In online courses, learners will be able to navigate the course with the help of mouse. What if the learner wants to navigate with the help of a keyboard? Can we develop a course which allows him to do that? Yes, we can. Let us see how to create such a course in Articulate Storyline. If you want to allow your learner to navigate to the next or previous slide using left arrow and right arrow keys respectively, here are the steps you need to follow. Step 1: Create your eLearning course, as per the requirement. Step 2: Click the Properties icon on the bottom right corner of the slide. Step 3: Uncheck the Next and Previous checkmarks to remove the Previous and Next buttons for your eLearning course and click the OK button. Step 4: Now, click the View option in the menu bar and select the Slide Master option to open the master slide view. Step 5: In the master layout, add two triggers for navigation. Trigger 1: Jump to previous slide when the learner presses the left arrow on the keyboard. Trigger 2: Jump to Next slide when the learner presses the right arrow on the keyboard. Step 6: Publish the course and check the output. In this way, we can create other navigational buttons in the GUI (M- for menu (opens customized menu), X-exit course and others) of your eLearning course. Hope you find this post useful. Do share your views. Related PostsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?2 Ways to Restrict Navigation Through Menu in Articulate Storyline

The MERIT Program 2015 seeks to show through qualitative and quantitative measures that engaging technology in the hands of a well-trained teacher can improve student learning. Participants have the opportunity to learn to use and contribute to a variety of resources for collaboration, and are required to design projects not simply to provide dynamic learning experiences for their students, but also create open educational resources that will be of value to other teachers and students near and far. In helping to make learning and teaching more dynamic, MERIT is working to bring education out of the past and into the future that unfolds before us constantly. Who should apply MERIT Program 2015? Participants in MERIT range in age, years of teaching and experience with technology, but all accepted applicants have the potential to help their colleagues develop their understanding of and techniques with a variety of powerful technologies. The MERIT program 2015 is open to California teachers and educators (librarians, administrators) of a variety of disciplines, grade levels, and school types. International applicants are encouraged to apply, too! The program includes a special focus on math and science, where there is a significant need to help students develop confidence in and excitement for their future possibilities with these subjects. MERIT Program Goals The MERIT Program 2015 will: Model a 21st Century classroom environment that demonstrates a) critical thinking and problem solving, b) communication, c) collaboration, and d) creativity and innovation that teacher-participants can replicate in their classrooms. Integrate innovative technology tools and practices into the program learning environment that enhances teacher-participant engagement and learning. Guide development of MERIT Teachers’ technology-enriched, student‐centered learning projects designed to improve students’ learning outcomes. Present and model assessment strategies for educational technology projects, teaching practices, and learning outcomes. Develop MERIT Teachers’ leadership in peer coaching, mentoring, and training skills in school and district venues as well as conference presentations at the local, state, and national levels. MERIT Teacher Learning Outcomes MERIT Teachers will be able to: Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity Design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments Model innovative, digital-age work and learning in a global and digital society Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility Engage in professional growth and leadership with confidence MERIT Program 2015 will , take place at the Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College on July 6-17, 2015 This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Collaborative learning may play an important role in training employees or channel partners. Collaborative learning enables your people to obtain vital information which they may not be able to obtain through formal training programs. Collaborative learning can be provided using various tools. In this blog, I am going to talk about "Discussion Forums" in Moodle. In my coming blogs, I will try to cover tools which can be used for collaborative learning. Good news for Moodle users they need not go for paid or free 3rd party discussion forum applications as it is already available in the LMS. Many other LMSs do have this feature. The main advantage of using an in-built discussion forum is you can include the forum in the course curriculum easily. Whereas, to integrate external discussion forums, you may have to put in extra effort and spend money. Here is a list of features available, for collaborative learning, in the Moodle discussion forum plug-in. 1. Create roles and give permissions: It is possible to create any type of role by giving appropriate permissions to add new topics, view, subscribe, reply, edit and delete. Administrator Moderator Participants 2. Add discussion forums: Administrators and instructors can add new discussion topics. You may have two types of discussion forums. - one, open to all registered LMS users, where everyone can participate, and the other which is specific one is specific to the course which can be accessed by learners who are enrolled to that particular course. 3. Moderate discussions: As an administrator, you can set selected instructor as a moderator to a particular course discussion forum who will moderate and monitor all the discussions happening. 4. Track discussions: The moderator can know how many responses are received and who has responded. You can view all the responses in a nested format as shown in the image. 5. Respond: As a learner/participant, you can view the topics and respond to them. You can also respond to a specific reply from another user on the same topic. 6. Subscribe and receive notifications: Authorized users can subscribe to a discussion to receive e-mail notifications whenever an update takes place in the forum. If a user unsubscribes, then no email notifications will be received. You can force subscription, give a choice to subscribe or configure automatic subscription. 7. Attach resources: It has WYSIWYG text entry option to respond. Audio, videos, images, PowerPoint presentations, MS-Word documents and other resources can be attached. If required, file size limitations can also be configured. 8. Rate forums: Instructors can rate the discussion on a scale of 10. This helps them motivate learners to have informative discussions. All these features will help learners and instructors to learn and train through discussion forums. It is the instructor’s job to moderate discussion topics and motivate learners to keep the discussion active. Learners can ask specific question or share their real time experiences on a particular aspect, which may benefit other users in the same domain. You can give it a try to explore its advantages. Related PostsHow to Implement Chat Rooms into LMS for Collaborative Learning?3 Reasons Why Organizations Fail to Fully Utilize LMS FeaturesLMS Features for Effective Administration

The Top eLearning Trends For 2015 Gamification It’s been around a while, but it’s just warming up. Gamification makes learning motivating, engaging, and (dare I say it) fun. Gamification in eLearning follows exciting technologies and innovations within the gaming industry; think even more realistic learning experience potential using virtual and augmented reality. Expect to see more simulation, animations, and narrative based games. Corporate MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses)  It’s been foreseen that in the near future universities will award degrees with 100% content on MOOCs. Currently students learning via MOOCs are getting certificates that will soon translate into credit. A growth area to watch for is the rise of co-branded MOOCs between corporations and established academic universities, which will see students paying fees to study rather than accessing free courses. Personalized learning  Traditionally, content is "pushed" at learners; however, personalized learning puts the learners in control, allowing them to "pull" information as needed, creating their own learning path. Learners are also offered choices as to how they prefer to learn and can choose mediums that suit their learning style and pace. M-learning and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)  With mobile use growing, being desk bound is not necessary for accessing eLearning. Learners are opting to BYOD so they can access training anywhere, anytime. Small screen size means instructional designers need to accommodate appropriately chunking content. Augmented learning  Augmented or virtual reality experiences are a growth area in eLearning. Learners can be placed in a replica of their work space, or a modeled 3D environment, with content pop-ups and features superimposed. It’s the ultimate in taking the practical! APIs (Application Programming Interface)  SCORM and Tin Can are examples of APIs in eLearning; basically these programs have inbuilt instructions for applications to talk to each other, such as allowing content to flow easily between different LMS platforms. Tin Can takes it a step further, allowing user data collection both online and offline. APIs open up new opportunities in learner progress tracking. Cloud LMS  Cloud computing is now a major technology trend. In relation to eLearning, cloud based LMS services are gaining popularity and have the capacity to reduce operation costs. Flash HTML5 conversion  Two words: responsive design. Clients want the value of a single build that performs across multiple devices, since Flash is largely incompatible. HTML5 can play audio, video, 2D/3D graphics, and animation, all without a plug-in. In addition, HTML5 also gives hardware access, offline storage, and supports cloud-based applications. Wearable learning  Watch this space… er, literally. Smart watches could soon be considered another "BYOD". Obviously screen real estate is an issue, but the humble watch has applications for in-the-moment, on-the-job performance improvement such as alerting a worker when they are performing a task incorrectly or unsafely through motion-sensor technologies and offering personal coaching. Video in learning  You’re at home and you want to learn something fast, where do you go? My bet is: YouTube. People love to watch stuff. Video with audio and overlaid text can cater for many learning types and is becoming much more of a must have in eLearning.   This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Articulate Storyline’s default features enable eLearning developers to create an eLearning course in quick time. The Final Quiz is an important part of an online course and used to test the learner. The score of the learner will be displayed by default. Consider a scenario in which the learner fails to complete the quiz. He must have an option to re-take the quiz. The re-take option should be enabled only when the score of learner is less than the passing score. So, how to set these criteria in the course using Storyline? Well, you need to follow the below mentioned steps. Step 1: Create a quiz with some questions and assign marks for each. I have created with 5 questions as shown below. Step2: Import the quiz into a question bank by clicking the "Create Question Bank" option under Question Banks option in Story View. Step 3: Insert the default Result slide and add the question bank containing final quiz. Step 4: Click the Edit Result Slide button and add the Passing Score percent you want. Under the options tab, you can check Allow user retry quiz option and click the OK button. Step 5: Change the state of retry quiz button, hidden initially, as shown in screenshot below. Step 6: Add trigger for the retry quiz button to change state of retry button to normal when the timeline starts for Result slide when score percent value is less than passing percent value. Look at the below screenshot to understand better. Note: Results. ScorePercent variable will be created by default Step 7: Preview the quiz and check the output. It’s done. The re-take button will appear only when the learner fails to achieve the passing score. Hope you find this post useful. Do share your views. Related PostsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?Varying Scores Based on Number of Attempts: How to do it in Articulate Storyline

Many of us start our day early in the morning with a cup of hot coffee and reading our favorite newspaper. We go through all the sections in the newspaper and try to know what’s happening around the world. Suddenly, we may find an interesting article and start reading it. You find that many words in the article are spelt wrongly and the text and images overlap. How do we feel? We lose our interest in the article. Right? The same thing applies to eLearning courses as well. Your learners may lose the interest if they such errors in the course. Here is an infographic which shares three things to check to improve the quality of an eLearning course. Hope you find this post interesting. Do share your views. Related PostsImproving the Quality of Your E-learning Courses: 3 Basic Things to Check4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesPrototypes in E-learning - An Infographic

Custom eLearning Development Benefits For Your Organization No matter how many employees you have on the payroll or what your specific training needs may be, custom eLearning development offers a wide range of benefits. One of the most notable advantages of opting for custom training over pre-made eLearning courses is a measurable boost in employee performance. This is the primary reason why so many businesses are now building their online training courses from the ground-up. In this article, I’ll highlight 7 benefits of developing custom eLearning for your organization in order to maximize the effectiveness of your online training. Focuses on key skill sets and subject matter. Rather than using a pre-built online course that covers a wide range of skills and topics, you can develop custom eLearning that caters to the specific needs of your corporate learners. For example, if your customer service associates need to learn how to carry out basic POS transactions, you can create scenarios that feature your particular check-out system, and integrate company-specific procedures and processes. This gives your employees the chance to gather the information they need and master the tools they will be using on a daily basis. Gives employees access to information when and where they need it. With custom eLearning development, training no longer has to take place during set hours or in a specific location. Performance development can happen whenever and wherever the employees need it, even on-the-go. You can customize your online training resources to provide employees with reference guides, scenarios, tutorials and other multimedia elements that allow them to access information quickly and conveniently. For instance, if you need to give your mobile sales team a way to brush up on company policies or interactive manuals they can use to complete purchase orders, this is all possible if you develop custom eLearning. Ties into real world benefits and applications. To offer your corporate learners real value your online training course must definitely tie into real world situations. Create customized eLearning courses to teach them how to apply the knowledge they have learned when they leave the virtual classroom. Also emphasize the benefits they can expect to receive by actively participating. Custom eLearning courses give you the ability to check all of these boxes, so that your employees can immediately see why they should take the online course and how the knowledge will be useful to them on-the-job. They can also participate in custom tailored activities that pertain to work related tasks and processes, which enables them to fine tune their skills and expand their knowledge base. Personalization creates an all-important emotional connection. Developing custom eLearning courses allows organizations to integrate stories, real world examples and other elements that create an emotional connection with their corporate learners. Rather than reading through generic eLearning content or participating in scenarios that are not relevant for their specific learning needs, employees can feel immersed in the training process. They can feel connected to the subject matter and understand why it is important for them to absorb the information, which helps them to more effectively develop their skills and broaden their professional knowledge. Improves knowledge retention and information recall. Developing custom eLearning courses also leads to improved knowledge retention, thanks to the fact that corporate learners are more likely to remember emotionally-centered training experiences which they find relevant and relatable. Thus, they will be able to recall information while at work, and perform their job responsibilities to the best of their ability, given that they have committed the subject matter to their long term memory. In fact, organizations can make custom online training experiences even more memorable by creating eLearning courses for specific job skills or departments. Instead of asking every employee to participate in a "one size fits all" course, you can develop personalized eLearning courses that offer them key pieces of information they will need while performing their work duties. Brand integration sets expectations. Custom eLearning development can also be customized to include branding, which creates an even deeper connection with your corporate learners and makes them aware of the company’s expectations. In most cases, your employees are the "face" of the organization. They are the individuals who help your customers and clients on a daily basis and serve as representatives for your brand. Participating in online training courses that clearly convey your message and image gives your employees the ability to align their work behaviors with company expectations. For example, if you stress the importance of customer service throughout your custom eLearning course, your employees will know that excellent customer care is one of their top priorities. Cuts down on training time. Custom eLearning development provides you with the opportunity to create online training courses that can be completed in a fraction of the time, while still improving employee performance. This is due to the fact that employees no longer have to sit through eLearning courses that contain an abundance of unnecessary information, as it is often the case with pre-built online courses. Your eLearning content can be customized to include only what they need to know, based upon their particular learning needs and the desired results, as defined by the learning objectives of the eLearning course. This means they can get back to their other job responsibilities more quickly, without having to worry about lengthy online training courses setting them back. Custom eLearning development can offer your employees the information and specific skill sets they need to boost their performance and ensure that your organization is making the most of its online training. Want to know the true cost of custom eLearning development for your organization? Read the article Factors To Consider When Assessing the Cost of Custom eLearning Content Development to go over the factors that come into play when determining the overall cost of custom eLearning content. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Moodle is the most widely used open source learning management systems, according to the eLearning Guild. It is highly flexible and can be customized based on our needs. I got opportunities to attend brainstorming sessions with customers to identify their specific requirements to manage trainings on the LMS. One of the common requirements which is not available in Moodle is domains. They wanted to have multiple domains in the same LMS. Users or the administrator belonging to Domain-A should not be allowed to view/access the courses or users of Domain-B. There should be a chief administrator who should have access to all the users of or courses available in the LMS, irrespective of domains. Using our expertise in Moodle customization, we have come up with a feature which will meet all customer requirements. We have created a plugin which will create domains and sub-domains, and these can be integrated with respective courses and users. Based on the domain, courses and user access will be provided.We also created a global domain which will provide access to users and courses in all domains. We have recently setup this domain feature for one of our customers who conducts online exams and has many divisions across the world. The customer’s main requirement is to restrict a division from accessing other divisions’ exams and users because there are chances that divisions can assign wrong exams to users, and this could lead to confusion. They should assign the exams which they have created for their participants. This domain feature is ideal for them. We created multiple domains based on their divisions and gave appropriate permissions to manage the exams and users. One division cannot view users and exams of other divisions, and so, there is no chance of assigning the wrong assignment. This domain feature can be used in various ways. One of our customers used the same feature in a different way. They wanted to sell their courses to organizations for a certain period and provide admin access to manage training programs and provide administration support, themselves, within the organizations. They create courses customized to a particular organization and assign them to a specific domain to enable the organization manage the training. As there is a domain restriction, one organization cannot access the courses or users of other organizations. The domain for some generic courses which can be shared with all organizations is set as Global. As the chief administrator, our customer has full access to all the courses and users. It is easier to manage the courses and users for various organizations in this way than setting up multiple LMSs. If you are using a separate LMS for each customer, then you may consider this customized features to save time and effort. Hope you find this blog useful. Do share your views. Related PostsPossibilities in customizing open source LMS for organizationsCustomizing the Self-Enrollment Feature in LMSAdministrator Level Customizations Possible in Moodle - Part 1

The Usefulness Of A Learning Management System  Since technology is leveraged for learning purposes, students and teachers interact with each other via online forums, threaded discussions, and videoconferencing, as well as emails and chats. These tools serve several functions including course documentation, administration, and evaluation that allow both the teachers and students to maximize the use of a Learning Management System. Your company will benefit from the installation of an effective and efficient Learning Management System. Centralized, simplified and blended learning First, a Learning Management System provides for a centralized source for information and education. The development, training, and performance content can be offered anywhere, anytime to the target beneficiaries from the same source, thus allowing multiple users to access the learning tools at the same time. The organization can ensure consistency in the delivery of the materials from the formulation to the evaluation of the system. Second, a Learning Management System simplifies the learning process and procedures to make it more responsive to the client’s specific needs and wants. It is easy to use with new users figuring out the system easily, while old users will find new challenges as they progress through the system. It also accommodates multiple features necessary for the satisfactory to excellent delivery of the learning modules, including documenting, recording, and tracking. Its scalable platforms also mean that the learning modules can be adapted depending on present and future requirements. Third, a Learning Management System makes blended learning possible. Blended learning means having the opportunity to combine multiple forms of learning including eLearning, simulation-based learning, and mobile learning, even classroom-based learning. This is because a Learning Management System is a central repository for all the modules and materials. The bottom line: A Learning Management System significantly improves on the learning rates of employees, managers, and executives. The more reliable and relevant knowledge and skills these people acquire, the more productive and profitable the organization as a whole can be. Technology leverage for better learning Even in education, technology is increasingly becoming the preferred method for learning among students and teachers, for obvious reasons. Technology, after all, provides for tools and techniques that make for better cost efficiency and results effectiveness, even for client-responsive programs. A Learning Management System leverages technology for the mutual benefit of students and teachers as well as the educational institutions and client organizations. As well as managing the back-end work, the combination of a Learning Management System and technology means establishing a reputation for being a tech-savvy, learning-savvy organization, thus attracting better people. The benefits of technology in organizations   Geographically independent learning wherein employees have access to their learning accounts anywhere and anytime. This increases productivity and decreases downtime, both of which will eventually redound to the organization’s benefit. Social learning can be increased, as a learning system can be designed with social learning elements, such as Twitter and Facebook being used as platforms for communication. Blogs, videos, and links can also be added to the system, thus expanding the students’ resources and making collaborative learning possible. Engaged learning also increases, because the students have greater control and freedom over their lessons. This usually involves the opportunity to set their own pace (i.e., view, organize, and schedule their activities) while still complying with the deadlines. With technological advances Learning Management Systems will only become better as the years go by, thus students can learn more, too. Range of evaluation tools Furthermore, using a Learning Management System enhances work performance via the use of effective and efficient tracking and recording tools including apps. The progress of all the users can be monitored, recorded, and evaluated to determine that everything is on track or to resolve issues as soon as possible. The organization can then analyze the areas for improvement in a timely manner, ensuring that the students actually benefit from the system. The wide range of evaluation tools makes evaluation of the students before taking the course (i.e., screening), during the course (i.e., training), and after the course (i.e., performance) better. Add the easy-to-install upgrades to the system and a Learning Management System becomes a must for employers and their employees. Of course, the right choice in a Learning Management System matters in the enjoyment of these benefits. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

As an Instructional designer, you might want to provide lots of important information in your eLearning course in order to provide your learners with better learning. But, you can never ensure that your learners make the most out of training. Hence, interactivities are a great way to engage the learners and break the monotony. Here are a few reasons why it is important to include interactivities in your eLearning course. Interactivities: Engage the learner: As eLearning is self-paced, it is essential to actively involve learners in the learning process. Interactivities, to a great extent , help maintain the interest of the learners. Interactivities allow the learners to explore, think, make decisions and, thereby, participate actively in the learning process. Attract the learner’s attention: Including Interactivities helps grab the learner’s attention. They make learners to participate actively in the course by doing things. Interactivities such as hotspots and click-on-tabs are a great way for learners to practice what they have learned and also explore knowledge. Help the learner retain knowledge: Learners are more likely to remember things when they are allowed to interact with the content. As the quote says "Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I will remember; involve me and I will understand." This way, your learners can retain information for a longer period of time. Motivate the learner: Including interactivities such as animations, graphics, scenarios and simulations motivate learners and urge them to take the course with great zeal. They make the learners understand the core concept and thus reinforce learning. Create excitement: Interactivities in eLearning courses excite learners. Adding graphics, animations, scenarios and game-based assessments makes eLearning courses engaging and evokes the curiosity in learners. Including scenarios that resemble real job situations makes learners fully immersed in the course. Have you used any interactivities in your course? If so, do share your views on same. Related Posts5 Ways to Make E-learning Interesting - An InfographicHow Effective is it to Use Gaming Interactivities in E-learning?Extending the Boundaries of E-learning Interactivities