Learning Technologies Fundamentals: Part 1  Think of how much of your life has been spent learning? Daily learning comes from a variety of sources including coworkers, family, and friends. In schools, learning is much more structured consisting of books, whiteboards (blackboards), teachers, and class schedules. To ensure that learning material is retained by students, the teacher uses a combination of individual exercises, group exercises, and quizzes. Creating this learning material was time consuming and tedious. However, the benefit has always been scalability. Once learning material is created, it can be used over and over again. Not just for one school - lots of schools throughout the country. Enter digital software and computer hardware technology. Books no longer need to be typeset, learning material can be instantly updated in the cloud, and 35mm slides are replaced with PowerPoints. The restriction of mandated scheduled learning has been displaced by curriculum that can be delivered anytime, anywhere. How we learn in the workplace is undergoing a massive transformation. And it all starts in the electronic classroom. The Elements Of Classroom Learning There are typically three stages involved with the life cycle of live classroom training from conception to class presentation. Instructional Design Production Delivery Function Create the learning material. Create the learning material for the course. Schedule and hold training with students in a classroom setting. Role Instructional Designer. Production manager. Instructor. Participants Subject Matter Experts and compliance reviewers. Production staff, suppliers, and vendors. Students, venue staff, registration managers. Output Slides and associated documents, code, or other artifacts are created. Produce final courseware material and prepare for printing. Scheduled class of the course in a classroom setting. Each student receives course material (like handouts of the slides, exercise task descriptions, and so on). Slides are projected onto a screen. Sample tools and technology Microsoft Office apps (PowerPoint and Word) to produce initial storyboards and courseware material. [1] Adobe, Microsoft, and Autodesk tools can be used to finalize professional graphics and layout. Everything to be printed can be exported to PDF format using Adobe Acrobat. PowerPoint, Inateck wireless presenter (WP1002), Casio Green Slim Line Projector (XJ series) equipment. Online student registration logistics are provided by vendors like cvent and RegOnline. Schedule Takes some period of time. Usually takes less time than Instructional Design stage. Set class times, highly structured. My company, Leading Software Maniacs, creates and presents innovative live workshops for software developers and managers. Workshops are usually presented as a set of slides that are accompanied with printed handouts for students during a class. Highlights of live training include: Classes take place at a set time and location. Interaction is encouraged between instructor and students. Table arrangement usually accommodates 4-6 attendees per table (round tables work best). Food and beverage service should be provided. Marketing and promotion for live workshops needs the help of local professional organizations hosting the event (PMI® comes to mind). Armed with a trusty laptop and a lightweight projector, there are literally hundreds of agile consultants presenting agile workshops hosted by PMI local chapters throughout the world. Inexpensive software tools and hardware devices gives new meaning to DIY. Now, most anyone can create world-class learning material. There’s considerable effort in handling the logistics: Venue selection, registration, and attendee fee collection. Working with vendors, partners, and attendees takes considerable personal interaction. Even with online software tools. There can be different folks responsible for each of the three phases, however for most of us, the creator of the course is usually the person producing and presenting the material. Learning Technologies: Enter eLearning  As many businesses have benefited from massive automation, learning is going through similar transformations. Educational technology, or eLearning, is possible due to personal computers and the internet. Software apps provide integrated solutions that enhance how to connect learning with computing devices. This software-driven approach allows self-direction, mobility, and even collaboration and evaluation. Originally known as computer-based instruction (CBI), eLearning offers key dramatic benefits. Live classroom eLearning Creation of presentation material Use PowerPoint to create slideshow. Use PowerPoint to create slideshow. Use screen recording software/devices to produce a video for viewing. Storyboard outline and presentation flow Optional. Mandatory. [1] Marketing and promotion Local for the event. Social media. Class setting Classroom or conference room. Work desk, coffee shop, or home. Class schedule Must be scheduled. Can be scheduled online or self-directed. Expenses Travel, venue, and registration. Registration only. Handouts Printed. View in browser, downloadable. Student/Teacher collaboration Yes. Limited, perhaps through chat room or forums. Computing device Rarely required. Desktop, laptop, and mobile (tablet). There must be great opportunity to supply technology for eLearning. According to Capterra, there are at least 500 Learning Management Systems providers in the market. [2] Learning technologies can provide a mechanism to evaluate how well students are learning in addition to offering more guidance if they fall behind. Even the use of games has become an accepted way to motivate and aid in the retention of information learned. I've posted a quick survey on how you like to learn. The survey is anonymous and will take no longer than a couple of minutes to complete. An analysis of survey results will be included in part 2 of "Fundamentals of Learning Systems". References:  Whitaker, Ken. "Storyboarding Is A Total Waste Of Time." eLearning Industry. October 25, 2015. Capterra. "Top LMS Software." Capterra. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

10 Awesome Online Research Tools  Online learning has opened up the opportunity for many people to educate themselves, learn new skills, and earn college degrees even if they are not able to attend classes in a traditional sense of the word. Some just don’t have the time/money to move or commute to another city, or they work full time and have families, which means eLearning is their only option. As great as online learning is, it has several drawbacks. Obviously, it requires you to be online most of the time, which is fine, if you are doing research, writing, taking online tests, or attending your virtual classes. But being online also makes you more prone to procrastination and distractions. There is also the issue of keeping all those gigabytes of research data organized and having hardware that’s powerful enough to enable real-time communication. These are just some of the issues eLearners face. Fortunately, there is something you can do to make your eLearning experience a lot more efficient and stimulating, especially the research part. We have prepared a list of 10 online research tools every online learner should master. Todoist. Research is a time-intensive activity, which means you will need a tool to organize both your professional and personal life. We advise you to give Todoist a shot. Todoist enables you to manage all of your projects and access them from any platform you own, including your desktop computer, laptop, or portable devices. You can share your tasks and collaborate with other people. Another clever feature is "karma" points, which are given to users if they are successful in assigning tasks to projects. EndNote. EndNote is a multi-functional research tool which helps you search for information in online databases and full texts based on abstracts, as well as manage and auto-complete all of your references. Like Todoist, EndNote also enables you to share your research data with your collaborators. If you prefer to work alone, you can do that too by saving, managing and tagging your research results for better access. Other features include bibliography maker that is capable of creating citations in over 6,000 styles, as well as automatic journal suggestion. EduGeeksClub. Every once in a while, you are going to come across an insurmountable obstacle while doing your research. Instead of giving up, you can turn to EduGeeksClub for professional research help. Get in touch with professional writers and researchers and learn all the ins and outs of thorough research. Also, you can commission a paper from them which you can then use as a resource for your essay, paper, or dissertation. They also provide editing and proofreading services. Zotero. Another essential tool all online learners should make use of is Zotero. Zotero integrates itself seamlessly into your browser and uses its clever ability to automatically recognize content for you. After that, all it takes for you to save it to your personal, fully searchable library, which is another feature in Zotero, in a single click. It supports audio and video files, PDF documents, as well as most image formats. RefWorks. RefWorks is a browser-based tool which has the ability to help learners find the right research data, organize it, store it, and easily share it with their colleagues and collaborators. All of that research information and written work needs to be supported by proper citations, and RefWorks generates those for you automatically, as well as bibliographies in every style. If you are not sure how to make use of its full potential, there are plenty of tutorials on how to do it, right there on the website. DataElixir. One of the best ways to keep up to date with all the latest news, developments and data in science is to find a website which curates all of those on a weekly basis. We recommend Data Elixir. Whether you’re an eLearner, a scientist, or a researcher, you benefit a lot for its weekly collection of all the best data resources and news, and you don’t even have to put in any effort whatsoever. You just have to subscribe to their free weekly newsletter and that’s it. Paperpile. Paperfile is a reference management software which, similar to Zotero, works as an extension for Google Chrome browser, making it accessible for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux users. We recommend that you use it to find and import data from platforms like Google Scholar, PubMed, or arXiv. You can easily export all the PDF documents and data to Google Drive, which means you’ll have the opportunity for collaborative editing of your papers. The collaboration doesn’t end there, because you can send data back and forth between Paperpile and Zotero, for example, as well as Mendeley. DeepDyve. High-quality research papers and scholarly journals can often set you back a pretty penny, so it’s important for you to know exactly what you’re getting for the money you’ve paid. The only trouble is, you are often allowed to look at an abstract for free, and decide if you want to buy the full-text paper, and then realize it’s of no use to you. DeepDyve enables you to access the full-text articles for a limited period of time, enough for you to figure out if the paper is exactly what you are looking for. ContentMine. ContentMine is an online resource which aims to bring over 100,000,000 scientific facts close to the people, by converting the collective knowledge of the world that is present in scientific literature into content which can be read on your computes. All of its tools, features, and services are free and open access. They often cite Wikipedia and similar open projects as a source of their inspiration. Plagiarism Checker. In order to rid your work of duplicate content, run it through Plagiarism Checker, which will scan and determine if there is any duplicate content present. If there is, you either need to provide better citations, or rewrite your work so that it’s more unique. These 10 awesome online research tools will change the way you do research for good, and for the better, and your eLearning process will be made much more streamlined and efficient. In the end, that’s the thing that matters the most. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

What Happens In DevLearn Gets Blogged About  Late in September and early in October I made my way to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas NV along with 2800 other learning, eLearning, and Training and Development enthusiasts for the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn 2015. The buzz is this was the biggest DevLearn ever - I would not be surprised if that were true. The event started, on Day 0 if you will, with the pre-conference workshops. Apart from a bunch of vendor and tool specific workshops there were two that caught my eye for their potential informational content: Getting Started with Mobile Learning: Determining the Strategic Fit by Brenda Enders, Enders Consulting Agile Project Management for eLearning by Megan Torrance of Torrance Learning The mobile learning workshop looked interesting, but a careful look at the agenda gave me the sense that this was targeted at those getting started with mLearning - a stage we have comfortably crossed at eNyota. I, thus, chose to focus on the Agile Project Management workshop and I’m glad I did. We have already adopted Agile in many of our software development projects, but given the volume of eLearning and mLearning projects we handle I had a lot of questions on how an Agile approach would fit in there. I got a wealth of information - so much so that I feel a separate article on the topic is warranted. The theme of the conference this year was "Innovation in the making" - a rather neat way to showcase the various innovative approaches organizations were taking to eLearning and also to make the point that this coming together of so many curious minds could lead to some innovative thinking too. The keynotes were picked to represent the theme. My favorite talk (act?) was the Opening Keynote from David Pogue. Pogue is the Host, NOVA ScienceNow and Founder & Columnist, Yahoo! Tech. He spoke about "Learning Disrupted: The Unrecognizable New World of Tech and Culture". In a word the keynote was "Memorable". I think it set the perfect tone for DevLearn. The key emphasis was how the lives and actions of people of all ages, and culture were being impacted by technology and extending that impact into learning. He revealed honestly unimaginable apps and technology that are already being used today around the world: Hapifork, a smart fork which gives you a reminder to eat slowly by tracking the movement of your hand to your mouth. Wearable devices for health data tracking from a slew of vendors including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and contact lenses with chips inside them to gather data about your blood sugar. Research Kit, an open source framework from Apple whereby health and medical data from so many wearable devices can be combined to give trends across the population. A privacy nightmare, but an awesome example of how big data can help change the face of personal and community-level healthcare. In an amazing example, the impact of stress on asthma was shown by looking at data from patients in New York/New Jersey! The direct linkages to learning were few, but the overall message was loud and clear - mobile, IoT, Big Data, and other technologies are changing rapidly and are invading every sphere of our life. The world of eLearning cannot be immune to this disruption - to be successful we will have to embrace this change. David’s sense of humor had the audience in splits for most of the keynote that ended with him singing at the piano! It was quite a keynote and one I will not forget in a hurry. This keynote will be a tough one to top for the eLearning Guild. I also liked the other keynote on "Curiosity, Discovery & Learning" by one-half of the MythBusters team, Adam Savage. Adam is quite the showman, but perhaps we were all drained by the first keynote to get quite so completely hooked! I attended a few other sessions of which the most interesting were: Using mobile and xAPI to make on the job learning workable. The DevLearn Hyperdrive Showcase, where the top 3 results from previous days demos were showcased. Showcase of how video could be used easily to train distributed workers. Performance Support case studies. There was quite a lot of talk about xAPI - support seems to be growing and it’s worth following closely. Another theme I heard time and again was that the mobile device is going to be a gateway to link all the various groups of learning related technologies. While we have been satisfied with running our eLearning courses on tablets for a while now, clearly this is not going to be sufficient. The mobile devices and true mobility has the potential to make our learning so much more effective and to unshackle its delivery, consumption, and traceability. There’s another article right there - the mobile learning lessons from DevLearn! Then there is the Cloud - a clear lesson from DevLearn is that the days of the large Learning Management Systems secured behind the corporate firewalls are slowly but surely coming to an end. Learning is jumping the firewall and getting delivered anytime and anywhere leveraging the public and private cloud. This may also herald the eventual EOL of many of the ways of learning we have held dear for so long. On a more personal level, I was happy to see the rate at which new products and systems are getting launched. eNyota has its own skin in this game with our Learning Management System coming out early in 2016. Clearly there is competition out there but there is a play for those willing to adapt fast to this new mobile-first world. As I leave the bright and flashy lights of Vegas behind I think the future is bright too. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

OEB 2015 "Accelerating the Shift" Attended by 2,300+ participants from 100 countries, OEB has gained a reputation over the past two decades for its unique, cross-sector focus and truly global reach, fostering exchange between the corporate, education and public service sectors. Each year, OEB pushes boundaries, challenges preconceptions and catalyses new ideas - through innovations in the exhibition, interventions from participants and new forms of dialogue. At OEB, always expect the unexpected. OEB 2015 Keynote Speakers Keynote Speakers at OEB 2015 include Miles Berry is principal lecturer in Computing Education at the University of Roehampton. Prior to joining Roehampton, he spent 18 years in four schools, much of the time as an ICT coordinator and most recently as a head teacher. His research interests include the pedagogies of computer science education and informal learning. He is a former chair of Naace, the UK ICT subject association, and continues to serve on its board of management and is a member the management board of Computing At School and the UK Forum for Computing Education. He is a fellow of the BCS, RSA and HEA. Over the years he has contributed to a number of computing related projects including: CAS's computer science curriculum, the national curriculum computing programmes of study, the CAS / Naace guide to the computing curriculum for primary teachers, training of CAS Master Teachers, the BETT and ERA Award winning Rising Stars Switched on Computing, Barefoot Computing, Code Club Pro's training materials, QuickStart Computing and resources for the BBC and Microsoft. He gives regular keynotes and CPD workshops on computing and education technology in the UK and abroad and has worked on a number of international consultancy projects involving curriculum development and CPD. Cornelia Daheim is the founder and director of Future Impacts Consulting, a foresight research and consulting company. Ms Daheim has experience in foresight projects in Europe, the US and Asia, and has spoken on foresight and future trends around the world. In 2003, she founded the German Node of the Millennium Project, which is the world’s largest continuous foresight NGO working towards future global change, and has since served as its head. Furthermore, she is a member of the scientific committee of the EU Commissions’ board for the "Futures-Oriented Technology Analysis Conference", a member of the board of the academic journal "World Futures Review", member of the jury of the "Janssen Zukunftspreis" and serves on the Association of Professional Futurists’ (APF) Professionalization Expert Task Force. Additionally, she is Vice President at the Foresight Europe Network, which aims to advance foresight in Europe. In the last decades, she has led projects on the future of work for public and private sector clients, e,.g. the study „Future of Jobs and Skills" for the UK Commission of Employment and Skills - called „the most comprehensive study of its kind" by Tobey Peyton Jones, head of Siemens HR. Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Professor; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. His two latest books are IN REAL LIFE, a young adult graphic novel created with Jen Wang (2014); and INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE, a business book about creativity in the Internet age (2014). He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, and serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the Clarion Foundation, the Metabrainz Foundation and The Glenn Gould Foundation. Ian Goldin is Professor of Globalisation and Development and Director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. Ian Goldin was Vice President of the World Bank (2003-2006) and prior to that the Bank's Director of Development Policy (2001-2003). From 1996 to 2001 he was Chief Executive and Managing Director of the Development Bank of Southern Africa and served as an advisor to President Nelson Mandela. Previously, Goldin was Principal Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, and Program Director at the OECD Development Centre in Paris, where he directed the Programs on Trade, Environment and Sustainable Development. He has a BA (Hons) and a BSc from the University of Cape Town, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and an MA and Doctorate from the University of Oxford. Goldin has received wide recognition for his contributions to development and research, including having been knighted by the French Government and nominated Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He has published over 50 articles and 19 books, his two most recent books are The Butterfly Defect: How globalization creates systemic risks, and what to do about it (Princeton University Press, 2014) and an edited volume Is the planet full?  (Oxford University Press, 2014). Hilary Leevers joined the Wellcome Trust in September 2011 as Head of Education and Learning. She has a long-standing interest in education and learning, reflected in her research, policy experience and involvement in local schools. After studying natural sciences at the University of Cambridge, Hilary stayed on as a research assistant investigating children's reasoning and learning strategies. She continued these studies for a DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford before taking a postdoctoral and then assistant professor position at the Centre for Molecular and Behavioural Neuroscience at Rutgers University. After returning to the UK, she joined the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) as Assistant Director and worked on a breadth of science policy issues. The Wellcome Trust has a long-standing interest in science education and identified four goals to achieve its mission of making inspiring, high-quality science education available to all young people. These are: to take a leading role in stimulating debate and influencing action on key issues; to build on current investments and embed continuing professional development at the heart of teaching careers in science; to become a trusted provider of contemporary resources in science education; and to conduct research on specific priority areas to generate a robust evidence base to inform education policy. Anka Mulder studied History at the University of Groningen, where she later lectured in International Relations. She worked in Brussels, Vienna and The Hague and became Director of Education at TU Delft in 2004. In 2008 she was a member, from 2011 to 2013 president of the board of the international OpenCourseWare Consortium. The Consortium is the largest international organisation in the field of free online provision of education in the form of complete courses. From 2011 to 2013 she combined the post of director with that of Secretary General of the university. Since April 2013, she has been Vice-President at TU Delft responsible for Education and Operations.  Furthermore she is a member of the edX University Advisory Board, a global network of universities including Harvard, MIT and Berkeley, that produce Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and promote innovation in education worldwide. She is member of the Supervisory Board of the Hotel School The Hague and of the Comité d’orientation stratégique of the University of Sorbonne. David Price, OBE, is a learning futurist and co-founder of We Do Things Differently, a culture change company.  He is a Senior Associate at the Innovation Unit, in London. His recent book, 'OPEN: How We'll Work, Live and Learn In The Future' has been an Amazon best-seller since its publication. For the past 10 years, David has led numerous international education projects, helping schools gear themselves up to meet the challenges of the 21st century. In 2009 he was awarded the O.B.E. By Her Majesty the Queen. He writes, talks and advises on some of the biggest challenges facing business, education and society: solving the problems of employee, student and civic disengagement; maximising our potential to be creative, innovative and fulfilled citizens, and understanding the global shift towards open organisations, and systems of learning. Sir Ken Robinson has written that 'from every perspective OPEN will open your mind to some of the real implications of digital technologies for how we live and learn in the 21st century'.   OEB 2015 conference (formerly known an ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN) will be held at the Hotel InterContinental Berlin on December 2-4, 2015. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Top 5 Options For Entrepreneurship And eLearning  Entrepreneurship is experiencing constant evolution, which is making it tougher; however, on the other hand, it is also making it quite an exciting career path. Impressive job description, limitless boundaries, and improving innovations in technology have made all types of businesses fast growing. Though unpredictable circumstances in professions might seem to be unfavorable, they can get you unexpected rewards as well. This is the most important reason why we encourage entrepreneurs to keep themselves fully up to date with all types of changes taking in their industry. Similar to every important element of entrepreneurship, education should also be taken as an effective tool that leads you towards success. Most of the newbies don’t have time to get further education and even if they do, they don’t have extra money to spend on it. However, they can go for eLearning options which should be less time consuming and cost effective as well. The good news is that there is a good number of eLearning programs available on which you can invest your money as a young entrepreneur; but you should always choose the best possible option as per the advice of experts. Here are the 5 top options for entrepreneurship and eLearning: Building Startups Easily And Quickly. Many experts suggest that the young people should go for the How to Build a Startup online course which is available on Udacity. Through this program you can learn how you can effectively learn the basic principles of startup building and customer discovery process. There are lots of important aspects of this program and you should try to finish it to the end. Some of the lessons that you will be learning in this course are: Corporation history. Product development. Customer development. Business models. Revenue streams. Major resources. Common mistakes. Market types. Market prices. Web and physical distribution. Human Resources. Others. Online Sales Courses For Entrepreneurs. You might want to work with sponsorships, raise VC, advertise, or direct sales, but you must keep in mind that if you don’t have the ability to read your potential customers’ mindset and don’t understand how to take the advantage of different situations, you may not be able to turn your leads into actual sales. You can easily find hundreds of courses explaining the entire sales process, but you must choose the one that encourages you to take practical steps; most of such programs will be limited to the theory of persuasion and sales. One of the most popular programs is called Entrepreneurial Sales. It is an especially designed course which outlines tactical and practical factors of selling of technical products to a huge number of potential customers. In this course, you can learn how to: Organize a sales force. Create a compensation system. Assign specific territories. Dealing with disputes and conflicts. Dealing with customers. Building good relationships. Others. Online Statistics Classes At Stanford. If you have taken statistics classes in college, you might have had just the introduction of the actual topic that does not give you clear things about it. Remember, if you feel comfortable with the numbers and get clear directions from them, it becomes much easier for you to take effective decisions to benefit your business. Having online classes covering detailed statistics is always a perfect choice for entrepreneurs. Stanford University offers statistics courses, certificates and degrees by the help of 1clickdissertation. Some of the popular statistic courses are: Introduction to statistical learning. Algorithmic trading and quantitative strategies. Data-driven financial and risk econometrics. Data mining and analysis. Financial models and statistical methods in risk management. Theory of investment portfolios and derivative securities. Modern applied statistics: Data mining. Others. General Assembly - Master New Skills. If you have started an office, you can encourage your entire team to take General Assembly eLearning classes. Everyone in your team, from designers to the developers and strategists to the writers and even accountants, can also take the advantage of these classes which can provide you enough learning material about public speaking, content creation, digital marketing, startups, web designs, data analysis, etc. Some of the upcoming classes and events are: Intro to UX design. Data analysis circuit. Programming for non programmers. Intro to product management. HTML, CSS, and web design circuit. HTML and CSS crash course. From dotcom to dotgov: The Lisa Gelobter story. Free Conference Videos And Courses. If you have just entered into the field of entrepreneurship, you might love to take conferences that often charge hundreds of dollars, but if you have started with a limited budget, this will definitely put an extra burden over your expenses. However, if you want to save some dollars, there is a way to do so. Most of the conference organizers regularly post informative videos on their websites after conferences and if you can’t afford to attend, you can still watch those videos. Check Udemy and Skillshare which are considered to be two brilliant eLearning options for entrepreneurs. You should also know that there are many other free programs available for newbie entrepreneurs who are interested in entrepreneurship and eLearning. You just need to look for them on different platforms; this requires some research, but eventually you will be able to find some great free online resources to help you keep yourself up to date with the latest entrepreneurship trends. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

3 Ways To Improve Your Content Experience With Typography  Trying to get engagement in your eLearning courses is a difficult task at the best of times. Those engaging with your content have developed more sophisticated attitudes towards what makes for a good Learning Experience. The proliferation of high quality content sites across the web, and the increasing ease of access to free or almost free content editing and publishing tools, means that it's not enough to simply create an eLearning course and assume that it will be well received. We need to be aware of the overall content experience that we present. An important aspect of the overall experience is the Typography that we use. Usability.gov, a leading resource for user experience (UX) best practices and guidelines within the US government and private sectors, defines typography as referring: To which fonts are chosen, their size, alignment, color, and spacing. Wikipedia defines it as: The art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed. This article looks at just 3 of the fundamental typographic factors you should consider when creating your eLearning Content. The text used for this article came from the Marco Polo page on Wikipedia. MS Word  was used to illustrate the typographic changes made. The Content Editor hosted within the TopClass LMS from WBT Systems was used to create the resulting eLearning content. N.B. Any eLearning Content Editor supporting the content formatting detailed in this article can be used. Based on the article 3 Typography Tips For A More Comfortable Read by Luke Jones. We'll start with simple unformatted text pasted into a MS Word document to highlight the impact that applying our typographical factors has. Figure 1. Unformatted Text In MS Word 1. Use A Typographic Hierarchy To Structure Your Page. The typographic hierarchy is the system for organizing type that establishes an order of importance within the data, allowing the reader to easily find what they are looking for, and navigate the content. It helps guide the reader’s eye to where a section begins and ends, whilst enabling the user to isolate certain information based on the consistent use of style throughout a body of text. Figure 2. Typographic Hierarchy All font sizes should be derived from the body text. The following steps can be used to define your typographic hierarchy: Body text.  Text should be comfortable to read. For this example, it is set to 14px. Primary heading. 180-200% of the body text, so between 25-28px. Secondary heading. 130-150% of the body text, between 18-21px. Figure 3. Text With Typographic Hierarchy Applied Other typographic hierarchical elements may be required; some further examples are as follows: Tertiary heading.  100-125% of the body text, so between 14-17px. Small text/Captions.  70-75% of the body text, so between 10-11px. 2. Use Vertical Spacing To Make Your Words Easier To Scan.  We need to ensure that the line spacing and space between paragraphs allows the eye and brain to more easily decipher characters, words, and word shapes. Figure 4. Vertical Spacing Paragraph spacing should be set equal to the Body Text size, in this case 14px. Figure 5. Text with Paragraph Spacing Applied Line spacing should be set to somewhere between 120-160% of the text size. Smaller body text requires increased line spacing in order to give each word room to breathe. It should be possible to fit a sideways ‘h’ between lines without it hitting the tops of d/b/t’s (ascenders) or the bottoms of p/q/y’s (descenders). In this case, the line-height used should be between 17-22px. Figure 6. Text With Line Spacing Applied 3. Adjust Line Lengths To Increase Readability. Long lines of text are difficult to read. The ideal number of characters per line is 65-75. This length of a line of text is referred to as the measure. The measure is defined by the width of the body text rather than those of headings or sub-headings. A line encompassing upper -and lower-case letters and numbers is 62 characters, an easy way of finding a comfortable measure, i.e. abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 1234567890. Reduce the width of the column of text until it meets this 65-75 character limit. Figure 7. Text With Line Length Measure Applied Summary Of Typography Techniques Applied  The animated gif below shows these changes being applied sequentially (may need to click to play in supported browsers): Figure 8. Typographic Techniques Applied In Sequence All of the typographic principles detailed above are applied to the eLearning content shown below created using the Content Editor within the TopClass LMS. This particular content experience displays the content via a smartphone. Figure 9. Presentation Of eLearning Content In this article, I have attempted to show how you can improve your content experience with typography. It addressed only a small subset of the myriad of typographical features worth considering. The three discussed provide very quick and easy ways to dramatically improve the overall content experience, i.e. Typographical hierarchy, Vertical spacing, and Line measure. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How To Convert Company Knowledge Into Online Training  Companies already have a great deal of in-house material that is suitable for online trainings. Many training officers and departmental managers create their own presentations in PowerPoint or PDF. After a classroom setting training, these documents are often sent out via e-Mail to trainees and shared publicly on the company intranet. Without knowing, this often times results to companies storing a lot of valuable department-specific knowledge and information, which are sitting idle in network drives and intranet folders. They are overlooked, left alone and will eventually become outdated. What is more, a new set of public could benefit from this knowledge too, such as partners and resellers, newly hired colleagues, and even other departments. Colleagues, partners and resellers are interested in your content - make your online training a collaborative space filled with relevant up-to-date ate information . The problem with sending PDF documents or PowerPoint presentations to people who are not directly involved in the training or department concerned is that, in order for them to understand and digest the static information they received, more details need to be added, or rather, explained. Moreover, it would be ideal to give them the opportunity to interact in the form of asking questions and getting their feedback. For trainees who have attended the training session, testing their knowledge right away would have helped immensely, and being able to follow and monitor their learning progress would be ideal. Just giving out static documents will not do justice to the effort you have invested on this knowledge. Share it smartly! There is indeed a better solution to converting static documents such as PDF, PowerPoint, and Word into interactive online trainings. Files can be automatically converted, which allows trainers to focus more on what is important at hand—adding relevant content, enriching it with questions and building collaboration opportunities around it. 3 Easy Ways To Convert Company Knowledge Into Sustainable Training And Proactive Community Knowledge Sharing  Convert training materials in PowerPoint and PDF. Use existing training material to create a complete online course. In an online training platform like Coursepath you can start course creation by simply uploading a PowerPoint presentation or a PDF document. The system automatically converts every slide into a step (a page). Editing pages can be done on a fly and reordering them is just a matter of dragging and dropping across chapters. To make the training interactive and to make sure that your target group is stimulated, you can further add media content and questions. Tips for PowerPoint: Make the most of your PowerPoint files and use the "notes" feature. By ticking the notes box, you convert the notes together with your PowerPoint slides into a course. They appear in the editor and can be further edited. Tips for PDF: Before converting, we recommend changing the PDF layout to "landscape", reducing the text to 12 lines per page and keeping the number of pages under 30. This way the content will be easy to read and helps give trainees the opportunity to focus on the key elements in your document. Upload documents for central storing and knowledge sharing. If you have content not suitable for conversion, such as files with large texts, forms, checklists, and Word documents, don’t keep them on the side. Storing this information in your training courses allows trainees easy access to additional learning content. For everyone’s benefit, upload the documents into short courses and ask colleagues for feedback. The best thing is, you have all your learning materials stored centrally in one single platform where you can easily update and upload newer versions when they are outdated. Trainees and other colleagues can further download the documents when they need it and at their own time. Collaborate with your trainees for information. Your training is truly collaborative when you empower trainees to interact and speak. Let them be heard! Get their opinions and feedback and let them share valuable and relevant information about the course you are training them on. Or design it allowing trainees to comment, upload files, and discuss with one other. On the other hand, you may want to use the training platform similar to a project or workshop environment where trainees can submit documents - from personal information to scanned documents, as well as tasks completed forms and assignments, and other file types such as MP3 for voice-overs or recorded calls for review purposes for example. This way you are making sure all relevant information are gathered and stored in one place where people can access, use and review together. Motivate Sharing And Knowledge Consumption   The trick in converting training materials for online training is making it concise. The Microlearning strategy encourages emphases on short and bite-sized online content. By focusing on selected key elements of your training as the major subject matter and using the rest of the content as supplementary through rich text format or downloadable documents, allows better impact and acceptance with your trainees. They are able to easily follow the training and better retain what has been learned as well. Making the most of existing in-company material and an individual’s knowledge is a good way to value your employees’ efforts. Through sharing this via an interactive platform, in-company knowledge gets spread out quickly and effectively. Not only that, they also get enriched by other employees through opinion sharing and feedback discussion. Your online training therefore becomes a collaborative space filled with relevant information and serving as a database for specific company knowledge. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

The 1st ASEAN-ROK e-Learning Forum (AKeLF 2015) is an international Forum, organized by the ASEAN Cyber University (SCU) Project Secretariat. The 1st ASEAN-ROK e-Learning Forum aims to discover and share teaching & learning methodologies utilizing ICT and open source in the context of ASEAN and also Korea, by sharing and developing best practice or pilot study cases. AKeLF 2015, pursuing to become the premiere international Forum in the field, spans all disciplines and levels of e-learning and is expected to attract many leaders in the field from especially ASEAN and the Republic of Korea. We invite you to attend the 1st ASEAN-ROK e-Learning Forum and submit papers or report for presentation. Open sources will be shared at the Forum webpage (http://AKeLF.aseancu.org → click AKeLF Banner→Click Resources) for those participants who wishes to develop pilot studies. AKeLF 2015 Topics The topic of AKeLF 2015 is "Innovation in Higher Education through e-Learning". The scope of the Forum includes, "Developing an Innovative Teaching·Learning Model utilizing ICT, Open Source, SCU LMS, LTI etc." Detailed Sub topics are listed as below; Appropriate Technology in the context of ASEAN Cases of using open sources Using appropriate technology for CLMV, Other ideas and cases of the field proposed by SCU Secretariat. Examples of such cases could be; i) Learning process centered cases through quizzes (Learner Empowerment and individual learning) ii) Using mobile tools for ultra-light content download Blended Learning for ASEAN/ROK Flipped Classroom Innovative online learning and educational programming Mobile and ubiquitous learning Developing an Organizational e-Learning Strategy Good Practice Concepts & Examples Innovative Curriculum in E-Learning Instructional Design for E-Learning Knowledge Management in E-Learning Learning & Content Management System for ASEAN / ROK Pedagogical & Issues Educational Trends and Best Practice Contributions Best practices in multimedia-based education The Impact of Web Technologies on Education Learning and Teaching Innovations ICT Skills Advanced classroom applications and technologies e-Tutoring and e-Mentoring Training the e-Trainer Online Assessment The 1st ASEAN-ROK e-Learning Forum (AKeLF 2015) will be held at the Seoul Cyber University on December 8-9, 2015. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

The Differences Between Gamification And Game-Based Learning  Gamification strategies are increasingly getting attention and investment in eLearning. In today’s high-pressure world, when everyone is working tight schedules, we tend to learn well only when it’s enjoyable or obviously beneficial to us - and games definitely make the learning more enjoyable. According to Engagement Alliance, the gamification industry is predicted to reach $5.5 billion by 2018. Games keep learners engaged and motivated - 80% of learners feel that game-like learning or jobs could make them more productive (Talent LMS). But it’s high time that we get gaming concepts right; let’s have a look at what each of these means. Gamification  What Is Gamification?  Gamification means applying the game design techniques and game mechanics to engage and motivate learners to help them achieve their goals. Salient Features:  In gamification, the learning process as a whole is turned into a game. Game mechanics and elements are applied to existing content to engage and motivate the learners. Might include a collection of tasks with some form of rewards (without necessarily any defined learning objective). Points, levels, rewards, leaderboard, achievement badges, feedback loops, conditions are some of the key principals used in gamification. It is usually easier and cheaper to introduce gamification in learning. Benefits Of Gamification:  It encourages collaboration, fun, focus, retention, productivity, creativity, and meaningful choices. It is a great way to change behaviors or encourage specific behaviors, provide immediate feedback and gratification, and track progress. When To Use Gamification? Following are some of the situations when the use of gamification makes perfect sense: When you want to encourage the learners to take specific actions. When you want to motivate the learners and influence their behaviors. When you want to drive innovation and help the learners in building specific skills. When you wish to engage the learners while promoting the spirit of competitiveness. When you wish to provide the learners ways to track their own progress. Best Practices For Designing Gamification:  Keep the game mechanics and structure easy to understand and follow. Carefully align gamification with the business needs and learning goals. Make scoring and winning easy and transparent - keep simple rules and keep the leaderboards easy to understand. Gamification Examples:  Wall Street Survivors. Bunchball, in partnership with Wall Street Survivor, launched an online education platform which uses gamification to teach investment strategies to Millennials. Through a series of engaging and rewarding missions, users are taught a variety of stock market concepts. Keas. Enterprises use Keas, an employee wellness platform, to maintain the overall health of the organization, lower group health insurance costs, and reduce unnecessary sick days. The gamification in Keas provides the individuals with a personalized dashboard which shows the stats, allows them to earn awards for achievements on task completion, and also support the co-workers to help them achieve their goals. Game-Based Learning What Is Game-Based Learning?  Game-based learning is a teaching approach where the learners explore the relevant aspect of games in a learning context designed by teachers. Salient Features:  In game-based learning, games are used as part of the learning process. Game-based learning is aimed at teaching a specific skill or achieving a specific learning outcome. Game-based learning includes the content which is created to fit the story and scenes of the game. It helps in drawing the learners into the relevant virtual environments that they are familiar with. It is usually difficult and expensive to build game-based learning. Benefits Of Game-Based Learning:  It helps in motivating and influencing the learners in a positive way. It helps in providing context and engaging the learners. It helps in rememorizing the concepts in a fun way. It reinforces and consolidates the knowledge in a friendly environment. When To Use Game-Based Learning? Following are some of the situations when the use of game-based learning makes perfect sense: When you want to repackage existing academic content. When you wish to promote critical and strategic thinking amongst the learners. When you want to engage and motivate the learners who are otherwise not engaged. When you want to support the struggling learners in learning better. Best Practices For Designing Game-Based Learning:  Focus on the learning objectives. Strike the right chord while making it challenging - it should not be too easy and, at the same time, it should not be as difficult as to frustrate learners. Make the games interactive and immersive so that the learners can remain focused on the goals and objectives. Game-Based Learning Examples:  McDonald's. McDonald’s launched game-based learning system to its 300 restaurants; it allowed the employees to learn and practice in a safe environment online. The game was addictive, fun, and with well-thought learning objectives. It made the learning experience memorable with targeted skill and knowledge training. It helped the employees in improving their accuracy and reduce the service time by close to 8%. Microsoft. Microsoft’s Ribbon Hero game teaches the learners how to use the Microsoft Office’s ribbon interface. This game has "Clippy", the helpful paperclip, as the game’s protagonist. While the objective of learner engagement is common between gamification and game-based learning, they are two different things. Both offer tremendous benefits to your eLearning course, but it is important to know the different between the two so that you can optimally use the one which is relevant for the desired goals and the needs of the learners. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Learning Exchange: Tips On eLearning Tools Which tool to select for your job and how to get started using that tool is just the start. How to use that tool more efficiently and more effectively for your work adds a whole new level of understanding to the equation. So what can you do to broaden your understanding of what tools are out there for eLearning professionals and how can you learn to use those tools to the best of their ability? To help you better understand the tools in the eLearning space and how to use them The eLearning Guild is hosting a 30-in-30 learning event during the month November in the Learning Exchange.The eLearning Guild’s new social learning platform where members of the Guild community can share content and learn from one another. Each day in November a different member of The eLearning Guild community will be adding an eLearning tool tip or trick to the Learning Exchange. Tips shared during this event will come from Guild members who have discovered tips and tricks from using different tools over the years, practitioners who use these tools every day in their work, and experts in the industry. Of course, the Guild will be adding a few of their own resources to the mix that they have found to be popular among eLearning professionals working with eLearning tools over the years. Overall, this event is aimed at helping the eLearning community find resources that will help them do the work they love to do even more efficiently. For anyone who views and marks complete all 30 entries in the 30-in-30 course module in the Learning Exchange by the end of November will be entered into a drawing, held by The eLearning Guild, to win a $100 gift card to The Grommet!* Learn more about this 30-day learning event in the Learning Exchange at http://bit.ly/1MgTOsf. Not a member of The eLearning Guild but still want to check out these eLearning tool tips? Simply create a complimentary eLearning Guild Associate account and you will have full access to the Learning Exchange for one whole year! *Terms and conditions apply. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.