In the last blog, we covered the Variable Manager in Lectora®. Now we will talk about the other important management tool, the Resource Manager. This is also found in the Manage group of the Tools ribbon right next to the Variable Manager. The Resource Manager As the name implies, the Resource Manager is used to manage all of the resources that you import into a Lectora title, such as image files, video files, audio files, animated GIF files, Flash files, and attached or linked documents, such as PDF files. It is essentially a library of every resource that you’ve imported into or linked to your Lectora title. You can use the Resource Manager to view all of your resources in one place, get information about them, and manipulate them in various ways. Resource Manager - All Tab If you are using Lectora Online, the resource manager will look slightly different than this screen capture from the desktop version of Lectora. All of the features are the same though with one exception, which I’ll point out later. When you open the Resource Manager, the All tab is active by default. All of the resources imported into or attached to the title are listed in the left-hand pane. Selecting one of the resources in the left-hand pane displays the Resource Info on the right. And if the selected resource is an Image resource, a preview of that image will be shown in the Resource Preview pane. You can rename a selected resource if you wish by typing a new name into the Name field and clicking the Rename button. This is handy if you’ve discovered that the name of an existing resource is incorrect or perhaps contains characters that are incompatible with the platform on which you intend to run the content. (This can happen when resources were given a name on a different operating system from your own or perhaps typed in a different language.) The Rename button will enable once you begin to type in the Name field. If you are using the desktop version of Lectora, clicking the Rename button will rename the resource within the title as well as the actual resource file itself in the resource folders (images, media, etc.) associated with the AWT file. Resource Used Pane The Resource Used pane displays the paths to every place in the title where that resource is used. Clicking on one of those paths will select the instance of use in the Title Explorer. It will also enable the Create Unique Resource button next to the pane if the resource is used more than once in the title. Clicking the Create Unique Resource button will duplicate the selected resource and give it a new, unique name. This is useful if you want to modify a resource independent of the other instances where it is used. For example, say you have an image that is used on several pages, and you want to use the same image on one of those pages but with some text added to it or some other type of modification. You can create a unique resource via the Resource Manager and then edit the new resource in-place without having to import and position a new file. To edit a resource in-place, double-click the resource in the Title Explorer or in the work area to switch to its Properties tab and click the green pencil icon. For desktop users, the resource will open in the editor you have designated in your Lectora Preferences. For Lectora Online users, an image resource will open for editing in Pixlr. You can also right-click the resource in the Title Explorer or in the work area and choose Edit from the context menu. For desktop users, selecting the resource and typing Shift+Enter will also open the resource for editing. Resource Manager - Search Tab On the Search tab, you can search by name through all of your resources. Type all or part of the resource name into the entry field at the top and click the Search button. In the example above, you can see that two resources containing the word "background" were found. Resource Manager - Unused Tab The Unused tab lists all of the resources that have not been placed somewhere in the Title Explorer or used with an action, such as the Change Contents action. Once you are finished editing your title, you can choose to remove all of the unused resources if you wish, although they will not be included in the published content regardless. However, if you are using the desktop version of Lectora, the resources you remove from your title will not be removed from the resource folders (images, media, etc.) associated with the AWT file. So, removing a resource from the title does not delete the actual source file. It simply disassociates it from the AWT file. Optimize Size or Convert to MP3 or MP4 As I mentioned before, there is one feature of the Resource Manager in Lectora Online that differs from the desktop version of Lectora. You can choose to optimize the file sizes of selected image files, audio files, or video files by clicking the Optimize Size or Convert to MP3/MP4 buttons in the Resource Info panel. When an image has been scaled down from its original size, the Optimize Size button will enable when you select that resource in the left-hand pane. Clicking the Optimize Size button will reduce the file size and dimensions of the resource to just what is needed for the image to display at the size to which it has been scaled. If the selected audio or video resource isn’t already in MP3 or MP4 format, clicking the Convert to MP3/MP4 button will optimize and convert the files to those formats. These are the optimal formats for delivering audio and video on the web. To test out the Resource Manager in Lectora, sign up for a for a free 30-day trial. Lectora Basics is your intro to eLearning authoring with Lectora. In this blog series, Wendy Miller, Lead Content Developer here at Trivantis, will introduce you to fundamental concepts in Lectora. Wendy is a visual designer and computer programmer with extensive experience developing software, courseware, web sites, games, and multimedia. Catch up on previous posts in the Lectora Basics series: Lectora Basics: What Is a Variable? Lectora Basics: User-Defined Variables Lectora Basics: About Question Variables Lectora Basics: Why Disinheritance Could Save Your eLearning Lectora Basics: How to Use the Variable Manager The post Lectora Basics: How to Use the Resource Manager appeared first on .

2016 is now a few weeks underway, and we’re hoping that you’re still going strong with your New Year’s resolutions. If you feel your resolve wavering or if you’ve fallen off course a few times, no worries, that’s to be expected. The most important thing to remember is that it’s not time to give up yet! If you need a little motivation to get you through the rest of the winter, maybe it’s time to draw on some literary inspiration. Check out our list below to see which literary character is your New Year’s Resolution spirit animal. 1. If your New Year’s resolution is to eat healthier: Your spirit animal is Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Lest you forget, Charlie is a shining example of the benefits of exercising moderation in eating - he’s the only character who doesn’t isn’t horribly removed from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Charlie only gets one chocolate bar a year for his birthday (which he saves and eats over many months) and even when surrounded by sweets, he shows plenty of restraint. 2. If your New Year’s resolution is to get better grades: Your spirit animal is Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. What fictional character could provide better inspiration for your studious side than a heroine who can save the world and still stay at the top of her class? 3. If your New Year’s Resolution is to read more books: Your spirit animal is Anne Shirley from the Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery. Reading gives Anne such joy and such fodder for imagination that it’s impossible not to read about her world and not fall in love with reading yourself! 4. If your New Year’s resolution is to spend less time on social media: Your spirit animal is Mercer, from The Circle by Dave Eggers. True, Mercer’s vehement rejection of technological society is taken to an unfortunate extreme, but he has some sound words to say about the world’s constant need to expose their lives online. 5. If your New Year’s resolution is to master a new skill: Your spirit animal is the indomitable Inigo Montoya of The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Sure, Inigo was ultimately motivated by a thirst for vengeance, which you might not have going for you. But what’s important here is that he became the best swordsman in the world in a mere two years. Devotion and discipline can help you become the best, and having a great catchphrase helps too! 6. If your New Year’s resolution is to travel more: Your spirit animal is Phileas Fogg of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. This classic adventure novel was written at a time when traveling around the world was infinitely harder than it is now - so you really have no excuse not to pack a suitcase and set forth! Phileas’ epic endeavor will inspire you to hop on the next flight to anywhere. 7. If your New Year’s Resolution is to be more environmentally- conscious: Your spirit animal is none other than the beloved Lorax from The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. He’s the best reminder that everything you do has an effect on the world around you, and that "unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not." 8. Finally, if your New Year’s resolution is to get your life together (finally), look your best, stop all bad habits, and try to date somebody nice (and sane) for once in your life: Your spirit animal is Bridget Jones from Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’ Diary. She’s the patron saint of New Year’s resolutions because she knows, as we all do, that everyday is a struggle between trying to have it all and just trying to keep it together. Whether you succeed or fail at this year’s resolutions, remember that everyone in your life likes you very much, "just as you are!"

Our members are weaving the threads of education every day with people of all ages across the country. They are involved in improving lives and the overall well-being of our communities. With over 4000 members strong, NCCE would like to introduce you to a few peers. Every month we will take a snapshot of active NCCE members and find out what they are doing to make a difference in technology education. In it Together: NCCE Members Making a Difference Learn more about the leadership and members who contribute to Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE). NAME and TITLE:  Maria Turner, Coordinator, Architecture and Integration, Information Technology SCHOOL DISTRICT:  Hillsborough County Public Schools, Florida NCCE MEMBER SINCE: April, 2014 What is one new initiative you are working on in your district? Project Innovate is our district’s foray into 1:1 classrooms.  Currently in the pilot stage at 26 of our 200+ sites, this initiative strives to bring innovative teaching and learning strategies to our teachers and students.  I had the distinct pleasure of working with the teachers this summer as they participated in Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) training and 21st Century Learning Design.  All of the teachers who participated in the training were able to take the Microsoft Certified Educator exam, adding to their credentialed expertise.  As the initiative has progressed, I have been able to work in classrooms as Office 365 and OneNote have become staples in the daily life of a 1:1 classroom.  I’m very excited to see the transformation taking place as we continue on this journey. What is one strategy you use to have a more productive workday?  Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you I’m a "list" person.  These lists have now become tasks that are added to my calendar, color coded of course.  At a glance, I can see what needs to be done, and also get a sense of accomplishment as I "clear" my task list.  This little bit of motivation if very helpful during "trying" weeks. Name one thing your "Mama always told you"?  Treat people the way you want to be treated.  I really do try to empathize with others and treat them with the highest level of respect. When you "unplug" - what do you like to do?  I love to lose myself in a good book or a great football game. Where was your last training for NCCE? Tell us about it?  I just finished presenting at NYSCATE in Rochester, New York.  This was the first conference I had an opportunity to present at last year for NCCE.  It was wonderful to have the chance to return to this conference and reconnect with educators I met last November.  Instead of presenting in breakout sessions, I had the chance to present in the classroom area of the Microsoft booth.  This was a new experience for me that took me out of my comfort zone, but was an extremely positive experience.  Having the chance to share transformational possibilities with teachers and educational leaders and then continue the conversations for how these possibilities could apply in their classrooms and districts was energizing. In addition to presenting, I was also able to reconnect with several Microsoft Educator Experts that I met during ISTE this summer, as well as meet several new Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts during NYSCATE.  I had the pleasure to mentor one of these new Experts as she did her first presentation at a conference.  I knew I loved sharing and presenting, but being a proud audience member as a mentee is presenting was just as thrilling. The post NCCE Member Highlights: Maria Turner appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Fresh off of winning one of the Innovation Awards at this year’s CES conference, Klaxoon looks to be an interesting product that may find a place in the K-12 arena. What is Klaxoon and Klaxoonbox? Out of the box thinking starts in the box. Today, Klaxoon, an innovative company dedicated to creative learning tools, introduced an interactive training solution that is poised to disrupt the working space in the U.S. Debuting at CES Unveiled New York, the cross-device platform is a collection of tools that facilitate interactivity, helping any employee in businesses and educational institutions to share knowledge and support learning on a daily basis. Klaxoon is the world’s first collaboration and learning solution with dedicated connectivity. Its hardware solution, a CES 2016 Innovation Award Honoree, the KlaxoonBox, provides total autonomy holding everything needed for a successful collaboration session inside. An extension of KlaxoonCloud, Klaxoon’s SaaS platform, KlaxoonBox ensures everyone can access Klaxoon everywhere whether online or offline. This is definitely a product we will be keeping our eyes on! In the meantime learn a little more in this teaser video produced by Klaxoon: The post First Look: Klaxoon appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

[Post by Greg Gammie, Implementations Manager at GeoMetrix Data Systems Inc.] Futurestep, the global talent acquisition division of Korn Ferry, recently offered up eight trends in talent and acquisition for 2016. "Based on insights from 24 global experts, the list reflects trends that have emerged during the past 12 months as well as those predicted to dominate during the coming year." The predictions include that candidates will be in the driver’s seat and that "embracing diversity is proving to be the key to growth." To read all the predictions in detail, visit: Korn Ferry Futurestep

As we did in 2014 and 2015, we return in 2016 with our predictions of what will evolve for Learning Technology in Higher Education this year. We take a look at 2015s NMC Horizon Report as well as adding our own reflections at Falmouth. Last years, key themes were around supporting digital literacies, agile approaches to change and new approaches to physical and online learning spaces. Certainly the output from JISC’s Digital Student project details a fantastic range of exemplars that are supporting the student experience in these ways and the JISC/NUS Benchmarking tool gives institutions a set of practices on which to build. This year, Higher Education looks poised to adopt some of these approaches as ‘Flipped Classrooms’ and ‘Blended Learning’ become common parlance within the institution. The University of Southampton have some great video examples of flips and blends and the HEA academy offer a ‘Starter Tool’ for those interested to know more. Educational Technology will have a significant role to play in defining and supporting the incoming Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The Association For Learning Technology (ALT) have responded to the consultation asking that intelligent use of Learning Technology and an understanding of the issues by senior managers is explicitly incorporated into all framework iterations from now on. It will also be interesting to see how Open Educational Resources and Open practice (seen as a mid-range driver to edtech adoption in 2015) will influence the TEF and how it will be integrated into Blended/Online Learning opportunities. Learning Analytics are also likely to impact Higher Education again this year in light of the TEF as Institutions strive to find ways to measure success in Learning and Teaching. Last year we looked at the idea of student centred Learning Analytics and JISC’s Effective Learning Analytics project concludes in July and is already providing the sector with a range of tools and processes with which to leverage Learning Analytics. The Falmouth and Exeter Students Union, FXU are prioritising the impact of cuts to the Disabled Students Allowances and gaining clarity around academic practice, in particular Students as Co-Creators of learning. Use of Educational Technologies can impact both of these through accessible learning design and opening up learning design to students, something that the Ed. Tech team are currently working on with our BA (Hons) Entrepreneurship course. If you’re interested in learning more or implementing any of this within your teaching, let the team know.

From guest writer Paul Warren. Just recently, a number of things have begun to capture my interest with regard to the way in which technology is utilised to engage students in their learning. One of the things which particularly interests me is the seeming disparity between the wealth of available information about, and the apparent lack […]

The Holiday season... All of us know what it means: unending dinner parties, Christmas madness, preparation for New Years eve etc. It seems that we are all rushing and being productive, but are we though? To be fair, I haven't done much self-development or any development in general, Just because I lost my mojo during the holiday season. Let me tell you, getting it back is difficult but possible! We just need to start mixing and combining rest with work. My secret: productivity does not equal the quality, so dip your toes in self-inspiration first! Stay tuned Most of the people say that disconnecting and recharging is the answer to the search of productivity. To be honest, if I disconnect it becomes difficult to gravitate back to work. Because of this reason, I try to read a couple of blogpost a day which are related to my work and what I do. It can vary from inspirational blogs on social marketing to recipes for successful daily routines, or even some useful info on my colleague work. What is more, don't forget to stay tuned and communicate, or at least read the communication between your peers. Try to understand what they are working on, it might inspire you, and you will easily jump back to your working environment and routines. Getting it back Feel it? After catching up with your peers you start feeling the kick of reality. From this point on it becomes easy to create an action plan. Prioritise your To-Do list, even if you still feel as if lacking behind, continue performing your tasks on a slower pace. There is nothing wrong with it, as long as you can objectively reflect on what needs to be done asap. If this doesn't work, boost your self-confidence and productivity with favourite hype songs (mine is this one) it always works for me! Staying on top of the game Don't forget that your (as well as mine) productivity mojo is fragile, it needs nourishing. It is helpful to proceed with staying up to date on all fronts: reading and listening to whatever interests you, learning and communicating with your peers, sometimes distancing yourself from your work and looking at it through a different perspective. My advice: have the right apps to stay tuned, everything becomes fun and easy. E.g. I love HipChat, Intercom, Medium, FaceTime, Twitter and many more. In the end, don't rush into work when you know you can't perform as well. Try to provide the quality not quantity. Productivity and creativity has to work hand in hand. To get it all back you must know: Listening is vital, asking is a must and sharing rounds it all up. So turn on your hype song and stay productive after holidays! Don't forget to share your thoughts on getting it all back after holidays!

The 70:20:10 framework is a useful model based on observations that generally, people learn 70% of what they need to do their job from experience. About 20% is learned from exposure to new tasks or environments. Only 10% is learned through formal education. These numbers are not firm but they provide a rule of thumb, especially for planning and resource allocation to support learning at work. The most important aspect of 70:20:10 is that it requires leadership to hold the space so that workplace learning is connected through experience, exposure, and education.  Leaders have to promote learning and themselves master fast, relevant, and autonomous learning. There is no other way to address the many wicked problems facing us today. If work is learning and learning is the work, then leadership should be all about enabling learning. Holding space means protecting the boundaries so that people can work and learn. Personal knowledge mastery is the core competency for each person working in the networked era. But organizations have to provide the support and remove barriers to learning. Leaders need to provide the space for learning.One approach to supporting workplace learning, based on the 70:20:10 model, is for the organization to provide three types of enablers: Tools: that workers are dependent upon to do their work Skills: competencies to work independently People: social structures to work interdependently with others, inside & outside the organization Education can enhanced by first designing formal instruction through a process like Cathy Moore’s action mapping, instead of focusing on content delivery. Instructors can develop new skills by flipping their classrooms and focusing engagement, not lectures. Participants can be more engaged in formal training when it is linked to their own personal learning network. Exposure can be facilitated by enterprise social networks, so everyone can see what others are working on. The practice of working out loud exposes people to more diverse opinions. But exposure often comes from others, so engaging people at all levels in practices like cognitive apprenticeship becomes necessary. Work is learning and learning is the work. Social media are new languages, requiring new communication proficiency, but they help expand our social networks, enabling more loose connections and potential for innovative ideas. PKM is the discipline of engaging with our professional networks and creating a diverse source of information, knowledge, ideas, and opinions. In order to make sense of their experiences, people need to engage with communities of practice, consisting of mixed social ties, in order to test new ideas in a trusted space. Organizations can help to identify and support these communities, both inside and outside the enterprise. I have described one relatively simple way to practically implement the 70:20:10 framework. There are many other possible approaches. If these methods make sense, you can learn more by attending the Moving to Social online workshop. [next workshop begins 1 February 2016]

A few years ago when the US had high rates of unemployment, there was a strong suggestion that this was not due to a lack of jobs, but rather a lack of skills. After all, businesses increased their corporate training by 9.5 per cent in 2011, which brought global spending to over $130 billion. However, rather than investing in more courses or programs for members of staff to attend, organisations turned their attentions to technology platforms instead. Coupled with social and mobile tools, these platforms enabled companies to develop and share content, provide employees with training materials when they were needed most, and deliver continuous learning. This represented a shift away from the old ways of formal training, which typically took place in the classroom and involved a teacher telling learners what they needed to know. In its place, continual learning gives staff a more engaging and satisfying training experience, where they can learn informally on the job or at a time and place that suits them. But why does your business need a continuous learning environment? And how can you go about implementing this new approach towards training?   Reasons for continuous learning Arguably the main reason why your organisation should introduce a continuous learning environment is because without such an agile and adaptive culture, the business will get left behind. Skilled jobs are becoming more and more specialised, while the rate in which things like industry regulations and technological advancements change mean that you always need to stay one step ahead of the game. In many respects, there is no such thing as an expert anymore. Thanks to today’s information economy, each and every professional has the tools to become a thought leader or authority figure. If you are able to utilise these resources correctly, you will soon outpace others that have specialised in their field for years. "Continuous learning is increasingly important to the success of the organisation because of changing economic conditions," according to the University of Guelph. "Given the current business environment, organisations must be able to learn continuously in order to deal with these changes and, in the end, to survive. It goes on to add that from an employee’s perspective, continuous learning is also concerned with expanding your ability to learn by always improving skills and increasing knowledge. "Continuous learning in the workplace involves viewing your experiences as potential learning and re-examining assumptions, values, methods, policies, and practices. At the group level, continuous learning is reflected, for example, by a team transforming itself in response to changing conditions." But while several companies will claim they have attempted and possibly even implemented a continuous learning environment successfully many years ago, the proliferation and use of social technologies has made adoption much easier than before.   Putting a continuous learning environment into action In order for continuous learning to work, organisations must have teams, programs, and systems in place that facilitate such an environment. This will need to be inclusive of expert content and instruction as well as the leveraging of internal experience and knowledge. For many, this takes the form of social enterprise tools, which give individuals access to a constant stream of information and understanding. Not only can members of staff learn from one another and collaborate together, they are also able to do so while carrying out daily roles and responsibilities. As a result, training becomes an intrinsic part of work rather than a separate activity on a separate platform. Sceptics will argue that creating and supporting a continuous learning environment will simply upskill workers and cause them to leave the organisation. However the opposite is true, as members of staff that don’t receive opportunities to develop or participate in shared activities are more likely to seek employment elsewhere. But even if you manage to establish social tools that facilitate continuous learning, they still need individual members to inject new ideas, thinking, and resources for everyone else to benefit from. Therefore, supporting continuous learning is just as important as deciding you want to do it.   How to support a continuous learning environment   Establish a flatter hierarchy - Executives and managers should not be asking their CLOs to create courses or run webinars for them. Instead, both parties should work in unison and partner up with each other to support team and individual needs. This could call for a flatter hierarchical structure when it comes to training.   Establish a flexible framework - With traditional training, CLOs would package up lots of content, deliver it to employees on a plate and have complete control over who was allowed access. But continuous learning requires a flexible framework, which includes the right conditions for acquiring new knowledge and monitoring performance.   Focusing on performance - Remember that learning and collaboration are means to an end, not the final goal, which should be improved performance among employees. So, try not to concentrate on learning but rather focus on performance. Value network analysis tools can help find this information for you, as trawling through activity data to identify high performing individuals can be time-consuming and doesn’t relate to all members of staff.   Assist slower staff - While some employees will strive in a continuous learning environment, others may struggle. For this reason, you must assist slow or struggling members of staff that need guidance for their own personal knowledge management approach. This should also include how to work and learn collaboratively in their teams.     Create new roles - Existing course design and training skills aren’t always required within continuous learning environments. Instead, they require specialists in performance, collaboration, and professional learning that can provide advice and support. So, you may need to create some new roles in the organisation.   It might represent quite a shift from what you are used to, but switching your static training activity to a more fluid and dynamic continuous learning environment will ensure employees always have the necessary skills to succeed and all but guarantees your business won’t get left behind. Share this post with your own audience

A portfolio of training programs represents a significant investment in company resources, including the annual training budgets of years past and the time and effort of training personnel, subject matter experts, and training vendors. View our Infographic for a visual journey tracking a single dollar invested in a Global 1000 training portfolio TRAINING IS AN INVESTMENT Companies have an average training expenditure of about $1,200 per employee per year,1 and over the years, the time and budget spent on curricular design and the creation of learning assets represents a significant investment in company resources. The average Global 1000 company has over 1,000 hours of learning content within its training portfolio. The development of this portfolio requires an average investment of $18 million, including: $2.7 million and 18,000 hours of labor from subject matter experts Subject Matter Experts are a borrowed company resource that are oftentimes highly paid, senior resources that are at the top of their respective divisions within a company. Although they have other job responsibilities and normally consult with the training department, their time is valuable and results in a large organizational investment into training. $8.1 million and 100,000 hours of labor from instructional designers Instructional designers design and develop corporate training programs. Internal IDs have knowledge of your company and its internal workings, and are able to go to business units, elicit training needs, and design programs to address these needs. $2.7 million and 67,000 hours of labor from instructors Trainers are called upon to deliver training programs within companies. They are a payroll investment and a vital part of the training function since they interface directly with employees $4.5 million and 34,000 hours of labor from managers This is a payroll investment into keeping Training, Learning, and Talent Development Managers on staff to oversee your company’s training function. Managers give direction to projects, take responsibility for deliverables, and lead their respective teams of trainers and instructional designers. The Association for Talent Development. (2014). "The Association for Talent Development State of the Industry Report 2013." About the author:Kyle Miller is an enterprise learning consultant with InfoPro Learning based out of Princeton, NJ. Prior to joining InfoPro, Kyle served as a research associate on subjects including e-learning, online education, game-based learning, and social media usage in higher education at St. John’s University in New York. The post The Total Cost of Your Training Portfolio appeared first on .

Online learning involves creating online presentations in various formats. Most instructional designers take the safer route - PowerPoint or a tool that produces the "PowerPoint effect". Learners get tired, and so do instructional designers, by looking at the same monotonous slideshow. In this article, we divulge some fresh tips on giving life to your online presentations - all tried and tested! Presenting online content in an engaging manner is critical to the success of the eLearning course. This process requires a great deal of creativity in terms of planning as well as visual design. In order to create an unforgettable eLearning experience, you need to think outside the "PowerPoint - box". Engage through Interactivity The more interactive your online presentation is, the more effective it will be. The question is, how do we integrate interactivity? How much is enough and what factors create the "too much" effect? To be honest, if you stick to the learning goals when creating interactive content, you can never have the "too much" effect. Plan out storylines using scenarios, eLearning games, and drag and drop interactions. Create navigation systems that are easy to use and have alternative methods to reach a certain point of your course. The more your learners interact with your content the more they will get engaged and achieve their learning goals. Do you know what top instructional designers are doing to hold the attention of their learners? Add a thought-provoking question towards the end of the presentation. This encourages your learners to reply back as soon as possible, engaging their peers in the process. Metaphor Mania What’s the quickest route of transferring knowledge from the working memory to the long-term memory? Simple - use metaphors. Metaphors create a visual image of a relatively abstract concept, making it easier to understand. When learners compare a new concept to something they are familiar with, they develop interest in it. Their curiosity is piqued and they want to investigate the concept further. This is a natural "hunt and seek" knowledge gathering behavior in humans, triggered by a good metaphor. Bring your online presentations to life by using stock images that are unusual and attention-grabbing. Stories and Fables The power of stories and hypothetical situations continues to captivate us since we first believed in a good Christmas story! Turn boring material into an interesting novella where characters claim their solutions through the decisions made by the learner. Research the background of your subject matter, build a storyline around it, develop your characters, and let them narrate the facts. A good story is the one which is believable, which your learners can relate with and something that connects their learning to their work-context. Music You cannot go wrong with music. Create the desired tone for your scenario with the right music track. Get your learners emotionally involved in the scenario. Use the music in accordance with copyright laws. A word of advice here: provide a mute button for those who can do without the music! Add a Video Very few eLearning courses and online presentations can be successful without integrating videos. Compare a good video with a static presentation. Optimize the effectiveness of your online presentation by adding relevant videos. Bear in mind, too many videos will drown your content. Make sure the videos you include are brief. Reserve the longer videos for extra resources. Another great way to enhance online presentations is to include a video of the instructor. Develop your own eLearning videos, in which you teach some of the content, instead of your eLearners reading it. Instructor videos have proven to improve course retention rates. Banish Bullets Bulleted lists "kill" attention spans! Replace those horrendous dots with meaningful images or icons that represent the content. This enables you to create a visual appeal for your content. Beware of low resolution and cheesy images! Animate Animations can be very disruptive if used incorrectly. Use tasteful animations at intervals to demonstrate main ideas or complex topics in an easier way. Animations can create the "entertainment factor" in your online presentations that lead to improved learner engagement. Be careful, don’t over-use animations, as they can easily overwhelm your learners. Be Humorous Use humor that inspires and motivates. Avoid humor that targets certain groups, behaviors or habits. Adding humor is a risk - you never know what may offend your learner. Try adding small doses of humor to entertain as well as help the learner connect with the material. With more and more software freely available to create online presentations, eLearning program development has become challenging. This is becausee learners now prefer dramatic multimedia in their learning environments. With the aid of these tips, you should be able to improve your online presentations and create satisfying eLearning programs. The post 8 Online Presentation Ideas for Instruction Designers appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

The key to success in eLearning, as in any other business for that matter, is to never rest on your laurels. That doesn’t mean that you have to strive for the ultimate perfection — just that you should never get too complacent with the quality of your eLearning offering. And, lest you think we’re taking theoretically, in this post we’ll detail 10 concrete pieces of advice which you can use to improve your course material and your learners’ experience. 1. Adding things in Whatever your course’s content is, we can pretty much guarantee that it is lacking in several areas. Perhaps your writer didn’t do the required research for some chapter. Or maybe he cut some corners in order to deliver it before the deadline. Or perhaps it was just fine for when it was written, but now, a few years down the line, things have changed regarding the topic it describes (e.g. 4G internet wasn’t available in 2010 — now it is). In any case, there will be places in your course’s content where you’re not giving your learners the full picture. Your job is to identify those cases and to make sure that they’re updated to cover all that they need to. 2. Taking things out This is the other side of the advice given in our first tip. Nearly every book, and by extension every eLearning material, has chapters that are long, and more detailed or wordy than they need to be. Perhaps the writer couldn’t stop himself. Perhaps he didn’t have time to take things out and rewrite the material to be more succinct (something that, surprisingly, takes more time than mindlessly piling up paragraph upon paragraph). Your job, in this case, is to find those cases of superfluous content and take it out. Your lessons will be all the better for it. 3. Typography Typography — the use of fonts and grids in the presentation of text, is an important part of making your courses accessible and easy to read. Even if your users can’t always articulate it, bad typography will hurt their learning experience, and might even drive some of them to abandon your eLearning courses altogether. If you can afford it, bring in a properly trained graphic designer to design your courses’ typography. Your nephew that "knows Photoshop well" and designs party flyers won’t really do. If you can’t afford a graphic designer, don’t despair (and don’t call that nephew of yours either). There are lots of free tutorials on the web where you can learn the basics of proper web typography. At least try to apply those principles to your course. 4. Humor Humor might not be the best medicine (no doctor would prescribe Ben Stiller to cure your flu), but it’s a great way to get your students’ attention. Instead of some long, boring, course content, how about trying to turn it into an overly long, funny, course content? Humor makes lessons more memorable (and obviously, more pleasurable), and helps attract the students’ attention for what comes next. It doesn’t have to be LOL funny, mind you. A few light touches, the occasional funny aside, or some puns will do. Of course this works best when you (or your writer) already have a good sense of the comedic, which won’t always be the case. 5. Media galore Text alone won’t cut it nowadays. Even when you already have the best Harvard or MIT-quality course content, you can still make it 10 times more interesting and richer looking to your users by adding some multimedia. The term is broad enough to encompass anything, from photos, clip art, audio recordings and video to a full blown 3D VR experience. Your multimedia doesn’t even have to do that much with your course’s content — as long as it is vaguely related (e.g. showing a picture of a forest when you talk about the environment), it will do. Of course if it helps illustrate a point in your lesson, then that’s even better. Take advantage of TalentLMS‘ extended multimedia import options (powered by our proprietary EncodeMagic engine), to include all kinds of media assets in your lessons, from pictures and songs, to PowerPoint presentations. 6. Story Another way to make your courses more interesting is to tie them into a larger narrative. In others words, to try to tell a story with your content. It’s no accident that storytelling techniques are often employed in children’s learning books and online courses. As research has shown, humans are wired to pay special attention to storytelling and can retain things that they heard in story form much better than other information. So, whether you’re targeting children or enterprise employees, adding a few narrative touches to your lessons will make them sit and pay attention to what comes next. A perfect excuse to set your inner Hemingway on the loose. 7. Gamification If there’s a thing humans of all ages like more than listening to stories, that would be playing. Gamification allows you to tap into this gaming instinct, and use it to increase engagement and start up a little friendly competition among your learners. TalentLMS in particular offers a plethora of gamification options, with badges, leaderboards, levels and other such standard industry tools that are very easy to deploy and very effective in making your courses more engaging. 8. Speed Actual or perceived loading speed are among the things that can easily make or break a website. In test after test, users have been show to leave pages never to come back if they take more than a few seconds to load. TalentLMS is plenty fast by itself, of course, and optimized by our expert team of Cloud administrators. But what about your course’s content? Very large blocks of text, custom fonts, slow to load custom or third party scripts, or maybe that 2MB PNG image where a 200KB JPEG would do, may be killing your performance. Even if it works fine for you when checking from your 50Mbps VDSL office line, have you tried to access it over 3G? Check your eLearning portal with a tool like YSlow or with Chrome’s excellent Developer Tools, and make the necessary adjustments towards a more lightweight and faster loading webpage. 9. Difficulty Another thing that might be giving your learners a hard time might be that your content is actually too hard for them to grasp. Just because the person who wrote it is an established expert on the field, it doesn’t mean that they can safely assume that your learners will be too. Actually, judging from the very fact that they take online lessons on the subject, they probably are not. So give them something appropriate for their level. Of course what’s appropriate really depends on your audience. One would rightly except a whole different level of learning performance and study pace from university students compared to smaller children or working adults. Use TalentLMS’ reporting tools to check grades and test results, determine your audience’s pain points, and prune (or explain better if needed) anything in your content that’s hard for them to grasp or goes above their heads. 10. Gratuitous nudity Hey, it works wonders for Hollywood, right? OK, OK, we’re kidding (see tip #4). But how about rewarding them for their efforts, though? We’ve already mentioned gamification, but possible reward and "loyalty" systems go beyond that. For example you could have small token prizes for the learners that do exceptionally well. Or you could reward users that bought multiple courses by letting them buy more at a discount rate. TalentLMS offers both discounts and coupon codes to help you build your own rewards system for your heavy users. Conclusion So, we talked about 10 quick tips for improving your courses and enhancing the eLearning experience of your users. There are, of course many many more, and we’ll come back at some point with another list of totally different, but equally proven suggestions. In the meantime, do you have any favorite tips on your own? Share them with us and your fellow TalentLMS users in the comment section below. Until next week, happy eTeaching! The post 10 ways to enhance the LMS experience for your users appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

The 2016 LMS market is not what you think. We have spent the last two years interviewing hundreds of global learning technology professionals on both the vendor and practitioner sides of the fence.  We ask them all about business drivers, trends, market opportunities, use cases, demand, competition and measurable successes.  We incorporate what we learn from each conversation into our analysis and understanding of the learning technology market.  It’s not what we thought - it’s much better. Here are our top ten 2016 trends, observations and predictions for the LMS and broader learning technology market.    #10 Culture Shift Driving Epic Innovation in the LMS Market Culture shifts happen slowly and then instantly.  The cloud, mobile devices, social media, ecommerce, Google and bandwidth have changed everything especially the way we all learn.  Simultaneously, there has been a shift from having a career at one organization to having a career comprised of numerous strategic roles at many organizations. Now individuals and not organizations are responsible for lifelong learning and continuing education. Today’s learners, of any age, want to consume just-in-time resources and to leverage the collective knowledge to get to best content instantly, inexpensively and reliably.  To address the culture shift, hundreds [...] The post 2016 LMS Market Trends, Observations and Predictions appeared first on Talented Learning.

When we come decisions, we most often employ a process for making those decisions. We may weigh the pros and cons, we may jump immediately to a ‘correct’ solution, or we may choose the wrong solution and have to go back to the drawing board. However you make decisions, there’s more going on inside your brain than you might realize. Convergent Thinking Convergent thinking is a process where you tend to choose the ‘correct’ response, given very little mental output. Think of multiple choice exams as an example (now, I know this isn’t the case for all multiple choice exams, but how many times have you ever guessed a response?). With this method of making decisions, the individual is often focused on patterns, responding in a way that is most probable based on previous experiences. It is a method that tends to be entrenched in logic and familiarity and is often the quickest route to making a decisions. Divergent Thinking Divergent thinking is a decision making process that emphasizes the consideration of many ‘correct’ or potentially correct solutions to a problem, which tends to require increased mental output. This method may not be as fast as convergent thinking, but it tends to generate many options and is often viewed as spontaneous, emphasizing principles of free association, brainstorming, and critical-thinking. Using this method, individuals provide an initial spew of ideas, and then use logic to critical connect various concepts related to the problem in an effort to reach the most appropriate solution.

Online work groups seems like a technical term, but it really is a collaboration teaching strategy in the eLearning environment. It gets tricky if certain dimensions are not handled with care. In this article, we illuminate those dimensions. It’s worth the effort as online work groups are the closest you can take your learners to the performance context of any industry. There are a hundred reasons why online work groups created for an eLearning groups go awry. The ill-design and implementation of these work groups is the main culprit. Designing assessments that are linked to your eLearning course learning objectives is one of the main features of a course. Creating challenging assessments is important to raise the bar for learning. It is even more important to know the difference between individual and group assessments. If collaboration will make learners participate productively and also learn from each other, then create unique tasks for all involved. To understand this process, let’s identify the three features of online work group activities: There is no one correct answer. Discussions are based on individual research, perspectives and experiences. Group tasks can deal with culture comparisons, analysis of a case or innovating a solution. There are several elements to investigate in a group activity. For this reason, a JIGSAW puzzle model approach is best suited to create unique tasks for each student. Use your learning management system to create online work groups with well-defined task list. All tasks and activities should be transparent to all groups. Progress should also be noted and updated in a timely manner. In order to fulfill such requirement, integrate the online work group rules into the grading rubric of the project. Scores and grades are great motivators for maintaining discipline in the online environment. Here’s an online work group preparation criteria by Jean Mandernach, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Grand Canyon University: Preparation Learners should appreciate the value of both the product and process of the assignment. Learners should have experience and knowledge of working in an online learning environment. Restrict group members to maximum of 5 to ensure everyone gets to participate and submit equally. Before the group assignment begins, learners should have ample community building experiences and opportunities. Assignment Assignment should be authentic: it should emulate the performance context and it should be measurable. The assignment should rely on collaborative work. Learners should get the performance criteria in the form of rubric before they begin the group project. The assignment should create an environment of interdependence and team spirit, in which learners believe that their individual success depends on the team’s success. The assignment should allow sufficient amount of preparation time. Assignment enables individual members a degree of control on their project. Technology Learners are provided with tools and instructions to facilitate online communication. Each group has a collaborative workspace within the online course. Learners have the desired technology skills to work in an online learning environment. Work-spaces provide back-up opportunities in case of technology failure. Evaluation Grading and evaluation hold weight for the process and the product of the project. The interaction process and quality of discussions are mentored and monitored. Self and peer evaluations are included in the process to monitor individual involvement and accountability. An eLearning course is seldom complete without a group activity. With these features for preparing online work groups, we are confident that you can turn your next eLearning course into a satisfying experience. The post How to Create Online Work Groups appeared first on eFront Blog.

Nobody working in the world of eLearning can get far without getting involved in some form of compliance training. On the one hand, it’s the bread and butter for many eLearning designers (according to Charles Jennings, 80% of all eLearning in Australia has to do with compliance), and there seem to be a never ending stream of legislation that employers are required to make sure their employees are aware of. And once created, compliance courses have to be amended, updated and adapted, providing a useful ongoing revenue stream. On the other hand, too much compliance training is what gives eLearning a bad name, as it often reflects the worst of it - mind-numbingly dull page turning, next-clicking and quiz-questioning. Often, the tests are so badly written that the answers are either blindingly obvious or impossibly elusive. In one UK bank, hundreds of frustrated employees failed an otherwise easy desktop IT safety course by not knowing the regulation distance between the top of their knees and the bottom of the desktop (two inches, since you ask). Clive Shepherd sums it up as - employees hate doing compliance training, and as a result, trainers hate offering it. The answer, then, is to use eLearning instead with the result that now learners hate eLearning. It is not even particularly effective. According to a recent survey in 2013, whereas nearly all organizations use technology-enabled compliance training, only 20% think it is raising awareness and understanding of complex regulations - but then again, only 20% provide managers with resources to encourage application back in the workplace. Not that firms are setting very high standards in the first place. A survey in 2014 found that the largest proportion of employers thought their eLearning was "Ok, but needs improvement" - however their aspiration was simply to raise it to the level of "meets standards", rather than above average or very effective. It’s hardly surprising then, that according to an LRN study in 2013, 60% of employees identified "online learning fatigue" as their top challenge. The simple point is that most employees don’t really embrace compliance training with open arms. Most are overwhelmed with the amount of information being thrown at them, in the form of emails to be read and responded to, appraisals to prepare for, quality standards to be met, endless internal and external forms to be filled in and deadlines to be adhered to. Finding time to complete mandatory compliance training, on topics that are vital but often perceived to be marginal is just another headache. As Iain McLeod of SAI Global Compliance says, "Universally, lack of employee engagement emerged as the biggest barrier to effectiveness - and it’s linked strongly to the poor reputation of compliance eLearning . Ask yourself what efforts you are currently making to really engage your audience and make it relevant to them. If you are subjecting your employees to ‘death by PowerPoint’, rolling out the same content year after year to everyone regardless of their job role or risk profile, blinding the learner with irrelevant detail about what the law says rather than what it means to them or failing to engage your line managers in the process, then chances are that you are potentially turning off the very people whose buy-in you need to effectively mitigate your compliance risks." Many businesses compound the problem by presenting compliance training as simply a hurdle for one to go through, a box-ticking exercise to avoid comeback, rather than any kind of meaningful learning. Every employer has heard horror stories of companies being sued by their employees over some safety or discrimination scandal, and paying out huge sums of money in addition to suffering a bruised reputation and other forms of long term damage. In some industries, employers may also have to answer to regulators, or appear before Parliamentary Committees. The most common reasons employees sue their employers are if they feel they were discriminated against , unfairly disciplined or dismissed, harassed or bullied, or that medical or mental problems weren’t taken seriously. All these are issues that need to be covered by compliance training. But, it’s not easy to create a respectful workplace where policies are well-known and consistently implemented, where issues are carefully documented, and where supervisors are accountable for and vigilant in managing situations before they get out of hand. How can compliance training, and the part eLearning plays in it, be changed? Before devising yet another piece of boring compliance training, think about the following five questions. What do we want employees to do that they may not be doing now? What do employees need to know if they are to do these things? What principles do they need to understand and buy into in order to do these things? What skills do they need to acquire and practice in order to do these things? What else needs to be in place in the work environment if performance is going to change? By starting with behavior change, as Carmen Simon suggested in her interview last month, there’s a much better chance of success. In the next post, we’ll look at some examples. The post Rethinking Compliance Training in eLearning: Part 1 appeared first on eFront Blog.

When deciding between an eLearning course and a job aid, industries need to know that job aids direct performance as the need-to-know arises. On the other hand, eLearning courses build performance capacity prior to the need-to-know. If your learners use the information infrequently, but find it harder to recall because the information is complex, create a job aid. In this article, we will demonstrate the significance of a job aid in the training industry. Most leading organizations are moving from the industrial age to the information age. This means that we no longer wish to work hard. We desire to work smarter and faster. While there are many job automation tools and devices, the procedure or protocol to operate them is critical to the employee’s success. Developing a job aid is the fastest way to achieve performance turnover. What is a job-aid anyway? A job aid is a repository of information, processes and perspectives gathered from expert employees or a manufacturer’s notes. It is external to the employee, that is, the employee does not rely on his or her memory to perform the task. They need to refer to the job aid to complete the task accurately. A job aid supports work activities. It directs, guides and enhances performance. It also boosts employee performance and motivation to carry out the tasks in a timely manner. Why do organizations need to develop job aids? Organizations need to understand the difference between information and education. eLearning comes to our rescue when we need to educate. Job aids directly support performance in a real-time manner. It’s a critical reference source for several job activities, especially where consequences for errors are high. It also serves as a precaution for performances depending on a large body of information. Job aids are created for information that changes frequently and also for a careful execution of delicate procedures. How can eLearning tools help create job aids? In the current information age, several organizations are opting for a paperless work environment. Instructional designers need to work closely with front line managers to create a particular job aid. Extra care is needed for tasks that require judgment. eLearning developers can enact tasks through scenarios in a brief manner to encourage the desirable judgement for a step requiring it. Also, eLearning tools can serve better when creating self-assessment procedures to double check if the performance is at the appropriate level. eLearning tools can easily be used to create several formats of job aids. These include steps, worksheets, arrays, decision tables, flowcharts, checklists, and combinations of any of the formats. The best part is that eLearning tools make the job aids completely interactive. They are also mobile friendly and can be viewed using a smartphone or any other portable device. This way, your employees can have a "coach" while on the job! Here are some questions to ask a team that requires some new job aids: · Do you have any questions? · Were you unsure at any time? · Were some steps harder to follow than others? · Was it difficult to use at your workstation? · Were the instructions clear? · Were the steps in the correct order? · Were there times you needed more information? · Were there times when there was too much information? · Did you see any typos? · Were there circumstances not covered? Remember, always involve the SME when creating the job aid. Good luck with your job aid development using eLearning tools. Do let us know how it goes. The post The What and the How of a Job Aid appeared first on eFront Blog.

In the first part of this post, we looked at some of the problems associated with a lot of compliance training. It can be tedious, uninspiring and not particularly effective - it may satisfy a requirement to perform the infamous "sheep dip" training session, but that doesn’t mean that their behavior will change. Faced with something like a fire, a major accident, a breach of security or a legal challenge, the fact that 99% of the employees had completed the statutory training designed to prevent such things from occurring is not an enormous comfort to anyone involved. So how can it be done differently? Good ideas include things like getting to the point quickly, without a lot of unnecessary policy or legal background, and using real life scenarios, incorporating an engaging visual element. Games and simulations can help, as can a slightly lighter approach, provided it’s not out of keeping with the subject matter. Above all, it’s important that the training is appropriate for the intended audience, which is why off-the-shelf courses rarely work. Each organization’s culture is different, and what works for an insurance company might not work for a furniture manufacturer. Three examples from very different areas. The UK broadcaster, Channel 4 needed to train all its staff in risk awareness. From the company’s point of view, the aim was to ensure that they didn’t face any more expensive legal challenges or public inquiries into programs based on things like faked images, unreliable evidence or other bad journalistic practices. Part of the problem however was that Channel 4 was, in its own words "born risky" - it had been deliberately created to be non-compliant, a kind of halfway house between the BBC and the fully commercial channels. From the 1980s onwards, it developed a reputation for fearless investigate journalism, challenging drama and alternative comedy. There was a feeling however that it had lost direction, and that many staff weren’t aware of what they should be doing. Acteon were commissioned to produce eLearning which would address this issue. The training was essentially about to how to take risks safely - to be "risky but not reckless". To engage learners from the start, it included short video clips of stunt performers and extreme sports fanatics, before showing the stringent safety checks and backup systems that were in place behind the scenes. This was based on a simple lesson from the cinema - an action sequence at the start of a film is a great way of capturing the audience’s attention. There was an emphasis on competence, not compliance - on what to do, not what to follow or accept. The questions staff were encouraged to ask before engaging in risky activities included: Does it feel right? What would colleagues think? What would viewers think? Does it comply with code of conduct? Is it legal? Examples used included large scale things like signing off a new program budget, but also more mundane activities like sending an important email, putting in a slightly inflated expenses claim or hiring a friend or relative. The training used peer contributed content from all levels of the organization, and recognizable voices such as continuity announcers. The scenarios were all video based, but followed a standard pattern of presenting a context, and offering the learner choices before exploring the consequences The eLearning was backed up by imaginative use of other media channels - things like messages of the day, screen savers, splash screens, wall posters, coffee mugs and coasters. As a result, the outcomes were achieved ahead of time, with 85% positive evaluation, and nearly 90% of staff reporting that they would be more likely to report conflicts of interest or other concerns. A second example from a completely different area is Connect with Haji Kamal, part of a program designed by Cathy Moore for Kinection to help US troops engage more sympathetically with people from different cultures. The course takes learners through simple conversations in a variety of situations using a comic strip format, showing how the right choice of words can often diffuse tensions and improve the chances of co-operation towards shared goals. Although they had initially planned to use video, budgetary and time constraints led to this novel solution, which was based on soldiers’ enthusiasm for war comics. The line drawings were based on photographs, and the scripts were taken from real life discussions in classroom courses. The game and its accompanying facilitator guide were tested by soldiers in focus groups before more widespread deployment. 70% of the players said that they were looking forward to discussing the game in class the next day, and instructors reported that the activity "prompted the majority of the discussion" , encouraging soldiers to share and critique their own experiences. Finally, UK retailer Mothercare needed to train all staff in a variety of health and safety issues including fire awareness, dealing with threats and hoaxes and accident prevention. Rather than adopt the usual legalistic, instruction led approach, they worked with eLearning developers at Sponge UK to produce a single 20 minute module, Staying Safe at Work. Based on a series of simple games and custom-made illustrations, the short course has proved to be an engaging learning experience for new starters, and an effective refresher for existing staff. As Carmen Simon suggested in her interview, to be effective, any learning program must include elements of reward, emotion and motivation. Unfortunately, a lot of compliance training ignores this. The examples outlined in this post point to some ways in which eLearning can be reshaped towards fulfilling its true potential. The post Rethinking Compliance Training in eLearning: Part 2 appeared first on eFront Blog.

There’s a great deal of talk these days about how eLearning is moving off the desktop computer and onto a variety of mobile devices. The release of the iPhone in 2007, followed by the iPad three years later and a whole variety of other devices since then, has led to a rapid rethink of the ways in which content should be presented online - clearly, models designed for a standard desktop computer aren’t always going to work on devices with a much smaller screen. Inevitably, the term mLearning was coined to cover this area, although many people still prefer to see it as simply a variant of eLearning, or of learning more generally. Either way, few can deny that it’s becoming more important, and that it also has a long way to go, albeit with neither the direction of travel nor the ultimate destination particularly clear. In this post, we’ll start by looking at the critical distinction between two terms - adaptive and responsive. We’ll then go on to consider the changes needed to eLearning design, and also some of the ways in which end users are responding. Some people use the two terms interchangeably, while others debate the differences with varying degrees of rancor. There’s probably no point in being obsessive about it, but there are some important distinctions. The terms originated in the world of web design, although they probably have more far-reaching implications for learning than they do for some other areas. Responsive web design was first proposed by Ethan Marcotte in 2010. Essentially, its basis is fluidity - that what the viewer sees on the screen should gracefully and gradually adapt as the screen size changes. In technical terms, this is mainly done by using percentages. If you have a page that displays two columns of text, for example, you can specify, using CSS that the first column should always take up 60% of the screen and the second column 40%. On a computer, as you resize the browser window, the text in the two columns will re-flow to fit, and consequently the columns will get shorter or longer. If you bring other elements into the equation - photographs, for example - those too can be set to resize on a percentage basis. It gets more complicated with a grid arrangement where there are several boxes on the screen each displaying a different story - a newspaper front page, for example - so here, other considerations come into play. You can specify breakpoints - if the screen width falls below, say, 800 pixels, then only show two boxes side by side rather than three. Some elements always need to keep together, or can’t be resized - companies tend to be very precious about their logos, for example - and these might be put into nested boxes that will always stay together, and should never shrink. There are also more technical considerations about the types of font to use, and whether to go for vector or bitmapped graphics. All these things are swings and roundabouts - some of them are not really relevant to an eLearning designer, but nonetheless, it’s important to understand them. The nine principles of responsive web design by Sandijs Ruluks illustrates this very well with a series of animated GIFs. The notion of adaptive web design on the other hand - the term was coined by Aaron Gustafson in 2011 - involves adjusting the appearance on the screen only at specific break points, which means that the screen snaps from one view to another. The designer might specify, for example, one layout for computer or laptop screens (over 800 pixels wide), one design for tablets (between 400 and 800 pixels) and a third design for smart phones below 400 pixels. If you view an adaptive website on a computer, and adjust the size of your browser window the screen appearance may therefore suddenly change as the screen width gets smaller. The disadvantage of this is that it can appear a bit more clunky to the end user - the advantage is that there are only three possible design permutations to consider rather than an infinite number. Another way of making the distinction is to say that responsive web design is device agnostic - its starting point is simply to adapt to whatever size or shape of screen it is presented with. An adaptive website on the other hand would probably use media queries in the webpage header to determine what kind of device it was being viewed on and present itself accordingly - which is why it wouldn’t necessarily change when viewed on a computer screen, even with a small browser window. The question is really in the starting point - should a designer aim for progressive enhancement or graceful degradation? When the vast majority of websites were only ever going to be viewed on a computer screen, graceful degradation was probably acceptable, aiming simply to present the occasional mobile viewer with something that was more or less acceptable. Nowadays however, where for some types of activity (which may include learning) mobile devices are very much in the ascendancy, it makes more sense to aim for progressive enhancement. This involves creating an acceptable experience on the smallest possible screen, and gradually increasing or improving it for larger devices. In the next post, we’ll look in more detail at the implications of these issues for eLearning designers. The post Adaptive and Responsive Design for eLearning: Part 1 appeared first on eFront Blog.

A few years ago, when rapid eLearning development tools were in their infancy, the job of eLearning designers was fairly straightforward, and had very little to do with web standards. Courses were prepared using software products that were almost all based, to a greater or lesser degree on the Microsoft PowerPoint model of slides, templates and bullet points. All that designers had to do was to provide a nice looking screen layout and graphics, add a few animations and activities and publish the course, which really meant exporting the lot to Flash. This would then be uploaded to and delivered by an LMS and it was out of their hands. Not any more. Driven in part by Apple’s decision in 2010 not to allow SWF files to run on the iPad, there has been an accelerating move away from Flash and towards the new emerging HTML 5 standards which allow most (but not all) of the same effects to be delivered without the downsides of dubious security, buggy code and outdated plugins. The main advantage of HTML5 is that it is built around WebApps, or small pieces of code that run within a browser, rather like little pieces of software, or mobile phone apps. Unlike Flash, HTML5 does not need any kind of separate plug-in for recent browsers to be able to interpret the code - and it runs seamlessly on most recent smartphones and tablets. So what do eLearning designers need to be aware of? The first and most important thing of course is to publish courses to HTML5 rather than Flash wherever possible. Not on every occasion - there are still some areas where Flash has the advantage, and provided that few students will be trying to access your courses on iOS (Apple) devices, it may still be appropriate where complex animations or special audio and video effects are involved. Some custom built assessment types may not run on HTML5 and if they’re vital, it may be necessary to stick with Flash there too. But for most other courses, and particularly when planning new content, it’s probably important to think exclusively in terms of HTML5 content, and give some consideration to what your course will look like on mobile devices. There’s a good summary of a range of eLearning authoring tools and the extent to which they support HTML5 on the eLearning Industry website. Recent versions of most popular desktop tools such as Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, Lectora and Camtasia offer the choice of publishing content to Flash or HTML5, or in some cases are able to detect automatically which option to use. There is also a new generation of online cloud based authoring tools such as Gomo or Dictera which not only publish automatically to HTML5, but are also beginning to break out of the straitjacket of the PowerPoint slide-based model and move towards flexible usage of screen space, more akin to an interactive web page. Tools like Gomo also have the advantage of offering a more responsive rather than merely an adaptive approach - but at the expense of some cosmetic elements. Unlike web designers, eLearning designers don’t have complete control over the screen appearance of their products, as they’re usually mediated through SCORM or xAPI and an LMS. Responsiveness, as we learned in the first part of this article is largely controlled by the use of percentage variables in CSS, and eLearning designers don’t get access to this in most off the shelf products. Instead, tools like Storyline and Captivate allow the user to set up screen layouts for a variety of different device types, and maybe some flexibility in specifying the breakpoints between different screen sizes, but essentially this is an adaptive approach. The simple reason is that it’s more important for eLearning authoring tools to offer solid and consistent functionality with as much control as is practical over screen appearance rather than an infinite range of cosmetic effects at the expense of basic functionality. There’s a whole variety of things like buttons, sliders, carousels and other layout devices that simply can’t all be infinitely resized on the hoof. It’s sometimes possible to incorporate more complex workarounds using Javascript, but that may run the risk of breaking something else further down the line. How are things likely to change in the near future? It’s fairly clear that mobile devices - smartphones and tablets - are becoming increasingly important for the consumption of learning content, although some evidence suggests that users are becoming more selective in how they use different devices. A recent study by Google, The New Multi-Screen World concludes that we choose the device to use by context - for example, when we need something quickly, which might include a nugget of just in time training, we’ll probably turn to our smartphone. However, many people seemed to think their tablet was mainly for entertainment at home, was not be their first port of call for eLearning. Similarly, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that in large companies, a desktop computer is still the only device on which people can undertake mandatory eLearning. While Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies are becoming increasingly popular in tech-savvy companies and educational institutions, there’s probably a while to go before they will be accepted in more risk-averse institutions like banks and large multinationals. The bottom line is that while eLearning designers need to be aware of the possibilities of responsive and adaptive design, many of us are likely to be producing content exclusively for desktops for a few years yet. The post Adaptive and Responsive Design for eLearning: Part 2 appeared first on eFront Blog.

2015 was a good year for us, and we wish you have shared the same level of success. During the last year we experienced exponential growth with TalentLMS, we re-positioned our enterprise offering eFront and we released a new mobile app. Along the way we also got some important awards. Our restrengthened goal for 2016 is to excel on what brings value to you; to build usable and innovative learning tools that help you be a bit more productive and a lot more successful. We started as a technology driven company and we still carry a very strong technical DNA. We consider technology as the gatekeeper for greatness. And we spend most of our work time iterating over ideas that produce tools that people actively use, as the balance between usability, simplicity and fit-to-purpose is a moving target. We would like to use this opportunity to discuss what happened in Epignosis this year and our plans for the next one. So take a deep breath and let’s get started. The products TalentLMS is now over 32,000 learning portals strong and it grows at a pace of around 1,250 learning portals per month. On the infrastructure front, we experienced an up-time of over 99.99% which is among the very best in the industry. We also responded to 8,118 support messages. That’s up 68% over the previous 12 months. Within 2015 we had 4 major product releases. Those releases added the ability to build a custom homepage, offered ample opportunities for blended learning, minimized the administrative overhead with automated actions, let you schedule reports delivery, introduced subscription payments and the calendar. The last release also introduced the mobile app. Altogether, there is no sign of slowing down for TalentLMS’ improvement. This sets the tone for 2016 as well. eFrontPro had its own share of important milestones. The product is now a complete rebuild that shares little similarity with the original eFront. Here is a link to this year’s releases for those of you who have some time to dig into the details. This year we also took the hard, but necessary decision to discontinue the open-source version of eFront. The reason behind this can be found in this post. Finally, this year we introduced a micro-learning mobile app, called Snappico. The product uses the metaphor of cards to tell interesting stories, a card-per-day. Snappico is available for iPhone as we are speaking so go grab your copy. Currently there are over 350 topics to discover from English Civil War to how Aging works. We consider micro-learning an important part of the future learning landscape. The micro-learning concept is still in its early stages, a bit clumsy and immature, but we’ve seen a number of products lately that share the same enthusiasm about its potential. For example, check Primer, the Google’s app for Marketing micro-courses. The people We grew considerable. We are now 25 people strong. I would like to welcome Eleni, Angel, Haris, Yannis, Chris, Alex, Maria, Thelxi, Simon, Lisa & Manolis. We keep hiring for next year so if you are into programming, marketing or sales check our open positions. The content Last year we accelerated our effort around content, with an emphasis on eFront’s and TalentLMS’ blog. Our posts are about eLearning topics spanning from tips to build better courses and eLearning industry coverage to new product releases and use cases. Altogether we released around 200 posts, accompanied with around 40 eLearning related videos (check them on the related TalentLMS’ and eFront’s YouTube channels). We even created an elearning tips podcast series! The integrations 2015 was heavy in integrations. First of all, eFrontPro got integrated with OpenSesame. This opened a number of opportunities for reusing ready-made, professional courses within eFront with minimal effort. eFront got integrated with Connections as well, the business social network platform from IBM. We are demonstrating this integration on IBM Connect conference from January 31 to Feb 3. TalentLMS integrated with Shopify and Woocomerce among others. The misfortunes Of’course, nothing is perfect in a non perfect world. This year we experienced a catastrophic failure of our official Youtube channel that took some time to recover from. This was an interesting lesson though you might want to read about. Next year and beyond… We have big plans for next year and with a bit of (always needed) luck we will deliver. Some things that are being "cooked" at the moment are native mobile apps for all products & H5P support for rich, interactive content building. Regarding our long term plans, rest assure that we are here for the long run, making a sizable dent in the universe. Here is a post from Signal VS Noise blog that summarizes our view of doing business better than I would ever did. And finally… We would like to wish all of you the very best for 2016. Life is a journey and it always has some marvels across its path for everyone. Enjoy each moment! The post Wrapping up the year appeared first on eFront Blog.

Gamification, the idea of using game-based techniques to increase engagement in a non-gaming activity, might have began as a novelty reserved for web 2.0 social startups, but is now an accepted part of the web in general and the eLearning industry in particular. And not just in eLearning courses meant for the general public — gamification is big in business and corporate training too, while an increasing number of enterprises is implementing game based eLearning courses or adding a touch of gamification to their existing courses. And it works. There’s nothing like a little competitive element to increase learning engagement and have enterprise employees try to outdo each other. Gamification, after all, is not that different from decades old employee motivation techniques such as "employee of the month" awards and employee recognition programs. Why gamification works Gamification, in essence, is based on the complementary ideas that man is a competitive creature, but also a creature that likes games — and not only just a child, but well beyond adulthood. One just has to point to the extreme popularity of sports to make the case for both assumptions. Games and play in general are not just an acquired taste either, but something that we’re "wired" to enjoy, so to speak. It can be found in nature too, in all kinds of animals, including primates that are genetically extremely close to the homo sapiens. The Dutch historian and anthropologist Johan Huizinga (1872 - 1945), even went as far as calling our species "homo ludens" ("the playing man"), and suggesting that play is essential part to the generation of human culture. There are several scientific theories that explain why playing games is important in nature. The "play as preparation" theory is based on the observation that play in animals often mimics adult themes of survival. Consider, too, how the initial set of Olympic sports were all based on skills essential in the ancient battle (running, throwing spears, wrestling, chariot racing, long jump, archery, etc.). Play has also been found to help shape the brain, resulting in a more efficient cerebrum. It’s also a survival trait in itself, as it helps animals to learn to switch and improvise their behaviors and reactions more effectively, preparing them for the unexpected in a non-threatening setting. Games also tap on our brains’ "motivational engines". When we’re excited and engaged because of a sudden reward, our brain releases dopamine, which serves as a chemical agent (a "neurotransmitter" in scientific jargon) passing the signal of satisfaction around our neurons. Given that our games trigger our pleasure centers and our brains want to relive the same experiences that gave us pleasure, dopamine is perhaps the greatest motivator we have at our disposal. It’s exactly this process of taping into our brains’ motivational machinery that makes gamification techniques so effective. How companies use gamification Enough about the theory. How do companies use gamification in corporate training to engage employee motivation and enhance their business training programs in the real world? The answer is: in many different ways, from the most basic schemes to quite advanced setups. Cisco, for example, teaches social media skills to its employees and contractors through a multi-level training program that lets learners advance through the ranks to obtain the ultimate title of a social media "Master", through 46 courses. This level/title based approach was a wide success with hundreds of certified employees taking a total of 13,000 courses. In another example, Engine Yard, a popular Cloud services platform focused on (popular web development framework) Ruby On Rails hosting, was facing difficulties with getting their employees and users to peruse its Knowledge Base portal. By implementing a gamification system based on badges, achievements and missions that rewarded searches and contributions to the knowledge base, they show a 40% increase in knowledge base searches and customer support performance. SAP, the leading Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions provider, had also leveraged to gamification techniques to train its sales representatives in the details and intricacies of its (quite complex) product line so that they can be more effective in answering customer inquiries. They did so by implementing "RoadWarrior", a game-show like application that simulates talking to a customer, and awards employees with badges and a place on the leaderboard for correctly answering customer questions. Enterprise gamification solutions are not just good for eLearning scenarios, either. Salesforce, for example, a leading enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) provider, has also embraced gamification to help motivate employees in competing for better sales results. In Salesforce’s case, this is achieved through their "Motivation" platform, their CRM add-on that implements common gamification techniques such as team leaderboards, progress bars, and goal-based challenges. Gamification in eFrontPro As we show from the previous examples, while gamification applications can take various forms and follow different strategies and end goals, they all share some common elements: levels, badges, leaderboards, scores and the like. eFrontPro gives you access to all of these elements, and offers you enough flexibility in combining them and customizing them so that you can implement your own unique gamification strategy (or any common one, for that matter). Let’s describe this basic gamification "lego blocks" that eFrontPro has to offer. Points Points are the equivalent of "keeping score" in a game. In eFrontPro a user’s total points are shown on their homepage header, with any newly award points briefly displayed in a non-intrusive popup message. eFrontPro gives you a lot of flexibility in configuring how and when points are to be awarded (for example, when a user completes a course, for each login to the LMS, etc.). Badges Badges are the equivalent of real world medals and similar distinctions. In eFrontPro, as in most established web-based gamification systems, badges are implemented as visual stamps (images), that are unlocked when the user achieves certain, err, achievements. As is the case with the user’s points, badges are displayed in his homepage header and in his profile info. eFrontPro’s badge-awarding system makes acquiring budges increasingly difficult, as to make it more challenging for the users and help them maintain their interest and increase their efforts in the later stages of their training. Levels Levels are similar to ranks in the army or to getting promoted at work. In other words, they are a hierarchy that the user can slowly climb, and get increased access and perks. eFrontPro lets administrators customize when learners should get to the next level (e.g. when they reach N points, or when they have completed X courses or acquired a specific set of badges). Leaderboards Leaderboards add to the competitive spirit by making all of a user’s achievements (with regards to the previously described gamification elements) visible to all learners. Similar to a "high score" list, leaderboards in eFrontPro show a user’s ranking under several metrics (points awarded, badges earned, number of certifications, etc), as give them a sense of how good (or bad) they fare compared to other users. Between these tools, and with the extra flexibility that comes from the numerous customization options available for each, eFrontPro lets you implement any web-based gamification strategy you can come up with. You don’t have to go crazy with all these options, mind you. After all, your end goal is a more effective training program through the use of corporate gamification techniques — and not turning your enterprise training into FarmVille. The best approach is an incremental one, in which you slowly introduce a few gamification options here and there, and take your time to see which ones work better and are more effective for your enterprise training needs and with your employees. And, of course, if some particular gamification element doesn’t seem to work, you can always take it out. Game got real While a purely virtual gamification strategy is very effective in increasing user participation and engagement (and, as a consequence, training effectiveness), it can be made even more effective is it’s combined with actual perks and rewards for your best learners. This can be anything the crosses the digital barrier and enters the real world, from a promotion for your best performing employee, to bonuses or even physical token awards (e.g. from an award trophy to free beer). While not essential, such gestures are indicative that your gamification strategy is not just a virtual carrot, but something that can also lead to real workplace benefits. To play or not to play? In our (informed) opinion the real question is not whether you should introduce gamification elements to your eLearning, but rather how soon. With it’s demonstrated and measurable effectives, gamification will be an inherent part of eLearning and corporate employee training in the future, and it’s increasing adoption by all kinds of businesses proves that it’s not some kind of fad, but a natural extension of training, with deep roots in pedagogy and human psychology. We suggest you give a good look of eFrontPro’s powerful gamification engine, and try to incrementally introduce some gamification elements to your corporate training. After all, you don’t want your competitors to get that shiny "we use gamification" badge before you, do you? The post How Companies Use Gamification To Motivate Their Employees appeared first on eFront Blog.

In the times of yore, when employees looked forward to a lifetime of employment in a company like General Motors and IBM, managers could afford to have their new hires "learn on the job". After all what’s the harm in allowing employees a few months to get up to speed, when you compare it to the 30 plus years that they’d work for the company? That, as they say, was then, and this is now. Hitting the ground running In today’s competitive economic landscape, businesses can’t really afford to have new employees learn on the job. First and foremost, because neither companies are that loyal anymore, nor are their employees. Some of the them might just be seasonal hires, that need to be trained and productive "by yesterday" to help offload your regular personnel. Others, especially in sectors with plenty of working opportunities such as IT, are not gonna be around for more than 4-5 years before they start to look elsewhere for their next career move. In both cases, getting new employees productive pronto makes a lot of sense in terms of savings and increased productivity (especially if one considers that, according to some estimations, the cost of replacing an employee can reach 50% of their annual salary). There’s also the fact that the modern ecommerce opportunities gave mistakes the potential to be costlier than ever. And with online and social media ready to jump on the first sign of a good story, certain employee mistakes that would go unnoticed in the past, can cause a huge embarrassment (and loss of sales) to a company. These are just some of the reasons that conspired to make employee onboarding a big deal in the last decade (we’ll get into a few more later in this post), and had businesses search for ways to make their employee onboarding and orientation processes more efficient. eLearning, especially in the form of modern web based learning management systems (LMS), has been the obvious answer to those needs. And I say obvious, because, after all, what is an onboarding process if not a special case of employee training meant for new hires? The duration of an onboarding course might be shorter, and its content might be less challenging than a regular training course (and not entirely job related as we’ll see), but it’s still the same process, and an eLearning system is ideally suitable for it. But before we get into how enterprises can leverage eLearning for employee orientation and new hire training, let’s first have a look at the contents of a typical employee onboarding course. What goes in an onboarding program While enterprise training needs can be many and varied, ranging from training your franchise partners to make the perfect McBurger to air-force training for F-16 pilots, employee onboarding courses tend to be much more similar in scope and content between organizations. Regardless of your line of business, for example, the goal of any employee onboarding program is to help new hires integrate smoothly in your company. For this you need to introduce them to their new working environment and give them the basic information that they need in order to start being productive. The first thing they’ll need to know is what their responsibilities are, along with their place in your enterprise’s organizational chart (in other words, who their colleagues and bosses are), as those are the very things that define their professional role. You’ll also need to inform them about your organization’s operating procedures and policies, and also about any legal restrictions and guidelines that they’ll need to follow. If we’re talking about simple seasonal hires or unskilled employees that will only be handling some small and well defined part of your business (e.g. freight loading, burger flipping etc.), that much orientation, perhaps combined with an equally to the point training program detailing the skills they need to have, might be more than enough to call it a day. Obviously the training needs of new hires are different when you’re dealing with a retail employee versus a VIP level executive or an engineer. For employees that are meant for more advanced roles, and especially for people that are meant to be with the company for the long term, it would be best to get them to see the bigger picture, to help them understand how they fit in into it, and this means an extended (in breadth and time) training program. Giving your new hires a brief history of the company and explaining its range of operations, its customer base, and its core values would be a good place to start. You could then continue with some (very useful for new employees) information about career advancement prospects in your company, your corporate culture, and all the benefits and perks available (including health & life insurance, pension plans, etc). Depending on the job market, and how hard it is to get talent for your particular industry, you might have to make your onboarding course more retention oriented (as opposed to orienting it to quick productivity). Especially in certain fields such as IT and Finance, talent acquisition can be hard, and an employee’s first impression of a company during his first few months on the job has been shown to play an important role to their decision to stay there. That’s why it’s important for your orientation/onboarding program to help new hires feel that they’re welcome, that they’re part of something bigger, and that they have made the right career choice. Now, unless your CEO is called Steve Jobs (or maybe Elon Musk), or is a regular speaker at industry conferences, don’t bother with some long winded "message from the CEO" — your employees are gonna skip it anyway. If you want to have one, keep it short and to the point. That said, offering some real life working experiences and advice from your existing employees would be a nice way to give your new hires a sense of what would be like working for your company. For work in IT, or involving computers (so, almost all of them), an introduction to your organization’s intranet and web facilities should also be included in your onboarding material. That’s especially crucial if your company has a BYOD policy, in which case you’ll also need to include some setup guides (e.g. for employees to configure their email program, or to connect their laptop to your VPN). Your employee onboarding program should also teach the professional and industry best practices regarding customer support, data privacy, etc., as well as any industry or government mandated rules and regulations (e.g. regarding labor safety, environmental protection, etc.). Last, but not least, another thing that should definitely be in your employee onboarding checklist, is education regarding sensitive legal and social issues such as sexual harassment and racial discrimination, so that your employees are aware of the correct codes of conduct for these situations. eLearning based onboarding There are several key benefits of implementing your employee onboarding program with an eLearning management system (LMS), besides the fact that it’s what all the big boys do. 1) It helps you formalize your onboarding process and material. This makes onboarding a more well-defined and repeatable process, than having someone showing new hires around the office and giving them a prep talk and a few brochures that they’ll never read. Of course your managers should come down with well defined roles and clear expectations and goals for new hires, and assist your eLearning instructors to put them in writing. 2) Being repeatable and automated, means it only incurs a one-time cost in order to create the onboarding course materials, which from then on can be maintained and re-applied whenever the need arises, with minimal overhead. 3) It leverages your existing LMS infrastructure, which means that you can run your onboarding process as a regular training program, complete with tests and reports to verify its effectiveness. This is an option that you don’t have when you use a regular content management system (CMS) for your onboarding. This ability to monitor and track an onboarding program’s progress has been shown to be crucial in its success. Another useful option with eLearning based onboarding, is that you can also your LMS to evaluate your new hires (thru quizzes, tests, etc) and their aptitude for different kinds of tasks. This can complement your hires’ initial evaluation from your interviewers and HR people, and help you determine what roles and responsibilities you should assign them. 4) As eLearning is asynchronous, your onboarding can take place at the time that best fits your business needs and employees schedule, which is good both for minimizing business downtime and disruption and employee satisfaction. Your new employees will be able to take an e-learning orientation course at their own pace, while still getting on with everything else that they have to do during their first weeks or months. 5) Unlike regular classroom based onboarding and new hire training programs, an eLearning based one doesn’t require multiple instructors, scheduled classes, transportation and other such expenses. In fact the same onboarding program can be server from your LMS platform to employees all over the world, 24/7. 6) With LMS based onboarding your new employees can go straight from their onboarding/orientation program to a full-on new hire training program, while using the same web-based environment they’re already familiar with. 7) While some of it might be fluff, a lot of onboarding/orientation material consist of things that your employees will need to consult again as time goes by (e.g. regulations, organizational charts, IT guides, etc.). With LMS based onboarding, these materials will be available online in a formal and easily accessible format. In fact an LMS allows you to have your onboarding material serve as part of your organization’s recruiting strategy by making the same information about your company’s structure, corporate culture, work experiences, perks and benefits etc., available either to the public at large (e.g. as part of your public facing portal) or just to potential hires. This will help raise excitement about your working environment and the career opportunities that you offer, and is a strategy that many big companies follow, from Google and Facebook to Pixar. 8) Last but not least, an e-learning based orientation course can use the LMS system to track attendance and completion status. In case of dispute, this can serve as a legal proof that your company has indeed provided knowledge of things like company policy, sexual harassment laws, etc, to the new hire (of course your regional laws may vary, so consult your legal department on this). Blend it While eLearning based onboarding is great in all the aforementioned ways, and an improvement over the costly and ad-hoc onboarding processes of yore (of their lack thereof), onboarding shouldn’t be relegated only to the online realm. An effective employee onboarding program will also need some physical presence, from the classic "tour around the office" where new hires can meet and greet their new colleagues, to specialized training sessions were physical skills are important (e.g. how to operate some machinery). A modern LMS platform like eFrontPro has you covered here too, as it provides support for blended learning, allowing you to schedule and treat physical training sessions, meetings and seminars the same way as your web based lessons. Get onboard In this post we’ve had a look at the basics of employee onboarding and new hire training, and examined how eLearning software not only helps you increase onboarding effectiveness and minimize costs, but also affords several unique opportunities over traditional onboarding techniques. If you’re looking for a modern, web based, eLearning platform for your employee onboarding and training needs, you don’t have to look any further than our own industry leading eFrontPro LMS. With over a decade of development, and now in its fourth version, eFrontPro (formerly known as eFront) is well known for its ease of use, excellent support and extensive feature list, from Reporting and Instructor-Led-Training support to a full blown extension API and REST interface. Take eFrontPro for a test drive, with your own account, and get your company onboard with employee onboarding today! The post How to use eLearning for Employee Onboarding appeared first on eFront Blog.