Creation of Cognitra
Cognitra LLC was launched by Cindy Galbraith, Pine City, MN, USA, in October 2009. The business concept is based on the following vision and insight:
Social Networking & Social Learning Website
Cognitra is a company that is based on social networking and social learning via the Web. Social networking is primarily focused on relationships, communication, collaboration, and fun. Social learning leverages the social networking infrastructure to build trust and communication, but greater emphasis is placed on learning from each other and deriving true value from the network of people rather than learning about personal likes and dislikes of other members. For example, dedicated social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have users that spend more time identifying what music they like, their favorite videos and photos, how the person feels that day, if the user is single or in a relationship, and so on. While social learning on the other hand, is focused on deliberate learning from each other on topics of interest or necessity.
Human Lifecycle Management
The process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal is called Product Lifecycle Management. (Wikipedia)
- This same concept can be applied to the management of the entire lifecycle of a human being – from beginning to end.
- Human Lifecycle Management focuses on the proactive management of human life – from birth to death - in a more structured and guided way to help ensure that each life is successful.
- One of the key tenets of this theory is on comprehensive learning inside and outside of school to improve behavior and enhance life and job performance.
- While many nations have done a good job focusing on formal education inside an academic school environment, informal learning outside of school has tended to happen by chance via family, friends, community organizations, and religious institutions.
- What if this “learning by chance” outside of school for life and job skills was modified to be more deliberate and guided learning? Imagine if a business concept could improve learning outside of school by just 5-10%!
Business Problem
Competing within a global workforce for good jobs will only get more fierce yet:
- Parents and guardians struggle to know when and how to best introduce and reinforce informal learning topics such as personal motivation, conflict resolution, assertiveness, and more.
- Informal learning today is based mainly on what was transferred down over the generations via family members, topic discussions with friends and colleagues, reading books. and discovering web articles scattered across the Web.
- As a result, learning outside of school tends to be chaotic and haphazard at best. Yet many would argue that personal motivation, conflict resolution, and assertiveness to name a few, are just as important to master for personal and professional success, if not more so, than formal academic subjects.
- Hence, learning outside of school today is not as productive as a result, leaving students less prepared to compete in a global economy.
Business Solution
Use Human Lifecycle Management as the business vision and provide a social networking and learning website for major informal learning life and job topics such as personal finance, cultural awareness, delayed gratification, time management, personal organization, project management, interpersonal skills, mutual respect, personal motivation, assertiveness style, conflict resolution, and more. Leverage the crowd to source the rich learning content – or utilize Crowdsourcing.
- Providing more structure and guidance by offering outside of school topics and lessons by age range so that subjects are introduced at an appropriate time for learning.
- Provide lessons that build upon each other so the learning outcomes are enhanced at each level.
- Provide various kinds of online learning interaction based on modern multimedia tools such as text, documents, video, audio, podcasts, blogs, e-learning, simulations, games, chat, webinars, and more.
- The website can also leverage what makes sense in the physical word such as books, board games, educational toys, and more.
- Use social networking tools such as wikis so members can create and capture the vast amount of informal learning content that would be required.
- The user generated content can be tagged and labeled based on desired categories such as gender (e.g., female), role (e.g., parent), and more.
- Make learning engaging, interesting, and fun!