As in the past, I again this year plan to blog my experiences at BbWorld, July 15-17th. Somehow my calendar is already fuller this year than ever, including 3 presentations, 1 poster presentation, and a host of a few other commitments. Stay tuned here on my blog for more or go directly to jrho.de/bbw14 for all my #BbWorld14 posts. Are you headed to #BbWorld14? Leave me a comment or hit me up on Twitter @jrhode and let’s connect!

Love your CourseMill® interface, but think it could use a little more… pizazz? I have good news for you! There are many upgrade options to choose from that include custom pages, additional graphics, and more in-depth tab design. Let me show you a few examples to help inspire you! To start, you can take your Student tabs a little further by making a graphic for them, relocating them, or just changing up the design a bit. Additional graphics are always a great way to customize your CourseMill interface. You can add a graphic to become a banner above your search box or as part of your header. You can also have a custom log in page that adds graphics, links, additional text, or even videos to your log in page. Plus, check out what our News Pages are all about! These pages give you a great place to share the latest updates and information you want learners to check out first. Go into your Manage Properties to set the News Page to be the first tab learners see when they log in. This can be designed and updated by you, or Trivantis can do it for you. Spice up your CourseMill interface design today! Check out our CourseMill Customization page to see more details, examples, and the prices! To see more cool things CourseMill can do, register for the "Custom Reports Made Easy" Inspiration Wednesday Webinar on June 24. Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more insider tips, how-to articles, and free resources. The post Spicing Up the CourseMill Interface appeared first on Trivantis e-Learning.

A bit over two years ago, more than 3,500 people enrolled in the first Blackboard MOOC on "Instructional Strategies and Technology Tools for Online Success" with Professor Curtis J. Bonk from Indiana University. This course helped to set the stage for this exemplary course MOOC! In one of the synchronous sessions of that course, Dr. Bonk presented his online motivation framework called TEC-VARIETY with each letter representing a motivational principle backed by decades of research on human motivation. In a polling item at the end of that session, his MOOC participants overwhelmingly voted that Curt’s next book on online motivation and retention should be free to the world as an e-book. Well, guess what? He did just that! After nearly 15 years of planning and 3 years of writing, his new book, "Adding Some TEC-VARIETY: 100+ Activities for Motivating and Retaining Learners Online" is done. And Curt Bonk has made this book FREE for anyone as an interactive PDF document both by chapter as well as in total. Explore the book homepage and you will find a download link for the entire 382 page book (http://tec-variety.com/). More important, there are dozens of low risk, low cost, low time activities featured in the book. In addition, each individual chapter is free to separately download and share with your students, trainees, colleagues, and administrators (see http://tec-variety.com/freestuff.php). You can find chapters on creating a safe tone or climate, learner engagement, online collaboration, interactivity, encouragement and feedback, learner autonomy, goal setting, and much more. You even can find a chapter on ways to support instructors who might remain hesitant or a tad resistant to online or blended instruction. According to Professor Bonk and his co-author, Dr. Elaine Khoo of the University of Waikato in New Zealand, you are free to download, use, share, and, with permission, even translate any part of the book (for more details, see the Creative Commons license in the copyright page of the book). Adding Some TEC-VARIETY is already being translated into Chinese by scholars at Beijing Normal University as a free e-book. If you have any questions or comments about this new online motivation and retention book, you can contact Professor Bonk via email at curt@worldisopen.com.

"We’re all built to run from tigers." This is why learners respond so well to game-based training—where they must complete challenges to get achievement, satisfaction, and recognition—according to Emil Heidkamp from Sonata Learning. Emil presented on gamification and simulations at the 2015 Lectora® User Conference in Nashville this spring. In his session, Emil discussed balance—how appropriate a game or simulation’s difficulty level is for its intended audience. With gamification, you want to create an engaging game experience that is also a learning experience. The goal is to achieve cognitive flow, a state of heightened emotional and cognitive engagement achieved when the difficulty of a task is proportional to an individual’s ability. Then, reward the learner for participating so that he or she feels that sense of accomplishment. Here are a few tips from Emil on enabling cognitive flow: • Have concrete goals with manageable rules. • Demand actions to achieve goals that fit within the person’s capabilities. • Have clear and timely feedback on performance and goal accomplishment. • Diminish extraneous distraction, thus facilitating concentration. Emil’s session was so popular that we had to bring in extra chairs! Emil also explained why Lectora is great for creating games and simulations: • Variables allow you to "keep score" and track states, essential for creating games and model systems or processes. • Modify Variable Actions allows games and simulations to be dynamic. • Random Value Generator can be used to introduce an element of unpredictability. • Conditional Logic allows for branching scenarios and more complex game or simulation mechanics. • Timed Triggers are great for adding stress or difficulty to your game. LUC 2015 attendees were excited to start creating their own games with Lectora. Have you created something cool in Lectora that you want to share? Post in the Trivantis Community! For more Lectora tips and eLearning news, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post Balancing Difficulty in eLearning Games & Simulations appeared first on Trivantis e-Learning.

I’m fortunate to be able to attend BbWorld for the third straight year. In additional to presenting this year, I’ll also be spending time at the Knowledge Bar with other BbMVP’s in addition to facilitating on open discussion about Enterprise Surveys and Course Evaluations in Blackboard. I’m also honored receive a Blackboard Catalyst Exemplary Course Award. Here’s a list of the presentations I’ll either be giving or be a part of at BbWorld… Scheduled Presentations Being Present and Engaging Students Online Using Blackboard Video Everywhere Learn about one instructor’s use of YouTube’s free and easy-to-use features incorporated in Blackboard for recording, editing, captioning, and embedding video into his online course. An overview of the steps for recording, editing, captioning, video in YouTube will be provided as well as examples shared for various approaches for seamlessly incorporating video into any online course. A summary of feedback survey results from students regarding their experiences with video in the course will be shared as well as lessons learned by the instructor for those wishing to follow the same suggested steps for incorporating video in their own course. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions throughout the session and see first-hand a demo by the instructor of how the video was seamlessly incorporated into Blackboard Learn. Date/Time/Location: Tue, 7/15/14, 2:45PM-3:30PM, Murano 3304Presenter(s): Jason Rhode Blackboard Catalyst Exemplary Course Award Poster: Instructional Media and Technology Poster for 2014 Blackboard Catalyst Exemplary Course, ETT 510: Instructional Media and Technology, taught by Jason Rhode, Ph.D., fall 2013 Date/Time/Location: Tue, 7/15/14, 5:00PM-7:00PM, Exhibit HallPresenter(s): Jason Rhode Trends in Online Learning What’s holding you back from growing your online presence? Based on research with hundreds of your peer institutions, this session will explore how the use of collaboration tools, mobility, and more will be changed by shifts in student demands and the fight to attract and retain students. Join this session, led by a panel of academic technologists to learn how leading schools are thinking about online learning in the future and what you should be thinking about as part of your long term strategy. (This is based on a webinar held in April of 2014 that was very popular.) Date/Time/Location: Wed, 7/16/14, 9:15AM-10:00AM, Murano 3301Presenters: Jason Rhode, Melissa Stange Enterprise Surveys and Course Evaluations: An Open Discussion of Feature Gaps Join us for an open conversation on the feature gaps and workarounds that institutions are employing in attempting to implement the functionality. I plan to take notes of the conversations and will plan to share here on my blog as well as LinkedIn for those who can’t attend. Date/Time/Location: Wed, 7/16/14, 4:00PM-5:00PM, Veronese 2401A It will be a busy week, but one in which I am looking forward to! Let the presentation preparation begin. If you’ll be at BbWorld, look me up! I’ll be tweeting @jrhode and will share my presentation slides and other resources here on my blog. I will try to also blog my experiences at BbWorld. Looking for Presentations Slides/Handouts? I will be posting the slides and accompanying resources from my BbWorld presenters here on my blog along with any other BbWorld-related reflections. Enjoy!

Our 2015 Lectora® User Conference presenters were such a hit in Nashville! This year’s conference received some amazing feedback, and we were so happy with all our speakers. If you’ve been a longtime Lectora user, you know that sometimes we bring an LUC presenter back for an encore in the form of an Inspiration Wednesday webinar. Adam Leibler from the eLearning Brothers presented "Creating Interactive, Immersive Learning for PC and Mobile Use" in Nashville AND graciously agreed to come back and present again for our Inspiration Wednesday crowd. Here are a few things attendees learned from his presentation: 1. What not to do on an iPad. (Adam did note during the Q&A at the end that Androids are much more friendly toward interactive eLearning than Apple devices. 10 points for my Samsung Galaxy phone!) 2. Saving custom fonts as images to ensure they display correctly on all devices. 3. Creating swipe navigation to enhance the mobile experience. Adam shared many more great tips during his presentation. Viewers also learned that you are actually supposed to pronounce .GIF with a soft ‘g,’ like Jif peanut butter… I’ve been saying it wrong for years! Now go watch the entire awesome presentation on the Trivantis Community! Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more Lectora tips, how-to articles, and free resources. The post Immerse Yourself in Interactivity—Tips from the eLearning Brothers appeared first on Trivantis e-Learning.

For the next 4 days, I’ll be attending the BbWorld 2014 conference in Las Vegas. I’ll be frequently posting to social media using hashtag #BbWorld14 as well as blogging from the conference, prefixing all my BbWorld blog posts using hashtag #BbWorld14 I’m continuing to work on grading Unit 5 activities and will send a quick text message once Unit 5 scores and feedback are available for you in Blackboard. Enjoy your week…I’ll see you online! ~ Dr. J

Facebook may be perceived as a distraction for online learning audiences. However, there are ways that instructional designers can actually use it to their advantage to create immersive and engaging eLearning experiences. In this article, I’ll share a Facebook guide for eLearning professionals explaining why Facebook is such a powerful eLearning tool. You can also find 6 invaluable tips on how to use Facebook for eLearning, as well as 10 additional tips on how to run successful Facebook groups. Read this guide and follow these tips to integrate the king of social media into your eLearning course design and maximize the effectiveness of your eLearning course. The Ultimate Facebook Guide for eLearning Professionals You’ve probably already been using social media as an eLearning platform or following your favorite authoring tools on Facebook, because you realize the role it can play in your social learning strategy. After all, social networks are a great place for interaction, collaboration, and information sharing, which are the cores of social learning. On the other hand, we’ve all found ourselves, at one time or another, perusing the posts on Facebook when we really should have been working or studying. But what if there was a way to turn this addictive social media platform into an amazing eLearning resource? Whether the use of Facebook may be beneficial for your audience or not is for you to determine. But if you decide to integrate Facebook into your eLearning course design, you should be active and have certain things in mind. In this article, I’ll share a Facebook guide for eLearning professionals, so that you can be sure of how to use the most powerful social network of all time for the benefit of your learners. Why Facebook Is Such a Powerful eLearning Tool 1. It reaches learners in a familiar environment. One of the best things about Facebook is that there isn’t much of a learning curve involved. A vast majority of learners already know how to use Facebook and have a profile set up. It’s a natural online environment for them, thanks to the fact that this social media site is so popular. Rather than asking your learners to sign up for a different, lesser-known networking site or engaging them solely through the eLearning course platform, you can reach out to them via a social network they are already familiar with. You can immediately provide them with links or relevant posts that can make their eLearning experience even more beneficial. 2. It attracts new learners. Facebook is, inherently, a networking platform that thrives on social interactions. When learners are going to attend one of your upcoming eLearning events, for example, RSVP invitations can be sent via Facebook to others in their network that can automatically be notified about the eLearning event too. As a result, you can reach out to new learners even without actively doing so. You can also create groups that attract like-minded individuals who are already interested in the subject matter, making it more likely that they will enroll in your eLearning course or attend your webinar. 3. It’s user-friendly. Facebook is one of the most simple and straightforward social media interfaces. You simply sign up, create a profile, and start contacting friends, colleagues, and learners. However, despite the fact it’s so user-friendly, it doesn’t have a shortage of features. You can organize public or private Facebook groups, create threaded discussions with specific groups, and keep your learners up-to-date quickly and conveniently. There are also Facebook applications and games that can enrich the eLearning experience of your audience. And it’s all free! 6 Tips on How to Use Facebook for eLearning 1. Separate your personal and your professional identity. This is the number 1 Facebook Rule you definitely need to follow. It is not unusual for people to blend their personal and professional lives on Facebook. In fact, it is quite common; people share their personal photos and stories with their colleagues, and they often comment on their friends’ pages about their jobs. Don’t make the same mistake. If there is only one rule you should follow on Facebook, this is that you need to keep separate your personal and your eLearning professional identity and be aware of who sees what posts. While Facebook does not allow you to have multiple personal accounts, you can adjust the privacy levels on each individual post you share. You don’t need to do this because you have something to hide; rather, it sends the message that you are a responsible professional who understands that there is a time and place for everything. No matter how talented and successful you are, a photo of you bungee jumping or of your dog wearing a green hat simply cannot convince your existing or potential partners and clients that you take your job seriously. These photos are better shared with only your real life friends. It may sound unfair, but this is how things work. And if you’re worried that keeping your colleagues and learners out of your personal life will deprive them of the opportunity to enjoy your personality and creativity—don’t worry! You are free to create an eLearning account that can capture your audience’s attention in various ways, for instance via your Facebook cover photo. How do you keep personal and professional separate on Facebook? If you run a freelance eLearning agency, you can create a business Facebook page, like the eLearning Brothers page. If you don’t have your own agency, but still want to use Facebook for eLearning, you can allow people to follow you. When you allow people to follow you, anyone on Facebook can follow you to get your public updates in their News Feed, even if you’re not friends on Facebook. A potential new eLearning connection will see this when they visit your Facebook profile for the first time: You must simply be aware of what group you are sharing your posts to after this—"Public" or "Friends Only." 2. Encourage group collaboration and discussion via Facebook. Facebook can be a powerful collaboration tool when you develop activities and class assignments that encourage students to work in online groups. Simply ask learners to divide into Facebook groups and assign a leader who will moderate the discussion and keep everything on track. They can work together to complete the assignment, be it a blog or presentation, by posting on each other’s walls, using Facebook Messenger, and sharing resources through Facebook. 3. Provide immediate feedback and resources for your online learners. Thanks to the fact that you can create closed groups, providing immediate feedback for your learners has never been easier. You can help them to correct or positively reinforce learning behaviors to provide them with the best possible educational experience, without having to worry about embarrassing them by posting things in a public forum. You can also share links to articles and videos with your learners conveniently, so that they can instantly learn about resources that can expand their comprehension of the subject matter. 4. Create groups to cultivate different learning communities. Facebook allows you to create a diverse range of learning communities that center on different topics and ideas so that you can share relevant information with specific learners. For example, learners who are enrolled in your customer service course may not necessarily be interested in the same information as learners in your account management course. However, if you create closed groups in Facebook you can directly interact with members of different learning communities in order to provide them with a customized learning experience. 5. Ask students to conduct Facebook research for upcoming assignments. Facebook may often be seen as nothing more than a social networking site, but it’s also a great source of information. Facebook questions and groups gives students the chance to conduct research for upcoming eLearning projects or assignments by interviewing professionals and experts in the field and viewing posts and links that pertain to particular ideas or concepts. For example, a learner enrolled in a nursing course online can speak with experienced nurses or other medical professionals to learn more about a specific topic or when studying for an assessment. 6. Use polls and surveys to fine-tune your eLearning course. Facebook serves as a powerful feedback tool due to the fact that you can create polls and surveys to collect the opinions and insights of your current or potential learners. For instance, if you are considering starting a new eLearning course, you can reach out to your existing network to see if there may be interest in the subject, and get a clear idea of what lessons you may want to include in an eLearning course. Learners can simply "like" the post to let you know if you’re on the right track. Lack of "likes" may indicate you need to rework your plan. This same rule applies to your existing online courses. You can fine-tune your eLearning curriculum by polling your learners and finding out what they like and what they think needs to be changed. 10 Tips for Running Successful eLearning Facebook Groups A Facebook page is a great way for promoting and branding your eLearning professional identity, as well as sharing eLearning content, multimedia, and news from eLearning websites and blogs with your learners. But creating your own eLearning Facebook group will give you more control over its content, as it can be closed and used for any purpose, from distributing your eLearning courses to creating your eLearning projects. Here are some of the best tips on how to create a successful eLearning group on Facebook: 1. Choose a descriptive name for your Facebook group. When your Facebook group is easy to identify, it can communicate more successfully its purpose. 2. Select an eye-catching group icon. Whether your Facebook group is open or closed, a stylish group icon will make your group stand out. 3. Introduce your Facebook group properly. The description of your Facebook group should be friendly, concise, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) compliant, and should include all the right keywords. This last one will give your Facebook group more visibility. 4. Ask partners, clients, and learners before adding them to your Facebook group. The Facebook netiquette suggests that you should always ask people before adding them to your group. Send polite, personalized invitations, and explain your group’s purpose. 5. Spark interesting conversations. Start commenting on a few topics that you find thought provoking and ask your group members to contribute their personal insights to the online discussion. 6. Encourage interaction, collaboration, and bonding. There is little use for one being on social media if they are not being social. Encourage your Facebook group members to interact with each other and share experiences and tips, as well as collaborate as a team and find solutions to eLearning challenges. This way, they will develop bonds with each other sooner. 7. Don’t forget visuals. Integrating images and graphics into your posts is a great way to engage your Facebook group members. Make sure that they are aesthetically pleasing and intriguing. 8. Encourage eLearning sharing. Whether it is subject matter related content, links to websites and blogs, or eLearning news, ask your Facebook group members to share eLearning information that can spark interesting discussions. 9. Use polls and reviews. Asking of your group members to offer their input about your Facebook group’s operation will offer you both valuable feedback and fresh ideas. 10. Be active. Finally, be there. Managing an eLearning group on Facebook requires investing a considerable amount of your time. Make sure that you are always, or almost always, available to answer questions, follow discussions, and offer interesting eLearning material. Facebook can transform even the dullest subject matter into interactive and engaging eLearning activities for your online learners, regardless of their age, educational background, or learning goals. It’s versatile and collaborative; the perfect match to enhance the effectiveness of your eLearning course for the benefit of your audience. Now that you know all the tips that this Facebook guide had to offer, you may be interested in learning how you can use social media to increase the effectiveness and longevity of formal learning. Read the article 10 Tips To Effectively Use Social Media In Formal Learning and find out how to enhance the social aspects of learning through the use of social media. Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more great guest posts from eLearning experts, free resources, and how-to articles. The post The Ultimate Facebook Guide for eLearning Professionals: 16 Golden Tips to Follow appeared first on Trivantis e-Learning.

While at BbWorld 2014, I have the privilege of accepting a Blackboard Catalyst Exemplary Course Award for my Blackboard course, ETT 510: Instructional Media and Technology, which I designed and taught online during Fall 2013. This course was reviewed by the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program and received the distinction of being named an Exemplary Course. While I’ve previously shared feedback from reviewers, course tour highlighting notable elements of the course design, and even made the entire course available to self-enroll and/or download as OER package, I thought I’d also share below the other kind "kudos" I’ve received related to this award thus far…photos from the awards presentation to be added later. Congrats to @jrhode for winning the 2014 Blackboard Catalyst Award for Exemplary Course Design! http://t.co/e01znrhsvj — NIU Education (@NIUCOE) July 14, 2014 The following announcement was sent by La Vonne Neal, Dean, NIU College of Education, on Monday, 7/14/14 in her "Monday Memo" to NIU Education faculty and staff: This week I am proud to announce that Dr. Jason Rhode, an instructor in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment (ETRA) and director of NIU’s Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, has won the 2014 Blackboard Catalyst Award for Exemplary Course Design. "ETT 510 Instructional Media and Technology," a required course for all ETRA master’s degree students in technology specialist online cohorts, is the course receiving this honor. Last year, Rhode collaborated with ETRA faculty and staff to improve the course content and template of the ETT 510 class. They were so successful that the template has become the standard for all online ETRA cohorts. The Blackboard award program is designed to enhance the visibility of the innovation occurring in institutions of higher learning and to recognize faculty and staff who are directly impacting educational programs. In 2014, over 200 entries were evaluated in a rigorous peer-review process by more than 300 faculty and instructional designers. NIU is among a distinguished group of winners in the Blackboard community. Blackboard will be celebrating the ingenuity of ETRA’s collaboration and course design on July 17, 2014, at an award ceremony in Las Vegas. It is clear to me that COE faculty and staff are leading the way in creating cutting-edge instructional technology, which ultimately furthers our scholars’ academic and career success. I am so honored to be a part of an institution with leaders like Jason Rhode who continuously demonstrate excellence in online teaching and learning. Dr. Rhode received the Blackboard Key to the Community Award in 2013. His staff at NIU’s Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center also won the 2013 Blackboard Staff Development Catalyst Award, 2013 Blackboard Teaching and Learning Catalyst Award, 2012 Blackboard Catalyst Platinum Award for Community Collaboration, and the 2011 Blackboard Catalyst Award for Excellence in Online Professional Development. Congratulations to Dr. Rhode and all ETRA faculty and staff members who collaboratively enhance our scholars’ experiences in online learning. La Vonne I. Neal, DeanCollege of EducationNorthern Illinois University

Effective design in eLearning courses makes courses look professional, supports the learning process, and increases course production efficiency. At the 2015 Lectora® User Conference, Johnny Hamilton from Providence Health and Services spoke about this and shared tips—or design guidelines—for effective instructional design. Here are a few of the tips that Johnny shared for emphasizing the design in instructional design: • Display less than 120 words at once to focus on important content, reduce clutter on the page, and enhance readability and comprehension. • Chunk content to increase comprehension. • Size fonts for readability. John suggested body text font size of 12-14; you should double that font size for section headers. • Incorporate white space to make content stand out and be easier to comprehend. • Design from top left to bottom right to follow learners’ reading path. • Limit your color pallet for a professional look. Higher contrast also improves readability. • Indicate meanings for color; for example, use the same color for elements such as responsive, navigation, or focus. • Be consistent in your design to give the course a unified look. That way, learners can focus on the content. To demonstrate all his tips and design guidelines, Johnny built an interactive course in Lectora! Session attendees sharing Johnny’s tips on Twitter For more posts like these, plus eLearning news and trends, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post Tips for Emphasizing the Design in Instructional Design appeared first on Trivantis e-Learning.