25 Shared This year at Learning Solutions, we had welcome visits from many interested folks in the e-Learning industry who were curious about iSpring products and what they could do to empower their workflow. Naturally, in an expo environment, there’s a limited amount of time to chat; thus, after the conference, we set up a series of webinars to go into greater detail about iSpring products’ unique contribution to e-Learning. We were quite pleased with the turnout at our webinars, and even more pleased that we were able to answer the questions of attendees. Here’s our Top 5: What separates iSpring from Articulate and Adobe? Naturally, this is a question we get a lot. Of course, during a webinar, we go into much greater detail about what sets iSpring apart, but for our website visitors, we’ve prepared this handy chart for comparison with the latest and greatest products on the market.Read more »

14 Shared Engaging e-Learners in a mobile learning environment presents different challenges than engaging students in a traditional classroom setting. When training remotely, learners may be tempted to check their email, surf the internet, or perform other tasks in the background. E-Learning can save travel costs, cut back on time away from the office, and open up learning experiences to employees who may not have had them otherwise. However, students’ temptation to multitask or "check out" from the training session means online trainers need to work twice as hard to keep their students engaged. But don’t worry. Today’s mobile learning platforms are set up for success. From PowerPoint converters that will transform your presentation into an interactive, digital experience, to programs that host real-time panel discussions and polls, there is no shortage of online tools to keep your trainings fresh. These are our top four tips to keep e-learners motivated. Read more »

24 Shared e-Learning course protection Plagiarism is rampant. A recent study of academic journal articles revealed that more than 68% of articles researchers surveyed qualified as plagiarized. If plagiarism, representing someone else's work without acknowledgment, is a problem in academia, authors of e-Learning courses have reason for concern. The Internet makes so much content accessible. Downloading, copy-and-paste tools, and many more technological tricks make a plagiarist's work easy. When you've invested research, time, effort, teamwork and - frankly - a considerable amount of resources to produce an e-Learning course, protection of that investment is a priority. While the Internet provides easy access to information, a downside to consider is that information is available for anyone to harvest.Read more »

15 Shared Can there be anything just as effective as teaching or training in person? After 20 years of e-Learning history, we’re sure: although its methods and tools are pretty different, it can be equally inspiring. Below are 10 suggestions you can implement before, during, and after your next training to guarantee success as an online trainer. BEFORE YOU BEGIN Use registration to gauge interest and tailor content When students sign up for your corporate learning session, invite them to send information about their professional passions, current role, and aspirations. Use their feedback to tailor interactive activities and course content around topics related to these interests.Read more »

41 Shared With the upgrade of iSpring Present mobile app for iPad to support iSpring Cloud, we were curious to see how it stands up to the competition. There are a few other apps on the App Store that fill the "PowerPoint on iPad" niche, but they have some limitations which could be deal-breakers for the discerning consumer, so we’ve done some in-depth research on their feature sets to compare them all head-to-head. Read more »

25 Shared iSpring is bustling with activity these days in preparation for the next eLearning Guild event, mLearnCon 2015 in Austin, TX. We’ll be waiting at booth # 301 with the following attractions: Read more »

43 Shared Gone are the Office Space days of isolated cubicles where workers are expected to keep to themselves. In this social day and age, cubicle walls have come down, desks now meet in friendly islands, and workers want to learn from the others around them. In fact, 31 percent of people leave their jobs due to a lack of empowerment according to one study, while according to another, 33 percent leave due to a lack of perceived growth potential. The good news? You can address both of these problems by creating a culture of self-directed learning (SDL) at your organization. Doing so cultivates employee engagement by giving them both the opportunity to learn and to teach, which cements concepts and majorly boosts agency. Plus, when employees teach one another, the result is a very cost-effective staff training strategy. What’s to lose? Here are seven ways to structure your work environment for self-directed learning.Read more »

29 Shared PowerPoint-to-video technology has been continuing to make inroads at iSpring, and we’re proud to announce the latest victory: iSpring Pro 7.1 now includes PPT-to-video with direct publishing to YouTube. PowerPoint to MP4 With iSpring Pro 7.1, now you can save your video presentation on your computer as an .mp4 file, the top choice among industry professionals for crystal-clear quality at a reasonable file size. More than that, you can even find your own balance between quality and size by adjusting the audio and video compression settings. If you have a specific device in mind for playback, you can adjust the image dimensions for a perfect fit on any screen, large or small. Read more »

36 Shared There’s been a lot of buzz from our clients lately about the iMoot online Moodle conference, which will be held from May 28th to June 1st. We’re proud to announce that iSpring and our trusted partner, actXcellence, are among the sponsors of the event. Not only that, their president, Guido Hornig, will be delivering an extremely enlightening presentation, How to use PowerPoint as an authoring tool e.g. for SCORM. Read more »

27 Shared The four primary learning styles present unique opportunities for online trainers. Whether your e-learners respond best to visual, auditory, kinesthetic or reading content, the mobile learning environment naturally complements each of these styles. Understanding and teaching to all your learners in a balanced way can have a tremendous impact on the engagement levels and success of your online training course. Visual Learners: Visual learners respond best to visceral material, such as vivid images, bright colors, shapes, and design elements. Do not underestimate the importance of an eye-catching, well polished presentation to these students. Although your presentation design may seem trivial compared to the course material, having a well-crafted PowerPoint presentation can help these learners visually organize and internalize content. In a corporate learning environment, we recommend using fresh, cool colors such as blues, grays, and greens when accenting content to keep your presentation bright, but professional. Use images and videos that relate to your material to accentuate important information. Try to steer clear of generic icons or abstract images that don’t have a meaningful relationship with your content, and always take time to pause and discuss the importance of each image to strengthen your visual learners’ mental connection.Read more »

24 Shared Sometimes it can be difficult to add the right mix of elements to your online course with hopes to increase student and employee engagement. "Engagement" and "Gamification" are two terms that seem to be big in the e-Learning world right now - and they go hand-in-hand. What is gamification exactly and what are the different ways to engage your online learners? Gamification in e-Learning is the use of game theory and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage and motivate your online students. That means adding interactive PowerPoint presentations with built-in quizzes or drag-and-drop features. But that isn’t all you can do with gamification - check out these 5 tips for successfully "gamifying" your online courseRead more »

24 Shared iSpring’s product line has been enjoying many superb enhancements of late, what with the roll-out of the 7.1 product line; and among those enhancements is full-fledged support for the latest Tin Can API version 1.0+ e-Learning standard. But if Tin Can is anything, it certainly isn’t standard. Read more »

15 Shared The iSpring engineers have really been pouring on the gas, and the results speak for themselves. The May update of iSpring Cloud brings a couple of exciting new features, plus some cool enhancements to already existing features: New: support for hyperlink tracking New: support for user profile avatar change (JPEG, PNG, GIF images) Enhanced: new account creation & password restore Read more »

32 Shared Do you wish you could teach your employees more easily, more frequently and from the comfort of their desks or homes? Are you intimidated by the idea of hiring an informational designer or finding a crack team of e-learning pros? Do you like to do things on your own, but are not sure how to kick off your own corporate learning program? Deep breaths. Believe it or not, most companies have an excellent tool for e-learning course creation on their desktops right now. It’s called PowerPoint. What? you’re thinking. But isn’t that just for presentations and stuff? Can I really teach with it? Traditionally, the use of PowerPoint has been limited to long, stodgy presentations awash in bullet points and terrible stock vectors. But you can break the mold, making awesome e-learning and even mobile learning presentations with nothing more than this Microsoft staple. Here are seven tips for rocking the process. Read more »

9 Shared In the Internet age, people routinely go online to learn. Perhaps they want to lose weight, or make the perfect Mother’s Day soufflé, or fix their dishwasher without calling in a repairman. Whatever the case is, such folks display the best traits about learning: they stick with the problem, they engage fully, they experiment on their own, they return to the problem if necessary. They are motivated; they have a "need to learn." If only you could ensure all your employees would feel this way when you pass out learning materials, right? Unfortunately, this is in many cases a pipe dream. Lack of motivation often characterizes employees who are learning independently, who may wish to complete the course as quickly as possible or are only doing it because they "have to." This lack of motivation reduces a learner’s ability to absorb and retain information, which is not what you want.Read more »

12 Shared More great LMS news from iSpring! We’ve completed compliance tests with another top-shelf Learning Management System, Intuition Rubicon, and the results are positive: SCORM 1.2 courses published with iSpring are fully supported in their system. Read more »

32 Shared So you’ve put the finishing touches on a course and published it to an LMS. But the statistics are showing you that the course isn’t quite as effective as you had hoped. Some learners aren’t completing the course; some aren’t spending enough time on each slide; some are spending too much time! Besides all that, you’re having a hard time gauging the overall results of the training, because there’s no convenient built-in assessments or feedback opportunities. Read more »

25 Shared Training courses have evolved over the years - we no longer need chalkboards and No. 2 pencils. For online trainers it is a completely new approach, but this does not mean you have to leave all the old ways behind. Here are some tips to help you spruce up your course and engage your learners in a new and creative way. Trade in your dry erase markers for a mouse or stylus. Use your online training software’s annotation tools to mark up your own presentation or try a digital whiteboard like Talkboard, which is a free, collaborative drawing and writing pad. Invite e-Learners to join your Talkboard and brainstorm together in real-time, or ask them to share their own screens during your presentation to showcase their mobile work. Read more »

26 Shared iSpring’s engineers are continuing the march of progress, testing the hottest LMSs for compatibility with our authoring tools. The next stop on our journey is Docebo LMS, which provides excellent support for SCORM 1.2/2004, AICC and Tin Can/xAPI. Naturally, iSpring’s authoring tools generate content for all those standards, so with iSpring and Docebo, you have the luxury of choice. Docebo has been ranked in the world’s Top 10 for SaaS elearning solutions providers, and in the Top 3 for B2B LMSs. Docebo is generally regarded as one of the industry’s most comprehensive solutions for training management, and has been chosen by some of the world’s most respected companies to achieve operational efficiency. Read more »

37 Shared This year, mLearnCon was hosted in Austin, TX, with a turnout of over 1,000 e-Learning professionals from around the world. We had a few hundred visitors to our booth, all curious about how iSpring products could accelerate their mLearning. Several iSpring customers swang by to testify about their positive experience with us, and as always, everybody enjoyed our iSpring totes and nesting dolls. Read more »

58 Shared Self-directed learning, or SDL, brings many gains to a company, which is why it is becoming so popular among businesses large and small. If you want a higher level of self-direction among your employees, consider that most workplace change starts at a cultural level. Instead of handing down mandates from above, instill a wide variety of opportunities for self-directed learning at every level of your workforce. Because people learn in different ways and are fired by different pursuits, giving lots of choice encourages better and fuller learning. Plus, it’s really in the spirit of self-direction. Here are seven ideas to get you started.Read more »

0 Shared Mark Wilcock is a Learning Technology Development (LTD) officer at the prestigious Edge Hill University in northwestern England. In January 2014, he and the LTD team at Edge Hill began to experiment with iSpring authoring tools as a way to aid both faculty and students in their online/mobile learning experience. The results were so encouraging that they launched an "early adopters project", including a webinar in July of that same year, which resulted in dozens of faculty and staff using iSpring as part of the project. Read more »

14 Shared We’ve just completed an update to iSpring QuizMaker which greatly enhances your sharing capabilities. Now, you can publish your quizzes directly to iSpring Cloud hosting and sharing platform with a single click from the QuizMaker interface! What’s iSpring Cloud? iSpring Cloud is your perfect solution for sharing content on any device fast and easy, with crystal-clear quality. You can instantly distribute your presentations and quizzes via shortlink, email, and social media, or even embed them on a website or blog. It has some built-in tracking features which are great for presentations, but you can also use QuizMaker’s built-in reporting capabilities to send detailed results to email or a server.Read more »

25 Shared Mark Wilcock is a Learning Technology Development (LTD) officer at the prestigious Edge Hill University in northwestern England. In January 2014, he and the LTD team at Edge Hill began to experiment with iSpring authoring tools as a way to aid both faculty and students in their online/mobile learning experience. The results were so encouraging that they launched an early adopters project, including a webinar in July of that same year, which resulted in dozens of faculty and staff using iSpring as part of the project. The early adopters project was completed in early 2015, and three participants were chosen to present video case studies, where they would share their experiences using iSpring. As of last month, all the interviews have been completed, and the results are overwhelmingly positive. Read more »