This weekend was all about relaxing. I resigned from my full-time role to take on a fantastic full-time contract opportunity, and in the interim, I have a mini-vacation I hadn’t expected! Joe and I went out on Saturday to pick up my new office desk and some home office supplies, and I am really excited to set up my new home office! How was your weekend? Professional: Cara Lynne Livermore provides a great overview of how she uses Evernote. This is fantastic! I’ve been curious about jumping on the Evernote bandwagon for awhile, and Cara helps clarify some of the questions I had. This week’s E-Learning Challenge was to create an interactive screenshot for online training. While more of a local shelter promotion, I threw together (very quickly) this submission. B-School is in full swing, with Module 2 being released tomorrow. I have one more activity to tackle, and I’ll be all ready! Cute: Photos of dogs leaving the shelter reminded me of how happy Oliver looked in the backseat of our car that first drive home! Reading: This week I finished reading Build Your Dreams: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love by Alexis Irvin and Chip Hiden. To be honest, I wasn’t too crazy about it, but I’ll save my opinion for a video review. One book on my ‘to read’ list is The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli. I’m interested to read about the psychology behind avoiding cognitive errors. Also on my ‘to read’ list is Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy, Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk, because that kook-aid…I’m drinking it. Enjoying: DavidsTea Pom Tango Gap’s Cuffed Always Skinny Jeans, because when uncuffed, they fit me perfectly.

Powerful Partnerships to Boost Personalized Learning Infographic Benefits of blended and online learning opportunities include increased student engagement and access to tools that support quality work products. A personalized approach provides students ownership of the learning experience, flexibility in path, and opportunities to progress at an individual pace. Schools and districts are now offering blended and online learning programs, and some are doing so at scale. This Powerful Partnerships to Boost Personalized Learning outlines the key lessons from programs which have successfully scaled their online and blended learning opportunities. From simplifying the teacher and student user experience to cultivating leadership, the infographic displays the lessons learned and features a framework for thinking about scaling the personalized learning experience. For more information, see How to Successfully Scale Personalized Learning: Six Key Lessons from Effective Programs by Fuel Education™ in partnership with Getting Smart®. This white paper explores how districts and schools can successfully scale online and blended programs to extend learning opportunities for all students. The paper features: A framework for scaling personalized learning Six key lessons from the trenches on scaling personalized learning Interviews with educators who have successfully scaled online and blended programs Benefits being realized today by schools and districts who are scaling their programs Recommendations for school leaders and educators who wish to scale Via: www.getfueled.comThe post Powerful Partnerships to Boost Personalized Learning Infographic appeared first on e-Learning Infographics.

I cannot tell you how long I have been wanting to write this post - years. I’m sure a musical will follow shortly…After reading an insightful article by fellow Instructional Designer, Nicole Mellas, entitled 3 Steps to Get MORE out of Subject Matter Expert (SME) Interviews, I was prompted to share my tips and experiences. Dealing with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can be tricky. Often times, they have trouble placing themselves in the shoes of their audience and/or Instructional Designer, and on particularly frustrating days where communication has come to a standstill, I call this relationship "My SME and Me." In the darkest moments (re: sobbing over my keyboard), it renews my faith in humanity. As Instructional Designers it is our job to figure out how to communicate effectively with our SMEs. Effectively in the sense that you get clear (or somewhat clear) answers to the questions you have in order to ensure the most accurate content, and you do this in an efficient manner. The phrase ‘time is money’ is a very accurate one in this respect. There are often many other tasks that you could devote your time and effort to in the instructional development process, so it is critical to be able to streamline the approach you take when it comes to communicating with your SME. Another phrase I’ve come to appreciate in recent weeks - "Everything is figureoutable" - Marie Forleo - allows me to recognize that each SME is their own person and as such, they are entitled to their own manner of communicating and disseminating information and the Instructional Designer will eventually figure out how best to communicate with that particular person. When I reflect on my annual performance, I often cite communicating with SMEs as one of my greatest challenges. While I still consider this task challenging, I walk into my SME interactions with a different attitude - one that appreciates where the SME is coming from and their area of expertise - they’re a SME for a reason, after all. This is step one. Go into your SME interactions prepared. Pinpoint the specific content areas you want to discuss in an agenda, that you submit to the SME ahead of time, and bring relevant reference material to the meeting (or include it in the agenda email) - this will help streamline your meeting by giving the SME an opportunity to prepare themselves ahead of time. Always keep your eye on the prize. The prize is engaging, accurate content or copy, and you need to steer the ship of conversation! If your SME begins to go off on a tangent, diplomatically get them in check, and proceed with your agenda (e.g. "That’s an incredible story about how you built the rocket, but could you tell me more about how to launch the rocket?"). Accurate content is essential for many training programs. I would say all, but something like soft skills training may be more subjective than something more specific like air traffic control training. It is imperative that you keep your SME on point. Finally, respect your SME. When you are especially frustrated and feel like you’ve talked circles around yourself, always be polite and ensure you are respectful to your SME. In many industries, you will likely have to interact with this individual again, and not burning bridges will go a long way in your next interaction. To summarize, my tips for successful SME interactions are: Get your attitude in check Come prepared Keep the content in mind Direct your SME and keep them on point Respect your SME and build rapport What have your SME experiences been like? Have you experienced cases of My SME and Me?

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Utility Warehouse, part of Telecom Plus PLC is a multi-award winning provider to 550,000 homes and small businesses throughout the UK. They have a team of 46,000 distributors. Paul Goundry, Head of Learning had a grand vision: To put the experience of high performing distributors ‘in the pocket’ of new distributors with fully responsive elearning. This is the story of how he achieved it with Elucidat. Utility Warehouse Rolled Out Responsive eLearning To 46,000 BYOD Learners Utility Warehouse strives to provide interactive work aids and learning materials that are accessible to their workforce who work remotely throughout the UK. However, after trying several elearning development tools, they still found difficulty producing immersive responsive elearning that worked on the web and any mobile device. After choosing Elucidat, they found they were able to create content without compromising their vision and also discovered several major advantages over the competition. Let’s look at the figures: 46,000 total Learners 13,000 new starters per year 15% of learners on mobile phones, 16% on tablets The Challenge Utility Warehouse found that their content wasn’t responsive elearning and wouldn’t display reliably on all devices and that the tools they were using to develop responsive content for multiple devices actually produced materials with very limited interactivity. ‘We’ve tried other tools, but found that in order to get them to work across different platforms meant our content had to be incredibly limited. For example we ended up having to lock things in landscape formats; the tools didn’t actually allow us to present our content how we wanted or how our learners expected.’ Furthermore, Paul and the team at Utility Warehouse found that the tools they tried did not cater for all e-learning scenarios and page types (even standard hotspot screens!) ‘This meant that as soon as we got the tool, we ended up paying for the providers to create the page types we needed. That cost us a few thousand pounds just to have that piece of work done!’ Another area of frustration for the team was that support was often restricted to forums: ‘We had to rely on other users giving us support rather than the suppliers themselves. Even with tools where support is included in the package, we’d make a request and it would go into a black hole!’ All Change Finally, Utility Warehouse made a switch to Elucidat in an attempt to confidently create engaging experiences that created fully responsive elearning on any device: ‘The reason we chose Elucidat is because it is capable of delivering a great experience across platforms: we’re not limited. Elucidat can produce cross-platform learning whilst still allowing a lot of interactivity out of the box. We can be far more creative than we had been able to be with any other tool.’ ‘With Elucidat we don’t compromise user experience on any device.’ Paul and the team at Utility Warehouse needed a tool that could do everything in one: ‘We would previously have ended up having to use different tools for different jobs. We’re able now to invest in one tool and master one tool that can do it all.’ The Result 65% increase in new starter confidence Utility Warehouse needed: A tool that can create great interactive content and responsive elearning No need to create separate desktop and mobile versions Wider library of editable page types Support as part of the package Elucidat provided: Reliable, interactive multi-device content An all in one incredibly simple authoring environment that allows easy creation of responsive courses An expansive library of page types and the option to create custom page types A Customer Success team to ensure success of the project Final word goes to Paul; ‘We’re able to wholeheartedly encourage people to access content through their mobile phone. We simply wouldn’t have been able to do that before. ‘The fact that support is built in to the system makes it incredibly painless, being able to communicate directly with the support team using a feature in the platform is very powerful. ‘We feel like we are only just scratching at the surface of what’s possible, and we have just started working on gaming and scenario-driven designs for their content. ‘It’s really about the future for us and the opportunities that we will be able to seize because of the flexibility Elucidat offers. I realize that what we’ve bought isn’t just a typical e-learning platform where you are stuck with certain templates, what we’ve actually bought is literally endless possibilities.’ A version of this article first appeared on eLearningIndustry.com The post How Utility Warehouse Rolled Out Responsive eLearning To 46,000 BYOD Learners appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

It seems like pricing e-learning packages is such a hot topic lately, and a necessary one at that. We all need to price our services in order to give clients an accurate representation of the cost; however, it’s a balancing act. As far as I’m concerned, there are three variables to consider: Audience, Level of Effort, Value. Your audience will likely be a strong dictator of your pricing model. Why? Well, you would likely package and price a package for a small business owner much lower than you would price a package for a large corporation. Keeping this in mind, you should also provided increased value equitable to increased pricing. For example - you may develop a stand-alone self-paced Computer-Based Training Module for a small business owner with no additional support, whereas you may develop the same module for a corporation; however you would customize it to fit their needs and provide continual support. The value you provide your clients should always increase relative to the pricing. The level of effort is a calculation made based on the time it will take to develop the product from start to finish (including review and revision cycles). For much of my work, I tend to use a variation in pricing structure to that provided by the Chapman Alliance. A recent forum post by Owen Holt provided a great breakdown of Chapman’s numbers, if you need further clarification. Keeping level of effort in mind, you should also consider whether this product will be one that you can resell. If so, it should be priced more competitively as you may have many buyers. For example, you develop a stand-alone self-paced module, price it at 100 dollars per download, and have 25 purchasers - here you’re at 2,500 dollars of profit for the level of effort of one product. This pricing structure doesn’t mean that you have to necessarily reduce the value of content offered within the product; only that you should carefully consider how much effort you put into the module, and cost appropriately. I’ll say it again - if you’re increasing value of your product (e.g. adding worksheets, job aids, resources, support, added review cycles, etc.), you need to increase the price of the product accordingly. Hourly versus Fixed Price Within the realm of e-learning, you may stumble upon a project that would be most appropriately billed at an hourly rate, then you may stumble upon another project where a fixed-price contract is more logical. However you choose to price your expertise is your choice; however, keep in mind that there are benefits and limitations to both models. Hourly pricing is good for quick projects (e.g. making revisions to a pre-existing e-learning project), but I would recommend charging per at least half-hour time periods. The trouble with hourly pricing is that you need to be efficient to keep clients satisfied and coming back. Clients don’t want to feel like you’re taking your sweet time developing materials for them because you’re working on an hourly rate. Another trouble with hourly pricing is that people often undervalue themselves, inadvertently, by not accounting for the variables which make up hourly pricing. For example, as an independent contractor, you’re hourly rate will not consider benefits of traditional full-time employment (e.g. health/dental, vacation, etc.). Therefore, your hourly rate must be higher than it would if you were employed within a traditional full-time role. Fixed pricing models are good and bad. Good because you can package your expertise and potentially save yourself time. Bad because if you inaccurately price your expertise, you can get caught in a work contract where you’re losing profit. With these contracts, you need to carefully review the materials and project requirements to calculate a fair price based on the hours required to complete the project and the value you will be delivering to the client. Another negative with fixed pricing is that you may scare off potential clients who underestimate the value of the product they’re requesting. To that end, I have to say that if you’ve accurately priced the project and the client is scared off, the client wasn’t worth working with as they already undervalue your expertise. So, how should I price my products?! I know. There’s a lot of information here, and the real answer is that it depends. There are so many variables to consider when pricing your products, and it will take time to develop an appropriate pricing model. My recommendations are that regardless of which pricing model you choose to subscribe to, you consider all of the variables and find out what works for you and your niche market.

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Alright, folks! I’ve got a new feature - Terminology Tuesday. As someone with a background in Linguistics, this is clearly up my alley, but it should be up yours too! Why?! Two reasons: 1 - As Instructional Designers, it is important to be able to define the terms you will be working with on a frequent basis so that you can properly explain these terms to a client instead of fakin’ it til’ you make it; 2 - As a potential client, I want to know that the cash I’m shelling out is going to something productive and meaningful to my project. This week we’ll be discussing Storyboards and Rapid Prototyping. Storyboarding Storyboarding is a process wherein a sequence for the product is laid out visually or textually. You may be most familiar with this term as it applies to animations - where the story is depicted scene by scene prior to development. Within Instructional Design, storyboarding lays out the course or module to indicate screens, topics, teaching points, onscreen text, and media descriptions. There are many variations; however, the previously mentioned elements are most commonly represented within the storyboard. Other elements may include audio narration, assessment items, filenames for media assets, source or reference images, or screenshots exemplifying the anticipated media asset or screen to be developed. Pros: Allows the Instructional Designer to organize the content and provides an encompassing document which may be reviewed prior to entry into an authoring environment. Cons: Is an extra step in the development process and may be considered an unnecessary expense by clients or as storyboards do not depict the finished product, reviewers may have difficulty reviewing content as they cannot contextualize the content without seeing the final product (this is typically an issue for visual learners). Storyboarding can also hinder the ability to adequately convey branching scenarios. Rapid Prototyping Rapid prototyping is a process wherein the Instructional Designer takes the content and commits it to the chosen authoring environment to develop a prototype of the final deliverable/product. Here, reviewers can assess the prototype, visually, and propose revisions prior to the delivery of the final product. Pros: Provides reviewers with added visual context, limits time spent developing paper-based models (e.g. storyboards), and may reduce review and revision cycles. Cons: Rapid prototyping may not be ideal for projects developing complex interactions, as these projects may result in length review and revision cycles until the ideal design has been achieved, holding up production of future courses or modules. Both approaches have clear advantages and disadvantages, and as an Instructional Designer, it is your responsibility to assess the content and guide your client toward an appropriate approach, based upon the client’s project requirements, scope, and budget. Like this post? Want more Instructional Design tips? Sign up below!  

You can’t go to a learning conference these days without seeing a session or ten on gamification; it’s becoming more common to be asked to "add gamification" to a learning experience. But what is ‘gamification’ and how can it help you to design great elearning? The Good Gamified eLearning We’ve long known that playing games can help people to learn a well as being fun, that’s why we play games with our kids, and it’s not a new concept to bring games into instructional design. Disney coined the phrase ‘edutainment’ back in the 1940’s and ‘gamification’ was probably first used by Nick Pelling, creator of games for the BBC Micro and Commodor in the 1980’s. Kevin Werbach of Wharton offers a definition for the term ‘gamification’: "The use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts". We’ve seen an explosion in ‘gamification’ in the way firms seek to engage customers (think Nike) and the iOS and Android platforms have opened up a world of apps which naturally employ gaming elements into their feature lists. But in our sphere, that of learning and development, the notion of games design elements in what we do has been around for a fair while now. It’s a long time ago, relatively speaking in digital terms, that Marc Prensky penned his first book, Digital Game-based Learning. We knew back then what the core principles were in games design that were beneficial for instructional design. I can boil them down to just four: Engagement Challenge Progression Accomplishment In all of these, the game changer, (pardon the pun!) was that the learner was put at the centre of the approach, in other words, the design centered around the learner like a game centers around the player. After all, if the game isn’t about the player, there’ll be no one playing it. So, first rule of great gamified eLearning is: learner centricity. This makes sense when you consider that it’s long been the Holy Grail of both the corporate and education sectors to put learning successfully online. It reduces lead-in time, costs, barriers to access, and - in theory at least - frees the learner from the tyranny of prescribed instruction. Putting instructional materials online often (though by no means always) means no instructor. We can learn a lot from games design that provides a framework for making online learning experiences successful for learners when there’s no instructor present. For example, when was the last time you saw little Jimmy digesting the How To manual before getting stuck into the latest stage of League of Legends? Intrinsic in any gaming software is good onboarding that orientates the gamer into how to play the game with a few helpful practice techniques. The game starts at an easy level, making it impossible to fail. And if you do fail, it gives you some more tips about what you’re not doing and drops you back in to have another go. Once you’ve mastered that bit, the game moves on, providing more challenges and building the gamer’s skills on those that he or she learned in the prior stage. All these features are in response to the fact that in eLearning, the instructor’s not there. Check out Plants vs. Zombies to see how these techniques are deployed. The challenge and achievement in game design is a blueprint for the type of eLearning that engages and fulfills learners. In addition, gamification focuses on short-term, achievable goals with clear rewards and provides a framework for learning new material. Duolingo provides a great example of learners setting their goals and working to the next level. What’s more, games give instant feedback. This is something we do all the time in good eLearning, fostering activity and formative feedback loops, which provide challenges to learners and then adaptive feedback on their response. If you think about a well-formed quiz interaction, this is what happens: you pose a challenge with a question, elicit a response and then give feedback on: how the learner did, what he or she could have done better, and what the next challenge is to help them improve. Good learning design includes all of the gamification features I’ve just discussed: Plenty of formative assessment giving you feedback on how you’re doing If you’re not doing so well, guidance in what you can do to improve Helping you get good at something by providing lots of opportunities to try again Providing help when you need it Being adaptive to your learning pace, or providing non-linear pathways that open up new and more difficult challenges that further your progress though the course Recognizing achievement, either through intrinsic or extrinsic rewards - getting to the next level, collecting badges or trophies. There’s not much here that’s news to the ear of a good instructional designer. But great gamified eLearning does look different from your usual click and read offering, and that’s perhaps because there’s now recognition that good gamified eLearning benefits as much from the input of the creative designer as it does from the instruction design and the programming. More and more, eLearning teams are looking outwards for animators, graphics experts and creative designers to come on board to bring the visual and interactive design skills that are common place in games design. Meanwhile there are eLearning authoring tools available, such as Elucidat, which can help you to bring all the skills together to build gamified eLearning with the minimum effort using a wealth of tried and tested gaming techniques and features. There are also resources to help you; check out this free book on gamification and industry experts’ views and opinions So in summary, to create a great gamified eLearning course you need to consider; learner centricity, engaging your learner, providing intrinsic motivation as well as extrinsic (a sense of accomplishment), with well designed challenges and rich feedback, as well as opportunities for learners to take different pathways through the course. Was this post useful? Do you have any examples of great gamified eLearning you can share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below. There is also a showcase featuring some examples of great gamification designs in eLearning which you can browse at Elearning Superstars. A version of this article first appeared on eLearningIndustry.com The post The Anatomy Of Good Gamified eLearning appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

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The goal of this week’s challenge was to create a visual story using photo collages as a means of moving away from the urge to display slides and slides of bullets within your e-learning modules. The Concept A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon this article by the CVU, outlining the state of online university education in Canada, and it really struck a chord with me. As someone who is extremely passionate about Instructional Design and increasing accessibility, it seemed baffling that we could be lagging so far behind other countries. However, after since working for a university, I have a bit more context into the why of how things are - you can’t really force professors to put their courses online, you can only provide them with gentle encouragement. In any event, I thought it was important to disseminate the information in this report, so I did it once in a paper for graduate school, and I did it again within this challenge. The Method I thought an infographic-style of approach would best display the statistics I wanted to illustrate, so I downloaded and cropped the infographic elements in Adobe Illustrator, imported them into Storyline and organized them appropriately. Then, I added a layer for every element, and applied hotspots on the base layer so that when the user hovered over each element, the appropriate statistics would display. When the user moves their mouse away from the element, the base layer returns to its original state. While not a traditional infographic and not the most attractively organized (Hey! I’m not a graphic designer!), I was happy with the end result. The Result To view the complete interaction, click here. Like this post? Want more Instructional Design tips? Sign up below!  

Gamification is the buzz word in eLearning at the moment, but of course, you don’t want to gamify eLearning for the sake of it. In this post, you’ll explore the principles underpinning good gaming design for eLearning, and set out an eight point checklist to help you create better, gamified learning. Gaming Design For Elearning In my last post, The Anatomy of Good Gamified eLearning, I made the suggestion that there are sound instructional principles underlying gaming design in eLearning. For one, we know that playing games motivate and engage players with challenges, feedback about how they are doing, and progression i.e. reaching the next level of skill. We’ve been doing gaming design for eLearning for a long time. More than a decade ago, Donald Clark outlined what underpins good learning design, and guess what, he describes lots of gaming elements. This is a ‘dream list’ for learning designers as, Donald argues, the areas outlined are the common weak points of much traditional classroom and page-turning eLearning. So, let’s revisit Donald’s proposal of what games offer learners and take a dive into the key points: 1. Motivation All games are based on the premise that the player wants to win or at least get to be the best they can. This is done by presenting the player with a series of small achievable challenges or steps (quests) along the way to reaching an overall goal. The player’s journey in the game from novice to master is what is often most engaging. Take away: Design your course with lots of small incremental challenges to help the learner improve their skills or knowledge in order to reach the overall objective. Make these mini challenges achievable or level-based and provide rich feedback and branching so that the course remains relevant and engaging (see an example for gaming design built with Elucidat). High levels of interactivity and high quality production values also matter, for example, try using video as the feedback for a challenge. 2. Learner-centricity Games are interactive and give a large degree of control to the player. Compare that to linear page-turning experience of traditional eLearning. Take-away: Put your learner first, not the content. In other words design activities that require action from your learner. Rather than present information, pose a question instead, set a task, get your learner grappling with the issues and making choices. Transform the learning from passive to an active learner-driven experience. That means branching: giving your learners different pathways through the course depending on choices they make at each point of challenge. There are some great tools out there that make branching eLearning very easy. 3. Personalization In games, the player reaches a certain level or achieves certain goals. Games provide a sense of purpose and achievement by awarding goodies and rewards and unlocking the next levels when you successfully complete the ones before. Take away: Design your course so that learners get can see their progression clearly. Use rewards such as badges, to award them when they reach certain competencies linked to the course objectives. Interactive menus can provide learner pathways that are tailored for individuals, unlocking your course so that learners can access content in a variety of ways. Progress indicators dressed up in rich graphics can easily signpost your learner to what they’ve already achieved and what else is still left for them to do. For example, if your learners work in the soft drinks industry, the contents of a can of soda can gradually rise as they pass each level. 4. Contextualization When you play a game, you soon become familiar with the environment and get used to taking cues from specific (often graphical) sign-posts. For example, picking up a sword on your way through a castle may award you extra points. Contextual cues can also act as aide memoirs, helping the player to recall certain experiences or skills they’ve learned at other moments in a game, e.g. a bridge will lead to safety, a door to danger. Take away: Consider the context in which your learners will best be able to engage with your content. This can be done visually, or through case studies and scenarios, providing realistic and relevant contexts or situations in which the learner interacts with the knowledge or skills you are presenting. Make the challenges and tasks relevant to the role they do at work, or the situation in which they will need to practice a certain skill. Here’s a rich visual example built in Elucidat. 5. Rich media mix Really big budgets in games provide the opportunity to create fully immersive 3D simulated environments. It makes the virtual gaming world real and contextualizes the activities and quests. It’s fun. Whole music scores are now composed and recorded by orchestras to accompany the big games in today’s market. Take a look at the Lifesaver game for a great example. Take away: If you don’t have the big budget of games, you can still achieve a lot through creative design. If you think about it, 3D worlds are engaging because they allow the player to move around, explore, interact in the virtual world. Brightwave made a good 3D product using the Unity framework. We can do that in elearning in several ways: Unlocking the content so that learners can explore it in any way they want. Providing challenges with consequence style branching, which takes learners in different routes through the course depending on the choices they make. High quality relevant graphics and good quality narrative voice over can help gamify the learning without breaking your budget. Have a look at an example of how you can build this kind of learning using Elucidat. 6. Safe failure At the end of the day, players of games want to win and get rewards. But along the way, there are knock-backs: you get bumped back to the start, lose points, or even die! But along the way you get feedback about where you went wrong, or learn quickly what not to do next time. Take away: Design the course with incremental steps towards achieving the greater goal. Build in lots of feedback loops to help the learner understand where they failed and how they can do better next time round. Make it fun, make suggestions for improvements, make the next step harder than the first. 7. Feedback In games you get feedback all the time. Shoot a zombie, you win a point; fall off the wall, you go down a level. Lose the game, you die; win the game, you go up the leaderboard. And so on. Feedback in gaming is everywhere and it’s what makes you play more and get better. Take away: Consider how learners get feedback at both the micro and macro levels in your course. In learning, we design ‘activity loops’ with feedback built in. You pose a challenge, get your learner to respond and then give feedback. There are two types of activity loop: engagement and progression. For engagement, at the micro level, provide small challenges to motivate your learner to use the knowledge or skills presented in the training. Get them doing an activity to utilize the new knowledge or skill and then tell them how they did and - where necessary - how they can improve. At the macro level, progression loops are about getting your learner from start to finish. So when the learner completes a small challenge, they progress to the next stage or have the next part of the course unlocked. Feedback is the hardest element to design in eLearning because it has the most value. Don’t just tell your learner they failed or passed, tell them what that means. A really great way to provide feedback is through short videos that immerse the learner in a sense of achievement if they’ve done well or provides friendly remediation if they didn’t do so well. 8. Lots of practice and reinforcement Players play games over and over. That’s how they get good. But how do they get good? By failing and getting put back to the start, players learn how to overcome failure because they practise again and again. This provides the opportunity to ‘reinforce’ what they are learning. Kineo and MacDonalds built a game that illustrates this really nicely. Take-away: Often we teach something in eLearning and then test it. The learners get it right or wrong and move on. But in order to help our learners to ‘retain’ information and demonstrate that they understand what we teach in the course, we need to design tests and quizzes more like game challenges. Create branching in assessments, so that learners can progress quickly on if they demonstrate understanding, or have a chance to reinforce the learning through remediation if they fail to complete a task satisfactorily. A standard multiple choice question can provide remedial feedback and then branch to different parts of the course depending on the response from the learner. So, in summary, the key take-away’s are clearly: challenge, feedback, progression. These three elements come up again and again when we talk about good learning design and we can learn a lot about how to apply these in learning by studying games design. There are eLearning authoring tools available, such as Elucidat, which can help you to bring all the skills together to build gamified eLearning with the minimum effort using a wealth of tried and tested gaming techniques and features. There are also resources to help you; check out this free book on gamification and industry experts’ views and opinions. Was this post useful? Do you have any examples of great gamified eLearning you can share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below. There is also a showcase featuring some examples of great gamification designs in eLearning which you can browse at Elearning Superstars. A version of this article first appeared on eLearningIndustry.com The post Gaming Design For Elearning appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

To ensure both you and your students get a positive experience of using online assessment, it is recommended you follow the advice below.   As with anything, plan what you want to do first. Plan out your questions and feedback and give yourself plenty of time to create these using the online assessment software. Ensure that you adhere to the instructions on copying your module folders from the shared repository to your local and working in your local repository. This will prevent you having any issues when publishing your completed assessments to the shared repository and will give you a copy of any questions and assessments you have created. It is recommended that you also back your work up in order to always have a master copy in the eventuality of any problems with your computer or the shared repository. If you want to use online assessment to create and deliver summative tests (these can be in-class tests or end of year exams, or in fact any test which will form a contribution to the student’s overall grade) give the students an opportunity to access and use the online assessment system by giving them at least one formative test. If you wish to use online assessment to deliver summative tests, it is important that you read the guidelines As with point 1, ensure you have factored in enough time to plan, create and test your assessments before scheduling them to your students. Once your assessment is created, test it with other subject experts to ensure everything is correct and that your feedback and scoring are working as expected. Although support is available in the event of technical problems arising, please be aware that the responsibility for creating and scheduling the assessments is yours. If you wish to revisit any aspect of the training, you can do so with the online training tutorials.

This week I stumbled upon a position paper titled Digital Critical Dialogue: A Process for Implementing Transformative Discussion Practices within Online Courses in Higher Education, by Jason T. Hilton, and coming across this article happened at a good time. Right now I am working to develop a model course structure as an introduction to teaching online, and the article prompted me to really consider my suggestions for enhancing discussion practices. Albeit, they may not be as transformative as Paulo Freire intended - I would just like if faculty members leveraged the technology available to create critical dialogue within their online courses. Additionally, B-School has taught me a thing or two about critical dialogue, and I think I can marry these two resources to develop a fairly comprehensive suggestion list for enhancing critical dialogue in online courses, specifically within higher education. USE YOUR FORUMS! - And by this, I do not mean just using your forums. Use them responsibly! You should build discussion posting requirements into your course outline. For example, adding a 5-10% participation mark that is awarded based on 1 unique post (usually to a question posed by the instructor) and 2+ responses to peer posts. Quality can be rated based on criticality of the dialogue - "Great post!" is not a quality response to a peer post - I’m sorry. Right now I am seeing many green professors grading based on participation, but while the forum is present in their course, they’re grading students based on attendance in VOIP sessions, and in online courses, it’s not always possible for students to attend all VOIP sessions - there’s usually a reason students are taking online courses. Assign group work - Most students aren’t a huge fan of group work; I certainly wasn’t - I preferred to go it alone and not have to rely on others for part of my grade. However, group work, when structured properly (more on this in a moment), can create critical dialogue by inciting a collaborative approach to learning. What do I mean by ‘structured properly’? Well - Create group environments (e.g. forums specific to only group members) where individuals can discuss aspects of the assignment amongst themselves. Within the assignment specifications, dictate that students must respond (usually at a minimum of 500 words) to each group member’s submission and indicate that there will be peer evaluations - doing this may enhance honesty and integrity, allowing students to understand that not only will their cooperation within the group be graded by the instructor, but also by their group members. Use Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) - Most institutions have some form of VOIP (e.g. Collaborate or Adobe Connect); you should leverage these technologies for two main reason - 1) to provide students with a variation of traditional face-to-face learning, which is critical for students who prefer this type of learning, but are hindered in their ability to commit to a physical classroom, and 2) to enhance critical discussion by allowing students to critique one another or ask questions within a more traditional style lecture. I have found these sessions to be incredibly effective when used as a forum for oral presentations. As a student who hated giving oral presentations, VOIP sessions allowed me to hone my speaking prowess, while reducing my associated anxiety. Other ways of enhancing critical dialogue may be through the implementation of Learning Management System (LMS) database functionality (e.g. students may upload material, view peer uploaded material, and comment on peer uploaded material), allowing students to use blogs or curate wikis, and assigning annotated bibliographies (less of a focus on collaborating with peers, and more of a focus on critically considering the literature). In any event, you don’t want to create page-turner courses, especially in higher education - you want to show of the passion of your discipline and perhaps make students passionate and engaged with their studies. While many instructors may be resistant (or afraid) to changing their teaching methods, it is essential to understand the technologies available for leveraging your online courses and engaging your students, especially with students coming from a digital age. If you’re afraid of technology, as your resident Instructional Designer or Ask Me - I would love to help! Follow these tips, and I’ll be a very happy gal!   Like this post? Want more Instructional Design tips? Sign up below!  

There are loads of great resources available to help you design really killer gamified elearning. Here we’ve curated just a handful. See what you think and feel free to contribute to the list in the comments section. Killer Gamified eLearning Resources Following on from my previous posts on gamifying eLearning, in this post I’ve curated a bunch of killer resources to help you in gamifying your elearning courses. So let’s get stuck straight in. In no particular order: 1. Donald Clark’s seminal white paper ‘Games in Elearning’ now a decade old, Clark sets out a useful framework for solid learning design based on gaming mechanics. 2. Badges - Open badges, Achievements and badges Wherever you have a scoring system, as most games do, badges can be incorporated not only as rewards, but as achievements which learners can store as validations of competencies or as certification. 3. xAPI or Tin Can - If a Learning Record Store (LRS) provides external access for distributed solutions like games, simulators and other learning platforms supporting xAPI in various learning scenarios, then the xAPI opens up a world of possibilities for gamifying eLearning. Paul Welch over at Kineo, describes the way in which incorporating the Experience API (Tin Can) into the McDonald’s Till Game could open up the learner experience to lots more. For example, by accruing a team score together from individual members would allow learners to compete in teams on the leaderboard. It would also allow the game to be integrated with the other elements of the blend in the training, e.g. the more traditional eLearning and other online activities. 4. Elearning authoring software such as Elucidat provides tools and feature which make designing and building gamified eLearning very simple, e.g achievement badges, dynamic polls, branching navigation and responsive sophisticated look and feel that works on mobiles and desktops alike. It also supports the xAPI. Yay! 5. Adaptive learning people, Knewton, have done an infographic to demonstrate that gamification has tremendous potential in the education space. 6. Wharton & Kevin Werbach I just took this MOOC and it takes a deep dive into gamification. Whilst not limited to learning design alone, it covers all the principles and provides simple and useful framework for design as well as guidance on positioning gamified design in your organisation. Prof Werbach is a friendly and authoritative narrator throughout. 7. Snap up Christopher Pappas’ free ebook, it provides lots of information about how gamification shapes eLearning. 8. The Knowledge Guru is giving away 100 articles on game based learning - a bumper list. 9. If you read my post 5 killer examples of gamified eLearning, you may be interested in taking a deeper dive into Kineo’s award winning McDonnald’s Till Game 10. And while we’re on Kineo, the guys share more on gamification, posing the question: Is it good for the Blend? 11. And one last one from Kineo, Paul Welch on Game design in eLearning 12. #Gamification - the must-follow Twitter hashtag for all debate, resources and news about the games in the industry and beyond. 13. For the more visual amongst you, a useful info graphic, 30 facts about gamification in eLearning 14. Check out Brightwave’s Real-world examples of how game-based techniques can energise online learning programmes and make a positive, measurable impact. If you’re interested in gamifying learning in your organisation, this guide will give you some useful food for thought. 15. Head over to Elearning Superstars to get the lowdown on some ace examples of gamified eLearning: Finance Game, Till Training Game, Capability Academy, Medieval Swansea, Lifesaver, Virtual Reality House 16. The list wouldn’t carry any authority if I didn’t mention Karl Kapp’s book: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction 17. And well worth a read: Karl Kapp’s article: Top 10 +1 Instructional Game Design Best Practices 18. Karl Kapp’s 3 part course on Gamification in Learning Solutions Magazine 19. If you haven’t already seen them, check out my previous blog posts on this site: 5 Killer Examples of Gamified Elearning, Gaming Design for Elearning, The Anatomy of Good Gamified Elearning 20. Some solid design theories are presented in Talib Hussain’s useful tutorial: Serious Game Design 21. Some Gartner stats to support your proposal: Gartner says worldwide video game market to total $93 billion in 2013. Read all about it! 22. Elucidat’s 3 part series taking you through how to create non-linear and branched courses quickly with Elucidat’s powerful Gamification tools. Each article shows you how to create the a branching course from scratch. 23. Seth Priebatsch’s talk at Ted Talks Boston. Using game dynamics to influence or change behavior - the root of corporate training objectives. Argues that this decade is about building a framework for game layer on the web. Love it or hate it, motivating factors in gaming can be leveraged for education and training and this short talk explains how. Anything to add? I hope this collection is useful. It’s by no means complete, so please add any more that you have using the comments below. A version of this article first appeared on elearningindustry.com The post 23 Killer Resources For Gamifying Elearning appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

As I was in the process of getting my business up and running this past quarter, I figured that monthly reports would be less effective and accurate than they will going forward, so for 2014, I have resolved to produce quarterly income reports. In 2015, I may switch to monthly, but we’ll see. I had some consistent revenue streams this quarter, so subsequent quarters may be a bit lower on the profit side, but I have some great prospective clients, and I’m eager to see how things pan out! Income Report: Full-Time Contracts - 4,659.24 Part-Time Contracts - 1,644.70 Business Contracts: - Storyboarding - 429.00 - Authoring - 1,036.39 Taxes - 2,383.52 Total Profit: 10,152.85 Expense Report: B-School Registration - 2,000.00 Office Expenses - 642.12 Total Expenses: 2,642.12 Total Profit - 7,510.73 (before taxes) What do I think? Well, this quarter will likely be more profitable than most due to my tax return and full-time contract; however, I have a new full-time contract on the go, so once that gets up and running - who knows? Going forward, I also won’t have so many expenses as all of my expenses this quarter were moreso start-up type costs. That being said, I foresee the purchase of several licenses in the coming months, so really, it’s anyone’s guess! Overall, I was satisfied with my total profits, but I’m nervous and excited to see how the new business fares within the market. Another thing - right now, I’m tracking all of my financials manually, and I’m looking for good project management tools. I’m wondering if anyone can provide me with some recommendations or comparisons. Right now, I’m going back and forth between Pancakeapp and Basecamp, but I can’t seem to commit to one or the other - HELP! Like this post? Want more Instructional Design tips? Sign up below!  

This month we’ve changed how the ‘Your Projects’ and ‘Releases’ pages work. Let’s take a look at what we have changed: Projects Tags In the ‘Projects’ page you can now tag projects, this is very handy for organising your projects. So for example if I wanted to have all of my colleague Bill’s projects grouped together, I could create a tag for ‘Bill’, and when Bill wishes to view his projects he can click the ‘Bill’ tag. To create a tag press the section that says ‘Enter project tags here’, displayed below the project title: Add a name and press enter. Your new tag will appear, it will look a little something like this: At the top of the page there is a tags section where you will be able to access all of your tags: Once you click a tag, only the courses with that specific tag assigned to them will be displayed. If you wish to reset the tags to the default settings press ‘Reset filters’. Previews You can now ‘Preview’ your course before opening, to preview your project press ‘Show previews’: Icons In the projects page you will now be able to see several icons: - This icon will display once you have created a release from a project. - This icon will display once you have created a release from a project, if you hover over the icon it will tell you how many times the course has been viewed. - This icon will display once a comment has been added to a course. Archiving projects When you press the ‘Delete’ (X) button on a project you will now have the option to delete your project entirely or to archive your project. Archiving your project will mean that you project is accessible in future. Releases page We’ve updated the releases page so that you can see how many course views your course has had, you can also see your release progress in real time. The post New ‘Projects’ and ‘Releases’ page appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Within the realm of Instructional Design, the term ADDIE is often tossed around; Love it or hate it, it looks like ADDIE will be around for awhile, so you might as well brush up on your terminology! Some folks may wonder what ADDIE stands for, and for those folks - here you go! ADDIE is an acronym used to encompass an Instructional Design model of: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. Love it or hate it, if you work within the teaching and learning industry, you will become quite friendly with these terms as most Instructional Design models tend to be some variation of the ADDIE model. Below I will further breakdown each ‘step’ in the ADDIE model: Analysis - Analysis is the highest level of course development. In it’s recommended format, this phase seeks to compile all information relevant to the project and 1) determine which delivery method will best display the content in a meaningful manner, (2) whether more information is required and from whom, and (3) high-level project goals. Design - Within the design phase, the Instructional Designer will take information compiled in the Analysis phase and will outline (typically in design documentation) how the learner will learn the content. This often includes the specification of learning objectives, determination of instructional strategies, task analysis. At this point, some clients may also wish to have assessment items specified, instructional tasks further broken down into a task analysis, or high-level media descriptions. Development - This phase involves the Instructional Designer taking the information outlined in the Design phase and putting it into practice. What do I mean by that? Well. This is where all of the content creation will occur and may include storyboards, media development and implementation, assessment item development and implementation, authoring, and/or rapid prototyping, just to name a few. Few Instructional Designer (in larger organizations at least) get down and dirty within the Analysis and Design phases, but all Instructional Designers gain experience within the Development phase. This is my favourite phase! Implementation - Once the content has been developed, the Instructional Designer will implement the course. This may mean exporting it to a SCORM package for installation on a client’s Learning Management System (LMS) of preference or delivering the course as a complete package. This is where all of the testing occurs, as it is important to ensure that the developed product functions in the manner necessary to achieve the client’s project requirements. Evaluation - Finally, the evaluation phase seeks to determine whether the developed product achieves the project goals specified in the Analysis and Design phases. Does the product facilitate learning in the manner for which it was intended? Can the learners achieve the outlined learning goals? Once evaluation has been completed, Instructional Designers may be required to further revise the product, as specified by the client. Like this post? Want more Instructional Design tips? Sign up below!  

Games are often more effective for learning than traditional training approaches. So in this article we aim to show you five examples of great gamified eLearning and guide you how to set about designing your own great gamified course. Gamified eLearning: 5 Killer Examples In my last post we took a look at a checklist for designing good gamified eLearning and saw how the story and look and feel that games provide engage learners on a deeper level; competition, rewards and challenges offer motivation, and feedback, both positive and negative, helps learners master information quickly. In this post, we’ll take a look at some examples I think stand out, where good gamified eLearning demonstrates these guiding principles really well. So, let’s dive in. 1. Till Training Game: Developed by Kineo (Elearning Awards gold winner) Kineo worked with their client McDonald’s UK on a real game changer in the industry, the McDonald’s UK Till Training Game, which delivered an engaging and memorable learning experience to support the launch of a new till system to 1,300 restaurants, as well as trending for a bit on social media site as learners set up self-styled leader boards to compete against each other. Some stats: £35-£50K budget 2 developers 20 days tech effort 2/3 designers Here are some of the elements that helps make this gamified approach work: Realistic: The game centers around using a simulation of the new till system so that learners’ ability to take orders is tested, using questions to assess knowledge on how to deliver the best customer experience. The till game is real-time and full on. Learners deal with customer orders, going between customer conversation and till entry, whilst being timed, to practice the till system and reaching customer expectation. Strong use of stories for context and emotional engagement. The setting is realistic (restaurant), there are characters (customers) and narratives (the orders and the different customers) Lots of game mechanics for fun and engagement e.g. lifelines, bonuses and panel elements to enhance the gamification feel. Some of the features included: 3 on the bounce: Get 3 correct orders in a row Beat the clock: Finish the game with time to spare Happy camper: Keeping the customer satisfaction meter high Time to spare: Complete the order before the timer runs out Dynamic feedback: Little and often (satisfaction, scores, levels, customer response) Branching: Scenarios pose challenges for the learner, and the decisions the learner makes have consequence all the time. There are eLearning authoring tools available, such as Elucidat, which can help you to create branching scenarios quickly and easily Gives learners an opportunity to learn in a safe environment, to practice and learn from their mistakes. Levels: Smooth learning curve with lots of attention to achievement. Scoring: Creates a sense of competition (there’s only one winner and the scoring goes up to 9 million) with lots of built-in opportunities to win bonuses and rewards. 2. Lifesaver: Developed by Resuscitation Council & Unit9 This immersive interactive training is available through a browser or can be launched via an app on mobile devices. The objective of the training is to make anyone aware of the basic steps in responding to a situation where someone (probably a stranger) suffers a cardiac arrest or choking. This multi award winning training utilizes gaming principles in some of the most effective ways: ‘Crisis simulator’: Live action, totally immersive movie approach which you can play like a game Immersive interactive scenario approach: Throws the learner straight into the middle of the action. Strong use of character and story: With different scenarios which the learner can select from a menu. Learn by doing model: Provides a sequence of decision points where if you make the right decision you save a life, and if you don’t someone dies. Beat the clock: The decision objects are timed to simulate the real event where time is of the essence and making swift decisions can help save a life. Levels get unlocked as you advance through the scenario through gaining points for correct decisions. Makes use of native features on the device, e.g. on the iPad, you ‘pump’ the heart and the app ‘measures’ the rhythm and timing of your CPR to give you dynamic feedback on how you are doing. On a desktop, you press keys on the keyboard and it monitors how you are doing. In-built competitive features allow you to save your progress and share via social media platforms. Lots of dynamic feedback: Number of answers right first time, average time to answer and provides a break down of your scores at the end. 3. Medieval Swansea: Developed by Make Sense Design & City Witness Built in Elucidat, this rich interactive historical game gets learners taking on the role of detective to solve a historical mystery. It’s bursting with gaming features and is fully responsive, making it work nicely on just about all platforms and devices. The underpinning gaming concepts include: Scenario driven with branching: Player-learners are taken through a series of scenes with lots of stages to unlock in solving the medieval mystery. Interactive challenges take them on a quest to gather points and bonuses in order to tackle the quest. Story-based: Narrative stages, character witnesses. Progression: A dynamic map allows the player-learner to see what stage they are at and what’s left to do. Scoring: Each time a witness is interviewed, you get that character in your collection, unlocking the next stage. There are also objects to collect along the way and at the end you get to cast your vote on the crime in an interactive poll which shows in real time what other players are voting. Feedback: At each stage of the investigation, gamer-learners are presented with challenges and have instantaneous feedback on how they are doing. If they are doing well, they get to ask the witness more questions and add that witness to their collection to let them move on in the game. 4. Virtual Reality House: Developed by Train4TradeSkills Double gold medallist at the Elearning Awards, The Virtual Reality House lets trades trainees such as plumbers practice their skills in a fully immersive virtual reality simulation, allowing them to make mistakes safely and learn from these in order to build confidence and competence before embarking on the workshop-based part of their course. The training is an i3D engine built on the Unity 3D framework which allows rapid development of interactive training scenarios. This is an example of gamified eLearning which demonstrates the following: Full simulation virtual reality environment. Scenario based approach makes the training very realistic. Flexible, non-linear instructional design and engineering - learners can create their own learning pathways, and the pathways can be altered for beginners and advanced learners. Virtual reality - all fixtures, fittings and tools - helps learners visualize real world setting. Learn by doing approach with a step-by step-training process: planning, costing and installation. Gaming style hand-held console/nunchuck is available which works wirelessly with the online system to improve the virtual experience. 5. Heineken Capability Academy: Developed by Brightwave & Heineken Not satisfied with gamified eLearning alone, Heineken got a real physical board game to go with its blended solution from Brightwave. Progression: A Tube-type map keeps play-learners abreast of their progress and shows them where they are headed. Engagement: A dynamic leaderboard provides opportunity to see how you are doing, compete with others and show off your success. Quests and challenges: Player-learners answer questions to get earn points. Context: The online environment imitates the real life board game, with players interacting with question cards they select and real-time scoreboard. Scoring: Earn point as you progress through the learning to push you up the leaderboard. Prizes for top scoring learners or teams. Feedback: The system provides feedback for challenges you take and also gives an overall ranking in terms of real competencies. Lots of supporting resources are available as you progress to provide more help or remediation in areas where you perform less well. Was this post useful? Do you have any examples of great gamified eLearning you can share? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below. There is also a showcase featuring some examples of great gamification designs in eLearning which you can browse at Elearning Superstars. A version of this article first appeared on eLearningIndustry.com The post 5 Killer Examples Of Gamified eLearning appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

This week’s challenge was related to the top 10 things learners need to know about Articulate Storyline, and I really had a lot of fun re-watching the tutorials I included. The E-Learning Heroes community is one of the greatest resources I’ve found as an Instructional Designer. It’s current, and all of the community members are extremely helpful and proactive - not only in addressing concerns of their peers, but they’re passionate about what they do and love to share their knowledge! The Concept In considering this challenge, I wanted to compile screencasts posted by various E-Learning Heroes that I have found particularly interesting and/or helpful. I scoured the forums and my personal messages to find a group of 10 tutorials I think everyone using Articulate Storyline should at least watch. The Method I developed a simple interface using circular buttons, filled with an image of the individual providing the tutorial. When selected, a layer is triggered to appear, providing a brief explanation of the tutorial and a screen capture; the full tutorial is linked to and will open in a new window. An exit button is available on each layer so the user can return to the main ‘menu’. The Result To view the complete interaction, click here. Like this post? Want more Instructional Design tips? Sign up below!  

Are you an eLearning designer trying to move on from click-and-read courses? Do you realize the value of non-linear and scenario-based learning? Then this post will help you to structure your course so it’s more engaging and effective for your end user. Create Cutting Edge Scenario Based eLearning If you take a look at one example of effective eLearning, such as Lifesaver, you’ll become aware quickly of the principles that make it an example of great scenario based eLearning. First, it puts you straight into the vortex of the action. It has a cast that you soon get involved with. It then dumps you right in the middle of a big old problem and makes you the one who has to take the decisions, with the clock ticking down, oh, and if you make the wrong decision, someone dies! So no pressure then. And it does this all through an unfolding scenario of events, told in the context of everyday life, in settings and with characters you are familiar with. The point is to provide you with a safe environment to practice responding to given situations. If you make a mistake, no one really dies - this time. Instead you get to practice again until you get it right. The premise is, learn from mistakes, and be ready with the right actions to apply to a real life event. Elearning doesn’t get much better than that. So what makes ‘scenario’ based eLearning? Well, strip it back to design principles and all scenarios are stories: they have a context, some characters and some problems that need overcoming. So let’s break these principles down a little: 1. Story Give the training relevance: consider what the real world contexts are for the specific topics and issues being addressed in the course, because training is about real situations. Get your subject matter expert (SME) to help identify authentic situations that will be relevant to the learners. Concentrate on situations where people can make mistakes. Build content around activities, not the other way around and tie the content to desired outcomes. 2. Script At the heart of a great TV drama or movie, is a fantastic script. And part of what makes a script terrific is how it defines characters. So you need to be writing engaging and authentic dialog. If you struggle and can’t hire a scriptwriter, try creating a storyboard of the training scenario, a bit like a comic book, and sketch in some speech bubbles. Then try rewriting your content from the point of view of the characters, in dialogue rather than narrative. E.g. instead of In case of a heart attack, deploy a defibrillator, try Character 1: Can you find a defibrillator or AED? Character 2: Where do I find one of those? Character 1: Try a shopping centre or station. Look for a metal box saying AED. 3. Characters you know or recognize In Broken Co-worker the characters are real and believable. We all sort of know an Emma at work or in our local social circles. But the way we deal with the issues people like Emma raise, is tackled in Broken Coworker with humanity as well as professionalism in sight. And that means the way you respond to the challenges it throws you can sometimes lead to surprising feedback. The Virgin Atlantic Safety Film, whilst strictly not eLearning nevertheless provides a good example of using storytelling effectively to get a message across. It takes the exact format of the onboard safety training demo and with some real panache rescripts and recharacterizes it using some really well-known movie genres. The result? Very engaging and highly memorable. In the Up to Speed program for Sky, the team at Brightwave have clearly worked with Sky’s SME’s to build a whole family of Sky customers who star in the training. Each character is at the heart of scenario-driven activities, engaging the learner in developing skills to help build customer satisfaction and retention. 4. Tension Scenarios help you to construct challenges and activities around real pain points to help learners practice resolving these in real life. Epic Group’s superb program for the UK Department of Work & Pensions, Lost IPO’s set the bar for scenario based eLearning when it was developed way back in 2002. High-res full-screen interactive video puts the learner right in front of the characters, eyeball-to-eyeball. Each interaction requires the learner to make decisions about how to respond in some highly charged situations in order to get the characters to be cooperative in the interview over their lost benefits books. In Elucidat’s Fraud Prevention demo course, simple branching scenarios provide a framework for presenting the learner with a challenge and consequences-style feedback to help raise awareness of how the two characters can unwittingly become victims of fraud. 5. Resolution With scenario based eLearning, the point is you don’t get to go down the same learning path as other learners. How you go through depends on how you respond. And ultimately, you fail or succeed. Except, you don’ fail. Good learning design works with branching logic that will always engineer a point at which the learner gets on track and reaches a successful resolution. This is generally done with feedback loops, providing feedback to a challenge with inbuilt support to help the learner improve with a second attempt or with remedial practice. In the Finance Game, Epic co-wrote with the BBC if the leaner fails following a couple of attempts, a friendly avatar guide steps in to break down the problem into solvable chunks and give some solid advice without actually forcing the learner to jump through the hoop of answering a question correctly. It’s actually hard to fail the game - at the end the cumulative score and feedback takes into account that whilst you may be utterly rubbish with money, your staff satisfaction levels are through the roof! Summary So, in summary, scenario based eLearning is effective because it provides a framework for learners to practice in a safe environment and learn from mistakes. In order to do this in an engaging manner, good scenario based eLearning draws on stories, which are contextualized in the real world. The stories they draw on are relevant to the pain points or issues the learner faces in their role and at work. The characters are believable and challenges which are modeled on real world issues. Do you have any examples of superb scenario-based eLearning? We’d love for you to share, just use the comments area below this post. And why not check out some really easy to use tools - like Elucidat - to help you get started with your scenario based eLearning. A version of this article first appeared on eLearningIndustry.com The post Tell Me A Story: Cutting Edge Scenario Based eLearning appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

I recently overhauled my Work With Me page, and I’m looking for some feedback. Is there anything you’re looking for as a potential client that isn’t there? I offer end-to-ends services, and sometimes it’s a little difficult to package some of these services up with a neat little bow. What can I do to make my services work for you? For anyone else in the e-learning industry, is there anything I should do different here? I’m looking for insight based on what your current or past clients have required. My goal is to provide premium services customized based on client needs. For anyone in the small business world, are there any suggestions you have to display service offerings in a more effective manner? Any advice is appreciated!

Need some help getting started designing branching elearning scenarios? Make sure you’ve covered all the bases by following our simple 5 point checklist for producing high quality branching elearning scenarios. Why branching eLearning scenarios? Branching elearning scenarios are a great way to let learners practise skills in realistic situations. By asking them to choose how they’ll respond to tough scenarios, they can test out different approaches in a low-risk setting. 1. Make it look good Scenario based eLearning is all about telling a story. And rather than do that will words, look for ways that visuals can convey the context, characters and feel of the scenario. When Cathy Moore partnered with Kinection to create a program for the US Military user respondents cited preference for video in the scenario, something that went beyond the budget, so instead, Cathy and Kinection worked on a style of illustration that was borrowed from the graphic novel, making it relatively simple to put a comic book style gloss on photographic imagery. 2. Make it conversational In Cathy Moore/Kinection example, debates are used as a means by which the challenges are posed and contextualised. These are scripted as dialogue between characters. What’s more, audio is used to give authenticity to the voices of the characters. In Epic Group’s training for the BBC, each challenge is presented by different characters speaking to their manager about issues in everyday workplace situations. 3. Make it real Give the training relevance: consider what the real world contexts are for the specific topics and issues being addressed in the course, because training is about real situations. Concentrate on situations where people can make mistakes. Thought provoking situational contexts with good use of characters, engaging video and consequences style branching are some of the elements which help drive home interviewing best practices in Epic’s Lost IPO program. 4. Make it challenging The root of all branching eLearning scenarios is the challenge posed to the learner. By providing learners with decision making contexts, and a range of choices, you are giving them the chance to practise knowledge and skills in a safe environment. The branching is what makes the decision making critical - depending on the choices you make in the scenario, the outcome or at least the path through the course is altered and adapted. In Elucidat’s Fraud Prevention demo course, simple branching scenarios provide a framework for presenting the learner with a challenge and consequences-style feedback to help raise awareness of how the two characters can unwittingly become victims of fraud. 5. Make it interactive Feedback Good learning design works with branching logic that will always engineer a point at which the learner gets on track and reaches a successful resolution. This is generally done with feedback loops, providing feedback to a challenge with inbuilt support to help the learner improve with a second attempt or with remedial practice. Broken Co-worker uses interactive video very effectively to provide feedback. Summary Does your branching eLearning scenario meet these criteria? Great stuff! If not, don’t worry! This is a checklist for an ideal eLearning scenario rather than a list of minimum criteria. Check that your eLearning tools allow you to build your scenario according to these criteria. Be especially aware of whether you can edit and/or change the content of your scenarios, because fixed content is dead content. Using cloud based eLearning tools allows you and your team to easily update scenarios and build them out rapidly. Have you got examples of great branching scenario eLearning which you can share with the community. We’d love to hear from you. A version of this article first appeared on eLearningIndustry.com The post How to create branching elearning scenarios (checklist) appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Another Tuesday, another acronym! Today we’re going to be talking about SCORM! SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model and more or less dictates how e-learning content must be programmed in order to work with other e-learning software, such as Learning Content Management Systems (LCMS’) or Learning Management Systems (LMS’). The SCORM website provides a nice explanation of how SCORM let’s code and software play well with one another, so to speak. As the name alludes to, SCORM creates ‘sharable’ content, which is essential when it comes to saving a business’ hard earned profits. Why? Well - before the days of SCORM, organizations may have contracted out training requirements to many different providers who all used their LMS of choice - creating a high volume of duplication, and likely less consistency. Now that SCORM exists, organizations can re-use training programs more easily than in the past. Why is SCORM a sought after client requirement? Well. When clients dictate they want SCORM conformant or compliant e-learning product, they’re doing this to ensure that the developed e-learning product will function within any LMS they wish to launch the product within. Adhering to the SCORM standard will greatly help ensure your e-learning products are well-equipped for interoperability. Right now, Tin Can API is foraging ahead to become the next generation of SCORM (let’s face it; SCORM is an old-timer; don’t get me wrong - a tried and true old-timer, but everyone needs to evolve), and will become the new standard within coming years - more on Tin Can API in another post. Still curious about SCORM? There’s a lot to it, and I’ve definitely only skimmed the top of  explaining it, but Learningpool provides a great infographic that should explain anything I’ve left out! Like this post? Want more Instructional Design tips? Sign up below!