Filed under: In The Classroom

eLearning templates are useful tools for online course developers as they can help drive user engagement and enable trainers to present a course’s content in the most captivating and professional way. eLearning template benefits include: Quick ramp-up for novice users: It used to be that creating an online course absolutely required the active collaboration of subject matter experts, writers, artists, videographers, and programmers. Today, with built-in templates in your course authoring tool, the extended team is necessarily required. Not only can you author great elearning rapidly, but you can also easily add photos, video, and effective interactive elements in your elearning course without any special designing or programming expertise. Templates walk you through exactly what you need to do, and what text, pictures, audio, or video you need to provide. Below is an example of a course slide created with the Flashcard template by an author with no visual design or programming expertise. Elimination of technical / programming mistakes: eLearning templates remove the risk and guesswork out of implementation, meaning that the only thing an author needs to worry about is the accuracy and quality of the content. For those who have been developing for some time, this is a welcome opportunity. Subject matter experts can turn all their attention towards authoring great course content and brood less about programming challenges or design issues. Proven approach to delivering specific types of course content: With built-in templates, course developers can adopt proven techniques to presenting course content. For example, long lines of text can easily be organized into small and interesting segments allowing learners to process the information effectively while remaining motivated to learn. Look at the example given below and notice how what would have normally been bullet points have been transformed into an interactive diagram. Standardization: Consistency is important in online training, as it keeps the learner focused on the content, not on the mechanics of how to navigate through and interact with the content. Add interesting and exciting content-related elements and experiment with different slide layouts without upsetting the uniformity of your course design with the help of elearning templates. Flexibility: Built-in activity and game templates offer a lot of flexibility. Use, re-use, and update templates in various courses to provide rewarding learning experiences to your students. Focus your energy on authoring great course content and let the Learning Content management System (LCMS) handle the rest. Useful job-aid for course developers: Built-in templates serve as a job-aid for course developers. The templates are a ready-made framework where all you need to do is add content. There is no hassle thinking about where to place which elements or how to design different buttons, and so forth. You have exceptional and instant interactions at your fingertips, waiting to be used, as per your content needs. eLearning templates are convenient, user-friendly, and time-saving, while offering variety and reusability. Try out different templates in your online courses and create an exciting and engaging online learning experience for your students!

Do you want to create blog posts people can’t help but share? This article shows how to use Facebook to find ideas for shareable blog content. Source: www.socialmediaexaminer.com See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

  I was absolutely delighted to be awarded an EDEN fellowship at the annual conference in Oslo last week. It was a tad embarrassing though as I had left the conference to go back to my hotel after a long day of meetings, and so missed being given the award, but luckily caught up with Morton (the then president) the next day to have a picture taken. I have been going to the EDEN annual conference since 2007 when it was held in Naples. I was invited to give a keynote by the then president Alan Tait. I have also been to some of the research workshops, which are also excellent. EDEN is a great community, as Morten says very much a family, so it was great to catch up with people in Oslo. The certificate says: Who has demonstrated excellent in professional practice of open, distance and e-learning and provided valuable support to the evolution and progress of EDEN. I just hope I can live up to the honour, and plan to continue to promote and support EDEN in the coming years. 

Filed under: In The Classroom, Technology

All prepared to kick-start your elearning journey? Now that you have authored a draft of your online course content, have carefully crafted learning objectives and assessments, identified key audio and visual support, and planned out some engaging activities to get learners deeply involved in the subject matter, it’s time to build what you’ve designed. What course authoring software will you use? With so many elearning authoring tools available, choosing the right tool can be a daunting task. The following are a few things to consider: How easy is it to use? Ideally, a course authoring tool should have a simple learning curve. The functions should be simple, logical, and self-explanatory, allowing online course developers to create engaging and interactive online training without any confusion. The course development tools should expedite work, allowing you to add content, create interactions, make edits, and publish your course—with as few clicks as possible. As an author and subject matter expert, you want to be able to focus your energy and attention on designing a rewarding learning experience for your students—not hacking and struggling through a software application jungle of tricky layers, complicated interactions, or difficult back-end coding. Does it support interactivity and a wide range of experiences? Gone are the days when trainers relied on page after page of text and graphics. Video is often a step up. It’s relatively easy to create and appreciated by audiences—but a string of videos can still often lead to learners becoming passive viewers and zoning out on your message and content. For maximum effectiveness, you need to get your audience engaged and active in the learning. When selecting the best course authoring software for your content, look at the range of ways in which you’ll be able to present information and provide opportunities for learners to interact with that content and really explore it. A set of built-in templates in your authoring tool can help you quickly create stimulating online training, without worrying about designing or programming knowledge. Hand-crafted activities are great when you have the time and expertise to develop them. Too often, however, elearning authors get stuck on their first custom activity and find themselves falling back to just doing presentations. While this may be easier, it impacts student learning and the quality of the course. Make sure you get the tools you need to efficiently create at least basic activity types and interactions. Does it fit my lifestyle? Some people prefer desktop applications over cloud-based authoring tools. With an installed desktop application, an internet connection may not be required. In addition, being a client-side application, the functionality that is offered by the tool may be very deep. On the other hand, heavy authoring tools can be complicated to learn, may require additional software/programs and large disk space to run properly, may not be compatible with every system, and may be restricted to a single device. Cloud-based authoring software typically scores points for being light, highly accessible, device independent (requiring no installation), with quick startup. You may find, however, that you are trading a certain level of functionality for flexibility. When considering ease of use and convenience, take into account the context in which you plan to create courses. Are you committed to building out your course at your desk with access to a system with a powerful processor and a large screen? Or would you ever want to create your course on the go, with your tablet or even your smartphone? Ensure that the product you choose has not only the features you want, but support for the course creation lifestyle you envision. Does it scale? How quickly and efficiently can I get things done? Does the course authoring tool you are considering have features to help expedite work? Many trainers, for example, have existing PowerPoint decks, fine-tuned over the years. Does the tool offer a "PowerPoint Import" feature to quickly transform those decks into an online course, which can then be further enhanced? If you have a large number of questions to upload into item banks for assessments, does the tool offer a way to bulk upload those items? If you have a large number of assets (pictures, video, flash files, audio clips, documents etc.) will the tool help you efficiently manage the digital assets of your courses? If you have a lot of existing content—or plan to build out a lot of content—consider software that includes a built-in content repository allowing you to add, store, delete, retrieve, update, and integrate media into your online courses whenever required. If you are planning on doing this long term and measuring the effectiveness of the learning, does the tool support version control, so that when you need to update the course, you can do so efficiently and consistently, without disrupting the validity of your assessment and reporting data? Is it reliable? When looking for an authoring tool, look out for brands that are trusted and recognized for their power, efficiency, and reliability. The award-winning 360training course creation tools, for example, have been used and fine tuned for more than nine years, tested by millions of developers and students on a wide range of platforms and devices. When you are investing time, effort, and passion into your elearning course, you want to know that the output will reliably meet the need. Is it affordable? Now that you have stirred up your creative juices and unleashed the training expert within you, the next big question to ask yourself is how much money you are willing to invest in this new field. If you are new to the elearning business, you may want to initially avoid course building tools that have expensive up-front costs, or heavy subscription charges. Try out affordable options and free tools first. Invest money after you test the waters in this field. If you’re part of an experienced team exploring new tools and options, consider what’s going to bring you the biggest return on investment. A system that supports learning from content creation through learning management and revenue stream? Ready-made channels for selling huge volumes of courses? A system that allows efficient creation of content by distributed teams? Tools that are more efficient and agile? Tools that let you mix and match your content with that developed by third parties? Explore corporate and partnership options to see what’s available. Does it make it easy for me to make money? Once you have found an outstanding authoring tool with all the must-haves that you need, and authored a great elearning course in it, the next big step for many elearning authors is to figure out how to distribute and sell that training to students. If you are a consultant and have a large customer base, you may be good to go with your own online store. If not, good news for you! 360training allows you with a single click to offer your courses to learners for distribution and sale through their vast sales channels with no out-of-pocket cost. Find out how! Conclusion A smart authoring tool can result in a pleasant user experience for you, but in the end, it is the quality content that makes the difference. Author great elearning and blend it innovatively with interactivity and learning aids to create a rewarding learning experience for your students.

"What’s trending up for 2015 school year in terms of education technology?" Source: www.teachthought.com See on Scoop.it - Educational News and Web Tools

Audio can add a great deal to the quality of your course. While generally beneficial to learners, voice-over audio is particularly important for auditory learners (those who remember best when they hear the information), those learners who may struggle with reading, those for whom English (or the course’s target language) is not their native language, and those who may enjoy listening to your course while multitasking (commuting, exercising, etc.). Many devices and industry-standard elearning tools offer simple and effective software for recording audio. Use whatever works best for you. One of our authors who was just getting started with elearning never before had had the need to record audio—and asked for advice on tools. This article lays out some of your options, focusing on simple voice-recording tools for your personal computer. As you consider your options, do also explore the numerous apps available for your smartphone or tablet as you may find some of these to be particularly convenient. Bottom line, for use in the 360training authoring system, you need a tool that will export your audio file in MP3 format. Please note that 360training does NOT endorse any third-party products or services. We just want you to create great courses! Please carefully review potential solutions in terms of their costs, risks, policies, and other impacts—and confirm that the solution you pick truly meets your particular needs.   I need to record simple voice-only audio  To go with my PPT slides  And I have PowerPoint 2013 or better To go with my text-and-graphic or activity slides At little to no cost  And no download required  But can download tool  With a moderate spend and can download tool   I need to record voice-only audio to go with my PowerPoint slides. You can record audio and associate it with a PowerPoint slide, but did you know that you can create video from your PowerPoint? For the full PowerPoint experience, syncing animations and transitions with audio, record your audio directly in PowerPoint and export your deck as video. Then upload this to the Streaming Video template in the course creation tool. An upcoming post will describe how to do that.   I need to record voice-only audio to go with a text-and-graphic slide or activity… And spend little to nothing, and download nothing. Sometimes circumstances are such that there is no money to spend on tools, and your IT department or personal policies may be such that you are not willing to download freeware. There are still options to get the job done. Online Voice RecorderOnline Voice Recorder is an extremely simple Flash-based free tool that allows you to record and save audio. Click the red circle button to start recording. Click again (now showing a square icon) to stop recording. The visual representation of the sound will display as squiggles on the timeline. The louder the sound, the larger the squiggle. This lets you "see" your words. If you have extra silence at the beginning or end of the recording, slide the handles such the blue shading area starts just before your audio, and ends just after it. Click Save to indicate that the selected portion of recorded audio is what you want. Click Click to Save to download and save the audio file to your computer.   TwistedWaveTwistedWave expands your options. The free tool only allows you to record 30 seconds of audio at a time. The paid models of this tool meet a range of needs, price points, and platforms. The free version, in addition to recording audio, offers undos, normalization of audio levels, fade-ins and fade-outs, control of audio quality, and control of export format. Click New Document to get started. Click the red circle button to start recording. Click again (now showing a square icon) to stop recording. The visual representation of the sound will display as squiggles on the timeline. The louder the sound, the larger the squiggle. This lets you "see" your words. If needed, click the plus or minus magnifying glass to change the zoom level on the top representation of the audio. If you have extra silence at the beginning or end of the recording, click-and-drag in the bottom representation of the audio to set the selection such that the dark gray shading starts just before your audio, and ends just after it. Click the Export button to name your file, set the quality, and download it.   And spend little to nothing, but would consider downloading a tool. AudacityOne of the most popular free tools is Audacity, which is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, in a variety of languages. It features multi-track editing (so you can put music or sound effects behind your voice track) and a wide range of features. There is much you can do with this tool, but to get you started: Click the red circle button to record. Click the separate brown square button to stop recording. The visual representation of the sound will display as squiggles on the timeline. The louder the sound, the larger the squiggle. This lets you "see" your words. If you have extra silence at the beginning or end of the recording, click-and-drag in either representation of the audio to set the selection such that the gray shading starts just before your audio, and ends just after it. Click File > Export Selected Audio. Navigate to the desired save location. Name the file and click Save. Fill out additional metadata fields as desired, and then click OK.   Or spend some money. If you are ready to invest money into audio tools, there are a number of software options that may be of interest, such as: Sony’s Sound Forge Audio Studio, Adobe’s Audition, Avid’s Pro Tools, Apple’s Logic Pro. Keep in mind that higher-end tools are often geared to the complexity and demands of music production. If you just need to record voice-over, fairly simple tools may satisfactorily meet your needs.   More questions? Not sure how to do something? Ask us! We can’t wait to see the glorious courses you build—and will do what we can to speed you on your way. Your special knowledge is the "why" that drives our free authoring tools. Come join us. Come create. Come teach. Onward and upward!Laura and the 360training Authoring Team

I am delighted that Gregor Kennedy from the University of Melbourne is coming to give us a talk at Leicester on Friday. I have known Gregor for many years, through the ASCILITE community and he and his team do great research, of particular note is his research on learner experiences of using technologies. So if you are around on Friday email me and feel free to come along. The talk is in 103-105 Princess Road East at 2 pm.   Negotiating disruptions in learning space and time Gregor Kennedy The University of Melbourne The last year has seen substantial changes in the higher education landscape, not least the spectacular rise in prominence of Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. The transition of MOOCs from the boutique to the popular has in part been noteworthy because of who is offering them. These wholly online courses are being provided by the ‘elites’, the North American ivy leagues; universities not traditionally known for their online and distance education programs. In a relatively short space of time, it seemed as if wholly online education, once the domain of universities oriented towards ‘distance’ education, was now the remit of all.  In this presentation I will argue that, in fact, the blurring of boundaries between ‘traditional’ and ‘distance’ higher education providers has been a long time coming. I will suggest that significant changes in higher education over the last few decades reflect a fundamental shift in the relationship between ‘student’ and ‘university’. This shift has been functional, reflecting the diverse reasons students choose to go to university. There has also been an operational shift that has fundamentally disrupted well-established university practices of teaching and learning, which have traditionally operated in centralised time and space. I will argue that all universities, regardless of their heritage, are now being forced to consider how they educate students given the challenges posed by disruptions of time and space. While diverse universities may respond differently, all will need to consider how they design, use and invest in space, both physical and virtual, and how they think about the speed and pace of learning and instruction. These institutional considerations - and the outcomes of these considerations - raise fundamental questions for educators about pedagogical practice.  Gregor Kennedy Associate Professor Gregor Kennedy is the Director of eLearning at The University of Melbourne and is based in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education. His current work involves leading the University’s strategy in technology-enhanced learning and teaching, supporting staff in the use of learning technologies, and undertaking research in the area of eLearning. He has a background in psychology and has spent the last 15 years conducting and overseeing research and development in educational technology in higher education. His research interests include staff and students’ use of technology, contemporary learning design and emerging technologies, approaches to educational technology research and evaluation, computer-based interactivity and engagement, and the use of electronic measures for educational research and evaluation. He has published widely in these areas and is currently the co-editor the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology.    

"This infographic explains how edtech is successful as well as how it affects educators and students." Source: edtechreview.in See on Scoop.it - Educational News and Web Tools

The 360training Authoring Program was delighted to have the recent opportunity to talk with Lori Myers about the ground-breaking assessment work of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Lori Myers has spent the better part of her professional career dedicated to educating others and preparing them for a future in family and consumer sciences. With sixteen years of teaching experience on the middle school, secondary, and university levels, Lori strives to continue this dedication to teaching through her position as Director of Pre-Professional Assessment and Certification (Pre-PAC) with AAFCS. The AAFCS Pre-PAC Perspective As the association’s Director of Pre-Professional Assessment and Certification (Pre-PAC), Lori Myers’ background truly gives her the knowledge she needs to support those turning to Pre-PAC for help. "It’s really exciting working with the Pre-PAC program because we are working primarily with the secondary and post-secondary audience to really try to meet the assessment and certification needs they have." Beyond the assessments themselves, Pre-PAC has also worked with institutions to ensure that they receive the data they need to help them meet federal requirements and document the success of their students. Having objective data on hand can make a huge real-world difference to schools. Administrators from a variety of institutions have turned to Pre-PAC for help in documenting student success and performance and in improving their programs. The Pre-PAC assessments, developed in conjunction with industry leaders and content specialists, help programs focus on what matters most and what will help prepare their students for real-world employment or further education. Student performance on Pre-PAC assessments and certifications are now used as benchmarks to attest to how well programs meet these needs. These results have even helped to save some programs from being discontinued. Lori explains that prior to Pre-PAC, there were few credentialing opportunities in Family and Consumer Sciences, but since launching their first assessment in December of 2009, Pre-PAC now offers 11 different assessments and corresponding certifications. "We are currently working on a new one," she tells us, revealing that the new assessment will focus on leadership. "That has been one that has been requested by many states." Building rigorous assessments takes commitment. Extensive and thorough, the AAFCS’s process of assessment development helps ensure that the best possible assessment is provided to learners and organizations. Work begins with the assembling of panel members, who will spend time developing the assessment. "That sometimes takes the longest, as you’re trying to put together the right people," she says. Those "right people" are national business and industry experts and content specialists, who will put much effort into ensuring that student success on the assessment closely correlates to marketable skills and solid performance in the workplace. Lori goes on to stress the importance of meeting the requirements associated with federal legislation and national content and industry standards when developing an assessment—a theme that underlies much of the compliance and professional development work we see at 360training. It is essential that "when someone finishes a program of study, takes the assessment, and successfully earns the credential, they have the skills and knowledge base that someone who is at a pre-professional level should have as they are entering the workforce or a post-secondary institution." Her advice to someone who may not have a lot of experience creating rigorous assessments is to ensure that the assessment measures what it should measure, that it addresses the expected content, and that it is first and foremost standards based. "The key is making sure it has a strong foundation and framework." The next step, she says, is to ensure all efforts are taken to confirm the validity and reliability of the assessment as a whole, and all the items within the assessment. Without this, an assessment cannot thrive or yield successful results. For example, prior to including questions on any of the high-stakes exams, the team tests the items on national pilot groups. New potential questions are first released as "non-graded" questions mixed in with the graded ones. A statistical analysis of question response data helps reveal questions that may be too easy or too hard—or biased towards certain demographics. "If you have a reliable and valid item, that’s going to lead to a reliable and valid assessment, which leads to reliable and valid results." Your Turn Are assessments the key to your future success? What do your students need to know to be successful? What are the industry standards? What standards should there be to help learners succeed? Follow the Pre-PAC formula for success as you take advantage of 360training’s new authoring program and eLearning Marketplace—and make a difference in your world and community. With our new, web-based course builder, 360training.com makes it easier than ever for users to share their industry expertise through course and assessment creation. Are you a dedicated and respected expert in your field who is looking to share your knowledge base with others? Head over to 360training.com to find out about our new authoring program and get started today! Meredith and the 360training Authoring Team

Sharing out to the world with iTunes U from tbirdcymru The University of Leicester launched on iTunes U on 16th March 2013. Yesterday Terese Bird ran a workshop describing the history of iTunes and the pros and cons in relation to other media channels such as YouTube and also the process Leicester went through in terms of choosing content. We had a team of subject specialists, elearning people and members of marketing. Content was vetted in terms of quality (both technical and pedagogical) and needed to have the appropriate Leicester brand. Criteria included checking that the sound quality was good, that the resource worked as a stand along item, and ensuring that if video was used it added some value over simple audio. The timing of the launch was good given all the publicity around the discovery of Richard III and not surprisingly the resources on this topic are one of the most popular. Click on the below for an image of Terese in action! image.jpg

Have you ever traveled down a road without quite knowing where you were heading or if it would connect with the road you wanted? Have you ever taken a training course without being fully convinced of its importance or usefulness? A course where the content seemed to meander from one topic to the next with no strong purpose? In either case, if the journey is interesting, you might be fine with just going along for the ride—for a while. But as soon as the situation requires more time or effort than you’re willing to spend, chances are you’ll be looking for the off-ramp. As learners or travelers, we want to know why we should make a particular journey and where it’s going. An elearning course is in certain ways like a tour bus that takes the learner on a sequence of planned adventures. The GPS way-finder of that experience, that directs the learner from one destination to the next and reinforces the "why" of the journey, is its set of learning objectives. What are learning objectives? Conceptually, learning objectives help define and structure the course journey, like an itinerary marking each expected milestone and highlight of the trip. Literally, learning objectives are a sequence of sentences that describe the knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills that learners are expected to acquire as they progress through the training. Why do we need learning objectives? Clearly defined learning objectives set the scope of the training. Learning objectives provide guidance with respect to the types of learning experiences that should be included to help support student success. A set of clearly written learning objectives can help satisfy students’ curiosity of "what’s in for me" and inform them about the new knowledge and skills that they can expect to gain. Learning objectives serve as the basis of the assessment of student mastery of the subject matter. What are the parts of an effective learning objective? Robert F. Mager has identified three key components of an effective learning objective. Performance: Learning objectives should specify what the successful learner will be able to do. This action must be something you can measure and assess accurately, given the method by which the training will take place. For example, a learner may be able to "explain" something to a trainer or coach—but in an online asynchronous course, we may need the learner to instead "list key components" or "assess a situation based on a scenario and choose an appropriate response to it." Conditions: Learning objectives should include notes regarding the conditions under which the expected performance occurs. Consider a course that requires students to perform calculations. The condition portion of the learning objective may note the source of the data for those calculations, such as a table, graph, or written scenario. It may indicate whether or not a calculator may be used. Criterion: Learning objectives should specify the criteria that will be used to evaluate success. Let’s say you have a course on proofreading. Does the learner need to identify 100% of the errors in a piece of sample text in order to be considered a success? Or will 85% accuracy do? What about the complexity of the writing in that sample text? Or the nuance of the rules covered? Learning objectives should set expectations regarding the level of mastery for which the course will prepare the learner. It should be noted that, for the sake of brevity, authors will sometimes choose to omit conditions and success criteria from student-facing learning objectives. They may even rewrite the objectives as quick goals or benefits of taking the training—similar to how a travel brochure may simply present highlights of a proposed tour, rather than an hour-by-hour breakdown. Behind the scenes, however, the author—like a good tour guide—must have a firm idea about all these critical aspects (performance, conditions, and criteria) to help ensure that the course will in fact get students to their promised destination. How can I create good learning objectives? Don’t leave students metaphorically on the side of the road, short of their desired end state, due to missing, vague, or ineffective learning objectives. Here are few tips. Good learning objectives are SPECIFIC and CLEAR. Clearly communicated outcomes are vital for successful training, as they direct both the learners’ and the instructor’s attention towards the target path. Consider the following learning objectives related to a business writing course: A: By the end of this course, the student’s writing skills will improve. B: By the end of this course, the student will be able to:- Classify types of business letters.- Identify the primary purpose of each type of business letter.- Rate the relative effectiveness of sample business letters, identifying the elements in those letters that impact the effectiveness. Example A is vague. What exactly will the lesson cover? How will the instructor or online system confirm that the learner’s writing skills have improved? This learning objective, as currently stated, is of little help in directing the learning that should occur. Example B is clearer and more specific. We can immediately begin to imagine the content that will need to be included in the lesson. We have indications of how the student will be assessed and a good idea as to what "success" will look like. We can start to form a plan of how we’re going to get the student to that point. Clear, specific, measurable objectives help ensure that everyone involved has a common expectation about the learning outcomes of the course. Avoid ambiguity. Verbs such as "understand," "become aware of," or "appreciate," are highly subjective and difficult to definitively plan for and measure. As part of the elearning adventure you are creating, learners may indeed have the opportunity to step out of the tour bus, wander in the meadows and simply soak up the beauty of the landscape—but if this side excursion is to be a milestone learning objective, there should be a specific, clear outcome that you can assess. Good learning objectives are LEARNER-ORIENTED. Effective learning objectives are student-centered. They describe the skills and knowledge that learners will gain—ideally, things of clear benefit or value that will get them excited about learning. Our learners stick with our "tour" because they’re getting something they want or need. Good learning objectives focus on APPLICATION. Good learning objectives should be action-orientated and tie back to real-world goals. While writing learning objectives for your elearning course, think about the knowledge and skills a learner requires to be truly successful. For example, if you are writing a course on food safety, knowledge of food safety rules and regulations is important—but ability to correctly apply that knowledge to real-world scenarios involving handling food and reducing risk of food contamination is even more important. Give students objectives that are relevant and meaningful. Good learning objectives are LINKED with the ASSESSMENTS in the course. Learning objectives and assessments are closely tied. Learning objectives refer to the target performance level expected of the student upon completion of the course. Assessments are a tool to gauge how well the intended learning objectives have been met by a particular learner. Good learning objectives are REALISTIC. Effective learning objectives are realistic and achievable. Don’t promise (or demand) things that are beyond the scope of what your course can reasonably deliver and help the student achieve. Once you are happy with your learning objectives, be sure to provide sufficiently comprehensive content and activities to empower students to gain the skills and knowledge targeted by the learning objectives of the course. Closing Thoughts Thinking of authoring an elearning course? To help keep your course focused and effective, make learning objectives part of your plan! Onward and upward!Shazia, Laura, and the 360training Authoring Team

  We have just completed our JISC-funded PLACES project, which focused on evaluating the use of iPads in a Masters course offered by Criminology.  Ming Nie and Terese Bird worked on this, along with Nichola Hayes from our Academic Practice team and Adrian Beck, head of Criminology. They have produced a detailed case study and a video. Criminology realised that their new MSc in Security, Conflict and International Development (SCID) would require a high degree of flexibility in the way in which course materials could be accessed - carrying large amounts of printed material or having 24/7 access to the Internet would not always be possible for these prospective learners. So they decided to issue all students with iPads as part of the registration process. This enabled students to have access to all their course materials on the device. Feedback was elicited from students vai an online survey. The results indicated that the iPad improved the experience of the distance learners involved in the pilot in the following ways: 92% stated it was useful or very useful 100% stated they were satisfied or very satisfied with their iPad 50% used the iPad every day Students valued the portability and flexibility of the iPad The iPad had the advantage of accessing, storing, managing, and editing (such as making notes, highlighting) the majority of the materials students need for their study on one single device The ability to access course materials without an Internet connection is also considered essential for many students So overall the evaluation was very positive indeed. Of course, as with any innovation, there were challenges; in particular issues to do with copyright, implementing a new technology into the existing IT services and finding the right kind of business model for this kind of approach. A key outcome from the project is that it has paved the way for other departments to explore the use of tablet devices. Education are using iBooks Author to create resources and Medicine are thinking of giving all first year students iPads. So iPads and other table devices are clearly here to stay and I predict that more and more courses will move to using them in the near future. 

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Instructors, lecturers, and subject matter experts: Get your next webinar off to a great start by following these quick rules—and by using 360training’s free webinar tools! 1. Do a system check prior to the event. Make sure your computer, webinar software, and network connections are up-to-date and working well together. Do your initial test run about a week in advance. Check again just prior to your meeting. 2. Check audio quality. Good quality audio is critical. If your audience cannot hear you clearly, or if the audio has a lot of distortion or interference, participants may get frustrated and leave your webinar before it is over. Prior to the event, work with a friend or colleague and try out equipment to see which of your options sounds best, from a land line telephone to computer software with voice over IP (VoIP). Keep in mind that a good headset will often provide better quality audio than a laptop’s built-in microphone. The headset will help ensure that the microphone remains a consistent distance from your mouth, no matter which way you turn your head as you speak or move. In addition, use of a headset means that the return audio is piped into the earphones, rather than the computer speakers, keeping that audio from getting picked up by the microphone. When thinking about audio and selecting a place from which to present, also consider the likelihood of background noise. Try to find a space away street traffic, dogs barking, co-workers chatting, loud fans, etc. 3. Check video quality. How do you look? Set up your equipment in a location with a neutral or professional background. The environment seen behind you should complement the mood and nature of the conversation you are about to have. Adjust the height and angle of the camera to ensure that your head and shoulders are properly centered and appear natural—the way they’d look if your guest were sitting across from you. If you’re using a built-in webcam, this may mean setting your laptop on a few books to get the lens of the webcam closer to the level of your eyes. That webcam lens offers you virtual "eye contact" with your audience, so position it so that you can achieve this contact naturally and easily. Check the lighting at the time of day you plan to give the presentation. If there is too much light behind you, for example from a window, your face may be completely in shadows. If the overhead lights are too harsh, or you have strong light from the side, you may find deep shadows cast across your face. Adjust your position as needed, or try placing some desk lamps in front of you (out of sight of the camera) to provide pleasant ambient light and minimize shadows. 4. Ensure optimal computer performance. Make sure your laptop is fully charged prior the start of the webinar, and if possible, keep it plugged in to a power source. If plugging in is not an option, and your webinar may push your computer’s battery to the limit, keep a spare fully charged battery close by. Prior to the event, close out all unnecessary applications running on your computer so that they do not take additional processing power. If you share a limited network connection with family or co-workers, ask them to refrain from uploading / downloading large files, streaming video, or otherwise commandeering bandwidth during the time you plan to give your presentation. Frozen video can create an eerie feeling of disconnection. 5. Quell distractions. For the duration of the webinar, consider yourself devoted to that environment and activity. Put the phone on mute. Turn off email, IM, and social alerts. Put a sign on the door telling people that you are not available, and when you will again be available, so that no one is tempted to peek in to find out. When you reserve a room, or write your sign, be sure to schedule additional time before and after the official period for the webinar. You’ll need time to set up—and you may want to stay a few minutes afterward to answer questions or follow up on connections. If you will be showing your desktop, remove viewer distractions. Clean up your desktop, relocating files and folders that may have accumulated. Make sure your screen’s background is neutral or reflects the message you wish to convey. Turn off programs that do not need to be running—particularly those that send you messages. 6. Make your presentation engaging—but easy to deliver. There are many ways you can engage your audience in a webinar. You may choose the traditional PowerPoint deck, opt for screen sharing, do straight live video, and / or include pre-recorded video clips, polls, and other activities. By all means, make your presentation lively and engaging! That said, don’t over-complicate the mechanics of what you’ll need to accomplish during the presentation, and plan the sequence of events carefully. If something unexpected happens, a simple presentation plan can help you maintain your cool and keep the event moving forward smoothly. For example, if you want to show YouTube videos, load each video to a different tab of your browser, in the order in which you will show them. If you need to show visual examples, upload those items to the webinar system or have them sequenced in a folder, so they are all immediately at hand, in order, ready to go. You don’t want to be scrambling and looking for materials. If the mechanics of your presentation are simple, you can devote your energy to what you are saying, how you are saying it, and how you can best connect with your audience. 7. Practice. Become familiar with all the features of the webinar tool or service that you are using. Try out everything to see how it works, even if you do not plan to use a particular feature. Once you feel you are ready, perform a test run with a friend or colleague—preferably the person who will be helping during the presentation to cover chat questions. That person needs to be familiar with the content and you’ll want to discuss in advance common questions participants might have. Run through your entire presentation from beginning to end. Were there any rough spots? Revise and practice more until you are comfortable. 8. Help make sure participants are ready and on time. If possible, send a reminder to participants the day prior to the event, expressing your pleasure in getting to know them and encouraging them to arrive a few minutes early if this is the first time they will be using this webinar service. Plan for you and / or your chat monitor to arrive to the session at least 15 minutes early to help participants who may have questions or need additional assistance. 9. Maximize interaction by enlisting a chat monitor. Live chat—where participants can ask questions or provide provide feedback during a presentation—can add great depth to webinars, differentiating them from presentations in standard online courses. It can be challenging, however, to monitor the chat feed and present your content at the same time. If possible, make arrangements with a colleague to monitor the chat and respond to questions, while you present. Establish a signal for your partner to let you know that a question has come up that you should address in the main flow of the presentation. Build in question-and-answer time at the end of the presentation. Near the start of the webinar, when you go over the agenda, be sure to highlight this opportunity. 10. Relax and enjoy. Prepare well. Then, just take things as they happen. Remember: Your audience came to the webinar to learn from YOU and hear YOUR message. That’s what’s most important—the piece that you and only you can deliver. Stay focused on that core message, and even if elements of your presentation or the overall webinar experience don’t go perfectly, your audience will walk away with something of value. Thinking of offering a webinar? If you have been contemplating teaching via webinars, delay no more. Our free webinar tools will not only give you the means to easily share what you know with learners, but sell your workforce training webinar courses through 360training’s extensive network of sellers and resellers. Find out more—and make the future a bright one! Wesley and the 360training Authoring Team

  I’ve just got the latest issue of Educational Media International, which has six papers focusing on Learning Design research. The first paper by Johannes Cronje is entitled ‘What is this thing called "design" in design research and instructional design’. The paper critiques design research. It describes the design research cycle as consisting of four aspects: Explore, Describe, Develop and Explain. The second paper by Liz Masterman and colleagues is entitled ‘Computational support for teachers’ design thinking: its feasibility and acceptability to practitioners and institutions’. It describes a number of Learning Design tools, including Phoebe, LAMS and the Learning Designer.  The third paper is mine with Sandra Wills, entitled ‘Representing learning designs - making design explicit and sharable’. We describe a number of visual design representations, developed as part of the OU Learning Design Initiative and their use to represent different role-play designs. The fourth paper is by Matt Bower and colleagues and is entitled ‘Supporting pre-service teachers’ technology-enabled learning design thinking through whole of programme transformation,’ reporting on work at Macquarie University. The fifth paper by Hannah Gerber and Debra Price is entitled ‘Fighting baddies and collecting bananas: teachers’ perceptions of games-based literacy learning’.  The final paper is by Eva Dobozy and is entitled ‘Learning design research: advancing pedagogies in the digital age’. The paper reports on a meta-ethnographic review of current learning design research. So a nice collection of papers which I can thoroughly recommend. 

Source: www.curatecontent.com Deciding whether or not this is content we can add to our 8th grade curriculum? Teaching students to value information!  See on Scoop.it - InformationCommunication (ICT)

In a recent interview, Lori Myers talked about the importance of assessment items (questions) being "reliable and valid," so as to end up with a "reliable and valid" certification or exam—something employers and regulators value highly. What does that mean—"reliable and valid"? Well, it’s a way of looking at data, whether you’re doing a scientific experiment or confirming that the results of a test actually measure what you intended them to measure. "Reliable" means that the results are precise—for a given situation, you get the same (or very nearly the same) results every time. "Valid" means that the results you get are accurate—that they can, with reasonable success, be correlated to real-world performance or conditions. Consider a thermometer for taking your child’s temperature. When you or your child is healthy, and you place the thermometer under the tongue, you expect it to read about 98.6°F. The readings may not all be absolutely identical, but if the thermometer reads 103°F the first time you stick it in, and 93°F when you stick it in again to double-check, and the third time 95°F, you would lose faith in that thermometer’s ability to accurately measure temperature. That thermometer would not be reliable. On the other hand, if the thermometer registered 95°F-96°F every time you tried to take the temperature of a healthy human, its readings would in fact be reliable, but not accurate—not valid. The same thing applies to assessments. Let’s say you have a tool—your test—that you expect to measure mastery of certain knowledge or skills. In addition, you also have an expert with a great deal of experience who will watch students demonstrate that knowledge or skill. And over the next few weeks, you also keep track of performance or incidents related to real world execution of the knowledge or skill. If the tool is properly calibrated—if the assessment is reliable and valid—when the tool says there is low mastery, the observer will independently come to that same conclusion, and the track record will show performance issues. Conversely, if the assessment measures as it should, when the tool says there is high mastery, so does the observer, and so do the real-world results. You can trust the assessment to tell you how things stand, like you can trust a good quality thermometer. Example: Question Regarding Ladder Angle Creating an assessment that is reliable and valid requires care and craftsmanship. Let’s say our objective was to make sure that people knew how far away to set the base of a non-self-supporting straight ladder leaning against a wall so as to help ensure that the ladder was safe to climb. Ideally, the horizontal distance from wall to the base of the ladder should be ¼ of the distance from the bottom of the wall to the place on the wall where the top of ladder rests, or one unit over for every four units up. If the top of the ladder rests about 12 feet up the wall, the ladder’s feet should be about 3 feet away from the wall. Keep in mind that successful assessments are not simply about content. They must also take into account the audience and the context that surrounds the performance goals targeted by the lesson. For our hypothetical online safety course, our learners include construction workers, safety-conscious housewives, 6th graders preparing for science fair projects, and love-maddened romantics planning midnight serenades on balconies. Our goal is not to teach this general audience math—or to test their math skills. Our goal is to make sure that when these individuals position a straight non-self-supporting ladder, the base of their ladder is within a few inches of the optimal distance from the wall. So let’s consider some assessment items. Question A Version 1 You have a tall straight ladder. You need to reach the top of a wall that is 13½ feet tall. The top of the ladder rests against the top of the wall and extends beyond it. Based on safety guidelines, how far should the feet of the ladder be from the base of the wall? - 3 feet 2 inches- 3 feet 4½ inches - 3 feet 9 inches - 4 feet 1½ inches Do you need a moment to do the calculations? The way this question is set up, it focuses on the mathematics component. Some students who understood the concept and who would actually be able to fairly safely set up the ladder will miss this question simply because the division or the fractions or the conversion from feet to inches threw them—not because they failed to understand the core concept of "one unit over, four units up." Conversely, students who were completely zoned out when we covered the positioning rule will also miss the question. The question, therefore, becomes unreliable. Missing the question does not necessarily correlate to lack of ladder-positioning ability. Question A Version 2 So let’s remove some of the unnecessary complexity and potential sources of error. You have a tall straight ladder. You need to reach the top of a wall that is 12 feet tall. The top of the ladder rests against the top of the wall and extends beyond it. Based on safety guidelines, how far should the base of the ladder be from the base of the wall?- 2 feet- 3 feet- 4 feet- 5 feet Now we would expect that all students who understood the 1:4 ratio and who were able to do simple division would be able to pass the question.1 We would expect the question to be reasonably reliable in measuring knowledge—but is it fully valid? If we observed these same students roaming wild in the real world, would those performance results closely correlate to our assessment results? Have we made enough improvements in the question to get to the heart of the performance issue? 1 Note that vocabulary and reading skills also impact a student’s ability to correctly answer a question. For this case, let’s assume that if there were concerns about reading level, we would consider adding audio or presenting the question in the student’s native language. Question A Version 3 In reality, how often do we really know the exact height of the wall—and how often do we guess? When our distracted amorous students are scouting out that tempting balcony, will they have a tape measure on hand (or the latest smartphone app to triangulate and estimate height)? If real-world performance comes with a high probability that folks will actually be "eye-balling" distances, perhaps a more valid question, with better correlation to mastery and real-world success, is one that shows pictures. You need to use a ladder to reach the top of a 12-foot wall. Which picture shows the proper position for the ladder, according to safety guidelines? This question is direct. It reflects ground reality. In the vast majority of real-world cases (exceptions including but not limited to those attempting to position ladders on a moonless night) the climber will see the ladder and its position with respect to the wall as he or she sets up the ladder. We would expect students who miss this question to have a relatively high likelihood of improperly positioning ladders2—and students who correctly identify the ideal position to have a similarly high likelihood of getting their ladders within a fairly safe range of the target angle. If this holds true, our question would be reliable AND valid—a simple yet effective assessment item for our online course.3 2 Whenever using images, be sure to provide suitably descriptive ALT text to support visually impaired students. In the 360training web-based course builder, this ALT text is the description associated with the image. 3 Keep in mind that in a blended learning environment, where hands-on activities are an option, the best assessment would be to have the student actually set up the ladder. But there’s more…. Even though we think the revised question is probably good, we should still test the question with focus groups, or as an extra ungraded question on an existing exam, to make sure there is no other source of confusion or false signals. Do we need to more clearly indicate that the bottom value represents the distance between the base of the ladder and the wall? Do students recognize the ‘ as shorthand for feet? Do students recognize the gray line as a representation of the ladder or is it too abstract? As question-writers, we are human and have biases. The formal testing of question sets can help surface issues we ourselves have missed. In addition, to fine tune the overall assessment, we might include a series of questions on ladder angle—some easy and requiring for most people no more than a glance, some more difficult requiring better visual discernment and / or application of math to double-check correctness. Such a strategy will help the overall assessment establish a range of mastery levels, from novices (let’s not give these folks too tall a ladder), to those you’d confidently put in higher-risk contexts requiring greater accuracy and care. Your Turn: Question Regarding Level Rungs Imagine this hypothetical safety course also covered the need for the rungs of the ladder to be parallel and level. Students should ideally find a flat stable area on which to position the ladder. Students are taught that where feasible they can excavate ground to level it—but they should not stack pieces of wood, rock, or other objects under the leg of a ladder to raise it up as this build-up can be unstable. They are also presented with the option of attaching leg-leveling extensions to their ladder. It is noted these extensions can be expensive—but not nearly as expensive as a trip to the emergency room. The target audience, again, is the same as in the earlier example. They represent a wide range of ages and come from all walks of life. Below is how one of your subject matter experts initially wrote up the assessment question. The question is interesting and could potentially work well as an opener for a discussion or scenario-based activity—but in the context of an assessment, will it provide a reliable and valid gauge of our particular audience’s ability to use ladders safely? See what you think. Question B Version 1 You need to trim some branches off a sycamore growing on uneven ground. Your neighbor is threatening a lawsuit if the offending branches don’t come down today. The flattest place you can find sends the ladder listing sideways at about a 20° angle. When you try out the first step, your shoes only slide a little on the rungs and you have pretty good balance—but you are working with a saw. There are some rocks around but they are natural and not perfectly flat. The ground is a mixture of mostly dirt with some rocks. You’re grungy from working outside, the nearest hardware store is at least 20 minutes away, and you suspect your car is just about out of gas. Looking at the approaching storm clouds, you don’t have much time left. You think you might have felt a drop or two of rain. What do you do? - Blow it off and grab a cold drink. Act surprised that the date has passed when your neighbor confronts you. - Climb the ladder, as is. - Find a rock that’s about the right height and put it under the leg of the side that is too low. - Get a shovel or pickax and dig out the ground under the leg of the side that is too high. - Drive to the store and purchase a ladder-leveling attachment for your ladder. Question B Version 2 How would YOU revise this assessment item? Why? Consider vocabulary, ambiguity in choices, implied skills and means, and socio-economic-cultural understandings. How might differences in learner background and perspective render this question unreliable? What could you do to improve reliability? Consider the performance goals: To recognize that rungs that are not level are unsafe, and to apply one of two strategies for correcting the situation. How could you focus the question (or questions, if you split it apart) to hone in on those goals and provide valid assessment? Closing Thoughts Thinking of creating and selling elearning courses? If you choose to include quizzes or a final exam, consider carefully your audience and your learning objectives. Think of your assessments as a tool—like a thermometer. Focus on making them reliable and valid, a good indicator of learner ability to apply in the real world what your course has taught. Onward and upward!Laura and the 360training Authoring Team

So it’s REF (Research Excellence Framework) time again and the game of which publications to submit, and I have to say I am not having a good time. Publications are rated on a scale of 1 - 4, which 4 being internationally excellent. My book ‘Designing for learning in an open world’ was reviewed as ‘a major contribution to educational technology’, a strong three with elements of four. Hmmm who uses the phrase ‘Educational Technolog’ these days? Gutted. If that isn’t a four nothing I have done is! A chapter in a UNESCO/COL book on a review of Open Educational Resources and the OPAL initiative was reviewed as a strong three. But two papers I put forward on Cloudworks (one in Computers and Education and one in AJET) were assessed as twos! So now the game is to find alternatives. Below is a list of publications I am considering. Need to narrow this down to a couple, no idea how to do that! 1.             Conole, G. (submitted), A new classification schema for MOOCs, submitted to the INNOQUAL journal. INNOQUAL is a newly established journal, associated with the European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning (EFQUEL). The paper is timely given the current interest in MOOCs. It describes a new classification schema, based around 12 dimensions. 2.             Conole, G. (2013), Tools and resources to guide practice, in R. Sharpe and H. Beetham (Eds), Rethinking pedagogy in a digital age, 2nd Edition, London: Routledge Falmer. This is a popular book, which has been widely cited. The chapter provides an overview of Learning Design tools and their associated characteristics. 3.             Conole, G. (2012), The state of the art of the use of technology in distance education, in O. Zawacki-Richter and T. Anderson (Eds), Online Distance Learning - Towards a Research Agenda, Athabasca: Athabasca University Press The chapter provides an overview of the use of technology in distance education. It also discusses theory and methodology associated with the field, drawing on an ESRC-commissioned study of interdisciplinarity in Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL). It summarises a review of Web 2.0 technologies and their associated characteristics. 4.             Conole, G. (2012), Learning in an open world, in R. Brooks, A. Fuller and J. Waters (Eds), Changing Spaces of Education: New Perspectives on the Nature of Learning, London: Routledge This chapter is as a result of an invited talk at Southampton University as part of an ESRC research seminar series. The chapter critiques the question ‘What is likely to be the impact of an increasingly ‘open’ technologically mediated learning environment on learning and teaching in the future?’ It begins by describing the characteristics of new technologies and provides some examples of how these can be used to promote different pedagogical approaches. It outlines a set of pros and cons of different technologies. It then describes a number of facets of openness, namely: open design, open delivery, open research and open evaluation. 5.             Conole, G. (2010), Stepping over the edge: the implications of new technologies for education, In M. J. W. Lee & C. McLoughlin (Eds.), Web 2.0-based e-learning: Applying social informatics for tertiary teaching. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. The chapter focuses on the implications of Web 2.0 technologies and how they are changing learning and teaching practices. It references a taxonomy I developed for classifying tools according to how they are being used, and using this to compare how Web 2.0 tools are different from Web 1.0 tools. It provides examples of different ways in which Web 2.0 tools are being used in Education. It then provides an account of the characteristics of new technologies and the impact on practice. It concludes by considering the implications for learners, teachers and support staff, and institutions. It provides two case study, drawing on research I was involved with: new approaches to design, and new metaphors for describing digital interactions. 6.             Conole, E., Galley, R. and Alevizou, P. (2011), Frameworks for understanding the nature of interactions, networking and community in a social networking site for academic practice, IRRODL, Vol 12, No. 3, 119-138. The paper reviews the literature on interactions and communities online and uses this to evaluate a social networking site for sharing learning and teaching ideas, Cloudworks. 7.             Conole, G. (2010), Facilitating new forms of discourse for learning and teaching: harnessing the power of Web 2.0 practices, Open Learning, Vol.25, No. 2, June 2010, 141-151. This paper is a result of an invited keynote at the Cambridge Interactional Conference on Open and Distance Learning. It draws on the result carried out as part of the JISC-funded Open University Learning Design Initiative. It describes the characteristics of Web 2.0 technologies and how they can be used in learning and teaching. It puts forward a number of reasons why Web 2.0 technologies have not had the anticipated impact on education. The methodology is: user-centred, theory-based and critically reflective and evolving, drawing on a range of sources of data (desk research, interviews, focus groups, workshop evaluations, observations, web statistics, etc.) to develop a rich picture of users’ practices and perspectives in relation to the use of technology to support their learning and teaching activities. It describes how this approach was used to evaluation a social networking site, Cloudworks. In addition to provide stats associated with the site and a description of how it is being used, the paper describes the use of the site during the Cambridge conference. 8.             Conole, G. (2010), Bridging the gap between policy and practice: a framework for technological intervention, Journal of e-learning and knowledge society, vol. 6, no.1, February 2010, 13-27.  This paper is the result of an invited keynote at the VI Congresso Nazionale della SIe-L: E-learning, creatività ed innovazione in Salerno. It argues that despite the potential of new technologies to promote learning and teaching, there is a gap between the promote and the reality. It puts forward a framework for more effective uptake of technologies,  which considers the relationship between policy, research and practice.  

A few favorites from my PLN: teaching and technology! Source: newsmix.me See on Scoop.it - Educational News and Web Tools

Authors! Have you cooked up a delectable feast of content for your elearning course? After completing your first draft, it’s time to take a taste and analyze it. How is the pace of your course? Is it "well-spiced" with things that engage and delight—but not overloaded with elements fighting for attention? Does it leave your learners feeling satisfied after they consume it? While there are many ways to improve elearning content, the following are a few easy tips to fine-tune it before serving it up to learners. Take these into consideration, and you’ll soon be on your way towards a tempting, mouth-watering course! Visual appeal: Images can play an important role in learning, either as a garnish to set the mood or as the primary element served up on a given page. That said, you can have too much of a good thing. Images that do nothing to support the learning or that clutter the slide and distract from the core message can spoil the true flavor of your course. Ensure that your images complement or support your message, are of good quality, and are of a consistent look and feel as you move from slide to slide. Bite size: We all crave tasty food, but shoving too much into your mouth at once, or mixing together too many radically different things in a single bite, is typically not the way to gustatory bliss. The same goes with elearning courses. Each slide is essentially a mouthful of content. As subject matter experts, we are often tempted to tell the student EVERYTHING we think might be helpful. Or, looking at a forlorn slide with a pitiful amount of content on it, feel the urge to go ahead and start a new topic that might have little to do with the last one. Keep in mind that information is useful to the extent that the learner is able to digest it. As elearning authors, we need to organize information, bite by tasty healthy bite, slide by invigorating slide, to help with this process. As a general rule of thumb, try to have a single core idea or message per slide. If you have excessive white space on a particular slide, consider a large relevant image that reinforces the slide’s message and gives the slide a more balanced, finished feel. Check out different slide templates in our Learning Content Management System (LCMS) and choose them as per your content needs. Flavor and nourishment: How does your content taste? Have high expectations for your learners, but as you explain things, be sure to stay within your learners’ reach given their existing knowledge and background. Understand whether they seek caviar, a hearty meal of barbeque, or tofu and sprouts. Given that context, make your content lively and understandable. Keep learners focused by asking questions, either rhetorical or integrated into activities. Involve them with compelling stories. Grab their attention by using real-life examples and use expressive words with which the learner can relate. Keep wording simple and jargon-free where possible. Make sure sentences are clear, concise, and sound natural—the way the words would come out if you were explaining the concept to them directly. Finalize your draft by reading it as if you are a learner. How do you feel? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? Comfortably full? Energized and eager for more? Edit out anything that doesn’t need to go on your learner’s "plate" and does not add value. Healthy, tasty, and satisfying keeps learners coming back for more! Is there a fly in the soup? While writing and reviewing content, always double-check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. Use punctuation marks and apostrophes appropriately (your/you’re, its/it’s). Pay attention to commonly confused words (their/there, principal/principle, weak/week). Avoid sentence fragments in your content. For best results, dedicate an entire review cycle to checking the written text. Need help? Try these tips on eliminating typos. Like a fly in the soup, or that insect appendage that wasn’t part of the order, sloppy text errors harm your content’s credibility and have been known to ruin a learner’s appetite. Is everything else as it should be? Copy-paste is convenient, isn’t it? Often, writers finalize their first draft of text-based content in their word processing tool of choice, and then copy and paste it into their course authoring tool. While this approach is very convenient, it can also be the source of unexpected formatting errors. The word processor and your course authoring tools are two different platforms, and the formatting that you applied in your final draft may be not always be copied over with all the formatting intact. Some tools, you may find, copy the content over with a little extra unexpected formatting. Always preview your content after you have pasted it in your course authoring tool. Common formatting errors due to platform differences include: bullet points, numbered lists, hyphens, m- and n- dashes, and special characters. Transform your elearning course into perfect dining experience, that your learners may enjoy every bite—and that you might win that upcoming contest! Here’s to great elearning meals to come!Shazia, Laura, and the 360training Authoring Team

Last week I attended a METIS project meeting in Barcelona. It was an excellent and productive meeting. We are at an important stage in the project. We have developed an Integrated Learning Design Environment (ILDE), which brings together the research work we have been doing over the last ten years. The ILDE covers conceptual design, authoring and actual implementation in a Learning Management System. It is also possible to explore existing designs in the system that others have produced. Designs can be tagged by discipline, pedagogy or free search. We had the chance to explore the ILDE and we are planning on running a series of workshops in the UK, Greece and Spain in the Autumn with teachers to evaluate it. The ILDE is available online definitely worth taking a look at! One of the key success factors for a good project is a strong consortium, of people who have a shared vision and know each other’s work. That is certainly the case with METIS. I am looking forward to evaluating the workshops and to finding out how practitioners find the tool and whether or not it is useful. 

Before we begin, let’s imagine a situation. Envision yourself taking highly effective professional development training which contributes profoundly to your career. The training is useful, interesting, and highly interactive. All is going well, when suddenly you get confused about a certain point. You reach out and ask the instructor your question, and guess what he has to say? "That’s not right! Try again." How would you feel in such a situation? While envisioning this situation is frustrating, imagine the confusion, a student in an elearning course would face if all they received was "incorrect" every time they made an incorrect selection in an online course. Apart from the learner’s frustration, ineffective feedback can erect learning barriers that prevent learners from meeting the learning objectives of the course, and result in your hard work writing reliable and valid assessment questions going in vain! Here are a few tips to help you fill in learning gaps and maximize learning transfer by writing effective feedback for your elearning courses. There is no "one-size-fits-all" feedback. The feedback students need depends on your course content, the level and type of information you are providing, the existing knowledge of your students, the learning objectives of your course, and so forth. It’s time to swap ready-made feedback ("yes," "no," "that’s correct," "that’s incorrect") with directed, context-based, useful information. Provide immediate feedback, at regular intervals, prior to the final exam. Include opportunities for learners to explore and confirm what they know throughout the course—and provide prompt coaching feedback during those elearning interactions (activities, games, quizzes…) to guide student understanding. Keep in mind that assessments can be effective tools to support learning, not just measure it. If assessment feedback is provided at the end of the quiz or exam, as a sort of report card, it may have limited impact on learner improvement. By putting it at the end, you rely on the learner to diligently go back and review the questions marked as incorrect and absorb your feedback. Many learners, upon seeing a passing grade on a quiz, even if it is not a perfect grade, will hurry forward to the next section rather than take the time to review. This can leave gaps in their knowledge that may negatively impact their performance on the final exam. On the other hand, if you provide assessment feedback immediately after a question is asked, at that moment you’ve got the student’s attention and can immediately reinforce key points and address common misconceptions and errors. Give it some thought. Explore alternatives and consequences. eLearning courses can allow learners to practice real-life situations in a controlled and safe environment. Take advantage of the opportunities available with online interactivity often not available in a live setting: Endless practice, impact-free exploration of alternate approaches and consequences, opportunity to change perspectives and goals to shed light on other aspects of a problem or situation. Combine practical engaging scenarios with helpful focused feedback in elearning interactions and assessments so that the learners are not only aware of reasonable alternatives but also the consequences inherent in those choices. Let’s suppose your elearning course is about food safety and you want to test the learner’s knowledge about handling the allergic reaction of a customer in a restaurant setting to food he or she has eaten. When there are multiple common or competing reactions to a situation, it can be highly useful to help the learner understand the consequence of each alternative (answer options). For example, when seeing the customer in distress, the server may want to make inquiries as to food allergies, carried remedies, whether there is a doctor in the restaurant, explore the possibility that the guest may simply be choking on something (unrelated to allergies), or call for an ambulance. In some cases, the quick arrival of an ambulance may help save someone’s life. In other, milder cases, where the guest carries medicine for just such events, it may be an unnecessary and problematic expense. Appropriate sequencing of inquiries to determine the nature of the situation, followed by appropriate action is critical. Allowing students to see the consequences of NOT asking the right questions can help drive home the learning. Make every feedback count. For maximum effectiveness, each feedback response should be something worthy of attention—even when the answer is "you’re right." Again, imagine the instructor in the classroom. A remark of "great job" can make you feel good, but after enough of those, the student is likely to stop paying close attention. Adding a tidbit of information (for example "Great job. Did you know that _________?") can set the feedback up as more of a conversation, where every feedback provides some useful or interesting nugget. Be clear and direct. Start your feedback with a statement that indicates immediately if the response was correct, partially correct, or incorrect. Then provide the follow-up. If the response was incorrect, explain WHY it was incorrect. Then, coach the student. If the student is likely to encounter the question in future assessment attempts (because the assessment draws from a limited bank of questions), provide a guiding hint as to the correct answer and how to approach such questions in the future. If the assessment draws from a reasonably large bank of questions, make feedback a teaching moment. Explain the thought process behind why the correct response was the best response. Keep feedback concise. In most cases, feedback should not be a mini-lecture. It’s a follow-up response to the user’s response. If you are concerned about skipping useful information in your feedback explanations, break core concepts into smaller chunks when writing assessment questions and designing elearning interactions. Focus each question or activity to address a particular aspect of the core concept. In most cases, this can help lessen the amount of feedback you need to provide at any given moment. It’s good to talk! Consider feedback as a developmental dialogue between you and your student rather than a monologue which is written to pinpoint the mistakes that the learners have committed as they moved forward in your elearning course. Write feedback in a friendly and conversational tone to help promote high order thinking by clarifying the tricky points of your course. In most cases, avoid blunt negative statements such as "You are wrong!" or "Incorrect!" It doesn’t need to be a verbal buzzer. Try replacing such openers with comments that make it clear that there is a problem, but with a little more compassion, for example: "Hmm, let’s look at that again." "Careful." For activities that allow the student to make a different selection, encourage the student with phrases like "Try again. You can do it!" or "Let’s try a different approach. What might work best?" In most cases, positive statements should not only confirm correctness, but cheer learners forward. Statements such as "Bravo!" "Great Job!" and "Way to go!" may be small phrases, but can strongly influence how the learner feels about their own performance and about the course itself. As in a conversation, keep the praise appropriate for the importance and scope of the task. "Fantastic!" for clicking the meaning of a word may strain credibility. The same remark applied to successfully analyzing a situation and identifying a solution with significant real-world impact could more reasonably merit "Fantastic!" Better learning, better feedback. We all learn from our mistakes. As online course developers, we should provide pleasant and informative learning experiences to our students and fill out any learning gap that exists between the learner and the online training that we have created. With the help of effective elearning feedback, we can ensure maximum learning transfer by helping our students embrace errors as learning opportunities. Ready to teach? Whether your interest is online courses, webinar courses, or classroom, the 360training Authoring Program can help you make that dream a profitable reality. No cost or commitment involved—just opportunity. Teach the world—and make money doing so. Sign up today to create great courses and help learners improve their performance by learning from their mistakes.