I Love You

This short article is being published on Valentine's Day. St Valentine is celebrated around the world on February 14th and is associated with three little words: powerful, evocative words.

I LOVE YOU

Whilst the words themselves are simple, this particular combination can be transformative in people's lives, so, apart from the well understood meaning of the declaration, what is it about the actual words that has this electrifying effect? Is it the words themselves, or their marriage to form a sentence that is so powerful? It seems reasonable to suggest that it is the coming together of the words that creates the magic.

If we analyse the construction of the sentence, we find that it is of the format: Actor (I) Verb (Love) Object (You).

This approach of "Actor Verb Object" is something that we have taken to heart at Coracle. We believe that by following this simple construction rule powerful results can follow. Luckily for us, the nice people working on the TinCan API (more about why we use TinCan) have created a standard that works around this format.

In our e-learning environment the actor is the learner, mentor or some other interested person and the object refers to thing being done. There are an infinite range of possibilities to these elements and there is no need to worry about what they are because the real driver is the verb. When it comes to the verb, we have flexibility in our ability to contextualise what it was that the learner did, however, by keeping the list of verbs relatively tight we are able to produce more meaningful filters and reports. The verb creates the power.

Examples of statements with some of the verbs that we use:

  • John Attended a Seminar on Astro Biology
  • Annie Attempted a Test on Statistics
  • Munaf Completed a Module on Derivatives Trading
  • Liam Failed a Test on Probability
  • Gail Passed a Test on Algebra
  • Ewen Read an Article on BBC News about Pope Benedict
  • Jane Understood a Webpage ‘title’
  • Wendy Visited a Webpage ‘title’
  • Stefan Watched a Khan Academy video on Number Pattern Visualization

Creating statements based around the Actor Verb Object construct allows us to generate order and meaning for learners from an otherwise potentially chaotic range of possibilities. So when you next think of Three Little Words, whether you think of ‘I Love You’ or the 1950 Fred Astaire film, spare a thought for the team at Coracle thinking of statements to help your learning!