There’s really no rhyme or reason for my term selection this week; Gamification is just a term being kicked around within the e-learning community, and if you were ever wondering what it meant, look no further! I will say that I feel the term has been used a bit less in recent years, but maybe that’s just within the circles I follow. Gamification? What the heck is that?! Gamification is a process in which you turn your course into an interactive learning experience for your users…creating a game of sorts. Often times, Gamification is intended to appeal to the competitive nature of humans by offering a fun experience in exchange for rewards, badges, level ups, or the like. Just think about Candy Crush - How awesome did you feel once you finally beat level 125? While you certainly didn’t learn much, it definitely felt like an accomplishment. A great (and simple-ish) example of Gamification is Lumosity; here is a series of games, based on neuroscience, that leverages rewards (based on your intellectual improvements) to improve your memory, speed, attention, and problem solving abilities. You’re motivated to continue visiting the site and playing the games under the rouse that you will increase your overall performance index. But why is Gamification good for learning? As I said before, and I’ll say it again, Gamification appeals to the competitive nature of humans. Even if you’re not innately competitive, you may find yourself motivated to compete with yourself. In a society where younger students have come from a generation of video gaming, Gamification also has the ability to make learning ‘cool’ and relatable. I once worked with an organization that developed a gesture-based learning experience to teach pilots aircraft marshalling signals - it utilized Xbox Kinect technology, and almost everyone who ‘played the game’ found themselves impressed, and because they were completing the signals in a practical simulation, they retained what was being taught in a meaningful way. Another positive to Gamification is that it offers variety. Instead of having to endure traditional chalk-and-talk style face-to-face lectures, students can glean the information in a more engaging format, and teachers can focus their efforts on squeezing more into their curriculums (as politics often dictate) or finding meaningful ways of supporting the information learned within the games to support information retention.

  Today I thought I’d talk about badges, because everyone likes to feel like they’re achieving something and badges are a great way of doing that. Badges What are badges? Well. You can probably relate to the badge reference when you think about the badges you or your friends received in brownies/girl guides/cubs/boy scouts, etc. These badges were received for achieving a certain criteria with regard to a specific goal. Take for example some of the badges I’ve achieved in the Articulate Insiders community (shown in the image above) - these badges were achieved by: finishing 50 challenges, completing 10 social media challenges, and providing a survey-style opinion. Another example you might be able to relate to: the gold stars your elementary school teacher provided on your assignments/activities for a job well done. We see badges in many domains; for example, social (e.g. brownies/cubs) and technology (e.g. video games), but how do we begin to use badging in education? Using Badging in Education Badges can serve to motivate students to work harder to achieve course goals; individuals innately want to succeed, so receiving an ‘award’ of sorts for completion of an activity can make a world of difference when it comes to learner motivation. To begin employing badging in your classroom, you will want to define goals to achieve the badges. These goals should align with your course goals and learning outcomes. Once defined, create a mode for delivering the badges. For example, in a face-to-face classroom setting, you may wish to use a physical leaderboard (e.g. a table created on bristol board of each student and each goal, with physical stickers or badges affixed to the board to indicate completion/progress). In an online course, you may wish to generate electronic certificates or an electronic leaderboard (similar to the one illustrated above) that displays each learner’s badges. Resources Educause Learning Initiatives: Things you should now about…Badges Badge Alliance - Why Badges? How Badges Really Work in Higher Education by David Raths

This week I was hoping to address E-Learning Challenge #97 and do something with slider-style toggle buttons, but I ended up killing two birds with one stone and addressed E-Learning Challenge #91 while I was at it! The Concept E-Learning Challenge #91 - Get to Know Your E-Learning Community with 2 Truths and 1 Lie sought to have community members create playful interactions using the icebreaker game 2 truths, 1 lie. The goal was to bring us, as a community, closer together. E-Learning Challenge #97 - Toggle, Switch, and Slide Your Way to More Creative E-Learning Buttons challenged us to show creative ways to use toggle buttons and switches in e-learning. The Method I thought about this challenge for awhile and decided I wanted to use sliders to respond to true/false or yes/no questions, so I thought up some questions about myself and hopped to it. My avatar was purchased from Creative Market awhile ago for another personal project I have yet to complete, so I figured I might as well get some use out of it in the immediate future. I chose 4 poses (one for the intro, one for the questions, one for correct responses, and one for incorrect responses) and began mocking up all of the screens I would need. I tossed in Continue buttons to navigate to the next question in the queue, and an Exit button at the end. After adding the buttons, I went back to add in all of the necessary functionality (e.g. the slider). I programmed the slider to have three slide points, with the initial point being the 2nd/middle). Then, I added in triggers so that the slide would change to the correct or incorrect feedback if the slider was positioned correctly on Yes or No (slider position 1 or 3). The Result Click Here to view the full interaction.

Today, my pal Rachel is talking about Making it Not Suck. I read her blog post this morning and had to laugh because…IT IS SO TRUE! Few people enjoy training, and when the training is terribly done or ineffective, it makes people perceive the job the training was to address as even being very sucky…and in turn may cause these folks to perceive their job as a whole sucky. I felt compelled to write a bit about this today because 1 - she hit the nail on the head, and 2 - one of my former Instructional Design colleagues texted me last week to tell me how great some typically terrible HR training was. She had to take some corporate training, and it didn’t suck. So much so that she felt obliged to tell me about how great it was because she knew I would appreciate it. And I did! Within my current role, I encounter a lot of faculty members who have a bitter taste in their mouth about online learning and the technological knowledge required to develop and deliver the learning experiences. A lot of them dread teaching online - it veers from their traditional approach, it makes them feel as though they aren’t teaching, and they’re too darn busy to learn something new. I get it. The struggle is real. So what I strive to do when working with these folks is make the inevitable suck less (e.g. the technical training and their course development) and hopefully make them feel as though they’re sucking less when they use these technologies to deliver their training (or more confident). Additionally, when you encounter well-developed and effective training solutions, you feel will likely feel more positive about doing your job (or even participating in required training opportunities) which may in turn make other things in your life feel more positive (positivity is contagious)! Thanks for the post, Rachel! It was definitely accurate and extremely relevant.

I’ve talked a bit about analysis before, but it recently dawned on me that there are a lot of components that fall under the umbrella of analysis, so I figured I’d channel my inner analyst and take a few weeks to delve a bit deeper into the topic of analysis. Let’s Go! Analysis in Learning Development - A Refresher Analysis is the highest level of course development. In it’s recommended format, this phase seeks to compile all information relevant to the project and 1) determine which delivery method will best display the content in a meaningful manner, 2) whether more information is required and from whom, and 3) high-level project goals. Elements Within this phase you may stumble upon several elements familiar to analysis (e.g. Needs Assessment, Instructional Analysis, Task Analysis, Environmental Analysis). You can read about Needs Assessments here, and Task Analysis here. The basic jest is that you want to collect all of the information you possibly can in order to ensure the training you’re planning to develop is 1) necessary, 2) relevant, and 3) informed. You want to thoroughly understand the performance requirements, who your audience will be, what they need to learn, and how that information will be relevant to their performance. Strategies There are many strategies for conducting analysis. For example, you might want to start at the end goal of the training and work backwards. This approach will allow you to identify the goal and then the steps or prerequisites required to get to achieve the goal. Another example might be to begin with a list of questions (e.g. who is the target audience? what is their prior learning? why is the training necessary?, etc.) and discover the answers to those questions in order to conduct a thorough analysis of the situation. You might wish to examine what the organization is currently doing and why it’s not working to determine a different way ahead that will work. However you choose to analyze, just know that you’re doing very important legwork that may save you time once you get to the design and development, and certainly the evaluation phase of your course development. Stay tuned for more on analysis next week!

Today I decided to catch up on some challenges, but I needed something light so I could ease myself back into the swing of things. So, I decided to tackle E-Learning Challenge #82 - Show Us How You Create Online Courses. The Concept The purpose of this challenge was to have us share how we create online courses. Because the interaction created was very brief, simply outlining the steps, this post will be a bit of an explanatory post. The Method For this challenge, I identified six steps I take when creating online courses, and made them look pretty in Storyline. Those 6 steps include (with some explanation): Sign a Contract - This is a critical step. You’d like to think that all of your clients are going to pay you, but signing a contract is one way of ensuring this happens. And from a client perspective, this can save their butts when it comes to non-disclosure schmutz. Coffee - Throughout the development process, a lot of coffee is consumed. Basically just make sure your house is stocked full of coffee (be prepared…you know snow storm? apocalypse?) or that your friendly neighbourhood cafe is open. Analyze the Content - This is a necessary step, because without the content, you might find yourself down a wormhole of internet articles and publications trying to figure out how to describe the cleaning process of a Burr grinder (and who wants to do that?! Not this gal!). Analyzing content allows you to identify gaps, liaise with the client accordingly, and retrieve the necessary information to do what you’ve been contracted to do. It also gives you an idea of what you may want to do in terms of media treatment. Develop/Author - Here you’ll be doing the heavy lifting of your course creation. You’ll likely be storyboarding the content or heading straight into authoring with a rapid prototyping model - this workflow will likely depend on that contract you signed up in step 1 (e.g. if the client doesn’t want you to ‘waste time’ storyboarding, they may want you to jump in with both feet and begin authoring in the chosen tool). Review Cycle - Ah. The dreaded review cycle. This is a very important component when it comes to course development. The review cycle will identify any necessary changes that must be made ahead of final delivery. Before you begin contract work, you’ll want to ensure the contract speaks to review cycle limits…because no one wants to do unlimited revisions (especially if you’re working on a fixed-price contract). Deliver and Invoice - A fan favourite! Delivering a course you’ve spent hours labouring over is one of the best feelings in the world. As an e-learning developer who doesn’t intend to bear children, I would liken this feeling to that of birthing a child. Mothers will slap me, but I don’t care! I applaud your hard work. Then, invoicing is just the icing on the cake, because gotta get that money, money, money… The Result Click here to view the full interaction.

Last week I started a discussion about Analysis, talking about some elements (e.g. Needs Assessment) and some strategies for conducting analysis. This week I’m providing a bit of a follow-through plan. Sort of. Or perhaps you can call it a guide for things of which you need before writing performance objectives. Call it what you want. I’ve made a doodle of some things you’ll want to analyze:   Less of a doodle and a bit more flow chart-esque am I right? Yeah. I know. Anyhow. What the heck do all of these things mean? When working in the analysis phase, you may come in on any portion thereof, but the key things you need to analyze are: Your Audience - Who will be receiving the training? What prior learning experiences do they have? Do they need prerequisite knowledge? The Environment(s) - How will the training be delivered? Face-to-face? Online? Blended? Where will the audience be applying the training? If on the job, will they need a performance support tool? Will it need to be mobile-friendly? Will it need to be a stand alone training aid? The Job or Task - What is the job/task for which you are developing training? Break that task down into each individual sub-task. Don’t assume your audience will know how to complete ANY of the sub-tasks, unless you’ve been specifically told they have the knowledge, and determine how much information is required (for each sub-task) to achieve mastery of the task for which the training was developed. Content - What content is available? Once you’ve analyzed your audience, the environments, and the job or task, you will have a greater understanding of what content you will need. At this point, you can analyze the content that’s available and determine whether there are any gaps. If so, you can request or source the missing content. I know these posts are a very brief primer (of sorts) about Analysis in Instructional Design, but they provide you with some primary information necessary for some forthcoming blog posts targeted at elements and strategies related to conducting analysis. Stay tuned for next week’s post: Design Part 1 - EXCITING, I KNOW!    

Over the past two weeks, I’ve talked quite a bit about the analysis phase of most Instructional Design models, and now it’s time to talk about the Design phase. But I’m not a designer! Oh. But you are! At least if you claim to be an Instructional Designer. Like analysis, many IDs don’t get the opportunity to dip their toes in the design phase, but it’s a very important phase to be a part of. While it might sound as though we’re talking graphic design and look/feel, we aren’t exactly. Only sort of. The design phase is where you identify how the learning is going to occur. So the look and feel…conceptually. And it may also include elements of visual look and feel. The output of this phase is typically referred to as ‘design documentation’. This documentation outlines things such as: Instructional Strategy Learning Objectives Assessment Strategies (and sometimes the assessment items) Prototype Requirements Compliance Specifications (e.g. system requirements for the end user and SCORM requirements) Branding Guidelines Screenstyles The design documentation is used to guide the design and allows developers to keep their eyes on the prize (or the project requirements). It also allows multiple developers to ensure a consistent approach across development. Have I piqued your interest? Great! Stay tuned for more on the design phase…next!

This week I missed DevLearn and was living vicariously through those in attendance via my twitter feed. But, I was finally able to relish in a secret I had been keeping for many months! On March 13, 2015, I suggested the lovely folks at Articulate have Atsumi, one of the most iconic e-learning characters, in the flesh, at their DevLearn booth. No one responded to this tweet, which I found a bit odd, but I later received a direct message vowing me to secrecy. I managed to negotiate a FaceTime in with Atsumi (thanks, Kelly!). My day was made! This week’s e-learning challenge is an homage to the wonderful lady who made these experiences (throughout many courses and at DevLearn) possible - Atsumi! Thank you, Atsumi for being such a wonderful stock photo specimen and for taking time to engage with use E-Learning Heroes! The Concept The challenge this week was to share our favourite Atsumi e-learning moments and explain how we’ve used here in our courses. I’ve only used Atsumi a handful of times in courses, mainly because I avoid using the stock character packs unless a client specifies. But when they do specify, Atsumi is my go to character! Because of the glory that are Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), I can’t show you how I’ve used Atsumi in those courses. Boo! The Method First, I downloaded Jeff’s Atsumoji Freebie to use as a background. Then I added a rectangular shape and applied a transparency. Atsumi’s poses and facial expressions are near and dear to me, so I chose five of my favourite poses and added them to the slide, applying a fade animation effect. I then added two states to each character: grey (greyscale) and selected. I added triggers to each character to change the state to grey when any other character was selected, and then a trigger to each character to change state to selected when the user clicked a particular character. Another trigger was applied to each character to show the corresponding layer when the character was clicked. I added layers with textboxes, indicating what Atsumi was thinking (based on the pose). Finally, I added a brief instruction so folks knew what they were supposed to do with all of the Atsumis, and adjusted the player (no menu/resources/title/changed player colour). The Result Click Here to view the full interaction!

A rainy weekend is the perfect time to catch up on some e-learning challenges, and I’m really digging deep into the archives for this one! The Concept This challenge was to develop a gate screen for course content. It was specifically requested to develop two slides, but I feel like the gate screen is pretty self-explanatory, so I opted out of the second slide. The Method I knew I wanted an elegant looking gate screen, so I chose a background image relevant to my content (in this case, driver training tips - specifically, tips for driving in the rain). I then added shapes to create a sleep looking ‘popup’ box with second shape at the top, posing the question. Some of the best gate screens I’ve seen operate as knowledge checks, so that’s the style I chose. I created a multi-response question with two layers. One layer for correct (with a green banner and a continue link) and one layer for incorrect (with a red banner and a continue link). For the multi-response question, I used checkboxes so the user could see which selections they made when the feedback appears. I then added triggers to show the correct layer if Checkbox 1, 2, and 3 are selected IF Checkbox 4 is not equal to Selected, and a trigger to show the incorrect layer if Checkbox 4 is selected. The Result Click Here to view the full interaction.

The Concept The goal of this challenge was to take an existing, static, content slide and convert it to an interactive knowledge check using the convert to freeform functionality in Articulate Storyline. The Method First, I came up with a quick ‘static’ slide (there were some animations to jazz it up a bit, but nothing the user had to interact with aside from the next button, with some general information about three types of triangles. Then, I added a custom next button using a rectangle shape. Next, I added a slide featuring the three triangles, converted this slide to freeform and selected the Pick One option. I also customized the feedback to keep the visual aesthetic in check. Finally, I modified the player (player background and bored colour, no menu/resources/volume) and published. The Result Click Here to view the full interaction.

Things have been super busy over in these parts, but I wanted to check in and provide you folks with a fantastic offer on my book, Articulate Storyline Essentials, if you’ve been interested in purchasing it…now’s the time! For a limited time (until November 20th), Packt Publishing will be providing a 50% off discount on the Articulate Storyline Essentials Ebook. Just click through the banner below and enter the discount (indicated on the banner) code at checkout. Please note, this is only applicable to the ebook; not the paperback.

Several weeks back, I talked a bit about elements featured in the design phase of course development, and now I’ve returned to finish off (the high-level) discussion. Previously, I talked about design documentation. Now I’m going to focus more on the technology and visual elements. Within the design phase, this is typically where I would identify an authoring tool or Learning Content Management System (LCMS). Where will the development occur? Will the course be developed in Articulate Storyline? Adobe Captivate? Flash? An internal LCMS? This should be identified before anyone moves further into the development phase. Why? Because the development tool selected may impact some of your specifications in your design documentation. For example, if you specify one authoring tool in your design documentation, but use another, your client might hold you accountable for not doing what you said you were going to do. Once selected, this authoring tool specification will help you out when coming up with a style guide (e.g. what screen styles you’re planning on using) and will be instrumental in specifying prototype requirements and compliance requirements. If your project requires SCORM compliance, you’ll want to ensure the authoring tool you select has that capability…or redevelopment might be in your future. Another element you might want to consider during the design phase is to outline your course content. High level is usually best for this. From a higher education perspective, the design phase is where I would have faculty members begin populating a Course Development Plan document. This document acts as a container for specific high-level course content, and facilitates and easier transition during the development phase. For example, this document (once complete) will have most all of the content housed within the document (and signed off on), and the faculty member can then copy/paste the textual content into the Learning Management System (LMS) instead of having to spend time retyping/researching what content they want to include in which module. It just streamlines the development process. For design, I think a good rule of thumb would be to outline as much information about the project requirements and high-level course content as you can, because it will make for a smoother development phase!

Everyone! Hurry up and head over the the E-Learning Guild’s Learning Exchange throughout the month of November. I’ll be posted up there every now and again sharing some tips for their 30 in 30, and so will a bunch of other fantastic contributors! Today, I’m hanging out on Day 2 of the 30 in 30, teaching you all about how to create an elegant learning objectives slide in Articulate Storyline. Definitely go check it out! Over at the Learning Exchange I provide a step by step walkthrough (in text), with a video demo. You can download the Source file here, and you can watch the video demo below:  

Edit: Well - that was poor scheduling on my part; Thursday is not Tuesday - whoops! My bad! It’s time to talk Development - my very favourite phase of Instructional Design! Why is it my favourite? Because I get to create things! I suppose that could be said for the Analysis and Design phases (Job Task Analysis and Design Documents…), but development is my favourite phase because I get to play in authoring tools that I love to create magical (ok…maybe that’s a strong term) e-learning for my clients. In this phase, you get to put all of the information you defined in the Analysis and Design phases into practice! Another reason this is my favourite phase is because there’s been a lot of build-up at this point - you’ve poured over the details of the e-learning project, but you haven’t physically seen anything just yet (outside of a ton of Microsoft Word documents). This might be a bad analogy, but it’s like hearing you’re going to have a wax figure of yourself made, and finally having it unveiled…alright, it’s probably a really bad analogy - I don’t actually know how that feels, but it seems like a very hyped up lead in to an exciting result! However, development isn’t always working within your favourite authoring tools. It could (and often does) involve: Scripting Storyboarding Drafting audio narration scripts Creating prototypes Developing assessment items Creating lesson plans Developing style guides Creating media assets If your project calls for rapid prototyping (aka forgoing most of the previously mentioned documents), you’ll jump into your authoring tool with both feet and immerse yourself in the wonderful world of e-learning authoring. In summary, the development phase of instructional design involves the development, and the processes involved in such development, of e-learning course content - Regardless of medium (e.g. Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or e-learning authoring tools such as Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline).

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about where to find freelance instructional design gigs, and my experience with each of the mediums discussed. The lovely Christy Tucker (-swoon- I’m fan-girling over here ya’ll) recently gave this post a shout-out in a presentation as being a helpful resource, which reminded me that I really should update my list. So, now I’m here to provide an update with additional resources, because I have since found clients (or had them find me) through some other channels. Bid Sites For starters, in the last post, I discussed Odesk.com and Elance.com, these sites have since merged and exist under the umbrella company Upwork.com. I no longer haunt these sites looking for new contracts. Why? Because I don’t like the concept of bidding on projects. Sure - it might be for some, and I definitely dabbled in my fare share of bid sites when I was starting out, but I would compare them to Tinder (that ‘dating’ app) in terms of how icky it the concept behind the site makes me feel. Using these sites, I felt like I wasn’t being valued for my experience and expertise, but instead my ability to compete with other bidders…and let’s face it-I’ve never been a competitive person. Action Steps: Take it or leave it; they’re a great place to go if you’re just starting out, but can leave you a little icky feeling as you progress through your freelance career. E-Learning Heroes Community and Job Board I’m still active within the E-Learning Heroes community (and will be until it ceases to exist), and always encourage instructional designers and/or e-learning develops participate in the community; especially when it comes to building your portfolio. The ELH community is a great place to showcase your work, share your knowledge, and help others…so in turn, it is also a fantastic place for potential clients to headhunt you! You just never know who’s lurking among the forum posts. Be generous with your participation and sharing, and someone will surely notice. One of my best long-term contractors found me through the ELH community and sub-contracted work to me over a year ago, and we have been working together, for a client I feel good about doing work for, ever since! Recently-ish, the good folks at Articulate added a Job Board, and you need to go there and bookmark that page right now, because there are new jobs posted every week (and sometimes everyday) that you should really check out! Action Steps: Participate in the ELH community (especially the weekly challenges), and lurk that job board! Referrals Referrals are now where I find most of my clients, which is awesome! It means that people in the e-learning community think I’m doing good work and feel comfortable referring me to work with their colleagues, or referring their clients to me to do overflow work when they’re too busy to do it themselves. For this method, sharing really is caring. So whenever I experience overflow, I am quick to forward my clients to many qualified instructional designers. Referrals are truly a form of flattery, and for that reason, it’s how I prefer to find new clients these days. Action Steps: Share your knowledge, participate in like-minded communities, refer others, and karma will return the favour! Social Media The results of participating in social media is similar to that of referrals because it often leads to referrals! I’ve found a lot of clients through FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and have even been recruited by several clients on LinkedIn. Social media is definitely where your new-age clients are hanging out. There are great Twitter chats out there (Guild Chat, Chat2Lrn), and a fantastic sub-reddit related to all things instructional design. Action Steps: Participate in social media spheres, but participate in a meaningful way. Don’t spam your Twitterfeed with archived posts from your website. Be a giver! Promote others and they’ll likely promote you! My Website I wrote about finding clients through my website in the first iteration of this post, and it’s still producing a steady stream of work and/or business inquiries. Most inquiries reference my contributions in the E-Learning Heroes community (as explanation for how they found me), but many reference my portfolio and certain work in the portfolio that appealed to them. Why am I talking about this again? Because if you want your clients to come to you, you need to get a website and/or portfolio, and show them what you can do! Oh! And don’t forget — make sure you communicate effectively to ensure potential clients know how to contact you and can do so easily. I use a WordPress plugin for my contact form. It makes life easy. Action Steps: Build a website (or have someone build one for you), include a portfolio of some sort, and include contact information. Again, I hope this post was informative, and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I’ll do my best to provide you with an appropriate response.

Tools and apps come and go, and there seems to be so much wasted time investigating tools that don’t necessarily work for your unique purposes. I get a lot of questions about the tools and apps that I use, and while many of them are included in the Resources section, I thought it might be helpful to update you on the ones that I’m using most often. Articulate Storyline 2 - I don’t think I have to drone on too much about my love affair with Articulate Storyline, so I won’t. What I will say is that if you have yet to dip your toes in the Articulate pool, please just jump in…with all of your clothes on…because it’s pretty darn awesome! Parallels - If it wasn’t for Storyline, I would never have discovered Parallels. I would just have been suffering through using Boot Camp to run my Windows-based programs. I know some folks out there love Boot Camp, but I’ve tried it, and I’m not one of those people. Parallels makes it very easy to run Mac and Windows-based programs, simultaneously. And for anyone wondering - No. I do not experience lag when working in Storyline. SnagIt and Camtasia - Techsmith has my heart when it comes to SnagIt and Camtasia, which I use for all of my screen capturing and video development needs! Dropbox Pro - Dropbox has saved my butt on more than one occasion and should be considered essential for any business person, especially those working in virtual teams. It proves critical in backing up all of your necessary projects so you can have them in more than one place (dropbox, your computer, an external hard drive - if you’re not backing up in three locations, do that now). Actively Learn - In higher education, I’ve been recommending faculty members use Actively Learn because it’s very easy to create a more active learning experience than traditional lectures. Nearpod - Coming in at a close second for enhancing the learning experience is Nearpod. You can create presentations and incorporate assessment throughout the presentation. Each student uses an access code (on their own device) to access the presentation as the instructor is giving it, and assessment is completed in real-time. You can share the stats (e.g. graphs) of responses, but only the instructor will see the student name associated with the response. Canva - In the past, I had dabbled in Canva, but it really proved its worth to me when I was developing graphics for a sample course. It’s a site that easily allows you to create professional looking graphics without having to install and navigate the complexities of a graphics program (e.g. Adobe Photoshop). I’ve been recommending this to faculty members as an easy way to create quick and professional looking module introduction graphics. Soundcloud - It’s not often that I have to regal people with my voice (and thank goodness!), but when I do, I upload and share my audio using Soundcloud. It’s free and easy to use! Vimeo - All of the videos I create in Camtasia are uploaded and shared using Vimeo. It’s easy to use, you can easily share, and you can add metadata if you want to enhance search-ability. For personal use, I use the free account, and at the university, we use the Pro account. The free account makes you wait in a queue for the video to upload and process, but it never seems like much of a wait (especially when you upload super early in the morning). Fetch - Fetch is the best FTP client for Mac that I’ve found. I know that’s a subjective statement, but I really enjoy using it. It’s user-friendly, and while you wait for your files to upload, your cursor turns into a running dog - how fun is that?! Hopefully you’ve found at least one tool in this list that you can make use of, and if not, I’ll be drafting these posts regularly, so stay tuned!

Last week I spent some time talking about the Development phase of Instructional Design, but I got bogged down with itemizing the various elements that you might develop, so I didn’t get to talk too much about my favourite part of development. In e-learning, this would be the authoring element of development! This week, I thought I would chat a bit about some of the authoring tools that are used for e-learning development, and what I think about them. Within very first development gig, I spent a ton of time working in an internal Learning Content Management System (LCMS), and I have to say that for all the little bugs, I truly believe our company could have brought it to market and it could have been a big deal. After having worked in several other LCMS’, I feel pretty comfortable saying that it was one of the most user-friendly tools I have ever used. Unfortunately, I don’t believe it’s being used any longer and therefore is definitely not out in the market…an e-learning industry’s loss -sigh-. This position also afforded me the opportunity to work within OutStart and Ilias…which were alright, but not for me. Ilias was Linux-based, and I just didn’t have enough familiarity with it to really form much of an opinion aside from noting the inconvenience of working in an almost entirely Windows-based office. OutStart was alright, but it was buggy, expensive (for what it is), and had one major character flaw (at least in the version we had access to): any of the developers could accidentally delete an entire program…you know a series of courses that a team of 20 had worked tirelessly on for months. Whoops! It did have a lot of helpful features for course development, but I often found myself looking for workarounds to get things functioning properly. I was introduced to Adobe Captivate, used it for way too long, hated it instantly, and still have a deep-rooted dislike for it. That’s all I’ll say on the matter. Articulate Studio proved extremely helpful for developing media assets without needing a media team (in terms of interactive graphs and charts - which is what we used it for primarily). It was an extremely under-utilized authoring tool in that corporate environment; however, I’ve since used Studio in my independent development, and I’m still amazed by some of its capabilities - I have one project in mind that had a unique way of using the Player tabs, and I always go back to that one as an aesthetically exceptional use of Presenter, if I do say so myself. Articulate Storyline has my heart. It’s truly my favourite tool to author in, and the reason you’ll only ever see Storyline samples in my portfolio. Why bother including samples from OutStart or Captivate if I know I don’t want to work within those tools? It’s my favourite authoring tool because it makes my life so much easier! The functionality and features in Storyline allow me to streamline my workflow and development process, which is half the battle. With such a supportive community, I know my inquiries will be responded to expediently, and I won’t have to wait weeks for a response from a support team of 1. TechSmith Camtasia is my favourite video editing tool. I use it in my independent work, I use it at the university, I encourage all of my faculty members to use it, and it really provides a wide range of video development and editing capabilities with a very small learning curve. Moodle is the Learning Management System (LMS) the university uses, and while it’s not flawless, it does exactly what we need it to do, which is great for an open-source LMS, and for a university known as ‘the’ distance university in our region. I’d love to hear about the authoring tools you’re using and your experiences with them, so let me know in the comments below!

Last week I spent some time over at the E-Learning Guild’s Learning Exchange sharing tool tips. One of them was near and dear to my heart, as a student, and now as an Instructional Designer working in higher education and using Moodle as a Learning Management System (LMS). The way our institution’s process works is that faculty members are responsible for adding all content to their Moodle course sites. As you can imagine, approaches to this are all over the map in terms of how faculty members choose to go about this task. Often times, faculty will use the Moodle default settings, and when I receive their course to review, I see long lists of content and main page scrolling abound! I sob a little on the inside, but then I quickly rectify the problem. Here’s how I easily reduce main page scrolling on a Moodle course site: Turn Editing On. From the Administration block, select Edit Settings. Scroll to, and select Course Format. From the dropdown menu, select Show one section per page. Select Save changes. If I’ve lost you, here’s a video demo:

For the past month or so, I’ve been discussing the five main phases of Instructional Design. Now it’s time to talk about the implementation phase! The goal of implementation is to get the training you developed to its intended audience. Or deliver the training. Essentially, you’re pressing the Power ON button for your course! There are several elements that might come into play along the way, but it’s all in the name of implementation. Some of these elements might include: Training faculty members or facilitators in the technology Making a course ‘go live’ for the audience Creating job aids and course documentation Installing the courseware on a client’s server Testing courseware in the intended environment However you or your organization chooses to deal with implementation, the goal is always the same - get the training to the audience! For some, the implementation phase might be the end of the road in terms of instructional design processes; however, for many (should be for all), there is one more critical phase: Evaluation. Stay tuned next week for my thoughts on evaluation and its importance in Instructional Design.

As this series on the phases of Instructional Design comes to a close, I’m going to be talking about an under-utilized phase (in my opinion) - Evaluation. I’ve talked about Formative and Summative Evaluation in the past, and I have to emphasize the cyclical nature in which I believe evaluation should occur. Evaluation is essential to the success of any course. How can you know if your learning outcomes are aligning with the course objectives? How can you identify whether your students are grasping the material in the intended manner? How can you identify training gaps in the course? How can you gauge the overall success of the course? Evaluation. That’s how! Now, evaluation doesn’t need to just be reserved for post-implementation. You can evaluate your course at various phases in the Instructional Design process. For example, you might want to evaluate your analysis for the course…is a course going to solve the problem? You might also want to evaluate during the design phase…will the design of this course meet the project requirements (is it responsive? Does it meet the needs?)? You may want to evaluate during the development phase…What are the stakeholder’s thoughts on the prototype? And you’ll definitely want to evaluate in the implementation phase, because that’s where your users will likely barrage you with ‘it’s not working!’ emails. But at the very least, evaluation should always occur at the end of the instructional design process as doing so provides you with feedback and additional context with which you can improve upon the course. No one is perfect, and that can be also be said for courses - no one course is perfect. You can get close, but there is likely always something you could have improved upon. Evaluation gives you the information you need to improve upon your courses.

So, the folks at Articulate have done it again! One of the plaguing issues for e-learning developers is how to curate a beautiful portfolio of their e-learning interactions. Now, you can easily do this within your E-Learning Heroes Community profile! Now you really have no reason not to have a portfolio! The Concept This week’s challenge was to build up your E-Learning Heroes profile by adding course samples! The Method To add course samples, you will need to access your profile by either clicking your avatar on E-Learning Heroes, hovering over your avatar and selecting My Profile, or by creating a new profile. Once you have accessed your portfolio, you will select Add a Course: Once selected, you will fill in the Course URL, Title, include an optional Description, and upload an image to associate with the course. Once completed, select Add Course, and your course will be added to your profile page. The Result Click Here to view my E-Learning Heroes Community profile.

Guest post by Clark Quinn (@quinnovator) One of the hottest topics around right now is gamification, and as with any hot topic, just as there’re reasons to be excited, so too are there reasons to be wary.  I suggest there is an important distinction between serious games and gamification, and the former is the reason for excitement and the latter is the reason to be wary. Quite simply, gamification is about motivation.  We know that people perform better when they’re motivated, and we’ve seen historically and more recently through video games that there are certain elements that affect motivation.  For clarity sake, let’s distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  Intrinsic motivation is that motivation that comes from doing something you find engaging, interesting in and of itself. This is the ideal type of motivation, as it doesn’t require any extra work.  Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is when we add external motivators to get desired behaviors (largely because it’s not intrinsically interesting).  There are certainly times when external motivators make sense. Simulations, Scenarios, and Serious Games As long as we’re covering definitions, let me also clarify the differences between simulations, scenarios, and serious games.  People tend to use these indiscriminately, and it’s important to be clear.  Technically, a simulation is just a model of part of the world, representing important elements and relationships.  The simulation can be in any state and specific operations can take it to any other viable state. A motivated and self-efficacious learner can use that simulation to learn what they need to learn, but that’s not the way to bet.  So, for the purposes of learning, we tend to choose an initial state for the simulation to be in, and ask the learner to take it to a goal state that we’ve chosen such that the learner won’t be able to succeed without learning the relationships we want the learner to understand about this world.  (We typically wrap a story around this.)  That - start state, goal state, story - is what I term a scenario.  And we can tune a scenario into a serious game.  What I mean is that we can turn that scenario into a game by tuning: adjusting the elements in the game - the challenge, outcomes, story, etc - until the learner has a subjective experience of engagement. The Difference Between Gamification and Serious Games So what’s the difference between gamification and serious games?  Some people consider them to be the same, or that serious games are a subset of gamification. I prefer to keep a distinction between them. For me, it’s back to the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, serious games are the former, while gamification is the latter.  Gamification involves specifically taking ‘game mechanics’, those elements that are purported to make games compelling and wrapping them around behaviors we would like people to perform but they are unlikely to per status quo. We see things like scores, and leaderboards, stories wrapped around objectives, and even prizes.  And these have been shown to be effective. Of course, these should not be used indiscriminately; I heard an expert on gamification speak, and he made the point that they can be detrimental as well as desirable.  If not properly balanced, the behavior won’t be exhibited as desired. Just as tuning is required to turn a scenario into a game, so too gamification requires tuning to set the right value of the rewards, etc., to achieve the desired motivation. In my opinion, your preference should be intrinsic.  If you can help people understand the intrinsic value of what you’re doing, not necessarily just for them, but also for the organization or society as a whole, you get a more persistent commitment and a more satisfying feeling of accomplishment.  However, there will be circumstances when gamification makes sense, and there are definitely reasons to consider gamification.  For example, think of tasks that are worthwhile, but avoidable (e.g. exercising; those wristbands are a form of gamification).  People can enjoy the competition and success that comes with successful gamification, and the organization can benefit from the outcomes.  For example, motivating to persist in the the amount of drill required to develop expertise in a task beyond initial success, or the times when rote knowledge absolutely, positively has to be in the head.  Gamification and serious games are not really distinct so much as points on a continuum.  I prefer the far end, but there are benefits to be seen across the spectrum. For Learning, I Advocate Serious Games For learning, however, I am very much an advocate of serious games. Why?  It’s not only because of the intrinsic motivation, but it’s one of the highest forms of learning.  The best learning is individually mentored live performance, but there are two problems with this. The first is that mistakes during live performance can be costly, so in instances when the cost of failure is high, we prefer sample practice first.  Second, individual mentoring doesn’t scale well.  To me, serious games are the next best thing. When designed well, they intrinsically embody the best learning practice: contextualizing the same decisions you want learners to be able to make in meaningful settings, with repeated practice, adapting the level of difficulty and providing real feedback from the consequences. Designing Games and Meaningful Practice Designing games and designing meaningful practice aren’t all that different, with a caveat.  To implement a full serious game, you not only have to define meaningful objectives, choose a context, identify how learners go wrong and make those compelling alternatives, but you also have to build the model of the world.  The good news is that you only need to do so in those areas where you really need deep practice.  Otherwise, there are approximations that deliver much of the benefit with no more overhead than you already use. Branching scenarios allow complicated consequences to play out without requiring an explicit model (the model is implicit in the links).  Where only limited replay is required to help learners ‘get’ the learning, branching scenarios (or a suite of them) can achieve the necessary goals.  And mini-scenarios are really just better written multiple-choice questions embodying only one decision.  I’m hard pressed to think of any situation where you wouldn’t to at least have a mini-scenario instead of any other type of multiple-choice question, since the ability to use the information is what is (or should be) key. There’s a lot more that goes into creating a meaningful learning experience (graphics, writing, etc.), but the focus on creating meaningful experiences is a step we need to go both for our learners and for the learning outcomes.  Again, games are the best form of learning practice that you can accomplish.  Unless you’re hoping people will pay you for the learning experience you create, you don’t have to go as far in your polish as would a commercial game designer, but you should work to make it a plausible scenario and tune the experience until there’s a subjective experience of engagement. The effort is a valuable investment in optimizing the learning outcomes. A number of years ago now, my research led me to the realization that the elements that lead to effective learning practice and the elements that lead to engaging experience are the same elements.  Learning can, and should, be hard fun.  You should want to know how to design games, as it’s really a natural investigation of what makes good learning.  And that, ultimately, is what we should be focusing on. The post Making the Distinction Between Serious Games and Gamification - Guest Post by Clark Quinn appeared first on Litmos.

Ready to move your corporate training online but aren’t quite sure what your LMS needs are to get the job done? In this article, I´ll share the top LMS requirements for corporate training that you need to know about when choosing a learning management system for your organization. LMS Requirements For Corporate Training In many ways and in the simplest of terms, an LMS is a lot like a puzzle. It must have all the key pieces in place, all of the functions and features your organization needs, if you truly want to get the most return from your investment. In this article, you’ll discover the top 10 LMS puzzle pieces that you’ll need to create a whole and effective corporate training experience for your employees. 1. Site and Online Course Customization Are you going to be able to integrate your branding into the LMS? Is the LMS vendor providing you with your own online training website that employees can log in to access their online training modules? One of the most important LMS requirements for corporate training, particularly for organizations who want cohesive branding, is a product that allows you to customize virtually every aspect of your online course and of your online training site. This can add value to the online training course by increasing its credibility, as well as its aesthetic appeal, which enriches the online training experience as a whole. 2. eLearning Course Building When considering LMS requirements for corporate training, effective eLearning course building tools are a must-have. Not only should the LMS provide a wide range of tools you can use to create the online training course that you have in mind, but it should also allow for both usability and design freedom. In other words, it should be easy enough for your design team to use, while still providing the features they need to take full advantage of their skills and talents. 3. Multimedia Integration Videos,interactive scenarios, and multimedia presentations are all key ingredients to an immersive online training course. This means that one of the major LMS requirements for corporate training is that it has to offer you the ability to integrate multimedia into your eLearning design quickly and conveniently. Can you upload your own videos into the eLearning course, or integrate links that your online users can click on to access online presentations hosted elsewhere? Determine which multimedia elements you will be using regularly and then ensure that the LMS supports these media. 4. Updating Capabilities Chances are that you may need to update your eLearning course contents on a regular basis. This is especially true for compliance online training courses or those that focus on product knowledge. Online assessments will also need to be updated on a regular basis, as well as certifications and links to other online resources. As a result, your LMS should give you the power to modify and add elements to your eLearning course design with relative ease. 5. Multilanguage Support Even if you aren’t planning on delivering training tointernational audiences at the moment, you may need to do so in the future, particularly if your organization is considering going global. Does the LMS offer you the opportunity to add subtitles or captions to your eLearning course, or to create eLearning templates that can easily be modified to accommodate for other languages? 6. Online Assessments Online assessments are on the most effective ways to gauge the effectiveness of your online training program. They give you the power to determine if yourcorporate learners are actually absorbing information and skills or if your eLearning strategy may need to be fine-tuned. As such, having a learning management system that allows for easy test, quiz, or exam integration is fundamental. Do they have a database of questions that you can use? Are there any online templates that will help to make the development process simple and straightforward? Does the LMS enable you to create interactive assessments? 7. Tracking Reports Learner performance, progress, as well as strengths and weaknesses are just some of the items included in online tracking reports. Having a LMS that features online tracking capabilities offers insight into how your employees are faring and whether your training strategy is achieving its goals and objectives. Some LMS providers offer dashboard reports, while others may deliver them directly to your email inbox. 8. Compliance Failing to meet compliance requirements can lead to a variety of negative consequences. Therefore, one of the LMS requirements for corporate training should be that your LMS should be able to track compliance training results and help you to ensure that every member of your staff is meeting the standards. Some may even be able to issue compliance certifications that your employees can earn by completing specificonline modules. 9. Feedback tools One of the powerful tools you have at your disposal is learners'feedback. Having a LMS that has built-in poll, survey and questionnaire online tools can make the data collection process more efficient and streamlined. You can find out which aspects of your online training course you may need to improve and which are offering your corporate audience the most value, without having to use third party poll sites. 10. eCommerce If you are planning onselling youronline training courses, in addition to offering them to your employees, it’s wise to have a built-in eCommerce platform. There are certain LMS vendors who offer you the opportunity to set up a virtual storefront, while others allow for shopping cart integration directly on your corporate site. If you are going the eCommerce route, then you may also want to look for a learning management system that also has marketing and social mediafeatures integrated, so that you can promote your product online. Keep these LMS requirements for corporate training in mind when selecting your next LMS to ensure that you get the most value for money and that you provide your employees with the skill set development they need to achieve professional success. The post Top 10 LMS Requirements For Corporate Training appeared first on Litmos.