Micro Learning

It appears that organisations realise the value of continuos education, but are constrained to let people dedicate time and effort for the same purpose. The reasons for such a paradox , vary from resources to loss in business productivity. These are some real testing times for L&D folks. Adding fuel to the fire are the learners - the texting folks, who value independence as opposed to compliance.

Since training , is an intervention step to make a behavorial change, getting the new age workforce to recognise the importance of doing a job effectively and efficiently is a challenge.

Since much of learning is based on observing, conversing, trial and error, coaching and searching a system that can create a very short duration learning track covering some of the steps above may work.

Ray Jiminez's has an interesting solution to this - "One idea -one action". This has a deep seated connection that learning needs to connect with learners context. Try looking at a picture in a group, and what each one sees may be at variance to what others may see. It is also known that people create own strories out of the information stored in their mind. Remember Inception and dream within a dream. Very often, we leave this process alone in any kind of learning. Conventionally, we let people to form their own opinion after tabling an idea or a proposition. If this were to be reversed - show a picture and than ask a question ( more of thought provoking kind) , the idea gets planted by finding answers to questions asked. Or better still, Reverse it by getting the learner to ask those questions based on the image. This process triggers a connection between ideas, images and actions quite instantaneously. Some have opined that learning is not a linear outcome of an image , process and behaviour. Learning can happen at anypoint.

I like this idea , as it is based on natural learning principles of observing, conversing and trial error. As the modules can be extremely short (may be couple of minutes) , and one idea one action at a time, it is possible to build a whole repository reflecting various situation.

It is known that informal learning aligns with our natural learning ability. However, leaving learning completely open and self paced may not match organisational outcomes. Therefore , creating short cycle learning helps to give an informal flavour to a formal requirement. This helps in developing bite size learning chunks, and therefore an interesting step.

Overladen Children

My son's class mate - a grade 7 student - came the other day to check on some course material. Casual conversation indicated that he puts in 9 hours of studies on holidays. Wow, this is real hard work. Further probe revealed, that parents are preparing him to be competitive and IIT degree is the aspiration. In the last few years , we notice that the intensity to excel has increased exponentially. The same student does not depend on the school academics alone. Off school, most of his time his spent jumping from one tutor to another. What about games ? What about a life outside of books ? For the available free time, sitting in front of a computer and chatting in a social networking site or playing violent computer games seems the best recreation. It is interesting to note , that many proponents of computer games opine that such participation enhances a child's mental agility. I will add one more to this one - also improves keyboard dexterity. School principals are extolling the academic performance of their students on number of toppers. It seems that the child only has to live above his neck. Is this the world we are creating now in middle class urban India ? A great example of education based hierarchial caste system. Where do you think the problem lies ?

Our education system needs a major overhaul in every count. While this may take pages of elaboration, let me reflect on two major ones for the existing set up. When did we last review the B Ed curicullum in India ? How much investment is going towards teachers skill development ? India has a close to 7 million teachers covering all types of education . Your guess is as good as mine that most are ????? Now let us look at the other concern . Are we ever going to see some overhaul in Instruction Design . Howcome , in this digital age tons of text books are the only recourse to learning. Why does a child need to carry a sackful of books to school ? Many educationists seem to be concerned about it, yet , year after year, this remains a lip service issue. How do we still encourage chalk and talk teachers in the classroom ?

Transforming India - a skill view

It is scary to live through these times. Look at these kids with back breaking backpacks plodding to school. The college kids with sling bags go to college , as if in defiance , to say "I am happy and I am out of school". Out off canteen, and enter into some pre-employment career coaching institutes trying to get a toehold in a career , that is horribly at a mis-match. With every passing day we are becoming slaves of a hierchial education system that was valuable for the industrial age of the 19th Century. India , seems to have got obsessed with competitive education , by happily discarding the timeless storehouse of knowledge given to us from our seers. In CII meet 2007 January , Gordon Brown (then FM of UK) had cited that India had more engineers then technicians, which meant more people with heads were available and less of the able-bodied people, forcing foriegn investment to take a back seat. Our great education system throws out 3 million graduates with less than 5% being employment ready and compare this to Singapore where 85% are work ready? How do we change this? More education ? I am afraid to mention that according to Ma Foi survey more than 10 million people are engaged in education with a half a million higher education teachers. We love white collar jobs and despise Blue collar . It is time that a systemic approach towards moving from head to hand is developed before we miss the bus of development and sink in the quick sand of poverty