Planning to author a technical course? Authoring technical training is often a top activity for experts who have years of hands-on experience in a given field. The knowledge transfer can be highly beneficial for learner-practitioners seeking to deepen and improve their job performance. Unfortunately, technical training can sometimes be very dense, complex, and dry. Here are a few techniques to present technical subject matter such that the learner remains engaged and receptive throughout the course and is able to apply the newly acquired information in best possible manner. Simplify and Focus Vocabulary. Keep in mind the expected experience and knowledge of your students. Do they know all the technical jargon you use effortlessly on a daily basis? Are you assuming background knowledge that they may not yet have acquired? Keep things simple and take the content stepwise, to allow more novice students to grasp the subject matter more quickly and keep them from being overwhelmed and giving up. Define technical terms, acronyms, and jargon with which they may not be familiar. Concepts. Be wary of "expert blindness"—when you know so much about a subject that it can be easy to forget what it was like when you didn’t. When writing content, consider things from a learner’s point of view. Start explaining concepts by referring to the things with which the student is already familiar and expand from there to the new material. Analyze the amount of information the student needs to learn right then, and consider leaving additional details for later. Keep content crisp to quickly establish the concepts, then build on this with detail and reference as the course progresses. Enliven Comparisons. Try out metaphors and analogies that help students grasp core concepts more quickly. Use comparison techniques to arouse interest and analytical thinking. Examples. Weave real-life scenarios in your technical training courses to change up the pace, and show students how the technical concepts fit into their world. Show—more than you tell. Videos and animations can be excellent ways to help learners visualize and understand a concept that cannot be explained merely with text-based content. For example, assembling a piece of equipment, performing a certain task, operating a piece machinery, or applying prevention methods can often be more easily instructed with the help of videos—allowing learners to get some experience without potentially dangerous or costly real-life interaction. Animations, on the other hand, are ideal for explaining abstract concepts, process-flows, and demos. For example, methods of chemical analysis, equipment control, task elements, or steps of a process can often be taught best with the help of animations. 360training Learning Content Management System (LCMS) comes with different templates that support all of these visual formats. Upload animations and videos as assets in the Learning Content Management System (LCMS) and incorporate them easily in your online courses. Involve Activity and game templates can be instrumental learning aids in a technical training course. Activity templates can come in handy in situations where there may be sequences or processes to explain, important terms and definitions that the learners should know, overlapping information between which students should be able to differentiate, visual interpretation tasks, and so forth. For example, a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) built-in activity template such as "Drag-and-drop Categories" can be used to help learners pick out items in their relevant categories (e.g., metals/non-metals, hazardous/safe etc.) and receive immediate feedback against each of their selections. Similarly, the activity template "Sequence" can be instrumental in helping learners recall different steps—performing an action, operating a machine, explaining a process, etc. Game templates are ideal to stir up your learners’ attention and increase their knowledge of subject matter by answering questions play by play. Game templates offer ample opportunity for practice and review. The built-in activities and games in our Learning Content Management System (LCMS) are easy to use and can help learners better understand complex information with high engagement. Every learner has their own way of learning. Try out different techniques and see which works best in order to create an exciting and engaging learning experience for your students.  

Filed under: In The Classroom

I have been recently thinking about adapting my classification for MOOCs to describe OER communities/initiatives thoughts welcome. Each dimension can be considered in terms of whether it is evident low, medium or high. Will discuss this tomorrow in our POERUP meeting.  Some initial thoughts…

Filed under: In The Classroom

eLearning templates are useful tools for online course developers as they can help drive user engagement and enable trainers to present a course’s content in the most captivating and professional way. eLearning template benefits include: Quick ramp-up for novice users: It used to be that creating an online course absolutely required the active collaboration of subject matter experts, writers, artists, videographers, and programmers. Today, with built-in templates in your course authoring tool, the extended team is necessarily required. Not only can you author great elearning rapidly, but you can also easily add photos, video, and effective interactive elements in your elearning course without any special designing or programming expertise. Templates walk you through exactly what you need to do, and what text, pictures, audio, or video you need to provide. Below is an example of a course slide created with the Flashcard template by an author with no visual design or programming expertise. Elimination of technical / programming mistakes: eLearning templates remove the risk and guesswork out of implementation, meaning that the only thing an author needs to worry about is the accuracy and quality of the content. For those who have been developing for some time, this is a welcome opportunity. Subject matter experts can turn all their attention towards authoring great course content and brood less about programming challenges or design issues. Proven approach to delivering specific types of course content: With built-in templates, course developers can adopt proven techniques to presenting course content. For example, long lines of text can easily be organized into small and interesting segments allowing learners to process the information effectively while remaining motivated to learn. Look at the example given below and notice how what would have normally been bullet points have been transformed into an interactive diagram. Standardization: Consistency is important in online training, as it keeps the learner focused on the content, not on the mechanics of how to navigate through and interact with the content. Add interesting and exciting content-related elements and experiment with different slide layouts without upsetting the uniformity of your course design with the help of elearning templates. Flexibility: Built-in activity and game templates offer a lot of flexibility. Use, re-use, and update templates in various courses to provide rewarding learning experiences to your students. Focus your energy on authoring great course content and let the Learning Content management System (LCMS) handle the rest. Useful job-aid for course developers: Built-in templates serve as a job-aid for course developers. The templates are a ready-made framework where all you need to do is add content. There is no hassle thinking about where to place which elements or how to design different buttons, and so forth. You have exceptional and instant interactions at your fingertips, waiting to be used, as per your content needs. eLearning templates are convenient, user-friendly, and time-saving, while offering variety and reusability. Try out different templates in your online courses and create an exciting and engaging online learning experience for your students!

Do you want to create blog posts people can’t help but share? This article shows how to use Facebook to find ideas for shareable blog content. Source: www.socialmediaexaminer.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

  I was absolutely delighted to be awarded an EDEN fellowship at the annual conference in Oslo last week. It was a tad embarrassing though as I had left the conference to go back to my hotel after a long day of meetings, and so missed being given the award, but luckily caught up with Morton (the then president) the next day to have a picture taken. I have been going to the EDEN annual conference since 2007 when it was held in Naples. I was invited to give a keynote by the then president Alan Tait. I have also been to some of the research workshops, which are also excellent. EDEN is a great community, as Morten says very much a family, so it was great to catch up with people in Oslo. The certificate says: Who has demonstrated excellent in professional practice of open, distance and e-learning and provided valuable support to the evolution and progress of EDEN. I just hope I can live up to the honour, and plan to continue to promote and support EDEN in the coming years. 

Filed under: In The Classroom, Technology

All prepared to kick-start your elearning journey? Now that you have authored a draft of your online course content, have carefully crafted learning objectives and assessments, identified key audio and visual support, and planned out some engaging activities to get learners deeply involved in the subject matter, it’s time to build what you’ve designed. What course authoring software will you use? With so many elearning authoring tools available, choosing the right tool can be a daunting task. The following are a few things to consider: How easy is it to use? Ideally, a course authoring tool should have a simple learning curve. The functions should be simple, logical, and self-explanatory, allowing online course developers to create engaging and interactive online training without any confusion. The course development tools should expedite work, allowing you to add content, create interactions, make edits, and publish your course—with as few clicks as possible. As an author and subject matter expert, you want to be able to focus your energy and attention on designing a rewarding learning experience for your students—not hacking and struggling through a software application jungle of tricky layers, complicated interactions, or difficult back-end coding. Does it support interactivity and a wide range of experiences? Gone are the days when trainers relied on page after page of text and graphics. Video is often a step up. It’s relatively easy to create and appreciated by audiences—but a string of videos can still often lead to learners becoming passive viewers and zoning out on your message and content. For maximum effectiveness, you need to get your audience engaged and active in the learning. When selecting the best course authoring software for your content, look at the range of ways in which you’ll be able to present information and provide opportunities for learners to interact with that content and really explore it. A set of built-in templates in your authoring tool can help you quickly create stimulating online training, without worrying about designing or programming knowledge. Hand-crafted activities are great when you have the time and expertise to develop them. Too often, however, elearning authors get stuck on their first custom activity and find themselves falling back to just doing presentations. While this may be easier, it impacts student learning and the quality of the course. Make sure you get the tools you need to efficiently create at least basic activity types and interactions. Does it fit my lifestyle? Some people prefer desktop applications over cloud-based authoring tools. With an installed desktop application, an internet connection may not be required. In addition, being a client-side application, the functionality that is offered by the tool may be very deep. On the other hand, heavy authoring tools can be complicated to learn, may require additional software/programs and large disk space to run properly, may not be compatible with every system, and may be restricted to a single device. Cloud-based authoring software typically scores points for being light, highly accessible, device independent (requiring no installation), with quick startup. You may find, however, that you are trading a certain level of functionality for flexibility. When considering ease of use and convenience, take into account the context in which you plan to create courses. Are you committed to building out your course at your desk with access to a system with a powerful processor and a large screen? Or would you ever want to create your course on the go, with your tablet or even your smartphone? Ensure that the product you choose has not only the features you want, but support for the course creation lifestyle you envision. Does it scale? How quickly and efficiently can I get things done? Does the course authoring tool you are considering have features to help expedite work? Many trainers, for example, have existing PowerPoint decks, fine-tuned over the years. Does the tool offer a "PowerPoint Import" feature to quickly transform those decks into an online course, which can then be further enhanced? If you have a large number of questions to upload into item banks for assessments, does the tool offer a way to bulk upload those items? If you have a large number of assets (pictures, video, flash files, audio clips, documents etc.) will the tool help you efficiently manage the digital assets of your courses? If you have a lot of existing content—or plan to build out a lot of content—consider software that includes a built-in content repository allowing you to add, store, delete, retrieve, update, and integrate media into your online courses whenever required. If you are planning on doing this long term and measuring the effectiveness of the learning, does the tool support version control, so that when you need to update the course, you can do so efficiently and consistently, without disrupting the validity of your assessment and reporting data? Is it reliable? When looking for an authoring tool, look out for brands that are trusted and recognized for their power, efficiency, and reliability. The award-winning 360training course creation tools, for example, have been used and fine tuned for more than nine years, tested by millions of developers and students on a wide range of platforms and devices. When you are investing time, effort, and passion into your elearning course, you want to know that the output will reliably meet the need. Is it affordable? Now that you have stirred up your creative juices and unleashed the training expert within you, the next big question to ask yourself is how much money you are willing to invest in this new field. If you are new to the elearning business, you may want to initially avoid course building tools that have expensive up-front costs, or heavy subscription charges. Try out affordable options and free tools first. Invest money after you test the waters in this field. If you’re part of an experienced team exploring new tools and options, consider what’s going to bring you the biggest return on investment. A system that supports learning from content creation through learning management and revenue stream? Ready-made channels for selling huge volumes of courses? A system that allows efficient creation of content by distributed teams? Tools that are more efficient and agile? Tools that let you mix and match your content with that developed by third parties? Explore corporate and partnership options to see what’s available. Does it make it easy for me to make money? Once you have found an outstanding authoring tool with all the must-haves that you need, and authored a great elearning course in it, the next big step for many elearning authors is to figure out how to distribute and sell that training to students. If you are a consultant and have a large customer base, you may be good to go with your own online store. If not, good news for you! 360training allows you with a single click to offer your courses to learners for distribution and sale through their vast sales channels with no out-of-pocket cost. Find out how! Conclusion A smart authoring tool can result in a pleasant user experience for you, but in the end, it is the quality content that makes the difference. Author great elearning and blend it innovatively with interactivity and learning aids to create a rewarding learning experience for your students.