Education

MAPE to uncover new perspectives

November 13, 2018, by barry ng

I end the journey of my MAPE(Masters of Arts in Professional Education) programme(like hopefully passing the last two modules). It’s a new journey of my learning and development (L&D)career. Some things felt familiar, some are pretty new.

Let me cover the journey that you will expect to experience.

MAPE felt like an artistry’s of curating, designing, developing and evaluating L&D holistically. It was a calling to break the routine( that learning only happens in the classroom) that I once had.

NETWORK AND GATHER YOUR FRIENDS!

I gained trust from the cohort that I reside in. It’s a long list to thank, but a special shout out to the MAPE 2016 cohort who really withstand all the wittiness and seriousness from me. All the break time conversations were really one of the key learning points I had during this 2 1/2 year journey.

The conversations were difficult to end because of its engagement level. As the social constructivist say, you learn better through intentional social interaction!

Your group members have got to be fun and enthusiastic. You’ll need to either be connected technologically (Skype/Google/Zoom/etc) or physically in a common/central venue.

There was support from one of my professor to bring our work for some attention by presenting in a student graduate conference. It was my first conference presentation and it’s really nerve wrecking but valuable experience i obtained too! My topic was a discussion about incorporating technology to facilitate a community of practice.

Support was important as I gotten mine from my supervisor and director who affirmed credentials and experience to study. I have to thank IAL for the study award as well.

READINGS ARE INTENSE

I gained insights from many industries, took part vigorously in the group work and discussions. Things familiar to me such as Gagne’s 9 events, Kolb’s experiential cycle were foundational to support us in the coming semester, it seemed to force me into relooking the perspectives of each instructional design theory and take another dimension to apply it.

There were a deeper understanding and empathy towards how things should be run and the perspectives I gained were intriguing.

There were talks about the community of practice by Lave and Wenger, there was this concept about social constructive theories which made more sense to me now.

There was the Activity theory by Engestrom that threw me overboard all the time, it was a difficult one to digest for a start, it took a lot of reading time during my daily commute to really understand what it meant.

Quality assurance totally kicked me up a notch with Peter Senge on learning organizations and the five disciplines involved. Then when you thought you know it all, Garvin came around and messed things up in your head again.

p.s. I forgot… that was only for two modules (Workplace learning and Quality Assurance).

FUN AND GAMES(IT’S ALL IN THE PACKAGE)

I had my fair share of fun in developing and going through iteration after iteration during my multimedia learning module. From the development of the characters to the voiceovers and programming experience through the Adobe E-Learning(Adobe Captivate), I believe it was captivating! I was always referring to best practices from Richard Mayer’s Multimedia Design Principles.

In your capstone, you will be developing some sort of instructional package/programme evaluation/training need analysis ultimately if you wanted to.

Stay focused on the last chapter and begin early with an end in mind. Taking a masters degree was like a marathon, and this was the final mile for me. I stayed focus throughout and really seek to understand what I needed to do.

Also, take some time to reflect upon what you did in two years before your capstone project. It will give you an idea of what to do next.

What’s best out of this whole experience, I get to really choose what to sit down and start developing.

I chose Mayer’s Multimedia Design Principles and Articulate Rise for the software. All are great and well I must say… Just praying for the results.

I LOST SOMETHING TOO..

I lost a lot of things along the way. I lost sight of time, how it flew passed me just like that. I lost a lot of personal time, dedicated my time for work, studies, family commitments, etc.

I still managed to squeeze time for things and work double hard during the weekday nights and weekends. I had to thank my wife and other family members for the support given though. These sacrifices also include lesser time with my kid too.

These are all small sacrifices to make my career better and my mind a lot clearer. It was to open more perspectives. It taught me to listen more, talk less. I’m already looking at future development plans as a person so drawn towards learning new things!

barry ng

Education

Reflections from Adult Learning Symposium 2018

November 1, 2018, by barry ng

We’re in 2018, coming to a close actually. Notice how fast the world is actually changing right before your eyes. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is embedded into our lives without us knowing. Take a look at the following Google Search example and see how answers have evolved thanks to A.I.

Image A: Google search results varying across the year

We’re a step closer towards deep collaboration between A.I. and humans.

Transformations don’t wait

Transformation is a process that doesn’t wait for you. We’re riding a wave of intelligent robots coming our way. Our roles will change, the job description will differ from time to time, our retirement age will never be similar in the yesterday.

Image: Using A.I., Facebook can tell if you are feeling depressed or not.

Technology advance, Artificial intelligence(A.I.) is getting more real. There will be more autonomous vehicles from cars to even planes. Jobs, as told by many of us, will be quickly replaced by A.I. and robots.

That wouldn’t change of course, based on some of the keynote speakers such as Klaus Wittkuhn, founder and managing partner of Performance Design International and Dr Eddy Lee, founder of Coffee Ventures. Repetitive work will be easily replaced as mentioned during the various presentation.

Videos: Loh Lik Peng, founder of Unlisted Collection shows us how dishes are being cooked. A sample video similar can be seen here.

Staying productive

Managing your work in the fast-paced environment can be challenging. Today, we need tools that offer us suggestions in dealing with our work issue.

Equipped with an abundance of tools and resources, it’s time to relook at what is really slowing us down in our work or lengthening processes that are unnecessary.

You need to tinker around and find out what works for you. Join communities to make you stay relevant. Keep up to pace with new technologies that will aid you in your work.

Image B: A Framework to support continuous learning by Jane Hart, founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies

Image C: Technology that supports us in Workplace and Personal lives by Jane Hart

Jane Hart(founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies) demonstrated to us through research on the relationship between workplace learning and the ability to perform the task at hand. She explained how individuals are self-organizing their learning and development, curating tools/resources constantly to stay ahead. Also, how employees now want to get the most out of their managers to learn from their daily work experiences in order to progress.

A continuous learning process is one that requires constant interaction among tools to enhance their learning experiences in and out of the workplace. The ability to schedule just in time learning is one that a learning and development professional will need in the future. Just like Klaus, both of them showed the power of A.I. and the possibilities across the different sectors to support humans in their work as well as replacing them to be more productive.

All is not lost yet

A touch of between humanity and A.I. or robots might just work out fine.

Finally…we shouldn’t fear it too much, but spend some time thinking about what differs us from robots. Dr Eddy Lee demonstrates how human empathy will be a skill required to share the good/bad news as a medical professional.

Dwell deeper and you will notice that we are different from robots in some way. As humans, we need to concentrate on upskilling our creativity and critical thinking. We need resilience to keep learning and doing, entering an exciting period of entrepreneurship. Working together as a team and encouraging an open communication, that’s how we can prepare ourselves for the future.

barry ng

Education, Reflections

Life’s a mystery

October 26, 2018, by barry ng

We all know that we can’t predict what the future holds. Things in life are getting messy and blurry. I realised i can only do this much to control what’s ahead of me.

Widened Perspectives

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given up hope yet. My perspectives are a lot wider now. I see things from many angles that I didn’t see before. I was really stubborn in some sense. Always believed that things that are built in a certain manner should be done only in a particular manner.

A challenge is worth embracing

Just like this roly-poly doll, we embrace new challenges and scenarios, even when they hit us hard, we still stand up and embrace it. Roly-poly dolls will stand up no matter how you hit, drop, or even slap them. They’re determined things that we should look at and self reflect.

Next Destination: Challenge!

Just think about how it relates to real life and our holidays, we do things that excite or thrill us because of its novelty. We go on holidays to new places because we have that sense of adventure in us all along.

All i could sum it up with is:

I remain a mystery to myself and others.

barry ng

#Alwayslearning, #learning, #learningbydoing, #learningisfun, education, growth

Education

Make Your Bed by William H. McRaven – Infographic Summary

July 19, 2018, by barry ng

Another one of my new creations based on the Book Make Your Bed by William H. McRaven. He talked a lot about his navy seals experiences. It’s a short book that I took about a week to complete, definitely worth the read. 🙂

Link: https://create.piktochart.com/output/30628133-make-your-bed-summary

Note: All credits belong to the author and publisher of the book. This infographic serves as a personal summary and reflection to me.

barry ng

#learning, design, graduation speech, graphics, infographics, make your bed, navy seals, william mcraven

Education, Reflections

3 lessons from learning disabilities

May 7, 2018, by barry ng

Learning disabilities hold special meaning to me, as I was typing away on my assignment on learning organisations and quality assurance mechanisms. The knowledge obtained spammed across two semesters during my masters programme.

It’s really no accident that some organisations learn better than others, not because they achieved the systems thinking(according to Senge). It’s because of the disabilities that form along the way, the culture that has been rooted in the organisation that might result in such ‘disability’ occurring.

Learning disabilities according to Senge in his Book “The Fifth Discipline” defines learning disabilities as:

It is no accident that most organizations learn poorly. The way they are designed and managed, the way people’s jobs are defined, and, most importantly, the way we have all been taught to think and interact (not only in organizations but more broadly) create fundamental learning disabilities. These disabilities operate despite the best effort of bright, committed people. Often the harder they try to solve problems, the worse the results. What learning does occur takes place despite these learning disabilities – for they pervade all organizations to some degree.

Here I present 3 out of 7 of the learning disabilities from Senge that I felt more meaning in my context of work and experiences.

THE PARABLE OF BOILED FROG

The metaphor of the boiled frog teaches us about awareness and our responsiveness towards danger and the external environment. Our lives are full of commitment as we grow older; our parents require our care, we get married and have kids, our job responsibility raises. There are lots of life events that occur through, some we treasure them dearly, some we overlook.

On the flip side, the accordance of technology as a distraction is an area of concern as well. We want to savour moments as we feel we worked pretty hard for the day/week/month/year. We don’t usually spend our time predicting what’s going to happen in the organisation, keep track of the external environment and how it impacts us.

We can’t track danger as well! Before we know it, we might get swarmed by competitors and a sudden change in the environment around us. So, our ‘radar’ needs to be on while juggling commitments around us. We need peers and colleagues to remind us periodically that danger lurks. Communicate them openly and acknowledge that personal vulnerability could surface due to this.

In addition, Senge mentions that changes can be too slow for us and can often go unnoticed. We will need be patient and slow down to get the best views in lives.

I AM MY POSITION SYNDROME

I am pretty sure that you have at least experience one person in your working career who has something similar to the comic illustration above. Just as Senge pointed out that:

When people in organizations focus only on their position, they have little sense of responsibility for the results produced when all positions interact.

In an age where technology truly drives collaboration and teamwork, we’re still at the age of building up areas of going the extra mile and being humanistic about it.

For this to subside, I believe mental models are a good start to get the culture moving. Culture is a terribly slow change management procedure that could work both ways. There might be resistance towards no initiatives. Even when one out of the hundred employees decides to change the existing process, ninety-nine of them would have resisted the change. It could possibly boil down to leadership and how one person alone could possibly restructure a culture of learning and encourage a collaborative spirit.

THE ENEMY IS OUT THERE

<span data-mce-type="bookmark" style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span>This is a common syndrome that is happening across different cultures and organisations. Finger pointing culture is a common phenomenon that most of us experience in our lives. It has became a natural human behaviour that people adopt and can be increasingly challenging to change this. Crediting external events could be a social norm, where people do not praise themselves for the good work they have done. Neither will they take the blame when things do not go their way.

How can we make our journey better? Taking full responsibility of the mistakes made is really one of the extreme approaches we take. Beau Lotto in his book Deviate, informs us on the concept of human and uncertainty. He argues that we inherently make uncertain things certain, just like the example of walking in a dark forest makes us uncertain and frightened as we are unable to predict what is in front of us. I feel that there’s a need for ownership for the things that we do, and understand that there are interrelationships in your work life. Consequences that you might eventually have to bear even though it is not your fault after all.

SO MY ORGANISATION IS NOT MOVING?

Beau Lotto writes,”If we are taught to be cotton, we will become cotton.”

Lotto reminds us that we will become whatever that our brain has ‘determined’ us to be. Senge talks about the importance of leadership in the organisation to drive systems thinking, but at times he might have missed the point that leaders tend to overlook their importance in driving the organisation.

To provide you with some principles, here are conscious thoughts about 3 things:

Changing your existing mindset – Look at the way you perceive and see things. The one way that you are looking at might not be the only way. Perhaps, you should be willing to challenge your existing assumptions you have. For example, Ben Underwood was one of the prominent figures that will stay in me for a long long time. Despite not being able to see, he was able to use ‘echo locations’ to detect locations of objects and accomplish areas such as running and playing basketball. Become emotionally ready to be ‘exposed’ at times, especially when things are against your existing mindset.
Be an influencer(An agent for change) – Senge claims that individuals tend to think of structures as external constraints, formal hierarchical structures that dictate processes(cultural,norms,policies and procedures) within the organisation. We tend to think that we are constraint by the structure dictated by the organisation. Perhaps, we need to think about overcoming the existing invisible boundary we created and work towards the vision and purpose that we came to this organisation for. Be influential to the little things that happen, good things will follow suit.
Coach yourself – In Brian Souza’s book on The Weekly Coach, he says, ” A lot of coaching equals a lot of improvements, a little coaching equals little improvements.” This is invaluable advice on progressing yourself as an individual and finding out your blind spots(as mentioned in Johari’s Window). It is about finding the blind spots so you can progress towards a known area of yourself. This is a difficult task, but with constant(and consistent) practice, you will go a long way with this. You can use the empathy map to define the areas and plan ahead.

barry ng

#learning, disability, fifth discipline, growth, learn, never stop learning, peter senge

Education

Be grateful again!(and again)

January 17, 2018, by barry ng

You must be thinking about the academic aspects of gratitude as you read this post. it’s not really one, I’m here to show you my journey after a year thinking hard about it.

It was a journey of a book “Gratitude in education” by Kerry Howells(The video can be found above). The obvious reasons were cause there wasn’t much literature focusing in depth on gratitude. The other reason was that I am focused on the education aspect of gratitude.

You think about gratitude as something obvious, a process that goes through your mind each day without thinking much about it. Gratitude is this invisible partner you see often but just neglect it because you are preoccupied with your daily activities in life.

You spend maybe 1/4 of your day being grateful to God, being grateful to the ones that helped you when you needed them most. You feel grateful when there is a positive outcome from an important occasion like passing your examinations, Drivers license or get promoted.

On the other hand, there are times where we really take things for granted. For example, we assume that we will get the service we expect because we paid for it. Anything below that standard, we express anger and frustration, questioning the standards of the service provided.

This sense of entitlement is what holds us from gratitude and even expressing it. I felt how it creates the negative energy that deters people from showing their true-self in being gracious and kind. You feel a lot less grateful when you missed a train, get blamed for something that isn’t directly your fault, etc. These events drain your energy and affect your mood for the day/week/month.

So to get you started on your journey, my clear intentions are providing some perspectives that you should consider as part of a new year resolution.

Is this about Positive thinking again?

Gratitude is a strange feeling that occurs to you. According to Dictionary.com,It is the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful. It is an emotion that makes you feel good!

Positive thinking is deeply embedded in gratitude because you are feeling grateful for the things that happen around you. Both positive thinking and gratitude are emotions that take up your time, and with it effort. It requires changes to your daily routine, if you are a pessimist or if you never feel grateful about anything. Positive thinking is about the die-hard attitude of believing you can perform a certain task or overcome a difficult situation too.

Deep within gratitude, it is more than just having optimism. It is a deep appreciation of things/situations that occur around you and how you react towards it. Being positive doesn’t make you grateful for anything, it just makes you able to overcome anything! Howells did mention how emotions are interconnected and separation was not possible. It implies that we cannot remove just disappointment and feel happy instantly. What emotions we feel is an interconnected chain of thoughts. Separation is never possible!

What do I need then?

You will need to develop the appreciation of the things that you have, not the things that you don’t. List down the things that you feel happy and grateful for. Here are some things that you will overlook(non-exhaustive):

Being able to see clearly each day
Have a mode of transport to and fro (Work/Home)
Being able to wake up everyday
Having a Job!

You can pause for a moment and think about these before reading on. I advise you to identify some of them that made you rethink about being grateful. It is an important moment to think about.

Howells reminded me that gratitude cannot happen every single day and moment. It is impossible to overturn an unhappy situation and feel grateful for it (Although it is possible to feel positive about it). So let’s prepare ourselves to feel gratitude.

Don’t expect anything in return

Don’t you hear phrases where people tell you:

”You ought to be grateful that someone celebrated your birthday!”

You would also hear phrases like:

” Why doesn’t John says anything about the present I gave him last week?”

Or maybe:

“I gave up my seat to this guy and not even a word of thanks! What an I’ll mannered person!”

If one of these sounds familiar to you, congrats! It’s time to step out of it, or even tell someone that you should not expect anything in return. Strange to say this, but it’s a phrase in life that I go through myself.

My dad used to tell me about this terminology called unconditional love, where you love someone without a condition, without expecting anything in return. Bear in mind that it is something you feel uncomfortable about because you feel self-entitled. It is a feeling to love yourself more than others.

Sometimes when you give something or offer your seat on the train, you’re always expecting something in return, as to make you feel ‘rewarded’ and happy. Life is kind of different, it doesn’t always work that way. Because of that, you will accumulate lots of disappointment and feel that gratitude just isn’t worth it. To make things simple.

Don’t expect anything in return when you give. Be appreciative of what is given.

It requires perseverance

I personally feel that gratitude can bulldoze and drain your emotions easily. Within weeks, I foresee you might be exhausted and start reverting back to your habits. For once, to conquer and feel gratitude, you might have to overcome social norms and culture. It means that your personal belief system will be tested. I challenge you to bring your perseverance to another level, it will take time, but it is highly rewarding! It can be daunting and makes you feel powerless. This stretched goal can be a long and tedious journey. But, don’t sulk because you are not alone in this journey.

Keep being grateful, and the world will be grateful to you!

Be intentional about it

We are subconsciously aware of gratitude as it feels habitual. It is a feeling that we can overlook easily.

One of my best advice for you is to do something differently that’s related to gratitude. I never ever thought of getting a good luck charm certificate to provide well wishes for my boss for her upcoming conference. I was very sceptical about my idea because I thought of things like, “What if I can’t get everyone’s signature?What if nobody wants to sign this card?” This list goes on and on and on…

But deep within me, I had to do it, because I wanted to express gratitude in a way that I never did. The important lesson here is not only being intentional about gratitude, but also doing something out of the ordinary so people might become aware of the differences. Take the recognition as a bonus, but rest assured that the gratitude feeling that comes after doing something different is intrinsically rewarding. Remember that we always feel good when we do something good for others!

Create good intentions to make good things happen!

In Summary…

To sum it up, I took an example from Kerry Howells, whom I read about in Gratitude in Education as she speaks about how a downstream effect that gratitude has when you express it on a daily basis. What I’m saying is that gratitude flows down to our students.

I would believe that gratitude is something very holistic and pure, not easily achievable and overlooked at times. It was actually a reminder that your role, as parents, as educators, as a professional has a great deal on whatever you do. Being grateful to the things you have, as mentioned above, helps you to develop gratitude in many subtle ways.

Your tale of wonder will unfold as you express gratitude to people in your life. – Kathryn Sievert

As a self-reflection, I have taken the initiative to express gratitude each day, to be thankful for the days and things that I have and for the journey that God has given me. It can be a very rewarding journey, but it could really be lonely. There are a lot of things that you could benefit from. My last take away for you is:

Start small, dream big, you will succeed!

barry ng

#learning, education, graduation, gratitude, keep learning, learn, reflection

Education

Why nobody told me e-learning could have been done this way?!

January 1, 2018, by barry ng

It was a dark evening and yet another gloomy day for me. It was a lost sense of purpose in what I was doing in life(or was it). Then came the idea of, why is nobody embracing ePortfolio the way it should be!? So because of that, I decided to start something about it (aka barristar learns). It is not something that is complex and requires lots of computational thinking and processing, but the essense was redefined by Professor Punya Mishra when I was viewing this particular video! It was about how I should be repurposing technology specifically for educational purposes and there are times where I’ll have to use whatever tools I have available and make the best out of it.

Barristar learn builds on many fundamentals that I have come across. One of them would be Universal Design of Learning. It’s a belief that all learning should take place using different medium/channels, and all of them providing avenues to support student learning. It was created in 2015 and continual development is still in progress. There’s a lot of thought put into the development as I wanted to address a lack of ePortfolio in Singapore (I might be very wrong about it).

In this section, I would be introducing the tools that are critical towards the development of barristar learns, all of which I will be sharing with you. These are mostly free tools that are available for your personal viewing pleasure and creation.

WordPress

WordPress serves as the primary platform for learners to access barristar learn whenever they need to. The site is designed to be mobile friendly and concentrating on areas that are relevant to learners. I could say i would prefer to have some elements of LearnPress in it where enrolment is possible. The rationale for WordPress was familiarity, plugins and mobile responsiveness. These are important factors in my push for a platform independent solution for learners to develop ePortfolios.

Checklist

To make up for some missing elements within the site, I really had to include a checklist. This was more for learners to take ownership of their learning, it was for them to select the learning points that they felt they covered. The limitations residing among this was more of how learners can track their overall progress and not be too modular about the checklist.

Thinglink

Thinglink is an image resource that allows you to place links at any point of the image. You can choose to place youtube videos, additional descriptions and external articles. I used it at almost every page of barristar learns, following the universal design of learning principles.

Thinglink was a mystery add-on that I felt was beneficial to the learning environment. Although I had to thank thinglink for providing me a free month of premium services, the basics were sufficient to let me reap the maximum learning benefits.

Padlet

Padlet is a free resource that allows your learners to put their sticker notes on a wall that is embedded to the WordPress site.

Generally, I used them for reflection purposes, gathering learners to come and think of 3 words that they understood, apply the knowledge and be able to reiterate. It comes to good use during classrooms sessions to share across everyone or simply just a class of barristar learns as a whole. I used it generally to option snippets of knowledge that are digestible. Taking from a learner context, it was important to obtain peer perspectives to garner an understanding of the same concept.

Flip cards

Flip cards were memorisation tools in my opinion. Similar to quizzes, they were instant checks to see if the learners wanted to assess their skills, knowledge and competencies in ePortfolio. It was a good knowledge check tool, to evaluate the progress of learners when required and not requiring them to stream through edpuzzle all the time.

Canva

Canva was a pretty useful resource, coming from someone who does a lot of design work. It’s freemium with lots of additional images at $1 each. It helped me design my infographics, thinglink images that I used and other projects I had too. It was a very fundamental tool that I needed to design barristar learns and doing it quickly too!

Summary

In short, there are many lessons to learn from during a simple development such as this project, and how much intrinsic motivation plays to make this a ‘small’ success. There are tons of solutions that are definitely better than mine, but I shouldn’t despair over the hurdles that came about during the development.

I am looking forward to making this a lot better than it is right now, just searching for the right formula. There are tons of waste to be disposed of and one is required to shed the excess away from this project.

Until then, happy 2018!

barry ng

Education

How Gagne’s 9 event can be relevant to your next E-courseware

December 29, 2017, by barry ng

Over the last few years, e-courseware has widely been adopted by institutions and organisation in a form of computer-based training material. Designing courseware teaching and learning experience become challenging as you need to consider the most effective and engaging manner possible for the end user.

I created this e-courseware to target primary school & secondary school students (age 10-14) on the various cyber-wellness issues that they faced while using the computer/the internet.
The courseware covers 3 main topics:

Cyber-bully
Game addiction
Online privacy.

The aim of the courseware is to ensure that the students are able to protect themselves and empower them to take responsibility for their own well-being in the cyberspace. During the development of the courseware, I used Gagne’s nine events of instruction to develop and offer opportunities to engage in every process.

cyberwellness4

1.Creating attention-grabbing introduction

One of the effective ways is to make use of interesting animation and attractive graphics to hook up learner’s attention at the start of the courseware. Most research shows that attention span of a learner is getting shorter over time. It is important to capture their attention at the start and to keep it short and sweet as the main idea is to capture their attention and make them curious, not to bore them.

cyberwellness5

2.Inform learner about the objectives

Learner should know what are they are going to learn before they access to the contents. So it is important to set a clear objective that allows them to tie to real-world benefits and application. When they are able to relate and see the beneficial “takeaway” from the objectives, they will be more willing to continue with the learning.

3.Stimulate recall of prior knowledge

Before the start of the content, I ask the learner questions about their prior knowledge of cyberspace that they acquired earlier. By using this method of building up existing knowledge rather than starting from scratch allow the learner to be able to retain new information easier. Usage of a short animated story to relate about past experience also helps a learner to be emotionally connect and get them think about the topic as they are easier to relate from there.

cyberwellness

4.Present of content

So here’s the main essence of the content. All the contents are designed to address all the objectives mentioned on the objectives. For easier absorption of content, I use whole to part method and break it into small segments for easier digestion of the content. I also make use of visual and audio element to simulate the learning and create the menu for easy navigation around the courseware.

5.Provide learning guidelines

As learner are practically on their own, it is important to ensure that they are not frustrated or feel lost. I make use of clear on-screen instructions and provide case studies for the learners for better illustration of the content.

cyberwellness-2

6.Elicit performance

Enable repeating of contents helps a learner to absorb and retain new information. Learners are giving an opportunity to re-visit the content after each visit. I also make use of decision-making questions in case study to test their response. When example given are realistic and learner are able to apply their new knowledge immediately, it will have a higher chance for them to retain the knowledge.

7.Provide comments and immediate feedbacks

By giving learner immediate feedback allows a learner to identify their weakness and improve from there. The discussion forum is setup for learners to give their feedbacks and comments. Learners are able to ask questions in the forum.

cyberwellness6

8.Assess of learner performance

Quizzes allow learners to test their understanding of the topic. It not only help to identify if learner has close the knowledge gap, it also helps developers to take note of the “weak spot” in the content. If most of the learner are struggling on a certain question, it may be an alert for the developer to evaluate on the content and activity.

9.Enhance the retention

Now that the learner went through the content once, it is good to repeat the concept and main learning pointers again at the end of the courseware to reinforce the content they gone through.

Of course, these are just the guideline I used for development of this courseware. As there are many instructional design methods out there, I would love to hear from you all.

Written by Wee Ying Qin.

Wee Ying Qin is an educational technologist at National University of Singapore. He received his Bachelor of Computer Science (Multimedia & Game Development) and Master of Arts in Instructional Design and Technology from the National Institute of Education, Singapore. As an educational technologist, he has demonstrated different capabilities in areas of effective instructional design, e-learning education and multimedia development. He enjoys photography and hiking as a hobby.

barry ng

Education, Reflections, Technology

Learning Journey from my Adobe Education Online Trainer Course

December 20, 2017, by barry ng

This is a post describing my learning experiences from the Adobe Education Online Trainer Course which is an annual course specially tailored for Educators around the Globe.

barry ng

Education

What’s your motivational factor?

November 20, 2017, by barry ng

Let’s take a look this week of the aspects of motivation. I would say motivation is one of the things that really drives me to do something that I want and achieve, it starts from deep within how we look at things and also how the things we look at actually change the perspective that we have. Motivation even starts off when we were infants, we are constantly motivated by our parents to stand up and start walking. Motivation changed as we grew older as we look into a different area that actually motivates us to go further. We had grading systems in schools to motivate us, we had electronic gadgets such as iPads, colourful books and computer games as extrinsic motivation to drive us to do better in school. Then after we graduate and have a job, we look into different aspects of extrinsic motivation such as salary increments, bonuses, nice cars, etc. I would explore the relationship between motivators and motivation and how they could drive our inner passion(intrinsic motivation) and let us carry on doing what we love to do.

Parents as Motivators

Our question is more about how motivation actually occurs and what elements are important in the area of motivation. If we turn back time a little, do we actually remember or understood how our parents motivated us? Our parents are usually our first line of motivators and educators. They’re the first people to teach us how to eat properly, how to walk and how to speak our first word. They’re always encouraging us to be better people and we often look at them as role models when we’re young. They watch us grow and we watched them aged. They would always be the first to say,”Wow, that looks fantastic” even though we’re not the best artist or writers. Some of us look at what our parents did as a career, and eventually follow the steps of either our mum or dad in career, because we’re reminded constantly on how exciting their career is and how constant reminders such as “Follow your heart” and “Follow your dreams” will always be stuck in our head. We always have a role model in our heart, the first one I could think of are always our own parents.

Technology as Motivators

Technology plays a very huge part of our lives as motivators. It’s just that we did not realise that they were present. Technology as motivators would first begin from the programmers who created your games to keep you playing. Think of the latest Candy Crush or the Role Playing games such as Final Fantasy series to fuel your desire to keep playing the game. Your extrinsic motivation varies in technology, it can be small rewards such as a virtual medal, or progressions for harder challenges in games. Technology can bridge the connection to fuel our desire for motivation, it acts as a channel to drive motivation and also allow your friends/peers/family to recognise your hard work and dedication to the things you love most. It is also the reason why gamifications are popular means of education to drive the motivation of our learners of today and to make them learn more effectively.

Peers/friends as motivators

When we think of friends and colleagues as motivators, we fundamentally explore intrinsic motivation through our entire lives. In each stage of our lives, we find people who continually fuel our intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. We have our friends during our younger days who would ask us for a football game, to constantly say small little things during games like,”Nice skills”, “Well done”. They could also be discouraging us by giving us the jeers, but these are fundamentals in driving us forward and making progress even faster and better. As we advance in our careers, we might stumble upon people who will motivate you from all walks of life. I knew many who dared to risk it all and start a business by themselves. Some of them ventured into climbing mountains, some started a food business without any prior knowledge and some even tried a coffee joint for the first time. I felt that these people are inspiring, so do talk to them to find that element that resonates with you best!

Significant Other(SO) as Motivators

The one that you would want to spend your entire life with, your husband or wife out there. They are your pillar of support and your interaction revolves around them every day. They will bring you to new heights, help you to do things you would have never imagined doing. I have a wife whom I ask for support and strength each day, and I would say she’s my main source of motivation to carry on strong each day.

As a conclusion, I’ve placed a card that you could print it out and paste it at your office or home as a source of motivation.

barry ng

Education, Reflections

MAPE to uncover new perspectives

NETWORK AND GATHER YOUR FRIENDS!

READINGS ARE INTENSE

FUN AND GAMES(IT’S ALL IN THE PACKAGE)

I LOST SOMETHING TOO..

Reflections from Adult Learning Symposium 2018

Transformations don’t wait

Staying productive

All is not lost yet

Life’s a mystery

Widened Perspectives

A challenge is worth embracing

Next Destination: Challenge!

Make Your Bed by William H. McRaven – Infographic Summary

3 lessons from learning disabilities

Be grateful again!(and again)

Why nobody told me e-learning could have been done this way?!

How Gagne’s 9 event can be relevant to your next E-courseware

Learning Journey from my Adobe Education Online Trainer Course

What’s your motivational factor?

Recent Posts

Categories

About me!