Training with Purpose featuring Kushal Bose

Kushal Bose  
Both. Good. You talked about both.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah. All right. Morning, everybody. Welcome to the Training, Learning and Development Community. Happy New Year to you. Thanks for joining our first broadcast of the year. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm like, is it actually a new year? I don't know. It's just everything seems to be one big long experience nowadays. But I am very excited about things that we have going on ahead of us like with the in the schedule for CLDC. Like for instance, this month, we have that teacher to instructional design event that's happening at the end of the month, we've got writing for instructional design that's happening at the end of the month, as well and a bunch of other stuff plans. So 2022 is already looking really, really good. And to help me start it off. We've got Kushala boasts now, um, Cushaw, we haven't been able to talk much. So I don't even know if I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Does that sound right? Or how do i pronounce your name?

Kushal Bose  
You did it exactly like my mother does. So Oh, very close.

Luis Malbas  
That is great. Thank you, that's a, I'm even impressed with myself. And so today, we're gonna be talking with Gu Shah about the future of learning for the next generation. But specific, Lee more about storytelling, because that was something that Michelle is an expert in. And, and also using video for that. And so we've got about 30 minutes, I'm running a little bit late this morning, but we'll get into it and cover as much as we can. Now Cushaw, um, you sort of found CLDC, I know that, that you, I think you might have had a producer, somebody that kind of book your parents here with us today, I'm always interested in bringing in people that are sort of outside of what is our typical community to have conversations with. So, you know, thanks for doing that. But let's hear about your background, I watched that HCI video, you recently did an appearance with human capital innovations. And you talked a lot about your background there. But um, maybe you can just tell the audience a little bit about who you are, you've kind of got a heavy interest in the humanities, but also at the same time, I saw you have a background in nuclear engineering and other things. So let's hear about that give us the quick rundown of who you are

Kushal Bose  
very quickly. I don't want to put too much time into me. I think my background has a lot to do with what I'm doing today. And what I bring to the table. And because I was born in a in a family where my mother was a professional singer and my father was a chemical engineer of a good standing in the, in the in all in the whole world actually. So. So I grew up with the left side and right side of the brain syndrome, where I was in the company of great musicians, great filmmakers, great theater, artists, dramatist, at the end, very great language professors. At the same time, my dad taught me engineering and I went to engineering school. While I was the president of the Film Society in my in my college, president of the drama club, music club, so I had really both sides of my, of my interests really nurtured during my adolescent years. So when I graduated from engineering college, I came to America to do my masters and, and I immediately found a job at Westinghouse Electric, right here in Chicago. And they sent me the nucleus to nuclear engineering school, and I became a nuclear engineer. For the next 10 years, I built nuclear power plants. All over the world, but mostly in the United States in the west coast. But after 10 years, the bug that bit me early in my life about art or literature about music, started to show up in my mirror and said, Cushaw, where are you, you're getting to be 3839 years old. So I left my engineering and I moved to New York, and I got my master's degree in film and theatre. And I loved it so much that I, I immediately got an invitation from the from Indian Government to shoot some documentaries in India, to do some social changes with television. And I did that for a couple of years. And I came back and then started this company that I run now, the confidence in my heart was that I can always go back to engineering if I wanted to. But my effort was to really combine my engineering knowledge and my my education, and the art of storytelling and film. That's what television did for the last 30 some years. And that's and pretty soon, we had a lot of companies, especially in the Chicago area, most of the technical and engineering company, who came to me who, who had the technical content. I was the guy who one of the very few instructional designers or learning developers, who could read blueprints who can talk to the engineers in their language. And I could look at the CAD CAM files or the manuals, so I was able to get that content into a discernible sixth grader level, telling the stories. That's my story.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. No, that's great. That's incredible, amazing stuff. I love it. And and so you have been doing and using video for a really long time, you know, you've got a, you know, extensive background with film. Nowadays, everybody's got like, you know, a smartphone on them. So basically, they've got potentially, you know, especially in the last couple of years, a 4k capable, you know, film camera to be able to film video and do all of that stuff. Now. How about for you, when did you start leveraging using video to train people?

Kushal Bose  
Very early, very, very early. In fact, back in those days, 30 years ago, there was no video, it was all my 16 millimeter camera. I shot. One of the first one of the earliest films that I did was for McDonald's Corporation who is right here in Oak Brook, Illinois, outside of Chicago, they're my backyard. They, from the moment that you walk into a McDonald's restaurant, McDonald's franchise, to the point when your food is delivered, the whole training was done by my company and me. And this was all shot on McDonald had his studio. It was replicate replication of McDonald's. Just exactly how so we put our actors and lighting and camera and Dolly and crane in the in that studio. And we shot the whole thing with actors and actresses, but it was emulated a real environment with customers coming in people who had language disability, people who have eating back those days, how do you treat a customer? So customer service is what we did on back in those days. And talking about early, early 90s. Late 80s

Luis Malbas  
Wow, okay. Yeah, so you've been doing it for a while.

Kushal Bose  
16 millimeter back then. But it's cool. I I learned how to light how to use camera, how to do a dolly shot or a zoom? Where do you what's the language of cinema. That's what I knew I learned in school and that's why I used when I showed my documentaries and all of this I brought that part into so it's today, you know, the automation of these phones doesn't really give you the controls of the aperture or the speed or the or the movement is just shoot point and shoot as an idiot proof system but back then we need to we need it to control all the variables, which was a lot of fun.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. Yeah. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how it has changed over the last 20 years now I'm sure you know you've probably got a team of of directors and producers or people that actually create the content for you now but it must be a completely different experience. Can you talk about now like what are the types of things that you do as as as a video producer

Kushal Bose  
actually, video can be of many, just like anything else can be on many different levels. You can act I have shot videos, training videos with my cell phone and completely unedited version and put it up on the server to an internal crowd of operators just and then move the camera around. Zoom in not even this doesn't really have a proper zoom. So I moved the camera single handedly to the to the contact to the switches to the relays whenever we were talking about them as as the as an narration is going on. But today I think Do us a favor video is massive. Everybody uses video. But I think what What's missing in these videos? is the art of storytelling. The purpose, if you will, the structure, just by pointing a camera and shooting and clicking the on button doesn't make it a good video. You really have to absorb the content. And how does the video bring that content up on the on the viewer screen is what you really have to talk about, which is why I'm a big, big proponent of script writing and storyboarding, I have very early on was under the influence of great filmmakers, who did all the pre production in the in the controlled environment of his desk. And when they got to the shooting, is he shot off the brain, he just follows the script. This is the way that I was taught filmmaking. So all the imagination, all the things so that's, that's, that's really feature and documentary film, not so much documentary, but feature films. But I have that discipline in me that every shot, every video that I shoot is pre planned nothing is instantly let me do this, let me take that. Of course there is a place for that. I mean, if you are in a in a factory, where you have never been before, and you have to shoot a machine, you cannot plan that short sitting in your on your desk, but but the story, how he's going to begin, and how it's going to end and what the takeaway that has to be completely in your head, what are we shooting? What are what the purpose of the video, so the video has to complement the purpose of the piece. And that that. I mean, that's something that you really need to learn to read to practice that. How does the video complement your content?

Luis Malbas  
No, it sounds like it's critical to the situation sounds so important. And this audience is primarily like, you know, I can see right now I'm seeing a whole bunch of instructional designers learning experienced designers that that that are live in, you know, in our stream right now. But how much time do you think? Would you recommend someone spend storyboarding? Like how much effort should they really put into it before they get in there? And actually do start doing like the video production or creation?

Kushal Bose  
Before I answer that question, I want to tell you that I today believe to really shorten the length of the video as much as you can. Two minute three minute four minute five minute really there's a name for it is micro learning. And I really strongly believe that the little chunks of of learning is much more effective than long. Videos that ties into your question is that how much time you into storyboarding is, is really how long as your finished product is going to be. So if you're so if I can, if I can take a half an hour course and break it down to four or five, five minute courses or six minute course module, I will do that. And for that reason. And just like YouTube video, when you watch one video, there's a bunch of other suggestions come on, on your screen. My elearning modules also work like that, when you're watching a video, a bunch of other suggestions come in, related to what you just watched. In other words, there's a continuity, what I'm trying to say is there's a continuity between what you're watching and what you're about to watch, you may want the optional watching. So with that framework, I would really create small videos, but at the same time, create a story along from each just like a chapter in a book. The first chapter has to have some context to the second chapter and the third chapter and the story progresses. And that's the way I do videos. Now nowadays. I don't do a long video. I don't. And for each of those short four or five, six minute videos, I don't spend much time in storyboarding. I usually this is something very important for your listeners. I would always start, always start writing, creating the storyboard. From the viewers point of view. In other words, what Am I seeing now? What's the next thing? How does the short one relate to short to? And short? Three? How does it connect to them? So when you write it on paper, it becomes very evident to you how those, it's almost like a string of pearls in a necklace, that how do you weave the story? And then how does it How does it go forward? So in a short film, or short video, I think you can manage it much more effectively than then you can do on a longer piece. And there is such a thing. Lewis is that there's a linear way of telling stories, and there's a nonlinear way of storytelling, the linear way of storytelling, there's always a star, those are always the middle always in the end, it says linear, you the story progresses, and the video progresses according to a linear fashion. But in many cases today, because of the distance learning, being a prime driver, in our learning and development field, you really have to pay attention to how you're designing the story, so that you're engaging the learner into doing something. So what mean that you're putting hotspots, you're reading interactivity, you're building polls or question. So when you do that, your video becomes interactive, become nonlinear, because you have no control over what the viewer is going to be learner is going to be clicking on Next. So so your story must have the ability to continue with the story, even though it's out of order. Am I making sense?

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, no, it totally makes sense. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think you know, and this kind of brings me to my next question for you. Because, you know, when we had first connected, we wanted to talk about the future of learning for the next generation. And when I think about the next generation, you know, I think about, you know, I have a seven year old and, you know, and his buddies is all that, you know, and kids nowadays, and looking the other day at, you know, number one most downloaded apps on the in iTunes, like, in the top 10 For the last couple years, actually, the number one for the last couple years has been something like Tic toc. And, and how has that kind of affected? Or has it affected the way that you look at producing video? Or is that something that you take into account as you start to design? Video content? Video Training content for? For for the younger for the next generation?

Kushal Bose  
I plead the fifth? I don't know. I don't know much about tick tock and I really have not looked at it seriously. Yeah. For learning and development. Right? But I understand Tik Tok is very, very popular. I get texts all the time from funny videos. Lots of them made in Korea and China. Yeah. But to answer your question, I want to I want to address that bigger question. Question behind your question. And that is, what do we do to the next generation to really attract them to learning? See, I strongly believe in my heart, that you cannot learn anything unless you want to learn? I really strongly believe so as instruction designer, our job is to how do you make them want to learn? How do you motivate them to learn? By telling them stories, stories, for 1000s of years have captivated the minds and the culture for 5000 years. That's how we have we have our societies have grown. So So I think that there are three factors, that interest inference, our mindset right now, looking at the future, and those three factors are it's I call it a perfect storm. And the perfect storm, if you remember in AD is was it happened in actually reality. It happened in Boston area, though there was a high pressure system in upstate California, developed in the atmosphere that move toward the east coast. There was a low pressure system from Saskatchewan and the Northeast Canada that moved toward Boston, and there was a tornado and hurricane develop in Florida that's also moved toward Boston, these three it never happened that all three come converge on the same area at the same time. So that's called a Perfect Storm in today's learning and development, they're the perfect storm. And the perfect storm is number one is is, is our millennials, the your six year old seven year old? How do you bring them to the table? How do you captivate their imagination? How do you grab their attention, we learned from PowerPoint and bullet text point for hours and hours sitting in a classroom, it's not going to work with them. So that's number one element of The Perfect Storm is the audience has changed completely. And they are born with the cell phone in their hand. And they are totally great, technically adept, to all kinds of apps and all that. So number one, number two, is that technology has leapfrogged into artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality. And all kinds of even learning management systems are amazing today, they're customizable. So So that's the second part of the perfect storm is technology has completely overtaken our lives. And the third part is COVID. What COVID first has to do is go to distance learning. And today, classroom learning is, is becoming very quickly extent. So when you combine these two, the audience, the technology and the distance learning, you have a new set of rules that govern your design. So now coming back to your question is that, how do you teach? How do you the six or seven year old seven year old, and I think keeping that in mind, so that's why I said keep it short, keep it dumb, keep it stupid, and not to the level of Tiktok, of course, but, but if you if you really need to make it break it down, make it really, really down to the, to the lowest common denominator, and frequently engage the student into the screen. And this is, I really, really think that, that today's instructional designer have a great opportunity, this is their lifetime opportunity to change the rules to do something different, which is what I have been trying to do for the last 30 plus years, you know, bringing cinema into learning. My shoots, always, were very, very creative, if you will, my scripts I scripted and storyboarded all my shoots, all my corporate videos, all my learning videos, all my technology videos, I did a lot of animation, I had a Silicon Graphics farm in my, in my studio with a lot of animation, lots of imagination, again, combining stories and imagination into the technical content. So I because I I rarely speak to to an audience of learning instructional designer, I want to really challenge them into

thinking differently about how does he do the teach to a six year old or the 10 year old kid? Is there the conventional corporate audiences is gone. So, so that that's number one, and how do you take advantage of the technology for example, today's learning management systems, I try to measure motivation, eagerness to learn their their participation, you can really build lots of you can structure your video or your your piece your learning piece, by by making them want to click the key he's wanting to click when you want to click, then you can capture the click in the LMS and see who clicked and who didn't. If you give a bunch of and the whole you can really understand the personality and most important thing is the behavior of the learner. You have to understand the behavior at and should be the match your your design accordingly. Designers have a very great opportunity to change thinking if today's today's instructional designers,

Luis Malbas  
right no i There's one thing that last couple years have taught me it's that we're in a period where innovation is probably what's gonna help you anyone everyone thrive if you're willing to innovate, then I think that and actually make mistakes, then I think you'll actually you know, be able to grow and, and be more dynamic and and match these crazy times that we have now. There's a lot of opportunity there for everybody that is willing To, to shift a little bit, you know, to, to match

Kushal Bose  
what we have been doing so far. Right, right. But you know, when you say innovate, I want to add a little two words in there. innovate with a purpose. Right? Yeah. Just don't innovate for the purpose of innovating. Because it looks pretty, that it doesn't work. You What does it add? What the value that that innovation add to the content that you're creating? That's to be is the key.

Luis Malbas  
I love it shall thank you. Now I do have? Let's see one question so far in the Ask a Question area. And this sort of like, relates a little bit to what you were just talking about your thoughts on using Animated Video Creation? Like, tools is like beyond or whiteboarding tools. Do you have any experience with that? Yeah,

Kushal Bose  
yes. You know, again, we are talking about technology. I, I think that's a great way to really create a storyboard or to prepare for your final, if you can afford the time to create the animated video. If you if you today's steel, the whiteboarding tool are fantastic, fantastic. And they really, and I think they're, they're some low cost whiteboarding tool, also, that can really add a lot to the table. Again, I, I want to caution the, the designer not to be artistic, but to be purposeful. In other words, every screen every shot that you bring, must support your learning objectives, some way or another. Just don't create a white board. Just to make it pretty, if you will. But yes, I love it. And I think it should be made more popular, especially with the welcome tablet. When you have the tablet at your disposal to really storyboard with those with the whiteboarding tool, and you can animate them very inexpensively. Those are great tools to have. Yeah, no,

Luis Malbas  
thanks for the question, Chris. Chris Johnson asked that one. And, you know, and just so you know, Chris, we're gonna I'm gonna try to get beyond on here more, because I was talking to him last year. I love the folks at beyond. And so hopefully, we'll have them, have them here at TL DC to talk a little bit more about, you know, animation and, and such. Well, Cushaw it's been a real pleasure having you on, I'm really glad that we got to make the connection, and that you're getting to meet the training, learning and development community, we have a fantastic group here. Really just authentic, lovely people in this community. And I'm glad that you were able to spend some time with us this morning.

Kushal Bose  
My pleasure. My pleasure. It's my pleasure. All right, everybody. If you if you if you have any other opportunity to talk about any other subject, I'll be happy to come and join you.

Luis Malbas  
I would love to talk more about storytelling with you, because that's actually a passion of mine. And, and that's sort of one of the intents of the training, learning and development communities to tell the story of instructional designers. And we do that on a regular basis. In fact, I have Ian crook on tomorrow for another showcase, where we talk about Ian's journey into instructional design what he's up to now he's, uh, he is a trainer over at Amazon, Amazon Web Services. So we'll be talking to him tomorrow. And, and with that, we're going to be signing off Cushaw Yeah, we'd love to have you back on. And everyone. Thanks a lot. Looking forward to seeing you all throughout the New Year.

Kushal Bose  
And thank you all. We'll talk to you every New Year to everybody. My fellow instructional designers. Thank you.

Luis Malbas  
Take care. Thanks, everyone.

Kushal Bose  
Bye bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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