Miles and Dr. Miles I have a quote from him and he said the greatest lesson to be learned from the Iraq invasion from the historic blunder must be to never again underestimate the soft power of religious difference to trump the supposedly hard realities of guns and money. Isn't that an interesting quote? Don't underestimate the influence of religion and I think that is great because he is a scholar in religion as well as politics. He earned the MacArthur genius award which I just learned this morning is a five year award given and no one knows exactly what the criteria is but it is given to somebody who gets 100,000 dollars a year for five years to engage in research of their choice. So can you imagine the amount of trust that was put into this man and the amount of wisdom that they felt would be gained from his research I think what an honor. Dr. Miles also is a senior fellow in religion and international affairs with the Pacific Council which is a nonpartisan organization headquartered in LA. He has written two books one is entitled God a Biography for which he won a Pulitzer prize it's been interesting God a biography Pulitzer prize in 1996 and then the second one was Christ a crisis in the life of God. So don't those sound like interesting it sounds like you have a very witty sense of humor. He spent 10 years as a Jesuit Seminarian and two years studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem before completing his PhD in near eastern languages at Harvard. He'll be speaking to us today on the impact of the United States involvement in Iraq and hopefully giving us some some of his thoughts on how we can unwind some things in there and what would be the best resource for that and I don't know what you're going to talk about that as well but we will see please join me in giving Dr. Jack Miles a warm inside edge round of applause let's get him up to the stage Dr. Jack Miles. Thank you Jeannie for that that most generous and gracious introduction it really is a pleasure to to be with you here this morning I've only recently begun my own association with Orange County you might say I was I was hired to my surprise just last July to be professor of English and religious studies at the University of California Irvine my my time in Orange County though I've been living in this area since 1978 has been rather limited I have a few friends down here I see once in a while I recall though sitting at the table here this morning my very first visit I had been brought from a double day in New York where I was an editor to serve as executive editor of the University of California Press which is headquartered in Berkeley but at that time had a branch office at UCLA and the University of California Press publishes all kinds of writers all kinds of scholars but of course especially the faculty of the University of California itself from all the campuses so it fell to me as a part of my duties to drop in on the different campuses and I can measure the passage of time from 1978 to the present as I look out on this this central meadow here and remember what scrawny little saplings were out there in 1978 and how this this forest has has grown up in the meantime of course I haven't changed at all in the interim you know we were we were telling each other stories just now about how as individuals we have had occasion to be surprised by other cultures and and to learn and perhaps to correct our our behavior or to seize opportunities that we didn't know were there in these in these places and with these people whom we first confronted as strangers our country as a nation has been undergoing a similar experience in Iraq when I was named MacArthur Fellow we were just past 9 11 and had not yet invaded Iraq but we were already hearing a great deal about the global war on terror which struck me as a bit of a puzzle because terror exists all over the globe and in almost all manifestations of it the United States it has no thought ever of taking a hand to control it to direct it to suppress it whatever it is only one form of terror the kind that that struck in New York in Washington on September 11th 2001 that engages us but to speak of that kind of terror one has to speak about Islam and the and the varieties of Islam and what has been done to the Muslims of the world by those who have created al-Qaeda and and brought the destruction in several countries that that they have brought I knew only some about some of what one would wish to know in the way of religious knowledge and regional knowledge at that time but a little knowledge seemed to be more than I was hearing expressed in by those who were announcing American policy at the time so I took the MacArthur money and used it to buy my own time my own services for the Pacific Council on International Policy which Genie mentioned the Pacific Council is the West Coast branch of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York which is which is better known and it's uh it's membership is is made up of some office holders some former office holders our president is Warren Christopher former secretary of state and many people who are involved in in business or law in a way that requires them to think about the world beyond our borders I thought that it would be valuable if this group of people this Friday for example we will be hosting Senator Chuck Hagel at lunch as you know though he is a Republican his name has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Barack Obama should he win the Democratic nomination now this is this is someone who might help us think more about the cultural factors that I believe we ought to be thinking about in Iraq as as we move forward into whatever lies ahead beyond the next presidential election you know that the government of Iraq has served notice to the world and to the government of the United States in particular that the United Nations mandate for a multinational force in Iraq will expire on December 31st 2008 each year the prime minister of Iraq whoever it was at the time has requested a one-year renewal of the mandate that creates the legal basis for international military activity within the borders of Iraq they serve notice the prime minister having come under a good deal of pressure from the Iraqi legislature that the renewal for 2008 would be the last renewal and what is now pending is an agreement between the United States and Iraq of a character to be determined whatever activity our forces engage in after December 31st 2008 will be determined by this agreement President Bush takes the position that this agreement does not require the advice and consent of the Senate and if deliberations are taking place for the moment they are secret interestingly the Iraqi parliament of a majority of its members at least takes the view that prime minister Nouri al-Maliki also lacks the authority to make such an agreement with with the United States they too take the view that this is actually international treaty and requires a legislative ratification the alternate view held by the chief executives in both countries is that it's not a true international treaty and therefore they may make the commitment to each other on their own authority so we're clearly at a remarkable turning point we really don't know of what lies ahead and general David Petrius and Ambassador Ryan Crocker in their testimony just yesterday were quick to make that concession that they don't know what lies ahead and they don't want to give any indication of any possible withdrawal date for American forces at the time a year ago last January when President Bush announced the the newest phase in American strategy in Iraq the surge he stated his goal for this stage which was to create a climate of security that would permit reconciliation in Iraq reconciliation is an interesting word it prompts the question reconciliation of whom to whom and the answer is reconciliation of the Sunni Muslims to the Sunni Shia principally secondarily of the Sunni Arabs to the Kurds of northern Iraq well this is a rather remarkable assignment this this mission of reconciliation intra-muslim reconciliation for the United States to be giving itself we are we have a secular government and we are a majority Christian society it would seem that we're rather ill-caste to conduct negotiations among hostile Muslims and and certainly when the United States forces were sent to Iraq the president didn't say it's essential for American security for us to bring peace among the hostile Iraqis this is not a the kind of assignment that our population could easily understand and the sense that so many Americans now have that they don't understand what's happening in Iraq or what we're really trying to do is growing because this is what we have been told that we're trying to do there and this seems so hard for Americans to get their minds around who are the Sunni who are the Shia why do we care that they're hostile mutually hostile to each other my agenda in this matter is not to to push for a particular withdrawal date or a particular arrangement for for a withdrawal I certainly have thoughts on that matter it it doesn't seem even possible that the United States could leave in Iraq by the way it left Vietnam which is to say leaving all our material on the ground to do that would be to arm al-Qaeda for activity all around the globe so it's got to be a phased withdrawal of material as well as personnel and this will take a year at least and a great deal of money and all kinds of precautions as objects that have been now in Iraq exposed to the flora and fauna of Iraq contaminated vis-a-vis American agriculture and American sanitation standards are brought back into the country it will be a very slow very costly process and it can't be done without regional cooperation it turns out though that regional cooperation is as involved with religious difference as a piece within Iraq itself is Saudi Arabia and and Iran the two nations that flank the Persian Gulf through which all of the ships that will be evacuating all this material will have to pass are of different forms practice different forms of Islam Saudi Arabia the Sunni form and Iran the Shia form remaining on good terms with each of those countries and doing what we can to see to it that they remain on good terms with each other is essential not just to the shipment of oil from that region but also to the very actions of a military retreat now could this situation which seems so hard for us to get our minds around could it have been foreseen have we in a kind of innocent way been blindsided by something that that's surely no American no American government could ever have been expected to anticipate I think the answer to that is no I believe that with with a little effort a little attention even to what was published in American English language newspapers and magazines this could have been foreseen there is of course a deep ancient religious division separating Sunni and Shia Muslims it has to do with an early dispute about how this new faith would be governed should it be governed by a lineal descendants of Muhammad this is the Shia view or should the leader of the faith be chosen by a consensus among among the believers and among their their acknowledged local and spiritual leaders this is the the Sunni view and there has been certainly tension and resentment and hostility over the centuries between the two groups the Shia lost on the battlefield and and they became the minority party though within the Middle East itself they're close to parody they're close to 50-50 balance with the Sunni next next year at Irvine I will at the university here I will be will be teaching a survey course to undergraduates covering Judaism Christianity and and Islam and all textbooks will tell you that the Sunni constitute 85 to 90 percent of Muslims worldwide but they reach this proportion by the inclusion of the most populous Muslim nation in the world which is Indonesia and which is by the way a democracy and the second most popular Muslim country in the world which is India which is so huge that its large Muslim minority has to count as the second largest Muslim population in the world bigger than the Muslim population of Pakistan which would come in third and which also is a heavily Sunni nation so in the Middle East itself the two are are more nearly balanced and so the ancient quarrels which were resolved in battles that took place in Iraq itself are are more vividly remembered still what matters most is the most recent experience of Iraq and it is an experience of violence that took place under Saddam Hussein but to some extent in full view and even with a measure of cooperation from the United States so during the the 1980s while Iran and Iraq were at war Saddam Hussein conducted what and his Baath party remember Saddam Hussein was not our our enemy in Iraq he was just among our enemies no one rules a country of that size alone so all all of the discussion we heard in 2003 about will he give up his weapons of mass destruction was a bit misleading whatever weapons he had he didn't have a loan he had as the head of a ruling party and when he was dislodged and and finally captured and even put to death they who had made his rule possible and had benefited from it were not dislodged with him so in a sense the the the regime that we were attempting to change hasn't been changed yet the those who benefited under the old regime are still there they're still not reconciled to losing they're still fighting back there has been some progress in bringing about pacification but the the deepest irony is that the United States is now arming both sides in the war in Iraq which seems a strange way to bring about reconciliation between the two contending parties the the government that we have put in place is a majority Shia government and that government has of course had very warm and cozy relations with Iran it has signed economic agreements with Iran we've seen prime minister Nuri al-Maliki giving a most cordial welcome to President Ahmadinejad of Iran and its army has domestically has served the interests of the Shia population far more than of the Sunni population and has in its ranks Shia incurred overwhelmingly the Sunni who were in the resistance at the beginning of the war in this last 18 months to two years have recognized that they can't defeat the Shia proceeding as they were they helped that they were receiving from Saudi Arabia and from Saudi fighters the largest number of foreign fighters in Iraq was producing division in their own ranks and violence against their own people so unable to to beat the Shia using those tactics they have decided to copy the Shia and like the Shia the Sunni are now accepting money and training from the United States and they have produced a militia overwhelmingly Sunni in composition defending the Sunni against the Shia and the United States army is caught in the middle in danger if this if the current relative standoff should end of being fired on from both sides by soldiers whom they have armed and they have trained I recurred to my earlier position could this have been foreseen we did know it was in all our newspapers that the Sunni under Saddam Hussein had conducted a quasi genocidal attack against the Kurds after the first Gulf War the United States encouraged the Shia to in southern Iraq to rise up against the government of Saddam Hussein the government that of course we hadn't dislodged at that time because as as general Schwartzkoff said in his his autobiography if we had done that we'd be in Iraq still he said Iraq would prove to be a tar baby from which the United States could never extricate itself that was general Schwartzkoff's defense of the decision that the first president Bush made not to go on to Baghdad and attempt regime change after the the hot war phase of the first Gulf War ended the American government did encourage the Shia to rise up but then abandoned them and allowed Saddam Hussein to put down the rebellion by using the air power that he was still allowed to exercise in southern Iraq at that time why that because relatedly we had had recognized that is the first Bush administration at least recognized that if the Shia had been successful the winner really would be Iran and the winner of the present war is Iran more than any anyone else we have removed from the region the major the major balancing power against Iranian population wealth and military power and we have created in Iran a majority Shia state inclined on religious grounds to have a warm relations with Iran and cooler relations with Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia has great wealth and it has advanced arms but it has a small population and would not be able to hold up in a sustained war with the country as large as as Iran so we've created a very very difficult situation for ourselves that we could have foreseen if we had been thinking a little bit more about religion and about the recent history of inter religious violence alongside a measure of inter ethnic violence within Iraq is there a way to to rescue victory or from from this very difficult situation to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat as the as the old saying goes is there some way if we even don't bother to call it victory is there some way to turn an unhappy situation into a happy one honestly I don't see one I think at the end of of this process however it ends we will find that we are poorer we are weaker and we've shed a great deal of American blood and a very great deal of Iraqi blood Iraq has lost on the average each month as many people as the United States lost on once on September 11th 2001 two million people of an Iraqi population of only 24 million are now living outside the borders of their country and another million are displaced within the country so I don't think that in retrospect it's very likely that we will see that we have found a happy outcome that we could rescue from this unhappy situation no one would be would be more pleased than I to be proven wrong about this and in in the time remaining maybe or as our time up we have we have some time remaining good and the time remaining I'd be happy to hear your comments on this I I'm I observe that this is a group that that follows public affairs very closely and and that's to your benefit into the country's benefit I always tell my my students to make friends with each other to make friends with each other and talk about what you hear in class you will learn much more effectively from your classmates than from your professor think back on your own education that's how you learned yes I heard a speaker on Saturday night who was talking about the underlying motives of the president as it relates to the invasion of Iraq and one of those is not to remove our stuff from Iraq but to develop a permanent base and presence in the Middle East and that's why we have made such an an inroad there can you comment on that United States has constructed I believe five very large very permanent looking bases and our embassy in Baghdad is enormous it is larger than the Vatican City and fortified far more massively than the Vatican City is fortified yes it looks that way but if that investment is stranded it won't be the first time in history that a very large investment has been stranded if if the incoming administration doesn't wish America to remain in Iraq and has the backing of a majority of the American people then we won't however much money we have spent the the question to which your question goes most immediately though is this pending agreement between the United States and Iraq it would be under the terms of that agreement that American troops would remain stationed in those bases on what has some have called the Korea strategy or the South Korea strategy we've we've stayed in South Korea now for decades our presence there hasn't been that unbearable or unwelcome to the South Korean population could something similar take place in Iraq so long as we stayed mostly on our bases and only came out in case of need seems a tricky kind of comparison because at the time that the after the the truce the armistice in in South Korea South the South itself was at peace so there was very little occasion for the Americans to engage in in further combat the occasions for further combat would be immediate in in Iraq that's why this agreement deserves so much more attention than I believe it has has received the expiration of the mandate and the renewal of the of the mandate for just one year on condition that it be the last came just before Christmas this year the the announcement was made I think by design at a time when no one was reading the newspaper or or following the news on on television President Cheney's recent visit to the Middle East I think had President Cheney oh excuse me you've heard you've heard the old joke yeah the you know let's not be too hard on on President Bush after he's got a tough job after all he's just a heartbeat away from the presidency anyway I believe that that's why that's why Cheney was recently there to try to hasten this process along and build support forward in the region but time will tell yes so if you if you so you've described a situation where there's this ongoing religious civil war kind of so if we separate out the American influence and just ask those people or thoughtful people on either side of what what do they expect to have happened or want to have happened do they think one side is going to win what what's their vision of their their own future of Iraq well so far as I know from my reading there are two competing divisions on either side yes there are those who are keeping their powder dry waiting for the time when they will have a free hand and and anxious to win definitively the whole thing the the Shia who are now in the ascendancy want to consolidate their power and will be happy to accept a help from Iran in doing that the Sunni are counting on funding at least from sympathetic Sunni Arabs in the region in in Jordan and above all in Saudi Arabia but on either side I believe there are people who are prepared for a tacit division of the country there has already been such an extensive mutual ethnic cleansing that the two populations are now far more concentrated regionally than they once were the question is that the the obstacle that would stand in the path of people who would want to this kind of stand down this kind of standoff if you want an acceptance of of the status quo and a stilling of the guns is control of Iraqi wealth if if Iraqi oil wealth is is concentrated in the as it is in the Shia regions and in the Kurdish regions then the Sunnis will be left out in the cold fiscally and even though there are only 20 percent of the population 20 percent of the population can make life unbearable for the remaining 80 percent so we'd have to anticipate that that there would be violence after after we leave the question is granting that and granting that we'd like to see the the country at least at peace can we can we bring that about by doing what we're now doing continuing to arm the two sides and continue to train them and doesn't seem that that will that will work that the two sides then are just waiting for us to go and our our national defense taken in the round is is being harmed it's time I think to start to stop talking so much about supporting the troops and start talking about defending the nation if our forces are spread too thin we may have to recognize that that this is a task that they cannot do and that the current policy of arming both sides will not enable them to do so this is a part of that recognizing ourselves to the fact that there isn't a good outcome all outcomes are going to be bad one one way or another is going to be chosen we're not going to be happy with it and that's not a very American kind of outcome you know we like we like to win we like happy endings yes hi can you can you speak a bit to the role of Saudi Arabia in this because I thought that at the beginning when Bush came into power that he was very close with the Saudis they had a special representative how could I mean couldn't the Saudis have influence I mean why didn't they if it's tilting the power so great well in fairness to to Saudi Arabia like every other country bordering Iraq it opposed the American invasion the rhetoric used at the time was that Saddam Hussein had attacked his neighbors actually Saddam with weapons of mass destruction actually Saddam Hussein and his forces had used chemical weapons against Iran and to a lesser degree against Kuwait if it had been stated that way people would have understood better why Turkey Syria Saudi Arabia Jordan and even Egypt Hosni Mubarak of Egypt said if America does this where there is one Osama bin Laden there will be 100 so they were opposed and despite all efforts on the American side to produce at least rhetoric at least verbal lip service from the Saudis to what we're doing they've never offered it they've never come through so whatever the closeness of the bush family to the Saudi royal family it hasn't produced any support in in in this case after the the Khomeini revolution in Iran in 1979 the Saudis were alarmed Ayatollah Khomeini had wanted to replace them in control of the holy places of Islam and and for a time the Khomeini people were exporting their form of Islam around the world at the moment Wahhabi Muslim extremism as exported by Saudi Arabia is far far more potent to force worldwide than than anything coming out of Iran yes so there's been rhetoric about us invading Iran and what would be the rationale and and as you say we're running out of forces could you just comment on this whole idea and what the rationale would be and what might happen well there is there is great concern in Israel that Iran is developing nuclear weapons joined to missile capacity to deliver those weapons as far away as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem if Iran were ever to do that of course it would kill as many Palestinians as as Israelis but that is one factor that that surely bears on this as regards Iraq the benefit of an attack on Iran leaving aside the the nuclear matter for the moment would be simply to weaken it and and to prevent the emergence of a full-blown Iraqi Iranian power axis a kind of Shia axis joining joining Baghdad and in Tehran it's difficult to see how the elimination of what Iran is now doing in Iraq would actually bring about peace in that country it it might eliminate whatever exacerbating elements come about by the presence of Iranian arms and Iranian influence militarily and diplomatically on the government that we have put in place but it certainly wouldn't reconcile the Sunnis to their fate it wouldn't bring about peace between the Kurds and the Sunnis it wouldn't solve problems between contending Shia groups in the south and also its potential to send oil now over a hundred dollars a barrel up to a hundred and fifty dollars a barrel because of the disruption of shipping through the straits of Hormuz and perhaps an Iranian attack on on Saudi oil facilities is pretty terrifying there's pretty clearly a deep division and within the military about the possibility of our doing this and it seems to me from what I can pick up that the side opposed to an invasion of Iran is now more powerful than the the side in favor of it will of course we don't want our government to take orders from our military we don't want to be a military state but their opinions do come for something in private deliberations okay we don't have too much time left yes first of all thank you for coming to UCI and welcome to Southern California thank you we're glad to have you here secondly would you comment please on what you see as the role of the Kurds in terms of we have heard comments about their potential role as power brokers in the balance of power but I would be interested in your perspective what's most important to recall about the Kurds just now is that there is a kind of quiet war underway between Turkey and Kurdish anti Turkish Kurdish terrorists operating from remote areas of Kurdistan Turkey was also opposed to the American invasion of of Iraq and Turkey is our most important ally in the region it is a member of NATO it's a secular state in a Muslim country and the government there at the moment which is like the Christian Democratic Party of Germany it is it is Muslim but it is not stripping all Turks of their civil rights by any means has actually brought about a measure of peace between Kurds and Turks within Turkey that is greater than we've ever seen before under the very extreme secular and extreme nationalist regime allowing a very large role to the Turkish army the Kurds suffered far more than they're suffering under the moderately Islamic government that's in place now I would think that the best American course would be to exert every effort to bring about peace between the Kurds and the Turks across the northern border of Iraq that way Kurdish oil Kurdish trade could flow north and south rather than north and west rather than south through the Arab regions because the the prospect of reconciliation between the Kurds and the Sunni Arabs who were Saddam Hussein's principal collaborators in his Arabization program you know with many Turks were displaced and and Sunni Arabs were brought in as settlers has left such legacy of bitterness and there's considerable fear among the Kurds that the surge and the creation of this movement called Sahwa or awakening among the among the Sunni Arabs will eventually lead to a resumption of Sunni Arab attacks on them the Kurds in general have used their their power is what you might call I think you were calling the swing vote in Iraq in favor of the preservation of of the Sunni rather the Shia regime in the green zone in Baghdad I wouldn't expect that really to to change at all I I expect the it to be two against one more or less Kurds and Shia against Sunni Arabs going forward I just wanted to before you talked on I just want to let you all know we're running a look our musicians are late so we're going to just keep going with the questions until our musicians arrive and if they don't arrive in time then we'll end after the question so we're going to keep going but I might have to cut you off abruptly if they come in okay so it's closing music that's great I loved coming in this morning so the sound of the piano by the way what a nice mood you create you know it's hard to get up early and come to hear a guy talk about Iraq but they get a nice breakfast and some music trust me this is easy so I don't know if this question is cultural and or religious or not so I'll try it anyway the word is oil the word is oil not going back to why we got into Iraq but moving forward where is the oil going now and I understand some it's being stolen it's being not utilized to to rebuild the nation and so forth where is it going now and what role does it have to play in the future I have called oil the love that dare not speak its name on the part of the of the current administration if you go back over President Bush's speeches on Iraq you will find almost no mention of oil and when the when the subject does come up it is spoken of in in euphemisms as if it really was a nasty topic such as a fair exploitation and development of the mineral resources of Iraq oil petroleum is a is a mineral I guess it's not a vegetable not an animal so I guess it's mineral but it that conceals rather than reveals the fact that this is a concern if you read the the Security Council resolutions licensing or authorizing would be the better word the operations of the multinational force in Iraq you'll you'll see that the those very resolutions get the the military matter done with fairly expeditiously and then they turn to the oil matter even before the first Security Council resolutions addressing this matter were passed the occupying powers had created something called the development fund for Iraq which was a kind of escrow fund into which oil revenues all oil revenues would be deposited and the development fund for Iraq was governed by five international parties including the secretary general of the of the United Nations the head of the World Bank the International Monetary Fund after the Iraqi government was created after the first elections it could send one member and and then the the head of an Arab development fund headquartered in the offices of OPEC headquarters of OPEC in Kuwait this group continues to nominally or legally to to govern the disposition of Iraqi oil revenue when it receives it but as you have just reminded us there's quite a bit of black market oil being diverted from normal sale to the profit of of the government and into other channels back channels so that the that just where the money is going is is unclear the resolution that creates the development fund for Iraq controlling the oil will expire on December 31st as well unless it it is renewed or replaced and what would replace it would be the long stalled oil legislation in Iraq if Iraq can pass this legislation then the existing international arrangement governing the oil could terminate but it the Iraqi legislators haven't wanted to pass the the legislation in the form in which it now exists because that form diverse so much more oil revenue to the foreign oil companies than the comparable agreements in Saudi Arabia in Kuwait it's a very favorable arrangement for oil companies and they think that that they want something they know they want something that will put more money in Iraqi pockets they also want provisions for the hiring of Iraqi workers Iraqi engineers and so forth rather than the importation of foreign talent so far no resolution of this has has come about but that matter is coming to a head and it's another matter as as I think you were hinting that it seems we're not talking about not by accident and there are those who would like somehow to come to bring this to a resolution when the public isn't looking okay our musicians are here so we can stop this grim topic and and have a nice time thank you thank you for your attention


When the narcissist realises you're better off When they realise you're in a more desirable and advantageous position without them When they realise that you are in a more favourable situation The narcissist try to break you down They try to destroy you They try to make your life miserable, but you are still able to live your life undisturbed You're still able to do what you need to do, and the narcissist sees this They realise that you're better off without them And this does have an effect on them. They are envious and jealous of your success They want to take it away from you Because they feel like your success is taking something away from them They feel entitled to you and anything that you possess So when you move on and you become successful without them It makes them feel like you have robbed them or something as though you took something that rightfully belongs to them When really That's what they try to do to you They have difficulty recognising that you are a separate person with your own life and resources In the narcissist world everything is enmeshed Everything is entangled together Where everything is just an extension of them They do not see the separation between you and them, which is why they can never be happy They're constantly trying to pull you back into their realm While you're consistently demonstrating your separateness and individuality Which feels like robbery to the narcissist. It feels like you are taking something away from them Which is why if you move on and become successful without them They feel like it's unfair They become very bitter and resentful towards you Even if they manage to move on and become successful They're still miserable Nothing can make the narcissist happy Nothing can fill the void inside of them Which is why they're always so angry Which is why they always want to make people miserable Because they're not happy and no matter how much they consume it never fills that void They still feel like they're missing something Which is why they constantly feel the need to take it with a happiness of other people Misery loves company And happy people like to share their troubles with other people They like other people to be unhappy too When the narcissist realises you're better off without them When they realise you have more money which you can use to enjoy your life And to live the life and go to the life And you're happier and healthier without them When they see that They can't stand it It really eats them up inside They return to you because they're hoping to witness your pain and suffering They want to see the aftermath of everything they did to you They want you to be worse off without them They want you to be in a less advantageous position They want you to be less fortunate They want you to have less money and possessions They want you to be in a worse situation Than before you met them so that you can't move on So that you can't become a healthy productive person Because although they constantly complained about how they expected you to be better That's actually the last thing they want to see They want to keep you stuck in a situation where you can't progress Where you can't become a better person Narcissists are known for constantly complaining about how they want people and things to improve But when you actually put in the work to be that which they profess they like and support That is when all hell will break loose They will do whatever it takes to bring you down They will do whatever it takes to destroy you Because of how it reflects on them It makes them feel small It makes them feel like they're not good enough So they want to tear down the very thing that they are envious of Because you are a constant reminder to them of everything they are not Of everything they wish they could be When the narcissist keeps you stuck it makes them feel better about themselves It gives them satisfaction They want your life to be so messed up That you're not going to be good for anyone else after they're gone They want you to be stuck in a situation where you cannot escape Where you cannot progress Where you cannot be anything better or greater Because then they feel like they have control over you And their control over you equates to their control over their own emotional state They may try to hide their emotions initially But eventually it will come out They can only bottom it up for so long Until they're finally forced to express how they feel Without even realising just how ridiculous they sound Because they are offended by your happiness It really gets to them They cannot share your experience They cannot be happy for you They feel like you are taking their happiness away from them When the narcissist realises you're better off They thought you were done They thought it was all over for you After everything they did to you After everything they did to try to break you down To ruin your reputation To strip you of everything that makes you who you are And then to see you emerge from the destruction and ruin that they had caused To see you walk away from the remains of everything that they had destroyed And live your life as though they don't even matter As though they don't even exist And without any desire to get revenge or affect them in any way It makes them feel physically sick In some situations They might pretend like they're okay But trust and believe that it's really getting to them They can't stand it When they realise you're better off without them They may try to return to you They may hoover you Because they want a slice of the pie They want to benefit from your hard work and dedication Following your escape from their attempts to destroy you They want to partake in the fruits of your labour And they're hoping that they can manipulate you Into returning to them By love bombing you Or making you feel guilty But you need to cut them off You cannot entertain the illusion that they are trying to portray If you let them back in It will be worse than it was before Because now they have to punish you for leaving in the first place And punish you for everything you showed to them Everything you managed to build while they were gone There is no second chances for narcissists Because they're never going to change They cannot partake in what you have established They can only hate and envy you It's time to return to yourself Focus on your mental, emotional and physical health Focus on your happiness And leave the narcissists in the pit that they created for you Thank you for watching I hope this video resonates with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe If you would like to donate My PayPal link is in the video description Coaching inquiries You can email me at coaching.narc-sur-viver.co.uk Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon


Okay, let's start off. So I'm David. I'll be taking you for this webinar and welcome to the Deep Brown Consulting Talent Development webinar. Our topic for today is or for topic for the month is micro learning. So micro learning is our topic for the month. And so we're going to be talking about that. So micro learning we're saying is a modern learners performance support tool. So that's micro learning. And that's what we're going to be talking about. And you guys can please feel free to type into the chat. And let's discuss on the chat and everything so that we can interact. I like this to be as interactive as possible. All right. So let's move on. So a little bit about us. We Deep Brown Consulting. We do training, consulting and payroll training as our core service which you offer to we say where the analyst hub. So anything analysts need financial modeling, anything an analyst needs a data analyst, a financial analyst, a reporting analyst, a sales analyst, a HR analyst, every single role has some analysis task or the other. There's no role that doesn't have an analysis task. So that we concentrate on that analysis task and show you how best to do the analysis and reporting. So that's what we do. Consulting we also do that analysis and we build solutions, reporting solutions for clients for payroll. We have an online payroll platform that guarantees confidentiality. I'm sure you know about the bickering. Some people will be talking about someone else's pay that they saw. I mean that can never happen with our application because we eliminate the leakages which we know exist in most organizations. So that's what we do. All right. So here let me just move on. We have affiliations with three major organizations, Financial Modeling Institute where there is a Canadian based worldwide institution for financial modeling which they have three certifications. Level one is advanced financial modeler, level two is chartered financial modeler and level three is master financial modeler. I think it's one of the most important certifications or newer certifications out there. It really proves to you if you are recruiting and you want to be sure that you're recruiting a finance person that's up to speed and knows his onions, he needs to be able to build models and use models to explain certain things in the business and advise management. And to prove you build models, it's very difficult to know someone that really builds a model. You say CV and say yes, I'm a modular but if you have the advanced financial modeler certification, you definitely know how to build models because you'll be building a model in the exam. So that's a very key certification we'd like to promote and the nice thing is the exams are now available in Nigeria. So that's a very cool positive so people can write the exam now in Nigeria. So that's cool. All right. And then Microsoft, we are also partners to Microsoft and then we also partners to ATD or we have members that are members of Association for Talented Development. Great. So what is our courses? We have courses as I said, analyst courses, financial modeling, business intelligence, Excel for business, Office 365 and financial modeling and the rest. So I want to just quickly jump to our topic for today. Here we're going to look through a disc, we're basically going to describe the typical characteristics of any microfinance course, identify the three major reasons why learners are disengaged and we recall the four reasons why the modern worker needs microlearning and then we talk about applying a six step approach to instructional design for microlearning. So this is what we're going to cover quite a bit, quite a lot and I would like you guys to engage, be very, type various questions out, anything you want to know, let's know, type it out so that we can all work together or at least learn together, so to say. All right. So any questions? Let me wait for any questions.  Once you click on that hand tool, it means you want to talk just like in a classroom, right?  All right. So talk at any time. Great. So let's move on. Let's see if we can reduce this. Okay, great. Sorry, just some technical, some small technical stuff I was doing. So what is microlearning? Let me ask you guys a question. What do you think microlearning is? Let me see if we can ask you a question. Do you currently do microlearning? So how many of us currently develop microlearning courses? Let me just ask that. How many of us develop microlearning? So you have a poll right there on your screen. So can you just click and answer how many of us develop microlearning courses? Oh, this is a very experienced group. 50-50. Call a friend. 50-50. Okay. So 50-50. 50% of us, yes, 50% of us say no. All right. So 50-50. Oh, that's good. That's good enough. That means we'll be able to have some good discussions then. So all right, let's get back to the slides. Let me get back to the chat. See how the chat is going. So right, I have this quote from Winston Churchill. He says, I'm always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught. So that's a modern learner, right? Always ready to learn but they don't really like being taught. Microlearning, simple definition is microlearning is learning in small steps. It's basically bite-sized learning. So you're learning in bite sizes in chunks. That's how you're learning chunks. So learning is short-term, digestible and easy, easily manageable. And that is really how human beings learn. So if you think about it when you're at work and you want to quickly find a solution to one very small problem you have when maybe you're working on Word or working somewhere, you go online and where's the place you go to? Most of us go to YouTube. YouTube is one of the most important microlearning sites out there. There are probably 1.2 billion people in the world that use YouTube and it has so many videos. But the key thing about YouTube is it is not what we call curated content. So it's not contents that someone has sat down to kind of bring all the correct or someone verified that is correct. I'm sure you've heard a lot about fake news, fake news. So curated content is different from YouTube. YouTube content is excellent. I mean, and if you find an excellent channel or recommend ours, for example, you see content that is already curated and free. So we're going to look through and understand how we take this microlearning thing and make it practical for our businesses. So why do we need microlearning? Yeah, why do we need microlearning? As you see, I've done a technique here where you're basically reading it as it's coming out one at a time. A critical analysis of your client, the modern learner will give you the answer to why we need microlearning. So who is the modern learner? Who is that person that I'm calling the modern learner? Who is he? So let's have a look at who the modern learner is. I'm showing you now a slide of the modern learner. Now this was the source of this is by Deloitte. I think Deloitte kind of put this together.  So this modern learner, there's so much going on in this slide, for example, this is, I mean, when you look at it, you see too many things happening at the same time. But I'm going to use this slide to do the most of the talk, most of the talk around microlearning, right? So I'm going to use this slide. So let me make you focus on one thing first. So you're focusing on the 1% in the middle. 1% of typical work week, right? Is all that employees have to focus on training and development, just 1%. So that's the only time that they have to really focus on learning. I don't know if that sounds strange. Does that sound strange to you? Can I see people commenting on any comments? No, I'm typing in the comments. Comments are too quiet. Yeah, what do you think? How much time, how much of your time do you spend? Well, how much of a time do you have not even spend to focus on training and development? What percentage of your own time currently? Just type, type in the chat, type in the chat, what percentage of your time is spent on talent development? I know, well, in the office, I know personally, I spend a whole lot of time developing myself. But you tell me how much of your own time is spent on talent development. Have a very quiet audience. Okay, let me focus on something else again in this, the modern learner infographic by Bersin, I mean by Deloitte. So I'll focus on the other parts of the top right there called on tethering or on tethered. So on tethered, what do we mean by on tethered? That the modern learner is on tethered. So the modern learner is on tethered. Here we have some statistics that is 7% of the global workforce is expected to be mobile. Now this data was done quite a while ago in 2015, but they expected to be mobile by 2015. Now I think that in Nigeria, especially in Africa, most people are already mobile. I mean, Nigeria has one of the highest internet penetrations in the world, internet penetration in the world is amazing. And 90% of the people use their mobile phones to go online 90%. So even in Nigeria is mostly mobile, people are more mobile. Yeah, 30% of time employees do most of their work somewhere other than the employer location or 30% of the time people are doing work somewhere else, not really the employee employer's location. Now that means they're on tethered, they're not connected to the office, they're on tethered from the office, right? I think that percentage is going to grow. So many people are working from home now. And the technology, okay, right now I'm training or doing a training using an online platform and anybody could be anywhere in the world. I could be doing this for 1000 people all over the world. And it's the same thing. I don't need to be there physically to train in a classroom. Right. So and then also the next one there is 20%. What's 20% mean? 20% of workforce comprised of temps, contractors and freelancers. So this is the today reality of the modern learner. Yeah, with all what happens with all of this that I'm going to share, all these things kind of lead to the only training that will be effective for this modern learner is micro learning. That's where we're heading. So let me take another focus. Let's look at the on demand side. What do we mean by on demand? Right. So have a look at this visual. I'll just give you a few seconds to have a look at it. So is this true of you that employees are assessing information and learning different differently than just a few years ago? Everything is quite different than what they used to learn a few years ago. Yeah. Is that true or false for you? I think it's true for me. And I'm going to type into the chat to encourage you guys to chat. I think it's on demand. I need things quick. I need things done. I need things now. On demand, on demand.  I sent a tweet just the other day. I said, how many of us are addicted? I said, are you addicted? So my Twitter handle is a D Brown analyst. I said most of us are addicts and we don't know it because when you wake up in the morning, let's assume you're married or you have your significant other, you wake up in the morning. Is the first thing you do saying hello to your significant other or the first thing you do is take your phone and look at your phone. Can you answer in the chat? The first thing you do is look at your phone or you say hello to your significant other. Well, I probably take my phone, which is really bad. So what just that tells you is that you're addicted to your phone and your phone is almost like a drug. So your phone is almost like a drug because you need things on demand. You need to know what's happening every single time.  So it's an addiction, but that is the modern learner. It seems the phone attention spans are very low. People are increasingly turning to their smartphones every single time. So that's what we're saying here and it's true. It's nearly true all over the world, not just the US or everywhere. Another key aspect of the modern learner is collaboration. So what do we mean here? There's some few statistics here. I'd like you to have a look at this. All of this statistics tied to the fact that the modern learner is very different from who he used to be quite a while ago and because the modern learner is different, we need to change the way we train them. L and D needs to change. Learning and development needs to change to accommodate for the modern learner and even millennials. Millennials are the real modern learner and I'll advise you go online and look for a video by Simon Sinek about how he explains the millennials and how millennials in the workforce should be treated and how millennials in the workforce or millennials find it so difficult adjusting to the workforce. It's quite an interesting and insightful discussion. So here we're seeing collaboration. 80% of workforce learning happens where on-the-job interactions with peers, teammates, and managers. So 80% is really on the job. So you can imagine on the job you're asking on the job, you always ask questions to the person to your left or the person to your right. Please can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? Now, if you had a training system where the can you help me with this is actually one two-minute video, you easy to access, you go to your portal or in your office, type in the question, you easily access that template or that process and you're done and you just move on with your work. That is micro learning and that is so, so important to improve people's performance in the office. So you have that collaborative spirit and most of us obviously have Facebook accounts and all the social media. Now, the last part there is empowered. So how can you empower your workforce? So do they have opportunities to learn? Do they can they choose their own course or does the management say, hey, this is what you're learning and that's it? How empowered are they? The modern worker wants to be empowered, needs to be empowered. Yeah, here they say 62% of IT professionals who report having paid for their own training, 62%. So IT professionals don't get enough training in their office. They pay for their own training and they come back to the office and use it. So that's a big staggering statistic. So what about you? How much training do you pay for? I know quite a couple of people that have come to us for one of our courses and said they actually paid themselves. They asked their employer for vacation to come and do a training and that training was going to affect their work. That training was going to help them in their work. So the employer should have at least said, okay, do you know what, go for this training is good, you're paying for yourself, but we'll give you those vacation days. So you don't use your vacation days for training that you need to do your work properly. So things are changing and the modern learner and the modern L&D professional needs to know how to improve performance based on using these tools and these ideas in micro learning. The modern learner is constantly distracted. Currently, right now, I'm probably sure that you have various tabs open and stuff and you're looking at different tabs at different times and you're distracted, but that's what the modern learner is usually constantly distracted. And that's one of the aspects to distraction is another key trait of the modern learner.  So number of times online every day. You have five days, what does that mean? So these are the number of times you're on the internet every day. So it's like prior to this, I mean they were on the internet like five times every day and then now it's 27 times every day. Maybe you check things, it sounds so ridiculous, but if you think about it, it's true. True but as hard and true, right? So anyway, that's it. Early days of the internet five days. So you think about your kids or the millennials, they probably are on the internet 90 times a day. Every single time you check your phone, you're on the internet. Check your phone, you're on the internet. So it's addictive, but it's something that you need to think about. Another thing about distraction, knowledge workers are constantly distracted by millions of website apps and video clips. Distraction, always distracted. Another distraction statistic, five minutes. What are we saying here? Five workers now get interrupted as frequently as every five minutes. Now, the issue is this, if you want to focus and do some work in your office, you need a chunk of time, at least like 20 minutes of solid focus for you to do proper work. But if you keep getting distracted every five minutes, then you end up doing absolutely nothing or very, very little work. So the effective work you're probably doing a day, instead of eight hour day, you do effective work for like what? Two hours if you're lucky and that's why people stay late in the office because then there are less distractions in the evening and then you're able to do more work. So sometimes people come very early to work, maybe six o'clock, do a big chunk of their work very early. And then when people come in, start distracting, hey, how are you doing? This is that. So work culture, the office environment needs to also, there's so much distraction going on. And that's just unfortunately what the modern worker has to scale through. Another distraction story is nine. What do we mean? What number nine? What do we mean there? People unlock their smartphones up to nine times every hour. Now, be honest, during this small time of this webinar, how many times have we checked your smartphone? Be honest and type in the chat. How many times? Honestly, even me that's actually doing the webinar itself, I think I've checked my phone like three times already. I've done, I've done, I've checked my phone like three times. That's, that's really bad. For how many times have you checked your phone while doing this webinar? Oh, it's only Clarissa has been honest here. Nobody else wants to out themselves. Okay. So you are probably even more distracted. Should I assume that? No? Okay. Okay. All right. So that's distraction. The modern learner is constantly overwhelmed, constantly overwhelmed. That's another trait of the modern learner. Another number that comes there is 41. What do we mean here? Constantly overwhelmed. Yeah. 41% of time workers spend on, for 1% of times, workers spend on things that are, that offer little personal satisfaction and do not help them get work done. Interesting. 41%. But that's, that's sad. I hope not. I don't spend up to that, but this is the average really, this is based on real statistics. Right? 41% of time workers spend on things that often, that offer little personal satisfaction and do not help them get their work done. So this is part of the distraction. So as I said, that five-minute distraction, every five minutes you get distracted. So we're saying 45, 41% of your day is really wasted because of distractions. Another statistic about being overwhelmed is two-thirds of knowledge workers actually complain that they don't have time to do their jobs. Obviously, with all those other statistics, it's true. Two-thirds of them, they just don't have time to do their jobs. So focus on, it takes a lot of discipline though, but overwhelmed by all sorts. Another key attribute of the modern learner is impatience. Modern learner is pretty impatient. And so a few statistics come to mind from this infographic. So if you want to grab somebody's attention in your website or stuff like that, you only have unfortunately five seconds to do it. So you have, or let's say, between five to 10 seconds. If you don't grab their attention, they basically go somewhere else.  So you have very short attention span and you need to grab people's attention with very interesting-looking visuals. So for example, the visuals I'm showing here, the reason I'm grabbing your attention to the center, because you can see that the background has been faded out and I want to grab your attention so I put something right there in the center. You need to put all sorts of different techniques, best practice techniques for you to be able to show your visuals, especially when you're using slides properly and effectively. So another key statistic of impatience is four minutes. What are we saying here? Most learners won't watch video longer than that. This is statistically proven. In fact, when YouTube do the analysis for what videos are going to be top rated, they have certain algorithms they use and they know on average how much time people spend on the video. And if people don't spend a certain percentage of time on your video, it will not be counted as watched. It will not be counted as you know how you see how many people view your video. It will be counted by Google. So four minutes, that's the attention span. So if that's the attention span, four minutes, just take note of that. Before we go through the next section, which is six steps to design a micro learning, I'm going to play a very short video for you. So a very short video that explains micro learning, just a one minute video. So I want you to watch this and we're going to have a small discussion after you watch the video. So let's play just quickly. That's coming up on your screen in a few seconds. When it comes to learning at work, we all want to be great at what we do. But becoming a top performer isn't something that happens all at once. Real improvement is only possible a little bit at a time. That's why micro learning is the most effective approach to workplace training. Micro learning provides short bursts of information that can be applied right away, helping people build the skills they need to be successful at their jobs. Think of these bite-sized pieces of learning like sentences. Each conveys just one complete thought. But when you put a few of them together, you build a more complex idea. Each micro learning moment is made up of a digestible morsel of information combined with a short practice exercise. It's hyper specific, so you can get the right help right when you need it. Like when composing an email, working with new spreadsheet software or practicing a big speech. Bit by bit, these micro learning moments add up to better job performance today and continual improvement going forward. Micro learning isn't just breaking up content into smaller pieces. It's a way to make learning digestible and effective, transforming not just what you know, but what you actually do every day. Great, so that's micro learning. We're back. What did you gain from that? What did you understand about what micro learning really is? Hello? Yeah, so I'd like us to type that in the chat. What did you gain? What's the main thing you gain from that? And what do you now understand? Or do you understand micro learning a little bit more? Just type something in the chat. Maybe you type this before you put your smartphone away, but it distracts you a lot. You need to switch off your phone sometimes.  You don't need to answer everybody all the time. Just switch it off. But it's addictive. It's what is a dopamine charge. You get dopamine. Dopamine is like a drug. Really, when you make you happy, you see a text message, you see a response to something you've posted. It's dopamine. That's what it is. So micro learning, let me show you one or two things. When you want to use micro learning, there are certain steps. So we've created an e-learning platform, for example. And one of our rules in our e-learning platform is that no video should be more than five minutes. But really, we just use that as a rule, a general rule. So as much as possible, we never allow video in our e-learning platform to be more than five minutes.  So you can watch that five minutes and you're okay, you've learned something. You don't need to continue watching, although you'll be encouraged to continue watching to kind of learn more. But it can stand on its own, that tiny five minute chunk. So my question to you is this, how many minutes do you consider as micro learning? How many minutes, let's assume it's video, right? How many minutes of content or video would you consider it to be micro learning?  Let's see. I'll ask you that question right now. So can you answer that question on the poll and let's discuss. Okay, great. I can see that people have finished voting four to six minutes since they're born, right? Four to six minutes. One, two, three minutes, 25% of us think, six, six to 10 minutes, another 25%. And then four to six, 50%. I think I agree, 46%. But then you have to think about this. If you know TED Talks, TED Talks are 18 minutes. If you check all your TED Talks, the most on average, they should be 18 minutes TED Talks. So TED Talks, how many of you listen to TED Talks? I'm sure quite a lot of us here do, right? Let me just end this poll. And TED Talks is one, there's something else, one other presentation format called Pechakcha. Let me type that down for you. In fact, in our office, we've started doing Pechakcha weeks. Every, every Thursday in our office, we have someone that's presenting on Pechakcha. I don't know who presented today or is in the office now. So interesting. So concept, you learned something and you want to present on something, you need to present 20 slides in 20 seconds each slide, 2020. So 20 slides, 20 seconds each slide. And the slides should automatically be rolling. You shouldn't click. You should put the slides on auto-run. So your slides are running regardless of you. So every 20 seconds, next slide, 20 seconds, next slide, 20 seconds, next slide. So you are forced to know your content in detail. And you are forced to reduce it into 20 seconds with one concept. So what advice to do really is each slide just talks about one thing. And because each slide talks about one thing, you should remove text. You shouldn't put text all over your slide. You should just put a picture with maybe very, very, very, very, very minimal text. And that picture basically depicts what it is you're saying. So when you're presenting, the slide is behind you with a picture and everybody's listening to you or watching you talk about that concept. So I think it's a wonderful way of presenting. It really is a really wonderful way of presenting. So let's look through and let's say the six steps to design a micro learning course. Let me go through what I think are the six steps to design a micro learning course. So step one is you need to determine your learning objectives. That's step one. So six steps to designing, you need to determine what it is your learning objectives. What are your learning objectives? This is so critical. So when you're designing a course, you ask yourself, okay, my learning objective is, let's think I'm designing a financial modeling course. My learning objective is to produce or at the end of this course, how do you write your learning objectives? At the end of this course, you should be able to, and then you now write your learning objectives under that. So you should be able to document the process for employing a new staff. Something like that, maybe for HR. Or you should be able to walk through the steps for putting on, I don't know, the generator. So the key thing there is an action word. Your learning objectives have to have something that you can measure. It has to be measurable. It has to be smart, right? So it has to be measurable. And because once your learning objective is measurable, then you'll be able to actually calculate and see did this learning happen at the end of the day? Did the learning happen or not? And if you can calculate or see or confirm whether the learning happened or not, because you've written very clear learning objectives, then you can calculate return on investment. Then you can calculate impact. How impactful has this learning been? So determining your learning objectives is very key if you want to design micro learning course. The second important step is to choose an appropriate design method. So choose an appropriate design method. In choosing an appropriate design method, let me show you how we do our courses online. Maybe I'll use that as a sample. So let me just put that up for you now. Just change this up. So here I was saying choose. I said choose an appropriate, the step was choose an appropriate design method. So if we come to one of our online courses, let's just go to one of our online courses. So this is our online e-learning platform. And the methodology we've used for the e-learning platform is micro learning. And micro learning using the video, video as our design media. So our design method is video. And if you look at it, let's pick a course like this one is Learn Excel Essentials for Reporting for Free. This is a free course. In fact, if you guys are interested in this, let me just give you the link on the chat so you can actually get these free courses. We have some free courses there for you to enjoy. So I'm going to click on this course and I'll show you how we went through that process of designing it. So we started off by writing a learning objectives, right, which was the first step. Then in choosing the appropriate design method, so we thought, okay, video is really what we're going to use. We're going to use video, but then we're going to use five, five minute bursts. So our videos are going to be in five minute bursts. So here is like the instructional design. Welcome to the course and stuff like that. Each of these videos, let me say how Excel works, for example, let me go there. I don't know if it's going to open up. Let's see. I hope I've logged in properly. Just want to show you. Okay. So if I play this, I don't know if you can hear it, but that's another point. So you can see here, you have designed this content, designed this course. You have each video, everything, everything is in chunks. Now the media is not only a video. This is video, right? This is a video, you watch the video. You also can download. So click on this is actual download for you to practice. So you click on this to practice what it is you want to learn. And then here, this one here to the left here is text. So this is just simple text, just simple text that someone can read. So there are three media as text. There's some downloads of some material or pre-work you need to do. And then there's a video. And then of course, there's also a quiz. So you have a quiz. This is also all the design, choosing the appropriate design methods. So apart from the videos, we also have a discuss forum to look at this discuss forum. Okay. Someone has asked a question here. He can see that the discuss forum for the learner, the learner also wants to be able to ask questions very quickly, ask quick questions and requires quick answers, isn't it? So that's your discussion. But here, this person is saying, I'm unable to view the last two videos, how Excel works, the managing dates, blah, blah, blah. And then you can see the response by the trainer. See the response by the trainer. So people can discuss directly instantly. You know, one of those things is people are distracted, they need information immediately. So all of that should be in one platform. You'll be able to discuss with the trainer in the same platform, able to watch the videos, able to download the materials, you're able to do a quiz. Quiz again is important. So you can see a quiz here. Complete this statement. If it is not in Dash, it is not Excel. Let me click that. Did I get that? Let's see next. Let's check whether I got it. Okay. One is correct. One is incorrect. Yeah. So you can see that's it. And then at the end of the day, this platform, you can now give somebody and say, okay, if you finish everything, you get a certificate or something like that. So when you design that was step two, choose an appropriate design method, because the design method will inform the other steps. So let's quickly get, let's get back to our steps. So I'm just shifting to back to our slides. All right. So what's our next step? So our next step is to conduct a content audit. Conduct a content audit. So why do you need to conduct a content audit? You need to understand what content needs to be removed. You don't, you don't see everything, because you are the subject matter expert most of the time. And that's it.  The issue is you have so much in your head. You have so much you want to give, and you start giving everything. You start giving everybody all the information that they don't really need everything. They just need a little.  You have to pretend you're not and then ask yourself, what exactly does the learner need? What is that simple information the learner needs, not what I want to give this learner. It just, he needs to learn offset. He needs to learn this. He needs to learn that. Not really. He just needs to learn what he needs for that particular task at hand. So you need to conduct a content audit and remove the content audits to remove the removal audit to remove a lot of content that you really, the learner doesn't need. That's step three. Step four is to think in terms of working memory. People have very limited working memory. The thing is you have a thing. You have this instance thing meant when it comes to memory, there's some things that you know are only in a flash. Yeah. It's more like automated memory. Really. You know it in a flash. And then there's some things that takes a while for you to gather and understand. And then there are some things that go back into how I call it, storage goes to the, the backend of your memory that you can always call back. You permanently know it. You permanently know how to ride a bicycle. I mean, give you a bicycle now, even though you haven't ridden in 20 years, you can ride it. But when you do learning, you need it to be in people's working memory. They can always access it at any time. And if you give bite sizes, it's easier for them to digest. They don't, they don't need too much information. Yeah. You could be, you could add the extra information into maybe a booklet that they can read after, but for the actual training itself, try not to bombard your audience too much information. So next thing, next step, step five, choose a format plan and develop your course. So we chose a format, we chose video, we chose text, we chose quizzes, we chose quite a few things, even some times audio. We chose different media and then we said, okay, this is how we're going to develop or deliver this course. And we have certain rules and in the planning process and the development process where like, okay, this video we've just recorded is like eight minutes. How do we cut it? How do we reduce it? How do we do what? Our system audit. How do you do that system audit to reduce the contents? The system audit is very key. You don't just do this as one step. You do this throughout the process, conducting a content audit, not system audit, sorry, content audit. So conduct the content audit you do throughout the process and then you now choose your format as step five plan and develop your course. Once you finish planning, developing your course, of course, you need to organize the lessons and content in chunks. And if you remember the lessons I showed you, they're all broken down into chunks, chunks of less than five minutes. So chunks of less than five, you have one that's 10 minutes, then think about breaking it down into two videos. Editors in a way that clearly breaks it down into two videos and makes sense to the audience, right? So that's very key. What I'll do now is I'll give you another example. I'm going to play a very short video of another example of how you implement small micro learning. So just watch this video that's coming up in a few seconds. So it's a micro learning example, some TED talk that happened in this Khan Academy TED talk. Micro learning examples.  Recently, Northwestern University decided they wanted to teach high school students and teachers in STEM how to talk about information that many deemed to be too technical. They created a micro learning course called principles of STEM education that could easily be taken in any classroom. The course consisted of a series of short modules that broke down complex information. Each of these sections is broken down into the Y section that explains the reason and the house section. It gives context, a video and a PDF outlying additional tips. Another example of micro learning is what is known as micro lecture. Almost everyone is familiar with this type of micro learning, TED talks, a popular nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas. TED talks are limited to 18 minutes and focus on one single idea. Several other examples of micro learning include TEDx, a local version of TED talks, Khan Academy, which offers free online courses and Linda, which uses a variety of skills. Some apps that engage in micro learning include gyro, which offers content to help enhance your well being, Audible, which streams audio books and other texts, Twitter, where you can tweet, Julingo, which uses micro learning to teach foreign languages, check, which allows users to create flashcards and learn, which takes a micro approach to learning programming. Mini games, also known as casual or micro games, are an example of immersive micro learning simulations that last between five and 20 minutes. They are especially useful to help employees learn skills that are best taught through repetition. Mini games are highly engaging because they have quick sprints of engaging content and are easy to consume. Mobile devices are the perfect interface for mini games because that type of content works well on a small screen. Here are some additional examples of micro learning that may surprise you. One to two question quizzes or polls, infographics, activity notifications from online communities of practice, RSS feeds, flashcard pushes, challenge type interactivities, brief games, micro blogging exercises, brief videos, including interactive videos, single question case studies, question and responses, and learner recordings of a brief audio or video response to a question. A special thanks to all these sources, which helped me create this great video for you. Please watch the next video, micro learning, while it's gaining popularity. All right, so that was great. Hope you learned a few things. Hope you learned a few things there. So micro learning as micro learning is the way to learn for the modern learner. It is the way to learn the modern learner. That's how the modern learner, that's how human beings really work. That's how human beings really learn.  All the retraining you do at work, hopefully they should have done it in school, seems that our schooling system is training people not for work. And really that's one key thing that most nations need to develop. They need to find a way of changing the way they learn, changing the way they teach their learners, because it's not good enough for the modern workforce. And one key, one website you just heard about it there is Khan Academy. If you can go to Khan Academy, you'll see so much content, so, so, so much content. In fact, let me just share my screen one last time, and you'll see all the content we're talking about. It's a lot of content out there, and it's just for you to know which is the best that you could use to really learn a lot. Let me show you some. All right, so I'm sharing my screen. I want to go to Khan Academy, Khan Academy. So I'm just going to a website Khan Academy, I advise you do. It's a free, a site that has micro learning videos on nearly everything you ever need to learn, and anything your kids need to learn. It's an excellent, excellent site, and it's free, absolutely free. You can log in as a parent, you click on parent, log in as a parent, and then create a login for your kid or your child or whoever, and you can set various courses for your kid to do, they watch the video, and they do the exercises, and the exercises learn from how they're, whether they're getting it right or not getting it right. So if you're, it's like a lesson teacher, it's like an online lesson teacher for free, and there's so much content for you as an adult as well, and it's all absolutely free. So this is like, this is the modern school. I just take Khan Academy as the modern school, and for us adults, another place you could go get some learning, they may not be micro-learning, is advise Coursera, Coursera.com, but that's not really micro-learning. They don't design it like micro-learning, but it's still learning, but the way Khan Academy works is mostly like micro-learning, and the way we also teach is micro-learning as well. So you just encourage you to go online and check these things out, right? So any questions for me, if you could have questions for me, we've actually come to the end of the micro-learning webinar, and it's just a topic that I think your learning and development professionals and your human resource professionals should talk to vendors and train vendors and say, look, you need to break things down into chunks instead of us doing their five-day course. Why don't we do a five-month course, and give tiny, tiny, tiny content throughout those five months, and people will actually learn and use the content far more and you get a better return on investment. I think that's the way to go really for the profession. So what do you think? I want you to try out the Pechaqcha, try to check out the Pechaq, the Pechaqcha, Pechaqcha and see how that works, because I think that that's pretty cool. Let me see if I can type it out, maybe it should come out, Pechaq. It's like micro-learning on steroids, because you need to know your stuff and when you're presenting it, you're presenting 20 slides in 20 seconds. Okay, Pechaqcha, in fact, we call it 2020. So that's, you should check Pechaqcha out as well, the art of concise presentations. Wow, so that's cool. So 20 images, 20 seconds. So check these out. This is micro-learning, but the person that's actually doing the teaching needs to do a lot of learning to be able to now teach in this 2020 format. But this is what I advise you to do in your organizations, if you have any presentations, tell them to follow the 2020 format, 2020 Pechaqcha format. So I'm glad that everybody enjoyed the webinar. If you can go to our website and go to Office Training Hub, let me give you a quick offer. There's a book that I wrote with 15 other authors, and the book is called Destination Facilitation, and it's a book about facilitation around the world, how we use various cultures around the world to facilitate, facilitate different topics. So let me put that up for you. I'll just publish that. So if you look at it, so Donna Steffi edited it. Donna Steffi is a master trainer, and we, she was our trainer in our master trainer program that I did four years ago, and we, about 15 of us wrote various chapters. So we wrote the chapter, I wrote the chapter on Africa. So how various cultures, how do various cultures in Africa affect the way people learn and the way people teach? So you the facilitator, if you're teaching someone from, from Northern Nigeria, teaching someone from Senegal and teaching someone from South Africa, what are the cultures you can bring to the classroom to make them even learn better, faster, and kind of build that interaction and build that connection. So that's the book. So you could always order it, it's very cool. If you want to be an international trainer, the whole world has been covered by this book. Every, you're going to China to train, you're going to Japan to train, you're going to Singapore, or you're going to, you could go and read the section and see exactly what you need to do so that that training is impactful. So thank you very much everybody. I hope you enjoyed this webinar and I hope to see you next month. So next month, next month for sure, we'll be able to have one or even two people that are going to be a panel panel and our guests to talk about a certain topic. So if you don't mind, click on the link to say that you want to receive notifications for all our webinars and you get an email from us when the next webinar is the next webinar is actually going to be every third Thursday of the month. So it's already known third Thursday of every single month at two p.m. Nigerian time or let's say one p.m. GMT. During the meantime, you can calculate that for whatever destinations you are and please join us and join us for the next one. We look forward to seeing you. Thank you very much guys. Bye bye.