 Thank you Thomas and good afternoon everybody. I appreciate this is the Perhaps the last event for the day and probably the meet as well people are waiting for the farewell meeting finally so well, thank you and I'm gonna take this opportunity to just talk about a Few things which I think will be a little different from perhaps a lot of the meetings that all of you have sat in You know through the last three days Thank you so I'm gonna be speaking. I'm gonna be speaking mostly for the subject of e-learning or technology-enabled learning I'm gonna speak on behalf of my own experience as an e-learning specialist. I've been in the business for about 22 years I'm the CEO just to introduce myself. My name is Raju Ganapathy I'm the CEO of a company a consulting firm in India and in the US by the name of conscience Had the good opportunity of working with schools colleges universities community schools I mean all formats in kind of bringing in different formats of learning and education mostly Technology and digital so it could be a high touch in the class with components with digital It could be less touch and it could be no touch and in the last couple of years We've seen so much more You know the in-between ones with a with a less touch and of course there's a completely self-paced non-demand as well I did not intend to bring in a dark cloud in this room with the things that I'm gonna say So please be mindful and you know apologies if I if I do get you think I get in that direction But that's not my purpose. I'm gonna be speaking for certain things that are fundamental But oftentimes just missed out It's rather easy to actually start finding solutions once you know that there is a problem But oftentimes you really do not know that there is a problem And if you don't know that there's a problem because you heard of it Then we're gonna try and find where is that problem? The third step is to really start looking for solutions So perhaps I'm going to be spending my time talking about the first two which is first trying to even get the sense that a there is a problem for lack of a better expression or a word and Perhaps where are those problems? I'm gonna probably focus on that in the next you know in the remaining part of this I do speak a lot. I'm gonna know I'm gonna rely much less on the screen there It's gonna be mostly coming in from me from my experiences So by all means just stop me put up your hand, you know put up your hand ask questions Or of course you can keep this for the later part as well So without further ado, I'm gonna be speaking for you know, what is it that's changed really? I mean did things change so rapidly in the last five years? Maybe maybe not but all of them find their genesis in certain institutionalized practices I could date this back to the industrial revolution where the first industrial revolution to whatever you may want to call it The third the fourth and I think Google is also speaking for the fifth industrial revolution So I'd rather let you number that but fundamentally where are the issues? What are the problems and how are we really looking at things? So I think the first thing I'm gonna bring your attention to is the fact that Fundamentally the epicenter is shifting Why are things the way they are the good bad and the not so good? That's fundamentally because of the shifting epicenter for the last hundred hundred and fifty years We've been used to a certain format of teaching and a certain format of learning. It's basically brick-and-mortar We've had faculty sit in their car drive to the university or get to the school We've had the teacher standing in front of the class and then students facing the teacher and then having a very personal touch of how Learning is important That's where things started and we basically were and when I say we I'm speaking for the educators They were in control of the learning dissemination process That has happened for much of the last 150 years of modern living whether it's a developed country or whether it's a developing country or still to be developed country Now very rapidly we see that shifting epicenter where again I say this respectfully and mindfully I have the highest respect for educators. I do not think and I hope For a hundred years after we're gone The the instructors will still be the powerhouse because it comes from sheer experience their knowledge and Their wisdom and wisdom is an accumulation of experience of life Which obviously you're not going to find in even as a 25 year old but having said that The sage on the stage It's again the instructors in the center of the overall teaching and dissemination process So the teacher or the instructor belongs to a certain Institute That Institute is determining whether you're in an Ivy League in the US or whether you're in a you know In a good college or whether which institution you are part of it's basically a top-down approach where the faculty is basically Teaching the curriculum the pedagogy and the content of what it is the institution provides for the most part And then we you know we have the learners and then of course we have the content So if you see the triangle on the left-hand side again, it's very heavily focused around The teaching dissemination process where we have the sage on the stage Very respectfully Now obviously in the last five years and you could you could take this to 10 or 15 But more so pronounced since the the advent of the pandemic We're now seeing people taking lives in their own hands and now very quickly The instructor is actually left and we see the Learners at the center of the learner journey that incidentally happens to be a product that we've built I'll keep that for later But the learners at the center of the learner journey It's now the students who are actually experiencing learning the way they think it should be It's no longer one institute. I may be a student of this college or university, but I'm consuming content from LinkedIn I'm taking something from MOOCs. I'm taking something from open educational resources And perhaps I'm not even interested in a degree anymore. I'm probably looking for Vocational training. I want to do something in the next three months and find myself a job so Power more power to the learners and that shift I would respectfully say is this is the opening theme of this conversation here If we understand that Things roll in from there onwards. So if I may say again very respectfully Content that was created and we're speaking as educators and we're speaking in a in a learning management system or a BLE conference The content that was created in the traditional format was actually never Was never made for students to consume themselves. I would underline that and I would also put it in quotes It was ever it was never made for the students So any problem that you speak about the genesis of that problem is the fact that that content was not for the students It was actually for the faculty for the teachers for the trainer to use their soft skills to use their knowledge and Deciminate that from into down to the audience in a high-touch classroom brick-and-mortar environment Now we've not seen any of that in the last two years. Unfortunately the world needed a pandemic To explain this this theory that's said, but that's also the truth So now when we're actually going from a high-touch classroom based environment to an environment where students are now empowered or at least They believe they are and they take their choices They're actually looking for learning that sticks for them. Are they are we creating sufficient learning hooks? Are we going to get them coming back for more? Then I think respectfully we need to have a mindset change We need to have a change of creating content that was earlier teacher facing Instructor faculty facing trainer facing to now directly student facing I say that with my background in instructional design pedagogy and androgogy depending on which audience we're dealing with So that's the first thing when we're going from content That's now speaking to the or speaking to students through the teacher to not directly speaking to the learners If we understand that well and a lot of good universities and companies companies University schools Understand that when they implement their digital programs They understand this genesis and when they take the efforts to creating Overhauling their design in the content. They do find success at the end of it. We've seen a lot of that as well so that's the first thing shifting epicenter and You know the next thing that I would really touch upon is for what I just spoke about now all of this is is good when you speak for this shift in Shift in the paradigm going from here to there as I just explained. What does that really mean when you talk about? using tools Technology and digital as a mean of means of learning now at a moody conference using technology and digital I think structurally I take this back perhaps to the time modern founded Moodle I'm gonna say this in a Moodle conference, but you know whether you're on one VLE or something else and whether you have a choice of 50 other digital tools these tools were actually made at a time When we actually had the former which was the didactic Method of teacher imparting learning to the students That's fundamentally what we will see in the in the design of platforms if we see Any VLE including if we see Moodle? It has been designed keeping in mind how teachers teach, but how do teachers teach in the? erstwhile methodology Today it's not important whether you run a 20 week course or a 50 topics Whether you choose a topic format or a course format, but that's again linear thinking that's didactic and linear Students are interested in outcomes. Students are interested in okay. What is the learning objective? What is the learning outcome? How do I understand this piece of content and that's not going to be necessarily spelt out in? Module number 23 page number 44. That's meaningless for the audience So specifically for instructional design versus structural design what I'm really talking about is the point where the rubber meets the road More often than not I say this also because we've just you know beta launched a product My learner journey. It's directly being launched for schools colleges and universities here in the U You know I'll talk about this please you can stop by but fundamentally when we talk about the science of instruction That's the forte of instructional designers They understand the science the science goes back to a hundred years all through the last three days Whether you talk about a Bloom's taxonomy a Garnier a David Merrill a Waikalski a Piaget There are a half a dozen to one dozen very good instructional design Methodologies at play the science goes back to a hundred years. How do we make effective efficacious learning? But the last 30 40 years have been around using tools and digital and technology to do that same process No, it's all good to have this great team of instructional designers who understand How to deal with teaching as a subject and how to deal with content, but that's my left hand My left hand needs to speak to my right hand, which is what I talk about as structural design So in this case the the instructional design is my left hand and the structural design is my right hand now How do these two people meet? It's going to be funny for some of you who are probably dealing with this process You need your developer to sit on the same side of the table as your Designer I've been doing it for 22 years. I say that with humility, but that's where the rubber meets the road So when you have to actually explain so a lot of the technology that we deal with today is actually coming from The erstwhile methods of teaching and that's why platforms regardless of what we see in the US and outside We're a US company. So we you know, that's probably a largest market There is a lot of grinding or to say the least friction between how design should be from a teaching methodology versus how design is from the way the application is built under the hood and The future generation of platforms even the future of Moodle, I hope and will I'm pretty confident has to address this particular aspect of design thinking from a teaching standpoint to how a platform is conceived and Finally delivered and that's still a long journey from from where I can see it today So that's the fundamental of instruction design versus structural design. I did touch upon this earlier, but I Think you're getting the point just by reading the title Didactic instruction the page paradigm versus adaptive and personalized. I already touched upon this a little bit It's very linear If I mean we were at a point where actually we were consuming earlier even till my generation Which was 25 years ago when I finished studying We were learning the way we were being taught Now it's not about the way we're being taught We're deciding deciding as students for the much younger generations how we want to learn and now we have not one not three But 55 choices Whether I want to study You know completely self-paced completely on demand a hybrid even my tools whether I want to go back to paper or whether You want to use a simulation? so again coming out of the page paradigm and everything that you would see in every format Regardless of the tool is very didactic in format That's perhaps why we find friction between what we're conceiving as a good Implementation versus actually what the users think they're consuming as learners at the center of that learner journey Perhaps that's my next slide, but I already said it so and sorry I did not come rehearsed this I'm just speaking for what I'm seeing here, but that's the fundamental thing now We're really talking about adaptive and personalized learning now what I consume should be suitable for my needs Perhaps if I go back to my childhood I I would just say this one thing. I've not been an educator I've been working with educators all my career creating great efficacious learning solutions But only if an educator spend the first five minutes explaining to a little child and I have a seven-year-old To her if you if you study this now 20 years later, you're going to be applying it here Maybe you're going to be constructing that bridge in London, North Paris or in India or wherever else that Association is extremely important and you know the why Automatically may bring You know may have little kids changing their career pathways We're all a function of our environment and we've only done what we've been you know experiencing in that space So anyways, that's didactic instruction and the page paradigm. That's mostly Seen in platforms in methods of instruction versus adaptive and personalized which is also being used very effectively in a lot of scenarios And of course the experience through the eyes of the beholder again, it's the learners at the center of the learner journey and It is definitely becoming more online it is becoming more blended and more hybrid now What does that mean? It really requires for the first three things in my opinion that I just spoke about to be you know You need to take a hard look at it right from the the methods of instruction To the platform and technology that you choose and the platform and technology that gets built has to address Whether it's actually the learners at the center of the learner journey. We're building I mean you could be creating content in a Word document and a PowerPoint and PDF and we could very well do that for the Next 50 years and that's very effective and for the ones that spend a lot of money and time and effort They're also building out simulations and high-end simulations. It's not about the medium It's about the design process that we apply even with paper and pencil and If we bring the learners in the center of that process, we have good instructional designers who can actually help that process Now again I have been speaking on the subject of instructional design for much of my career And I know I only stretch the surface even if I try it for another 22 years The what of the teaching obviously comes from is the prerogative of the subject matter expert the faculty the staff But the how-to of the teaching is not one that will come more naturally The science of instructional design the how-to of the teaching comes very well from the instructional designers That's why it's so important for instructional designers to you know Mate with and sit down with faculty to actually improve the design process of whatever it is You're building whether it's paper or whether it's a flying object on the screen. The the medium does not matter So that's what I would speak for in terms of experience through the eyes of the beholder and Of course in a conference like this and I speak for the future of where these platforms go In back in June I was at the one at Tech, which is now the one at Tech It was the IMS global learning with the makers of interoperable standards up until this moment We're still dealing with a very limited number of May I say connected platforms? This is going to multiply by a hundred within the next three years and no one person or one company controls that I'm very confident of that. We all thought that you know the makers of wheelies Even if they've been around for 10 or 20 years have the right past the first past to you know Starting to teach students when when they when it becomes relevant Which is through the pandemic of the last two years little did we know that there's a company called maybe a zoom That's actually where you know 95% of learning has actually happened So are we going to focus on zoom and Microsoft teams or do we go do we put up our hands and say no We're the makers of wheelies here or something else that no it's not going to be that way So the hub and the spoke model in in all of what I just described. We're talking about connected ecosystems We're talking about perhaps really as the hub unless something else comes and changes it in the future But we're talking about in my rate and an infinite number of connected spokes You have assessment tools We have a lot of great companies that are presenting a lot of their own engines including the gentleman who was speaking for the Notetaking on a video software So regardless how I mean if you have ten components that you think you're going to use for learning for assessment for Survey for block for quiz, you know, you know what you're using Each of those have at least ten more in terms of options to choose from so that automatically is a spider web of 50 to a hundred so We have to be mindful of When we're designing these platforms or rather when we decide how we want to bring the learner journey for our respective program We're not dealing with one or two, but we're dealing with at least 15 20 different connected spokes And that's basically the future in my personal opinion This is perhaps the last in my presentation here, but I like to touch upon the subject. Sorry I want just to go back. I mean, of course when I'm speaking for the hub in the connected spokes I am obviously speaking for good interoperable solutions LTI learning tool interoperability from the one a tech Framework is great. It's powerful. Of course, it's questionable on, you know, a lot of things like security and things But they're all getting resolved as we speak. So the more we embrace Standards we're more open to actually adapting to outside Technologies still being safe and secure with the students with GDPR with data, etc Perhaps Design for analytics is the last slide of my presentation. I want to just take that's right, but I This was not intentional, but this is unfortunately how it happens as well analytics is generally an afterthought Just like my slide It should not have been the last slide. It should have actually been the very first slide, but it's a pity When you're actually talking about analytics, it's not about okay, we finished teaching this course now Let's see what we can find out of it So it should actually be the first step so there are Universities there are schools there are great companies on this planet and training and corporate training and LND Where if you actually are creating let's say the simplest even a didactic course or a fairly advanced simulation In my company, we're actually let's say we're building a lot of biology and physics and chemistry labs How do you do a grand-stain? Stain, you know, how do you test the bacteria? It's a 37 step process Now in each of those 37 steps you could actually be bringing in You could actually be bringing in you could pre design what it is you want to actually gather as important data Not let for a platform to find out some data and show it to you But a good instructional designer through the course design process will actually help So when if you're familiar with the concept of storyboarding, which is the you know for me Is the blueprint for any design process and course design and development in the process of storyboarding a good instructional designer will actually put in the elements of what is meaningful actionable data for me and That could be the 37 step grand stain It could be going to a minus 20 degrees, you know refrigeration Unit where you have to do an advanced simulation, you know that this gentleman at this eighth step Did this step wrong in the second attempt? There is science that's already ready. It's the equivalent of what Google Facebook and all the other big five Tech I mean they probably know the number of people sitting in this room by our names Just by virtue of our cell phones in our pocket. The same science is already there. It's ready It's applicable to the science of learning as well. So when you create a course the next time I would definitely Advocate recommend and feel very proud if I see more of solutions where Design for analytics is the first step not the last step and with that. I want to thank you all I'm not sure of the time, but thank you all for your time and I Want to leave it on this, but we are actually piloting a project We're in beta phase for university schools and colleges specifically here within the European Union And that's a specific product where you'll find us in the in the alley and we're happy to show it to you specifically again if you're a school college or University some thank you again and happy to take any questions if there is time We experience at our universities that students are keen to come back to university So There is Some issue about arguing that well It's it's the end of the time where you go into a lecture hall and listen to the teacher Because if you ask students they're keen to come back to university not only to to these lectures But to see each other What what is your expectation? How will this be? Connected with your approach of this learner center centered not non Physical Be together set up of learning. Thank you. That's that's a that's a great question And I think that will also help me clarify perhaps all of what I said in the last 20 odd minutes I want to say the first sentence which does not even have to do with learning as a as a subject But humans by nature are supposed to be symbiotic and that's why we're so dying to get back and meeting people and embracing people Three weeks from now. I'm going to be probably giving people in Denver to hug I'm going to be meeting with people at the edu cause conference. So yes So first and foremost people are symbiotic by nature Since I run a company. I'm also not for work from home. I am for work from office I want people I want my staff coming back So that's point number one people are going to be doing that so it's not about the physical location of where people are It's the method and it's the mindset Now whether you find your students sitting in the house or whether you find them in front of you Even if they're sitting right here as a student The methods and the science of how that student things has changed in the last over the last 150 years, which is what I'm trying to pronounce here. So nothing has changed This is this I'm not trying again as I said earlier the The teacher the sage on the stage is extremely important The connection the mentorship is very important But the methods around it has to be one that embraces students at the center not the physical proximity Thank you Thank you. Really interesting discussion interesting for you to bring up the idea of the friction and talking about being Instructional designers and developers to be on the same side of the table and you were saying that you do consulting work It's I mean, yes, we do most of what you do Do you find that people are ready to sit down at the same time at the side of the table that they've identified that there is a there is a there is Structural things that instructional designers can help with that if they were on the same side things would go better Short answer it's disappointing right If you achieve 10% I think you have a big win. That's my experience with this subject I'm saying that from my conscience the name of my company is also conscience So I have to be honest with you, but yes, that is the big change that is required Our methods of how we seek need to change I'm perhaps getting to the level of philosophy here, but I have to stop at that. Oh Yes, oh, I'm sorry. I mean again, of course we if I speak for I mean This is not about again what I'm specifically doing or my company is doing but Yes, there are great universities and schools and colleges and these need not have to be very big and most pronounced People who understand these things are finding success in great pockets I can say that from 22 years of practice when I'm trying to give an intelligent solution to somebody here today in 2023 almost I am perhaps saying the same thing that I did probably 15 years ago Five years ago 10 years ago and it's still accepted as a great suggestion Yeah, it is a great suggestion. It's not one. That's there that they're using But it needs the realization So if we can embrace the fact that we're educators, we understand the subject matter The SME the subject matter experts understand the what of the teaching but the how-to in the u.s More specifically, it's a two-year degree program. These are people with a background in Psychology or education. They're teaching their educators for 15 years 20 years Then they go and take a certificate program in instructional design and there they learn the I mean One of the biggest challenges you have a large course to decide which piece of that content is best suitable for what format is A science and an art combined so that's better left to a Set of folks that can actually suggest and That's what I would advocate and yes the short answer to your question. Yes, there are successes I mean the large ones do it very well in all parts of the world, but it needs I think more embracing