No board exams from 2011 in India?

This bold move by the HRD minister of India to bring in radical change in the Indian education system, shift to a grading system, and eliminate ranking and the mark sheet, triggered a huge furore! In a country where citizens have grown up to 'always' be measured by marks, compared to others who always score well and yet are all rounders, been pushed by our parents to 'study' so much, that they reach a point where they didn't want to hear the word anymore. Somehow even today in India, young people are pushed into engineering and medicine, as they are the most highly respected streams. Such stereotypes make parents put enormous pressure on kids and the competition just gets stronger. Kids cram and prepare for competitive exams and sometime commit suicide when they fail, as they feel they've let down their parents. I'm sure so many Indians of this and the previous generation can relate to this experience unless they 'were' those ideal kids all parents liked to have; good at studies (the greatest stereotype)! Yesterday the HRD minister Mr. Kapil Sibal was called on to one of our news channels (NDTV) to recite a poem he wrote on his and the government's vision in this bold decision.

So many of us in this field of learning and education talk about various ways of engaging the learner, creating a great learning experience rather than dumping information on the learner. Some have even blogged about Killing the curriculum and have made some really bold statements. Harold Jarche makes some great points in his post First, we kill the curriculum and some great discussion came up in the comments on the post. Gilbert actually tried a whole new way of self-learning for several years! I thought that was interesting. I like some points Harold makes:

As books are to subjects and disciplines, the Web is to processes. David Weinberger says that Everything is Miscellaneous, and in our interconnected world it sure is. That means that ALL subjects in school or university are miscellaneous and it doesn’t really matter what you study. It matters how you study and what you can do with your knowledge.

How apt! If you learn and only learn and don't figure out how you can make a significant difference with all you've learned, it does seem futile. Often, Indians are also known for their vast general knowledge. Their ability to dream big and struggle to reach greater heights at all times, is probably ingrained in this 'traditional' system of education and upbringing. This definitely is a good thing, but maybe not all in the population of 1.2 billion can be expected to be run of the mill. In a country where basic education is a struggle to deliver to so many, bringing in such a radical change all of sudden can lead to a lot of chaos, unless it is gradually brought about and with a proper implementation plan that takes into account the deficit in the existing system to take on such a change smoothly. Any change is good, only when it is done keeping in mind everything that is needed to to be done, to reach the vision in mind.

Some interesting statistics on the subject of the use of social media in schools in the U.S. are detailed in this post by Geetha Krishnan. Coming back to the scene in India, here are a few thoughts on what I think maybe issues in the implementation of the new system of grading students:

• The majority (including rural India) existing teachers are certainly not qualified to move into this new system. Existing teaching styles and practices would make the implementation come with a lot of resistance to change. News reports already show so much concern and speculation.
• The existing infrastructure of the majority of schools do not support advanced and alternate means of learning like access to the internet and other learning resources.
  
• 'Making learning fun' calls for not only changing the final event of a board exam, but improving the overall learning experience in schools. In India more often than never, teachers cling to older methods of teaching and it will be very hard to get them out of this. It would stir several out of their comfort zone and this will not help bring value.
  
• Given everything, bringing about a mindset change seems like a major issue to me. The size of the population and our binding to culture, tradition and most importantly 'stereotypes' could make this an implausible proposition at least in the near future.
  
• Just like accepting and imbibing social media in general has come through so much resistance globally, changing the system of education and a new way to look at and design curriculum seems a really long way to go.
  

Given everything, I am positive that change will come, but in its own time, as it is the way of nature as such. But to have the conviction to bring in this change is a quality that is needed going forward. I wish our government good luck in this noble endeavor and hope to see positive outcomes.

Another good point Harold makes in his post:

All fields of knowledge are expanding and artificial boundaries between disciplines are disintegrating. Our education system needs to drop the whole notion of subjects and content mastery and move to process-oriented learning. The subject matter should be something of interest to the learner or something a teacher, with passion, is motivated to teach. The subject does not matter, it’s just grist for the cognitive mill.

I believe this is true and it is only a matter of time before subject-purists start seeing the diminishing lines and start looking at the bigger 'subject' called knowledge. As we evolve as human beings we will slowly start seeing life and learning from the bigger picture and that's what will make the real difference!

Learning Strategies You Can Use

One of my favorite topics of all times since I got into the profession. I'd love to share all I have on my mind relating to this topic and from all perspectives I've seen it apply. I remember once when I was working on a course, a certain part of it was more like paper work and some planning activity to be done before beginning the project and come up with a list of resources needed. The product enabled the user to use these resources and flesh out a complete process that interacted with real-time systems to deliver a service, say a shipping or billing service. But the planning activity was a critical and essential step.

The process of planning and building up the working model of the service using the product was what I had to teach the learner. After analysis, my solution was to transform this planning activity into a scenario and have the learner work through it in three parts with some questions on decisions, drag and drop and multiple select. It finally turned out to be quite interesting when the graphic designers took a jab at the layout and came up with some cool interactivities to depict what I had in mind.

So what are Learning Strategies?
Learning strategies, as the name suggests are direct or indirect strategies employed by instructional designers to help learners easily understand learning content. By using a strategy, the instructional designer eliminates the need for a learner to learn just by memorizing information provided in a course. The strategy justifies the benefit of the learning content and indicates how the learner can use and benefit from it.

At a high level learning/instructional strategies can be at a macro-level or micro-level. So what does macro and micro-level strategy mean?

A Macro-level strategy is designed at a course or curriculum level. It would be more in the lines of providing a learning solution that works for a certain audience when we consider the tasks they need to learn. The macro-level strategy governs the overall direction of the learning solution. I've written about one such strategy in a previous post on Pure Courseware vs Reference Hybrids. You should use this as an example only, and remember that you can come up with several such strategies based on certain criteria that you gather in your research and analysis phase.

Micro-level strategies are more low-level strategies that you use to teach the different information types (fact, concept, process, procedure and principle). Lets look at few examples here.

Strategy 1: The derivative approach
Usually good for teaching facts. Rather than just stating facts, its nice to start with an example of a task a learner needs to do and then conclude to the fact. In this way, you would have stated the benefit of having a certain feature in a product, and how it will be useful to the learner. You could teach concepts similarly. For example, the fact is that youtube is an excellent tool for sharing videos online. Assuming tools like youtube have just arrived, you could present this as: you have bought a really cool camcorder, went on a long ride with friends and recorded some nice videos. You now want to share these videos with other friends and family. To conclude, you introduce youtube as the tool that can make this experience possible.

Strategy 2: The questioning approach
Good to teach concepts and principles. You can start the section by introducing questions into the learners mind. This triggers the learner's thought process and makes the learner make the right connections and build up a concept. For example, the learner is learning Newton's 3rd Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. How about asking the learner, when you throw a ball it bounces back with nearly the same force. Why does this happen? Once you raise the question the next thing you do is briefly explain why that happens, or drop a few hints and ask a few more questions about a similar scenario, before bringing out the principle behind why this is happening.

Strategy 3: Learning from mistakes/experiential learning
This strategy can be used to teach multiple types of information. Allow the learner to run through a set of quizzes or play a game with certain rules. Here even a decision tree is an appropriate strategy. All through the exercise, make sure you give the learner sufficient facts to make decisions, along with hints and guidance at the right places. At the end, have them review their actions and analyze what they could have done differently in the quiz or the game. Make them realize what differences their choices made to the situation. By the end of it the learner will figure out the facts, build connections and understand the underlying concept or principle being taught.

Strategy 4: Demos and recordings
Works best for procedural topics. Create short recordings of procedures that the learner should know, containing audio and instructions in the form of callouts, with the procedure that needs to be learned. This should be preceded by some introduction to concepts and facts in previous screens. For example, create a new PowerPoint file and insert a new slide.

Strategy 5: Practices and hands on
Again useful for teaching procedures, but especially those which are really big and complex. This should usually be preceded by a demo, so the learner has already seen the procedure taking place. This strategy requires very detailed instructions to be given to the learner starting from where to begin a task and where to end it. The instructions should be simple and step by step, give the location of the area of expected action and have really short sentences, so that a learner can perform the procedure independently.

Strategy 6: The scenario approach
The scenario approach works very well with many complex products to teach the learner a task they need to perform on their job. The scenario works well with generating relevance as the learner can immediately relate to something that they do on a day to day basis. Based on time constraints and business requirements, one could choose one of the following ways to deal with a complex concept or procedure to be taught:

• Use a scenario and create a series of quizzes with simple drag and drop, click the relevant area and multiple-choice interactivities, all focused at making the learner use his knowledge and take decisions. This causes the learner to think through a situation and make connections. This strategy is simpler and requires less time and expertise on tools.
  
• Use a scenario and come up with a game to help the learner achieve the objectives. This approach probably takes more time and requires some technical programming skills. This is also an area I haven't explored myself.
  

Overall, one may argue that there are many ways to combine and use each strategy to teach different kinds of information. My answer to that is yes you are right! You could build a complete game and employ a different strategy to teach different skills, all in one big scenario. I would also like to emphasize that strategies should not be used for the sake of having one. It is extremely essential for an instructional designer to measure what is absolutely essential and what is excess flab. A strategy used to create a better learning experience and aid the learning process is valuable. This is where one needs to be practical and remain focused on the learning goals. Ask yourself these questions:

• Will the strategy actually make it easier for the learner to grasp the concept?
• Given the audience level, the learner is an advanced learner. So would it be better to list the basic concepts and focus on using strategies for the really complex ones?
• Is this strategy becoming too redundant in the course? Then I should probably change strategies and try something new.
  
• Is the example I used a strong enough case or should I change it?
• Does this information need a complete scenario or a small example?
• Is the procedure simple enough that one can just learn it by seeing a demo, or, is it so complex that it is better to design some hands-on after the demo?
  

elearninglearning Updates

The elearninglearning site managed by Tony Karrer has come a long way in the last one year. It plays a significant role in bringing together some of the best elearning blogs on the Internet, thanks to Tony's efforts. My blog too came a long way after getting listed, as it was one of the most exciting and encouraging achievements for me. I'm really late to post this announcement, but the site now has a new look and some new options as well:

• A new feed that is just the "Best of" which are basically the hot lists and other similar supporting items.
• You can of course also subscribe to a "Full feed" of the site.
  
• There is also an email subscription option at the top right of the page.
  
• A blogpost describes how people can participate in the site.

Some interesting topics from Tony are:

• Alltop vs Browse My Stuff
• Social Filtering
• Topic Hubs
• Using Social Signals to Find Top eLearning Resources
  

I wish Tony good luck and I hope a lot more enthusiastic bloggers get listed on elearninglearning.

Business-driven Learning and LH Theory (Love-Hate Theory)

IDCI Session Highlights
Today's IDCI session by Abhinava (Twitter ID: @Abhinava) was extremely thought provoking for me. The topic of discussion, LH Theory (Love-Hate Theory) triggered on a lot of thought on how to be sensitive to the learner and use 'love' to design courses. To know more about the session go to twitter and search with the hash tag #IDCI. The session highlighted the need to be sensitive to the learner needs more holistically. At the same time, the session compared two modes of creating learning; Love and Hate. The session also emphasized on when to use each mode of learning.

Here's the presentation that Abhinava put on Slideshare:

The LH Theory

View more presentations from abhinava.sn.

So when do you use the LH Theory?
You use Love when:

• You want to create learning for a long term.
• You want to create a long term relationship/bond.
• When you have time to create good learning.
• When there is a lot to gain.
  

You use Hate when:

• You want to create learning for the short term and don't really care much about the outcome.
  
• When you don't need to create any long term relationship/bond.
• When you don't have time.

Why Business-driven Learning?
So, you use Hate theory when you only mean business and don't plan to invest a lot of time. You want a quick-fix solution that just serves the purpose. I found this discussion extremely relevant in today's times, as most often we seem to get pushed towards the Hate theory for purely business reasons. It is also important to be sure that you don't use Hate out of ignorance.

Sometimes, when you're in a situation where the business demand is high, using Hate does seem like the most practical thing to do. The need analysis moves from addressing the learner need towards addressing the business need! One could easily argue here that isn't the learner need the business need as well? My answer is yes at a high-level, but probably not exactly how we define it when we get to the specifics. I call this kind of learning 'Business-driven' or 'Business-centric'. The following are some justifications for creating 'business-driven' learning:

• You really need a quick solution to address the business need and get training out there to learners. Meaning your TTM (Time-to-market) is the #1 priority.
  
• Shelf life of the learning material is short (6 months to a year) and content changes/updates very often.
  
• Your learning supports the business and is not the primary revenue generator.
• Topic for learning is a mature one (like a product for niche areas) and people in the domain already know a lot of the basic concepts. Some are very advanced users. So, all you need to do is to tell them the new features and concepts and they will soon be using the knowledge hands-on.
  

The ideal ID world?
Given a chance, IDs would love to make the most effective and engaging courses. Some attributes that contribute to making such courses are:

• Perform a thorough learner analysis.
  
• Do a thorough needs assessment for your learners meaning drill down to the exact learning outcome that is expected.
  
• Empathize with the learner and create simple, usable and easily navigable courses.
• Don't make the course a content dump. Take time to make the course effective and engaging.
  
• Use well-researched real-time scenarios to add relevance to your learning material.
  
• Personalize feedback and strategies if the learner has high EQ (Emotional Intelligence)
• Design simple but effective practices.
  
• Use practices when absolutely necessary and not for very simple procedures.
• Validate and choose the appropriate delivery medium based on content complexity. Very advanced courses with lots of hands-on are better delivered in classroom training. Do not try to achieve this goal using online learning.
  

Business-driven learning; the reality and the solution
When you create business-driven learning, you may tend to skim/rush through many of the above steps. But business-driven learning becomes a reality as end of day 'business' is what everything boils down to. This of course does not undermine the fact that you do need to deliver the best possible solution in this situation. Here are some things one can do:

• Be extremely clear about the business objective.
• Do a periodic detailed learning profiling and assessment of the prerequisite knowledge and skills of your learner. Knowing the prerequisites will enable you to reduce the flab on your course and focus on a smaller amount of content. Eventually, this reduces your TTM.
• Research on and recommend a list of rapid elearning tools that work for the business solution.
  
• Leverage on existing material and spend time refining and updating it to the most current information.
• Focus on reducing knowledge gaps rather than covering the whole bulk of content.
• Use social learning as much as possible and focus on creating short and effective micro-learning strategies.
  

Why should you share knowledge? A big question?

Further to my post on Should you share information?, I'd like to express my thoughts once more, based on a recent discussion with some colleagues . At the recent training I attended, I met a whole bunch of pre-sales and consulting people who were also there to learn more about the product. It was amazing that in a class of 20, we had people from at least 10 different countries! What was more important was that all of them had the task to sell the same products and were not really connected until this training. Thus the training was also very critical for them to network. Being the social media evangelist, I obviously suggested that people use our social tools and share their knowledge online. At a later point when we were discussing offline and I was suggesting to our trainer that he should share his experience online, the obvious debate came up. One of the colleagues started telling him that if he did so, someone else would learn his job and he could be replaced. My opinion of course is:

• When you share your knowledge, you actually grow to the next level. Being a trainer he was obviously already sharing knowledge but in a limited forum.
  
• Your clarity on the subject is further enhanced and you end up researching it further.
  
• You have people in the community write back and add value to the content.
• It is also practically impossible to share all the tacit knowledge you gained over several years. If you even attempted, you would perpetually always be on a blog or wiki and not have time for your actual job. That knowledge always stays with you and is your 'value' to the organization over what you share with other people.
• Effectively, the percentage of people who read your information and get positively impacted and make the most of it, is a really small number when compared to the whole lot who have read it. Very few might have got the exact value you are trying to share.
• Also it is important to remember that the knowledge you gain when part of an organization is also the organization's asset and not only yours.
  

I also suggest seeing the video who owns information.




From here I leave the rest open to debate.... Really, what do the rest of you think?

What makes effective ILT?

I am attending a deep dive training for the product I work on, and this is probably one of the first detailed internal trainings that I'm attending. I have a lot of observations and learning from the way the training has been designed. In effect, attending the training gave me a much deeper perspective into what goes on in the learners mind during a class. I recommend that all IDs attend trainings sometime, just to get a better insight into the learner's mind.

When creating training for complex and advanced products, learners benefit from having a greater number of hand-on exercises and demos. They help in improving a learner's confidence on the subject tremendously. Such cases call for classroom training. Here are some of my insights...

Examples and scenarios
I think the instructor needs to be loaded with relevant real-world examples to help learners grasp the concepts better. Examples help build the connections that learners are looking to make. As you delve deeper into a subject, learners benefit from scenarios that make sense to his job, rather than random analogy. The examples should also keep in mind other systems interacting with the product in question. Thankfully, our instructor is not short of examples when somebody asks a question or he explains a concept.

Hands-on exercises
I must say that in the specific case of the training I am attending, the product is really complex and we are working on exercises that are over 3 hours long. So how does an instructor address such a challenge when it cannot be avoided? I think such exercises should be chunked down to no more than 20 high-level steps, and the task and concept explained before beginning each part. Our instructor is doing a good job with that.

The other thing with exercises that I realized is, how important it is to have standards and be consistent in your way of referencing things, in order to enable students to see exactly what they need. Some suggestions:

• The classroom setup needs to be detailed and communicated to the class prior to starting the session.
  
• For each exercise, ensure that you mention the prerequisite requirements.
  
• Give a short summary of the task and objective that will be achieved using that part of the exercises, just before it.
  
• Have standards and be consistent in your way of referring to components that repeat.
• Group instructions of one screen or component under a high-level instruction.
• Write short sentences that start with where the object of action is located.
  
• Emphasize the button/option where the action needs to be performed and the value that needs to be entered/selected.
  

Overall, I think the class also needs to be very interactive and solicit participation from learners. But you really need to plan your time well so you can cover everything needed, and also have the class contribute to the learning.

Social Learning Adoption Success: First Steps?

I'm quite thrilled to let all of you know that my effort to push social workplace learning in my team has been recognized. Post my queries posted in my blog post Social Learning Adoption, I have been slowly evangelizing social media tools and social learning to management at every opportunity I've had. It has been a great recognition for me the last week, when the manager of our team from the US, acknowledged my efforts and my knowledge in the domain, and included the use of social-networking to benefit our global team in my goals for the next year. I know this is a tough job, given the challenges I listed in my post, but never-the-less its an encouragement that motivates me to work at it in an organized manner. I believe I owe my knowledge and confidence to the community who willing contribute and encourage me. Getting listed in the elearninglearning site was very encouraging too and I thank Tony for it.

I'd like to use this post to also answer a question one of my co-bloggers Sahana raised on her blog, do people need training on how to learn? Her post suggests that when she urged one of her colleagues to use twitter, he came back to her asking her to create training on how to use it. I think and agree that the process of using social learning tools like twitter does have a learning curve for everyone. How fast one can pickup the tools and use them to their benefit depends on their 'tech savvyness' and their familiarity with Web 2.0 tools as such. But what I also want to emphasize, is that it doesn't make sense to talk of formal training on the use of such tools for the following reasons:

• These tools are quite intuitive, and if one wants to use them, they should just go out and read relevant resources and get started.
• You cannot show the 'value' these tools bring unless you go out, use them and participate actively. You cannot expect to sit back and just have information 'come' to you from others. So it requires 'active' users to 'proactively' go out and look for information and figure out how to use these tools to your benefit. So 'pull' learning always works with these tools, as these tools are designed to promote 'pull' learning.
  
• Once a user figures out the tools, they need to be persistent and be able to identify their own learning patterns, interest areas, what works for them and what doesn't. So it does require mature self-directed learners. The tools promote what Web 3.0 is trying to achieve with personalization of information and limiting it to what users find useful to them. So it does call for self-directed learners.
  

In spite of these facts, what I'm saying here is that it doesn't mean that all learners need to be self-directed and well-versed in the tools from day one, but they do need to be self-motivated and persistent. What we, who are savvy with the use of such tools can do, is to provide people tips and tricks that we figured out, guidelines on getting started and most importantly urge them to go out and look for information, participate and contribute their experiences. Then they will just figure out for themselves! The only way they are ever going to see value, is by being part of this virtual community and figuring out what they're interested in. A good analogy is a seeker of information, going to a book store with no specific book in mind, exploring the available options and finding a subject of their interest. After this the user may buys the book. He will then read it after which he may like it or not like it. If he does like it, he recommends it to others or he may go out and write a book review highlighting whats good and whats not. That's how social learning works as well, except that the whole process takes place in a virtual community and you won't be spending money on that book!

Trying to get to the background of the mental pattern a user goes through while using social media for learning is well explained by the Cynefin Framework. There's also this video I found useful:



So it is important for us who recommend social media to others, to understand the patterns that a new user will usually go through and help them work through those. The best way is to recommend reading the online resources available. A more theoretical insight into understanding the learning pattern is the double-loop learning concept.

To solve the problem in question, I would recommend reading specific online resources to the user:

• Twitter for learning
• A beginners guide on how to Twitter?
• The Twitter network model
• Why I suck at twitter?
• The Social Learning Guide by Jane Hart
  

I will also recommend telling them about successful collaboration initiatives like Trek Earth and reading stories or case studies of social learning implementation. Looks like I have a plan already!

Qualities of an Instructional Designer?

I started thinking about putting together some qualities of an instructional designer (ID) versus the skills of an instructional designer, when I attended the April 2009 Learntrends webinar by Jay Cross. The tool used for online conferencing had a chat feature and I got speaking to many of the participants and moderators. Cammy Bean and I happened to discuss what qualities an instructional designer should posses. Clark Quinn intervened with some of his suggestions too, and this got me thinking. The few qualities that came out of the discussion:

• Innovation
• Creativity
• Business sense (goal)
  
• Passion
• Sensitive to learner
  
• Minimalist

To start with, an instructional designer has to be open-minded, self-directed and self-motivated with one goal of making the learning experience for learners complete. An ID has to understand the business need that drives the requirement for any learning. Having good communication skills, an ability to gather and analyze information and organize it into a structured format are critical skills for IDs. An ID also needs to be really sensitive to learners and their needs. Understanding how people learn should be an ongoing study, and his/her focus on addressing business needs by leveraging evolving technology and standards. An ID also needs to be a minimalist (apply minimalist theory). Over and above a whole list of must-have's, IDs need to have the discretion to selectively apply what is relevant and will enhance learning, rather than bombard a learner with information.

Some guidelines for all IDs are:

• Perform a thorough audience-analysis and remain focused on the learner profile and his needs.
• Design meaningful and measurable goals.
• Design task-based courses after performing a thorough task-analysis.
• Use relevant examples and analogies to aid learning.
• Device methods in which the learner can interact and discover facts, concepts or procedures themselves to keep them interested.
• Design minimalist, or loosely-coupled, self-contained modules that focus on learner goals and drive to the point quickly.
• Keep it simple and use animations, demos, practices selectively and only where absolutely necessary.

Whatever you do, you do need to think 'business' at all times and be able to provide quick, relevant and no nonsense information to learners without getting them distracted. All of this calls for you the ID to do your homework well before you get down designing your course.

Big Question: Time Spent

An excellent question for one and all, and what better opportunity to motivate me to get back to the blogging scene that I have been away from for quite long now, and so for reasons precisely related to Time Spent. Tony thanks for this excellent question!

To start with I'd like to tell folks that I am quite versatile and love doing a lot of things. I live believing that after all I have only one life to do everything that I want to do, so I do not stop myself if i have an urge to do something quite new and compelling, that I would enjoy.

So what do I spend my time with?
Well I work on weekdays, so my commute to work and back itself takes a away a lot of my time. At work, I manage to tweet and get on FaceBook and chat with my friends and colleagues in breaks between working. These are important to me and I have linked my twitter and FaceBook accounts so the tweets are shared on FaceBook as well. But I have several friends on FaceBook (school time friends, other friends and colleagues) with whom I share a more personal relation, so I quite often set more personal messages on FaceBook only, and enjoy it when my friends come back with comments that often add humor to the situation. Social media does become an integral part of my life as a lot of my friends aren't in the same location as me and it isn't possible for me to meet them otherwise. I was recently, suddenly flooded with loads of work and had several issues to resolve that were making my current project very complex. I was really stressed and bogged down and was feeling guilty for a while that I didn't have time or the bandwidth to blog. My mind was always preoccupied and I couldn't write blogs or read a lot of other blogs and news in such a situation. But, my feeds stay in my reader so I can read them at a later point and time. That way twitter is really effective to keep me up to date and point me to the most valuable posts and latest happenings. It almost comes like a breath of fresh air in such times. So twitter is just great for me!

What am I doing less of today?
Social media has actually got me connected back to zillions of people whom I had lost touch with many years ago. I don't think I'm doing less of anything but actually doing a lot more things now. Today, I'm more exposed to information and more aware as a result of social media. I love reading blogs and learning from all you wonderful folks in the community. All this gives me a broader perspective while doing my job and I owe a lot to the confidence I've gained in the field of instructional design and elearning to social media. So, effectively I am doing a lot more things that I ever thought I would be doing before. I've also fallen in love with photography and have a group of colleagues who go for photoshoots on weekends once in a while. I'm learning from them and from the collaborative photography site Trek Earth where I post my photos. I have connections and networks here as well and that adds to my satisfaction.

I am simultaneously fascinated by several things and also want to do my bit to the environment and participate in tree plantation, play a volunteer role in activities organized by our employee club, learn aerobics to stay fit, yoga someday, eat well, shop...etc. I also love to travel and am absolutely in love with nature. Saving up money so I can visit wildlife sanctuaries in India or anywhere that I can make it to. I love spending time with friends and family too and drop everything when I get a chance to do that. I am also an ardent sleeper and sleep late at night and wake up late in the day on weekends. In effect I love to sleep ... :) So, my life is a mix of all these things and I am not very consistent or disciplined about doing just one thing. So lots of things often result in my occasional lapse in blogging or regularly following on or commenting on people's posts. But I do love to and push myself to multi-task. I tell myself that I should be able to do everything and not complain that I don't have enough time. I take things as they come and don't fret about them before.

Sometimes all this gets really overwhelming, so I manage to cut off too when I feel like I'm reaching my threshold, and I enjoy those solitary moments as well. Wake up and sit with a cup of tea, read the newspaper or just a book. I also dream of going off to some far off place with only nature around me, sans technology and gain back my peace of mind. Thinking of such things replenishes my brain cells that get dulled with the daily grind of commute to work and getting back. So, effectively to answer the last question is, I actually have a better life due to social media and not the reverse. My motto is to live life to the fullest learn all I want, do all I want, live the way I want! So social media can actually be used to your advantage .... think about it!

Road to Learning now featured on elearninglearning

This is the first step towards the success of my blogging effort and I'm really excited about it. I thank all of you in the community for your support and I hope to keep writing good stuff that you all can make use of. elearninglearning is a very useful website (and topic hub) that features good blogs related to elearning. It has been a really satisfying journey till here since I started off seriously from January 2009. My posts so far are:

• Social Learning?
• Audience Analysis?
• Social Learning Adoption?
• Call for elearning Demonstrations by Tony Karrer
• Instructional Designers Community of India
• Should you share information?
• How to make social learning work?
• Suggestions to measure social learning
• Beyond Kirkpatrick?
• April's Big Question: OMG I'm Stuck!
• Collaborative Learning with Trek Earth
• Long Live ILT? Whats the point here?
• Best Practices and Design Patterns
  
• Action Mapping in Action
  
• March Big Question: Workplace Learning in 10 years
• Kirkpatrick's Four Level Evaluation Model
• Pure Courseware vs Reference Hybrids
• Skill sets of an Instructional Designer
• Language for technical courses
• Analyzing Technical Information Simplified
• Challenges and solution to technical software product training
• Role of IDs vs SMEs??
• elearning in India

I have been learning a lot in this journey and feel a greater sense of achievement when I write my posts and have your support. Thank you all!