Category: Second Life


Sample Question for Knowledge Test:

Intravenous Urogram

Knowledge Test


Sample Question for Evaluation:

Intravenous Urogram

Complex Evaluation






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

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

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

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

Let us study a sample scenario as an example:

Discipline: Civil Engineering

Topic: Structural Analysis

Learning Objectives:

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


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

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

Learning Activity 1:

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

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

Learning Activity 2:

Identify the characteristics of static loads and dynamic loads.

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

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

simulation activity

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

simulation activity

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



Google Plus

Collaboration Life







Circle around life



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


Sparking Life







Hangout with life





Mobility in life



+Huddle: Huddling your groups in


Huddle in Life



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5 things that help eLearning maintain efficient learning rates

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

Kenny Conley, a Boston police officer, was chasing a shooting suspect. During the chase, he ran past a brutal assault. Other cops were attacking an undercover cop because they mistakenly believed he was involved in the crime. Conley was eventually asked to testify about what he saw of the assault. He claimed he saw nothing. Jurors didn’t believe Conley’s claim that he didn’t see the fight. Instead they assumed he was part of a cover up of police misconduct. They convicted Conley of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Thankfully for Kenny’s legal battle, he is back at the police academy.


Psychology professors Christopher Chabris (Union College) and Daniel Simons (University of Illinois) did an experiment that involved a video of a “gorilla” walking through a group of people passing basketballs. The unexpected gorilla stopped in the middle of the scene, faced the camera, thumped its chest and then walked off screen. When study subjects were asked to count the number of passes by players wearing white and ignore those of players in black, half of them did not notice the gorilla.

They asked people to run around a ¼ mile route on campus while chasing one of the researchers. The experimenters asked the participants to stay about 30 feet behind the researcher and to count the number of times he patted his head. Part-way through the route, they ran right past a staged fight about 25 feet off the route. They put the participants in either a low attention load condition (simply chase the guy) or a more difficult attention load condition (count the number of times he touches his head with both his left and his right hand). In daylight with the low attention load, 72% noticed the fight. But with high attention load, only 42% noticed the fight. Even in broad daylight, people can fail to notice a fight that occurs right beside their path if their attention is occupied.


While you build your elearning course, you create your objectives and establish the objectives with learner in the beginning of the course. You then integrate instructional approaches that help your learners stay focused on the objectives and finally achieve them.

How many times have you thought what happens if learners get into “inattentional blindness”? Elearning programs are generally built to be intuitive. Intuition, however may have a side-effect, “inattentional blindness”. To prevent learners fall into inattentional blindness, mainstream instruction has to be delivered in a way that allows learners prevail the alertness of surrounding learning objects.

In an attempt and focus to achieve a result at the end of Lesson 2, try to hint back the learner of subtle take-aways of Lesson 1, failing which an elearning program will fall prey of inattentional blindness- a serious cognitive mishap.






Adult Learning



1) approaching the class with real excitement and enthusiasm,
2) adding vocal variety for interest and clarity,
3) including purposeful pauses,
6) actively involving the learner and,
7) ending using a strong conclusion with vitality.


Instructional Strategy and Teaching Steps 


Recall Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction

Healthcare Instructional Strategy


HTML 5 holds enormous promise for the browser experience without a plug-in requirement. Capabilities include drag-and-drop file copy, animation, video playback with synchronization, all sorts of transitions, interactive canvas and font manipulation, advanced typography, Web SQL data storage and rollback, online/offline testing and a myriad of others available now or under way.

If you are still unsure about HTML5, just take a look at some of Apple’s past bets. The company’s flagship technologies such as FireWire and SCSI, foresaw that CDs would replace floppies and that all computers would need Ethernet, and was using SIMM modules when others were still inserting memory chips one at a time.

Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers now support HTML5. Microsoft is planning to support it, and maintains an excellent HTML5 Web site where it displays news, capabilities and emerging features about HTML5 and other technologies that have not yet been standardized.

And when combined with CSS3 and JavaScript, as in Apple’s HTML5 demo web site, its potential to create amazing Web experiences simply knows no bounds. Indeed, there appear to be no limits on the type and scope of applications built with HTML5. For example, there’s an effort to build HTML5 WebSockets, which permit bi-directional communication between the browser and the Web server, giving it the ability to update browser content without the need to reload the page. And as with all HTML versions, apps made with HTML5 would be cross-platform and would not reply on proprietary operating system-specific runtimes.