Joe is the training manager of a large consumer electronics manufacturer. Recently, he was entrusted with the responsibility of launching an online course on the company’s latest washing machine. It has all the attributes of a perfect eLearning course - relevant content, proper flow, right use of the media - it has it all. But, it was an utter failure - the learner response was very poor. How can you make sure that you do not have a similar experience? What does it take to market your online course effectively? Well, here are 6 very useful tips. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you promote your eLearning courses? We’d love to know. Related PostsCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An InfographicMaking E-learning Courses Mobile: 5 Aspects to Consider - An Infographic7 Tips To Create Effective Sales Training Courses For Gen Y Workforce - An Infographic

We still remember the rhymes we learned in school. We remember some movie dialogues and songs we watched a few years back. What made us remember these? On the other hand, there are some instances where we don’t remember some lessons we learned in our school. It’s natural that we forget some things. So, as eLearning designers, how can we create courses that learners remember well and recall easily at their workplace? In this post, we will look at a few tips to improve knowledge retention. Present digestible bites The human brain has the capability to hold a limited amount of information at a time. Learners tend to forget things when a lot of information is crammed onto a single screen. So, to enable faster reading and better comprehension, it’s important to split the content into small chunks or pieces. This helps recall information efficiently. Here is an example of the content before and after chunking. Use graphic organizers  The human brain loves visuals rather than the bulleted list. So, instead of displaying a bulleted list on the screen, use graphic organizers such as charts, diagrams, illustrations wherever possible. Make sense of the words, bring some kind of connectivity, and display the diagram on the screen. These graphic organizers help us remember the content easily. Get colorful Human beings are visual creatures. Choosing the "right" colors can actually affect the extent to which information is grasped and retained. They set the mood and attract the learner’s attention. But, remember that not all colors help in effective learning. This table gives you information about the effect of colors on viewers. Game it In eLearning, games are great tools to engage learners with the content and reinforce learning. They encourage learners to think deeper about what they learnt and apply the knowledge in practical situations. Games should be designed in a way that they test the learners on concepts they have learnt without having an official assessment. Example: In a course on motivation, the learners need to identify their motivators from a list. This recapped the learning and gave them the flexibility to select their preferences without getting worried about the correct and incorrect answers. To conclude, these are some of the tips to create eLearning courses that help learners remember more, retain more and forget less. Hope you find them useful. Related Posts3 Myths about Instructional Design - Busted10 Tips for Instructional DesignersAdding a Degree of Challenge in Online Courses

Adobe Captivate 8 Tutorial: Removing Popups from Your Recording in Adobe Captivate 8 This Adobe Captivate 8 tutorial presents how to get rid of the annoying notifications that pop up in the middle of your video demonstrations using Adobe Captivate 8. The post Adobe Captivate 8 Tutorial: Removing Popups from Your Recording in Adobe Captivate 8 appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

As instructional designers, learners are the center of our universe, and everything we create is of the learner, by the learner and for the learner. But, at times, we create courses that drive our learners insane! There are times when we unintentionally do more harm than good with the courses we create. Let’s have a look at four annoying eLearning design practices that drive learners insane! Remember, when you were a kid in school and you hated it when your teacher was repeating every little thing written on the board, boring wasn’t it? Well, the same happens when you narrate your course word-by-word. You’re practically repeating the same points that are available on the screen, and there is nothing new that your learner can grasp. You can avoid this is by having a right balance of text and audio for your eLearning course, and the "recommended ratio of on-screen text and audio narration is 70:30″. For the next annoying habit, let’s take a cue from advertisements. Have you ever seen a TV advertisement that runs beyond 60 seconds? Even if it did, I am very sure you changed the channel. Now, imagine you’re taking an eLearning course where you have an "endless" slide that simply goes on and on. You’re bored, and you decide to move on to the next slide. But wait! You can’t go to the next slide because you’re restricted. The logic behind restricting the learner is that he will not watch the slide if the navigation is free. However, on the contrary, your learner is more likely to learn from your course when he is in control of and not "imprisoned" in the slide. So, give your learners unrestricted navigation to blossom and learn. Have you ever come across a Q&A session that responds to your answer with only "Yes. You’re right or No. You’re wrong? We are inquisitive and want to know why something is right or wrong. Now, think how we end up killing our learners’ inquisitive thought process when we use quiz questions that provide no feedback! Merely telling the learner that he is right or wrong isn’t enough. What if your learner makes a lucky guess and wonders why the answer is right? The right or wrong answer won’t be enough to end his curiosity. Always remember to provide proper feedback for both the right and wrong responses for your quiz questions. Never miss a chance to reinforce a learning point. Our visual strategy is just as important as our instructional strategy. However, many a time, we forget this point and decorate our course like a Christmas tree! Graphics add life to the text and take your learning point a notch higher. For example, having a picture of a file just because your slide is talking about documenting records no way enhances your learning point. Remember that using graphics as decorative elements will only take your learner away from your learning point. Graphics should always be in tune with the on-screen text. Hope you find this blog interesting. What are the eLearning design practices that drive you insane? Please feel free to post a comment below. Related Posts4 Tips for Designing Training Material for Global AudienceFirst Do No Harm - A Basic Principle of Instructional Design: Part 14 E-learning Elements to Leave Your Learners Spellbound - An Infographic

Camtasia Studio 8 Tutorial: Stitching Essentials This Camtasia Studio 8 Tutorial covers the following topics: 0:00 - Intro 0:05 - New cut behavior 0:25 - Differences between split clips and stitched clips 0:40 - Animating split clips 1:05 - Animating stitched clips 1:35 - Unstitching 1:45 - Stitching manually 2:05 - Setting the auto-stitching options 2:20 - Stitching restrictions 2:40 - Wrap-up / Feedback The post Camtasia Studio 8 Tutorial: Stitching Essentials appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

When I started my career as an instructional designer, I was told to put myself in the shoes of a learner and think when creating storyboards, so that I can understand how a learner feels when he takes up the course. This strategy really works when you want to create learner-centric courses. However, at the end, we only care about what the learners have taken away from the course. In this post, I’ll share a few tips to create learner-centric courses. Involve the Learner Gone are the days when you only have to click the Next button and read the content. It is now time to involve learners and make them think. Including activities and scenarios that relate to the situations they face in their lives and allowing them to take decisions is a very good practice. These activities help improve their decision-making skills and also help retain information for a long time. Keep It Relevant When a learner takes up the course, he checks whether the course is useful to him or not. So, it is very essential to communicate the objectives of an online course clearly at the beginning of the course. This gives him a clear picture of what he would gain by the end of the course. Aligning all the topics covered, activities and assessments in the course with its learning objectives would keep a learner motivated to reach the goal of the course. Facilitate Reinforcement It is very difficult to remember too many things at a time. So, it is important to include assessments and activities after every topic to reinforce the learning. Feedback must be given clearly after every correct or incorrect selection of option. This helps the learner retain the information for a long time. Avoid Restrictions Last but not least, do not ever try to restrict the learner. Always allow him to freely navigate through the course. Adult learners get frustrated if they feel that they are being restricted. If a learner feels that he has good knowledge of a topic, he can be allowed to skip it. This can help him develop interest in the course. By following these tips, we can develop highly effective, learner-centric courses. Hope you find this blog useful. Do share your views on this post. Related Posts7 Tips to Design Better E-learning Courses - An Infographic3 Interesting Ways to Design Elearning Intro Pages - Infographic3 Tips to Instructional Designers for Effective E-learning - An Infographic

eLearning Courses Should Be More Immersive and Interactive Than Ever Before Instructional design teams need to leverage advances in learning technology to transport learners on a sensory voyage and make elearning courses more immersive and interactive than ever before. Comics Vs Textbooks In the battle of Comics Vs Textbooks, the comics always won. As a child, I always found my collection of comics far more interesting than my school text books. Thanks to DC and Marvel in no small measure, I could spend hours lost in fascinating stories of legendary superheroes in epic battles. These stories were always far more interesting than math text books filled with quadratic equations which refused to be solved! Ignoring the basics tenets of learning It was only much later, when I was exposed to the science of learning, that I began to understand how the human brain is better tuned to understand concepts that are explained pictorially and made interesting by weaving stories around them. Yet, through much of my career spanning 18 years with large corporates, I have been exposed to eLearning courses that ignore these very basic tenets of learning. As we grow older and busier we also suffer from an information overload which causes the attention spans of adult learners to diminish - drastically reducing their ability to process any information that is not of immediate interest or essence. Studies have shown that the average adult attention span is 8 secs, lower than that of a goldfish! Not very flattering for humans and definitely not a statistic that corporate training departments would like to hear. The bulk of eLearning courses being churned out by organizations today contain content that is staid, serious and plain boring. Amen. Training departments have the unenviable task of regimenting learning and churning out volumes of prescriptive eLearning courses for a generation of millennial learners who are already being bombarded by external stimuli like social media. But as Uncle Ben (Spiderman’s late uncle) aptly said "With great power comes great responsibility" Corporate training and development teams will need to respond to this challenge by using creativity in transforming eLearning courses and content. Rediscovering the basics No wonder then that we are rediscovering the basic fundamental principles of active learning. Scenario based learning, 3D simulations, game-based learning and video-based learning are attempting to put the joy back in learning by creating an immersive learning experience that is truly enjoyable. Advances in learning technology have empowered instructional designers to think out of the box and move beyond creating courses to creating new learning experiences. Further advances in learning technology promise to transport learners on a sensory voyage and make learning more interesting than ever before. It’s only when training managers script this transformation of content that we will begin to see legions of learners take to imbibing learning experiences that start to define them. After all as Batman said, "Its not who I am underneath. But what I do that defines me." This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Adobe Captivate 8 Tutorial: Location-aware Learning with Adobe Captivate 8 This Adobe Captivate 8 tutorial presents how to utilize the GPS capabilities to deliver timely, location-aware content such as assessments that require learners to be at a particular geo-location with Adobe Captivate 8. The post Adobe Captivate 8 Tutorial: Location-aware Learning with Adobe Captivate 8 appeared first on VivaeLearning: The Best Free Video Tutorials Online.

The most important factor that makes an eLearning course well received by the target audience is its visual appearance. Good visual design helps communicate the key concepts of the course effectively and engage the learner throughout the course. However, some common mistakes are made in the process of making the course appear visually rich. Here is an info-graphic which shares 6 common mistakes that instructional designers make while developing visually engaging eLearning courses. Hope you like this post. Do share your views. Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesWhat, Why and How of Instructional Design9 Common Mistakes Instructional Designers can Avoid

Why You Should Adapt Your Onboarding With Diversity It requires only moderate shifts in philosophy to start putting this diversity to good use. By respecting a wide variety of different learning styles, using cross-training to introduce each employee to the range of functions at your organization, and ensuring that workers have good relationships they can leverage in both work and play, you can build that dream team. There Is No Such Thing as a "Bad" Learning Style People have different learning styles, whether they stem from occupational, generational, or auditory versus visual differences. Although the history of the developed world has leaned heavily toward rote visual and auditory learning with emphases on regurgitation, the pedagogical world has increasingly realized the importance of playing to a wide variety of different learning styles. A 2008 study at Northern Arizona University concluded that appealing to a wide range of learning modalities effectively nullified the artificial differences in the course grade that using only one learning style caused by privileging one learning style over another. The take-home? Using a variety of different teaching practices in training or when introducing employees to their tasks can help to ensure that they learn information quickly and retain it better. Employee Cross-training Gives New Hires the "Big Picture" Employee cross-training aids companies in responding to a wide range of problems. Consider, for instance, the case of absenteeism. In addition to costing the U.S. economy $117 billion in wage replacement and $232 in medical and pharmacy bills in 2012, poor health also cost $227 billion in lost productivity. Much of this lost productivity cost is due to absenteeism or what’s known as "presenteeism," where the employee is present in body but not necessarily able to perform the tasks for which he or she was hired. Cross-training can help, enabling companies to make use of "pinch hitters" rather than simply writing off that role for the days or weeks the employee is gone. Not only does cross-training employees help to mitigate some of these staggering costs, it gives your workers a much more well-rounded idea of what actually goes on at your workplace. This benefits your organization in several ways, including: Helping employees truly understand what they can promise clients or customers Better respecting each other’s time Working together more efficiently within and across teams Enabling them to do smaller tasks themselves that formerly they might have had to ask someone from another department to do Encouraging Good Relations among Employees Puts Diversity to Work Onboarding should not just consist of training; it should include meeting the team and enjoying company outings even before they're hired, depending on the position. Why, you’re wondering? Isn’t this just a waste of company resources, especially if you don’t end up hiring that person? Not at all. Giving employees a sense of unity with their peers is critical to creating an engaging, productive and effective workplace. In fact, fostering that sense of unity by allowing all workers to take their breaks simultaneously can increase worker satisfaction by as much as 10 percent, and according to some case studies, can decrease a call center team’s average call handling time by 20 percent. This points to a widely known but little-heeded maxim: the team that plays together stays together. But perhaps a more important takeaway here is that encouraging your employees to get to know one another will make the best possible use of their diversity in learning style, job function, preference and personal background. When employees know and respect one another, they are able to make much better use of what others bring to the table. Onboarding employees isn’t always the easiest process, but doing it right can pay massive dividends in terms of organizational performance, productivity and employee satisfaction. Next time you make a round of hires or bring on even one new employee, remember to pay homage to their individual learning styles, to cross-train for "big picture" benefits, and to encourage unity. Doing so will result in the happy, efficient workforce you’ve always dreamed of. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.