We are experiencing digital renaissance in all aspects of our lives including the way we obtain knowledge. Today, information is at our finger tips, thanks to the groundbreaking developments in the ICT sector. We have access to information whenever and wherever we want. These developments in technology have provided organizations with new tools to enhance employee performance at workplace. The way training is delivered has changed significantly over the years but the tools available today are simply incredible. OHPs gave way to PPTs and now PPTs are slowly giving way to more interactive and engaging formats. Virtual classrooms, interactive whiteboards, podcasts and screencasts are some of the other tools that instructors are using at a part of teaching aids in the classroom as well as online. Right now, instructors or training managers are using these aids on an ad-hoc basis. Would it not be a good idea to bind them into a structured format, so that for any given training need, there are resources that are carefully organized and made accessible to learners based on the learning need at a given point of time? Here is an eBook that shares information about various instructional aids that are being used in classrooms, as a part of e-learning courses or as independent just-in-time learning resources. The eBook: Provides a comprehensive overview of technology-enabled learning is and explains how it is useful Lists various technological tools that can be used to impart training better Describes how these tools can be used effectively in various training situations Explains how multiple learning aids can be integrated under a single umbrella for better workplace learning experiences Download the eBook now! Related Posts4 Tips for Developing E-learning Course Using Rapid Authoring ToolsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesHow to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to Interactive E-learning Courses: Free E-book

Many organizations are now realizing the need to make their eLearning content available through Smartphones and tablets. They wish to implement mobile learning by making their e-learning courses accessible through mobile devices. But the e-learning courses that run on desktops do not run on iPads or the latest version of android tablets, if they were developed using Flash. The reason being Flash based courses are not supported by iOS versions. It is, indeed, a challenge to convert courses that are developed using Flash. What can be done in such cases? Do you discard such useful resources? Do they re-developed them right from scratch to make them compatible? Well, converting them into HTML 5 format is a good option. How do we migrate existing Flash courses to HTML5? Here are the 7 steps involved in converting your existing Flash courses to HTML5. It just takes 2 to 3 weeks to re-create a course similar to Flash course using few authoring tools. Step 1: Make sure that all source files are available You need to ensure that all media and other supporting files of the existing course are available before conversion. These may include .FLAs, XML, JavaScript and media files such as audio and videos. Having all files at one place will ensure effective and quick conversion. Step 2: Extract content and media from existing course Once you have all necessary files, you have to extract the content and media from the legacy course. You need to copy the on-screen text content and the labels of all navigational buttons in the Graphical User Interface (GUI), in MS-Word document or PowerPoint presentation which can be used as a storyboard. You also need to copy the media elements such as audio, video, graphics etc and store them in a structure of folders. It is also necessary to copy learning resources in the form of PDF files and MS-Word documents. Step 3: Select authoring tool to convert your course into HTML5 You can convert your existing e-learning material into HTML5 using various authoring tools available in market. These tools help in the smooth transition of your existing Flash-based training material into HTML5, and retain the interactivities that were adopted for e-learning course. Here are some popular authoring tools that can help in creating your existing eLearning into mLearning. Articulate Storyline 2 Captivate 8 Lectora Inspire iSpring Step 4: Finalize GUI and interactivities based on branding Once you have chosen the authoring tool, it is time to decide on the GUI and the interactivities in the converted course. This is important because the GUI of the HTML5 course may not be similar to that of the legacy eLearning course. Some interactivities developed in Flash cannot be created in authoring tools. In such cases, you need to choose alternatives. For example, some complex animations can be converted into videos. Step 5: Identify right templates to develop Interactivities Templates play a key role in effective development of online courses quickly and at low cost. The job of the instructional designer is made simple, as the necessary framework for designing the digital course has already been created. They lend consistency to the courses and can be modified to make the course look unique. Step 6: Develop a prototype resembling the actual course Once you finalize the templates, the next step is to create a prototype. The prototype needs to resemble the "actual course" and help stakeholder/client to get a clear picture of how the course looks like when it is fully developed. Any improvements and alterations needed, can be identified at a very early stage, and this reduces rework. Step 7: Develop the course and publish it This is the last step in the conversion of a legacy course into HTML5. After the prototype, the next step is to develop the "complete course" and publish it to the HTML5 format, using the selected authoring tool. Apart from converting flash to HTML5 another challenge for organizations is with multiple browsers and versions. Most problems are associated with IE6 & 7, which a huge number of organizations are still using. Organization may not be inclined to move towards advanced version of the browser that supports HTML5 content. Online courses can be published to both flash and HTML5 users. When Learners access course in IE 6 or 7 they can see the Flash course which does not support HTML5. If they are using the latest versions of the browsers they will see HTML5 output. Conversion of Flash based courses to HTML5 can be made simpler by following these 7 steps. Please share your thoughts on the same! Related PostsRe-creation of Flash Courses Using Articulate StorylineHTML5 - The Lord Of The RingJourney of CommLab India with E-learning Tools - Flash Still Rules

Last week, I was assigned a new e-learning project. As soon as I received this information, I was asked to have a call with the stakeholder, who was the training manager of an FMCG company. With little time to prepare, I went for the call and all hell broke loose! After a while, it realized that the stakeholder wasn’t giving me any answers because I failed to ask him the right questions. So, I went back to my desk and made a list of questions to ask him and scheduled another call. Here’s what unfolded in the call… My very first question was Who are the learners? I know this sounds quite simple, but you will learn a lot about the people you’re creating the course for. In my case, I came to know that there are about 200-300 people belonging to the global procurement division of the company. I also came to know that they belong to the age group of 25 to 40. I understood that it was a course directed at a global audience. And, my target audience was young (an informal approach can be used for the course). My next question was What needs to change about their performance?  In other words, what is the outcome of the course? The stakeholder seemed relieved to hear this question, and he went on and on for quite some time. When he finished answering this question, I had all the learning objectives and outcomes ready! The process was quite simple, and the stakeholder mentioned that he wanted to train the procurement division to use a new procurement tool to ensure hassle-free procurement and payment. So, I instinctively knew what the outcome of this e-learning course is.  My third question - Were any e-learning training programs conducted before?  This question helped me know whether my learners were novices or experienced with e-learning. If they were novice online learners, then the tone of the course needs to be a bit "introductory", rather than just jumping into the subject matter. If your learners are well-versed with e-learning, then you can request your stakeholder to send one of their pervious courses so that you can create a course on the same lines. This won’t leave the learners confused, especially in terms of course navigation. I then moved onto the technical bit - What are the delivery platforms? This is a must ask question. It is the delivery platform that decides your authoring tool. For instance, my stakeholder wanted the course to be developed in Adobe Flash, but also needed mobile device and iPad compatibility as most of his learners use smart phones and tablets. Since the iPad does not support Flash, we came to a conclusion to go ahead with Articulate Storyline. This was a very important decision. Just imagine if we had created the course in Flash only to find out in the later stages that the course should be mobile compatible. Next comes, What is the budget allocated for the project, and what is its timeline? Although the budget is taken care by the project manager, it is important to know the cost of the project as it determines the effort you put into it. More than the budget, I was concerned with the project schedule. Deadlines decide the number of people working on the project. They also determine the iterations and review cycles of the course. The lesser the time the more the hassles in delivering the desired output. Now to the most significant question - Who is the key decision maker and who will approve the course? You need to make this point absolutely clear with your stakeholder. Many a time, we are told that the stakeholder is the decision-maker. Later only to be told later that his boss, or his boss’ boss saw the course and gave a few changes. ‘Finalizing’ the decision-maker right at the beginning will not only make your life easier, but also helps you judge the stakeholder expectations. It hard to meet expectations when you have no idea who gets to make the final call. Last but not the least, How will we know whether the training/course is successful?  Most stakeholders tend to ignore this factor once the course is uploaded; you need to know if question number two (What needs to change about their performance?) has been answered. There are several ways to do so. You can track the learners’ progress and results on the LMS or conduct a survey to know whether the learners found the course useful or not. It is very important to assess the efficacy of the course. Feedback from the learners will help implement changes in next module. At the end of the day, the course is all about enhancing performance and bringing a visible change. These seven questions helped me understand my stakeholder and his requirement and made my life much easier! What are the questions you ask your stakeholders? We’d love to know. Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesWhat Should You Look for In A Prototype of E-learning Courses?Best Practices of Giving Feedback for E-learning Assessments

The primary goal of training managers is to improve learner’s performance and efficacy. So, how can they effectively achieve this objective? E-learning is one of the possible answers. Effective e-learning helps people to get trained with new skills, and knowledge. One of the essential requirements for building an effective e-learning course is to make content simple for the learners to understand easily. Let see some tips to develop an effective content for an e-learning course. Write E-learning Content Simple and Clear: To create an effective e=learning course, the content has to be very clear, simple and straight. Use good presentation patterns and simple interactivities to teach e-learning. When we teach a subject, we should use simple words that everybody understands easily. Avoid complex words that could confuse learners. Use simple and short sentences as they enhance the clarity of e-learning. Give real time examples to understand the concepts. Prepare assessments relating to the content to assess the learners’ knowledge. Choose information that is essential and avoid unnecessary content that is not directly related to the learning objective. Visuals and Infographics: Visuals play a vital role in creation of e-learning courses. Using visuals according to the content, increases learners’ participation and performance. They should be presented in such a way that just by seeing the visuals, learners should be able to understand the concept easily. Avoid overloading the course with too many visuals and maintain a balance between text and visuals. Real photographs and graphics will help learners to retain the information. Most of us do not give adequate importance to the usage of infographics in e-learning. But, info graphics are powerful elements that help learners to recall the information. Using infographics in e-learning helps increase learners’ performance as complex information is presented in a simple format. It is very difficult to present the information related to process and timeline events in a text format. However, when you create infographics, these subjects can be presented in an easily understandable format. Narration: Narration will engage learners and give necessary instructions throughout the e-learning course. Learners get bored, if the entire course includes audio that merely repeats on screen text. For example a course of30 minutes should be supported with just 15 to 20 minutes audio. Narration should not intrude into comprehension process but should actively support it. These are 3 major factors that should be considered to enhance the quality of content in an e-learning course. Please do share your thoughts. Related Posts5 Tips for Quality Control of E-learning Courses3 Tips to Create Immersive Learning Environment in E-learning Courses [Infographic]Learner Analysis - 5 Things You Need to Do [Infographic]

Interactivities in online courses help learners to stay connected with the course even in the absence of the trainer.Interactivities enthuselearners and help them focus better. The content is condensed and presented in such a way that learners comprehend the course effectively. Interactivities make learners participate in the course and learn at a faster pacewith efficacy. To know more about how interactivities engage the learners, check out the infographic here If you have more to add, please share your comments in the column Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesBenefits of Adding Game-Based Interactivities in E-learning - An InfographicCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An Infographic

Many a time designing and developing effective e-learning courses is a challenging task. Opting the right strategies for your course based on the specific requirement is utmost important. Selecting the right authoring tools is very essential as course requirements may vary from each other. For example a course may require interactivities; in this case tools like Flash and Storyline are more appropriate as they have templates with scenarios and avatars. This makes access easy and saves time and cost. After this the next step is to translate the course into multiple languages and make it available to global audience. And thereafter hosting is done on LMS. So, implementing e-learning in your organization is fast and easy. We have put together resources like: Choose the right authoring tool to develop e-learning Get to know: Instructional design 101 Translate e-learning course effectively and global roll-out Host on LMS These resources help you get insights that help in addressing your training needs. Download this kit now! Related PostsLearner Analysis - 5 Things You Need to Do [Infographic]5 Tips for Quality Control of E-learning Courses6 Aspects to Consider Before Starting an E-learning Project

Video-based learning content is one of the effective and engaging learning strategies. It motivates the learner to learn complex concepts easily. The involvement of an instructor in the video will enhance the learning experience and give them the feel of attending a classroom training virtually. Video-based content is a must for imparting certain training concepts. Recorded videos help in a major way to repeat training programs for participants who could not attend the training session. The challenge comes when you want to host a training session online to deliver it to a global audience. The huge file size of videos may create problems for hosting them online on a normal server. Hosting charges are expensive because you need a streaming server than a normal server for learners to see the video due to the difference in Internet bandwidths. Another issue is to protect the confidentiality of the videos. Hosted videos should not have downloadable or share options. In order to host videos online and deliver them using LMS to track the training status, you must have all the videos on the streaming server. There are many videos hosting service providers who provide similar services but with various payment packages. To select the best video hosting service provider, you need to first list down your requirements and then check on the agency that is providing such features or services. Here are some factors that you need to consider while selecting the video-hosting provider: How many videos do you want to host? What will be the size/length of each video? Do you want to deliver the video to mobile users or only to those who use desktops? What type of video quality do you want to host? HD or normal videos? Do want to provide the download or share option? Do you wish to customize the player with your own logo? Would you require unlimited or limited video space? Would you require unlimited or limited bandwidth? What would be the number of user views? We recommend to our customers to use Wistia video service, which provides good streaming features, but the costs are based on usage; for low and for fixed budgets, Vimeo is a good choice. The streaming feature helps learners to download videos in parts. The quality of the video will be based on the learner Internet bandwidth. The videos will be hosted on the streaming server and can be easily integrated into LMS as a learning content. Based on the device used, the respective video format will be displayed. All videos will be secured as it is delivered through LMS and video hosting provider provides its own security features. Get the <embed> code from the video hosting application and embed it easily on the LMS. Hope this information helps you in achieving a breakthrough on hosting huge videos and integrating on LMS. Related PostsHow to Create Section 508 E-learning Course Using FlashIncreasing User-Registrations for Courses Hosted on LMS15 Questions You Were too Afraid to Ask About the LMS

Well-defined operational processes are the crux of a successful organization. Streamlining operations help in improving efficiency and increasing productivity. However, it also comes with a challenge of training the employees on these processes effectively. Processes involve a series of stages/ actions that are required to be performed in a systematic manner, to get the desired output. The content is usually dry, routine and boring, and employees tend to quickly lose their interest. Therefore, training employees can be a daunting task. So how can we handle this? How can we create effective courses, which can break the monotony, making learning interesting? Crafting an appropriate strategy can greatly help impart hands-on learning experiences. I will share with you a few strategies that we have used to design such training courses. Storytelling Approach for Recruitment Process We weaved a story introducing a character Adam. Adam, the new HR manager faces a talent crunch and wants to recruit new employees. Since he is new, he is confused how to go about it. John, who is a senior HR manager starts explaining the key phases in the recruitment process. The entire process is explained in a story format, using the fictional characters to make it interesting. We have used the real captures of the company’s recruitment portal to explain the process. A set of characters was created to explain with whom and how Adam has to communicate and interact while recruiting. Animations and call-outs with speech bubbles were used to show the conversation between the characters, supported by the audio. So, by the end of the story, the learner understands how to hire staff members, as per the company’s policy. Avatar-Based Approach for Supply Chain Management Process Supply chain management is a complex process that deals with various activities, including purchasing, manufacturing, warehousing, planning etc. This is a dry subject and can be very boring to learners, if the content is just presented with some interactivities. So, we came up with a strategy of using an avatar, which is an ant. Avatars can add life to a routine topic, and help in engaging the learners, especially when the process is complex and huge with series of stages. "Alex, the supply chain ant" is introduced at the beginning of the course as an expert in all aspects of supply chain management. It guides the learners and helps them understand the concepts. We used different interactivities to explain the ‘dos’ vis-à-vis the job roles and responsibilities of the team involved in each stage. Scenario-Based Approach for Hazard Analysis Process This course was on identifying microbiological, chemical and physical hazards associated with foods. So, we used a scenario with 2 characters, The senior safety manager guides a new safety supervisor. The junior staff member asks questions and understands the process and concepts. To make the course more engaging, we used icons and tables to explain the phases of the analysis process. Appropriate backgrounds, which were similar to the real working environment, were created to make the course more relevant. We recreated lot of graphics to represent the hazards and steps. We have also used click on interactivities to explain the details of the process. Once the whole process is completed, the senior manager asks the assessment questions and the learner needs to answer them. This helped us retain the learner’s attention till the end. Hope you find the strategies interesting. I will share some more strategies that we used to design courses on performance management and automation processes in my next blog. Stay tuned. What strategies do you use to make process training programs engaging? We would love to know. Related PostsBusiness Process Training - Why & When: Free PresentationDeveloping Online Process Training through eLearning - A Case StudyChallenges in Traditional Methods of Process Training

Recently, we were working on a product training course. The course was about precision balances and topics included installation and repair and maintenance of the balance. There were around 12 topics in the course, out of which 5 topics were mandatory. The learners need to go through these topics to attain completion status. The raw inputs contained a lot of product videos and a one line explanation of each topic. It was a challenge to use these videos to teach and engage learners throughout the course. So, let’s look at a few approaches we used to engage and motivate learners. As the learners were service technicians, we used the character of a senior service technician to guide them through the course. The character adds life to the course and learners can easily relate to what is being taught. So, we used this character to set the stage for the learners. This character comes at the beginning of the course to introduce the topics and tell learners how important it is to complete the mandatory topics. These topics are distinguished from other topics with an exclamation symbol. Though the importance of the mandatory topics is told, the learners may notbe motivated to take these topics since only videos were used to explain the working of the product. So, to increase the motivational levels, we came up with another approach. For each topic we framed 2 questions. Once the learner completes watching the videos, he is posedthose questions. Based on the response, the learner is provided feedback -A congratulatory message using the phrases ‘Excellent, Well-done, Bingo’ if he is right. In case he is wrong, he gets messages such as ‘what’s your second guess or ‘Give it another try’ so that he is not demotivated. He scores 5 points for each right answer and on the completion of 5 mandatory topics he should score 50 points to win a badge. The character appears to congratulate the learner and guide him to the next mandatory topic. Scores and points are ideal tools to motivate the learners, as they are challenged to winin order to enter the next level. This also makes the course engaging and effective. This approach greatly motivated the learners. We also included afinal quiz at the end of the course to cover all the topics.On successful completion of the course, he will be awarded with a certificate- an additional motivational factor. To conclude, these are a few approaches we used to improve motivation levels of learners for a product training course. Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesUse of Avatars In E-LearningImportance of Standardization in Designing and Developing E-learning Courses

Articulate Storyline is widely used to develop e-learning courses. A survey conducted by the E-learning Guild, in 2013, revealed that most online course developers prefer to use this powerful rapid authoring tool. What makes Articulate Storyline the preferred choice of the e-learning development community? Well, this tool is very simple to use, and anyone familiar with PowerPoint can work with it in a hassle-free manner. Furthermore, Storyline comes with a wide array of capabilities that go a long way in creating excellent online courses. Here is an info-graphic that lists some of the advanced features of this rapid authoring tool. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you use Articulate Storyline to develop e-learning courses? We’d love to know. Related PostsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key Features4 Tips for Developing E-learning Course Using Rapid Authoring ToolsArticulate Storyline for Easy E-learning Development - An Infographic