A Long Long Time Ago...

In a city called Mahilaropya in Southern India, there ruled a King named Amar Shakti.

Amar Shakti was a fair and just ruler who was also well versed with Art, Philosophy and other works of wisdom. His people loved him because he brought prosperity to all of them under his rule.

Amar Shakti had won the love and the loyalty of not just his people, but of people from the Kingdoms he had conquered. People from the lands beyond conquered lands too sang songs of praise for this great King.

Indeed, King Amar Shakti's fame spread far beyond the boundaries of his reign.

The Gods were generous beyond measure. The King was blessed with three sons - Vasu Shakti, Ugra Shakti and Anek Shakti.

As a father of three sons, the King looked forward to the day when the Princes would take over the Kingdom. He would then, follow in the traditions of his ancestors and retire into the forest to live out his last days in Vanaprasthan.

But Fate Had Other Plans...

King Amar Shakti had it all or so it would have been but, for a small twist of fate. The young Princes showed no interest in the Kingdom or in their father's desires.

Royalty, their father knew, was not a matter of birth alone. And if his sons had to succeed him to the throne they needed to master the Nitishastras - the administrative principles of ruling a Kingdom along with the other sciences, arts and grammar.

But the Nitishastras were complex, and the Princes were uninterested.

Sleep eluded the worried King. He sank into despair as he worried for the future of his people, and his royal lineage if his sons failed to master the Nitishastras.

A solution had to be found.

So the King summoned his ministers to bring him a man who could make his sons truly worthy of the Kingdom that they were to inherit. As teacher after teacher, scholar after scholar, 500 of them, failed in their task, the ministers too began to despair.

The Princes, undeterred and unhindered continued their pursuit of Princely pleasures.

But around King Amar Shakti the clouds grew darker each day.

And Finally... A Ray of Hope

King Amar Shakti had a trusted aide and minister named Sumati. Sumati knew of a great scholar and teacher named Pandit Visnu Sarman who he had been told was capable of the most impossible feats.

The Pandit was invited to the palace and taken to meet the King. The King promised the Pandit all the wealth he could ever want if he could turn his indifferent sons into interested and able rulers.

But wealth was not his goal, said Pandit Visnu Sarman. It was the challenge that he really looked forward to. He assured the King that in six months the three errant sons would become worthy heirs to the throne.

Delighted but skeptical, the King decided to put his faith in the old man.

From the Depths of Despair... A Creative Solution

It did not take long for the Pandit to realise that the Nitishastra was not a text that had to be committed to memory. It had to be understood. It had to be lived and practiced. It had to become a way of the Princes' lives.

The Pandit had understood the King's real need and set out to teach the Princes the essence of the Nitishastras.

But that was no easy task. And to be able to teach his three hyperactive Princes, the Pandit would have to get back to the books himself.

He spent six months, reading, thinking and understanding the text he had been asked to teach. And finally when he had gleaned the essence of the Nitishastras, he created a rare and brilliant text. He pulled out the core lessons of the shastras and structured them in five volumes and named them thus:

1. Splitting Friendship
2. Making Friends
3. The Crow and the Owl
4. The Loss of what was Gained
5. Rash Deeds

This is the Panchatantra - five volumes of concise learning that Pandit Visnu Sarman created for the Princes.

Each volume was made of a series of stories. The stories were based on a method called Nidarshanakatha or "seeing through examples" to demonstrate the essence of each shastra.

Visnu Sarman returned to the Palace after 6 months and took the Princes to the ashrama.

Each day the Pandit spent hours telling stories to the three Princes. The Princes in turn would tell a story to their Guru, telling him what they had made of his tales. And together, the Guru and the Shishyas set what they had learnt to verse.

Short, pithy and memorable, the verses captured the essence of the Nitishastras.

Having studied with the Pandit for a year, they became adept in administrative policies. And suitable to become Kings.

King Amar Shakti was overjoyed.

And the Pandit who had refused to be paid for his efforts was rewarded with the greatest gift of all. A work so brilliant that it has inspired generations in his Kingdom and beyond.

The Panchatantra and how it was created demonstrates the values and guiding principles of learning that iDesign Skills holds dear. Our learning from this story is yours too.

Read on!

Panchatantra & Instructional Design

# 1

Pandit Visnu Sarman understood the King's real need It was not to make them scholars or teachers or warriors. He needed an heir to his Kingdom, and not just an heir - but a King who would rule the Kingdom well with wisdom and expretise.

An Instructional Designer's first step is to understand the business need. Because a learning intervention, no matter how smart, interactive or engaging is of little value unless it meets a valid business requirement.

# 2

What did he know about the Princes' aversion to learning? Nothing much except that they refused to learn the Nitishastras.

But Visnu Sarman knew that a good teacher must be able to convince his students of the need to learn.

The same is true with effective Instructional Design. More than delivering knowledge to a single learner or a group of learners, it seeks to build active connections between what learning and performance.

We need to know the learners' true needs and link them to the business need to ensure that they are motivated to learn.

# 3

500 scholars were engaged to teach the Nitishastras. Not even one succeeded. We will never really know why, but here's an informed guess.

Teaching a complex subject without building relevance can turn away learners. Textbooks like Nitishastras are repositories of knowledge. Does one need to learn it all?

Instructional Designers adapt content from texts and other resources to learner needs.

Content analysis techniques used by Instructional Designers ensure that learners get only the content they need. This ensures efficiency of learning.

# 4

Pandit Visnu Sarman made all the difference when he shifted from "I will teach Nitishastras to the Princes ..." to "Princes will learn and apply the essence of the Nitishastras..." Instead of being stuck with the enormity of the text he was to teach, the Pandit swiftly shifted to why the Princes needed to know the Nitishastras. He became learner-centered.

Instructional Designers write contextual learning goals - statements of the end purpose that the learning will serve. It may be difficult to imagine this sometimes and may seem like a fussy add-on step. But a course without a goal can get lost like a rudderless boat.

# 5

The essence of the Nitishastras was re-organized into 5 volumes.

The Pandit did not just cull out the most relevant parts of the Nitishastras. He distilled their teaching into a structure that would help the Princes learn.

Instructional sequence is much more than creating a menu - it must encourage and facilitate learning.

# 6

What is the Nitishastra? It is a text that tells one how to govern. Pandit Visnu Sarman mapped the principles within the text to stories that the Princes would relate to. The stories were simple, interesting and each was tied to a single administrative principle.

This is the secret of good Instructional Design. It is not enough to just tell a story. The story must be relevant, it must be rooted in a familiar context and revolve around a single learning objective.

It goes without saying that the story must meet its basic tenets. It must have a well defined plot and powerful characters. Only then can it be a powerful tool for learning and engagement.

# 7

The Pandit chose an interactive mode of teaching. It was not a one-way narration of the stories. Each story was followed by a discussion on the interpretation and its application.

The continuous dialog between Guru and Shishya fostered learning. It motivated the Princes and they were engaged.

And thus ends the story of learning and how learning should be designed.

The Panchatantra, as designed by Visnu Sarman, is a collection of interesting and highly effective stories.

It is effective not just because the Princes lived by its tenets all their lives but also because the text lives on till this day.

The King's need was met as the Princes, now able Kings, served the King's lands as effectively as he had. And hundreds of thousands of years later, the Panchatantra is still being used in Indian homes across the world to impart morals and make children aware of their traditions.

And just as Visnu Sarman created the Panchatantra, iDesign Skills' has created a process that helps make learning effective. So next time you take up a course design, you have a process that you may follow.

The learnings of this story are cast here as a process that you can follow for creating your Panchatantra, each time you take up a course design initiative.

iDesign Skills is inspired and committed to follow the path showed by Visnu Sarman to create learning that meets both the needs of the individual and the business.