We can create a simple final quiz, very easily, using the default features of rapid authoring tools. But, in some cases, the requirements pertaining to quizzes are very complex. You can use Articulate Quizmaker to meet such requirements, in a highly effective manner. A training manager asked us to create a quiz that has two categories of questions. The learner should be asked to select a category, and once he makes a decision, he needs to be navigated to the questions of the chosen category. The quiz ends after the learner attempts it. We met this requirement using the question Groups option in Quizmaker. We used this option to create a number of groups, so that we could categorize the quiz questions based on requirements. Here are the steps we followed to meet the requirement: Step 1: Open Articulate Quizmaker and click the Question Group option in the Home tab. Step 2: A new group will be created. Rename it, if required, by double-clicking. Step 3: Now, click Graded Questions on the Home tab to add your quiz questions to groups. Step 4: Now add a dummy question to navigate the learner to a group of his choice. As this is a dummy question and should not be scored, use a Survey Question (I have used the Pick One type here). Step 5: Now, double click the Pick One question. Click on the Drop Down arrow beside the Feedback and select By Answer from the options displayed. Step 6: Click the More button (for every option) from the window opened to set navigation options, when the learner selects each option. Step 7: From the window displayed, click the Drop Down arrow under Branching section. Now, select a slide in the list appeared to navigate the learner to the selected slide. Step 8: Now click the Save option to finish the process. Then, publish the quiz. Hope you find this blog useful. Do share your views. Related PostsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key Features4 Tips for Developing E-learning Course Using Rapid Authoring ToolsHow to Randomize Final Quiz Questions in Articulate Storyline

The e-Learning 2015 conference aims to address the main issues of concern within e-Learning. This conference covers both technical as well as the non-technical aspects of e-Learning. Topics for e-Learning 2015 conference include, but are not limited to: Organisational Strategy and Management Issues Technological Issues e-Learning Curriculum Development Issues Instructional Design Issues e-Learning Delivery Issues e-Learning Research Methods and Approaches e-Skills and Information Literacy for Learning The e-Learning 2015 conference will be held at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Escuela de Ingeniería Informática, Spain on July 21 - 24, 2015. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

As 2014 sails past, we have already reached June, and that can only mean one thing: gomo is going to mLearnCon 2014! We will be jetting off to sunny San Diego in less than three weeks to demonstrate our new multi-device authoring tool and tell you more about gomo. We’ll be ready to show you live demos on stand 403 throughout the exhibition, which takes place from 24th-26th June, and will have a variety of courses built in gomo for you to explore. I will also be presenting a session at 12pm PT on the New Possibilities Stage on 24th June, where I will be talking about how gomo allows you to create your own beautiful multi-device HTML5 e-learning. This will give you the opportunity to see for yourself how simple it can be to build your own courses from scratch for almost any device. Epic’s Director of Learning Imogen Casebourne and US-based Solutions Consultant Sherry Archer will also be presenting at the event from 4-5pm PT on 24th June. Their session, ‘Make the Move to Multi-device Learning in 10 Easy Steps’, will address topics such as BYOD, selecting the best authoring tool for your needs and why your mobile learning needs to be responsive. I’m also very excited to announce that Imogen will be part of the keynote panel on 26th June from 11am-12.10pm PT. In this session, ‘Today’s mLearning: Exploring Technologies, Strategies and Possibilities’, the panel will discuss the successes and failures in m-learning and what might happen in the future of learning technologies. I’m looking forward to meeting you in San Diego, and please visit us at stand 403 to say hello and to find out more about the future of multi-device learning. Make sure you’re following us on Twitter @gomolearning to keep up with all the action from the exhibition. The post Meet gomo on stand 403 at mLearnCon 2014 appeared first on gomo Learning.

In my blog, Content Chunking for Effective eLearning, I mentioned about screen-level chunking where an eLearning course is divided into modules which are further divided into chapters. These chapters are developed separately and the navigation from chapter to chapter is linked in the Learning Management System (LMS). But, one of our clients came up with a requirement of adding a button to the last slide of a chapter that would help the learner navigate to the next chapter. Let us see how we met the requirement using Articulate Storyline. Step 01: Take the source files of an eLearning course which consists of three chapters. These chapters are unpublished. Step 02: Before publishing,you have to remember a very important point. In this functionality, you have to start publishing the chapters in the reverse order, i.e., first you have to publish chapter03, because it is the last chapter of the course. We do this because chapter03 need not have the Next Chapter button as the learner does not have to navigate any further from here. Step 03: In the last slide of chapter02, create a Next Chapter button. Step 04: Using a trigger, link the button to the story.html file present in the published folder of chapter03. The trigger would be as shown in the below screenshot. Step 05: Publish Chapter02. Step 06: Copy/ cut all the files (except story.html) from the published folder of chapter03. Go to chapter02 published folder, and open story_content. In this, open external_files folder and paste the chapter03 files. Step 07: Similarly, in the last slide of chapter01, create a Next Chapter button, link it with the story.html file present in the published folder of chapter02 and publish chapter01. Step 08: Copy/ cut all the files (except story.html) from the published folder of chapter02. Go to chapter01 published folder, and open story_content. In this, open external_files folder and paste the chapter02 files. Now, open the published file of chapter01 and check the functionality. You have the published files of chapter03 inside the published files of chapter02 and the published files of chapter02 inside the published files of chapter01. So, all the chapters come inside one folder, i.e., in chapter 01. You can use this method for any number of chapters. You have to keep in mind that you should always begin with the last chapter. Hope this blog is helpful. Do share your views. Related PostsHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?Rapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesCreating Navigation Restriction in Articulate Storyline: Method I

What a two days the gomo team has had at mLearnCon in San Diego! With non-stop demos and some fabulous feedback, it’s been a great experience for us at this excellent event. mLearnCon is a highly focused event looking at mobile e-learning in particular, making it the perfect platform for an adaptive and responsive HTML5 product like gomo. There were some wonderful speakers and sessions as well as a packed exhibition. Almost everyone we spoke to had reached the point where they were planning their first mobile e-learning projects and they were actively looking for solutions. Most of them wanted something that had been designed specifically to create e-learning once only and content that worked across all their devices. gomo was the talk of the event and very well received by everyone who saw it in action. We had queues of people wanting demos and barely stopped at all on day one. My talk on the New Possibilities stage was fully attended and generated lots of great questions. The first thing most people said was ‘everyone’s talking about gomo - we have to see this product’. My thanks go to Mira Mendlovitz from Grainger and Robert Gadd from OnPoint for talking about their hugely successful use of gomo in delivering mobile apps (developed in gomo and delivered through OnPoint’s Cellcast solution) at their session on Wednesday. The next thing people liked was how fluid and beautiful our adaptive and responsive courses looked on their desktops, tablets and smartphones. You can access our new demo course on any device to watch it adapt and respond to your screen before your eyes. Finally, they liked gomo’s ease of use, the fact that gomo is in the cloud and the highly competitive gomo pricing model. We ended the two days very tired but with numerous enquiries and hopefully lots of new friends and customers. For me, the icing on the cake was one of my last demos of the event. A very nice lady told me that she’d watched my demo on the stage on day one and then been to see every other vendor in the room. She’d looked at all the other products and concluded that gomo was absolutely the product for her organisation. It doesn’t get much better than that to finish off two days of a fantastic exhibition experience. The post gomo is the talk of mLearnCon appeared first on gomo Learning.

What is a style guide? A style guide is a document that puts together all the standards that include grammar, formatting issues, visual effects, capitalizations, abbreviations, etc. In brief, it can be called as the "style" which defines your course. In addition to these, specialized styles meet the requirements of clients. The style guides which we follow in CommLab India are based on these standard style guides: AP Stylebook AMA Manual of Style The Chicago Manual of Style The Gregg Reference Manual Here are a few basic styles which you can follow while developing a course. Grammar  Rule 1: Abbreviations  Abbreviations (e.g., lbs, mp) can be used in a bulleted list, but in the context of a discussion (paragraphs, descriptions, etc.), they should be spelled out (e.g., pounds, megapixel). Avoid using Latin abbreviations, as it leads to complications in translations and comprehension in other geographical languages. Instead, we can use "that is", "in other words", "for example", or "such as". Rule 2: Acronyms  Spell out words on the first occurrence along with acronym in parentheses. Thereafter, use the acronym in capital letters, unless the acronym is widely known and will be understood by our audience. For Example, RAM can be globally understood. Rule 3: Capitalization  Capitalize proper nouns and all words in titles except articles, prepositions and conjunctions. With hyphenated compound words, always capitalize the first element; do not capitalize the second element unless it is a trademarked word capitalized in that way. For example, Pre-announcement Sales CD. Use lowercase for "and", "but", "for", "or", and "nor" unless they are emphasized in a particular heading. Rule 4: Hyphens and Dashes Hyphens and dashes are not the same. If you are linking phrases, use an em dash ( — ) or a colon. If you are linking words, use a hyphen (-). Avoid hyphenation unless needed to avoid ambiguity. Never split product names, trademarks, units of measure and sizes at the end of a line by using hyphens. Rule 5: Quotation marks Punctuation always goes inside quotation marks. Exceptions are colons and semicolons. Within content, avoid using quotation marks unless you’re actually quoting; for emphasis, use italics instead and only sparingly. Format  Rule 1: Bulleted lists  Bullets should be red circles. Black and gray are acceptable. No other colors. Secondary bullets should be red dashes. Spacing between bullets should be automatically set by the first look course template. However, if in question, bullets should be single spaced (1 pt.). To indent bullets, use the Increase Indent button on the tool bar or tab. Rule 2: Font Use Arial standard 16 point font for text in slides. Titles should be in Arial 20 point font. The font can be changed as per the client’s requirement, but the preferred font is Arial. The color of the font should be black. Again, this can be changed according the requirements of the client. Many other standard style guides can be followed for maintaining consistency in the course. This will help the learner learn quickly and increase the level of satisfaction. Please do share your views on style guides for a quality eLearning course. Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning CoursesBenefits of Standardization in E-learningHidden Errors in an E-Learning course - Part I

With the release of our first major update imminent, we’re extremely excited to show you more of the improved functionality of gomo. Our multi-device e-learning authoring tool has been designed to be a constant work in progress with regular updates to give you all the new features you need in the fast-moving world of learning technologies. With gomo 2.1 now just days away, we have been working hard to incorporate the feedback from our beta programme and our triallists from the past few months. In gomo 2.1, you can expect lots of new features, including: Display conditions - allowing you to target content to a specific device or devices Screen templates - for even quicker content creation New themes - two beautiful new designs to get you up and running as quickly as possible New assets - even more interactivity and an iFrame asset for embedding external content Multiple language support - via XLIFF translation export/ import. If you want to see the new features in action, make sure you register for the next gomo webinar on 31st July to learn more about gomo 2.1. We’ll be telling you more about the detail of these new features very shortly but, for now, our work to improve gomo definitely hasn’t stopped. In fact, we’re already thinking about what we can include in gomo 2.2! That is why we want you to take our gomo summer survey. The summer survey has been created to help us find out what it is you want from your e-learning authoring tool. We want to know about the way you create content, the devices your learners use and how you want that content to adapt and respond. It’s very quick and straightforward, and it will help us shape the future releases of gomo to give you the exact features you need. We’re always listening, so please take the survey now, or feel free to tweet us @gomolearning to let us know what you think of our multi-device authoring tool. The post Shaping the future of your e-learning authoring tool appeared first on gomo Learning.

Improving Corporate Online Learning Success Through Improving Learner Attitude and Organizational Support The benefits of training and learning in the corporate scenario are undisputed. It is not surprising that many organizations make considerable efforts to create training initiatives to make sure that their employees are at par with the developments around them. A lot of funds are also directed towards creating sustainable as well as impactful trainings that benefit the employees as well as the organization, in the long run. But training initiatives often fail to make the anticipated impact. This is a waste of time as well as effort of the learners; and, furthermore, a waste of organizational funds as well. Digging into the reasons why a training initiative fails, the two main culprits are: Firstly, the learners’ apathy towards learning and secondly, lack of organizational support. Improving Learners’ Attitude Towards Corporate Online Learning Many learners’ view Online learning as a ‘necessary evil’. They take up mandatory training programs that are required to advance within the company. This is where the negative attitude towards learning often originates. When the training is closely linked with organizational actions like employee evaluations or bonuses, it is a definite ‘push’ for learning. But it is important to note that the learners are only motivated by the reward and not the subject matter. Rather than something that they have to do as a mandatory task, learners must view learning as a task where they benefit directly. There are ways to improve the learners’ attitude. These work for a variety of organizations: Highlight actual benefits of corporate online learning. Most employees ask the same question when starting a training initiative -- "What’s in it for me?" If they perceive that the training is for organizational benefit only, it discourages them to put in their best efforts into learning. Thus, if the benefits of learning are pointed out to the individual before the start of the training endeavour, it can do a world of good to the end-results. Mailers or e-brochures can be created to highlight the benefits, and sent out to the learners. Mini-contests and other activities can also be held to create a buzz around the training initiative. Within the e-course, badges or certificates can be created to help the learners achieve goals and improve engagement with the learning process. Encourage peer learning. Learning is a social process and the best results are reaped when there are ample opportunities for peer interaction. But due to time restrictions, this is often not a viable option. But with technology-aided online learning platforms, learners can be given the opportunity to interact with fellow learners through instant messaging, discussion boards or even virtual classrooms. The social platform can also be utilized for peer learning, where advanced learners or high performers can be given the onus of leading discussions or even conducting short lessons for their peers. This is a huge driver for learning. It gives a sense of pride and achievement to the best performers within the learner group. For others it’s a source of inspiration that propels them to put in extra efforts and encourages them to aspire for the same achievements. Personalized corporate online learning. Learning is a personal experience, and every individual has a different learning style. It is not possible to build-in all the personal styles into a single training course. But it is important to give enough options to cater to some personal requirements as well. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to build-in the avenues of personal learning without drilling a huge hole in your training budget! For instance, while building an e-course, G-cube created a structure that split the course into two - the first one, an introduction; the other. giving the details of the subject in hand. Advanced learners could choose to skip the first part and move on to the more pertinent second part. To make sure that all the learners do not skip the introduction, a small test was assigned at the beginning of the second part, which made sure that the learner had the necessary background to fully understand the subject ahead. The bifurcation within the course provided an option to the learners that helped them save time and effort. In addition, it provided them the opportunity to concentrate on newer knowledge while they did not have to forcibly study something they already knew. Improving Organizational Support The organization has to support the corporate online learning endeavor to reap the true ROI of the initiative.  Organizations should develop a solid organizational program that provides choice to the employees by making available courses for individual learning needs as well as custom training courses for team learning and development needs. It is possible for the organization to do its bit and make sure that the corproate online learning initiative is not headed for failure: Defining training objectives. As basic as it sounds, many training initiatives begin with no clear objectives in mind. Most of them are created to cater to a pertinent need within the organization, but how the employee can improve or can become more better-suited for his or work through learning remains unclear. For instance, when creating a training to improve the selling techniques of employees, the objective should take into account the improved sales figures of the learner group over time - both before and after commencement of training. By defining objectives, the organization makes the training ‘purposeful’ and thus gains the most out of it. Training evaluation is critical. Many organizations don’t direct enough efforts to evaluate how well employees have learned after they have completed a training course. Organizations should extend support to fully gauge the impact of training efforts that benefit employees as well as the organization. Some organizations simply rely on employee feedback to understand how well the training was received. But this only gives a measure of initial reaction to the course, which is often insufficient in measuring the true impact. Organizations should not only test the actual skills learned during the training, but do it on a continual basis. Also, it is necessary to test an employee immediately after the training and repeat the testing multiple times to measure the skills decay. This will provide the true impact of online learning and also reveal the training needs as and when they emerge. Practice what is learned. Measuring skills decay is important, but it is also necessary to take proper steps to avoid the loss of skills over time. It is common knowledge that 79% of information learnt is forgotten within a month, if nothing is done to reinforce it. So, the good news is that there are re-enforcement activities that can decrease loss of information over time as well as increase retention rates for the learners. Organizations should provide the learners ample opportunities to practice newly-acquired skills or knowledge. If this is not possible in actual place of work, assignments or workshops can be conducted to make sure that the learners can practice and perfect. Simulations can also be created to provide the learners a safe and secure environment for practicing before embarking on applying them in their work. Employees are the greatest assets of an organization and employee development can be attained only if both parties are on board - employees as well as the organization. In the current competitive global market, the organizations who invest in employee training and development are the ones that succeed. Also, employees who realize the worth of giving their best towards employee training and development initiatives are the ones who succeed along with the organization. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

It is well-said that change is the only constant in the world of learning. Various groundbreaking developments in the last two decades have transformed the corporate training landscape. Instructor-led training sessions are gradually making way for eLearning courses. Unlike sessions held in brick and mortar classrooms, online courses can be accessed anywhere, anytime. These courses enable people to draw their convenient learning schedules, without disruptions to their work. E-learning courses can be developed quickly, at low cost, thanks to rapid authoring tools. This goes a long way in ensuring that the dynamic training needs of firms are met efficiently. The online medium helps deliver training of high and consistent quality as it is instructor-independent. It is highly environmental-friendly and helps organizations reduce their carbon footprint. Also, eLearning courses can be translated into multiple languages easily and are very useful to provide top-notch training to international, multilingual workforce. These benefits of eLearning have resulted in the widespread adoption of eLearning. Here are 5 interesting statistics about the popular training format. Hope you find this post interesting. Do share your views. Related PostsOnline Courses in Native Languages for Effective Corporate Training Things to be Considered Before Developing Multilingual E-learning courses6 Amazing Statistics on Learning Management Systems - An Infographic

At gomo, we never stand still, and are always improving our product based on our planned roadmap and feedback from our customers. Since launch, we’ve been providing lots of minor updates, but the first major upgrade, gomo 2.1, is available now. And because gomo is in the cloud, subscribers get these updates as soon as we release them, which is why you will now find the new gomo 2.1 features available to use in your own gomo courses. We’ve added a host of new features and capabilities to make everyone’s life even easier - both for multi-device authors and for students who are learning with gomo content. Alongside a wealth of minor tweaks and performance improvements, the major new features in gomo 2.1 include: Screen templates Creating highly interactive screens just got even easier. Some complex gomo screens took a lot of setting up in the past - we’ve now made life much faster with our new screen templates - in some cases reducing the effort from 20 steps down to two! Pick a pre-configured screen template and gomo will create the screen layout and add all of the items needed for the chosen screen type. Just drop in your content and hit the publish button. gomo 2.1 screen templates The new screen templates currently include: Media Audio asset (left and right) Video asset (left and right) Presentation Comic strip Film strip Hotspot image Hottext Menu (grid) Menu (list) Text and graphic (left and right) Question Assessment results Drop down on graphic Graphical multiple choice question Hotspot multiple choice question Select from list With this new feature in place, we will be regularly adding new templates in as the list of our screen interaction assets continue to grow. Display conditions gomo courses have always responded and adapted to the target device (desktop, tablet and smartphone), filling the screen and orientating themselves correctly. The addition of display conditions now allows authors to easily create device-specific content, or content based on the value of a project variable. For example, a detailed graphic on a desktop or tablet display might become unusable on a smartphone screen. Authors can now choose to replace the graphic with a simplified version that works on the smaller screen. gomo 2.1 display conditions With gomo 2.1, display conditions can be applied to ALL assets in a course. So it’s possible to have less text on a smartphone, shorter videos, alternative audio and any other adaptations that you desire. Multiple language support via XLIFF translation export/import (beta) gomo now makes it easy to create courses in different languages. Once a course is built, you can duplicate it and export the course content to XLIFF format for your translation agency. When the translation is complete, simply re-import it into the duplicated course to instantly get the foreign language version of your course. gomo 2.1 XLIFF translation export Brand new themes Themes are used in gomo to control the look and feel of your courses. gomo comes with a number of themes to get you started as quickly as possible. gomo 2.1 adds the ‘Night Sky’ and ‘Elegance’ themes.  If you would like to see the Night Sky theme in action, you can do so via our online demo. gomo 2.1 ‘Night Sky’ theme Don’t forget that these are just the starting point. You can configure themes to your heart’s content in gomo to give you beautiful content that matches your branding seamlessly for e-learning that really feels like yours. Brand new assets We have a variety of brand new screen interaction assets for you. These include: Accordion The accordion asset allows for the expanding and collapsing of text blocks on a page. It’s a nice way of presenting a series of statements and allowing users to step through them as they expand and collapse. gomo 2.1 accordion asset Carousel The carousel asset provides a horizontal storyboard for text and image content so you can present your content as a storyboard. gomo 2.1 carousel asset Image wall The image wall asset allows you to present image-based content as an interactive image gallery.  Clicking on an image will display the content full screen and display additional text content which relates to the selected image. gomo 2.1 image wall asset Content separator The separator asset is a simple content separator that allows you to break up content on screen using a solid, dashed or dotted line. gomo 2.1 content separator asset iFrame (beta) Still in beta, but available as part of the 2.1 release, is our iFrame asset.  The asset will allow you to embed externally hosted content within a screen and can be used for HTML5 animations, YouTube videos and more. gomo 2.1 iFrame (beta) New actions With gomo 2.1 we have also enhanced our range of actions.  For the assets that support actions (e.g. button assets and hotspot image), the following actions are now available: Link to a resource You can now link directly to resources associated with your project (e.g. PDF files) Set image states Using actions, you can now dynamically swap the images on screen. Set variable Using the variables you have defined for your project or group, you can now set these dynamically using actions Minor updates and usability enhancements Based on your feedback, we have made a number of enhancements to gomo to improve usability.  Notable enhancements include: Colour picker The content editor now includes a colour picker to easily select the colour you need Media library refresh When uploading new content to your resource library, you can now see the additional resources in the content editor by clicking on the refresh button Text input asset variable support The text input asset now supports variables for default text Custom fonts If the range of default fonts isn’t enough for you, we have added support for two custom fonts, allowing you greater flexibility in how you present your text content. To see the new features in action for yourself, register for our gomo 2.1 webinar on August 22nd. Mike Alcock will demonstrate the new and improved gomo, and will answer any questions you have about our multi-device authoring tool. The post Introducing gomo 2.1 appeared first on gomo Learning.

For an organization, its sales force is its biggest asset. However, training a team that sells new products day in and day out is a huge task! With new versions of products and their features to learn and sell every day, you need a platform that transcends all the difficulties of training your sales force and helps deliver quick and market-oriented results. In this post, we will explore the three reasons of choosing eLearning to train your sales force. Imagine you’re making a sales pitch and you’re stuck on a particular feature that you can’t seem to remember. What will you do then? Well, the answer is easy - creating eLearning courses on your products and their features; you will have the added advantage of delivering information in real time. Even the minutest of information can be easily updated and delivered with the help of rapid authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate and Lectora, which take only minutes to add and update any kind of new information. The biggest challenge any sales representative faces is addressing global audiences. There are certain features of a product that are only available to a select region or target market. This is where eLearning is helpful, because you have a virtual library at your disposal that is not only content but also region and target specific. During classroom sessions, you can miss out certain aspects of the product training; however, with eLearning all resources can be saved and are readily available for learners whenever they need them. This way, as a sales representative, you will never falter while addressing your target market area and audience. As a sales representative, you’re always on the move, and classroom training can be a hindrance in this case. With eLearning, you have a plethora of delivery platforms such as desktops, laptops, tablets, and smart-phones. Learning on the go encourages those on constant move to choose when and where they would like to get trained, whether in the comfort of their homes or in a cafe while sipping coffee! I hope this post has helped you understand the benefits of choosing eLearning for training your sales force. If you have more interesting reasons, feel free to share them. Related PostsEmpowering Sales Forces with Product TrainingUse Cloze Activities to Assess Product Knowledge of Your Sales Force 3 Things to Include in Your Online Product Training

gomo 2.0 has been available to the public since 2nd April. We thought it would be interesting to look back over the first three months in the life of our e-learning authoring product and see what sort of reaction we’ve had so far. We launched gomo 2.0 to the world at Learning Technologies in January. Although the product wasn’t ready for purchase at that time, we wanted to give the world a sneak preview of our brand new adaptive and responsive HTML5 authoring tool. To say that we were overwhelmed with the level of interest would be an understatement - non-stop demo requests led to over 200 enquiries at the exhibition. Interest continued over the next few months as we made the product ready for sale and by the time we were ready for launch on 2nd April we had almost 1,000 enquiries in our database. Two further exhibitions in the USA (Learning Solutions and mLearnCon) confirmed how ready the market is for a cloud-based, adaptive and responsive HTML5 authoring tool. Numerous organisations are frustrated with the limitations of their current authoring tools, especially when it comes to delivering content to iPads and smartphones. Since launch, over 600 organisations have signed up for the 21 day free trial of gomo, and many of these are now happy gomo customers. This includes organisations such as Deloitte, JCB, Dunhill, Climate KIC, Constellation Brands, Cranfield University, ITC Learning, Grainger, Devon & Somerset Fire & Rescue Service, Centro Universitário Cesumar and many more. We are on track to exceed our initial forecasts for the success of gomo and expect growth to accelerate with July’s release of gomo 2.1 - our first major upgrade. We are hoping that the host of new features and usability improvements should lead to even more organisations benefiting from true multi-device learning. The icing on the cake at the end of our first quarter is this testimonial from the Climate-KIC Online Education Team: "We’re building entire MOOCs around resources created with gomo. It’s the easiest authoring tool we’ve used and brilliant for our team collaboration, whether we’re working from home or together in the office. The range of design options has really helped us get a good balance between simplicity of output and richness of learner activity. We love the way it adapts what we create to display on phones, tablets, laptops and PCs from one source. We’re hooked!" Sign up for one of our upcoming webinars to see the capability of our latest update, gomo 2.1, or get started with a 21 day free trial today to begin creating beautiful multi-device learning today. The post gomo 2.0 - the first three months appeared first on gomo Learning.

Articulate storyline is a highly effective tool for developing eLearning courses.In each slide, we will have a title at the top. This slide title can be created with the help of the text box option from the menu bar. But, we can also INSERT the slide title, without using text box, through variables. Here are the steps to create a slide title with the help of variables. Step 1: Create a variable as shown here. Define a variable name (can include characters/numbers) Type as a text field Leave the value field empty Click OK Step 2: Place the variable name in the slide, with a percentage symbol on both sides (%SlideTitle%). Now, adjust the text box based on the required position. Step 3: In the respective slide, follow the steps below to adjust the variable. Action : Adjust variable Variable : Variable name (Ex: SlideTitle) Operator : equal to assignment Value : Slide title name that we want to display (Ex: Welcome) When : Timeline starts Object: preset slide. Step 4: Check the output using the preview The value you have entered in Step 3 will be displayed. I hope you find this blog useful. Do you use any other method to create screen titles for eLearning courses? Please do share. Related Posts2 Ways to Insert Slide Numbers in Articulate Storyline How to Enable Content After Visiting All Buttons in Articulate StorylineHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?

If you’re already a gomo customer, you’ll know how simple it is to design e-learning for mobile and tablet. Not only does gomo output responsive, adaptive content, but the recent gomo 2.1 update with its addition of display conditions makes it easier than ever to tailor each version of your course for different devices. If you’re new to the world of multi-device design, here are some of our top tips to get the look and feel right first time round. Text Generally speaking, the smaller the screen, the less text you should be using. If you’re designing e-learning for mobile, your learners don’t want to be scrolling through screen after screen of plain text, so keep it brief. On a similar note, the font you choose will need to be very clear, and you must choose a size which will be visible on all screens. Images Detailed diagrams and images won’t be especially mobile-friendly, forcing users to zoom in and out to see everything in the same detail they would on a larger screen. When you are designing e-learning for mobile, make sure your images are bold and clear, and remember the colours may display differently on a phone or tablet than a desktop. Videos All smartphone users know the frustration of waiting for a too-large video to stream on their mobiles, leading to annoying buffering and pausing. Keep videos short, sharp and snappy to avoid long waiting times for the best user experience, especially if you are opting to create a web app which uses an internet connection, rather than a native app. Interactivity Some activities in your course may work fine with a mouse or a keyboard, but touchscreens give you a whole new level of interactivity to widen your scope. When designing e-learning for mobile and tablet, think about experimenting with touch functionality to swipe, pinch, spin, drag and explore your content to give the best experience for each device. gomo really is the quickest way to build your own multi-device learning, whether you are designing e-learning for mobile exclusively or for a range of devices. From just £49 a month, you can create beautiful content with no programming skills necessary, tailoring it to your devices for the optimum user experience. To see gomo in action, join MD Mike Alcock for a live webinar of gomo 2.1 to find out more about our responsive, adaptive multi-device authoring tool. The post Designing e-learning for mobile appeared first on gomo Learning.

The main objective of an eLearning course is to make a strong impact on the learner. It should communicate the key concepts and engage him effectively. This can be done easily by focusing on visual elements. Visuals can be in the form of diagrams, charts, graphs, graphics, illustrations, drawings, or photographs. According to Fred R. Barnard, "People often say ‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ I believe the original quote was actually ‘A picture is worth ten thousand words’." Good visuals contribute greatly to enhance the learner’s understanding than text. Let’s have a look at the 4 core visual elements that need attention. Graphical User Interface (GUI) The purpose of having a Graphical User Interface (GUI) in an eLearning course is to help learners to navigate through the course, tell them how much of the course they had completed and so on. It is designed to interact with learners using elements such as icons, menus, controls etc. Generally, it is designed to suit the corporate branding. But, it is a good idea to customize it based on the content type. In a new employee orientation course, which we developed for a company operating off-shore rigs, we used a theme of water and sea. Colors Colors impact the learners’ mood and reinforce learning. The colors we use will definitely impact the presentation aspects of our courses and facilitate better retention. It is advisable NOT to use too many colors in one course (it’s better to follow a theme and stay consistent throughout the course). For example: If you are dealing with an ‘Agriculture Course’ or environment-related courses, you can use the color of nature i.e. Green. Fonts Choosing the right font does matter a lot in any kind of eLearning course. Fonts like ‘Verdana, ‘Times New Roman’ etc. are the most preferable fonts. It is advisable to use three precise fonts - each for the heading, one for the sub-headings and the other for the text body and stick to them throughout the course. However, we can also use various styles such as italics, bold, underlines etc. to emphasize on a particular text/content. For example: Graphics/Visuals Use graphics to enrich the course, and make sure that they are relevant to the content. Graphics, including photographs or images can be used to make the learning very effective and interesting. For example: These are some of the visual elements that help create an effective and engaged eLearning course. Please share your thoughts! Related Posts5 Visual Elements in E-learning4 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Using Visual Elements in E-learning6 E-learning Design Elements - An Infographic

6 Tips To Create Memorable Online Training Courses You are spending a significant amount of money, as well as countless hours, to carefully develop your online training courses. Thus, it is important for you that employees will take the most out of it. But how can you ensure that they will remember everything they learn? Confucius has been offering us the answer since the fourth century B.C: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand". In order to use these wise thoughts in empowering your online training strategy, read this article for 6 top tips that will help you create memorable online training courses and offer employees an immersive online training experience that they will not forget any time soon! Know your audience.  The first thing you need to do in order to create a memorable online training course is know who your audience is; meaning know their knowledge, skills and expertise levels. After all, if you don’t have a clear idea of what they already know, what skills they currently possess and what they need to advance, it will be difficult to develop an online training course/event that will offer them real value. You don’t want to waste time and money designing an online training strategy by making assumptions and probably by misjudging where employees are in their professional learning. In order to understand how to present the subject matter so that it will help expand your audience’s professional knowledge base, you need to carefully assess your audience. Evaluating employees’ skills and expertise is the crucial first step you need to take in order to develop an effective, engaging, and unforgettable online training experience. Grab employees’ attention. As a first step to grab employees attention, consider creating an eye-caching online training course title and introduction. Next, consider using humor as an attention grabber. You don’t need to overuse it, of course, after all we are talking about a serious corporate environment, but using small doses of humor is proven to be an invaluable tool for boosting memory, since for some reason, our brains prefer to remember unusual pieces of information. In addition, even if employees are enthusiastic about the online training experience and are willing to fully commit to it, which is not often the case, they may fail to stay focused and absorb the most important details of your online training course. It may be challenging for them to immediately identify and remember the critical ideas of each section. Therefore, you need to provide them with a clear framework that directs their attention to key concepts and propositions. To help them easily recognize and then memorize these key concepts, be sure that you repeat them multiple times throughout your online training and that you highlight them properly by using bold fonts, different colors or by placing them in boxes. This way you will offer employees the opportunity to focus on what is really important from the very beginning. Create a powerful online training course structure. After you have ensured that employees’ attention is yours, think about what it is that you most want them to learn. Have realistic expectations of your online training course and do not suffocate them with content; it is impossible to absorb too much information in a limited period of time, anyway. So, design a "brain friendly" course structure in which large volumes of information are divided into key sections. The more "step by step" is the nature of your approach, the easier it will be for employees to create an effective memorable pattern. Repeat key information in order to be successfully absorbed and try different ways to present it every time. Switch text with images and video with audio. In this manner, employees will have a variety of ways to accommodate their individual learning needs. Finally, consider to create "cause and effect" cases as often as possible throughout your online training course. When employees can logically link or associate two different pieces of information, they are able to process and retain them more effectively. In other words, the more clearly and logically structured your online training course is, the easier it will be for employees to remember it. Address employees’ emotions. As we already know, emotions amplify memory. In fact, it has been proven that without the emotional element, it is difficult for long term memory to be effectively formatted. Thus, if you are interested in creating an online training course that produces long term memory formation, you need to design it in a way that your content elicits emotional responses in employees. If the information you want employees to absorb fails to elicit emotional responses in them, they will not perceive it as meaningful and they will therefore be more likely to kick the information right out from their long term memory banks. In other words, if you want to facilitate your audience’s memory, you need to follow an emotionally-driven approach. A great way to create content that offers employees emotional value is storytelling and scenarios, which have a tremendous value in enhancing memory by helping your audience focus on your online training content and remember it for a long time. Make your online training course interactive and convenient. In order to offer employees an unforgettable online training experience, your content should be pointed out in the most interesting way possible. stimulate your audience’s interest and engagement levels by adding games, multimedia, and other interactive elements into your online training design. Forget info screens and focus on creating a series of activities that entertain employees and allow them to practice useful operating procedures. The more engaging your online training process is, the easier it will be for your audience to remember what they are learning. Furthermore, always make sure that your online training course is really easy to access and participate in. You need to keep in mind that employees are in fact busy adult learners and they may find difficult to fit their online training into their schedules. Consider the implementing mobile learning, so that your audience can access your online training course anywhere, anytime. Show employees the real world benefits of their online training. This last tip is of utmost importance: to create a memorable online training experience, you need to put the information you want employees to absorb in the real world. Information becomes solidified in our long term memories only if we are given the opportunity to reflect on it. Allow employees to see themselves in scenarios that offer real world benefits and give them the chance to take action and make choices. Speaking of choices, also consider allowing your employees to make mistakes. A mistake-driven learning approach significantly enhances memory, as it allows your audience to fail in a risk-free environment and then remember the consequences when dealing with the actual problem in real life; this way, it will be more likely for them to succeed. Application of knowledge by integrating real world simulations in your online training course takes full advantage of Confucius’ wise words discussed above. If you encourage employees to use the information they are receiving in a real world framework, and thus see how their specific skills can be applied to real world problems, they will surely not forget what they have learned. Finally, consider integrating social learning techniques into your online training course and encourage employees’ participation in online discussions. This will not only offer them the opportunity to prolong their memory by discussing and further exploring the key concepts of the subject matter for days or even weeks, but also it will offer you a valuable feedback on your online training deliverable’s effectiveness. Now that you know all the ways to create a memorable online training course, you may be interested in learning some more online training motivational triggers. Read the article 6 Tips To Motivate Your Employees in Online Training and discover all the tips and techniques you can use to fully engage and motivate employees in their online training, regardless of the subject matter. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

User experience  (UX) is the interaction between a person and a product, service or, in the case of gomo, e-learning. In the past, the interaction between a user and e-learning existed solely through a desktop computer, so courses were built and designed with a static mode of delivery in mind. Desktop is still a very popular mode of delivery, but the expectation to access the same content across devices is growing rapidly. User Experience is about how graphics, technology and the user interact to let the user take control of their experience without feeling lost or out of control. If the path through a course is kept simple, users are likely to understand what they are seeing and what is required of them. Take a website for example - terms like ‘home’, ‘about us’ and ‘portfolio’ more often than not appear in a site’s navigation to help us find what we want. We understand where the icon of a house will take us, regardless of whether we see it on our smartphone or desktop computer. We have an expectation as to where it will take us and what we will see when we click it. With gomo, you can ensure you keep users in control of their journey with user intuitive features such as help, menu and glossary buttons, which can be added at the click of a button. They will translate across devices to ensure a clean user experience, however the content is accessed. Sometimes, your audience will be accessing your course on a single device, so it doesn’t matter how the user experience will translate onto different screen sizes. Building a course for a smartphone or tablet has its own considerations, such as the use of swipe gestures, how graphics will look and how many words will fit on a screen. gomo 2.1’s display conditions feature allows you to build content specific to an individual device. This means that while you can build an app purely for mobile or tablet output, you can also apply display conditions to individual assets of a multi-device course. This means you can build a course which has less text, shorter videos and simplified graphics on one device and more on another in order to give users the best experience, without having to build two separate courses. To find out more about gomo, why not take a look at our feature tour or register for our upcoming webinar ‘introducing gomo 2.1 - our brand new gomo release’. The post Give your learners the best user experience appeared first on gomo Learning.

Now-a-days, organizations are looking to develop eLearning curriculum at one go rather than individual modules. Developing curriculum can save their precious training dollars. But, it takes a long time to develop it. How to reduce the development time? Is there a cost-effective way to develop a complete eLearning curriculum in a short span of time? Well, here is an infographic that lists the steps to develop an eLearning curriculum in just 3 weeks. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you develop eLearning curriculums? We’d love to know. Related PostsCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An Infographic3 Handy Tips for Training Manager to Make Employee Training a Success - An InfographicBenefits of Blended Solutions - A Mix of eLearning and Classroom Training

ICATEOET 2015 aims at providing a platform for researchers, engineers, academics, Students and industrial professionals to present their recent research work and to explore future trends in various areas of E-Learning and online education technology . The ICATEOET 2015 will be a showcase of relevant research that addresses these challenges and opportunities in E-Learning & online education. During the conference, there should be substantial time for presentation and discussion. ICATEOET 2015 is the 3rd in very successful series of Events, previously held in Abu Dhabi, UAE on 2013 and Munich, Germany on 2014 . After the great success of first and second series of ICATEOET , Now 3rd Series of ICETEOET is going to be held in Bangkok, Thailand on July 21 - 22, 2015 . It's our great pleasure to invite and welcome all from around the world.     This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Michael W. Allen, in his book "Leaving ADDIE for SAM", defines a prototype as a rough and incomplete tangible embodiment of an idea or concept. But, why should we consider prototyping in eLearning development? Today, in this blog, we will see how prototyping helps us in the eLearning design and development process. What is a Prototype in E-learning?  A prototype is an embodiment of the instructional strategy we plan for a project. A prototype is developed to ensure the alignment of our understandings with the expectations of stakeholders. So, the functionality of the prototype is only to a level where you can witness key and proposed interactivities. How Many Prototypes?  Michael W. Allen recommends that even if we like the prototype, we need to develop at least three prototypes. Use your creativity and develop the 1st While developing the 2nd prototype, do not include the ideas used in the 1st During 3rd prototype, try to design something new. In this, if necessary, you can use some of the design intents from the 1st and 2nd  Sometimes, we may have another iteration. But, whatever the selection may be, we will be confident that we have a good design ready. Benefits of Prototypes  A prototype helps us find the problems we will face while developing the final product. Problems of functionality and compatibility become very critical to resolve at later stages of development. Once you resolve the problems in the prototyping stage, you will avoid the process that had created the problem, while developing the final product. This will avoid rework to a great extent. So, it shortens the overall process time dramatically. As we develop at least 3 prototypes, it provides opportunities for us to be more creative and we start talking more constructively about design. As it is a collaborative process, it helps us analyze our learners’ needs and how those needs can be met. So, always prototype an idea or a concept of your instructional strategy before you start completely devoting your time, resource, and budget on implementing the idea for developing the final eLearning product. Have anything to say? Please do share? Related PostsCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An InfographicSAM - Why is it the Preferred Model for E-learning Development?ADDIE: Does this eLearning Model Need Innovation?

If Google Chrome is your browser of choice (which is highly likely according to the latest W3 schools stats), then we are pleased to announce that gomo is now featured on the Google Chrome store. Active gomo users, installing the app will install an icon and quick-link shortcut to the gomo authoring tool within your Chrome Apps directory and the Google App launcher for desktop. This makes accessing gomo authoring tool easier and quicker than ever. If you are using Chrome and would like to download the gomo app, click here. Google Chrome Apps directory Google App launcher for desktop To find out more about what gomo is, register for an upcoming webinar to see how you can create multi-device e-learning content today. The post gomo authoring tool is now available via the Google Chrome store appeared first on gomo Learning.

According to a survey conducted by the eLearning guild in 2013, Articulate Storyline is the most preferred rapid authoring tool. However, despite its immense popularity, there are several useful features of this tool that many eLearning designers, online course developers and training managers are not aware of. In this post, I would like to share 4 such features. 1. Adding selectable content Do you know that we can add selectable content (the content which we can copy) in our eLearning courses, using Articulate Storyline? This can be done by adding the content as HTML file (as Web Object). Follow the steps mentioned below. Step 1: Create a HTML file with your content. Note: Save your HTML file with the name index.html in the folder (from which you select to insert the Web Object). You can apply any text formatting within this file using styles. Step 2: In Articulate Storyline, select the Insert tab and click on the Web Object option. Step 3: Browse for your index.html file or paste the location of your folder directly and then click the OK button. Step 4: Publish your eLearning course and open the Story_html5 file to view the output. 2. Knowing your eLearning course duration Do you know that we can know the duration of our eLearning course without calculating? Follow the two steps mentioned below. Step 1: Publish your eLearning course to the LMS. Step 2: Open the published folder. You will find an XML file with the name meta.xml. Step 3: In the meta.xml file, you will find the duration property. You can find the total course duration here. You can even reset this value here itself (within the quotes). This doesn’t have any effect on the source. Articulate Storyline, by default, rounds the time value based on the fraction of a second. Have a look at below image to understand how Storyline rounds the time values. Note: Storyline, by default, ignores the timeline of slide layers. 3. Setting your eLearning course duration I have explained how to view eLearning course duration. Now, I will explain how to set the duration of an eLearning course in Articulate Storyline. Step 1: Open the publishing window and click the button beside the title. Step 2: Click the dropdown beside the Duration option and type the duration, based on your course. For instance, you can type About 2 minutes. 4. Inserting tables Though Storyline is considered as one of the best authoring tools, it doesn’t have an option to insert tables. But, we can add a table easily through a web object. Create a table in HTML and save it with the name index.html and insert it into Storyline as a Web Object. Note: Inserting a web object was explained in point 3. Hope you find this blog useful. Have anything to say? Please do share. Related PostsHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?4 Tips for Developing E-learning Course Using Rapid Authoring ToolsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key Features

Six-Figure Instructional Designers You may not have seen any help wanted ads with that headline. But companies are on the hunt for Instructional Designers (IDs) with an entrepreneurial bent and a creative flair. And who are willing to work for a salary in the $130,000+ range. Sound like a fantasy or a scam? It’s not. And not only are IDs getting the higher salaries, they’re increasingly getting director-level titles. "Creative, high-tech eLearning instructional designers are the new content marketers," according to Jessica, a recruiter for the health-care industry who didn’t want to give her last name because she feared being overwhelmed with emails from job-seeking IDs. In an email interview, she told me employers are after the unique skill-set of instructional designers. "My clients no longer want solely writers or marketers to create consumer education and marketing campaigns. They want someone who knows how to change behavior through education—not just someone who focuses on information delivery without behavior change. They want someone who knows that gamification isn’t about meaningless points and badges for completing an activity, but that true gamification is about embarking on problem-solving quests through resource acquisition and management in a simulated environment. Company managers finally started saying, ‘Hey. Those are the things instructional designers do.’ That’s why there’s such an uptick in these higher-level positions for instructional designers." "Then why not just hire instructional designers with those skills, pay them well, and call them instructional designers?" I asked. "Why offer director-level titles?" "Most IDs with those skills are freelancers, own a boutique eLearning agency, or work for an eLearning agency," Jessica explained. "Most freelancers and boutique owners wouldn’t consider working full-time for someone else without a high-level title. After all, they’ve earned it after owning their own businesses. And IDs working at agencies with those skills are on a development track to get those titles in those agencies. So, companies had to offer those VP and director titles to entice the IDs with the talent and skills they need—even if it is only for a one-person department." A New Hiring and Recruiting Trend Instructional Designers are increasingly sought after for Director-level positions of single-person content creation departments. I can personally attest to this hiring trend. In the past four months, I have received three unsolicited "cold call" offers for interviews from recruiters working for large companies.  Several of my freelance instructional designer friends have also been contacted by recruiters for similar positions. All of these offers were over the six figure salary mark (the range was from $130,000 to $180,000), and all titles were director level except for one, which was a VP level.  (Fortunately, for now, I’m deliriously happy at my current gig so I’m not looking to move. On the other hand, one of my freelance buddies is in the final stages of interviews for one of those six-fig gigs, and another has already accepted a Director of Instructional Design position!) Those unsolicited calls to me and my ID colleagues made me think I smelled a new hiring trend in the eLearning industry, and that prompted me to do some investigating. After a few cursory web searches, I discovered that many companies now seek out high-level IDs for high-level positions. Revenge of the (eLearning) Nerds From learning nerds to department heads: Instructional Designers are sought after by training and marketing executives alike. Once considered the red-haired stepchildren of corporations, instructional designers are finally going from no-respect Rodney Dangerfields to super cool content heroes. Organizations now value these high-performing individual contributors by giving them titles like "Director of New Information Products"  (this title is found mostly in the healthcare and biotech sectors), "Director of Educational Products" (found mostly in K-12 and higher ed organizations), or "Director (of VP) of New Information Products" (found most often in health care and financial services). Other six-figure titles that required an ID background include: "Director of Learning Innovation," "Director of Instructional Design,"(found in the banking and software industries) "Director of eLearning," "Internal ID Consultant," "Director of Adult Education Products," "Creative Director," "Director (or VP) of Digital Education Publishing," and "Director of New Product Marketing" (found mostly in the medical devices field). For the most part, these are positions that do NOT have direct reports; they are one-person departments—which is exactly the type of position most IDs crave. Most highly experienced instructional designers I’ve spoken with over the years say they don’t want to manage people, but they feel trapped by a system where the only advancement opportunity for high-level individual contributors is through people management. It seems as if the more progressive companies have finally realized that and are giving IDs what they want, while at the same time meeting corporate growth and revenue goals. It’s interesting that some titles (such as "Creative Director" and "Director of New Product Marketing") were once the sole domain of graphic design, advertising and media professionals. But as more organizations discover the effectiveness of online courses in building brand loyalty and revenues, they seek people who have experience in interactive online course design and development. Millennials Driving the Trend to Hire High-Level Instructional Designers Millennials want eLearning that is innovative, uses multi-media, and has strong storylines and enteratainment value. Companies aren’t just hiring instructional designers with gamification experience for content and consumer marketing. They’re also hiring them to create the highly interactive, highly entertaining employee training programs that Millennials demand. My friend, Clive, who is interviewing for a Director of Digital Innovation position in the oil and gas industry said his potential employer needed to up his game because younger new hires just couldn’t relate to the traditional eLearning programs with a few branching activities and some drag-and-drop interactions. They want interactive gamified movies with real story lines that directly relate to their jobs. "My potential boss said they were losing good employees because of bad training," Clive told me during one of our "Pizza and Skype" chat sessions that we have once per month on Sunday evenings. What it Takes to Get These Gigs Although a college degree is required for high-level ID jobs, you don't need an instructional design-specific degree. Experience and portfolios count more than the specialized sheepskin, except in academia. Surprisingly, only the director-level positions in education (K-12 and higher ed) required an ID degree and/or an advanced degree; all other positions required an average of eight years as an ID consultant or agency owner, or someone who has managed multiple clients and projects while being responsible for revenue goals. In other words, companies are looking for people with entrepreneurial skills who are accustomed to working with no supervision, who can quickly and accurately identify customer needs, and who have marketing experience. Nearly one-third of the director-level ID positions required some experience to marketing courses and adult market; about one-fourth required hands-on gamification design and development experience. And, of course, the ability to work with subject matter experts (SMEs) was listed as a requirement in most position announcements. Clearly, the portfolio and the experience were more important than a degree- except in the educational field. For that market, you’ll need a Masters in Instructional Design or a related field. But other industries- corporations- wanted demonstrated results and proof of experience over the sheepskin. One caveat: nearly all of the director and VP level positions required both design and development skills; not one or the other. Creativity, Tech Skills, Marketing and Vendor Management Experience Valued Top skills employers want when hiring instructional designers for director-level jobs. Top skills mentioned in the job descriptions for these ID Director-level positions were innovation and creativity. Tech skills such as HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and JQuery don’t hurt, either. You don’t necessarily need to know how to use those programming languages, but you have to know the capabilities and limitations of each. Why? Because here’s another trend: ahead-of-the-curve companies are getting away from the development restrictions of rapid development tools (and some of the browser compatibility headaches that go along with those tools) and are turning to native development. And a few are turning to hybrid solutions: develop part of the course in something like Storyline2, and then use gamified elements created with JQuery (or something else) and include that in the final product. Managing vendors and freelancers was another skill highlighted for high-level ID positions. Because these directors are one-person departments for the most part, they usually need to outsource some of the work. This is another reason why companies looking for candidates for these who have entrepreneurial experience; freelancers and agency owners have extensive networks already developed of people with 3D animation, programming, video and voice-over skills. That means the company doesn’t have to spend time hunting for those resources. Other skills mentioned were the ability to work independently, budget managment, course marketing and course profit tracking- again, mostly skills gained as an entrepreneur of freelancer. Telecommuting Encouraged Although some director-level ID positions seemed to be for on-site jobs, about 65% were 100% remote positions—which allows you to work from home. As Jessica told me: "They (companies) realize it’s difficult to find eLearning professionals with all of those skills (gamification, video, script-writing, vendor management, programming and ID), and they also realize that people with those skills are going to likely be people who are accustomed to working from their homes as freelancers or small agency owners. To get those people to budge, companies are increasingly discovering not offering a remote work environment is not an option if they want the best candidates." Question to Freelancers: Would you Do it? Would you give up your freelance ID gig for a full-time six-figure job? Take the quiz. All of this fancy-title-high-income talk is great. But it got me wondering about something else: Would freelancers (or boutique agency owners) go full-time if they could have a six-figure income, do the highly creative work they love (instead of mind-numbing, low-budget productions), not have to manage employees, and could work from home? Does the idea of paid vacations, paid holidays, partially paid insurance, matching 401K contributions and a regular paycheck pique your interest? Or, is the deep satisfaction that comes from owning your own business too great? Is the call of freedom (freedom to work when you want) and the ability to work with many different types of clients—rather than just one—too powerful to give it all up? For all of you freelance (or boutique eLearning agency owners) out there, we want to know what you think. If you have 60-seconds, please click here to complete an anonymous survey. We’ll post the results on my blog when survey results are tabulated. Or, if you want to be notified directly, just drop an email to: vicki@digitalwits.com with "Send Survey Results" in the subject line. Like this content? Want to get free resources, regular tips and tricks on brain based learning, or be the first to learn of new eLearning trends? Then visit our blog to read more or join our community of 10,000 instructional designers and corporate edu-preneurs.  This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

You could argue that the platform and delivery of your e-learning content is the most crucial part of learning and development. After all, if learning content is strewn across several locations, platforms and systems, it’s going to be more hassle than it’s worth for your staff to seek anything out. In this instance, courses end up getting lost and forgotten past their launch despite the effort (and cost) of getting them created and live. With the platform, delivery and access of learning being so crucial, the marketplace is vast with hundreds of possible solutions out there. Course management systems, virtual learning environments (VLE) and learning management systems (LMS) all offer things that are similar in premise, but very different in reality. It all depends on how far you want or need to take it, which obviously affects the cost and complexity of the implementation. Course management system What we’re looking at in this particular post, however, is how a cloud course management system can save you time, effort and of course, money. A course management system is more flexible and focused around securing delivery of content, giving learners easy access to learning via a cloud-based portal. It’s not as feature-rich as an LMS and is probably slightly less formal, curricular or even HR focussed. After all, features are great, but only if you know you’ll use them. A cloud course management system is for the organizations who are hellbent on getting learning content out quickly and don’t have time for the hosting and RFPs (or cost) associated with implementing an LMS. If you don’t want to feel tied down by investing in infrastructure, like the idea of multi-device and BYOD access to your content and want somewhere to analyse what learners are up to, a cloud course management system might be the ideal solution for you. The good news is that this sort of solution can save you money, too. Here are six ways a cloud course management system can save you and your company money. If curriculums, events, chat and other LMS functions are wasted on you If you opt for a traditional LMS or course management system, every feature you have available is going to increase the cost of your overall contract. That’s all well and good if you have plans to put everything to use, but if not, it’s going to be eating into valuable budget that could be put use elsewhere. As we’ve suggested in this post, make a list of requirements and stick to it when speaking with LMS or course management system vendors… this will keep your selection focussed and cost where it should be. If getting courses out there is your #1 priority A cloud course management system is the ideal solution for the organization looking for a flexible vehicle to get your courses in front of your learners, as quickly and as easily as possible. Learning teams login via their browser and upload courses and push them live and make them available to learners. Learners login via their browser and courses are ready and waiting for them. This goes hand in hand with the above - if forums and hand-ins are going to be no use and you’re focussed on the speed, simplicity and getting courses out there, a cloud course management system could be the solution for you.   Distribute courses instantly with gomo’s cloud course management solution If you can’t keep up with all of the devices in your offices (but want to put them to use) The devices sat on desks across your organization are a great (and increasingly important) tool for learning. With app such as Gmail, Slack and Google Analytics making our access to work a whole lot easier, it’s only right that learning is on hand, too. Because cloud course  management systems are based in the cloud, they can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. If globally dispersed staff know they’re just a login away from resources and support, there’s a good chance they will begin to take advantage of it. All staff need is a login and a link, putting them just minutes away from learning and development support whether they’re in a meeting, with a client or working from home. If you’re put off by being tied in for the long-term Cloud course management systems and cloud solutions in general usually work on a software as a service (SaaS) model, meaning you pay for the system on a rolling basis to keep using the web-based tool. This gives you the freedom to up and leave whenever it suits, keeping you in control of your contract, usage and budget. An LMS isn’t the sort of thing you can replace easily, the amount of curricular info they contain along with the physical hosting and annual contracts makes it difficult to up and leave as freely as you can with a hosted solution. If you’re tentatively stepping into the world of e-learning management, a SaaS course management system might be the ideal solution for you. If you like the idea of staff having constant access to learning Especially great for organizations working in different time zones or locations, a cloud hub of learning resources leaves you safe in the knowledge that everyone can access the same stuff easily, regardless of location. It takes away some complex IT and network stuff, too, as staff only need an internet connection to access a cloud course management system, which makes it easy to implement. It’s important your staff the world round are following the same procedures, on brand and using the same terminology to avoid crossed wires and confusion to keep things moving across offices. Enjoy the read? Share it with your community. If a flexible, cloud course management system sounds like a solution you’d like to explore, read a little more about gomo’s hosting and distribution solution here, or join an upcoming webinar with Managing Director Mike Alcock to see it in action. The post 6 ways a cloud course management system can save you money appeared first on gomo Learning.