According to a report published on chitika.com, iPads account for 77% of the web traffic generated through tablet devices. The widespread use of iPads has opened new vistas in online training. Today, learners can conveniently access e-learning courses whenever and wherever they want. Are you too planning to join the iPad bandwagon? Do you wish to make the best use of this device from Apple to train your people? Then, you need to download the eBook Unleashing the Power of iPads and Other Tablets in E-learning to get all the information you need to harness the full learning potential of this tablet device. Related PostsHow to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to Interactive E-learning Courses: Free E-book5 Questions you Need to Ask Before Designing a Course for the iPad116 Sure-fire E-learning Tips from the Experts in Online Training - Free eBook

In most cases, we see that a one word feedback is provided for the learner’s responses to questions in assessments of online courses - Correct or Incorrect. The feedback provided for all right responses is the same. Similarly, a common feedback is provided for all wrong answers. But, we can provide separate feedback for each option to a question. The main advantage of providing ‘individualized’ feedback is that the learning is reinforced effectively. Furthermore, as the feedback for each option is different, we need not add too much of content. Recently, I was tasked with developing an assessment for a course, using Articulate Storyline, which comprised Multiple Choice Questions. Each of these questions had three options, and the feedback for each of these options is different from the others. Here are the steps that I followed to meet the requirement. Step1: Insert the MultipleChoice slide. Step2: Enter aquestion and itsoptions. Step3: By editing the fields below, you can provide separate feedback for and assign ‘individual’ scores toeach option. Step4: By default, we can see the option By Question, is selected in the dropdown Feedback. I change it to By Choice. Step5: By selecting By Choice, various fields with the Morebutton are added to provide separate feedback for each option. Step6: In this step. I provide‘individualized’ feedback for each option. How to insert feedback for the first option: When you click the More button, the Question Level Feedbackwindow is opened. Enter the feedback text then click OK. You can also add the related audio for each feedback. The text highlighted in blue is the feedback for first option.  How to insert feedback for the second option: You can add the feedback for the second option in the same way you added for the first.The text highlighted in blue is the feedback for second option.  How to insert feedback for the third option: You can add the feedback for the third option in the same way you added for the first and second.The text highlighted in blue is the feedback for third option.  Step7: After entering all the feedback, Save & Close the question window. Finally, the output for each option is as follows. Hope you find this blog useful. How do you provide feedback to questions in assessments? We’d love to know. Related PostsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?Providing Custom Feedback in Articulate Storyline for Effective Learning

It is a well-known fact that medical representatives face many challenges, while promoting their companies’ products.They need to impress and convince doctors to prescribe their medicines and upgrade their product knowledge to survive in a fiercely competitive business world. How can a medical representative overcome these challenges and promote his company’s drugs to doctors? Well, effective training plays a vital role in enabling these representatives to face doctors confidently and convince them to prescribe their medicines. E-learning can be the best solution to improve the efficiency of medical representatives. As an e-learning company, we are experienced in designing and developing training programs for medical representatives by following these best practices. We design and develop bite-sized (10-15 minute) modules for medical sales representatives to reinforce learning on the go. These modules can be accessed anywhere, anytime, on any device (such as iPads, Smartphones, PCs and so on.). We use different kinds of interactivities, animations, scenarios and gamification to develop engaging and learner-oriented modules. We frame assessments to enable the sales representatives to apply what they have learned already. This helps them retain their knowledge for longer periods. Once a medical representative is trained well, he is ready to handle doctors’ questions. Here is a list of questions, which may be asked by the doctors. Why should I prescribe this product? How does this product help treat the disease? What is the recommended dosage for different age groups? What is the composition of your medicine? What are the pros and cons of the product? What will be the side effects of discontinuing the drug? When should the patient discontinue this product? When does the product expire? What is the cost of the medicine? Is it a newly manufactured drug or re-modified from an existing product? Is it effective compared to its competitors? How many doctors have prescribed this product till now? Here I would like to share the best practices of creating effective assessments for medical representatives. Create interactive assessments to reinforce learning and enable active participation Provide explanatory feedback for the assessments once representatives attempt them, and this helps them understand the concept better. To be successful as a medical sales representative, you need to have good knowledge of the product to handle the doctor’s queries effectively, and this is possible through effective e-learning.Please do share your thoughts! Related PostsInformation Security - Why Does This Sensitive Topic Need E-learning?5 Tips for Quality Control of E-learning Courses5 Compelling Reasons Why Organizations Need E-learning

One of our clients approached us with an interesting and difficult requirement, and in this blog, I am going to explain about the requirement and the solution we offered. Requirement: Our client, a leading provider of logistics, transportation and warehousing services, trains its employees through the online courses which are hosted on its intranet/ portal, and it doesn’t use a Learning Management System (LMS). Also, it doesn’t track its learners who complete courses successfully. The client wanted to develop an e-learning course on safety, for all the employees of the company who are geographically dispersed. Some of the employees work on the field. So, it wants its employees to take the course whenever and wherever they want, on the device of their choice. And, it wanted to track the completion of the course regardless of the time, place, and device. The client also wanted to email a certificate to each of its learners, containing his name and designation, on passing the final quiz of the course. Solution: 1. Firstly, we need to finalize the tool which: Can be used to publish to a format which is compatible with multiple devices Can be customized easily Is flexible for coding All the above mentioned features are available in Articulate Storyline. So, we selected this tool to develop the course. 2. The client wanted a ‘completion certificate’ which contains the learner’s name and designation to be emailed to the latter. In order to get that information, we created an intro page for the course in which the learner needs to enter his first name, last name, designation and email ID. We restricted the page such that the learner cannot proceed to the next slide unless he enters information in all the fields. 3. Now, we had all the information of the learner. Using this information and JavaScript and PHP, we generated the certificate with the name and designation printed on it and mailed it to the learner as an attachment. 4. Finally, we met the requirement — the courses could be viewed on any device and the certificate was emailed to the learner. To meet the other requirement of the client, i.e. track the learners who have completed the course successfully, we arranged to send a carbon copy of the email to the trainer, through coding, so that he can know how many learners have completed the course successfully. This is how we met the client’s requirement. Hope you find this post interesting. 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 Create Section 508 E-learning Course Using Flash

E-learning is used extensively by companies to impart training to their staff members. According to the report, Corporate Learning Goes Digital: How Companies Can Benefit From Online Education, published by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, 77% of American companies offer online corporate training to improve the professional development of their employees. The report also stated that the online corporate market is expected to grow by 13% per year up to 2017. How can companies make the best use of this immensely popular training medium? What does it take to create highly effective e-learning courses? Well, organizations need to focus on one of the most important steps in the development of an online course - preparation of the storyboard. Here is an info-graphic that explains what a storyboard is and why it is important to make good storyboards. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you develop e-learning courses? We’d love to know. Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesWhy are Videos so Effective to Train Your Employees?6 Phases of an Effective Instructional Design Process [Infographic]

Cost and time overruns in e-learning projects don’t happen over night. In fact,they happen in each phase of the project, whether big or small. To find out the root cause of this problem, let’s look at some of the reasons that causes cost overrun and schedule delay 1. Starting a project before the inputs are ready It is common for organizations to start a project before they’re ready. They provide provisionary inputs and ask the vendor to proceed. The vendor often puts in a lot of effort to comprehend the inputs at the initial stage, with the help of the SMEs and stakeholders. Inspite of all these efforts, you don’t find good progress. Provisionary inputs result in re-work, delays and cost overruns. 2. Quoting before knowing Sometimes it happens; before knowing the complete project scope we started quote for the same.Often, estimates are prepared in a hurry. At first, it appears that the projectinvolves only asmall amount of work,but as timeprogresses, a completely different picture emerges. For example, there might be some complex animations involved that consume most of the production time, and we wrongly estimate thiswhen we quote. As the number of hours spent goes up, cost overrunsoccur. 3. Inadequate planning and poor scheduling Inadequate planning and scheduling leads to chaos among other projects. Due to inadequate time estimations, resources have to work overtime to meet the deadlines which will indirectly result in cost overruns.Inaccurate time forecasts also have a negative impact on quality deliverables. 4. Wrong assumptions The mismatch between two brains results in rework and cost overruns. To avoid this,both the parties should sign off the scope prior to commencement of actual development. A prototype,developed before actual production starts, helps scale up the requirement greatly. 5. Change of owner/stakeholders A change of owner/stakeholders creates lots of differences in a project. The expectations of the new stakeholders may differ completely, from the previous stakeholders. If this is the case, all the work done already will have to be discarded. Similarly, when there is a change in the internal teams, problems such as ineffective transfer of project knowledgeto new team members may take place, and this results in re-work, delays and cost overruns. These are some of the common mistakes I come across in my day-to-day professional life; do share the ones you come across, too. Related PostsCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An InfographicDr. APJ Abdul Kalam: Homage to a Great TeacherTypical Setup Time and Cost to Develop and Deliver eLearning Courses

Using videos in e-learning is an effective way to make the learners recall the things on which they have been trained. Many training managers prefer adding online videos directly into the online course. However, we face some problems when we use online videos, especially those from the YouTube, directly in our courses.  In this post, I would like to share some tips to avoid issues while adding You Tube videos to e-learning courses using Articulate Storyline. Let us take a sample video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDjRIONF7ag) of CommLab. As you are aware,YouTube has stopped device support recently, as Google is updating the API. As a result, videos embedded in Articulate Storyline result in ‘Device Support Error’ and videos don’t play. In order to make the videos work, insert them as web objects. Below are the steps to insert YouTube videos as web objects. Step 1: Click the Insert tab; select the Web Object option. Step 2: In the window opened, type/paste the location of the video as shown below. Step 3: Adjust the size and position of the web object on the screen. If we add you tube videos as described above, the entire web page will be inserted into your course. As a consequence, other videos which are suggested by the You Tube will be displayed on the screen and even played after the completion of your video if the Autoplay option is set to ON. So, here is my second tip - to avoid playing such unwanted videos, use embed before the video ID in the URL. For example, to use a video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDjRIONF7ag, you should update the URL as www.youtube.com/embed/RDjRIONF7ag which plays the same video. Using tip 2, you can insert just the required video, but at the end of your video,the You Tube just suggests (but does not play, unless you click) some videos as shown in the screenshot below image. Learners may get distracted from e-learning courses if this issue is not resolved. Hence, I advise you to remove such suggestions by the You Tube. To do that, just add ?rel=0 at the end of video URL which looks similar to the link below. Sample Link: www.youtube.com/embed/RDjRIONF7ag?rel=0 These are some tips to remember while inserting You Tube videos into your e-learning courses. Have anything to add to the above list? Do share with us. Related PostsHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?Rapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesHow to Create Section 508 E-learning Course Using Flash

Quality control is a process to review all essential elements involved in order to meet the requirements of quality. It is an important step that must be followed before delivering any course to client. A thorough and systemic quality control (QC) reviews and testing must be done to avoid obvious errors. Formative and summative reviews are done usually before we send a course for stakeholders or clients, but rather you can QC your course at the stage of developing, designing, and production. ISO 9000 defines quality control as "A part of quality management focused on fulfilling quality requirements". So, checking the quality of the course is really an important phase of course development. Let’s see few tips on how to test/check the quality of an e-learning course. Plan for the unplanned We should be able to plan the quality standards in advance considering all the issues rather than take shortcuts at the final stages of course delivery. For example, a developer or an instructional designer working on a project takes an unplanned leave, but as per the planning, the course should get delivered on the same day when he\she took a leave, and no one has a time to review or test that course; as a result the course delivery would get halted. Hence, we should plan for the unplanned situations too.Also, we must include a set of review cycles in the project plan itself, to have consistency for all the changes that are taking place at each phase. For example, limit the content edits for the first review phase such that audio need not be re-recorded.We must reserve time in the schedule for the quality control reviews. At least 10 to 20% of the project’s time is required for the quality control or testing of the course. Create checklists Create checklists for testing the QC such as standardization, efficiency, and accuracy. Some key points that must be included in your checklist while testing a course are: All links and buttons must be tested All audio must be tested Test whether the videos are loading properly Accessibility features must be tested Test the course in multiple browsers and with different resolutions Test whether navigation is in correct sequence Test the final assessment at the end Master the process of Quality Control Maintaining a personal checklist and keeping an eye on details helps you master the process of quality control. Identifying the issues at a glance or lesser review time are the signs of mastering quality control process. Use a fresh set of eyes to review your course A Quality Analyst or an IDwhile viewing for functionality, also reviews consistency in storyboards etc. You could also find someone who is not directly involved in the project to review the course as every individual who is working on the project may not identify small errors or mistakes such as spelling errors, double spaces, incomplete navigational page, wrong hyperlinks, errors in functionality, etc. Having an independent person to review the course helps to rectify such anomalies. The developer, then can correct the issues and complete the edits. Maintain an issue log Keeping track of all the feedback is a crucial step and is more challenging to maintain. An issue log contains a list of ongoing and closed issues of the project. It would be easy to maintain an issue log. If we get the changes done in the course on the same day, sort and move closed issues to a side or bottom, maintain the status of each issue, keep your issues together, and allow members to submit the issues. In terms of collecting and resolving feedback, using an issue log that will help list all the feedback we received, as well as those assigned to fix it along with comments. These are few tips that I have noticed that help bring about a better quality control of an e-learning course.  Have other interesting tips? Please share with us in the comments section below. Happy Reading!! Related Posts5 Compelling Reasons Why Organizations Need E-learning6 Aspects to Consider Before Starting an E-learning ProjectSmart Questions to Evaluate Product Knowledge of Medical Representatives

Are you creating an e-learning course for your people? Do you want to execute the project smoothly? Well, we must have a clear vision for and set the goal of the project before we start. In our organization, we analyze the project requirements clearly before commencing work on a project. As an e-learning project manager, I would like to list some key aspects you should consider before starting an online course development project. Stakeholder: We need to get information about the stakeholder by asking the following questions. What is the role of the stakeholder? Was he involved in the development of online courses earlier? Who is the point of contact for the project? What is the best way to communicate with the stakeholder? How much time can the stakeholder spend on the project? Business Need: Here are some questions we should ask to learn about the client’s business need. What is the ultimate goal of the project? How does the project help the client reach its goals? How is the client imparting training, currently? (Is the training imparted in a classroom or through self-paced online training material?) Will the e-learning course be translated? Learner Profile: The following questions will help us gather the required information about the target audience of the course. Are the learners familiar with e-learning? What is the level of their proficiency in English? (This helps us determine the complexity of the language to be used in the e-learning course) What are the learning resources currently used by the learners? Content: Here are some questions you need to ask about the inputs. What is the format of inputs provided (MS-Word documents/PPT files/videos)? Can the given content be modified/edited by us? Is the content finalized by the subject-matter expert (SME)? Do we get all the inputs in one go? Technical Requirements: Answers to the following questions help us understand the technical requirements of the client better. What is the LMS on which the online course will be hosted? What is the learning technology standard to be followed (SCORM 1.2/SCORM 2004/AICC/Tin Can API)? What are devices on which the course will be accessed? What are browsers that the course needs to be compatible with? What are the operating systems that the course needs to be compatible with? What is the bandwidth available to the learners? Project Management: You need to ask the questions listed below to get useful information that helps you execute the e-learning project better. What is the project deadline? Can the client arrange for an SME to answer our queries about the content? Can we contact the SME directly, or will the client help us organize meetings with the SME? By obtaining this information, you can understand the e-learning project requirements clearly. Hope you find this post useful. Do share your views. Related Posts5 Compelling Reasons Why Organizations Need E-learning5 Tips for Quality Control of E-learning CoursesSmart Questions to Evaluate Product Knowledge of Medical Representatives

According to the Mac Observer, 94% of Fortune 500 companies are either testing or using iPads. The widespread usage of these tablets from Apple has ushered in a new era in the world of online training. Millions of learners access online courses easily, anytime, anywhere, on iPads. These devices have indeed opened the door to highly effective and convenient learning. The iPad is the ideal tool to train your mobile workforce. It has a number of hardware and networking features which are very useful to impart high quality training online and create excellent learner experiences. Here is an info-graphic that lists 6 aspects you need to consider when you develop e-learning courses for the iPad. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you use iPads? We’d love to know. Related PostsUsing iPads to Harness the Full Potential of E-learningMedia Suitable to Deliver High Quality Training through iPads [Infographic]5 Questions you Need to Ask Before Designing a Course for the iPad