gomo learning is ecstatic to have won a gold award in the prestigious Brandon Hall Group Technology Awards last night for Best Advance in Content Authoring Technology. This is among the highest of accolades an authoring tool can achieve and a testament to the pioneering development of the gomo team over the last twelve months. This award follows a silver Brandon Hall Award also for Best Advance In Content Authoring Technology in 2014. The gomo learning suite, which launched in January 2015, takes gomo beyond e-learning authoring and integrates a cloud hosting, distribution and analytics suite, allowing teams to seamlessly create, deliver, update and analyse multi-device learning, with or without an LMS. Brandon Hall is known for their stringent judging process, with over 50 categories and entries from around the globe plus a judging panel made up of independent senior experts and Brandon Hall Senior Analysts and Executives. Managing Director Mike Alcock said: "This is an amazing achievement for such a new product and a huge validation of what the gomo team have been building for the last two years. The introduction of the gomo learning suite makes gomo significantly different from traditional authoring tools with integrated hosting and analytics for instant content distribution. We believe that we have a unique set of capabilities and that Brandon Hall has recognized this with a Gold award." To find out why Brandon Hall gave us gold, begin your free trial of gomo today. The post Gold for gomo at Brandon Hall Technology Awards appeared first on gomo Learning.

This weekend was all about relaxing and getting amped up about starting B-School tomorrow. I’ve been taking my time catching up (or trying to) on the B-School community, but there’s a lot to it, and I only have so much time in the day! Yesterday Joe and I ran a bunch of errands, had a little thai lunch date, and walked a pup at the city pound. We hosted Sunday brunch today, and now we’re both enjoying the mild weather. Oh! I also registered for some Canadian business tax services I needed for a new contract…what does that mean? My business is official! This week was light in terms of links, but here are some of my favourites! Professional: David Anderson posted the Challenge Recap for E-Learning Heroes (24 weeks of amazing submissions)! Angel interviewed several freelancers about how they manage projects. I was a last minute registrant for Marie Forleo’s B-School, and I look forward to discussing it in the weeks to come. I thoroughly enjoyed reading through Breanna’s best of be free, lance for 2013 (albeit, I was a bit delayed). Development: I stumbled upon Tidy Repo, a repository of the most reliable wordpress plugins, and I’m excited to begin sifting through it. Personal: I started reading Build Your Dreams by Chip Hiden - So far, so good! How was your weekend?

There’s really no rhyme or reason for my term selection this week; Gamification is just a term being kicked around within the e-learning community, and if you were ever wondering what it meant, look no further! I will say that I feel the term has been used a bit less in recent years, but maybe that’s just within the circles I follow. Gamification? What the heck is that?! Gamification is a process in which you turn your course into an interactive learning experience for your users…creating a game of sorts. Often times, Gamification is intended to appeal to the competitive nature of humans by offering a fun experience in exchange for rewards, badges, level ups, or the like. Just think about Candy Crush - How awesome did you feel once you finally beat level 125? While you certainly didn’t learn much, it definitely felt like an accomplishment. A great (and simple-ish) example of Gamification is Lumosity; here is a series of games, based on neuroscience, that leverages rewards (based on your intellectual improvements) to improve your memory, speed, attention, and problem solving abilities. You’re motivated to continue visiting the site and playing the games under the rouse that you will increase your overall performance index. But why is Gamification good for learning? As I said before, and I’ll say it again, Gamification appeals to the competitive nature of humans. Even if you’re not innately competitive, you may find yourself motivated to compete with yourself. In a society where younger students have come from a generation of video gaming, Gamification also has the ability to make learning ‘cool’ and relatable. I once worked with an organization that developed a gesture-based learning experience to teach pilots aircraft marshalling signals - it utilized Xbox Kinect technology, and almost everyone who ‘played the game’ found themselves impressed, and because they were completing the signals in a practical simulation, they retained what was being taught in a meaningful way. Another positive to Gamification is that it offers variety. Instead of having to endure traditional chalk-and-talk style face-to-face lectures, students can glean the information in a more engaging format, and teachers can focus their efforts on squeezing more into their curriculums (as politics often dictate) or finding meaningful ways of supporting the information learned within the games to support information retention.

  Today I thought I’d talk about badges, because everyone likes to feel like they’re achieving something and badges are a great way of doing that. Badges What are badges? Well. You can probably relate to the badge reference when you think about the badges you or your friends received in brownies/girl guides/cubs/boy scouts, etc. These badges were received for achieving a certain criteria with regard to a specific goal. Take for example some of the badges I’ve achieved in the Articulate Insiders community (shown in the image above) - these badges were achieved by: finishing 50 challenges, completing 10 social media challenges, and providing a survey-style opinion. Another example you might be able to relate to: the gold stars your elementary school teacher provided on your assignments/activities for a job well done. We see badges in many domains; for example, social (e.g. brownies/cubs) and technology (e.g. video games), but how do we begin to use badging in education? Using Badging in Education Badges can serve to motivate students to work harder to achieve course goals; individuals innately want to succeed, so receiving an ‘award’ of sorts for completion of an activity can make a world of difference when it comes to learner motivation. To begin employing badging in your classroom, you will want to define goals to achieve the badges. These goals should align with your course goals and learning outcomes. Once defined, create a mode for delivering the badges. For example, in a face-to-face classroom setting, you may wish to use a physical leaderboard (e.g. a table created on bristol board of each student and each goal, with physical stickers or badges affixed to the board to indicate completion/progress). In an online course, you may wish to generate electronic certificates or an electronic leaderboard (similar to the one illustrated above) that displays each learner’s badges. Resources Educause Learning Initiatives: Things you should now about…Badges Badge Alliance - Why Badges? How Badges Really Work in Higher Education by David Raths

This week I was hoping to address E-Learning Challenge #97 and do something with slider-style toggle buttons, but I ended up killing two birds with one stone and addressed E-Learning Challenge #91 while I was at it! The Concept E-Learning Challenge #91 - Get to Know Your E-Learning Community with 2 Truths and 1 Lie sought to have community members create playful interactions using the icebreaker game 2 truths, 1 lie. The goal was to bring us, as a community, closer together. E-Learning Challenge #97 - Toggle, Switch, and Slide Your Way to More Creative E-Learning Buttons challenged us to show creative ways to use toggle buttons and switches in e-learning. The Method I thought about this challenge for awhile and decided I wanted to use sliders to respond to true/false or yes/no questions, so I thought up some questions about myself and hopped to it. My avatar was purchased from Creative Market awhile ago for another personal project I have yet to complete, so I figured I might as well get some use out of it in the immediate future. I chose 4 poses (one for the intro, one for the questions, one for correct responses, and one for incorrect responses) and began mocking up all of the screens I would need. I tossed in Continue buttons to navigate to the next question in the queue, and an Exit button at the end. After adding the buttons, I went back to add in all of the necessary functionality (e.g. the slider). I programmed the slider to have three slide points, with the initial point being the 2nd/middle). Then, I added in triggers so that the slide would change to the correct or incorrect feedback if the slider was positioned correctly on Yes or No (slider position 1 or 3). The Result Click Here to view the full interaction.

Today, my pal Rachel is talking about Making it Not Suck. I read her blog post this morning and had to laugh because…IT IS SO TRUE! Few people enjoy training, and when the training is terribly done or ineffective, it makes people perceive the job the training was to address as even being very sucky…and in turn may cause these folks to perceive their job as a whole sucky. I felt compelled to write a bit about this today because 1 - she hit the nail on the head, and 2 - one of my former Instructional Design colleagues texted me last week to tell me how great some typically terrible HR training was. She had to take some corporate training, and it didn’t suck. So much so that she felt obliged to tell me about how great it was because she knew I would appreciate it. And I did! Within my current role, I encounter a lot of faculty members who have a bitter taste in their mouth about online learning and the technological knowledge required to develop and deliver the learning experiences. A lot of them dread teaching online - it veers from their traditional approach, it makes them feel as though they aren’t teaching, and they’re too darn busy to learn something new. I get it. The struggle is real. So what I strive to do when working with these folks is make the inevitable suck less (e.g. the technical training and their course development) and hopefully make them feel as though they’re sucking less when they use these technologies to deliver their training (or more confident). Additionally, when you encounter well-developed and effective training solutions, you feel will likely feel more positive about doing your job (or even participating in required training opportunities) which may in turn make other things in your life feel more positive (positivity is contagious)! Thanks for the post, Rachel! It was definitely accurate and extremely relevant.

I’ve talked a bit about analysis before, but it recently dawned on me that there are a lot of components that fall under the umbrella of analysis, so I figured I’d channel my inner analyst and take a few weeks to delve a bit deeper into the topic of analysis. Let’s Go! Analysis in Learning Development - A Refresher Analysis is the highest level of course development. In it’s recommended format, this phase seeks to compile all information relevant to the project and 1) determine which delivery method will best display the content in a meaningful manner, 2) whether more information is required and from whom, and 3) high-level project goals. Elements Within this phase you may stumble upon several elements familiar to analysis (e.g. Needs Assessment, Instructional Analysis, Task Analysis, Environmental Analysis). You can read about Needs Assessments here, and Task Analysis here. The basic jest is that you want to collect all of the information you possibly can in order to ensure the training you’re planning to develop is 1) necessary, 2) relevant, and 3) informed. You want to thoroughly understand the performance requirements, who your audience will be, what they need to learn, and how that information will be relevant to their performance. Strategies There are many strategies for conducting analysis. For example, you might want to start at the end goal of the training and work backwards. This approach will allow you to identify the goal and then the steps or prerequisites required to get to achieve the goal. Another example might be to begin with a list of questions (e.g. who is the target audience? what is their prior learning? why is the training necessary?, etc.) and discover the answers to those questions in order to conduct a thorough analysis of the situation. You might wish to examine what the organization is currently doing and why it’s not working to determine a different way ahead that will work. However you choose to analyze, just know that you’re doing very important legwork that may save you time once you get to the design and development, and certainly the evaluation phase of your course development. Stay tuned for more on analysis next week!

Today I decided to catch up on some challenges, but I needed something light so I could ease myself back into the swing of things. So, I decided to tackle E-Learning Challenge #82 - Show Us How You Create Online Courses. The Concept The purpose of this challenge was to have us share how we create online courses. Because the interaction created was very brief, simply outlining the steps, this post will be a bit of an explanatory post. The Method For this challenge, I identified six steps I take when creating online courses, and made them look pretty in Storyline. Those 6 steps include (with some explanation): Sign a Contract - This is a critical step. You’d like to think that all of your clients are going to pay you, but signing a contract is one way of ensuring this happens. And from a client perspective, this can save their butts when it comes to non-disclosure schmutz. Coffee - Throughout the development process, a lot of coffee is consumed. Basically just make sure your house is stocked full of coffee (be prepared…you know snow storm? apocalypse?) or that your friendly neighbourhood cafe is open. Analyze the Content - This is a necessary step, because without the content, you might find yourself down a wormhole of internet articles and publications trying to figure out how to describe the cleaning process of a Burr grinder (and who wants to do that?! Not this gal!). Analyzing content allows you to identify gaps, liaise with the client accordingly, and retrieve the necessary information to do what you’ve been contracted to do. It also gives you an idea of what you may want to do in terms of media treatment. Develop/Author - Here you’ll be doing the heavy lifting of your course creation. You’ll likely be storyboarding the content or heading straight into authoring with a rapid prototyping model - this workflow will likely depend on that contract you signed up in step 1 (e.g. if the client doesn’t want you to ‘waste time’ storyboarding, they may want you to jump in with both feet and begin authoring in the chosen tool). Review Cycle - Ah. The dreaded review cycle. This is a very important component when it comes to course development. The review cycle will identify any necessary changes that must be made ahead of final delivery. Before you begin contract work, you’ll want to ensure the contract speaks to review cycle limits…because no one wants to do unlimited revisions (especially if you’re working on a fixed-price contract). Deliver and Invoice - A fan favourite! Delivering a course you’ve spent hours labouring over is one of the best feelings in the world. As an e-learning developer who doesn’t intend to bear children, I would liken this feeling to that of birthing a child. Mothers will slap me, but I don’t care! I applaud your hard work. Then, invoicing is just the icing on the cake, because gotta get that money, money, money… The Result Click here to view the full interaction.

Last week I started a discussion about Analysis, talking about some elements (e.g. Needs Assessment) and some strategies for conducting analysis. This week I’m providing a bit of a follow-through plan. Sort of. Or perhaps you can call it a guide for things of which you need before writing performance objectives. Call it what you want. I’ve made a doodle of some things you’ll want to analyze:   Less of a doodle and a bit more flow chart-esque am I right? Yeah. I know. Anyhow. What the heck do all of these things mean? When working in the analysis phase, you may come in on any portion thereof, but the key things you need to analyze are: Your Audience - Who will be receiving the training? What prior learning experiences do they have? Do they need prerequisite knowledge? The Environment(s) - How will the training be delivered? Face-to-face? Online? Blended? Where will the audience be applying the training? If on the job, will they need a performance support tool? Will it need to be mobile-friendly? Will it need to be a stand alone training aid? The Job or Task - What is the job/task for which you are developing training? Break that task down into each individual sub-task. Don’t assume your audience will know how to complete ANY of the sub-tasks, unless you’ve been specifically told they have the knowledge, and determine how much information is required (for each sub-task) to achieve mastery of the task for which the training was developed. Content - What content is available? Once you’ve analyzed your audience, the environments, and the job or task, you will have a greater understanding of what content you will need. At this point, you can analyze the content that’s available and determine whether there are any gaps. If so, you can request or source the missing content. I know these posts are a very brief primer (of sorts) about Analysis in Instructional Design, but they provide you with some primary information necessary for some forthcoming blog posts targeted at elements and strategies related to conducting analysis. Stay tuned for next week’s post: Design Part 1 - EXCITING, I KNOW!    

Over the past two weeks, I’ve talked quite a bit about the analysis phase of most Instructional Design models, and now it’s time to talk about the Design phase. But I’m not a designer! Oh. But you are! At least if you claim to be an Instructional Designer. Like analysis, many IDs don’t get the opportunity to dip their toes in the design phase, but it’s a very important phase to be a part of. While it might sound as though we’re talking graphic design and look/feel, we aren’t exactly. Only sort of. The design phase is where you identify how the learning is going to occur. So the look and feel…conceptually. And it may also include elements of visual look and feel. The output of this phase is typically referred to as ‘design documentation’. This documentation outlines things such as: Instructional Strategy Learning Objectives Assessment Strategies (and sometimes the assessment items) Prototype Requirements Compliance Specifications (e.g. system requirements for the end user and SCORM requirements) Branding Guidelines Screenstyles The design documentation is used to guide the design and allows developers to keep their eyes on the prize (or the project requirements). It also allows multiple developers to ensure a consistent approach across development. Have I piqued your interest? Great! Stay tuned for more on the design phase…next!