Medical representatives face many problems while promoting their companies’ products to doctors. It’s a well-known fact that doctors are more knowledgeable about medicines than the pharmaceutical sales representatives. So, how can a representative gain as much knowledge as the doctor about the medicine? Well, e-learning is the best solution for this problem because it helps to impart highly effective training. At CommLab India, we have been developing online training programs for pharmaceutical sales reps and using the following best practices to make these trainings highly effective. 1. What’s in it for me? It is a best practice to tell learners what’s in it for them early in the course. It can contain a series of questions related to the concept that learners usually get. The answers to these questions must be revealed in the subsequent slides. It greatly helps sales reps understand what they would gain if they take up the module. If you are dealing with a product, then you need to ask a series of questions such as: What is the recommended dosage of the product? What is the mechanism of action? What are the adverse effects, indications and contraindications of it? What does it contain? How can it treat the disease? 2. Learning objectives  Adding clear learning objectives helps specify the intended outcome of the module. They describe what the sales representatives will be able to do after completing the course. For example, if you are dealing with the topic "complications of migraine", you can say: By the end of this module, you will be able to : List the complications of migraine Explain the treatment options available for migraine 3. Do You Know? or Can You Recall? Ask thought-provoking questions before going into the concept to make the module more engaging and interesting. It can be done by including a teaser in the form of "Do You Know?" or "Can You Recall?" And give explanatory feedback to the learner’s response instead of just indicating whether the response is right or wrong. For example, If you’re dealing with the topic "Anatomy and Physiology of the Liver", you can ask basic questions related to liver such as "What is the second largest organ of the human body?" 4. Clinical application It is a best practice to include clinical application of the drug at the end of the module to enable sales reps handle questions asked by the doctor. This goes a long way in helping the sales representatives answer the doctor’s questions confidently. You could include questions such as: Why should I prescribe this drug? What are the complications arising out of its usage? In which patients is it contraindicated? Keep these best practices in mind to create highly effective online courses for medical representatives. Related Posts5 Types of Training for Sales Representatives of Pharmaceutical Firms - An Infographic5 Types of Trainings Every Pharmaceutical Sales Representative Needs5 Training Programs for Medical Representatives - An Infographic

A Subject Matter Expert (SME) is an expert in an organization on a particular area or topic. To create good e-learning courses, inputs from SMEs are vital. To get the best out of your SME, you need to first understand him and know his role. The SME’s role is to help instructional designers (ID) understand the content. An SME is a knowledge hub looking for the best ways to transfer it, and we IDs are the people who lay the path for it. We generally face many challenges while dealing with SMEs such as variation in timelines (the major challenge), lots of changes in the content and few in the GUI, huge variations in visualization, etc., once the course gets developed. In order to overcome all these issues, and to get the best out of your SMEs, you need to follow a few steps. Let us see what they are. Know your SMEs It is essential to maintain a good relationship with your SMEs, as it helps ensure hassle-free development of your online course. From the initial stage to the final stage, it is your responsibility to make him understand about e-learning (if he is new), the project parameters, quality schedule, the project constraints, look and feel, etc. so that you and your SMEs can work together to let the SMEs vision of success help drive your vision for the course. There are several instances where the course gets developed, and then, the SMEs modify lots of content in the course. This is because the SMEs are not clear about the way you have approached. A good bonding helps overcome such issues. Define your design and development process As an ID, you need to define your design and development process to your SMEs from the initial stage. If you help them understand this process, he comes to know what is actually going on and how much time it could take. Lay out expectations, agree on tasks and plan a schedule. This prevents time and cost overruns and facilitates the creation of a good course. In our organization, we educate our clients with key deliverables and set clear expectations on the project timelines. Involvement of the team during different phases of development is another key success factor. The goal is to provide clarity on what is going to happen, how long it’s going to take and what needs to be done to make it more informative and engaging. Make the deliverables visual SMEs need to visualize what you’re going for. You can provide him with lots of examples of deliverables and the look and feel of the final product early in the design phase itself. You need to provide him with a prototype, in which the look and feel of the final course can be visualized. The SMEs can also provide their feedback and ask for the changes that they need, at this point. The prototype and working version should include the screen types, interactivities, GUI, etc. that you wish to use in your course. Whatever process you follow, make sure that the SMEs understand what you’re aiming for and what’s the output going to be. Most often SMEs say, "Well, I just want to see the alpha version of the course to really know the outcome of the course." Few key points to bring up with SMEs about design: Remember the novice Provide context Chunk the content Aim for one idea per slide Ask the right questions Once you share the process and expectations of designing and development, you and your SMEs can take time to define the outcomes of the course. During the content analysis, you might have some doubts to be clarified, few content related queries, questions about usage of visuals etc. But, you hesitate to ask queries with SME. Why is it so? This is because we think that the questions that strike to our mind are very silly, and we don’t ask them. This later leads to a major change. As SMEs are often starved for time, we need to use their time wisely. We need to come up with a list of questions before starting the review with SMEs. You need to ask questions such as: What do you want the learners to be able to do? What are the key takeaways of this course? What are the mistakes committed by you? What are the corrections needed to make the course more engaging? Can we explain the content using a story? Where should the learner go for help and more information? Is the navigation screen required in the course? These steps help you get the best out of your SMEs and make your job and that of the SMEs easy. Hope this post is informative. Please share your views in the comments section below. Happy Reading!! Related PostsWhat, Why and How of Instructional Design4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesE-learning Instructional Design for the Operator Training Course

A Webinar provides training to large audience. Most organizations conduct webinars to train their employees. Many a time, employees may not be able to attend the webinars. In such cases the content is made available in the form of on-demand webinars. The live webinars may require editing, additions and deletions when being converted to on-demand. These changes can be done with the help of the e-learning course authoring tool called Adobe Presenter. This tool has several features that enhance the quality of the webinar. Once the audio and video files are imported and the necessary changes done, the file can be published. However, there are some activities that need to be performed before publishing the presentation. Check out this infographic that lists them. If you have more to add, please share your comments in the column. Related PostsAdobe Presenter - An Ideal Tool to Convert PPTs into On-demand WebinarsAdobe Presenter 9 - What’s New?Adobe Presenter: Awesome Features For Your E-learning Development

Assessments in e-learning courses are intended to test learners on the topic / content they have been trained. Scoring the learners makes the assessments more engaging. Based on the score of the learner, corresponding feedback will be displayed. In general, specified number of points will be assigned for a correct response and no score will be assigned for an incorrect response. Do you know that we can assign negative scores for an incorrect response to a question in a quiz? Articulate Storyline 2 has a new feature to assign negative scores based on the learner’s responses. In this post, I would like to share how to use negative scores in e-learning courses. Here are the steps. Step 1: Click the insert tab and select the New Slide option.  Step 2: This opens a window with all available types of slides which you can insert into your course. We are creating an assessment, and hence, we need to select Graded or Freeform options under the Quizzing category. Step 3: Select an assessment type from the 9 available assessment types and the click Insert button. Step 4: In the window opened, add your question text and choices. Make sure to select the correct option. Step 5: Under Points section, which is at the bottom of the window, you will find 10 (which is the default score for a correct answer). You can enter a score of your choice. You can even increase/decrease the score using a drop down (which is displayed by clicking on the score). In this way, you can assign negative scores to your assessments. Note: You can modify the score or question content anytime by just clicking Form View on the top right corner of the slide. Hope you find this post useful. Please do share if you have any other ideas. Related Posts4 Tips for Developing E-learning Course Using Rapid Authoring ToolsHow to Enable Retake Quiz Option in Articulate Storyline?Calculating Score for the Quiz in Lectora Using the Modify Variable

Watch-try-do simulations are ideal for software training. They enable learners to first watch, and then, try it themselves, and finally, work on the software. Recently, we satisfied a unique requirement. A training manager wanted to have a login screen in some screens of software. Learners have to type their usernames and passwords in the text entry fields. The most important requirement here is to add password fields i.e. the password typed by learners should be displayed as ‘*’. This is not possible by default, as text entry fields in Articulate Storyline don’t provide much control for online course developers. The only option is to use external text entry fields (HTML ‘Input’ field). So, I have used a HTML field through a web object. In my previous blog, I explained how to add a normal text field using HTML. In this post, I will share how to add password fields in Articulate Storyline. Here are the steps. Step 1: Create a Boolean variable. I have created one here with the name password. Step 2: Develop a HTML page with an Input field (text field, in general). Format it as you desire, as shown in the screenshot below. In the above code, I have used commlab as password. And this code will set the value of the variable password to True when the learner types the correct password. Note: Make sure to save the HTML file as index.html. Step 3: Now, in the Insert tab, select the Web Object option to insert the HTML page into Storyline. Step 4: In the window opened, paste the location of the HTML file, or you can browse for its location by clicking the folder icon as shown below. Step 5: Adjust the size and position of the Web Object on the screen. You can even place a portion of the Web Object off the stage. However, the output remains the same. Shown below are the references. Step 6: Add a trigger in the base layer to jump to the next slide when the learner clicks the Submit button, if the value of the variable password is True.  Step 7: Publish the course and check the output. Now, you can see that the password typed by the learner is displayed as *. Hope you find this post useful. Do share your views. Related PostsArticulate Storyline: Login Screens for Simulation-based Courses - Part 1How to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?Integrating Twitter in An Online course Developed in Articulate Storyline

In the previous post, we looked at the approaches to design e-learning courses on food safety; in this post, we will look at a few instructional and visual components that we used to engage learners. Let’s see what they are. The first component is the learning objectives section. As it was a curriculum with many modules, only course level objectives wouldn’t serve the purpose of aligning objectives, content and assessments. So, we included module level objectives and presented all module level objectives using icons across all modules. Then coming to content treatment, we split the content into ‘need-to-know’ and ‘nice-to-know’. This helped us present the content appropriately instead of showing everything on the screen. We presented the ‘need-to-know’ content as info-graphics, text and image or icon and supplemented with interactivities. Whereas, the ‘nice-to-know’ information was presented in pop-ups. This bifurcation gives learners an opportunity to interact with the content. Regarding the visuals, we used vector images, icons and food industry themes to bring in variety. The next important component is the engagement technique or presentation pattern. We decided to set the stage for each module by asking engaging questions such as ‘Do you know?’ and ‘Can you recall?’. With ‘Can you recall?’, we get an opportunity to test what the learner has learnt in the previous module. We also used some ‘reflective questions’ during the modules, which allow the learners to think; here, we showed an expert’s opinion. Various presentation patterns such as slide shows (to show guidelines), timeline (to show time period) and info-graphics (to show dos and don’ts) have been used to engage learners. To consolidate learning, we have added the summary at the end of each module. Audio is another important component that aids the learning process. Narrating the entire on-screen content increases cognitive load on the learners. So, we used audio judiciously, without compromising on the degree of learner engagement. We used audio for conversation between the characters and to give an overview of the slides. For interactivity slides, we used audio only for introduction and instructions. The last and the most important component is the assessments section. We made sure that formative assessments are aligned with learning objectives and spread well throughout the module. We used drag and drop, match the following, drop down, etc., to present assessment questions. We used 3 different expressions of the character to provide feedback (correct, incorrect and try again) to the learner. This reinforces the learning and improves retention. To conclude, these are some of the elements we used to treat the content. Hope you find them useful. Related Posts5 Steps of a Highly Effective Instructional Design ProcessApproaches to Design Engaging E-learning Courses for Food Safety4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning Courses

Personalization is one strategy that’s helping many top companies reach their learners easily, and e-learning is no exception. As instructional designers, it’s our task to make online learning courses that our learners can relate to. Every day, we try to find innovative ways to engage learners and make our courses more interesting to them. In this process, we need to understand the needs and tastes of the learners. It’s important to come out with an idea that can take our training programs a step closer to them. But, how can you get started? Well, I’ve created a simple list for you. You have an opportunity to make creative courses and add a personalization element to them and make the learners believe that they have been tailored specifically to suit their tastes. As we all know, learners enjoy the training when they are able to identify themselves with it. Here are 4 innovative ways to personalize your online learning courses. 1. Provide learner-centric experience The ultimate goal of a training program is to meet learners’ expectations, and it is important for every e-learning course developer to develop a learner-centric approach. This is possible only if you talk to the stakeholders and gather the learners’ expectations for the training program before designing the course. We should understand who our learners are, what type of content they are looking for, and how they intend to use it. For example, if we have to design an e-learning course for people working in different departments such as HR, sales and so on, we need to personalize to create individualized content experiences for different roles. The content should be presented in such a way that the learners have an opportunity to select their role and meet their needs. 2. Deliver the course on the device they use Device personalization allows instructional designers to provide more relevant, optimized experiences based on the type of device used by the learner. For example, a salesperson needs to meet his customer and he wants to have a look at the features of the products. He would find it very helpful, if the features of the products are available in the form of an eBook which could be accessed, easily, anytime, anywhere, on his tablet. As we all know, Gen-Y people are gadget-friendly and use multiple devices such as smartphones, iPads, iPhones, tablets, and laptops. So, it becomes important to make your courses compatible with all these devices and modify the content based on the delivery device. 3. Use real images As instructional designers, we have learned over the years that learners want to feel connected to the training they take. For this, we need to personalize the content, and one way to do this is to use real images. Using real images can improve the perception of the learners as they see their colleagues/ product involved, and as a result it will be worth the time to participate in the development. Let us look at an example from a course we have designed on product training where we used real images to explain the installation of a battery of an explosive detector by a technician. This helps the technician understand and learn clearly, and he can perform well in the real time. Personalizing the training with real images will definitely be very effective. 4. Use a conversational tone Another way to personalize the content is to make the audio conversational. Use words such as "Wow", "Really", "That’s Great", and so on. This helps the learner get connected with the course at an emotional level, and thereby, makes it interesting. For example, let’s look at two different tones. Option 1: This course Anxiety Disorder gives an overview of the symptoms and treatment for anxiety disorder and demonstrates how to cope with this disorder. Option2: Hi! I am Mike, and I will guide you through this course Anxiety Disorder that highlights the symptoms and treatment for anxiety disorder. I will also tell you how you can cope with this disorder. Let’s get started with what is anxiety disorder. Which one is more conversational? I’m sure option 2 has a more friendly and conversational tone. I hope you find this post useful. These are surely not all the innovative ways for making your online learning courses more personalized. What other ways do you use? We would love to hear. Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An InfographicErrors While Designing Interactivities in E-Learning: How to Avoid Them?

Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) are used extensively in the assessments of e-learning courses. Well-designed MCQs go a long way in evaluating the achievement of the learning outcome of an online course. They are also very useful tools to reinforce the learning. MCQs can be classified into two categories - single-select and multi-select. In case of a single-select MCQ, only one of the given options is correct, whereas for a multi-select question, two or more of the options are right. Multi-select questions are more effective in evaluating the learner than single-select questions. Here is an info-graphic which tells you why. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you use multi-select questions in your e-learning assessments? We’d love to know. Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesBest Practices of Giving Feedback for E-learning Assessments5 Proven Tips to Frame Good Questions in E-learning Assessments [Infographic]

In most cases, when we work with buttons in Articulate Storyline, we create interactivities such as click-on-tabs, which tend to have two or three buttons. What can you do when you don’t have enough space on the screen to place two or three tabs? I worked on a course where the client asked me to use only a single button to reveal two different pieces of content. Furthermore, the text on the button/tab needs to be changed based on the piece of the content displayed. This is when I came across the Toggle Variable. Let me tell you a little about the Toggle Variable; this variable is very useful when you have only one tab to click, and the same tab needs to be clicked to display two or three different pieces of content in a single slide. This how you can use the Toggle Variable. Toggle Variable Creation: It is created while adjusting the variable section. In this section, we mostly set the operator value as Assignment to set the value of variable as either true of false. But, here, instead of Assignment, use the value Not Assignment to get the toggle variable. We can get the Not Assignment option when we choose the variable type as true or false only. It automatically assigns its values as either true or false on clicking the button. I have inserted one rectangular shape which is used as a button and named it as button1 and added one state called 1. I call the button when it is in state 1 as button2. Then, I took the two different pieces of text for the different states of the button and change the state of the text to hidden. After adding the text, I created a variable and named it asVariable1. And I toggle this variable as explained in the first two paragraphs. Here, I applied triggers to change the states of the button by using Variable1. Below are the triggers to generate the Toggle condition. After assigning these triggers, I showed the respective content for the button on clicking. For button1, the corresponding text is displayed using the below triggers. And for the button2, the correposnding text is displayed using the following triggers. Here are all these triggers on the Object Trigger panel. After assigning all these triggers, when I clicked the button1, it changed to button2 and the content of button2 is displayed. The button2 has a different color. When I click the same button, it changed to button1 and corresponding content is displayed. In this way, you can use the toggle variable to reduce the number of tabs, and thereby, make the optimal use of the limited space on the screen. Hope you find this post useful. Do share your views. Related PostsHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?Rapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesHow to Enable Content After Visiting All Buttons in Articulate Storyline

As an e-learning developer, you might have developed many online courses in English. But, have you ever worked on a course in a language you are not familiar with? Obviously, the answer is NO. It’s very difficult to develop an e-learning course in a language other than English. Here, I would like to share with you a process by which you can develop online courses in languages you are not familiar with. Recently, one of our clients, a leader in the healthcare industry, wanted to develop an e-learning course in Spanish to impart product training. This was a big challenge as we do not speak the language. We decided to develop the course in Spanish with the help of a translator who can speak Spanish and understand content in the language. We followed the below steps to develop the course. Understanding the Content: As the content was in Spanish, our instructional designers could not understand it. So, with the help of a translator, we comprehended the content and created an instructional design strategy. Also, we created screens with different interactivities like click-on-tabs, click-on-images with instructions and sentences in English. Then, we got the English content translated into Spanish. Audio Script: After completing the development of the slides, we wrote the audio script in English to support the on-screen content. Then, with the help of the translator, we had the audio script rendered in Spanish. Customer Review: After completing the audio script, we sent the course for customer review. The client was very impressed with the output and suggested minimal changes. We implemented the changes and finalized the course without audio. Audio Recording: As we were unable to understand the audio in Spanish, we added instructions to the narrator to give a pause between sentences where synchronization was needed with on-screen content. We also added some notes for the technical words, to ensure that they were pronounced correctly. Course Development With Audio: Synchronizing audio with the on-screen text was a big challenge to the developer. With the help of transliterations and pauses in the audio, the developer synched the audio. We clarified with the translator wherever we had doubts. After sending the course with audio to the client, we were asked to make some changes. After implementing the changes, the course was approved by the client. By following the above steps, we developed a course in Spanish though we do not understand the language. Hope you find this post interesting. Do share your views. Related Posts5 Tips for Efficient Translation of Narration of Online Courses5 Steps for Excellent Translation of Online CoursesTips to Reduce Translation Costs of E-learning Courses - Free Presentation