Anticipation, buzz, hype… whatever name you give it, one of the absolute best times to be marketing your course is before it’s available to purchase. Whether it’s the anticipation buildup of watching a trailer for an upcoming movie, commercials for the next season of Game of Thrones (we have to wait until APRIL!), or Apple’s latest product announcement, buzz is all part of the excitement. Your upcoming course should be no different. Marketing in advance and building buzz can not only lead to a truly successful launch, but also gives you plenty of opportunity to build an even larger list before you go live. Here are a few tips to get started: When you start putting together a course, begin marketing at the same time. A "coming soon" banner on your website, talking about what you’re up to on your blog and emails, and social media mentions are all great places to start Supercharge your existing website prompts to join your mailing list (or add this if you’re not doing this now). Rather than "sign up for my newsletter," change your call to action to something related to your new content, such as: "Join my VIP list and get 5 tips from my upcoming course right now" Talk about benefits, not features. The compelling message isn’t that your new course is going to have 27 lessons of content with videos and so on, the message is how your audience will be better off. Turn those messages into prompts for action - "5 days to the release of my course which will give you back 5 hours a week in lost productivity. Don’t lose another hour - sign up for early access" Let some people in on it early. Select tips to VIP audience members, signups for advance access, and early release to key influencers in your community (think review copies) can be a great way to get people talking about it up front Entire courses can be written on planning a successful launch, but these few tips should help inspire a few ideas that you can get started with, even if you’re still perfecting your content! Happy Monday!   The post Marketing before launch: Building Hype appeared first on Thinkific.

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University. Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of … Continue reading →

I just watched Chef, the movie, and it reminded me why I do what I do. If you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend it. Chef Carl Casper, Jon Favreau, finds himself unhappy cooking under a restaurant owner’s yolk and with no time to spend with his ten year old son. He quits his job and starts a food truck with a friend and his son. They embark on a cross country road trip serving up Cuban sandwiches, and with the help of his son’s tweets, vines, and Facebook posts, they take America by storm. What really struck me was the power to take control of your life and your time with a business of your own. Working for yourself, whether it’s running a food truck or teaching online courses, can give you the freedom to spend time with your kids, go fishing, learn a language, or whatever you’re dreaming of. And we’re all dreaming of having a little more time and money to work with. I guess I identify with the Chef, as his move from a fine dining restaurant parallels my jump from one of the largest law firms in the country to teaching online courses. I loved law, but the freedom of teaching online is amazing. It wasn’t an over night success, but with a little time and attention my first course took off and left me with the time to pursue my dreams. If you haven’t seen it, check out the trailer. And if you haven’t started teaching online, think about it. Or think about a food truck. The Chef had a passion for food and wanted to share it with the world. What do you want to share with the world? What can you teach people? I’d love to hear about it in the comments! - Greg @ Thinkific The post Lessons from The Chef appeared first on Thinkific.

Good quality eLearning makes a difference to your staff Today’s blog comes from Helen Cassidy, one of our Senior Learning Consultants and lead Instructional Designer. Helen works directly with clients to help shape eLearning project requirements, and from the outset, she always has good quality eLearning in mind. Helen’s our workplace performance ninja - projects that focus on ‘awareness’ just don’t get past her! Over to Helen… What is the main challenge you want to address? How does it impact your staff and your business? "Well, we’d like our employees to have a really good awareness of the new product suite." Ugh. Years ago I became the proud owner of an altimeter watch - a top of the range piece of kit. I bought it because it would tell me how many meters I stood above sea level. And why was this useful? It’s so obvious! It would make me much more aware of where I was on the side of a mountain! Except that this new awareness of how many meters I stood above sea level meant little when I found myself on the side of a featureless munro, in the dark, in the mist, close to hypothermic, out of food and water and well past home time. What’s more obvious is the point I’m trying to make. An awareness of something is usually a vague knowing. It’s not enough to make you change your behaviour. I was aware of some navigational aids but didn’t have the skills to use them on the mountain when the need arose. And this idea forms the basis of many conversations we have with our eLearning clients. You don’t need an eLearning course to ‘create awareness’. Employees can become aware by talking to colleagues or scanning a document - both these options are much cheaper than developing an eLearning course (even a competitively priced Logicearth eLearning course!) So why do clients get stuck on the ‘awareness’ thing? Is it because: A. The objectives of the eLearning solution haven’t been well enough defined? B. The individuals we speak to don’t have the detailed knowledge themselves? C. The needs of the learners haven’t accurately been identified? D. The client hasn’t viewed eLearning as a tool for effecting behaviour change? E. The client thinks that IDs are magicians? At Logicearth, of course we’d like to think that our instructional designers are magicians - but that aside; for us as IDs, the key question is: What do you want your learners to be able to DO after completing the course? Once IDs get a clear answer to this question, the design can focus on ensuring that learners can DO this ‘thing’. This answer will help enormously to address points a) to d) above (we’re still working on addressing point e). The answer will help subject matter experts (SMEs) to understand that in identifying what learners must be able to DO, they can identify things that learners are currently not doing, which can be addressed directly in the eLearning. By identifying what learners should DO, SMEs can further identify the precise moments and situations of need. Knowing what a learner should DO helps IDs to give learners the words or the actions needed to succeed, so the eLearning can include opportunities to practice decision-making and action-taking which mirror their everyday challenges. Identifying what learners must DO can also serve to highlight any gaps in the content provided by the SMEs in the clearest possible way. Using awareness as part of the good quality eLearning journey So let’s look at an example - say your friend is learning how to drive. Would you get in a car with them if they only had an ‘awareness’ of where the brake, clutch and gear stick was? Or, would you prefer to drive with someone who had actually learned TO DRIVE? This is perhaps a ridulous example, but yet it is what many eLearning programmes try to do. How many of you, for example, have taken communication skills courses, without actual support, feedback and practice on how to listen or speak effectively in business? And there are countless other examples that I am sure you could bring to mind. Not only is awaress too vague a concept to make a difference to your staffs’ on-the-job performance, it is just unclear what it means and it is very subjective. How do you tell the difference between someone who is averagely aware versus someone who is fully aware? Awareness is more useful as part of the learning journey, or as what we would call an enabling objective. When you are plotting your learner’s journey as part of the overall project goal, you can look at barrriers to awareness and other issues like motivation and confidence. This refinement of requirements keeps everyone involved in the design process moving towards a common goal. The quality of the eLearning for learners will directly depend on the relevancy of each element of the course to the goal of DOing something better in their jobs. Back to the munros (We think Helen climbed this one) On a more recent mountain trip, I found myself on the side of a dangerous, crag-ridden munro, in the dark, in 100mph winds with a party of novice walkers, one of them injured and well past home time (I know, there’s another lesson in there somewhere). By studying the map, estimating time and distances, judging the terrain, taking a compass bearing, reading the ground and confidence-roping the injured/terrified, I managed to safely lead the group off the mountain and down to the pub for a nerve settling Glenmorangie. Key to the whole escape was my trusty altimeter - in the dark, I needed to be sure we didn’t drop below 520m above sea level in order to avoid a waterfall gorge below and yet stay beneath the vertical crags above. After working out where we were and where we needed to go, my altimeter was the tool I needed to follow the only path to safety. The difference this time was that I knew how and when to use the tool to achieve my goal. So, what do you want your learners to be able to do? Abracadabra! Kalimazoo! Through the dull cloud of awareness come bright rays of positive action and sound decision-making… good quality eLearning! Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe. The post What good quality eLearning really means to your staff appeared first on Logicearth.

Quality, inspiration and engagement - themes for June 2015 I often wonder what my colleagues in the wider eLearning community would like to see in eLearning content designed for them. If you are involved in eLearning or training design, you’ll have spent countless hours thinking about your target audience and the companies they work in. What motiviates them to learn, what might put them off? What do they actually need, beyond ‘awareness’ to help them to do their jobs better? Pratical, relevant eLearning content - scenarios and examples, inspire me!   Getting to inspiring eLearning So now, today when I think about what actually motivates me to learn, I think that perhaps it is much more simple than I once thought. The key word for me is inspiration, closely followed by relevance. On a day-to-day basis I get bombarded with so much information. Lots of ‘helpful’ ideas from colleagues, solving problems for clients and filtering through emails and instant messages. Then there is Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and reviewing other’s work - it is hard to make the useful insights stand out from the noise of the mundane crowd. If something inspires me, my ability to learn seems to be turbo-charged with energy and enthusiasm. Of course, the trick is to figure out what actually inspires you - and this can be different for different people. Today’s post brings you six sparks of inspiration, from a few of Logicearth’s blog posts this month and a few others that have caught my eye. Spark 1 - If content is king, it is time to overthrough the monarchy Great blog post by Will Thalheimer on the ATD blog. Will thinks that we may be teaching too much information- craming too much content into our courses. I think he is right! Will’s training maximisers should be part of the quality standards for all eLearning. Spark 2 - We need employees who think, not follow orders Interesting article from Harvard Business Review; if we keep to our industrial age processes and ways of working, how can we expect a different result? Spark 3: ATD 2015 Survey on training challenges Training re-inforcment is rated as the number one challenge - the forgetting curve is alive and well! There are lots of new products on the market to help with this - but bottom line is - we need to design training re-inforcement into our content. Spark 4: Inside the learner’s brain A blog post from Logicearth, thinking through what might make the learner’s brain happy. We outline seven attributes that are important to learning - insights, pacing, visual impact, relevance, scaffolding, practice and re-inforcement. What do you think? Is there anything here that you would change? Spark 5: The poetry of behaviour change Do you have learning in your soul or soul in your learning? A blog post on behaviour change by Scottish poet David Cameron, who reminds us that the unconscious mind needs to be part of our learning plans as much as the conscious mind. Some useful insights too from experienced Instructional Designer, Julie Dirksen. Spark 6: designing eLearning content a multi-device world An article in eLearningAge, UK magazine that explains new instructional design techniques for designing multi-device eLearning content. Embrace the scrolling people! (Page 38-39) Thanks for reading our blog today. If you have any of your own sparks of inspiration to share, let us know in the comments below. PS - if you want on-going sparks of insight, we’d love it if you’d sign up for our monthly newsletter here. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe.   The post June 2015 roundup: inspiring eLearning sparks appeared first on Logicearth.

We all love a great deal, and perhaps even more as we get into the last couple months of the year. The other day I was talking to a friend about a service I was thinking of buying, and she suggested I wait until Black Friday sales at the end of the month (for our readers outside of North America, the day following American Thanksgiving widely known for being the biggest promotional day of the year). In recent years, especially as commerce is increasingly online, Black Friday sales can be found around the globe. Two things immediately came to mind when my friend suggested I wait - first, that I had no idea if the company I was planning to purchase from was even going to offer any promotions. Second, if I waited and no sale happened, how disappointed I’d be for then having to pay full price along with the added frustration of having waited the extra time! If you’re looking for a way to drive new sales to courses you’ve had up for a while, Black Friday is a PERFECT excuse to have some fun with your marketing. Now is the time to make the plan. Here are some things to consider to get you started: Straight up Black Friday sales - an awesome promotion, based on a % or $ amount off, for a single day. You can create coupons for your Thinkific school directly to make this one easy, details here. Sweeten the deal - how can you make your course offering even more compelling? Think about add-ons for your promotion. Perhaps access to a second course, a half hour coaching call, or bonus course content could fit the bill here. Get your fans excited. Remember the post last week about building anticipation? This is a great way to put that hype-building knowledge to work on an existing course. You don’t want your audience to question whether you have a sale coming up (like I did) - make sure they know and are ready for it! Encourage new visitors to sign up on your list to be the first notified - perhaps list members get extra time to cash in on the deal (made possible by giving list members a discount code that expires at a later date), or extra value (like the sweetening options above)? Seek out new audiences! Use your Black Friday deal as a way to share your promotion with new groups. Hit up LinkedIn or Facebook groups that would be interested in your course with exclusive Black Friday promotions for them to share with their members. And of course, be sure to let us know what you’re up to! We’re looking forward to hearing what everyone does as we get into the busiest shopping time of the year. Have fun! The post Counting Down to Black Friday - Using Promotions to Drive Sales appeared first on Thinkific.

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University. Each week, we are required to post three responses/reactions to queries posted by other … Continue reading →

Hello Thinkific fans! We’ve been rolling out some great new features here at Thinkific HQ, and wanted to share a few of the recent updates with you. We’re constantly working behind the scenes to make Thinkific even more amazing, with lots of fun stuff in the works. Have fun exploring! Upload and lay out your entire video course in one step New Feature: Bulk Video Uploader & Quick Edit. This is a big one! Instructors with video courses can now bulk upload and edit their entire course in one step. Simply create your new course, then click on "Quick Edit" in the top left once in the course editor. Drag in all of your files, and while they’re uploading you can name your lessons and chapters and move things around, all on the same screen. Be ready for launch in no time flat! Details here. Shiny new options for text-based content creation New Feature: Updated Text Content Styling. Many of our instructors are creating courses using multiple content types - Videos, PDFs, Quizzes and Surveys, the list goes on! We’ve now updated our Text content type to make it more robust, both for creating content right in the tool and for pasting in content from other sources. Authors can now author text content right in the system and apply basic styles without ever having to touch the HTML view (which is still there for our power users, of course). Data exports now available New Feature: Survey & Quiz Exporter. Survey and Quiz data in the system can now be easily exported. Wahoo! Quiz data is great to track student progress and see exactly which areas students are struggling with, and the export feature makes surveys more robust. Find the new exporter in your dashboard under Reporting -> Quizzes and Surveys. Instructions are up here.  Social discussion forums added New Feature: Disqus. We heard you! We’ve integrated with the Disqus social commenting platform to give you more control over discussions for your classes. Disqus offers social logins, moderation and notifications, and robust commenting features such as image support. Learn more about using Disqus for your school here Native PDF content support added New Feature: PDFs. eBook authors rejoice! Native PDF support means that PDF files can now be added as course content directly from within your editing dashboard, and viewed by students right in the browser (rather than as download only). Turn your existing PDFs into lessons as part of your new dynamic course. Details on the Knowledge Base. The post New Features Announced! Improved course authoring & more appeared first on Thinkific.

What makes an engaging user experience in eLearning? This one is always hotly debated, especially amongst the Logicearth design teams! The graphic designers say that style, flair and creativity is what draws users in. The instructional designers say that interaction and challenge is what keeps users wanting to learn more. Ideally an engaging user experience in eLearning has equally good graphic design and instructional design. Maybe it is that age-old battle of inspiration versus perspiration? Or art versus science? Art versus science - who wins in eLearning design? Today’s post comes from Erin Doherty, a key member of our graphic design team. Erin has written before on user experience design for eLearning, and today she takes that one step further to look at design techniques and examples that she finds particularly engaging. If you have any questions for Erin, she’d be happy to answer them - just reply to us in the usual way through the form at the bottom of this post. Over to Erin.. Drag & drop Drag & drop activities are a great way to initiate user interaction with the course. Prompting the user to physically interact with the course provides a fun and engaging way to help them remember the information given to them. Drag & drop interactions are a great alternative to blocks of text or simple yes/no questions. Users are much more likely to remember something that they have had to drag to a certain zone, rather than simply read. The example below shows a way to make a yes/no question much more fun & engaging for the user. Have a go at the drag & drop interaction below. Animation Animation is a really effective way to get a message across to your user. Animation has been capturing the attention and engaging children for a very long time through cartoon television programmes, but it can be just as engaging to an older audience. Types of animation can range from quirky animated cartoons to corporate explainer videos. The entertaining aspect of animation is a great way to evoke enjoyment within the user, helped by the fact that animations can always be a quite humorous if they want to be. This can be used to good effect in the middle of a course, to re-attract the users attention if it has wandered, or at the end of a course to reinforce the key points. Illustration Replacing corporate photographs with vector illustrations is one way to break up a course and make it more eye-catching. Illustration, when done well, can brighten a course and make it much more pleasing for the user to look at. When illustrating, there is much more freedom than when using stock photography as scenarios and environments can be created that directly link to the content, which gives the course a much more bespoke feel. Consistent illustrated characters can make a course more playful and give the user a sense of trust through building a relationship with the characters.  Illustrated images are an excellent tool for learning and some images, such as icons, can be universally understood without any need for text. The illustrations can also be branded specifically to the company that the course is being created for. Live action There will always be a place for live action video in eLearning. Animated videos are always fun and are great for explaining, but sometimes nothing can beat actually seeing a real life scenario. Health & safety and first aid courses are two areas in which live action is very important, as the user will need to know exactly how to carry out an action. For example, when instructing a user on how to properly carry out first aid on another person, a live action video would be much more effective than an animated video. This is simply because seeing an actual person carry out the action shows the user exactly how it should be done, whereas with animation there is always room for a slight error in position, technique etc…which isn’t ideal with such a critical topic. This video is an extract from an ergonomics course - to highlight how many small movements we make each day, putting pressure on our joints and limbs. Did you know that you are likely to click the mouse 400+ times a day? No wonder wrist pain is common. Of course, live action video does come with its limitations. A low budget video will almost definitely look like a low budget video. Limited lighting, environments, actors etc. can make a high quality live action video very hard to achieve without forking out for it. However, the results of a high quality live action video can look very professional and can be extremely effective for the users learning experience. Combining design styles Finally, combining some of the above skills can create a really innovative and exciting learning environment and a user experience that learners will actually want to engage in. An example of this is the interaction below. The combination of illustration and animation, along with the background functionality of hover overs and clicks, creates an interaction that is not only pleasing on the eye but really fun to take part in as well. Other ways to combine skills to create an engaging user experience is using animation on top of live action video to prompt users to make decisions that determine what comes next. A great example of this is the interactive film Lifesaver. Engaging user design for eLearning needs to take many things into consideration. Our top 5 tips are: Good design is a communication tool - be clear on what message you are communicating through all elements of your design - colour, texture, white space, size, shape, weighting etc. The human brain will look for meaning in all your design elements. Get to know your audience - what types of imagery and design techniques are they used to seeing? What would grab their attention? Encourage your graphic design and learning/training design teams to work together; the more each team understands each other’s perspective, the better the overall design. Infographics are a great example of where art and science meet together in perfect harmony - without good design, infographics just don’t work. But using the wrong content or content structure confuses the user and is likely to stop them engaging. Avoid common design pitfalls - take a look at websites such as this one. If you have any design questions or examples of good or poor designs, get in touch - our design team love to talk about all things design. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe.   The post 5 ways to create a more engaging user experience in eLearning appeared first on Logicearth.

I came across this today (Thanks to Jeremy Hunsinger): Second, we have become painfully aware of how badly (or how little) some of our colleagues read. Articles are too often cited, by authors and by referees, as making the exact … Continue reading →