and strategies that such initiatives have been able to deliver.

Project 1: http://www.amgenoncology.com

The site is developed with best-in-class digital media tools and technologies. Technically, the portal has been designed using high-fidelity Flash technology. The Graphic User Interface has been designed in a dashboard-like style and presents a non-linear learning approach. The portal aims at presenting a comprehensive wealth of knowledge about Oncological Pathways encompassing;

• Bone Metabolism and Metastases: focus and direction on Rank Ligand
• Angiogenesis
• Growth Regulations: Mechanism of Action for diseases like IGF and HGFSF
• Apoptosis: MOA and extrinsic and intrinsic Pathways
• Hematopoieses: Endogenous Pathways
• Personalized Medicine

Major Value-adds:

Videos Based Learning Objects: 3D and 2D videos of animated mechanism of actions present step-by-step illustrated instruction of complex biological processes such as role and action of Angiopoeitins in maturation of blood and lymph vessels and hence their critical role in Tumor Angiogenesis.

Branched Information Presentation: Additional information such as Extrinsic and Intrinsic Pathways of Apoptosis is presented in the form of branched illustrations to prevent information clustering and encourage systematic knowledge flow.

The portal in a excellent way integrates Amgen Products, referred as ‘Amgen Treatment Toolbox’ with the disease-state information. Empowerment knowledge is presented in the form of Support and Advocacy Information through the portal.

Project 2: http://angiogenesis.amgen.com/

This portal takes my attention away all together. It is designed to present 2 High-definition versions of the portal as its index. It allows the visitor to choose either a HD version of the portal to load OR a 3D HD version of the portal to select.

To view the 3D version of the portal, one may need to procure special blue/amber color code glasses.

The portal is designed with high-definition Flash technologies and presents the content in a 3-Dimension format.

Major Value-adds:

Navigation: Navigation is designed to be flip-style and includes touch-sensitive horizontal sliders.

Content Types: Majority of the content is 3D. Biological concepts have been designed to be interactive and touch-sensitive.

Branched Content: Illustrated biological objects including animated MOAs, videos, movies deep dwell into the subject areas. Hotspots allow clickable branching navigation into curriculum sub-branches for deeper insights. A well designed navigation and site mapping allows flawless navigation into modules, topics and lessons.

Instructionally, a better treatment and presentation of the content with context to the subject presentation would be the rarest to find.

The Rise of Avatars in Healthcare Learning

Roll back to 1985, when Chip Morningstar and Joseph Romero in designing LucasFilm’s multi-palyer online game Habitat.  This is when the word ‘Avatar’ was coined in its then context. Since then Avatars, Actors and Characters have some terms that describe the virtual representation of the player or user in varied contexts.

In the recent years, a stigma of focused effort has been constituted to establish a social context between the learner and the learning platform (be it any form of learning content).

In simple and practical terms, a Character or Avatar creates a social representation of a real person into a designated role within the learning program. Relating this to the current Healthcare Learning and Educational landscape, the involved persons are majorly Physicians, Students, Clinicians, Academicians and other allied healthcare professionals. Each individual applies to its specific competency role in the industry.

As we speak about the industry specific title, each title is entitled to a role which performs its designated role in a Practice-Based environment. A Practice-Based environment demands only and only Practice in Practical.

The challenge here is how does e-Learning transform learning to be virtual yet practical. How can e-Learning in it’s inorganic matter deliver results similar to that of organic and practical methods.

Avatars play the bridging role here. An Avatar can play various social roles.

Expert/ Instructor/ Coach: Here the character is modeled after an expert or knowledgeable human – most commonly a senior surgeon, professor, training manager/head or expert in the field such as a regulation,etc. Effective use of this role with the help of an Avatar ensures social engagement between the character (Avatar) and the student through a conversational tone, interaction, and feedback.

Learner/ User: An Avatar of learning establishes the emotional presence of the learner into the learning scenario. It simulates the learner’s belongingness within the learning context and situation. An Avatar created with situational and curriculum based contextual engagement allows the emotive mind of the learner to dwell into imaginative and experiential learning.

C0-learners or Peers: Avatars of co-learners or learning buddies create a sense of being accompanied. It helps eliminate the loneness factor of the learner and builds a scope of togetherness into the learning environment.

In the study, We Learn Better Together: Enhancing e-Learning with Emotional Characters (2005) by Heidi Maldonado et al., it is discovered that the presence of a Co-learner resulted in learners performing better. Students with a Co-learner scored significantly higher than students without a Co-learner.

Play doctor using Google Body- brought to you by Google Labs

Google has brought many a resourceful applications through Google Labs.

Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a company acquired by Google in 2004. The product was re-released as Google Earth in 2005.

Google launched the Google Maps API in June 2005 to allow developers to integrate Google Maps into their websites.

The list goes long with Google books, calendar, news, search, videos, wave and so on.

Last year Google launched its new high-tech 3D product- Google Body. Google Body is a detailed 3D model of the human body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, and navigate to parts that interest you. Click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more.

One can also share the exact scene being viewed by copying and pasting the corresponding URL.

Google Body, which is already available in web form, can now run on Android tablets that use the 3.0 Honeycomb version of Google’s mobile operating system. Using 3D graphics capabilities of the latest tablets such as Motorola’s Xoom, the hardware is now good enough to properly display a 3D-heavy app such as Google Body, which lets you look at your organs, muscles and bones.

It looks like a pretty cool way to explore the human body – just like earth or maps, you can strip away layers (i.e. skin, bones, etc.), rotate it in 3D, and search for body parts before having them highlighted in the app. Teachers are gonna have a gala time giving anatomy classes to students.