Colorado, or "the Centennial State", is known for its beautiful state parks, its fabulous mountains and ski slopes, being home to the Denver Broncos and the fictional (and, amusingly enough, the real) South Park, and for being the microbrewery capital of America. It’s also the state hosting this year’s Association for Talent Development (ATD) conference — the event you can’t afford to miss if you are interested in the latest developments in Talent Development. Which is exactly why Epignosis will be there, touting its wares, so to speak, discussing potential partnerships and collaboration deals, mingling with the industry’s best, keeping up to date with the latest innovations and trends in the field, and generally absorbing everything we can. The ATD 2016, like those before it, is organized by the eponymous Association for Talent Development, a professional membership organization that has been supporting knowledge and skills development businesses and professionals for over 70 years. This year’s ATD 2016 International Conference & Exposition brings together professionals from the Talent Development and eLearning industries with key decision makers and employee development stakeholders from the corporate world, attempting to offer an in-depth guide for the path to success in talent development and a clear outlook on what the future of the industry holds. With numerous keynote speeches, round-tables and learning sessions, participants will get the opportunity to share their experiences, discuss the industry’s present state and future goals, and learn about innovative tools and solutions for designing, delivering, implementing, and measuring the success of employee training and talent development programs. As for Epignosis, we’ll be there to showcase eFrontPro, our flagship enterprise Learning and Talent Development Platform geared towards large businesses with high user volumes and advanced customization requirements. Meet us at our booth and we’ll be happy to tell you all about eFrontPro’s features and deployment options (including self-hosted and private cloud), as well as the numerous integrations on offer, including our support for IBM Connections, Big Blue’s leading business social network platform. Along for the ride, will be TalentLMS, our cloud-based Learning Management System that’s a powerful yet simple to use solution for businesses and educators, and Snappico, a mobile app that builds on the intersection of micro-learning, gamification and infographics to provide bite-sized business training for the modern enterprise. If you’re attending this year’s ATD, come and say hi. We will be waiting for you at the Exhibit Hall, booth #1839. For more information on ATD 2016, visit the event’s page. The post Epignosis announces Bronze Sponsorship of the ATD 2016 Exposition (Denver, CO - May 22-25 2016) appeared first on eFront Blog.

Learning Evolution is a successful Elucidat partner based in the United States. Here are six training courses they have built with Elucidat’s authoring platform. Titleist’s Vokey Design SM6 Education Course This is a great example of using Elucidat to create product training for new product launches. This course provides amazing ROI for the company by leveraging expensive marketing production videos and wrapping elearning with them to deliver engaging and simple product training. The goal for this course is to educate on the new product and train sales reps and trade partners to deliver the SM6 marketing message to customers in the most intelligent way possible. Visit elearning Titleist’s 915 Driver Education Course Product training for new product launch. This course is built to educate customers, retailers and internal sales reps on the features and benefits Titleist’s 915 drivers. Visit elearning Delphi’s Fuel Pump Training Concise product training module aimed at counter staff selling Delphi fuel pumps, to help them to position features and benefits. Visit elearning Wildlife Foundation of Florida’s Invasive Species Youth Education Course This course educates youth on the dangers of invasive species and how to help conserve natural resources. Visit elearning PepsiCo’s Detective Theme: Analyzes Data and Trends Course Uses a fun and interactive theme to train employees on how to analyze data and identify industry trends. Visit elearning PepsiCo’s Formula 1 Racing Theme: Understands and applies industry knowledge Uses a Formula 1 racing them and game component to bring new interactivity for the learning. Learners travel Formula racing circuits and meet with their "pit crew" to learn about the industry. After a successful completion the learner gets to play a fun and cheeky racing game using their "super charged" car. About Learning Evolution At the core of Learning Evolution’s learning programs is a purposeful approach that leverages adult learning expertise and instructional design with responsive design and delivery. Ideal for employees on-the-go. Deliver custom content and training. Responsive design works across all devices. Next step: Visit LearningEvolution.com for more details or take the 80-second Elucidat tour The post 6 training courses created with Elucidat (built by Learning Evolution) appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Are you considering using an learning management system (LMS)? Perhaps you don’t think you need one. In this article, guest contributor Brendon Noud shares six reasons why you should consider using an LMS. An authoring tool that makes delivering effective elearning content quick and easy is essential. But once created, that content’s potential to deliver results depends on a LMS. Your chosen authoring tool and LMS should work together to form one cohesive elearning process. Firstly, they must be compatible on a technical level. But both tools should also deliver value to specific areas of your elearning programs. If you already use an authoring tool like Elucidat, here are six reasons why you also need an LMS. 1. Deliver course content to learners The engaging content an authoring tool allows you to create is only the beginning of the elearning process. Once exported, an LMS must step in to deliver content in a way that engages learners and makes it easy to measure performance. Learning content on its own is not very useful; the LMS must help you decide how that material is best distributed and delivered to users. Your LMS should provide a single location where learners can access all materials relevant to their training, from guides and manuals to coursework and assessments. It should also make it easy to organize the content that has been exported from an authoring tool. 2. Benefit from SCORM and Tin Can API technology Modern authoring tools now offer considerable SCORM and Tin Can compatibility. But exporting course content in SCORM or Tin Can formats is meaningless unless your LMS is powerful enough to manage that material effectively. Many LMS’s claim they are SCORM compliant but struggle in practice. The design of LearnUpon’s SCORM implementation was inspired by these common problems. The result is an LMS that offers the most intuitive SCORM and Tin Can API in the industry. Simply drag and drop the SCORM or Tin Can zip exported from your authoring tool into LearnUpon’s LMS, and it springs to life in seconds. When you upload your course, LearnUpon will validate it and provide feedback on errors so you can correct them. Your LMS’s SCORM and Tin Can functionality should help you make the most of the content your team has put such effort into creating. Related: To SCORM or not to SCORM, that is the question 3. Measure learner performance Distributing content is usually just your first task. A good LMS must also help you measure and optimize the performance of elearning. You need to know how much learners have understood, whether for formal compliance purposes or to evaluate program effectiveness internally. An LMS can help you reward learners and deliver professional credentials (such as certificates) linked to specific courses and learning paths. In addition to evaluating performance with assignments and assessments, reports and training histories can be maintained in your LMS as long as they’re legally required. These processes can be automated with an LMS, reducing admin workloads. Related: New way to measure and evaluate the performance of elearning 4. Deliver a fantastic user experience While the authoring tool only needs to work closely with an LMS, your LMS should integrate with your existing CRM, marketing and finance systems. With close integration, you have greater reporting options and a simpler user experience. If your team creates engaging course content, your LMS should support it by delivering a positive branded experience. It helps if your vendor offers comprehensive customization options. LearnUpon customers can customize portals with a logo, banner image, and style to keep their LMS consistent with existing platforms. Tailoring your login page, emails, and notifications helps you deliver a seamless learner experience. Related: How to design personalized learning experiences 5. Deliver blended learning You’ll frequently need to deliver a lot more beyond the online content created with an authoring tool. It’s rare that such material exists in an isolated portal. A good LMS must go beyond online content delivery to offer blended learning features that allow you to track performance at classroom-based, instructor-led sessions too. An LMS can help you supplement content created through your authoring tool with these real-life sessions. This makes it easy to inform and remind users about locations, instructors, rosters, and marks awarded for attendance. Related: What is blended learning an why is it important 6. Sell courses online Are you selling courses online? If so, you’ll need an LMS that offers eCommerce functionality. With LearnUpon, it takes less than two minutes to set-up and configure an eCommerce store. It also integrates with services like PayPal, Authorize.Net, Stripe, and Shopify to provide a secure and simple shopping cart experience. Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. Learn more about LearnUpon Visit LearnUpon.com to see all the features and sign up for a free trial. The post Why you need an LMS and an authoring tool appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Is gamification in your online training delivering the results you want? Before you add gaming elements, you need to ask yourself how gamification will help you design great learning experiences. Here are five questions you should be asking yourself. 1. What is the goal? Why are learners doing it? This question helps you focus on what the course needs to achieve. Do you need to engage the learners? Try hooking your learner in with a warmup: How many questions can they get right in thirty seconds? How many mistakes can they spot in the statement? Do they need to improve their performance? Or build collaboration with other learners? Try giving them polls or scoring so they can compete on leader boards. Is there knowledge or information learners need for their job? Give them a quick quiz to see how much they know, then branch to parts of the course where they’re a little shaky. Do they need to develop new skills or simply need to know about some important changes in the business, new product or service developments, or new rules or laws they need to comply with? Give them challenges, quests, or problems to solve that they can relate to. Knowing where you’re going with the course can help you settle on the strategies best suited to reaching your goal. Related: 5 ways to use gamification in online training (that can’t be done with traditional training) 2. What is the desired outcome? At the end of your course, do learners need to know more about a topic? If so, you might want to build a quiz at the end so they can measure their progress and see their achievements. Or they may need to understand where they can go to get support, in which case give them a challenge to find answers by linking to other resources or websites. Perhaps they need to become competent at specific tasks. For example, in the immersive interactive video Lifesaver, learners need to show they can perform CPR. The course makes use of the following gamifying elements: Beat the clock feature - decision objects are timed to simulate the real event, where time is of the essence and making swift decisions can help save a life. Levels are unlocked as you advance through the scenario by gaining points for correct decisions. 3. Who will the learner be as a game player? Are learners better off doing your course alone or collaboratively with other learners? Is it designed for personal improvement or as an engagement activity? Can you pitch learners against each other in order to motivate them? If your learners are lone wolves, try adding a ‘beat the clock’ feature to get them totally engrossed in the activities. For example, is this spot the fake smile challenge, learners have to keep an eye on the time while they undertake the interactive tasks. Other gamification techniques for lone wolf learners could be opportunities to improve their score (provide an interactive quiz with scoring that they can take as many times as they like), and ways to challenge themselves (lock the next level until they get the correct response). Or are you learners team players? Does it make sense to pitch them against others? Let your learners record their score for a quiz or collect and display badges. Use dynamic scoring to set up leaderboards so learners can compete against each other alone or in teams. 4. What does the interaction framework look like? Do your learners need to access lots of information in your course? Can you deploy case studies that convey information in a familiar context? What tasks and actions do learners need to be able to do? Depending on your answers to these sorts of questions, you can begin looking for the kinds of interactions that will deliver a good learning experience. Instead of giving learners information, give them scenarios in which they are immersed in real-life situations and have to make decisions in order to move to the next stage of the story. Medieval Swansea is an example of scenario-driven elearning with branching. Learners journey through a series of stages to unlock a medieval mystery. Interactive challenges allow them to gather points and bonuses in order to tackle the quest. 5. What variables will learners choose from? Consider the options that learners will need to weigh up. Do they need to decide between objects to take on a mission? (Select job aids to help complete a task). Do they need to answer a question correctly in order unlock the next task? (A yes/no question or a multiple choice question, set a rule to allow the learner to move to the next question or along a pathway). These sorts of questions will help you anticipate what you need to include in your storyboard or how your project view may look. Each question can lead a learner down a different pathway. You need to factor in these sequences when you design the course. Storyboarding the course with each different learning path is a good way to visualize your course before you begin to build. Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. Conclusion Gamification isn’t really about playing games, it’s all about designing engaging interactions that will hook learners, motivate them to continue the course, and help them get a sense of enjoyment and fulfilment on completing it. Ultimately, you want to be asking, does this element of design make the course a better experience for the learner? And be honest, because a word game may be great if you’re teaching your learners a new language, but if it doesn’t fix a problem, go back to your storyboard and change it. The post Don’t add gamification until you answer these five questions appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Stuck for new ideas? Draw inspiration from these elearning examples from Ulka Academy, University of QLD and Tim Slade. Ukla Academy: Save the Island A neat little module demonstrating gamification in language learning.   Why we like it: Gamification - levels that only unlock as you progress. Personalized by using the learner’s name interactive language practice tasks built in feedback provided. Provides the learner with an opportunity to review or retry the game. Creative fun way for grammatical and lexical structures drills. Visit elearning University of Queensland: SBLi 4 Orthodontics A one-stop shop for higher education program, based on real world scenarios to help students practise orthodontics. Why we like it: Good example of instructional design based on feedback loops. Multi screen approach - giving 4 windows in one, so that you can see the scenario and the resources as well as the activity all at the same time. Directed specifically at reducing the need to use multiple learning channels. Visit elearning Tim Slade: How to Cook a Turkey mLearnCon DemoFest award winning entry, this little module is bursting with great examples of interactive elearning. Why we like it: Good example of how interactions can drive the discovery of content. Takes inspiration from apps designed for tablet devices, the look and feel is bold and pleasing. Great example of interactions including: slider, drag and drop, input text/numeric. Nice example of using rules and variables to create a dynamic calculator to work out how long you need to cook your turkey. Interactive pop-ups provide extra tips and hints. Visit elearning Post Primary Languages Initiative: Teachers’ Use of the Target Language (TL) SHRC worked with the Post-Primary Languages Initiative on this elearning module to help language teachers. Why we like it: Great example of using authentic video from teachers to demonstrate good practice. Show me, test me model learning model. Self-reflection exercises allow teachers to set goals and print out their record for future reference. Consistent look and feel. Good use of transitions and audio voice over. Visit elearning Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter.   The post Elearning inspiration: Ulka Academy, Uni of QLD, Tim Slade appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

If your organization relies on your delivering elearning content to a paying audience, the authoring tool that you use can dramatically impact both the learner experience and your bottom line. Here are 10 questions that you should ask before choosing an authoring tool for your business. 1. Is it easy to use? The tool you select should be simple to use. When your subject matter experts (SMEs) can produce content without the need for tech-savvy developers, the time to create your training will be shorter, the number of courses can increase, and the return on the investment for your authoring tool will be higher. 2. Does it give you the flexibility and control you need? Your brand is important to you, so you’ll want a high degree of control over where your logo  appears and the color palettes and fonts that are used in your courses. A high level of control is good, but if you have several people developing courses, you won’t want them applying your standards in non-standard ways. Modern authoring tools, such as Elucidat, address this by allowing you to create themes or templates that position and lock-in certain on-screen elements, including logos, background colors, and formatted text blocks, and to leave the course author free to focus on manipulating the dynamic elements, for example text content, images, and drag and drop elements. 3. Can you collaborate with team members inside the tool? To ensure quality, your course authors need to collaborate quickly and accurately with stakeholders, reviewers, and testers. Consider using an authoring tool that has a streamlined online system to enable reviewers to make comments or recommendations right on the page they’re reviewing. This means no more crossed or missed e-mail recommendations and no more duplicate or conflicting change requests. Apart from avoiding frustration, this efficiency results in higher-quality content produced in less time. Related: Why online collaboration is the solution you’re your team’s efficiency problem 4. Can you create mobile-ready learning? Content that can be written once and deployed to a desktop, tablet, and mobile phone is a huge plus. It increases your audience and gives it the flexibility to access your content in multiple ways. This case study shows how Utility Warehouse was able to reach 46,000 learners by using Elucidat’s responsive write-once-publish-anywhere design feature that allows learners to access content on their tablet and mobile devices. Related: Why mobile learning is important (4 reasons) 5. How long does it take to publish and maintain courses? It’s inevitable that you’ll want to make changes to courses that you’ve published, either because the material changes or because you find an error that needs to be fixed. When this happens, cloud-based authoring tools are usually more efficient and convenient than their desktop equivalents. This is because the source files for your courses and the authoring tool itself are held centrally and are accessible to all your authors, wherever they are. So, for example, if a course requires an urgent fix, and the primary author is on the road, another author can quickly make changes, or the primary author can make the changes from his or her hotel room or home. All that’s needed is a web browser and Internet connection. To further streamline the process, Elucidat has a rapid release feature that, with a button click, can save and publish course changes directly to your Learning Management System (LMS). 6. How easy is it to localize for overseas markets? At some point, it may be necessary to translate your courses into different languages, for example to access foreign markets or to cater to a client request. It’ll pay you to use an authoring product that has a built-in translation workflow if this is a possibility for you. A common standard to allow translation from one language to another is XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format). An XLIFF file is a structured file that contains all the text to be translated and corresponding spaces for a human translator to enter alternative language versions of that same text. This video shows how Elucidat allows you to export an XLIFF file containing all a course’s text for translation with the click of a button and then how to automatically import the translated text. 7. Does it come with prebuilt themes, page types and interactions? The best authoring tools shield you from the complexities of what they’re doing under the hood, yet they enable you to incorporate powerful, engaging interactivity into your courses. For example, an Elucidat theme can contain dozens of page types, such as drag and drop, hotspots, text and graphics, and multiple choice questions. Where appropriate, these page types give you a simple mechanism to customize them (e.g., to position hotspots or add an answer option to a multiple choice question page), but the high-tech programming that makes them function will be hidden. These simple-to-use pre-built page types become the building blocks that you use to create your highly interactive learning masterpiece in the quickest possible time. 8. Does it integrate with an analytics platform? Data about who your learners are and how they are accessing and using your courses is an important part of understanding your business. Without this, how do you know how effective your courses are? Good data could highlight a new potential market or indicate ways to better serve your current customers. Some of this information may be available from your LMS, but it is more likely that more granular demographic data can be captured by using Google Analytics linked to the courseware. This short video shows how to link a Google Analytics account to an Elucidat project. Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. In conclusion Your authoring tool is one of the most important pieces of software that you’ll rely on, so it pays to do a lot of homework before you commit to it. I have recently written a post comparing a few high-profile authoring tools. Most of these have generous free trials; take advantage of these to test them out and see if one is a good fit for your business. The post Online training providers: 8 questions to ask before buying an authoring tool appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Do you want to sell more courses and drive more revenue? In this article, Ross Beard shares some marketing strategies to help online training providers attract more customers and sell more courses. Today’s training industry is ultra-competitive. The Learn 2020 project found competition to be one of the three biggest challenges online training providers will face over the next five years. With more and more solutions entering the field, it’s more important than ever to differentiate through marketing. Here are three simple marketing strategies you can use to differentiate your offerings and sell more training courses. 1. Understand your ideal customer Before racing into actionable strategies, take a step back. Think about your ideal customers. Who are they? What companies do they work for? Where do they hang out online? Once you know who your ideal consumer is, clearly define why customers buy from you over competitors. In others words, identify your value proposition. Communicate this value proposition in all your marketing communications. This is what differentiates your training product from others. It’s no longer good enough to compete solely on price—you need to focus on why customers buy from you. Not sure where customers buy from you? Ask them! 2. Invest in your top marketing asset When it comes to marketing, your website is your biggest asset. It’s often the first thing potential customers see when they come across your training organization. With that in mind, there are a number of things you must do to ensure your website markets courses effectively. Communicate what you do and why you’re better This ties in with the above section (your value proposition). Use your website to communicate what training courses you provide—and most importantly, why they’re better than others. Build trust and credibility through your about us and contact pages Customers need to trust you before buying from you. Use your about us page to tell a story about your organization. Where did you start, and how did you get where you are today? Use your contact page to share contact information: address, phone number, email address, and a contact form. Sell courses online and manage customers with an account portal Use your website to sell courses online. Facilitate transactions with a secure payment gateway, and manage customer details via an account portal. Choose a learning management systems that offers ecommerce and portal functionality so you can quickly sell courses online. If you don’t have an LMS that can handle ecommerce, consider Docebo, LearnUpon, DigitalChalk, or Cornerstone. Use a blog to give customers a taste of what they can expect in the course Content marketing is an effective way to build trust with customers before they’re ready to buy. Try publishing a blog article once every two weeks that focuses on a challenge your ideal shoppers might face and how taking your training course can help them overcome it. For example, say you operate a leadership training business. A blog post might focus on why generation Y struggles with taking up leadership positions. You could explore this topic and highlight sections inside your leadership training course that teach members of generation Y to become better leaders. Optimize for search engines Google and other search engines are the gateway to your website. Optimize your pages to ensure they know who you are and what you do. Search engine optimization (SEO) can get complicated, but there are three core principles you can personally tackle: Technical SEO, linking, and content. Technical SEO: This encompasses the SEO basics: make sure your pages have meta titles and descriptions that accurately represent the page’s content. Read more about on-page SEO. Linking: Ensure you’re always looking to build relationships with other related companies. At every sensible opportunity, ask these enterprises to link back to your site. This is where incredible content can really help; if you publish a stellar article on leadership training, other organizations will use it as a resource and link to it from their websites. Read more about link building. Content: Google looks at your website as a whole to see what you write about. Keep a consistent theme that is relevant to the training courses you sell. For example, if you offer leadership training, product pages must talk about leadership training. Also, make sure you’re blogging about leadership training. By focusing on a theme (or niche), you can tell Google that you specialize in this area. In turn, search engines will trust your site and reward you with higher rankings. 3. Try paid advertising on Google Google’s AdWords platform lets you find customers looking for your online training courses. This is an excellent advertising solution. Since you only bid on keywords that you believe customers search for, you can control costs and keep them within budget. Paid search advertising with Google is easy to launch. In fact, it can be set up in three simple steps: create a product page, choose keywords, and create ads. Create a product page Sending traffic to a low-quality homepage is the biggest mistake beginners make with AdWords. If your homepage isn’t specifically crafted to communicate a value proposition to your ideal customer, create a new product page. On this page, highlight the reasons why shoppers choose your training over competitors. Add a call to action encouraging visitors to sign up or try a course for free. Choose keywords Select 5-10 keywords that accurately represent the training you sell. For example, if you offer leadership training, here are six keywords that will work well for your organization: Leadership training Leadership online training Leadership courses Leadership training provider Leadership training program Leadership skills training Always start with a small selection of keywords, and expand as you become more confident with the marketing channel. Create ads Now you need to craft ad copy. This can be tricky if copywriting doesn’t come naturally, but anyone can be a copywriter by following these basic principles: Ensure your ad copy links directly to the product page. Use value propositions in the copy; tell customers why you’re better or different. Include keywords in the ad copy. This helps with click through and overall performance. For example, here’s a good ad for leadership training: This works well because it focuses on the value proposition (a course designed for new managers), includes keywords (leadership training), and provides links to more information (a course outline and instant quote). Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. Final thoughts I hope the ideas in this article inspire you to use marketing to differentiate your online training. The industry is changing. You’ll face new hurdles over the next five years, including competition. If you ignore this marketing advice, you risk losing customers. By clearly communicating a value proposition, your training organization will continue to sell more courses well into the future. The post Marketing strategies for online training providers appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Are you ready to start using branching scenarios in your online training? In this article, we’ll share seven branching scenario examples to give you inspiration for your own online training. Branching scenarios tell a story and pose challenges in a real-world context that learners can understand and identify with. They are a great way for learners to practice their skills in realistic situations. Learners can test out different approaches in a low-risk setting when choosing how to respond to tough scenarios. Let’s look at seven ideas that can help you create simple branching scenarios in your online training. 1. Put the learner in control A great way to engage learners is to let them steer the program. Consider providing a series of scenarios so they can choose which one they want to do. This has an added bonus of appealing to a wide range of learners in one program. Here’s an excellent example we made with Elucidat that puts the learner in control: 2. Use linked menus Elucidat makes it very easy to link a menu item to a scenario. Just select one of the "Menu" page types. These page types allow you to make a button, hotspot, or image box into a link. In the example below, we linked the cupcake image to page 3: "Cupcake kerfuffle." 3. Use real-world contexts Give the training relevance. Consider the real-world contexts for specific topics and issues being addressed in the course. Your training should address real challenges in real situations that your learners are likely to face at work. Making mistakes is a great opportunity to give feedback to learners, so be certain to provide plenty of good advice and practical suggestions if they require a bit more support. Some of the elements that help drive a good scenario include: Thought-provoking situational contexts with good use of characters, engaging video, and consequence-style branching. Here’s another example we made with Elucidat that shows how to use real-world contexts: 4. Make it challenging Branching scenarios need to challenge the learner. By providing learners with decision-making contexts and a range of choices, they are given the chance to practice their knowledge and skills in a safe environment. The decision-making process becomes critical through the use of branching scenarios; depending on the choices learners make in the scenario, the outcome -or at least the path through the course- will alter and adapt. Here’s an example of how to pose a challenge to learners: In another example we built with Elucidat, the Fraud Prevention course, the simple branching scenarios provide a framework for presenting the learner with a challenge and consequence-style feedback. The result of this is that it helps to raise their awareness of how the characters can become unwitting victims of fraud. In this scenario, the learner is asked to consider what he or she would do when faced with a stranger entering the office: The interaction is set up as a multiple choice question. But instead of having a "right" or "wrong" response when choosing an answer, each option is instead linked to another screen. The next screen advances the scenario in a way that relates to the answer given by the learner. If the learner chooses "Phone security or reception" when they discover a stranger in the office, they get the following response from the program: This approach of posing a challenge and giving immediate feedback is more effective than simply telling learners what they should do. It is simply more engaging and memorable. Related: 5 ways to use gamification in online training (that can’t be done with traditional training) 5. Use linked pages Pages can be linked to one another with ease. Regardless of what route a learner takes in one scenario, you can always ensure they move seamlessly to the next section by linking to the end screen. Here we have a screenshot showing how simple this process is in Elucidat. Just select the page you would like to link to and press "Save". Easy! 6. Start with a storyboard The starting point for any good branching scenario is a storyboard. Some people like to write storyboards through text or use software like PowerPoint. Others like to use the "Project View" in Elucidat to create a visual storyboard that showcases the different pathways learners can take. Elucidat offers a simple way to structure an online training course so you can design the branching points to be provided. In the example below, notice how the third page splits learners down two different pathways, and then how each pathway splinters and leads learners down even more branches. Related: Why storyboarding is important (4 reasons) 7. Provide extra support Instead of writing a course that simply tells your learner what good practice is, design courses that ask learners to respond to challenges and show where their responses lead. If they need a little extra support, you can build in "information" pages. Below is an example of a hotspot screen. From this screen, learners can select each fruit and learn about the environmental impact of each before selecting which one they plan to have for lunch. Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. Final Thoughts Branching scenarios are an effective way to engage learners through challenges that provide a framework to safely practice their skills and knowledge. When done well, scenarios guide learners deeper into problem-solving activities that can help change behavior and improve outcomes. Creating branching scenarios for your online training doesn’t have to be a headache, provided you’ve selected the right tools. Use Elucidat’s simple authoring tool that empowers non-technical authors to design immersive learning experiences. Keep reading:  5 killer examples of branching scenario eLearning How to create cutting edge scenario-based eLearning Why scenario-based eLearning is important (4 reasons) The post 7 ideas to help you create simple branching scenarios with Elucidat appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

I’m excited to show you how three industry-leading organizations use Elucidat. If you tried Elucidat’s authoring tool but didn’t know how it could help your organization, read this article. Tesco uses Elucidat to simplify the authoring process Tesco is the UK’s largest retailer, employing over 500,000 people globally. The company needed a platform that could deliver learning programs to employees far quicker than past solutions. Why Tesco uses Elucidat to create elearning: The team was using an authoring tool, but it wasn’t widely adopted internally. A simple tool (but flexible enough to customize) was needed to encourage adoption. Employees wanted to take courses on their tablet and smartphone devices. Tesco rolled out Elucidat to 37 authors. Every user was surprised at how easy it was to operate; even inexperienced staff could use the tool with just two hours of training. Within three months of using Elucidat, Tesco saw a 50% increase in the number of people using Elucidat to create digital learning opportunities. Read case study: Learn why and how Tesco uses Elucidat Utility Warehouse uses Elucidat to quickly build and test responsive learning Utility Warehouse is a multi-award winning provider of home, phone, broadband, mobile, and gas services. The organization has a team of 46,000 distributers across the UK. Utility Warehouse needed a solution to help produce interactive and engaging content on desktop and mobile devices. Why Utility Warehouse uses Elucidat: The company trialed several tools but struggled to produce interactive and engaging content that worked on desktop and mobile devices. The company needed a way to deliver a consistent learning experience to 46,000 distributors using mobile devices for training. Instead of using multiple tools for multiple tasks, Utility Warehouse uses Elucidat to handle the entire design and development process. The organization can now encourage all distributors to access the training programs through their mobile phones. Read case study: Discover why and how Utility Warehouse uses Elucidat Johnson & Johnson Vision Care uses Elucidat to create bite-sized, interactive learning Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (JJVC) is a leading provider of Continuing Education and Training (CET) to Eye Care Practitioners (ECPs). Why JJVC uses Elucidat: Changing compliance regulations required Eye Care Practitioners (ECPs) to ensure at least 50% of the training they completed was interactive. ECPs have little time between appointments and limited internet access on their work computers. JJVC wanted a new way to deliver training that could be consumed quickly and accessed via mobile and tablet devices. Elucidat’s flexible and build once, learn anywhere solution made it easy for JJVC to produce bite-sized, interactive eLearning programs that ECPs can complete on mobile and tablet devices. To stay current with new regulatory requirements, Elucidat’s Rapid Release feature made it easy to quickly make changes and publish them instantly to the course. In only 12 months, JJVC doubled the amount of training it delivered to ECPs. Even better, ECPs are now completing seven times as many courses (a 740% increase). The project was so successful it won an award in the Best use of mobile learning category at the 2015 UK National E-Learning Awards. Read case study: Learn why and how Johnson & Johnson Vision Care uses Elucidat The post How three leading organizations use Elucidat to create elearning appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Consumers of online training are becoming increasingly sophisticated. They expect engaging learning experiences and will quickly choose competitor’s offerings if you fail to meet their needs. Here are five tips for building engaging online training that meets customers’ needs and has them coming back to buy some more. 1. Use branching to ramp-up engagement Branching is one of the most powerful techniques in elearning. This is where you give the learner two or more options on a screen. The lesson progresses down a particular screen-sequence based on the choice made—i.e., they branch down one path or another. There can be other choices to make along a given path that further direct where the learner goes. Branching gives learners control over the process, allowing them to direct where they go, what they see and what happens. This makes the experience inherently more engaging and personalized than if the same information is presented in a linear and inflexible fashion. Branching scenarios take this a step further by wrapping a real-world situation around the branches. By setting the branch-point decisions in a virtual workplace and showing a decision’s impact across the resulting screen sequence, you give the learner an opportunity to experiment and learn by doing: "I encountered this situation, made this decision and saw the result. Was it a good outcome or a bad one?" This blog article discusses seven ideas for branching scenarios and further demonstrates this concept. Your project structure can get complex if there are lots of decision points and resulting screen sequence paths! But don’t worry. The best content authoring tools have ways to manage this—for example, Elucidat’s Project Structure View. These tools give you the mechanisms to clearly see and manage the decision/branch points and resulting paths. 2. Use bite-sized online training Creating small, targeted, bite-sized learning is important for several reasons: It’s quicker to design and build than larger modules. It can therefore get to market and respond to changing consumer demand quickly. Smaller nuggets are quick and convenient for learners to consume, particularly on mobile devices. Small, granular learning pieces can be combined and consumed in different ways to satisfy different learners’ needs. It can be consumed during gaps in busy work schedules. It can be used as a refresher or Just-In-Time training. Small doesn’t mean that learning is less effective than a bloated equivalent. In fact, it’s often better. It focuses on key messages without unnecessary nice to have material clouding the important points. Consider this Sales Training Sample that would only take five or ten minutes to complete. 3. Build responsive learning that’s multi-device compatible I’ve written before about the importance of mobile learning. But it’s inefficient and expensive to author separate versions of the same course for desktop, tablet and smartphone devices. Good news! These days, you don’t have to. More and more authoring tools create responsive output that adapts (responds) to multiple device screen sizes. That is, you create content once. The clever output dynamically adjusts the layout depending on the device it’s viewed on. This opens your content to more learners with little or no extra work. Authoring software that creates responsive output will usually give you a mechanism to see how your work will look on different devices during development. Related: Check out Elucidat’s Responsive View Mode slider in action. 4. Challenge learners Adult learners like to be challenged. Spoon-feeding information is a sure way to bore and have them forget what you’re trying to teach. The branching techniques discussed earlier are a fantastic way to engage learners and have them actively participate in learning, but any time a learner has to make a decision or be pushed to think, he or she is more likely to remember the context, content and outcome. Here’s a brief example of how making choices can be fun. Adult learners like to prove to themselves that they understand what they’re being told or asked to do. (I bet you did all the faces in the sample, didn’t you?!) Give learners opportunities to make choices, and your content will be more engaging and effective. 5. Make training relevant to the learners’ work Relevance is something else that makes learning powerful. If material is relevant, learners have a reason to pay attention. One of the best ways to do this is to put it in a context learners can relate to. Here are some ways this can be done: Understand learners’ issues and pain-points, and address them. Pose challenges that will be realistic and meaningful to learners. Use authentic images and language. Use metaphors consistent with the topic being learned: rather than assigning points for challenges in a financial training course, assign (virtual) dollars. Or, let learners accumulate customer satisfaction points in a customer training scenario. Still on metaphors, deliver scenario background information using methods the learner would use in the workplace. I.e., if learners speak with people on the phone in the workplace, use audio (perhaps with a phone effect applied to it for added realism—here’s how to do that in Audacity). Set the scene with an image of a complaint email if that would be more authentic for the context. Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. In conclusion The key to successfully growing your learning content in a competitive market is to provide quality experiences in the most efficient ways possible. By leveraging the power of modern authoring tools and applying the techniques discussed here, you’ll maximize your offerings and produce learning opportunities that delight customers. The post How online training providers create courses for the modern customer appeared first on Elucidat Blog.