Written by Chris Osborn   How can we minimize costs and keep required yearly content fresh? Today's Q&A Thursday offers suggestions to help keep your compliance training from becoming boring.     Stay Up-to-Date on the Most Current Business Training Trends BizLibrary offers 7,000+ training videos in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   10 Tips for Marketing Your Employee Training Program In this eBook we’ll discuss you'll learn 10 ways to improve the marketing of your online employee training program and boost employee engagement and participation. BizLibrary's Mobile Learning App meets the needs of today's digital learners. Employees no longer wait for training departments to push learning content to them. Employees are used to pulling information to themselves, when they need it, on their own terms and conditions, and on their own devices. Video Transcription Hi,Chris Osborn, VP of Marketing at BizLibrary with today's Q&A. Today's question comes from Julio, he's a safety and compliance manager at a manufacturing facility and he wants to know how can we minimize the cost and keep our employees engaged while conducting the same compliance training year after year. Well, let's start with an assumption that Julio makes in his question that I think might be an error. You don't HAVE to offer the exact same training year after year. You might need to train on the same content each year, but that isn't the same thing as offering the same training program each year. So let's start by finding multiple ways to offer your safety and compliance training. First, video programs. Find a variety of video programs, there are multiple companies that produce high quality safety and compliance training videos on the same or very similar topics. Find ways to access a library of content with choices for your employees. You can also switch up your classroom training. Flip the class! Offer the video before holding a classroom session and then discuss the content of the video during the class. You CAN be limited to delivering the same old compliance training, the same old ways if you want, or you can be a bit creative. Find a video library. And, BizLibrary has such a library with 7,000 videos just waiting for you to try for free. Flip your classroom training. Have the employees take the core content by video before coming to the class and again use the classroom time to discuss the training. And last, but not least, just change your core classroom content. Any of these methods will work, any of these methods will change it up, and Julio you don't have to offer the same training year after year if you adopt any one of those three methods.

by Kevin Siegel      Last week's poll about how eLearning developers work with the storage demands of video in eLearning garnered several responses. Here are the results: Which eLearning development tool do you use the most? Adobe Captivate Adobe Presenter Articulate Storyline Articulate Presenter TechSmith Camtasia Studio Other (please specify) While many developers use two or more of the tools listed above, the majority of respondents use Adobe Captivate the most (56%). Second was Camtasia Studio (24%) followed by Articulate Storyline (16%).When adding video to your project, which option are you using? Video stored on your computer or network Your corporate media server (or a server you created on your own) A media service Other (please specify) Most developers (54%) store the videos on their computer or server. Media service placed second (38%).   If you set up your own media server, tell us your story. Specifically, what hardware and software did you use? What did it cost to set up?Top comments about this question: "Previously attempted to do this with Adobe's Flash Media Server but it was too complicated and expensive. Did Windows Media Streaming as it came with Windows Server years ago. Generally due to cost, I have customer setup private Vimeo account and stream from there. We're getting a beefy streaming service setup (Kaltura).""We have a central server for our L&D team, run by operations.""IT set-up MediaMill for us... and we set-up YouTube channels."If you're using a media service, which one are you using? Top responses: Amazon  YouTube Kaltura Respondents were able to select any or all of the options above. Most selected the first two (creating or including videos feature themselves/talking head or video of industry-related tasks). Plenty of people also said that they use video of a demo already created in an eLearning authoring tool.

Send to Kindle If you truly want to develop learning, or any other type of content that can be viewed on multiple screens, including desktops and laptops, smartphones, tablets, as well as future devices, such as Google Glass, the only solid solution is by using Responsive Web Design principles. The real beauty of Responsive design is that it enables you to go from static content that is formatted using absolute dimensions (e.g. 1024 x 768) into content that is fluid, meaning the content will flow seamlessly from screen to screen regardless of the screen’s resolution. Unfortunately, most rapid eLearning tools today require us to use absolute dimensions when developing learning, this means the resulting learning will only look optimized (or at least decently optimized) on devices with that specific resolution. However for all other devices with different resolutions, the learners will have to experience the content via swiping left and right and up and down in order to see the rest of the course. A 1024 x 768 Adobe Captivate 6 course converted to HTML5 and viewed on an Apple iPhone This of course provides a bad user experience. Until rapid eLearning tools embrace modern approaches to learning design for this new multi-screen world we live in, we may need to get our hands dirty with HTML5, Javascript and CSS3 media queries, which are all technologies that make up the principles around Responsive Web Design. Having said that, this morning I came across this list of free online tools that can help us optimize our CSS files and I recommend you take a look at them. I have tested them all and my two favorites are CSS Beautifier and Clean CSS. I’d also like to recommend a tool called kaleidoscope, which allows you to spot the differences between two text files (e.g. css files), images and folders. Here are the tools in the article I found. For links to the tools listed, click the link to the original article below: These tools we are sharing today are free online tools that can parse, check, format, beautify, clean, validate, compress and optimize your CSS code for today’s web. Online Tools for CSS Optimization This is a brilliant resource for all web designers. Devilous Probably my favorite tool for optimizing large size CSS files. Devilous smartens your CSS code by removing unnecessary codes and making them tidy, clean and slick. This is probably the best CSS code compressor available on the internet right now. It also supports CSS 3.0 CSS Comb The tool claims to be the greatest tool for sorting out your CSS codes. And you know what… it’s hard to argue with that. This tool really does the job better than anyone else. It can parse your code, sort your code alphabetically and through other standards, checks, formats and optimizes your CSS code. Supports up to CSS4 (Yes, there is a CSS4). CSS Beautifier Almost the same as CSS Comb but CSS Beautifier does not sorts your code as powerfully as CSS Comb does. Sometimes web templates and themes come with difficult to read CSS files. You just copy the code and paste in this CSS tool and voila! CSS Lint CSS Lint is one of the truest CSS tools for code optimization. It can do loads of stuff. Details would take too much time, so just go to site and click the arrow button on the right side of Lint button. zBugs This is one of the simplest CSS tools. It compresses and minifies your CSS code and converts the file into Gzip format. This tool also supports JavaScript. CleanCSS A fairly simple tool. Doesn’t support CSS3. Nice resource for beginners but not that awesome for the gurus. ProCSSor This CSS tool does nearly everything you can ask for from a code optimizer. via 7 Best Yet Free Online Tools for CSS Optimization.

Adobe has announced a free update to its popular Adobe Captivate 8 software. The update fixes several bugs and includes some nice enhancements. To get the update, choose Help > Updates from within the Captivate program. Once the update is installed, your new Captivate version will be 8.0.1.242. Here's a partial list of what's new in the update: Responsive drag-and-drop interactions Google Maps enabled geo-location support Native app publisher Custom shapes and lines are now supported in responsive projects Streaming video support through embedded code in Web objects Success/Failure/Hint captions in quiz questions can now be replaced with smart shapes Swatches integration in color palette Symmetrical shapes The EXE publish option is back More information.

View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording.     Additional Resources: The Art of Coaching by Kevin Pallardy Is an Employee Coachable? 3 Questions a Manager Should Ask by Shannon Kluczny     Learn something new! BizLibrary provides 7,000+ training videos and eLearning courses in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   Developing the Coaching Skills of Your Managers and Leaders Coaching comes down to people and the processes needed to support our people and organization. Download this complimentary eBook to get started with developing the coachingskills of your managers today!

On May 21, 2009, I moderated an eLearning Tour in association with Learn Trends. It was designed to take you on a quick tour of different examples of what's happening out there. The tour guides and their topics:Judy Brown - Mobile Learning SolutionsBob Mosher - Performance Support Tools Karl Kapp - Games and Simulations Tony Karrer - Self-Paced and Other eLearning SolutionsBelow are the videos from the sessions:Mobile LearningPerformance SupportSimulations and GamesAsynchronous eLearningMobile LearningJudy Brown, Tour Guide For the mobile learning section of the tour, we will be talking about the opportunities and benefits in using devices our learners are already carrying for various types of learning. The topics / presenters will be:Overview/Introduction - a quick scan of the current and future environmentJudy Brown, Mobile Learning Strategic Advisor, mLearnopediaInnovative Podcasting - Introduction of research and an example of improved audio communicationsChristopher von Koschembahr, a pioneer in mobile learning previously with IBMMobile Lessons Learned - Overview of experiences in the first year of use of iPhones and iPods for all the learners at Abilene Christian UniversityWilliam Rankin, Associate Professor of English & Director of Mobile Learning Research: iPhoneGeorge Saltsman, Director of the Adams Center for Teaching & Learning and Director of Educational TechnologyPerformance SupportBob Mosher, Tour Guide In the Performance Support tour we will be looking at technologies and approaches which bring learning directly to the learner’s "moment of need". Performance Support offers a unique opportunity to go beyond learning and acquiring knowledge directly in the context of doing work. 4 case studies will be shared. The topics / presenters will be:Overview/Introduction - a overview of the PS learning landscape and some overall design principles which need to be considered Bob Mosher, Chief Learning and Strategy Evangelist, LearningGuide Solutions US Electron Performance Support integration - 2 examples of highly guided and integrated Performance Support environment for IT applications and the DoD. Dan Peay, Transcensus Performance support for Processed based learning - Two more examples of PS used for helping support Medical Devices and On-boarding. Bob Mosher, Learning Guide Simulations and Games Karl Kapp, Tour Guide In this part of the tour, we'll explore how organizations are using games and simulations to provide engaging, effective training to their employees. You will see how: Mini gamesGame EnginesMachine SimulationsSoft Skills Simulationare being leveraged to transfer knowledge within organizations.Speakers during this section will be:Adam Nelson who currently leads the learning group at Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life, designing and implementing next-generation adaptive learning environments in enterprises of all sizes. Prior to joining Linden Lab, Adam spent 10 years at Ninth House, a leading leadership and behavioral change company.Phil Sueper - Simulation Designer for The Performance Development Group. Over the past nine years, he's designed more than 200 performance simulations. He will present a series of simulations with very brief summaries of the unique approaches to learning included in eachSelf-Paced, Asynchronous eLearningTony Karrer, Tour GuideIn this part of the tour, we will quickly go through a series of demonstrations of different types of asynchronous, self-paced eLearning that comes directly from the submissions.The topics / presenters will be:Really Rapid eLearning - A rapid process, integrating SMEs to produce software overviews.Ben Duffy, eLearning Program Manager, Fairchild SemiconductorNarrative eLearning - Teaches about Pandemic Influenza Preparedness at Work and at Home through conversations at work and at home, and newscasts - incorporating audio and bandwidth constrained "video."Kim Koehler, Learning Center, Park Nicollet Health ServicesScenario eLearning - Introduces AmeriCorps VISTA to new members through an exploratory environment with interactive scenarios.Angela Nicholas, Instructional Designer, Northwest Regional Educational LaboratoryNon-linear, Clue/Puzzle eLearning - Introduces banking staff to a banking service and customer enrollment through a film noir setting where learners play a private detective search for clues.Jeffery Goldman, e-Learning Designer, Provident BankSocial eLearning - A reusable product that invites conference audiences into a conversation with keynote presenters before and after the event.Douglas Flather, Vice President, Product Development, Washington Speakers Bureau MultimediaMore on our tour guides:Karl KappKarl is a consultant, speaker, scholar, and expert on the convergence of learning, technology and business operations. His background teaching e-learning classes, knowledge of adult learning theory, and experience training CEOs and front line staff provides him with a unique perspective on organizational learning. In 2007, he voted as one of TrainingIndustry.com's 2007 Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals. Recently, he won the Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology. His experience with technology companies and high-tech initiatives provides him with insights into the future of technology. He shares those insights and perspectives through writing, consulting and coaching with clients in the field of learning and e-learning.He is the author of "Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning" and is working on a book about 3D Learning.Judy BrownJudy Brown is a Mobile Technology Analyst who has been involved in technology for learning for over 25 years and with mobile learning since 1996. She coordinates the mlearnopedia.com site. She moderates the Mobile Learning Content Community and is a fantastic speaker on all things mobile learning.Bob MosherBob has been an active and influential leader in the learning and training industry for over 23 years and is renowned worldwide for his pioneering role in e-learning and performance support. Bob joined LearningGuide from Microsoft, where he was Director of Learning Strategy and Evangelism. Before, Bob was the Executive Director of Education for Element K where he directed and influenced their learning model and products. He is an influential voice in the IT training industry, speaking at conferences and participating within industry associations such as CLO Magazine, CompTIA, ASTD, The E-learning Guild and The Masie Centre.Tony KarrerDr. Tony Karrer is CEO/CTO of TechEmpower, a software, web and eLearning development firm based in Los Angeles, and is considered one of the top technologists in e-Learning. He has twenty years’ experience as a CTO. Dr. Karrer taught Computer Science for eleven years. He has been the CTO for several start-ups, most notably eHarmony. His work in social media, e-Learning and Performance Support has won awards and has led him into engagements at many Fortune 500 companies including Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Fidelity Investments, Symbol Technologies and SHL Systemhouse. Dr. Karrer was valedictorian at Loyola Marymount University, attended the University of Southern California as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the nation, and received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science. He is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. eLearning Technology Browse eLearning Content

If you've spent any amount of time at all using Adobe Captivate, it's a good bet that you've used some of the more basic keyboard shortcuts (copy/paste, save, etc). But check out the image below for some keyboard shortcuts you might not have known existed. (Feel free to right-click the image and save it to your computer for future use.) Looking for Captivate training? Check out our online classes.

Written by Chris Osborn   Today's Q&A Thursday explores three key ideas behind improving your employees' training     Stay Up-to-Date on the Most Current Business Training Trends BizLibrary offers 7,000+ training videos in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   10 Tips for Marketing Your Employee Training Program In this eBook we’ll discuss you'll learn 10 ways to improve the marketing of your online employee training program and boost employee engagement and participation. BizLibrary's Mobile Learning App meets the needs of today's digital learners. Employees no longer wait for training departments to push learning content to them. Employees are used to pulling information to themselves, when they need it, on their own terms and conditions, and on their own devices. Video Transcription Hi, Chris Osborn, VP of Marketing with BizLibrary with today's Q&A. Today's question comes from Marcus, and it has to do with techniques for improving the effectiveness of training. Yes, we actually have three that we want to suggest, all of these are turning up in a lot of recent literature about how to improve the impact and effectiveness of a whole range of training, whether it is classroom or online. And the first is to make sure your training is in a narrative. We're wired to remember stories and if you think about your experiences, classroom experiences, school, personal experiences, think about how you relate them to others. It's almost always in a story, isn't it? It's a narrative. We're wired to remember that way. Great stories are memorable and it's very important to tie your training, your learning, your learning objectives into a narrative. Make the narrative relevant to the employees, to the employees you're training, the audience you're trying to reach and you're going to have a lot better chance to understand the training content and that they can then apply it to their work environment, particularly if the narrative is very reflective of the work environment that they're in. Second, visual representation of information is extremely important. We live in a very visual world, we tend to be very visual learners. It's stunning how many of us in the learning & development field forget that and we just put words, and bullet points, on pages and pages or on a flip chart or someplace else and expect employees to take in that information effectively. It simply doesn't work. Remember, a huge part of training and development has to do with the visual organization and visual presentation of information, so make sure to capture that. Think carefully about how to present information in visually interesting and visually effective ways. And then third, flipped classroom. It's an interesting concept, and it has to do with providing content ahead of time and then bringing people together to discuss the content that they've studied ahead of time. It's a great concept, you can google it and learn a lot more about it, but those are the three methods that we've seen that are front and center in the thought leadership today: content in a narrative, visual representation of information, and the flipped classroom.

My post on learning goals has some great feedback via comments and a couple of blog posts. The focus of the post is really about the design of informal / social learning experiences and my belief that they need to have context for what I call Directed Learners. Particularly, there still needs to be Learning Outcomes defined. But please don't read Learning Outcomes to mean Learning Objectives. They are distinct and while I'm not claiming to have a great definition here, I think you can get the flavor from this post. Business Outcomes and Learning Outcomes This relates to my recent post about Improved Learning or Business Benefits. However, the context of that post is more about defining the overall benefits / positioning. Still in my learning goals post I said: "Unlike formal learning, informal learning is generally not going to ensure that specific knowledge will be transferred. Instead, people will learn what they need in order to accomplish the ultimate objectives. We aren't sure what they will learn." and Jay Cross responds: In a business context, isn't learning enough to accomplish the objective sufficient? At a more fundamental level, the massive swing from the industrial age to the network era is accompanied by pervasive uncertainty. Twenty years ago, the business world seemed predictable; corporations wrote five-year plans. Today, it's a world of surprises. We're all tied to the unpredictable interplay of complex adaptive systems. It's tough to assemble a viable learning to-do list when you don't know what tomorrow will bring. Jay, I agree that it is extremely hard to define effective learning experiences in a chaotic world. It's even more challenging when you have to deal with Directed vs. Flow Learning Styles and with motivation and with questionable outcomes. That said, I don't think the answer is really (and I don't think Jay thinks this either) to ignore the challenges of working with Directed Learners. I actually think that informal learning experiences can be greatly improved by ensuring that you are dealing with learning outcomes or business outcomes. Concrete Learning Outcomes And to that end, great post by Michele Martin that responds to my learning goals post. She provides some context and then positions it in a question that I think is really great about specific learning experiences: So the issue becomes, how do you define learning goals for social, informal learning in a way that provides context and makes sense for more concrete directed goal learners? Michele has concerns that defining a learning outcome or business outcome or set of known learning objectives for the informal / social learning experience is a good start. In my experience, this may be true of a directed learner like Tony, but he seems to be an exception. The people in my work who are most uncomfortable with informal, social learning are those who are also uncomfortable with something as ill-defined as a "business outcome" for their learning goals. They want very specific, concrete, actionable learning objectives AND they want a step-by-step process for getting there. In fact, I find that these types of learners have no patience for informal learning. To them, it's not learning at all. It's too messy and ill-conceived (in their minds). Likely most of us can relate to this. Even if everyone in the room at the end of the session feels like they are better able to perform some task, but they all got there a different way, there will be some members of the audience who aren't sure if they saw the right stuff, missed something … it's just that uncomfortable feeling of not being sure if you really got it. Michele may be right that: I'm not sure that it's possible to provide enough of a structured goal orientation to informal learning to totally satisfy most directed goal learners. That's probably true - but I'll guess that people are likely somewhere along the spectrum and while the extreme ends of directed learners may not be happy with an outcome that achieves the purpose but has an uncomfortable path, I believe that you can greatly increase the comfort of directed learners with the right kinds of context setting. Michele pretty much lands right there: In designing informal learning activities, we may need to get better at helping directed and flow learning people forge a learning path for themselves to navigate the social learning space. But that's a good thing--because then we're also helping people develop the skills they need to learn from work itself. Well said! Social Learning Design Revisited What's also interesting about this is that Michele, Harold Jarche and I went through the whole design of the Work Literacy Ning learning event and had several discussions about how the nature of the social learning environment might feel uncomfortable to many of the participants. But until now, I didn't really have the words to describe the issue. Drilling down a bit on this, we did start out by collectively defining some high level goals. For example: The goals of the event are to: * Introduce you to new tools and methods for work and learning * Discuss implications of these tools for learning professionals *Prepare you to participate in DevLearn in new ways as an attendee or as a spectator. And then for a particular week such as the one on Social Networking, there would be a list of more specific goals: different topical areas to explore: **The Tools--LinkedIn, Facebook and Ning are the primary social networks being used by learning professionals. ** How people use these networks for personal professional development **How people use social networks to facilitate learning **Issues and concerns related to privacy, managing multiple networks, and the value of these networks in terms of the time commitments involved. But we knew that no one could possibly "explore" it all … so we also said: Also--DO NOT FEEL YOU HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING! (Yes, I just shouted that). We have given you many different ways to dip in and out of these topics and by no means are you expected to do everything. You don't even have to read every forum on social networking or do all the activitities related to any particular topic. We have a few hundred people here and we wanted to give people a variety of ways to explore different aspects of social networking. This module is not linear--it's meant to give you an introduction and some avenues into exploring and discussing the tools. As Harold Jarche has said, "there are no gold stars." This is for your learning, so feel free to pursue it in the ways that work best for you. Here is where we start to have a bit of a challenge because if I don't have to do everything and there's too much to explore, how do I know when I'm done? In looking back, a lot of our focus was in describing the process and the systems that we would use to allow discussion. And we focused on topics to explore. I think we could have spent a bit more time defining some specific learning outcomes or at least have made some parts have higher importance. For example, if the point of the experience is to help learning professionals understand implications of these tools for themselves, then we might make an assignment to: examine how these tools fit into your personal work and learning environment. Or the assignment could be to write a list of five suggestions that they can present to their manager or someone in the business. Or ??? Basically, I would work with Michele and Harold to define a business / learning outcome that is close to what you would really want to achieve for the business. Of course, the flow learning types might not like something to be mandatory or an assignment or have higher precedence or however you want to say it. They may have to put up with me trying to put some directed learning structure on top of their flow learning event. Having someone write a discussion item, blog post, or whatever that is the ultimate outcome that we are going for is really something that I would push for in hindsight. I have no idea what Michele, Harold and I would have finally done as an outcome of this discussion. But I'm glad to have the context to discuss it now. eLearning Technology Browse eLearning Content

Send to Kindle Just a quick post to share that I will be teaching a two-day Articulate Storyline class online for a training company called Amananet, Inc. on September 5th and 6th. I have been a big fan of Articulate Storyline even before the product was introduced to the market a year ago. The day the product launched I blogged a list of 7 reasons why I thought it was a game-changer for eLearning.  A year later and having worked on several consulting projects since then, I still strongly believe Storyline is the very best Rapid e-Learning development tool out there. These are all reasons why I’m very excited about this opportunity to teach Storyline. In addition to the course outline, which you can find on Amananet’s site, I will also go over best practices for developing learning for mobile devices based on Mobile Learning (mLearning) projects I have worked on. This course is intended for Storyline beginners and intermediate users, so if you are just getting started, I hope you will join me on August 5th. Please use this link to Register and I will see you there.