The year 2010 has been great. I have written close to 43 posts and have managed to keep this blog alive A couple of posts managed to enter the "Great Learning Posts" list in elearning Learning.  This certainly has encouraged me to write more. I hope to write better posts the coming year. So here’s is closing this year with  TOP 10 posts of 2010. Why Learning From Videos is Difficult The Difference Between Technical Writing and Instructional Design 6 Reasons To Use Amplify for Collaborative Learning Is it Okay to Punish Your E-Learners for not Paying Attention? Do You Tell Your Learner "You’re Doing it All Wrong!" to Teach the Right Way? Using Case Studies/Scenarios for New Application Training Time to Eliminate Software Product Tutorials? Introduction to the Instructor Led Training ToolKit Instructional Design Review Checklists - Key to Quality E-learning T-Bites I thank all my readers for inspiring me to write more. Hope you all enjoy visiting my blog and continue to do so. Wishing you all a rocking 2011! Cheers, Rupa

The III International Congress on ICT and Education - ticEDUCA2014, a biennial event carried out since 2010, will be held in Lisbon, at the Institute of Education of Lisbon University, on the 14-16, November, 2014.Themes:Theme 1: Formal and Informal Learning Environments and TechnologiesTheme 2: Computer Mediated Communication, Relationships and  Expression of Emotions OnlineTheme 3: Digital Technologies and Professional DevelopmentTheme 4: eLearning in Higher Education and Vocational TrainingTheme 5: Technologies and Special (Educational) NeedsImportant dates:Paper Submission: June, 20, 2014Notification of Acceptance: September, 5, 2014Submission of Accepted Papers: September, 14, 2014Proceedings of ticEDUCA2012 are available on line.

The Horizon Report 2014 - Higher Education Edition has been released. This year's edition has a new format that now includes Key Trends Accelerating Higher Education Technology Adoption and Significant Challenges Impeding Higher Education Technology Adoption.The 2014 six important developments in educational technology are listed in in the report's third section, Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education:Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or LessFlipped Classroom Learning Analytics Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years3D Printing Games and GamificationTime-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five YearsQuantified Self Virtual AssistantsRegarding last year's report, Quantified Self and Flipped Classrooms are new. Games and Gamification is kept on the "Two to Three Years" horizon. This is what the report says about it:"The games culture has grown to include a substantial proportion of the world’s population, with the age of the average gamer increasing with each passing year. As tablets and smartphones have proliferated, desktop and laptop computers, television sets, and gaming consoles are no longer the only way to connect with other players online, making game-play a portable activity that can happen in a diverse array of settings. Gameplay has long since moved on from solely being recreational and has found considerable traction in the military, business and industry, and increasingly, education as a useful training and motivation tool. While a growing number of educational institutions and programs are experimenting with game-play, there has also been increased attention surrounding gamification — the integration of gaming elements, mechanics, and frameworks into non-game situations and scenarios. Businesses have embraced gamification as a way to design incentive programs that engage employees through rewards, leader boards, and badges, often with a mobile component. Although more nascent than in military or industry settings, the gamification of education is gaining support among educators who recognize that effectively designed games can stimulate large gains in productivity and creativity among learners."About the Quantified Self trend, the report mentions that:"People have always demonstrated interest in learning about themselves by tracking and measuring their behaviors and activities. Students already spend time in formal classroom settings gathering data about themselves or research topics. Quantified self technologies tap into this interest in the form of mobile apps, wearable devices, and cloud-based services that make the data collection process much easier."The Quantified Self movement can benefit from gamification. In fact, if people are able to track and measure their behaviors, adding the proper game elements, they can be motivated to improve those behaviors, increase engagement in activities promoting those behaviors and change undesirable behaviors. This is the all idea behind gamification. And Education can benefit from both trends: gamification and the quantified self.In this post published on Gamifeye, four approaches were mentioned to collecting data in gamified systems. Quantified self with gamification is the second approach, "using some external device". In Education they are also connected to Learning Analytics.

This is my first post for this year. I have not been able to blog due to lot of changes that’s been happening in my professional life. Anyways, here I come, once again, to share the little knowledge that I have. This blog post is for those venturing into custom e-learning business or people who are getting started with their first e-learning project. Before I get into the crux of this post, I would like to explain why I decided to write on this topic. When you are trying to do something for the first time, there is always lot to  learn and do before you actually get successful. For example, when you are learning to swim, you have lots of fears and inhibitions to overcome, many guidelines to follow and lot of practical exercises to do, before you actually start swimming. Likewise, while getting started with your e-learning business or your first e-learning project, you are likely to face challenges, hurdles before you finally execute the project. With some common sense and a systematic approach,  you can easily tackle challenges and execute your project smoothly. So here are some guidelines for startups, individuals starting with their first e-learning project. These guidelines apply only to those working in very small teams/virtual teams. Please note these guidelines do not follow any specific order. I hope these will help you avoid mistakes and execute your project successfully. So here you go. When starting with your first e-learning project, make sure you do all of the following. Get a Grip of Instructional Design/E-learning Design - Make sure you completely understand about instructional design or e-learning design and development. It is important you have a clear idea what kind of work goes into e-learning development. Gain hands-on experience - When you are starting a business and when there are very few people in your company, you cannot afford to just supervise or monitor. Make sure you also get down to work. It doesn’t matter you know the tricks of the trade or not. You will learn only by doing. Build a good rapport with the client - Make sure you interact a lot with the client before actually you get down to work. Spend a lot of time confirming the requirements and what you propose to do for them. Remember the client may or may not know about e-learning. Take some time to brief them about it or show samples. Check mode/medium of delivery -Make sure you know how the client plans to deliver the e-learning to the learners.  Research and study about SCORM and other standards. Study the LMS that the client is using. This will help you design and develop content that complies with the client’s system. Get a sign off on A&D -Make sure you get a sign off on the Analysis and Design document before you start storyboarding. Plan your project- Share the project plan with the client and team. Make sure you stick to the plan. Hire a consultant if required - But make sure you do not give him/her complete control, even if he/she is an expert. It can be dangerous for your business. Outsource with care and caution - If you are outsourcing the storyboarding activity, make sure your freelance IDs completely understand the requirement. Introduce the IDs to the client.  It is important that you stay in the loop while the IDs communicate with the client. If you are outsourcing the graphic design bit, make sure you hire graphic designers much in advance and involve them right from the Analysis and Design stage. Keep backup - Always plan for unexpected exit. For example if an ID leaves the project, you should have already planned for his/her work. Develop design standards and checklists -  Based on the Analysis and Design that you did for the project, come up with standards and guidelines to storyboard. These checklists will be very helpful when 2 or more IDs are working on the project and this will also help you determine the quality of work, when you review the storyboard. Review work - Make sure you review the work yourself before it goes out to the SME or client. If the SME has suggested fixes, make sure you check the fixes, once its done by the IDs. Since this is your first project, do not take a chance. Set rules of engagement with the Subject Matter Expert - Articulate clearly how you will interact with the SME. For example, how do you want the SME to send review comments? Should he/she use the Review feature in MS PowerPoint or highlight changes in a different color? Remember if you do not set rules of engagement, interactions with the SME will get too messy. Monitor activities regularly - Always monitor and continuously look into the activities throughout the e-learning development cycle. For example if your graphic designer has started work, frequently check work progress. Check quality of work. If you do not monitor, it will be too late until you discover shabby work or undone work. Set communication channels - If you have a virtual team or an in-house team, make sure you communicate with your team frequently and check work progress. Make sure you use email to communicate with your client, SME and team. You will have a record of all communication that has happened. Organize mails and work-  Make sure you sort all emails you exchange with your client, SME and team. Keep track of all mails and make sure they are easy to locate. Use a tool or have a folder structure in place that will allow you to track versions of storyboards and also reviewed copy of storyboards. Keep your client informed - Make sure you keep the client updated of the work progress. Use an iterative process - Complete small chunks of work and test it with learners. This will help you make lot of fixes beforehand. If your course is structured as Modules and Lessons, make sure you get review comments after  every lesson. Sending an entire module for review is not a good idea. Freeze content - Make sure you freeze content at one point. For example, after lesson 1 review and fixes, get a sign off on lesson 1. If the SME keeps changing his/her mind or if the SME keeps reviewing the same stuff, it will be disastrous for you. Test your e-learning - Map the e-learning course with the storyboard.Make sure your e-learning program goes through ample rounds of review before it is shipped off to the client. Avoid delays - Do everything that will allow you to complete work on time. Track delay in responses, delay in work. When you upload documents for review, get an acknowledgment from the client that they received the document.  If people from the client side are not responding, follow up. Do not wait. I am sure there is lot more to the list above.  Do you have any tips to add to this list? Please leave it in the Comments section.

Editing a video using Camtasia is a bit of a challenge for newbies - you will agree to this, if you are a regular user of Camtasia. But I think every tool has its pain points and there is always a learning curve with all  e-learning or screen capture tools. You really need to figure out how to work well with tools like Camtasia to make your life easy. Otherwise you will spend hours editing unwanted portions in your video. Before we proceed further, here is a video that I recently created using Camtasia. A few things about this video: This video showcases a software meant to be used by people working in organizations which conduct Clinical Trials. The software essentially will help people manage their day to day activities using the software. The software will allow people minimize paper work,  automate their processes and reduce errors. This video  is a quick tutorial on how to model a trial using the software. The objective is to educate existing customers on how to use the software to execute their tasks. The objective is not to project the benefits of the software. I created this video in less than 1 hour and editing was not so difficult because I planned in such a way that editing should not be time consuming. So here are some quick  tips to reduce editing time in Camtasia which I think work really well: #1 Remember editing might get painful when you have to split frames in the video. As far as possible, you must avoid splitting frames.For example, a frame is highlighted below in the Timeline: You may have to split the frame in to two or three,  if you want to extend the time of a portion of this frame. Throughout the video, if you have to keep splitting frames, editing will get really tiring. #2 While shooting the raw video, make sure you record in parts and not in one go. If you record in parts, you will not have to split the video into multiple frames. Removing unwanted portions and also extending the time of each frame will be easy. For example, the screenshot below shows many camrec files and one camproj file. The camrec files are the raw/unedited frames of the video.  I shot the video as I performed each task and saved the raw video of each task as a separate camrec file.For tasks with more steps/details, I broke the task in to two camrec files. Example: Check two camrec files for "Visit Schedule". Finally I added each of these camrec files one after the other in the timeline. I quickly edited, rather removed unwanted portions of the frame in each camrec file, added callouts and finally saved it as a camproj file. #3 While shooting the raw video, never hurry up. Make sure you give enough time for the actions and (say 5 seconds or more) for the callout. This way you will not have to split the video and will be able to easily place the callout in appropriate places in the video. #4 If you are planning to add transition only in specific portions of the video, plan your camrec files or frames in advance. For example the video above has transition in 2 places - check 1:56 and 3:48.  Here is a screenshot: If you notice the transition happens during the course of a task and not after a task is completed.Here the task is "Editing the Visits Schedule" and since there is lot of data to enter in the cells. I filled in a few cells and then applied the transition effect after which the data filled across all cells is shown. I knew I had to add a transition so while shooting the raw video I separated the task into 2 camrec files - one camrec file that shows entering cells in a couple of cells and the second which has all the data entered across cells. This way I could add the transition effect in between these two frames. Note transitions can be applied only in between frames. #5 While shooting and editing a video using Camtasia, always remember that  removing unwanted frames is easier than splitting frames. Hope you found this post useful. If you use Camtasia and have some editing tips to share, please leave a comment.

When I was creating this tutorial video using Camtasia, I was looking for ways to insert an audio loop. The audio clip I had was just 32 seconds and I had to extend it till 4 minutes. In Camtasia Studio, I could not find an option to loop the audio track. Please let me know if there is any such option. I could see only one option that was possible in Camtasia Studio - Add the audio track to the timeline multiple times. For example, I have added the audio clip twice in the Timeline as shown below. But then, after googling for sometime, I found a better option. The option was to create the audio loop in Audacity and then add it in Camtasia Studio. Here is the video that I referred to and it really helped me a great deal: Hope you find this video useful and do let me know if you have any good tips to loop audio files.

The gEducation Workshop - How Gamification is changing the future of Education will be held in Barcelona, on the Gamification World Congress. The gEducation Workshop will be on Saturday, May 24, 2014 (9:00am - 1:30pm).   Topics of Interest:    •    Tools for education    •    Gamification in education    •    Techniques and strategies    •    Frameworks    •    Collaborative learning    •    Innovative methodologies    •    Success stories    •    User experiences and gamification in the clasrooms    •    Management of gamified classrooms    •    Useful resources for educators    •    Gamification for different learning levels    •    Styles of gamfication in educational environment    •    E-learningImportant Dates:    •    Submission deadline: April 14    •    Notifications: May 1    •    Workshop: May 24

Some years back, I had to go through an induction program in one MNC. I was introduced to an award winning e-learning program that was supposed to introduce me to the company, product, services,  policies and procedures and more. The e-learning course interface design was  extravagant. It was an expert graphic designer’s work. While the design was out of the world, the content was too drab and boring. To be frank , I got nothing out of the course. All that I did was just click Next to proceed further while I checked out the rich, bright e-learning interface.Though I gained no value out of the course, I did think the interface did lure me to explore the entire course. There was a time when I used to give a thumps up to fancy designs and interfaces and a thumps down to anything that was plain and simple. To me at that point of time, form was just as important as function. I could never think of compromising on form. Today my perception has changed. I completely believe form must follow function. However, the decision whether or not to compromise on form is completely context specific, depends on the end user requirements. For example: If you are trying to sell a product, say chocolates, it is not enough you produce high quality stuff. You also need to make sure that the wrapper is attractive enough to lure people to buy the chocolates. If you want to train pilots, a flight simulator is very much needed and will alone serve the purpose. High definition and rich content is part of aviation training. If you want to create e-learning for kids, you need to present  content using rich images/animations, sound/music and make it as attractive as possible for the kids.No colors,  no images, no sound, will not work well with kids even if the content is very useful. In all the scenarios above, form is equally or sometimes more important than function. On the other hand, if you are building a software application to solve a business/enterprise problem, the following questions are of utmost importance: Is the software easy to use? Is the software easy to learn? Does the software solve the business problem? If all the above requirements are met, even if the software user interface is simple, it will work well with the customers/users. So what do you think? Should form follow function or vice versa? Please share scenarios, if you can.

The International Journal of Serious Games (IJSG) has lauched its first issue (volume 1, number 1, january 2014). The published papers are fully available for download:Individual and collaborative Performance and Level of Certainty in MetaValsMireia Usart, Margarida RomeroGamification and Smart, Competence-Centered Feedback: Promising Experiences in the ClassroomMichael D. Kickmeier-Rust, Eva C. Hillemann, Dietrich AlbertGuidelines for an effective design of serious gamesChiara Eva Catalano, Angelo Marco Luccini, Michela MortaraSerious Games for education and trainingAlessandro De Gloria, Francesco Bellotti, Riccardo BertaBusiness models for Serious Games developers - transition from a product centric to a service centric approachJannicke Baalsrud Hauge, Stefan Wiesner, Rosa Garcia Sanchez, Poul Kyvsgaard Hansen, Giusy Fiucci, Michel Rudnianski, Jon Arambarri BasanezThe journal is seeking for contributions in several topics. Gamification is one of those topics.The IJSG is published by the Serious Games Society.