Microlearing Project
TOOL IDENTIFICATION AND DESCRIPTION
Tool
Link: https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/
Description:
CANVA is an easy to use and very powerful infographic creation tool. This is a free online tool that helps in design tasks from infographics to brochures, presentations and much more.
Infographic communicates ideas quickly. As rightly said, every picture tells a story.
I planed to use CANVA to create infographic. Infographics make complex things easy, eye catching and easily understandable.
CANVA has a vast library with may existing design templates, many images ,icons, text fonts icons and colors a designer would like to experiment with. All these sources are free. There are also few premium elements on the websites that are priced for $1.
END PRODUCT OF TOOL USE
This tool was used in creation of two infographics in this portfolio.
Infographic 1
This infographic is on constructivism and a learning scenario associated with it.
Infographic 2
This infographic gives the five principles of andragogy.
REFLECTION ON LEARNING PROCESS
The learning of a new tool used many dimensions of the learning theory.
The first and foremost is andragogy. As an adult, the learning of a new web-tool that helps to design an infographic was inspired by one of Knowles’ 4 Principles Of Andragogy.
“Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact to their job or personal life.”
I am an educational content developer and learning instructional design was adding more meaning to the work I do. We create text which should help communicate ideas to the student more clearly. The interest on an “Infographic tool” came in as it was the best way to represent a complex information in a simple and eye-catchy way. The main motivation to learn a tool was that it was relevant to what I am currently working on in my career.
The learning was also inspired by the andragogy principle: “Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented. (Kearsley, 2010).”
Adult learning is centered around solving a problem. Here in my scenario making an infographic that can simplify complex things. For example, how to simplify the complex pages in a text into simple statements, communicate content ideas through images etc. were well studied using this theory.
Adults learn best when they “do.” (Ref 4). CANVA was learned by regular doing and undoing. Many trial and error sessions led to the ultimate product; "The infographic".
The next part was the research on tool and how I ended up picking CANVA. The learning theory of connectivism is involved here. I did conduct researches across various online tools. Had referred to the discussions in the weeks discussion forum (on our instructional learning portal) to understand what other co-learners think about the usage of each tool. I had referred various websites and links to tools to understand which is the best to use in my portfolio. My networks helped me to select CANVA as a tool for the infographic I am going to create. The website on learning theories(Ref:2) links the major strength of connectivism: “Learning is networked and connected to a variety of sources, information can be obtained easily and instantly.”
The next learning theory that was used in learning and understanding CANVA was “cognitivism” or rather the cognitive load of the learning website. The tool website had a simple 6 to 7 steps on how to create an infographic. There was also an additional small video that showed an example of making a simple infographic using the various properties. Cognitive load theory states that the working memory has a very limited capacity, too much information presented at once may get lost. The tool was well defined to reduce the cognitive load by using both visual and auditory channels. Each icon had a drop-in label, that explained what action is performed. It helped reduce the split attention effect. (Ref 3)
Lastly a small extend of behaviorism also guided me in the learning process. I had created my first infographic on the website and the link to the website was added to the portfolio discussion forum in our instructional design course portal. Many co-learners wrote positive comments on them. This was indeed a positive reinforcement towards my learning of the tool and helped me or in fact made me confident to work on more infographics.
"A student who receives verbal praise and good grades for correct answers (positive reinforcement) is likely to learn those answers effectively; one who receives little or no positive feedback for the same answers (negative reinforcement) is less likely to learn them as effectively." (Ref 5)
References to quoted text:
Ref 1: https://elearningindustry.com/the-adult-learning-theory-andragogy-of-malcolm-knowles
Ref 3: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/cognitive-load-theory.htm
Ref 4: https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/adult-learning-theories-instructional-design
Ref 5:http://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/behaviorism/