Making sure employees have the time for elearning is a challenge.  We’re going to give you some practical tips on how to deliver training to staff who are on a tight schedule. These tips are based on feedback from clients who have faced this challenge. If you’d like to talk about creating an elearning course tailored to your needs get in touch . Bite-sized learningMicro learning, or breaking your courses into small pieces, has been popular for a long time. Whilst we’ve been writing about chunking your elearning for a while, there’s a more recent trend for making individual pieces of learning shorter still. Attention spans are falling and even the best content has to compete with a hundred other options for your employees’ time. Breaking up the learning process can help with tight schedules; fitting elearning in around a busy work routine is easier when it doesn’t need a large block of time.For many industries micro learning can offer a great opportunity for just in time learning ; a staff member takes a small, focused course on a task that they are required to do in the immediate future. With just in time learning, the information is fresh in the learners mind and they have not wasted any time with areas they will not benefit from.It’s important not to let the quality of the learning suffer when you prioritise short pieces of content, consider these tips when creating your bite sized micro learning: Keep it tightly focused - each bite-sized chunk should have one learning objective Make it wholly relevant - the learners should be able to focus entirely on the knowledge they need for the current chunk Use video - video draws learners in and keeps them interested more than text, so it can help speed up the progress through a short piece of learning Multi DeviceYour employees already access the information they need in many ways, from face to face conversations to external social media sites. The best device for accessing elearning is the one that’s nearest to you, and often it’s no longer a desktop computer.By making the training accessible from anywhere you can greatly increase the chance of your staff being able to complete the course promptly.Here are our key tips for the multi device elearning development process: Use responsive design principles - building one course which can be viewed on many different screen sizes helps keep costs down whilst ensuring multi device compatibility Try a mobile first approach - it doesn’t work for everything but if you get the design right for the smallest devices and work from there, this helps avoid adding unnecessary content Optimize for fast loading - the main reason use a mobile device is because it’s faster and easier than a desktop or laptop, make sure your course doesn’t take a long time to load Adapt Sponge UK is one of the founding collaborators on the Adapt project , it offers a framework and tool for producing responsive elearning content. ManageStaff can take part in most elearning courses whenever it’s convenient -  it’s one of the advantages of online training.Instead of having to schedule time for all members of a team to be away from work together you can have all the relevant employees taking the same course at different times.This kind of asynchronous elearning has other benefits, learners can interact with other members of the team who they don’t see in person and offer advice which they can use when it’s their turn for the training.Managers can help ease the time pressures that elearning presents with some simple steps: Book in times for staff to attend training in advance Let staff know what’s expected from the training and when it should be happening Promote the course to your staff Build learning into employee objectives Sponge University Sponge UK has an internal staff development program. By encouraging employees to incorporate training into their objectives, you give them more motivation to complete training on time. Incentivise the learning - make it fun.If your staff want to complete the training they will be more likely to find time in their day for it.Games and gamification are two of the most powerful tools in encouraging participation in online training. These elements can range from cost effective gamification elements that integrate with an existing LMS, all the way to fully-fledged games with high scores and leader boards.Incorporating aspects of social learning can help people invest in the learning process. Staff who are able to act as mentors will be motivated to share their knowledge, and employees who benefit from their more experienced colleagues will feel more included.Consider these options for motivating your staff by making the learning fun: Games - building learning into a game environment increases engagement and helps learners commit to finishing a course Social elements can add incentives to staff to help others by sharing knowledge A leader board helps promote friendly competition between staff Badges can be awarded to staff who accomplish learning goals If you’d like to know more about how serious games for learning work, download our free guide . By combining these tips you can make sure your elearning strategy has the best chance of providing staff with the training they need quickly and effectively. If you’d like to talk to us about creating elearning which can fit into your schedule, get in touch. The post How to find time for elearning appeared first on Sponge UK.

1 tweets   tweet   It’s always pleasant when your effort is acknowledged. This month we got it twice. First, the iSpring team was called "the most personable" at the ASTD TechKnowledge’13. All TechKnowledge attendees were given leaflets to vote for the booth where staff was the most personable. Winning this contest came in as a nice surprise to the iSpring team, and it added to the thrill of communicating with our visitors! Another thing to share is that Craig Weiss called us a "cool site" in his recent blog post. Craig named the common mistakes of some web sites "whose design looks like it came from 1995 when Netscape ruled the land". In his examples of cool sites, only two web sites of authoring tools were named, one of which was iSpring. A big THANK YOU to everyone who helped make these things happen. Here’s to a future filled with even more achievements!

1 tweets   tweet   Today we’re posting another success story, sent to iSpring by Dustin Bauman of iApproach. Thank you for sharing this with us, Dustin! We promise we will continue to provide you and all our customers with even better solutions so everyone can have a success story! iApproach provides eLearning development, LMS implementation, PowerPoint/iSpring/Camtasia/Captivate/video and audio training and conversion services. After working with all the top products on the market, I can say that you should not be without iSpring Suite. After years of testing the top products, Articulate (Presenter and Storyline), Adobe Captivate, Lectora and others, iSpring is the most reliable, versatile and most powerful tools that truly convert all PowerPoint features, including triggers. Additionally, iSpring works and reports correctly with every LMS I have tested it with. This is extremely important as I have personally implemented more than five different LMS systems for various companies and have tested all products with more a dozen LMS systems on the market, iSpring being the only (fact) product that reported course status correctly. What makes iSpring so great? Well, first of all, the product converts all (almost) PowerPoint features (PowerPoint is more powerful than people give it credit for) including triggers (which is why Storyline introduced triggers). Supporting triggers allows you to create menus, hotspot images with popup text and many more features in your courses. Second, conversions are fast. Working with slide decks in excess of 100 slides and over an hour of audio and video is a real challenge for other tools to convert or publish. Third, large organizations that I have worked with, initially had issues reaching all of their users due to bandwidth constrictions. iApproachThe way iSpring publishes its files is very efficient and works in the low bandwidth scenarios, because it chunks out the published files, meaning, it utilizes both Progressive and streaming technologies to reach the customer. I have done extensive testing in this area and documented results, example: Captivate only uses progressive, while it would take over an hour for a developed course to play (if it played at all), the same course (re-developed and published with iSpring suite) took less than 30 seconds to launch and played the entire course, with video. Lastly, working with your reporting system/LMS (SCORM) is a critical piece. I have worked in environments with very strict auditing requirements (FDA, ISO, etc.) and the ability to provide proper documentation and SCORM results is critical for training records.  Through the years, iSpring has been the only consistent development tool, (the only one). Is iSpring the only tool? No, I still use the other tools and have a lot of tools in the toolbox. I use Camtasia for screen/video recording, Captivate for interactions (show me, try me), PavTube for video/audio conversion and compression, Levelator, FlipPDF and others, but, it all gets published with iSpring. If you follow the company and the product, you will see that they continue (they are always working to make the product better) to move the product forward, quiz integration and capabilities continue to get stronger and offer more features, Kinetics, player customization and audio management. On a final note, iSpring (the company), are one of the only companies that I have worked with that truly listen to the customer. Whether you are working with support (Mikhail, Tanya, Natalie and others) or if you are connected with Yury or Slava, they truly give you the time of day and solicit feedback to keep moving the product forward. I highly recommend iSpring, as a product, as a company and as a team.  Keep up the great work, you and your team are sincerely appreciated. Dustin Bauman iApproach

5 tweets   tweet   Whether you are already using iSpring for eLearning and mLearning development or just giving it a try, it’s always good to hear what the professionals have to say about it. Check out the following iSpring reviews from two brilliant eLearning ladies: "PowerPoint Converter for 2013" by Jane Bozarth and "iSpring´s approach to #mLearning: testing PPT to HTML5 conversion" by Mayra Aixa Villar. We want to thank Jane and Mayra for taking their time to test drive iSpring and share their experience with readers. Were the reviews helpful for you? Please share your comments below.  

3 tweets   tweet   Last week The Saba Global Summit 2013 took place in San Francisco. This year’s event was entitled "People 2013" and it focused on practical solutions for social learning in the corporate environment. iSpring was the Gold Sponsor of the event and we thoroughly enjoyed everything from the excellent organization of the event to the amazingly welcoming atmosphere. The Summit united professionals from all areas of business. Many of them had heard about iSpring and were curious to know more. Judging by the interest in iSpring that we witnessed at the Summit, it seems as though the team of iSpring users will continue to grow! At the Summit, iSpring introduced iSpring Pro 7 - the brand new authoring tool for the creation of e-Learning content with a focus on mobile platforms. Like all iSpring’s e-Learning authoring solutions, iSpring Pro 7 features excellent support of the Saba LMS. Did any of you make it to the Summit? Write us and let us know what your experience was!

6 tweets   tweet   iSpring offers a comprehensive set of tools  for e-Learning authoring - from freeware to all-in-one solutions. iSpring software allows creating SCORM-compliant e-Learning courses ready for LMS’s directly from PowerPoint. Today we are posting a series of video tutorials on how to upload iSpring-generated content to the Docebo e-Learning platform. Check out the playlist of tutorials kindly provided by the Docebo team:

3 tweets   tweet   Today we are glad to share another client's success story. It was sent to us by Qinghua Chen, an English teacher from China who just discovered how iSpring Suite can facilitate both in-class and online learning for his students. Happy reading! My name is Qinghua Chen. I teach English at Beijing 21st Century High school in China. Recently, when I was searching solutions on putting contents on my moodle site, Damienglish.com, I came across a post in teacher’s forum, strongly recommending iSpring products. I visited the website of iSpring, downloaded a trial version of the product, and I can’t tell how excited I was when using the product for the first time. I just felt all my previous troubles and embarrasement I had with PPTs were in the past, with the installation of this amazing product on my computer.Read more »

0 tweets   tweet   This May the iSpring Team attended ASTD International Conference and Expo that took place in Dallas, TX. As usual, the event was perfectly planned and organized and the members of ASTD team were amazingly supportive. In this welcoming atmosphere, we had numerous interesting conversations both with iSpring clients and many new customers. At this year’s event, we were demonstrating the ability of the new iSpring Pro 7 to generate m-Learning content for iPads and other tablets. With the help of the brand new Mobile Player app, anyone can view iSpring-generated presentations on the iPad and even download them for viewing offline. At ASTD 2013 we introduced another powerful solution: iSpring Rocket. The new toolkit empowers users to create professional e-Learning courses in PowerPoint, deliver them to iSpring’s functional LMS and track e-Learning results with multiple reports. The solution got plenty of interest from corporate training specialists as well as representatives of the government-run and educational institutions. During the conference, we’ve scheduled a number of online demos for everyone who was interested in iSpring Pro 7 or iSpring Rocket. In fact, you can still request a FREE online demo to see how iSpring can help you boost your business or e-Learning. All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed attending ASTD Expo, meeting old friends and making new acquaintances. Now what are your feelings about the event? Please share your opinion in the comments!  

0 tweets   tweet   At iSpring, we keep working on new solutions that help our clients develop their businesses and save time. One of the latest innovations - iSpring Mobile Player app for the iPad - immediately received plenty of positive feedback, which we are happy to publish in this blog post: «Hi, my name is Sanjeev Khindaria and I am a digital marketing consultant working in the Greater Toronto Area. One of my clients sells capital equipment worth hundreds of thousands of Dollars. The selling cycle is typically 1-year, involving multiple meetings, decision makers and influencers. While making sales calls, their Sales Managers bump into various decision makers on elevators, in hallways, etc. These decision makers are hard to contact and get an audience with, do not respond to phone calls or emails, but have great influence over the final decision. The company wanted to showcase their product’s unique features / results to these key decision makers in those 30-second opportunities on elevators, hallways, etc. showing PowerPoint Presentations on iPad, offline, from a pool of tens of existing PPTs. Their PPTs have a lot of videos (WMVs, AVIs, aGIFs), custom animation and slide transitions. After having tested a plethora of solutions to view PPTs on iPad offline for months and none of them supporting all three - videos, custom animations and slide transitions - I was referred to iSpring Pro 7 by an overseas associate working on this project with me but still I was unable to vide the PPT offline. Communicating with a very responsive iSpring Support Team, I found they are releasing iSpring app that will allow me to view PPTs on iPad offline. Having waited few more weeks for its launch, I am pleased to say that iSpring app for iPad works like a charm. It delivered results beyond what I had expected. My client is very happy and is finally implementing this solution as part of their sales strategy. This app delivers excellent results. At the time of writing this, there is no other solution I am aware of that allows viewing PPTs on iPad, as seamlessly implemented as this app. And the best part is the team behind the app - very responsive, very supportive» Did you have the chance to use iSpring’s Mobile Player? What do you think about it?

0 tweets   tweet   How about creating great e-Learning courses with challenging quizzes right in your PowerPoint? With the new iSpring Presenter, it’s very easy! It has all you need to make your e-Learning courses effective and successful: video and audio narrations, media rich quizzes and surveys and more. Installed as a PowerPoint add-in, iSpring Presenter appears on a new tab of PowerPoint ribbon to give you access to all of its advanced e-Learning features: M-Learning courses from PowerPoint Video narrations and voice-overs Interactive HTML5 quizzes and surveys No matter what sphere you work in, iSpring Presenter’s professional opportunities will help you create stunning mobile content: Instructional designers: If you create e-Learning courses for your job, you probably have high demands to the authoring software. iSpring Presenter provides an intuitive interface and an extensive set of professional authoring features. Educators and teachers: How about enriching your lectures and lessons with a touch of technology? iSpring Presenter allows you to easily create interactive e-Learning courses that will totally grab students’ attention. Besides, the courses can be taken from home, which will enable slowly progressing students to catch up. HR specialists: iSpring Presenter can help you launch e-Learning in your company. Created in PowerPoint and enriched with effective narrations and quizzes, iSpring’s courses will be the best way to train new employees or retrain your stuff. Can’t wait to boost your e-Learning materials with the new powerful tool? Take a look at what it can do! Create mobile e-Learning courses in PowerPoint Control e-Learning effectiveness with mobile quizzes and surveys Record informative video and audio narrations Integrate courses with LMS’s All these opportunities are easily accessible on iSpring Presenter’s handy toolbar in PowerPoint. Create mobile e-Learning courses in PowerPoint The new iSpring Presenter now allows you to create mobile courses that will play on all devices, including iPads. The secret is the conversion of your PowerPoint projects to one of these formats: Flash (for playback on desktops); HTML5 (for viewing on mobile devices); Combined Flash & HTML5 format (for playing courses on all platforms) As usual, iSpring Presenter preserves all the advanced features of PowerPoint, including animations, triggers and hyperlinks. The toolkit also provides professional features for e-Learning authoring, like the ability to build branching scenarios, adjust the structure of the course, control navigation and customize the player. Fully packed with all these professional features, your e-Learning courses now become mobile, so all your students can learn wherever its convenient for them. Control e-Learning effectiveness with mobile quizzes and surveys Are you tired of hand-checking all those paper quizzes? Or are you looking for new, effective and innovative ways of testing your students? Then iSpring Presenter is what you need! The new toolkit has been equipped with a built-in QuizMaker. It allows you to create mobile-ready quizzes with advanced opportunities: Inserted multimedia objects; Advanced drag-and-drop questions; Informational slides; Branching scenarios; Customizable feedback messages; Adjustable quiz settings. Interactive quizzes provide all you need to test students’ knowledge and thereby control the effectiveness of your e-Learning courses. You know what else can make your quizzes more engaging? Video questions! iSpring Presenter allows you to enrich quizzes and surveys with video and audio narrations. In addition, you can flexibly customize the look of your quizzes so that they blended well with the design of your course player. Record informative video and audio narrations Learning is much more interesting when a teacher is nearby. With iSpring’s video recording opportunities, you can actually be there for your students and help them view the slides and learn in the most effective way. Easily record video narrations for all your slides, or insert and synchronize pre-recorded video lectures. All the recordings will perfectly play on mobile devices. Now your students will be able to take the teacher with them wherever they go. Integrate courses with LMS’s Of course, you’re very concerned about the effectiveness of your e-Learning courses. With iSpring Presenter, it can be easily monitored via the LMS. The results and statistics of all created e-Learning courses, quizzes and surveys will be tracked by your LMS. Once iSpring’s course is uploaded to the LMS, it can be easily played on any mobile device, including iPad and iPhone. Did you like these features? Request a beta version right now and be among the first to test-drive the new iSpring Presenter!