Dealing with subject-matter experts for eLearning courses is a regular sight for an instructional designer. The subject-matter expert or SME is an integral part of your course, and this person works behind the scenes gathering relevant content for your eLearning course. An SME can be anyone from a software engineer to a research analyst. Many times, it’s hard to decode what an SME thinks; this leads to anxiety and confusion which is reflected in your eLearning course. As hard as understanding an SME maybe, it’s not impossible! Let’s have a look at a few tips to decode your SME’S brain. Be Ready - Before you even schedule a meeting with your SME, you have to be ready to ask the right questions in order to get the right answers. For this, all you need to do is be ready! Read the content provided by the SME before the meeting and comprehend as much as you can. Do some research, go on the Internet and read about the basic concepts of and ideas on the concerned subject. Remember- don’t try to outdo the SME as he is the king of the content. All you need to do is be a little knowledgeable in the subject matter in hand, and once the SME knows that you are as passionate as him about the subject, he will share all the information with you keenly. Be Steady - Now that you’re in the meeting with your SME, you need to be ready with an in-depth questionnaire. The reason for having a questionnaire is that the SME may have a tendency to go off track and talk about information that isn’t relevant to your course. Ask specific questions to emphasize the "need to know" information rather than "nice to know" information. You can also ask open-ended questions, if you need interesting stories or case studies for the course. Always ask about the performance mistakes made by the learner; this helps you get a clear understanding of the learning outcome. Be Set - You’ve done your homework and asked everything you needed to know. But, before you end the discussion with the SME, it’s your turn to talk. Once you have all the information you need, there is only one thing left to do - repeat, repeat and repeat! Summarize the information provided by the SME, and take a final confirmation. This is also the best time to clarify any gaps in or doubts you have about the content. And GO! - With these points, you are all set with your final course content. So, what are you waiting for? Go! Get started! Related PostsHow to Create a Customized E-Learning Course? Step 2 - Instructional Design ProcessApplication of Learning Cycle in Designing E-Learning Courses3 Brilliant Ways to Present Timelines - An Infographic

There’s a lot going on at gomo as we head towards the release of gomo 2.2 at Devlearn next week, so I thought I’d take to the blog to let you know how you can be a part of the launch and learn more about the latest version of our multi-device authoring tool. If you haven’t already, take a look at last weeks blog to see some of the magnificent new features we’re adding to gomo. DevLearn 2014 DevLearn takes place from October 29th-31st in Las Vegas. If you’re attending, visit us at booth 409 to be in with a chance of winning a years subscription to gomo authoring tool. We’ll also be on hand throughout the exhibition to talk all things multi-device and to take you through gomo 2.2 - we’re really excited to meet and speak with you all. Mike Alcock, gomo Managing Director’s Devlearn seminar "Responsive and adaptive HTML5 multi-device elearning with gomo", takes place on the elearning tools stage at 12pm (PDT) on Wednesday 29th October. Come along to a live demo of gomo 2.2 and explore how easily you can create your own single source, cloud-based, multi-device content. gomo 2.2 webinar If you won’t make it to Vegas, Mike Alcock is following up with a webinar on November 6th at 3pm GMT. During the exclusive online event, Mike will reveal gomo 2.2’s features and showcase how they come together to provide you with an effortless and intuitive content creation experience. Places are limited, so be sure to reserve yours today. The future 2.2 is further proof that we never stand still at gomo. Since launching in April, we’ve provided a constant stream of minor upgrades and usability improvements on top of 2 major updates. Based on our planned roadmap and user feedback, we are always improving our product to ensure gomo users can meet the ever-increasing demands of learners today. Because gomo is cloud based, subscribers get every tweak and improvement we make by simply logging into to their account - no downloads, no time wasted. All projects built prior to a new version of gomo will have all new features as soon as we launch a new version, allowing all subscribers to take advantage of every improvement we make, not just new ones. The post The launch of gomo 2.2 - what we’re up to appeared first on gomo Learning.

The aviation industry was the first industry to adopt eLearning and define the standards for online course development. The Aviation Industry Computer-based Training Committee (AICC) develops guidelines for CBT and WBT. They adopted eLearning to ensure flexibility and minimize costs. The use of eLearning has reduced the dependency on aircraft and other high-end training devices considerably. E-learning courses used to train the people in the aviation sector need to be developed meticulously as even minute details play an important role. E-learning courses for the aviation industry should not infuse doubts in the mind of the learner, and they need to enable him to take quick decisions. This is essential to ensure the safety of passengers and air crews. Let’s now see 3 important things that instructional designers need to keep in mind while designing online courses for the aviation industry. Hope you find this post interesting. Do share your views. Related Posts3 Reasons Why Problem-based Learning Is Effective LearningSCORM or AICC - Which is The Best Compliance Option for your E-learning CoursesThe 3Cs to Safely Land your Aviation Industry Computer Based Trainings

From Flash To HTML5 At KMI Learning we have used this platform to deliver high end, award winning content wrapped in our own custom framework. The platform has vast adoption given  its thriving developer community, user friendly audio visual tools, powerful scripting language, and cross browser support for desktop.  But that’s all changed. When Flash Started Loosing It became clear during the release of the first iPhone and subsequent Android devices that Flash just wasn’t going to cut it. Android tried to maintain Flash player support, but performance issues coupled with battery usage really killed its chances. For a while making mobile courses required expert level web development skills, primarily to navigate the array of unique platform requirements. Creating a mobile course that was also available on Internet Explorer, without sacrificing production value, was challenging. Eventually in September 2012, with the announcement of new recommendations for HTML5, the W3C sealed the Flash player’s fate. It was obvious that HTML5 was the way forward and we would need to build a new course framework from the ground up. We began development with a few things in mind. First we needed the ability to run content across the widest distribution of browsers possible, everything from Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and across any device with modern standards. Second, it would have to allow us to produce courses with the same rich content as Flash; custom user interface, scripted interactions, animations, video, and audio. Finally, provide a way to convert older Flash content for mobile devices. I’m proud to say we managed to reach all of these goals and we have been using (and refining) this framework for the past 2 years. How To Convert Flash To HTML5 After an extensive amount of research and testing we decided to use CreateJS as a base for our framework. CreateJS is officially supported by Adobe and includes a very powerful set of API’s similar to the AS3 language. We were able to leverage this to produce the three modular libraries; a course controller, flash layer and canvas layer. They allow us to use component based detection to determine if we are able to operate using HTML5 canvas (with 2d context) or Flash. In concert with our course software we have also refined our process by building a set of custom publishing tools. Built as standalone applications our tools use JSFL to interact with and manipulate normal flash files. They have allowed us to fully automate mobile optimization, and mitigate common HTML5 conversion issues. Our tools allow us to build content in Adobe Flash, and output directly to both Flash player (as a backup for older devices) and HTML5. Meaning we are able to produce courses that work on legacy browsers, and mobile devices. It also means we are able to recycle existing content (given source files) and convert it into something your users can view anywhere. No more roadblocks. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

This weeks blog comes from Elly Davis, Lead Learning Designer at fellow LTG organisation, LEO. According to the BBC’s Jon Howard (@swingpants) we are in ‘the scribe stage of the digital age’. So, whilst digital products are now an intrinsic part of our lives, only a few people have the skills to make them - it’s time for digital creativity to go mainstream! I was lucky to catch Jon’s presentation at this year’s Reasons to be Creative conference - he’s an interesting speaker whose positivity is catching. He asked us to imagine how the next generation will be creative in the digital world… which set the cogs in my analogue brain a-whirring. What will my tablet-reared children be making in 20 years time? (Not Skynet I hope!) As a Lead Instructional Designer, I rely on the talented developers and digital designers at LEO to help me turn my creative visions into reality. I’m a fortunate minority - I get to hang with the scribes, without having to master complex software or programming languages. Most people don’t have that luxury, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have creative potential. The way forward, according to Howard, is the availability of simplified tools. You shouldn’t have to code to be able to create. The clever coders make and maintain the tools so the rest of us can use them to create games, learning, apps, platforms and other things we have not yet imagined. Howard outlined a set of criteria that needs to be met in order to be considered a simplified tool; Have low barriers of entry Enable sharing of creativity Be multi-platform friendly Be simple yet effective While we’ve always always been proud of gomo’s ease, simplicity and developer-free content creation, we’re pleased to see that it meets all four categories, making it a fully fledged simplified tool… It costs as little as £49 a month (low barriers of entry) It is accessed through a web browser and allows users to collaborate on projects (sharing of creativity) It is responsive and adaptive, making for truly multi-device output (multi-platform friendly) Its drag and drop functionality, simple asset creation and ease of publishing means anyone can create powerful, effective learning. (simple yet effective) It’s still early days, but it’s fascinating to see what people are creating with our multi-device learning tool already - it’s exciting to see what tomorrow brings! To see the latest version of our multi-device learning tool, register your place on gomo Managing Director Mike Alcock’s webinar on November 6th, where he will reveal and demo the new features of our multi-device learning tool and show how you can create content simply, quickly and easily. The post The future of digital creativity appeared first on gomo Learning.

Many training managers prefer Articulate Storyline to develop online courses as it can satisfy their unique requirements. Everyone in the eLearning industry assumes that this tool is very efficient for eLearning development. But, do you know that there are three ‘hidden’ features which are very useful? In this post, I would like to share what they are and how to use them. They are: Icon creator Video converter Audio converter Let’s us now look at each of these in detail. 1. Icon creator Shapes in Storyline are not mere shapes, but building blocks to create icons for eLearning courses. Storyline comes with several in-built Shapes and Tools (like Freeform, Curve and Scribble) which help create new objects from the existing ones. Have a look at the screenshots below to view some of the objects/ icons created in Storyline. 2. Video converter Storyline 2 has come up with a new option for videos. Once you publish the course, all the videos used in eLearning course are converted into the .mp4 format. This feature can be used as a tool to convert our eLearning videos into .mp4 format. After publishing, we can get the converted videos from story_content folder of published files with an auto generated name (Alphanumeric). E.g.: video_5VqenzRyzuj_26_48_644x364 Note: We can convert videos only into the .mp4 format. 3. Audio converter  Do you know that we can convert our audio files into the .mp3 format? Yes. All you need to do is insert audio files into a Storyline slide and publish. As described above, open the story_content folder to take your converted audio files. Refer the screenshot below. Note: We can convert audios only into .mp3 format. Hope you find this blog useful. Do share your views. Related PostsRapid E-learning through Storyline Tool: 5 Infographics Sharing Key FeaturesHow to Combine Your Adobe Captivate Projects Into Single Course?4 Tips for Developing E-learning Course Using Rapid Authoring Tools

gomo learning is delighted to announce its debut on e-learning industry guru Craig Weiss’ list of the top 5 authoring tools of 2014. Based on a review of 190 authoring tools, gomo was revealed as one of the Top 5 authoring tools during Weiss’ seminar at Devlearn in Las Vegas, Nevada. gomo 2.2, which was launched at Devlearn, comes with a cluster of new features and improvements to make cloud-based, multi-device e-learning content more effortless, intuitive and beautiful than ever before. It allows teams and individuals to build, collaborate and publish their own e-learning content for as little as £49/ $89 a month. Commenting on the result, Managing Director Mike Alcock said "We’ve had a fabulous six months since we launched our multi-device software. For a brand-new product like gomo to be acknowledged by an industry thought leader as one of the top five authoring tools of 2014 is a great way to top it off." Secure your place on Mike’s next webinar to see how the latest version of our top 5 responsive, adaptive authoring tool makes multi-device e-learning development more simple and intuitive than ever before. The post gomo learning announced as a top 5 authoring tool appeared first on gomo Learning.

What eLearning Professionals Should Know About Behaviorism In Instructional Design For eLearning Although we may declare supporters of cognitivism or constructivism, we are all behaviorists by nature. Even if we may not realize it, as eLearning professionals, we all use behavioristic principles extensively in our instructional design for eLearning. This happens because behaviorism, no matter how much out-of-date it sounds, without any doubt, is deeply rooted in human subconscious. Instinctively, it’s part of our actions and reactions. From an educational point of view, who doesn’t want to examine learners’ observable and measurable behavior and guide them accordingly to optimize their learning? What are tests and assessment in general, other than an effort to estimate learners’ performance and adapt the instruction accordingly to the learning needs of the audience? These principles also apply in eLearning. No. In this article, I won’t talk about Pavlov’s dogs, Skinner’s rats and pigeons, nor about the Thorndike’s Law of Effect. There is extensive bibliography about all these. Instead, I will give you examples of elements we all use today in instructional design for eLearning, without even realizing that they are based on behavioristic principles, as well as to explain for what type of learning objectives a behavioristic approach may yield better results. Applying Behaviorism In Instructional Design For eLearning Right-wrong, on-off, 0-1, etc. In fact, the connection of behaviorism and eLearning was clear from the very beginning. If we take a look back in the 1950s and 60s, when Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) first appeared, computer seemed to be the ideal tool to measure learning outcomes, on the condition of course, that there was a single correct answer learners were expected to give. Soon this evolved to an attempt for Programmed Instruction with the computer programmed to give pre-determined paths to follow, that is allowing learners to proceed only when the correct answer was given. Today programmed instruction can be perceived as a forerunner of interactive branching scenarios and adaptive hypermedia systems applied in online education, with behavioristic elements, the resemblance of which with programmed-instruction is very difficult to be ignored, despite the fact that we tend to "cover" them in modern "constructivistic" packages claiming that we give learners "freedom of choice". The truth is that the only freedom learners are allowed is with respect to the order they choose to follow the predefined learning paths, so carefully tracked and programmed in the instructional design of really good eLearning courses. Back to behaviorism, as the name implies, a behavioristic approach focuses on guiding learners reach pre-established learning outcomes. Learning is considered to take place when learners manage to reach these expected outcomes designed to meet the learning objectives of the eLearning course. Therefore, the aim of a behavioristic-oriented instructional design for eLearning must be to provide learners with the appropriate stimuli, that is with opportunities that help them demonstrate that they are able to express desired behaviors that prove that learning has actually taken place. An instructional design for eLearning based on behavioristic approach starts from the basic assumption of behaviorism that knowledge is objective, meaning that there is only one correct answer to give or a specific approach to follow, respectively. Although this may sound rigid, and perhaps it is, this is where to start in order for eLearning professionals to get awareness of the type of activities that a behavioristic approach could be appropriate for. It also shows, that behaviorism may not be the appropriate approach for eLearning activities that require the user to develop higher-order skills, such decision-making or problem-solving through analysis, synthesis or evaluation of the information presented. Objectivism is the key to remember in order to decide whether a behavioristic approach is appropriate for your eLearning activities or not. Is there a single correct answer or multiple approaches may be acceptable. Is knowledge objective? Don’t rush to answer no. Facts and standardized procedures actually are examples of "objective" knowledge. They do not change. Take advantage of this and check the learning objectives of the eLearning course. This is where you need to start. Techniques To Be Used For The Instructional Design Of Behavioristic eLearning Activities Once determined that a behaviorist approach is suitable to meet particular learning objectives of your eLearning course, you need to design the respective eLearning activities accordingly. The techniques you may use are the following: Discrimination. Use discrimination whenever the learning objective requires learners to identify whether a concept belongs to a specific category or not. In order to do so, learners should be able to identify key characteristics and qualities of the category, and judge whether the new information shares the same qualities to belong to the group or not. Drag-and-drop exercises to classify concepts into different categories may serve as examples of developing discrimination activities in terms of eLearning course design. Generalization. Generalization is suitable whenever the learning objectives are such, that learners after identifying the attributes of an item belonging to one category are expected to assign the same attributes to all items within the category. Teaching through examples is based on an inductive approach of presenting eLearning content, during which learners after observing a series of independent online examples should be able to identify their common characteristic(s) and generalize by formulating the rule. Under this perspective, generalization is very close to what today we perceive as active learning, with an obvious direct connection to constructivism. Association. Although in strictly behavioristic terms, association is the typical example of conditioning, that is linking a specific stimulus to a specific response, there is a tendency in today’s eLearning to create eLearning interactions based on association whenever the learning objectives require the new information presented to be linked to specific practical applications of it. Presenting information within context can help learners create associations. This means that whenever learners encounter the same or similar information, they already know what it’s related to, as they have already built a basic frame of reference to associate this piece of information with. Although a behaviorist approach perceives this association as an automated drill task and not as a cognitive process, applied in instructional design for eLearning, matching exercises are examples of eLearning activities that could be designed to facilitate learners’ process of making associations. Chaining. Chaining is referring to learners automatic performance on specific procedures with pre-determined steps to be followed. Like a chain, one step leads learners to the next. Performing drill tasks is an example of elearning objectives that can be mastered through chaining. Creating drill tasks in eLearning involves presenting the theoretical model first and then asking learners to repeat the procedure by actually repeating the steps involved in the same order these were presented. Through repetition and online practice, learners at the end are able to reach the desired outcome by following the steps exactly as presented in the model. Sequence ordering exercises through drag-and-drop are very frequently used in quiz making templates most eLearning authoring tools provide. Such exercises may serve as typical examples of drill tasks applied in eLearning course design. In such activities, there is always a pre-defined and unique correct sequence that learners must form in order to show that they have mastered the learning objective under consideration. It’s very common for learners to reach the desired outcome through trial-and-error, another behavioristic technique quite applicable in eLearning, depending on the number of attempts allowed by the instructional designer. It sounds like Thorndike’s Law of Effect, doesn’t it? Learners do not stop pressing different levers, that is exploring alternative answers, until they find the rewarding one! Keep in mind that for all of the above techniques, there is just a single correct answer. All quiz creation eLearning authoring tools take advantage of these behavioristic-based alternative exercise formats, as in order for the program to give an automated response and test learners performance through their test scores, that is measurable outcomes, there should be a unique correct response for each question. Reinforcing Desired And Weakening Undesired Behavior What is the instructor’s role in this process then? An instructional design for eLearning based on a behavioristic approach sets the type of reactions to be received by learners, after interacting with the online training material. These reactions come from an online instructor or corporate trainer in synchronous eLearning settings, or from the eLearning course itself in the case of asynchronous eLearning. Depending on the type of reaction received, learners expressed behavior may be reinforced or weakened. This highlights the importance of feedback throughout the entire learning process, not only at the end of the eLearning course but each time a learner interacts with the system. In behavioristic terms, although nobody wants to call it like this today, feedback is the simplest form of conditioning. Correct attempts are most frequently being reinforced by positive comments written on automated programmed responses. Although negative reinforcement, that is punishment and negative criticism is not quite acceptable today, and certainly not appropriate for adult learning, such behavioristic traces can still be found in some cases that negative scores are used. An instructional design for eLearning based on the behavioristic approach would therefore imply that learning takes place when unwanted behavior is extinguished and learners reach the point of giving only the desired uniquely correct responses that express the expected learning outcomes that guarantee that the learning objectives of the eLearning course have been mastered. Application Of Behavioristic Principles In Gamification And Game-Based eLearning Last, but not least, nowadays, behavioristic principles are also still applicable in gamification, that is presenting the learning material employing game design elements in an entertaining way in order to motivate and engage the audience throughout the learning process. In gamification, as well as in other types of eLearning activities, reinforcement of a certain desired behavior can occur in two ways: either by eliciting from learners particular learning outcomes and rewarding these outcomes by assigning points, grades, budges, higher position in leaderboards, etc, or by removing from learners specific benefits, for example points, lives, etc, in order to make them try to avoid undesired consequences of their behaviors. Behaviorism in Instructional Design for eLearning: Concluding Remarks It is true that behaviorism has received too much critique during the last decades, mainly to the fact that it does not take into account other aspects of learning such as the mental processes involved or the environment in which learning takes place. The aim of this article was not to show any favoritism towards behaviorism, but rather to show that, in certain cases, it’s still a valuable approach in today’s eLearning. Of course, we cannot ignore cognitivism and constructivism as alternative approaches.  Today, we know that a behavioristic perspective of certain activities in instructional design, does not mean that other approaches may not be used simultaneously for the same online course for other types of eLearning activities. Rather than following a single approach for the entire eLearning course, we should, therefore, select the most appropriate for each one of the learning objectives to be covered. Although the focus of behaviorism may not be to examine what is going on in learners’ minds during the learning process, this does not necessarily mean that it denies cognition. It simply does not examines its. Humans are social beings; we learn from the environment, we learn from each other. We evolve all the time. We are rational beings. We are clever. If we are given the right incentives, we are able to construct knowledge in learning that meets our personal interests and needs. As instructional designers, all the emphasis should be placed on the learning objectives as each one of them may require for eLearning activities that follow a different approach. Overall, the result in most cases is a mixed approach that combines the best of behaviorism, cognitivism and constructivism, that meets the needs of each learning objective to be mastered and offers the audience the best possible eLearning experience. Want to learn more about adult learning? The article 9 Tips To Apply Adult Learning Theory To eLearning features 5 adult learning theory assumptions to integrate into your eLearning course design, in order to achieve maximum engagement and motivation for your audience. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Welcome to today’s blog post. Every instructional designer will be trained on standard instructional design principles such as ADDIE or Gagne’s nine events. It is not easy to remember all these concepts and apply them at the right instant of time, especially for people that have just started their career in instructional design. Therefore, as an instructional designer, you should be skillful at four different slices of an eLearning pie that always remind you of the ideas behind these principles. Let’s see what they are. 1. Pedagogy and Andragogy The first slice is about the learning pedagogy. This is all about assessing how much knowledge the learners have been able to acquire after the completion of the course. Many parameters such as adult learning principles, learning objectives, instructional strategies and quiz decide the learner’s performance. In the context of eLearning, instructional designers are bound to make people learn better. For this, they have to know how the learners would behave, think and react. Thus, they should step into the learner’s shoe and then design the course thinking from their perspective. 2. Inventiveness  Next comes the inventiveness slice. Visual and graphical designers are the people who use their creative talent to make the course look visually appealing and interesting. They design very beautiful and attractive eLearning courses which pull learners in. This makes the learners stay focused throughout the course with the same zeal and anxiety. Without this inventiveness in our eLearning courses, we will definitely end up creating really boring courses. 3. Technology Technology has totally changed the art of learning. We know that eLearning stands for electronic learning. The word ‘e’ becomes incomplete without developers, programmers, data analysts, etc., as they are the key to launch the online courses. These experts will help us decide the right authoring tool to develop the course. 4. Management Every industry, including eLearning, has the business pie to consider. This deals with understanding some of the important concepts such as productivity, Return on Investment, goals, vision, stakeholder management; project management, etc. Understanding this piece of pie i.e. the business slice ensures that you are able to meet customer demands with extraordinary services within the estimated time and budget. Finally, as eLearning professionals, we need to concentrate on these four areas which lay the road to successful training. What do you think? Related Posts4 Effective Ways of Presenting Scenarios in E-learning Courses4 Elements of an ID Strategy - An Infographic4 E-learning Design Strategies You Need to Focus

What is Intrinsic Motivation? Intrinsic motivation centers on internal rewards. Rather than participating in an online training course to earn tangible rewards or to avoid a negative consequence, employees who are intrinsically motivated become active participants because they are excited about the online training experience or view it as an opportunity to learn something new and expand their knowledge base. Coon and Mitterer (2010) summed up intrinsic motivation quite nicely by stating that "Intrinsic motivation occurs when we act without any obvious external rewards. We simply enjoy an activity or see it as an opportunity to explore, learn, and actualize our potentials." Employees may even be motivated by the need for self-fulfillment or to enhance their self-esteem. To help you understand how intrinsic motivation works, I’ll share something that Lionel Messi said. Now, you may wonder what football has to do with online training. The thing is that, as eLearning professionals, we can learn a lot from athletics about the mechanisms of motivation, as all athletic efforts and accomplishments are founded on motivation. No matter how confident or focused athletes are, if they lack the desire and the determination to maximize their abilities, they can never be motivated enough to achieve their goals. And the Argentinian football superstar is, above all, an athlete; he must always be motivated to reach his goals, as motivation is a continuous process. To clearly establish what it takes for him to become a master on his field, he said: "Money is not a motivating factor. Money doesn't thrill me or make me play better because there are benefits to being wealthy. I'm just happy with a ball at my feet. My motivation comes from playing the game I love. If I wasn't paid to be a professional footballer, I would willingly play for nothing." And this is where the power of intrinsic motivation comes from: within. Intrinsically motivated people perform tasks simply because they enjoy doing them and engage in behaviors because they find them rewarding. It is the exact opposite of extrinsic motivation, which is driven by external rewards. Needless to say, intrinsic motivation is key to online training success, as literally every eLearning professional on the planet dreams of having an audience that is motivated to learn simply by finding the online training experience to be rewarding enough. However, as it happens with most dreams, you need to work to make it come true! In this article, I'll show you how and when to focus on intrinsic motivation in online training course design, in order to offer your employees an online training experience that will inspire them to learn, explore and actualize their potentials. Intrinsic Motivation In Online Training Enjoyment; this is employees’ drive when they are intrinsically motivated to take your online training course. In other words, when an online training experience inspires intrinsic motivation in your audience, they will engage in it as they normally would on their own, whether you provide them with external motivators or not. Intrinsically motivated employees are eager to learn, and enthusiastically tackle online training assignments. On the contrary, extrinsically motivated employees participate in the online training process almost superficially, as they only look forward to being rewarded at the end, and thus, they may not have real interest in order to commit themselves 100% in the online training experience. It is pretty clear that as eLearning professionals we should provide our audience with opportunities that will intrinsically motivate them, as intrinsically motivated and engaged employees master the learning objectives of the online training course faster. By finding ways to intrinsically motivate employees, therefore, we also increase the effectiveness of the online training course. From an instructional design point of view, incorporating online training activities that enhance the intrinsic motivation of employees, by addressing their curiosity is fundamental. However, are there any downsides with respect to instructional design? To create online training activities that intrinsically motivate your audience may be a time-consuming process. Usually, it is difficult to accomplish that as it requires extensive preparation and a deep knowledge of your audience. Different people have different learning needs, so it requires a variety of approaches to address and successfully meet the learning needs and preferences of all your learners in order to be able to intrinsically motivate each one of them. On the other hand, you create a learner-centered online training experience, satisfying and exciting for your employees, that is very likely to yield lasting results. An online training experience that derives from employees' personal interests and natural curiosity in the subject matter, encourages knowledge implementation and develops employees' sense of achievement, inspiring them to emphasize on their personal growth. 6 Tips To Increase Your Employees’ Intrinsic Motivation In Online Training Developing online content that intrinsically motivates our audience is great. But, how easy is it to inspire them a genuine desire for the online training? Here are 6 useful tips: Challenge your audience. The more interesting your online training deliverable is, the more intrinsically motivated your employees will be. Simply put, when the goals we pursue take us out of our comfort zone, they become meaningful to us, and thus motivate us to pursue them more intensely. There is a fine line between activities that make employees feel defeated and those that challenge them just enough to trigger their intrinsic motivation. Integrating activities that are a step above the employees' current skill level enables them to feel as though they have accomplished something that they can take pride of. On the other hand, if they do fail to complete the task successfully, they can learn from their mistakes. This also provides another source of motivation, which is to prove to themselves that they can overcome the challenge. It is, however, important to do audience research beforehand to determine their current knowledge base and skill sets, so that you can create activities that are difficult, but not so difficult that they disengage. Integrate multimedia elements that pique their curiosity. Humans are naturally curious. Curiosity is a primary source of internal motivation. There are two forms of curiosity at play here: sensory and cognitive. When employees are exposed to visual elements or interactive presentations that direct their attention, this serves as a source of sensory curiosity. They want to explore the visual or audio stimuli and this prompts them to actively participate in the online training process. Cognitive curiosity stems from an online training activity that makes them want to learn more, such as an idea that may be in conflict with what they’ve already learned. To incorporate this form of motivation you can provide them with interesting, little known facts about the subject matter or reveal surprising information that may go against common belief. Challenge your audience to reflect on what they are learning by thinking critically and using their creativity in branching eLearning scenarios that pose questions that contradict their long-held beliefs. This way, you will stimulate their curiosity and make them want to learn more. Encourage employees to collaborate with each other. The satisfaction of helping others to overcome the challenges of an assignment can be a great factor for increasing intrinsic motivation. Furthermore, when employees are able to compare their performances with the performances of their colleagues, they feel more interested in achieving their goals. Encourage your audience to collaborate with each other in the virtual classroom by participating in online discussions, asking questions and sharing experiences and concerns. This will make employees enjoy difficult assignments more and persist longer on finding ways to complete them. Give employees control over their training. Having control over one’s own online training experience is one of the most powerful intrinsic motivation factors. Employees want to feel like they have a direct say in the outcome and that they have choices when it comes to which sessions they will complete and when. A sense of responsibility automatically increases employees’ intrinsic motivation, as it adds meaning to their online training experience. Encourage your audience to take control over their own learning by offering them opportunities to go in depth and collect extra information from additional bibliography or further reading for self-study you provide at the end of each topic of your online training course. Furthermore, consider integrating interactive elements into your online training strategy, as interactivity undoubtedly makes employees feel that they have power over their online training experience. Give employees self-guided assignments or group projects that turn the tables, such as asking them to design a presentation for their colleagues or create a webinar based upon the core concepts of the session. This will empower them to want to do more and achieve more, because they are the ones in charge of the training process. Develop scenarios and simulations that tie into real world applications. Fantasy on its own is not necessarily an intrinsic motivator. However, if you are able to tie fantasy or make-believe into real world applications and benefits, then you have a powerful source of motivation. Use simulations or branching scenarios to show employees how the information they are learning can be applied outside of the virtual classroom. Allow them to explore the consequences of their choices, so that they can see the direct link between the subject matter and how they will use the information on-the-job. Just make sure that all of the knowledge and skills you include in the simulations is relevant and relatable, so that employees’ minds won’t be weighed down by extraneous clutter. Offer employees constructive feedback. Finally, recognition can significantly increase your audience’s intrinsic motivation, as it adds the elements of satisfaction and personal achievement. Offer employees positive feedback throughout the online training experience, but be careful not to overreact: Intrinsic motivation can actually be decreased when lavish praise is offered for completing a simple task. Thus, make sure that your feedback is not only positive, but also genuine and constructive. Encourage employees to learn from their mistakes and show them how to improve by isolating your feedback from negative connotations and presenting it as "points for improvement". This way, you will encourage them to try again to maximize their performance, without feeling that they have failed. The key to creating online training experiences that leave a lasting impression and achieve learning objectives is to uncover the motivating factors behind employee engagement. If you know what drives them, what fuels their pursuit of success and what will make them become active participants in the online training process, then you have the ability to design online training courses that are always on target. Now that you know how to increase employees’ intrinsic motivation, you may be interested in challenging yourself and dealing with a tough audience: passive learners. Read the article 6 Tips To Engage Passive Learners In eLearning and find out how you can turn even the most passive learners into engaged, excited, and motivated ones who achieve profound change, thanks to your online training course. Reference: Coon, D. & Mitterer, J. O. (2010). Introduction to psychology: Gateways to mind and behavior with concept maps. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

As instructional designers, training managers, subject matter experts, project managers, and project stakeholders, we all have heard of the term ‘process’. Deciding on and selecting the process which will increase learner performance and improve the Return on Investment (ROI) is of utmost importance to everyone involved in an eLearning project. What is the best process? Ideally, there are no hard and fast rules about what the best process is. What suits one organization and one type of eLearning project may not work in another situation. The best process is one which best suits the task at hand and achieves the best results with optimum resource utilization within the projected timelines and budget. Hence, the ideal process is one which works best for you. This definition of the ideal process is open to interpretation and can often lead to loss of clarity and wasted effort if the wrong process is selected. To avoid this scenario, there are certain attributes every process should possess if it has to be called an ideal process. Characteristics of the ideal process An ideal process model should be: Iterative Collaborative Efficient and Effective Manageable Iterative Process The ideal process should be transparent and shed light on the product as early as possible. It should be iterative rather than linear. This makes it easy to identify whether the project is proceeding as planned at each milestone and bring it back on track if needed. This eliminates costly rework and prevents investing the majority of the project’s resources on a product which does not work. It also helps learners have an idea of how the course will be right from the outset. The main benefit of an iterative process is that it takes small, experimental steps that can be evaluated and modified/reversed/reworked as needed without wasting vast resources. Collaborative Process An effective model seeks the participation of and leverages the strengths, experiences, and knowledge of everyone involved in the project. Also, in a collaborative effort, everyone is aware of their role and responsibilities, who is responsible for what and what are the expected outcomes from each member. This makes it very easy to avoid unnecessary delays and indecisive elements which otherwise cost a lot of time. Efficient and Effective Process While it is a given that no project can ever be perfect, an efficient process works around the underlying constraints and addresses unexpected issues which might crop up. The ability to anticipate and address contingencies is the hallmark of an efficient process. When one element in the process undergoes a change, it may have a cascading effect on the other elements. In such cases, time might be spent trying to better things till they become perfect, but perfection is a mirage. We can move closer to it, but never reach it. Hence, an effective process must focus resources on areas which will yield maximum results. The process should produce operational products as quickly as possible. Manageable Process An ideal process must be easy to manage and provide clarity on the project requirements. It should be feasible to complete the project within the set time and budgetary expectations and deliver a product that meets quality requirements. The next time you start an eLearning project, ensure you select a process that suits your organization, product and adheres to these guidelines so that you achieve the best results. Reference Leaving Addie for Sam: An Agile Model for Developing the Best Learning Experience By Michael Allen and Richard Sites Related PostsWant to Make Effective Use of Your Training Budgets - Consider These! [Video]Recommendations for Quick and Cost-Effective E-learning RolloutDeveloping an Instructional Strategy for E-Learning Courses

We are delighted to announce the release of gomo 2.2, the second quarterly update to our multi-device authoring tool since launching in April. Because gomo is a software as a service (SaaS) tool, subscribers and trialists get all of 2.2’s improvements and future updates to the authoring tool by simply logging into their account. Some of the latest enhancements include: Slide out menu/ table of contents Header and footer navigation bars across all devices Inline actions - navigate to a page, sub screen or external website from any text asset Dropdown list asset - create a simple quiz with a drop down in seconds Numeric input asset - test students’ math ability Advanced animation control, allowing you to animate all content assets Orientation preview - test landscape and portrait views on any device Preview courses - share a link to courses as they are being built with colleagues who aren’t using gomo. gomo Managing Director Mike Alcock said "Once again our team have raised the bar for responsive and adaptive HTML5 e-learning development. gomo gets better with each new version and our growing customer base and industry accolades reflect the improvements we are making." gomo is a cost-effective way to easily create beautiful multi-device learning content which looks and feels bespoke. Starting at just £49/$89/€59 a month, teams and individuals can effortlessly build, collaborate and publish their own custom content, making it a budget-friendly solution for organisations of any size. You can find out more info about gomo 2.2 here and if you like what you see, begin a no obligation, 21-day free trail of gomo today to get to grips with our authoring tool and the brand-new features we’ve added.   The post gomo 2.2 is here! appeared first on gomo Learning.

How can you develop a top-notch eLearning course that meets your needs very effectively? What does it take to create the perfect online course? Well, you need to follow a well-defined eLearning development process. Following a proper online course development process prevents time and cost overruns and ensures quality. Here is a wonderful info-graphic that list the 6 steps of a good eLearning development process. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you create eLearning courses? We’d love to know. Related Posts5 Ways to Make E-learning Interesting - An InfographicSteps to Create an E-learning Course - An InfographicBasics of E-learning Project Management - An Infographic

Why Embrace eLearning For Centuries we had been used to learning in a particular way. Our learning was always shepherded by a guide - parents at home; teachers and tutors during our school years; professors and mentors at college. We then entered a vocation which again required some learning; and the way we learned from our childhood carried on into adulthood where we again learned under the guidance of an instructor. This worked fine until recently when technology enabled learning changed the way that educators and L&D faculty thought of learning. Today, educational institutions and offices, both in the public and the private sectors, are making the shift to technology-enabled, online learning.  Within organizations, there is always a faction of those employees who are uncomfortable with this new way of learning. If you are one of those who hesitates to give technology-enabled learning a try, here’s 1 reason to embrace eLearning - you will love it! Here are 12 reasons why you will love and embrace eLearning: Learn on your own device. If your organization is against its employees bringing in their own device to work, you can access your learning when you are not at work. Learn at your own pace. eLearning recognizes that your needs are unique and lets you learn in your own time, in your own way, at your own pace. You will have access to a unique learning plan that has been designed keeping your job role and capabilities in mind. Get access to information as soon as you need it - courses are well structured, so you can find the information you need, easily. The industries' best practices are at your fingertips. Oftentimes, instructors are inadequately equipped to answer questions related to the most recent practices. eLearning courses are prepared with much thought and research. Because the content can be easily updated, you can be sure that you are accessing the most recent information. Self-evaluate. Self assessments after every course let you know where you stand. If you are unable to fair well in a particular course, you have the option of redoing the course until you get it right. Get immediate answers to your most pressing questions through the interactive interface that connects you with peers and industry experts - across the globe. Train in a safe environment with simulated learning. This is especially useful for employees who are exposed to hazardous conditions like the pharmaceutical industry and those who must train on the use of heavy/dangerous machinery. eLearning is eco-friendly and drastically reduces your carbon footprint. Increase your overall productivity by training in your free time, when you are at home or traveling; it is accessible every day. You don’t have to be connected to the internet. Organizations, whose employees are constantly on the move, make sure that they can train, offline; work is automatically uploaded when you are connected to the internet. Perform better, and have greater retention of what you have learnt, than your classroom-trained counterparts, and enjoy the fruit of being a top performer. We live in a futuristic world of high expectations and increasing demands. We must keep pace with the superfast changes around us while delivering a 100%. It’s impossible to keep up a chaotic lifestyle, keep pace with hectic work schedules and attend training. How do we sustain the balance? With the help of eLearning, of course. For most of us this is a scary proposition; the more set our ways - the scarier it is; but eLearning is one of the most beneficial forms of learning for busy employees. Don’t think of the ‘e’ in eLearning as ‘electronic’. Think of it as ‘exciting,’ ‘extraordinary,’ ‘efficient,’ and ‘easy,’ and you would have taken your first step toward a more rewarding career. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Once you’re e-learning course is developed and ready to be published, you need to start thinking of it as a commodity. It’s simple - the more people buy into what you’re offering them, the greater number you can expect to take the course. Why you need to market e-learning As technology becomes increasingly accessible and we can create and produce high quality digital materials without a specialist vendor, it’s possible to miss a trick or two when it comes to the strategy surrounding your e-learning. Taking the time to drum up support and market e-learning to your internal audience can do wonders for the numbers through the course and how L&D is perceived in your organisation. To make people buy into your course, we need to deploy some tactics to market e-learning effectively to your internal audience. Implementing a marketing strategy for your course is key to ensuring you’re course doesn’t gather dust on your LMS. If you don’t woo your audience with the benefits and personal value of your course, then you can’t be too surprised if you aren’t getting the results you were expecting. You could have built the best course in the world, but if nobody knows about it, how can they even consider taking it? Think of it like this blog, I’ve taken the time to write it, so I promote it on social media, post it in relevant groups and forums plus a load of other things to ensure that it finds its audience, which is exactly what you need to do when you begin to market e-learning. What’s in it for me? It will come as no surprise that while you’re building a course, you should be thinking all about your learners. As soon as you’re course is built, however, it’s time to think of them as consumers. Busy ones at that - their working weeks are predefined and will rarely let up, leaving little time for them to stop and think about their personal development. In order to make your audience want to consume your course, you’ve got to make sure they’re well aware of what is in it for them. Some courses may be mandatory, but telling your workforce they have to complete it is hardly riveting. In this case, you should help them understand why mandatory or annual refreshers will benefit their performance and address potential weaknesses in the way that they work. Learning isn’t cool We might have designers, developers and intuitive tools (like gomo) to make e-learning content as interesting and visually pleasing as possible, but take it outside of your L&D peers and without the right marketing and messaging, staff could take one look at it and decide they want nothing to do with it.  Make sure once the course is complete, you leave the learning theory, intricate workings and other L&D-isms behind and consider how your audience will perceive it. After all, whether your course takes minutes or months, it relies on people taking time out of their day to complete it. To make people want take the time out, you need to tap into what motivates them and sell benefits related to that. Through speaking with line managers, you could work the course into being a part of personal development plans. This means that staff are looking to reach bigger goals  by  they look up to, which could in turn lead to a pay rise or a new job role they are working towards. If you have found the above useful, why not read the second part of the blog, which provides information regarding internal communications, marketing messages and more to help you market e-learning effectively. To be sure you don’t miss it or any future mobile and multi-device learning insights, sign up to the gomo RSS feed here or follow us on Twitter or Google+. The post How to market e-learning (part 1) appeared first on gomo Learning.

Creating an effective eLearning course is a challenging task, as you need to cater to the expectations of different stakeholders. You can make it easier using prototypes. A prototype is a sample of the "final" eLearning course. It gives a clear idea to the stakeholders of how the course would look like upon the completion of development. Here, I would like to share some benefits of using prototypes in eLearning. Provides clarity on the final output Prototype gives a clear picture of the strategy and good idea of how the elearning course will look like when the development is complete. It provides a quick overview of the final course by helping zero-in on the final GUI in the early stages of the design phase. Eliminates ambiguity Prototypes go a long way in helping the developer understand the requirements of the client properly. The client can view the prototype and suggest modifications to the course, if needed. Thus, it reduces the ambiguity, incompleteness, inconsistency, misconceptions and faults between the developer and the client. Improves accuracy Inconsistencies in the eLearning course can be identified and eliminated in the initial stages of development, and this result in an online course of high quality without time and cost overruns.  In case, the client asks feedback in the proposed design or interface, it can be corrected right at the beginning. Thus, it improves accuracy of the final course. Cuts down the review time You can reduce the time taken to review the course considerably using a prototype. This is because certain important elements of the course such as the fonts, slide layouts, interactivities, etc. will be finalized before the development of the elearning course. Helps meet stakeholder’s expectations Prototype helps you meet the stakeholder’s expectations, because it helps you understand his requirements clearly. Furthermore, shortcomings are addressed quite early in the development process, and this leads to the development of a first-rate online course. Creation of a prototype is generally seen as an additional step in the eLearning development, and people try to skip it as it takes time and resources. But, it helps you to save considerable time and avoid rework. These are some of the benefits of using prototypes in eLearning. Please share your thoughts! Related Posts3 Tips to Instructional Designers for Effective E-learning - An InfographicTop 5 blogs of 2014 on Instructional DesignImportance of Content Comprehension in E-learning

Today, it’s more evident than ever that the power is in our hands. The internet, connected technology, and the dawn of simplified tools are all proof that today, we are in control. Consider e-learning; we can now build whole courses of learning through a browser, collaborating with fellow learning technologists in other global locations on the same project, storing data in the cloud to ensure a cohesive, collaborative building experience which, in the form of the finished course, ultimately benefits the learners your course is built to serve. With the power firmly in our hands, it’s important to understand that once we’ve built it, it’s our responsibility to ensure we’re marketing e-learning efficiently. This can feel quite removed from L&D, and involves a completely new skill set, but the benefits associated make it worth your time. As we mentioned last week in our first part on marketing e-learning, you might think a course is out of this world from an L&D perspective, but if you aren’t marketing e-learning sufficiently with the right messaging, it’s probably going to seem like just another course to your audience. We can’t stress the importance of marketing e-learning; it can really make the difference between a course you thought was good and course which is great, with results to prove it. Marketing e learning messages Just like the words you chose within a course, the language you use while marketing e-learning is really important. Decide on several statements which articulate the benefits of your course and refer to them throughout your marketing e-learning campaign. If your messaging is concise and appeals to your organisation, interest in your course will begin to build. It’s important to engage at all levels through all channels available, so you reach the right audience and hit them over the head with the messaging and benefits of your course at every opportunity. your learners are consumers and defining this messaging will help you sell your great product to them. Marketing e learning to Influencers The fact you’ve actually built the course means you already have the buy-in of internal stakeholders. Use this to your advantage and work out how you can get these (probably fairly senior) people to begin championing the course amongst their departments, peers, seniors and juniors. Chances are, these stakeholders will represent different areas of the business, and could help spread your message into areas of the business you might struggle to tap into alone. You are looking for the superstars of your organisation; the ones who are widely known, well respected and listened to. Whether its a CEO or a head of department, getting key people on board can make your campaign gain traction much faster. Quick wins Every team, department and organisation will have their own Internal newsletters Management updates Team meetings Forums intranets Find out about them and either post or appear yourself, or recruit the help of line managers and stakeholders to lend a hand marketing e-learning to individual groups. If you have one, speak with your internal marketing team and find out what they think about your message and how you can get it out. After all, this is the sort of thing they do every day on a much larger scale. A good product sells itself Once you’re implementing the above (and some of the stuff from part 1), you have to rely on your course to do the talking. If you’re course is doing the trick and staff benefit from it, you can rely on further uptake through word of mouth, one of the oldest and most effective forms of marketing. If your course proves a hit, look at feeding back the results to your organisation to benefit future initiatives, or enter it for an e-learning industry award. The first time you go through the process of marketing elearning may take a while, but just like any commodity, you can build from it with future products. It does go without saying, though, that even with the best marketing, a bad course is still a bad course, and once you’ve enticed some internal consumers into becoming learners, a course needs to stand on its own two feet. To make sure they aren’t disappointed, you need to make sure you build responsive, adaptive content that you can output to an app store, an LMS or internal website. This means that wherever your course lives, your internal audience can access it on any device they need to. I can’t stress the importance of this - consumers today expect nothing less than to be able to put down one device and pick up the same task on another, and learning should be no different. gomo produces HTML5 responsive, adaptive content as standard, and gives you a super simple way of creating e-learning content which looks and feels bespoke which you will be proud to market. To see how easy creating first class multi-device e-learning can be, sign up for our next webinar, where you can learn how gomo works, the benefits of  cloud authoring and see an intuitive, feature rich course built in minutes. The post What’s your message? Marketing e learning (part 2) appeared first on gomo Learning.

Is your eLearning a giant snooze fest? There’s a way to fix that. Your learners shouldn’t be taking their afternoon nap during your online training course. If you’re looking for some new ways to get inspired before you start designing, then I have a few ideas. Get ready to change the way you think about eLearning development. Here are 3 ways to get inspired with eLearning: Chat with your colleagues and other eLearning professionals. Just talk to them? Yes. It’s easy to start a conversation in an online discussion forum or on social media. Or, you could just poke your head into your coworker’s office and ask how his weekend was and what he’s using in his courses to improve learner feedback and assessment scores. Before you know it, you’ll have a bunch of cool, fresh ideas and maybe even a new lunch buddy. But what if your coworkers don’t have any good ideas? (Don’t worry; I won’t tell anyone you said that.) Or, more likely, what if you’re the only one in your training department and you just want to see how other companies are creating energized courses? Then you’d want to join an online eLearning community like the new Trivantis Community. It’s an awesome place to connect with other developers in the discussion forum, share your content and browse the Knowledge Base for inspiration and how-to tutorials. Tune in to an eLearning podcast. Keep learning—even if you think you’re a pro eLearning developer. You might actually be a pro, but you can always keep growing. I like Rick Zanotti’s eLearnChat, which is a video podcast. Rick and his cohost, Dawn J. Mahoney, chat with top eLearning and training influencers about eLearning, multimedia development, project management, and what’s new in the industry. Joe Ganci, John Blackmon, and gamification expert Karl Kapp have all been interviewed on eLearnChat, plus other eLearning experts and thought leaders. Use templates to kick start your creativity. You can be creative without building everything yourself. Pre-made templates provide a great starting point; from there, you can tweak the template to customize your course. They’re an easy way to start your course with a new look and save valuable development time too. The eLearning Brothers have an awesome template library—and it’s now included with Lectora® Inspire. If you’re creating scenarios, they also have thousands of character images. And the eLearning Brothers clip the images out for you so that they look professional and are ready to add to your course. Looking for an authoring tool that will also inspire you? Try Lectora Inspire free today! This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Marketing Tips To Promote Your eLearning Courses Creating memorable eLearning courses for your audience is just half the battle. The real trick is knowing how to promote your eLearning courses, so that it ends up on the screens of those who can truly benefit from them and potentially turn a profit to your business. But have no fear; below you’ll find 6 useful marketing tips to promote your eLearning courses. Identify your target audience. In order to market to your audience you first have to identify just who you are addressing to and what they expect. This often involves a fair amount of market research, surveys, interviews and focus groups. Learn as much as you can about the type of educational and cultural background of your target audience. Are you addressing to novices or advanced learners? What the current knowledge base of your target audience should be? What type of information they need to acquire while taking your eLearning course? Once you have a grasp of who you are marketing to, you will have the ability to custom tailor your marketing efforts to reach out to them and attract learners who are actually interested in what your eLearning course has to offer. Tell them how your eLearning course meets their learning needs. Ultimately, organizations and individual learners rely upon eLearning to offer a solution to a problem. Whether they need to improve the skill sets of their employees or to achieve specific goals, your audience is looking for a way to improve some aspect of their personal or professional lives. This is why it’s essential that you clearly state what your eLearning course can offer them, what benefits it will provide and how it will go about doing this. Tell them exactly how it will solve a problem they face on a daily basis or the advantages that they can expect to receive if they successfully complete your eLearning course. In some cases, you may also need to specify why your eLearning course is more beneficial than traditional learning, especially when dealing with organizations that may be hesitant to convert to online training. Show them how your eLearning course is time and cost effective. There are two types of value to consider here. The first is the value that your learners are going to get for their money. If they are paying for your eLearning course, then you need to emphasize the fact that it offers a great ROI. On the other hand, if their company is footing the bill, you need to also stress the idea that it’s worth their time. Bear in mind that your learners are pressed for time, so they are looking for an eLearning course that can give them the skills they need in the shortest amount of seat time. Give them a sneak peek. More often than not, people need to be convinced before clicking on the "enroll" or "buy" button; giving them a free preview of your eLearning course may be just what they need. Why not offer your learners a sneak peek of your eLearning course to get them hooked and to give them an idea of what to expect? There are still some individuals who may be resistant to eLearning, or may not even know the advantages of taking an eLearning course, but giving them a glimpse of the forthcoming eLearning experience can change all of that and can even make them loyal lifelong learners. Be sure to include contact information, such as your website or email at the end of the preview, so that they have a way to purchase the full eLearning course once they’ve thoroughly enjoyed the free version. Ask satisfied current learners to endorse your eLearning course. People generally like trying new things. In the case of eLearning, however, they prefer to first see reviews and testimonials from other satisfied learners who have already successfully completed the eLearning course. But, how do you get these endorsements? While you can ask your learners to give you a glowing review, you can also opt for surveys and questionnaires. If a learner gives you positive feedback, you may use that on your website or in your marketing materials. In case that learners are on the fence about whether to enroll in your eLearning course or not, they are more likely to commit if they know that it has made a difference in other learners’ lives. Remind them of your online presence. Learners have a tendency to forget information after they have learned it if they don’t refresh and review it from time to time. The same rule applies to your marketing efforts. If someone signs up for your mailing list, then keep your eLearning course fresh in their minds by sending occasional emails that offer them value or letting them know about special eLearning events you have planned. For learners who have already participated in one of your eLearning courses you can reach out to them via social media or emails to tell them about special offers or new eLearning courses that may be of interest to them. Also, on all messages or posts, be sure to include your website and any important contact information, so that learners always know how to get in touch with you if they decide to take you up on your offer. These tips can give you the opportunity to increase your eLearning sales and reach a wider audience. You’ve put so much time and effort into designing and developing your eLearning deliverable. So, why not get the most out of your marketing strategy by utilizing these techniques? Want to learn more about how to boost your eLearning course sales? Read the article 6 Marketing Tips To Boost Your eLearning Course Sales where you will find a variety of marketing ideas to promote and build the buzz for your eLearning deliverables. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

A standard is a frame of reference which qualifies what is good and what is not. In the context of computer-based learning, there are many elearning standards given by AICC, ASTD, IMS Global, etc., We usually come across customers asking for SCORM/AICC compliance which makes our courses interoperable and portable. These standards not only help track and report a learner’s performance, but also help improve the quality of learning delivered through eLearning courses. As per ASTD, there are 13 standards in four clusters. Let us see what each cluster of standards deals with. Cluster 1 - Interface standards This cluster of standards speaks about the relationship of the learner with the courseware. The courseware should provide clear navigation/ orientation display features to indicate where the learner is currently in the course. The standards state that course should allow tracking and reporting of the learners’ performance. The course should enable the learner to navigate freely. The developers need to provide optional navigational devices in the form of hypertext and bookmarks. The developers also need to provide operational support such as installation recommendations, instructions, etc. Cluster 2 - Compatibility standards This cluster of standards speaks about the relationship between the courseware, operating systems and related applications. The courseware needs to provide installation recommendations and launching facility from the LMS. The standards state that the course should be made compatible to SCORM or AICC to ensure interoperability and portability. Also, you can have Tin Can API, the successor to SCORM to track learning experiences anytime, anywhere.  Cluster 3 - Production quality standards This cluster of standards deals with the quality of the courseware. The course should be consistent in the use of text and graphics like callouts, graphics, etc. The course needs to be well-formatted and devoid of errors to prevent learner distraction. Cluster 4 - Instructional design standards Finally, the fourth cluster examines the relationship between the objectives, content, instructional methods and the learner. The learning objectives need to be clearly stated. The instructional objectives need to be performance-based and describe specific, measurable and observable skills or knowledge that the learner will acquire in each unit The content needs to be aligned to the learning objectives. In addition to complying with the above elearning standards, the developers need to use engagement techniques, provide opportunities for practice, create effective assessments and give appropriate feedback to the learners. Was this information useful? Please do share your thoughts. Related Posts3 Reasons Why Problem-based Learning Is Effective LearningWhy do You Need to Go Beyond ‘E-learning Development Cost Per Hour’?The Real E-learning Standards for Course Development

gomo learning is delighted to announce the global launch of the gomo learning suite at Learning Technologies 2015. The gomo learning suite is a complete e-learning solution comprising gomo’s award-winning authoring tool and an all-new product, gomo hosting & analytics. The gomo learning suite allows subscribers to seamlessly create, host, update and track beautiful multi-device learning from a single place. There is no other authoring solution on the market today which allows for both multi-device content creation and hosting, distribution and analytics capability. gomo’s Managing Director Mike Alcock said: "The gomo learning suite takes us even further ahead in the e-learning marketplace. In addition to our award-winning, cloud-based authoring tool, our customers can now host and distribute their gomo courses instantly to all of their users and to any device. Our in-built analytics completes the solution, giving users a one-stop shop for their multi-device e-learning needs." To celebrate the launch of the suite, gomo is giving away a year’s subscription to the gomo authoring tool (valued at $2490/ £1480) at their stand at Learning Technologies 2015. This allows up to four users 12 months of collaborative, multi-device e-learning authoring free of charge. Further details about the launch of the gomo learning suite and Learning Technologies 2015 can be found over the coming weeks on Twitter and Google+. The post gomo announces its brand new gomo learning suite appeared first on gomo Learning.

In today’s world, your learners may access the Internet using multiple devices such as mobiles, tablets, desktops and laptops. A survey by Google reveals that 98% of Internet users switch between devices with varying screen sizes in a single day. So, as a training manager, it imperative for you to make your eLearning courses accessible on all devices. There are two ways to deliver online courses on multiple devices. Develop multiple versions of same eLearning course Create a responsive eLearning course However, there are many problems in creating multiple versions of the same online course. Let us see what they are. Hope you find this post interesting. How do you deliver eLearning courses on multiple devices? We’d love to know. Related PostsCreative Ways to Present Click on Tab Interactivity in E-learning Courses - An InfographicMaking E-learning Courses Mobile: 5 Aspects to Consider - An InfographicTrends in The World of Online Training

What Makes Your Employees Feel Satisfied The Statistic Brain Research Institute of the American Institute of Stress reports that job stress tops the list of physical symptoms caused by stress that 77% of Americans experience regularly. Annual costs of stress-related missed days and health care in the United States is a staggering $300 billion. So what is it that today's employees want to feel happy and satisfied in their workplace? According to a combined Harvard Business Review and The Energy Project study of 12,000 primarily white collar workers indicates that workers need four essential needs to be met in order to be happy on the job. These four needs are: Physical needs. The worker needs to feel recharged and renewed in their workplace. This can come from a comfortable and relaxed work environment. Emotional needs. The worker needs to feel appreciated and valued. Managers that show their appreciation for their employees have an overall more satisfied staff. Having a fun and social work environment can also make the workers more productive as they want to come to work. Mental needs. The worker needs to be able to focus on important jobs without being constantly interrupted and chastised. This is where a micro-manager becomes a problem. Constantly looking over your employees shoulder and telling them what to do can cause more stress and dissatisfaction. Spiritual needs. The worker needs to feel that there is some purpose to the work that they do, a higher purpose than just taking home a paycheck. Human resources professionals can use this needs guideline in the development of new programs in the workplace. How To Support These Needs What are some of the ways you can ensure that corporate policies support these essential needs? Some practical ways include: Ensuring that workers have regular breaks to allow themselves to re-focus. In unionized workplaces, this is often a negotiated item, but in other settings (especially in white-collar environments), often workers take it as a badge of honor to stay at their desks through breaks and lunchtime. This is not conducive to maximum production. Taking a small break every 90 minutes is essential to the creativity and health of all workers. Regardless of the importance of the job and the skills of the worker, people should not stay more than 40 hours in their formal workplace setting. Creativity and innovation fades as the hours after that accumulate. Even a change of setting if the person moves to a home office, dons more comfortable clothing, and feels more relaxed, can spur creativity. Find programs to show employees that their work is valued. One company recently sent a memo to its staff to advice that on the three long weekends of the summer (from July to September), they were giving everyone the Friday before off as well as a way of saying thank-you for their hard work the rest of the year. The response was amazing. Effectively matching a worker's skill and aptitude to their job is another crucial component in reducing job stress and increasing worker satisfaction. When selecting applications for different positions, using programs that match personalities with tasks can also be effective. Every company has it's own method of making employees feel satisfied. There is no one-size fits all method, but as long as the employer is taking the initiative workers will feel appreciated. There is nothing worse than an organization that does not put effort meeting employees needs. Share with us your thoughts and opinions about what keeps employees satisfied and personal experiences you've had while on the job.  This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

As you and your teams begin work on the year ahead, you probably have a good idea of what was good and what wasn’t so good about the strategies and interventions you put into place during 2014. We’re not going to predict e-learning trends we might see in the future, because the reality is that the issues businesses face take a long time to conquer and certainly don’t change as fast as trends do. Maybe you know the learning infrastructure in your organisation is starting to creak, or the requests for mobile courses are beginning to pile up. It’s all well and good identifying a problem, but how do you go about turning these big ideals into practice? We’ve outlined a few and exactly how to get going with them, in order to help you get the ball rolling in 2015. Marketing e-learning If you’re used to building and finalising a course of e-learning and moving straight onto the next one, make some time in 2015 to do every intervention justice with a marketing campaign to support it. Treat learning like a commodity and woo your internal audience into taking the time out of of their hectic schedules to focus on their learning and development. Luckily for you, we wrote quite an extensive 2 part guide to the ins and outs of marketing e-learning at the back end of last year to get you on your way. Open up courses to a multi-device audience There’s been a good few years of device-based learning talk and I think it’s fair to say that mobile and tablets aren’t going away anytime soon. As our relationship with devices evolves alongside technological capability, we expect to do more and more from them, learning included. You may have weeks worth of desktop only or flash based learning content sitting on your LMS which (besides the odd brand refresh or compliance update) will still hold it’s value, so why not aim to repurpose it for multi-device delivery over the course of 2015. Making your content adaptive, responsive and multi-device ready doesn’t just please learners today, it also leaves you in the comfort that it will work on the myriad of devices that haven’t even been released yet. In order to make your organisation multi-device, you need to invest in an authoring tool, such as gomo, which allows you to create learning content that is truly multi-device/ responsive and adaptive. To see what gomo is capable of, sign up for our next webinar, where gomo’s Mike Alcock will show you the ins and outs of our authoring tool and how easy content creation is with gomo, in order to show you why multi-device learning is the way forward. Data, what data? There’s a fair chance that the data collected from courses and your LMS has shaped your 2015 learning strategy. If you’re one of the many organisations who are new to e-learning or are working to improve your infrastructure and don’t yet have this kind of data-led insight to help you shape L&D, don’t worry. The good news for you is that the gomo learning suite, our complete e-learning solution, aligns multi-device authoring with hosting, distribution and analytics, giving you a one stop shop for all things e-learning. Just imagine logging into your authoring tool through a browser, building a beautiful, multi-device course and instantly distributing it out to a direct link, intranet, app store, website or LMS, before tracking it using an analytics dashboard. We truly believe this will transform the authoring experience as you know it. Show me more… The global launch of the gomo learning suite is taking place at Learning Technologies 2015. Join us on the 28th and 29th of January at London Olympia where we have competitions, seminars, and more to celebrate the launch. If you’re a little further afield or won’t make it Learning Technologies, don’t sweat it, join our mailing list to get the latest on the gomo learning suite direct to your inbox as soon as anything is released. The post What should you do more of in 2015? appeared first on gomo Learning.