In this third part of our series of behind-the-scenes posts, we’ll be interviewing Simon Birt, a recent addition to the eFrontPro team, who is in charge of the product’s global business development. Could you please introduce yourself for our readers? My name is Simon Birt, and my background is in technology and business development, and more specifically the application of these into the enterprise space (large and medium-sized businesses). For the past nine years, this has been in the field of Corporate Learning and Development. My role at eFront is to lead the business development of the eFrontPro Learning Management platform throughout the global corporate marketplace. Where would you place eFrontPro in the competitive landscape? eFrontPro is a unique platform because it addresses formal and informal learning needs in an Enterprise Deployment Model (Private Cloud). This makes it attractive to buyers who prefer an option to Software as a Service (SaaS). What do you think are other companies’ shortcomings with regards to how they design and market their LMS platforms? The LMS marketplace is crowded. This is great because buyers have lots of choice, but it is confusing because it is hard to determine which LMS is the best fit. The features that make one LMS a good purchase for one company will not be applicable to all. Among the best LMS options, such as eFrontPro, there are common areas of focus: the blend of formal with informal needs, the ability to integrate easily to Human Capital Management (HCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, the ability to manage mobile content with Responsive Design, and the option to deploy in the Enterprise (Private Cloud). The weaker LMS are not designed with this functionality, and consequently they will struggle to attract large user numbers. So, whilst the LMS marketplace is crowded, once the buyer understands the importance of the aforementioned focus areas, there are fewer realistic choices available. eFrontPro has had some undeniable success in the global market already. How do you plan to take it to the next level? There is a promising future for this platform, as I am convinced that buyers will be searching for an Enterprise (Private Cloud) solution. This is for a few key reasons: the ability to deeply integrate and embed learning into workplace software such as IBM Connections, SAP Jam, Jive-n and Yammer; the need to ensure complete data integrity and security; and the need for a great user experience around learning content delivery, management and reporting. Having said that, we need to dramatically increase our presence in the marketplace by recruiting a large number of partners to drive our business development, in every geography around the world. My primary objective is to attract, meet and sign up as many partner companies as possible to resell and locally support eFrontPro. In addition to this, I will work closely with our very talented team to ensure we have great lead generation, online marketing, and partner business support in place to strengthen our growth. You have a lot of experience in the eLearning industry, both as a professional and also for having (literally) "written the book" about the use of eLearning in the modern enterprise, ‘Learning Unscripted’. What insights can you share with our readers regarding the present and future of this industry? Technology Enhanced Learning is going through a dramatic change. This is being fueled by the redesigning of workplace productivity from email to social networks, our adoption of smartphone and tablet platforms, and our repositioning of services from Enterprise to SaaS (Social, Mobile and Cloud). Our experiences and interactions with technology are becoming more sophisticated and demanding. For the Learning and Development industry, this will be about delivering technology that supports informal and formal learning in one single, personalized and social environment in the short term. Further out, we will see the emergence of adaptive ‘smart’ learning platforms that are deeply integrated into our workplace infrastructure. On another level, there will be a tremendous take-up of SaaS-based learning platforms that are needed to deliver content with little management, maintenance and integration. I believe that this area will have tremendous growth in the EdTech Universities and Schools market. How do you like working for eFront thus far? Anything particularly rewarding or challenging regarding your new role? I have been working here for one month. In that time I have been impressed by the passion, commitment and talent of the people I have met. It is particularly noteworthy that the company lives and breathes the new way of doing business e.g. delivering great software using a predominantly internet-based business model. Without over-extending itself, I believe the company is well positioned for the next phase of business development. This is essentially a break-out from the virtual to the physical marketplace; in other words, getting large numbers of partner salespeople into customers on our behalf. This is a challenge to execute well, and I am really excited by this opportunity. Do you have a concrete roadmap of where you want the platform to be in 2 or even 5 years? Yes. This is something we have been formulating with the company leadership over the past three weeks. eFrontPro is already a strong LMS for those businesses that wish to deploy it within their enterprise as a stand-alone or lightly-integrated eLearning platform. However, in line with my comments earlier, I would like to see eFrontPro become deeply integrated to the user workplace of today and tomorrow. I would also expect the platform to become more adaptive and ‘smart’, in the sense of being able to capture learner interaction and behavior to deliver a more personalized and effective learning experience. Anything else you’d like to add? The only thing we haven’t mentioned is our search for enterprising learning companies to join us on this journey to growth. I’m very interested in talking with any company working in Learning and Development, HCM, or in the wider area of Social Software deployment about becoming partners with us. We have a tremendous value proposition for the right partners in these areas, and I’d like to hear from any who would like to learn more about partnering with us. Furthermore, we have four other categories for our partners outside of the one I just mentioned. I am also keen to add partnerships with companies around eLearning and other learning content, marketing opportunities for eFrontPro, and technology. This is a great moment to be in the business of learning technology and, together with our partners, I’m sure we’ll continue to be at the forefront. Thank you. The post Meet the Team Part 3: Simon Birt, VP of Global Business Development appeared first on eFront Blog.

"We believe that learning can become better through technology, and we work hard to prove it. Our main product, eFrontPro, is a new type of learning tool that emphasizes the user experience without compromising functionality." - eFront Our intent at eFront is to deliver leading learning technology to our customers, and to remain at the forefront of learning platform research and development. In a market of hundreds of vendors, it is hard to maintain a position at the top, but that is our goal. Central to the achievement of this ambition is the delivery of the latest software to support learning needs as they evolve. Our key focus is the corporate learner. Professional learning and development have unique challenges that schools and universities do not have - and vice versa. A learning platform for one is not necessarily suitable for the other, except in a most generic way. eFrontPro is a new and rewritten evolution of our original open source LMS, eFront. The user experience has been completely reshaped. It is now more attractive and easier to use. There are some great new features such as informal content creation from web-based content, which can be quickly combined with a test if desired. Another excellent feature is the responsive design which allows your content to be displayed accurately to users regardless of the platform (PC, Smartphone or Tablet). This fully serves the growing requirement for Mobile Learning, which is becoming central to any learning content-delivery strategy. Another feature worth mentioning is that eFrontPro is a private cloud LMS. This means that it can be deeply integrated and extended across other software platforms within the organization, such as social workplaces, to embed the learning content directly into the user environment. When this feature is leveraged, it becomes possible to deliver personalized learning environments based on user choices. In short, eFrontPro is a modern LMS - it combines all the power of a formal eLearning platform with the additional functionality of an informal, workplace learning software solution. Not surprisingly, eFrontpro is becoming a fast favorite for corporate buyers today. Whether starting out with a learning platform for the first time or replacing an older, less-functional system, LMS buyers are opting for the flexibility and power of eFrontPro. As a result of this rapid success, we at eFront find ourselves in need of Partners to serve the market demand. And that is the point of this blog post. We are looking for new Value Added Resellers to serve our global market. The global LMS market is forecast for substantial growth in the next few years and is already a multi-billion-dollar market. The most successful LMS vendors will be those like eFront who continually deliver functionality for formal and informal learning and knowledge sharing. If you are a learning solutions provider considering the addition of an LMS option to your portfolio, or if you are doing a review of your current products and would like to see what we have, please contact us today for an initial discussion. You won’t be disappointed in our value proposition or our business support, and you will be delighted with our commitment to making you successful. Want to learn more about partnering with us? Simon Birt is VP Global Business Development for eFrontPro at Epignosis LLC. He is an experienced business developer in the learning and development software market, specifically in helping resellers increase their revenues across the world. He is the author of ‘Learning Unscripted: Conversations and Presentation with Learning Leaders‘. The post The LMS Partner Search appeared first on eFront Blog.

When we design courses, we inadvertently borrow many learning strategies from the K-12 classroom setting. Add to it the layers of andragogy (the science of teaching adults) and you have a well-rounded course. Whether or not you are confident about including these learning strategies, go through this article. We will jog your memory and demonstrate how these scenarios play out and improve in the eLearning environment. Workbook Drill and practice activities are given in workbooks. Young learners are given structured material to help them master a concept. The level of the activities gets increasingly challenging, but remains within the scope of the subject. The main purpose of the workbook is to practice through reinforcement exercises. You are doing this in a kinesthetic way; you fill in the blanks, draw, erase, cut and paste, place stickers, etc. It is fun and educational at the same time. Consider these tips to transfer workbook exercises into the eLearning environment: Create an eLearning course mainly based on exercises. This could be highly interactive using the quiz feature of your LMS. Colourful drag and drop and rearranging exercises are attractive and stimulating to the learner. Build an easy-to-difficult practicing path based on competency and skills. Use interactive scenarios that are work-context based. Make it an enthralling experience in terms of visuals and sounds. You can never go wrong with the print option. Allow learners to print exercises and notes. We still love scribbling away with a pencil! Provide immediate feedback as a self-evaluation tool so that they can gauge their success. Field Trip We’ve all been to those eye-opening field trips we took back in the day to a museum or historical sites, castles and battlegrounds. How about those horticulture visits where we experienced rain forests and other biospheres? Aren’t they still vivid in our memories and most concepts related to them are still pretty recallable? This is a classic multisensory learning experience that brings together social learning (learning with and from peers), storytelling (by a guide or a teacher), and by-the-way learning. Do you remember writing reflections regarding your findings, and using them for further learning activities? Such field trips break the mundane routine into a creative and energetic time for learning new material! So how do we bring field trips in our eLearning environment? Develop a route for a virtual tour around the web for a project. Good examples in virtual field trips include: Customer service call center for placing an online order for pizza. Reflect on the online purchase experience. Request your eLearners to undergo an experience based on their course, for example talk to a product manager about the company’s latest product. Then ask them to comment and reflect on their observations based on structured criteria. Require your eLearners to share their reflections with peers and supervisors through the course. Repetition According to Hermann Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve theory, all people have to repeat in order to remember things and routines. If we do not repeat newly learned formulas or definitions, we may forget it within 24 hours of learning. Repetitions are done through introducing similar scenarios with same problems requiring the use of newly learned solutions. How do we integrate the repetition concept in our eLearning courses? Present booster quizzes between sections of your eLearning course after the section is completed and before a new section begins. Throughout the eLearning course, repeat the critical information: Tell stories, summarize, provide exercises and quizzes. Towards the end, administer a comprehensive test to ensure recall of the course objectives related information. Follow up with your eLearners through an email a month or so after they complete the course, with critical information from the course. As a rule of thumb, always provide multiple formats for assignment presentation and learning resources - let them print out cheatsheets, checklists, visuals, mindmaps, etc. Note taking Haven’t we all, at some point during our earlier school or high school education, taken notes? Note taking is the most popular form of active or kinesthetic learning. We listen to lectures and presentations and want to scribble important data that will be deciphered later. This technique encourages us to rewrite the lecture by paraphrasing it, arranging it in our own structure, or connecting it with our own experiences. Various forms of note taking such as stand alone texts, notes on a margin of the publication and highlighting text, reinforce memory. Pictograms and other visuals placed close to text also help us understand the material better. So how can we stimulate note taking in our eLearning course? Enable the note taking option in your LMS. Provide freebie tools like mindmapping, pictogram making, visual note taking or speech input apps to your learners to encourage this technique in your eLearning courses. Summarize all sections towards their end and provide a print option for highlighting and other note taking activities for your learners. Create paragraphs of content and ask learners to fill in the missing areas. Ask eLearners to summarize important points and email it to their trainer, manager, or mentor. Basic learning methods can easily be integrated in your next eLearning course using these ideas. Collaborate with the course mentor, the training manager and the learner to create more activities related to the basic learning methods. Do tell us about your own experiences related to converting basic learning methods to eLearning activities. The post The 4 Basic Methods of transforming Learning into eLearning appeared first on eFront Blog.

The best way to look like a fool is to attempt to predict the future. Like those well respected analysts back in the fifties, who said that by 2000 we will all have personal robot assistants and flying cars. That doesn’t mean that predicting the future is impossible ― just hard. Besides, 50 years is probably a few decades too many. In this post we’ll attempt to predict how eLearning will be in 10 years, a much more constrained and manageable task, not to mention far more useful for your business planning. The general shape of eLearning in 2025 Remember going from 1980 to 1990, 1990 to 2000, 2000 to 2010? Things changed, but not that much. Some trends run their course and some fashions began to look slightly ridiculous but not entirely. In general we mostly had more of the same, but better, with a few slices of "new" thrown in for good measure. Even in the fast paced IT industry, the change was somewhat predictable. The only exception was the emergence of the web, circa 1994, that took over the world around 1999. But that’s a "black swan", a rare event that’s difficult to predict. The development of eLearning in the next 10 years will be more of the same. Some existing smaller trends will see growth, some older trends will decline, and a few new trends will emerge in the process (but will still be undeveloped by 2025). There might be a new "black swan" or (more likely) there won’t be any. In any case we won’t go into that. So what will eLearning be like in 2025? Mobile learning, MOOCs, Gamification, Instructor-Led Training and Social Learning will dominate. Virtual technologies and wearables will have their small niche, but nothing to write home about. Oh, and eLearning will be bigger than the traditional learning industry, and inseparable from it. Mobile Learning Mobile learning, or mLearning for short, will be the dominant mode of eLearning content consumption. Already, surveys show that Americans rely more on their smartphones (and tablets) to access the web than on their PCs. This trend will only accelerate as smartphones get more powerful, 4G (and 5G) connections get more accessible and widespread, and tablets turn into a hybrid tablet/PC fusion that’s good enough for people to use as their main computer (e.g. attached to a monitor and keyboard when on their desk). Then there are developing countries, were there are enormous populations without PCs, but with ever more capable mobile phones, and with a huge demand for education and professional training. MOOCs MOOCs (short for Massive Online Open Courses) is a trend on the rise, with most top profile universities investing in this area (and countless other educational institutions, either traditional or online only). MOOCs allow for thousands of people to take the same course from the same institution (and indeed tens or even hundreds of thousands of students are enrolling simultaneously for courses in the most popular ones, such as MIT’s and Stanford’s). Those MOOCs now tout their open free access to students, but we are already starting to see it being complimented with paid-for MOOC-based tuition. Georgia Tech, for example, began offering a completely MOOC-based master’s degree in computer science. While free MOOCs wont go away (they would grow and be the first tier to a multi-level offering by large educational institutions), monetization of MOOCs is inevitable, and is estimated to create a multi-billion dollar market of accessible degrees. Gamification If a boring class is an ineffective class, then traditional education was always boring. eLearning fixes some of the issues with that — heck, even not having to sit down in a classroom for hours listening to a professor’s hypnotic delivery is a big improvement, but anything to make training even more fun is always welcome. Gamification does just that, so it’s no wonder that it caught on like wildfire in the past few years, or that it’s poised to grow much more in the future. Gamification brings a sense of challenge and competition to learning, far beyond having students fighting for the better grade. By leveraging gaming themes and insights from cognitive psychology, gamification adds interaction, strategy building and immediate feedback to the learning process. These elements increase not just engagement but also knowledge retention. In the future, gamification will be the expected and dominant way of delivering learning material, with eLearning courses looking more like video games than books or websites. This will not be limited to kids training either; even corporate training will include gamification elements. Short-term prediction That concludes our first part of our attempt to glimpse into the future of eLearning. I predict that there will be a new post here next week, covering the future of Instructor-Led Training, Social Learning and Virtual Reality based training. Stay tuned and drive your flying cars carefully. The post The future of eLearning: part 1 appeared first on eFront Blog.

Organizations complain about the lack of the right human resources and training tools. Why? They do not see the expected results in performance. We hear too many companies complain of a gap between training and performance. They seem to have the required talent, the relevant knowledge, the needed tools and even the desired experience, yet they are unable to reach the company goals. Extant research blames these failures on one element alone: lack of knowledge management. In this article, we present thirteen ways in which you can use your learning management system to manage your organization’s knowledge. Let’s examine each of these knowledge management related complaints and prescribe a feature of your learning management system for appropriate correction: 1. Lack of performance indicators and measurable benefits Training managers and organization strategic planners can combine forces to create key performance indicators (KPIs). Each of these performance indicators need to be measureable. For example, 60 software sales per week, 35 memberships sold per quarter, 150 hardware assembly per month and so on. Measurable goals need to be assigned in the learning management system. This involves the entire organization in the goal making and goal achievement process. Don’t forget to announce incentives to motivate employees as periodic notifications: win a trip to Thailand with your family if your team achieves this KPI, for example. 2. Inadequate management support Manager involvement is the key to improve performance through training. In fact, managers are responsible for measuring the current KPI of a given goal. Have managers check on employee performance a week after completing an eLearning training. Any improvement can predict the achievement of the KPI. Have managers create a space in the learning management system in which they recognize and encourage rising performers! 3. Improper planning, design, coordination, and evaluation Your LMS is an excellent tool to establish a practice for each department in your organization. By providing access privileges according to the role of an employee, you can provide more control to key players in the organization. These key players can plan and coordinate tasks more efficiently. Using project management metrics in your LMS, you can gauge project progress and update everyone involved easily. 4. Inadequate LMS skill of knowledge managers Train knowledge managers on using all functionalities and potential of your learning management system. Mandate the use of this system for all employees. 5. Problems with organizational culture Create easy to read or just-in-time flyers that help technology-averse employees learn the basics of how to use the LMS. Encourage casual chatting, both live and online. Also, encourage employees to write a reflections log (or record their video) to share their performance experiences with everyone. Sharing is caring! 6. Improper organizational structure Use the organizational hierarchy chart to create access privileges to the learning management system. Managers and senior managers can see activities of employees. This will enable them to gauge progress towards KPIs. 7. Lack of widespread contribution Create a space in the LMS that recognizes outstanding performance. Shoot a video in which they explain their breakthrough experience with everyone. Conduct live chat sessions between employees and experts. Create experience documents for common problems and archive them in the LMS for common use and reference. 8. Lack of relevance, quality and usability Many times organizations promote irrelevant training. This training seems to be the hype, but it only ends up wasting time and human resources. A clear description of the KPI helps all members of the LMS stay on track. 9. Overemphasis on formal learning, systematization and determinant needs Sometimes problems can be fixed referencing previous materials and talking to experts instead of extensive training. Determine true training topics for the next eLearning course based on consensus and manager recommendation. 10. Improper implementation of technology Your LMS is the best place to announce the use and training of a new technology that improves the performance of your employees. Productivity improving technology is very common these days. You can create a quick course using screenshots and images to guide employees on the use and benefits of new technology. Request new technology users to share their experience with all members of the LMS. 11. Improper budgeting and excessive costs Concrete KPI planning and implementation strategy using the LMS will help reduce costs and improve ROI. 12. Lack of responsibility and ownership Assign responsibility for different tasks to deserving employees using gamification badges. This will not only create a sense of ownership towards the project for the employee, it will also improve their performance review. 13. Loss of knowledge from staff retirement Loss of staff or retirement of a senior employee leads to an organizational "brain drain". Mandate a two month notice before leaving and during these two months allocate training sessions for the employees who are leaving. These employees will train the successors of their positions. Dedicate a special knowledge retention section in your LMS that deals with such eLearning sessions. Good luck! Your LMS is not only meant for eLearning courses. It is also a space where groups and teams meet for exchanging novel ideas. This is only possible if you develop the skill to mentor activities in your LMS. We hope this article will help you become a better mentor for your LMS. The post 13 Ways to Use Your LMS as a Knowledge Development Tool appeared first on eFront Blog.

Managers are crucial drivers for learning success within an organization. Ever heard of the expression "learning organizations"? Well, managers are behind such organizations. Constant learning leads to innovation. Unfortunately, managers are also too busy in their daily activities to offer the desired support to their teams. This counts double when teams are in training mode. Managers are enablers of learning. Senior management needs to support front line managers to support their learning teams. This practice is crucial to adopting new technologies, changes in business, improving performance and yielding better business results. In this article, we will reveal the best practices of leading organizations in supporting their line managers that can lead to inevitable success! 1. Create Learning Programs With Managers Make sure your line managers are involved in the learning solution design stage of your eLearning course development. This initiates their engagement, their responsibility to implement learning, add real challenges in the training and create new ideas in the learning solutions. 2. Combine learning with existing performance context Link learning solutions directly with the problems presented by the line manager. Avoid creating isolated solutions that do not include job related issues of your learners. 3. Relevant eLearning only Make sure that your eLearning solution is relevant to current jobs and directly supports important work initiatives (leadership, sales, new systems and processes). 4. Apply eLearning Your eLearning solution should redirect learning to application. Monitor progress closely by: Supporting coaching skills and peer group sessions. Providing learning aids that reinforce eLearning concepts at the desk, for example checklists, workflows, job-aids etc. Building online learning communities through forums or in-house social networking. Mentoring a culture of intellectual conversations in online chats. Involving learners immediately into projects that require them to apply their new skills. 5. Receive feedback from learners Encourage peer to peer communication about learning and performance improvements. Share these between managers as well as learners. 6. Empower Managers through model experiences Finally, the best way to teach leadership to managers is to model it. Help managers become better leaders! Watch how more and more learners benefit from their managers and develop better relationships with each other. A well supported learning experience goes a long way! The post 6 Ways to Help Managers Support eLearners appeared first on eFront Blog.

In this series of posts we stroke our elaborate moustaches, straighten up our turbans, and look into our crystal balls to determine the future of eLearning in 10 years time. In our last future-telling session we discussed how mobile learning, MOOCs and gamification are only going to get bigger in the coming years. In this post we’ll be examining a few more eLearning trends that will play an important role, namely Instructor-Led Training (ILT) and social learning. We’re also going to tell you what’s probably going to happen with virtual reality technologies and wearables. Instructor-Led training You might be wondering how come "Instructor-Led Training" is part of the future of eLearning. It does seem more like a throwback to the past with its demands of physical attendance, traditional classrooms and actual teachers telling you to keep quiet. Maybe you are forgetting, but that’s actually how the majority of education is currently run — in every school, college and university worldwide. Physical classrooms, teachers and whiteboards rule the day. Instructor-Led Training, in that aspect, far from a step back represents a step forward: it’s all about the incorporation of eLearning into all of our traditional educational institutions. Whereas in the past you had traditional schooling and eLearning, and the two did not meet, in the future no actual school and no physical classroom will be considered complete if it doesn’t incorporate an eLearning element. Social learning Social networking is not some new category of computer use that Facebook (or Friendster/MySpace/Twitter/etc) invented. It’s just humans communicating over a computer network, something that we have been doing ever since there was a public internet (through BBS systems, AOL, CompuServe and what have you). Still, for it to really catch on it needed the capabilities of the modern web (circa 2005) and a good enough implementation. In the same vein, humans have also been communicating, exchanging ideas and making friends while studying since forever, which makes "social learning" something that will inevitably catch on. It just needs the right platform and the right technical capabilities (e.g. effortless tele-conferencing through our browser, something that still has modern CPUs spiking). Whether social learning hits the big time sooner or later we don’t know, but we do know that it will be increasingly more popular in the upcoming years. Virtual Reality and Wearables Virtual reality sounds so good in theory. It’s even impressive as a demo. But, at least in its current state (and including much touted products like the Oculus Rift), it’s not really gonna fly outside of small (but important) niches. There are several technical limitations with how convincing (or nauseating) the "reality" part in VR is. Those will probably be overcome with time, but at least for the next few years, you won’t want to be wearing a VR headset for prolonged periods of time. Another major issue to the adoption of VR for eLearning will be the lack of content. There hasn’t been any great re-imagining of educational content for VR — it’s all about virtual tours and game-like experiences. It’s also expensive to produce quality VR educational content (it’s like making your own mini Pixar movie or AAA game title). It surely won’t be something that a small or medium educational institution will be able to slap together (not to mention that the tooling to do so isn’t really here either). As for wearables, they’re too limited by their small (or no) screens, lack of input methods, inefficient speakers, battery performance, etc. to be actually useful in eLearning (besides supplementary and novelty use). Back to the present "The future is here", famous sci-fi author William Gibson once said, "it’s just not evenly distributed". This is very much true for eLearning’s future, as all of these trends and technologies we mentioned are already available in one form or another. They are just not prevalent or mass-market enough yet. That said, they are quite mature already, which means that you don’t have to wait for 2025 (or even 2020) to begin incorporating them in your eLearning offerings. While most competitors are satisfied with bread-and-butter solutions, your early adoption of future eLearning trends will ensure that as these grow stronger you’ll be along for the ride. The post The future of eLearning, part 2 appeared first on eFront Blog.

Here are some questions to help determine if your organization is ready for a Learning Management System (LMS). Are you ready for eLearning? Answer the questions below and build your business case! Why do you need an LMS? Who will use the LMS? Which learners and which trainers? How many are there? Is there any internal (IT & business) support for an LMS? Which type of employees do you have e.g. office-based, factory-based, warehouse-based etc? Do your learners have access to computers and mobile devices? In what ratio? What activities are your employees doing e.g. working on a computer, working with their hands, driving transport, traveling a lot? Do you currently have a training program for staff? What kind of training do they do e.g. class-room, on-line, outdoors? Where are your learners based e.g. nationwide, globally distributed, single office? What is the average age of your learner population? Does your staff need to be certified or do compliance training at present? How much does your organization spend on training staff? Will there be any cost saving from using an LMS? What type of content will you have e.g. SCORM, TinCan (xApi), PDFs, Video etc? Who will create content? Where will the content come from? How much content will there be? How will the content be updated and how often? Do you need to regularly test your employees’ knowledge? How will you do that? How much does that cost? What will eLearning deliver that does not currently happen? What is that worth? Who is your most senior supporter/ stakeholder for eLearning? How influential are they? How much is your LMS budget? Do you have a budget yet? Who would support your budget request? How influential are they? If you didn’t buy an LMS would anyone notice? What would the top three business benefits to the organization be if you used an LMS? Could these benefits be gained any other way without using an LMS? We’re almost certain you answered yes to a few of these questions, and we’re glad! Because here at eFront, we have all these and many more solutions to eLearning and traning questions. If you would like to have a conversation about: a) how to get started with eLearning, or b) a move from an open source LMS to a commercial LMS, or c) a move from your current LMS to eFrontPro just send an email to birt[at]efrontlearning.net to receive a fast response, and some helpful insights! The post The LMS (eLearning) Needs Analysis appeared first on eFront Blog.

Do you like microbes? If not, don’t worry because micro-learning has nothing to do with them, and is perfectly safe for your health. Micro-learning (from the Greek word "micro" meaning small) is all about getting your eLearning in small doses, as tiny bursts of training material that you can comprehend in a short time (contrast with the hefty tomes you had to read at school to study a subject or the typical content-heavy eLearning class — which would be classified as "macro" learning). As with most eLearning related terms there is some vagueness into it, or rather a flexibility if you wish. People use it to refer to several different ways of learning. All, however, share a few common characteristics to a greater or lesser extent: Micro-learning is performed in short time bursts. Micro-learning requires little effort from individual sessions. Micro-learning involves simple and/or narrow topics. All of the above make micro-learning a natural fit for mobile learning, and while the two indeed go well together, there’s nothing that says micro-learning has to be confined to mobile devices (or conversely that mobile devices can’t serve as platforms for macro learning just as well). Here are some real world examples of micro-learning to help you understand its practice: - watching small instructional videos on YouTube. - flashcard learning: this involves applications that present the learner with small cards (flashcards) with limited content such as new foreign language words, parts of the human anatomy, countries, chemical elements, etc., to aid in memorizing them. - solving mini educational quizzes - receiving small nuggets of information through email, sms, IM, etc. (e.g. "word of the day") Of course learning, and by extension micro-learning, is not just about consuming content. Here are a couple of examples of micro-learning being practiced by having the learners produce their own content: - learning to write in a new language, or learning creative writing, by having to compose small sentences. - learning how to draw by being given a theme that you have to sketch quickly (similar to the "Draw Something" game for iOS). Micro-learning is not just a byproduct of our short attention spans in the internet age or a subpar eLearning methodology for when we don’t have much time. In fact science backs it up as a credible and effective method of learning. Research has shown that we learn more (and retain it better) when we study in short focused bursts than when we’re forced to sit through hour long classes — but of course your younger self that was bored to tears at school knew that already. It just so happens that micro-learning is also a great fit for the modern age, when everybody has a mobile phone, and lots of people have plenty of dead time, such as long commutes to work. And while primitive forms of micro-learning such as flashcards and quiz books have been known for over a century, when combined with modern eLearning they get even more powerful, as they get to tap into vast content repositories, add multimedia elements, employ gamification strategies, or take advantage of techniques such as spaced repetition (where content is shown to the learner at specific intervals that enhance its retention). That said, micro-learning is not the be-all end-all solution that will replace all other forms of eLearning as it has its own share of compromises and disadvantages. With its emphasis on small isolated chunks of learning, micro-learning is not so great when it’s essential to have a holistic view of the training material, and be able to connect disparate elements of it into one coherent picture. For example, while doctors frequently employ micro-learning to memorize medical terms, nobody seriously suggests that it’s a credible method to study pathology. Sometimes you just have to soldier through an extensive body of material and understand it thoroughly, and micro-learning is unsuited for that use case. In general, micro-learning is unsuited when there’s a large body of material that needs to be studied and comprehended in detail. So while it would be great in order to learn "business English" or some other dedicated vocabulary, it would’t work for learning how to speak English properly. Or, in the same vein, while micro-learning would work to learn the timeline of events in European history, it wouldn’t work to study its deeper motives, interactions and undercurrents. Again, the above are not meant to dismiss micro-learning in the least. Just to show that it has a specific place in a broader range of eLearning methodologies. That said, that place is big at the moment, and will only get bigger, as micro-learning is, as we said, a natural fit for mobile learning, and mobile use is poised to dominate desktop internet use. In this new landscape, micro-learning will be a permanent fixture in eLearning, as it hits all the sweet spots: - It’s fun and engaging (by keeping it short and taking advantage of multimedia and gamification) - It works (people remember stuff they’ve been taught through micro-learning better) - It’s casual (you can do it anywhere and it doesn’t demand too much of your time) Last, but not least, while it can be implemented by itself effectively, micro-learning also works as part of a larger eLearning offering, that is as a casual/micro companion to traditional training. And if you want us to summarize this post in a micro-learning sized chunk, that would read something like: "Micro-learning: it’s learning in tiny chunks and short bursts of time. Great way to learn in the small. Goes well with mobile. Will only get bigger in the future.". The post Everything you wanted to know about micro-learning (but were afraid to ask) appeared first on eFront Blog.

The ultimate goal of learning and professional development is to instill the habit of being a "life-long learner" or continuous learning. Do we mean that you need to have your nose in a book or your fingers on a screen 24/7? Not at all! Life-long learning implies to the cyclic update, reflection, social interchange and again update of knowledge. While some of us unconsciously hunt for new knowledge and revel in "cognitive growth", most of us need a bit more guidance in terms of achieving learning mindfulness. Does it seem like a lot of work? It actually isn’t. All you need to do is to align yourself with your learning needs and organize your time for learning. The adult learner is wired to learn independently, by default. Don’t worry, after reading this article, you will not only improve as a learner, but also consciously develop stronger learning habits. Extant research is rife with findings which indicate that learning and innovation are the only elements for organizational growth. If you are not seeing any performance growth in your employees, you can safely conclude that they need training. Sometimes, learning is not needed in the form of training at all! Sometimes all you need is to have employees talk to each other about their performance experiences. Sharing concerns, pitfalls and milestones and even solving a tricky problem at a task can be a great learning tool! And where can your employees hold this productive talk? Two locations: a casual meeting room or employee lounge, where employees are not compelled to think and act formally and second, your learning management system, through its collaborative elements. The environment of the physical place should be similar to coffee time or break time. Let them vent out without any inhibitions! You never know how one thing may lead to another and they might end up offering private training sessions. As an employer, provide such volunteers and experts with all the resources they need for these informal training sessions. And don’t forget to offer recognition and praise for their contributions! The second place, as mentioned above is your organization’s learning management system, where you can hold a formal training. As a mentor for training, your primary task would be to post meaningful discussion topics under relevant training. A mistake most managers do after posting an excellent question, is let the discussion taper off. You need to direct wayward conversations in the direct direction. And when enough has been said about the topic, summarize all key points. Ask all participants if you missed anything. Watch another set of comments march past the page! So what exactly have you established through this exercise? You have developed a sense of contribution and responsibility to implement ideas and suggestions among all participants of this discussion. When you see healthy input of valuable experience from experts, you know that you have established a community of practice. This is your ultimate goal. Create a fear-free and happy conversation environment, both online and offline. Be consistent with these practices and watch how your company evolves into a learning organization. Congratulations, this means you have created continuous learners! Study this simple three-part model for acquiring continuous learning habits. Remember, in order to be successful, you need to learn more each day. Think about it this way, the more you learn, the more you are flexible towards changes in the unknown situation or future. As your organization’s leader, teach these three skills to your employees to develop a learning organization! Follow these tips to boost your learning habits and ultimately your performance at work: Be your Best at your Work No matter what your job is about, try to be the best at what you do. Be an expert. Have people asking you questions or consult with you. Be clear on your job expectations. Regularly ask for feedback from peers and how you can improve. Get clear on what your expectations are on your current job. Regularly ask for feedback and ways on how you can improve. If you are the best in your job, people will look up to you and will also ask you for directions on learning and other tips. Become a Leader Being the best sometimes also means leading through inspiration. Your peers know how much you value your time. They will begin respecting your time, by listening to you carefully and taking notes (at least mental notes!) of what you say. Leadership is not reserved for managers and bosses only. Anyone who has knowledge and knows how to demonstrate it in order to motivate aspiring individuals, is a leader! Set aside one day a week in which you talk about leadership qualities with your employees. A great activity is to play games with team members to develop these skills. Another way is to assign mandatory leadership related eLearning. Suggest a valuable leadership book to your employees by Harry S. Truman, in which he says "Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers." Keep Skills Fresh Many soft skills like flow charting, diagramming, labeling, worksheets and documentation require updates. eLearning training for these is not recommended as they simply involve reinventing the wheel. Not only they are expensive in the long-run, they fail to measure the impact on performance. For such skills, create a wiki for the online training which is offered for free by the vendors. Not only are they up to date, but they are also free and self-paced. The tutorials offered online are short and can be viewed by multiple people, multiple times. YouTube videos also offer a great learning tool when dealing with "learning by doing" activities. Being a continuous learner requires you to develop daily learning habits and an inquisitive attitude. Adopting the above three tips will help you get started and move in the right direction. Good luck! The post 3 Ways to Boost Your Learning Habits for a Superior Performance appeared first on eFront Blog.

An eLearning course design and development is a major project that needs to be handled using the formal protocols of a project management life cycle. Here’s a good place to start if you are still in the "head scratching" phase of your new project. In this article we describe a no-nonsense list of 18 essential steps to deliver a successful eLearning project. Feel free to print and paste over your work area for quick reference. Let’s get started. Consider yourself as the key communicator and instructional designer and developer who manages the team and shares milestones with the customer. Your task is to listen to the customer and create a course from scratch. 1) Research When a topic is given to you by the customer, expect them to introduce you to a subject-matter expert (SME). Have your experts in the team meet with the SME. Analyze training topics and sections. How is the current training taking place? Try to keep it similar and uniform, improving and refining in the process. How can the topics be taught in an interactive format? Highlight the content that needs to be reinforced through interactivity. Determine the technical resources available to the customer. Does the customer need a CBT (computer based training) or a WBT (web-based training)? What type of LMS does the customer have in their organization? What course authoring tools will integrate easily? Cover all platform compliance, SCORM and Section 508 issues here. 2) Determine Instructional Needs Understand and analyze the learning audience with the customer. This is the first step in determining instructional needs. Discuss the organization needs and expectations form the course. Establish the parameters and scope of the content that needs to be converted into the eLearning course. 3) Course Design Now let’s refine our research further. In the context of this course, what are the "pre-course competencies" of the learning audience? In short, what do they know already? What are the course objectives and test items declared by the SME? Create the course outline, divide it into sections and present it to the customer and SME for approval. Create a Detailed Design Document that demonstrates learning interactions, themes, activities and navigation logic. 4) Create a Prototype Create a quick prototype using a graphic tools like Visio, which looks like a final course. It should include the following: Recruit talent to play characters. Write a partial script. Shoot photographs, and record audio (narration and characters). Creating a look-and-feel and sound treatment, and produce graphics, animations, sound effects, and music for the partial script. 5) Conduct a Pilot Invite the customer with a sample of learners to test this initial prototype. Record their feedback and integrate the changes in the prototype. 6) Storyboarding / Scriptwriting Using sticky notes or other papers, label and number them and create interactive scripts and branching scenarios using the content. Note: here you will reinforce or enhance the content that you highlighted in step 1 with the customer. 7) Produce Media Produce video, create graphics, shoot photographs, record talent voices, score and record music and sound effects. If you don’t have the equipment or resources to produce media, consider subscribing to media providing services. Purchase photographs, voice talent, graphics etc. 8) Produce Courseware Assemble the media in the form of mp3, jpg, wmv etc, in your course authoring tool. 9) Test Course Review the course for adherence to the scope and objectives, quality of media, any typing and grammar errors, and software bugs or glitches. Make appropriate corrections to the course based on customer feedback. 10) Customize the LMS Customize the learning management system to run the course smoothly for the customer. This step deals with a CD-ROM based LMS or a web-based LMS depending on the request of the customer. 11) Write Manual Write Course Administrator’s Manual and Systems Administrator’s Manual to describe the purpose and administration of the course from both training and IT perspectives. It is advisable to hold a meeting with the customer with their facilitators and IT administrators at this stage. 12) Beta Review of Courseware Present tentatively finished courseware to the customer for review. This stage will determine how close or far you are from completing your project! 13) Final Changes and Testing Make any final changes and corrections to the eLearning course based on the Beta Review feedback. 14) Test Lab Pilot at Customer Site Now is the stage where you bring the completed project to the customer’s IT Department for installation and testing. Configure and verify the complete enterprise-wide deployment functionality. 15) Installation and Configuration Install and configure to go live on the web-based LMS or distribute CD-ROMs to individuals for a computer based LMS. 16) Train the Facilitators Orientation of the customer’s IT staff and facilitators to the eLearning project and possibly the LMS to be used for learner collaboration. 17) Roll Out Implement the training and advertise the eLearning course. Record any issues and integrate into the development of the eLearning course. A successful eLearning course is developed by incremental improvements! 18) Measure ROI and Evaluate the Course Use the data and metrics that gauge the effectiveness of the eLeanring program available through the LMS and surveys to determine ROI of the training. Determine all issues and feedback and create the next version of this course. The post The 18 Essential Steps of a Course Design appeared first on eFront Blog.

Scenario-based eLearning is quickly becoming the main focus of eLearning design. This is owing to the fact that eLearning programs are required to emulate the real-world/job context of the learner. You depict the real world by adding scenarios to your eLearning courses. Here are 5 effective ways to ensure your scenarios are convincing and yield authentic responses from your learners. If you have sought the services of a SME, hold on to them tight! Offer more coffee and donuts and don’t let them go easily While we are not making a stalker out of you, we are trying to explain the power of expert scenarios in developing your eLearning courses. SME’s are out there, in the battlefield, facing real challenges in the real world. You may have the best content, through extensive research and the best practices knowledge. You may have consolidated all concepts beautifully in your eLearning project, but believe us, it might still not take off! More and more line managers suffer with frustration over employees not delivering according to the eLearning training they just completed! Why?Because most eLearning programs fail to integrate with the real world. Each organization has unique performance problems in mundane routine-work. These problems are directly related to performance goals. When such performance problems persist, the organization faces failure to accomplish its operational and strategic goals. ELearning trainings need to address the organization’s goals in such a way that they are achieved despite all performance hurdles. When we talk about an organization’s culture-specific problems, and bring them into our eLearning programs, we are actually action-mapping. We tap into a problem, we pull it into the eLearning program through images and dialogues (scenarios) and we give learners a few choices to make to rectify the problem. So what are we trying to accomplish in our eLearning program through our precious SME? Ask him/her of their experience in detail regarding a recurring performance problem and also its desirable solution. Now make that part of your eLearning program. Not only that, ask your SME to talk about several real world problems and their desirable solutions. Now put them to life in your eLearning courses. Consider this example: A member of your team is often an hour late to work on Monday mornings. What should you do? A. Ask the team member why they’re late. B. Refer the team member to the human resources for counseling. C. Dock the team member’s pay for the missed hour of work. This question, if posed in an eLearning program is a no-brainer! Really! It does not talk about the context of the problem and neither are the characters believable. How could we improve this question? Let’s add flesh to this question. You will end up with a convincing, real-world scenario for your eLearning program. If you ask yourself: What is the context of this problem? The above question is weak. It doesn’t tell us who did what and in which context. Suppose the strategic goal of the organization is to reduce employee absenteeism by 70% in the first quarter. With this goal in mind, you need to create an eLearning program for managers, who control employee attendance and performance. The manager will be responsible to modify the behavior of a late-coming employee. Encourage managers with this slogan "When a team member consistently fails to reach a standard, encourage them to share why they’re struggling." Consider this altered question for the scenario: Jamie has worked on your team for two years. In the last one month, he’s arrived an hour late on each Monday. He doesn’t seem as cheerful as he used to be, and a couple of times you’ve noticed that his eyes appear bloodshot. Jamie is married, and had a baby three months ago. You chipped in money for his baby shower! You ask Jamie to come into your office after lunch. When he arrives, his eyes look bloodshot again, and he looks uneasy. How do you start the conversation? A. "You’ve been a great member of the team for two years, so I’m surprised that you’ve started coming in late. Is something going on?" B. "I’ve noticed that you’re coming in late on Mondays, and I’d like to help you get back on track. What can we do to help you get here on time?" C. "I want you to know that no matter what the situation might be, I’m here to help. Could you help me understand why you’ve been coming in late?" There you go! Isn’t this a much better way to pose a scenario? You can use an office setting with a character cut out of a young man for Jamie and one of an older guy for the manager. The characters and dialogues are much more believable. Why so? 1. We gave people names, which in a way also gives them a face. Your learners will try to place a Jamie in their life. Jamie immediately comes to life. Your learner will be able to empathize with him! 2. We provided cues that may or may not be relevant — the bloodshot eyes, the changed mood, the baby born 3 months ago. Management challenges occur in the real world! 3. We put people’s words in quotation marks, creating a layer of voice and an added dimension of reality. Now your eLearners can hear Jamie talk to his manager. 4. Finally, another cue that we wrote a more challenging question is that it’s not obvious (to me, at least) which answer is correct. We have phrased the correct answer in a way that it seems attractive and "selectable"! 5. Again, we asked the SME to tell us in detail when employees come late and how managers address the issue. Without SME, we could not have crafted such detailing in our scenario! Scenario building is actually action-mapping. By creating eLearning programs through action-mapping, you create efficient and effective courses that yield better performance. Your eLearning programs are no good if they fail to make behavior changes in your learners. Find out what is really bothering a team before creating an eLearning program for them! The post Ways to Action-Map your eLearning Scenarios appeared first on eFront Blog.

No matter how experienced an Instructional and/or eLearning Designer you are, there will always be room for improvement. An eLearning course is still raw material until you fill that room. How do you do that? Simply by asking the best people: the learners who have taken your course. In this post, we will look at the 5 parameters you will need to take into consideration when you set up a post-course evaluation. Learning Expectations Anyone accessing an eLearning course has certain expectations with regards to its learning objectives and the topics covered. Getting an insight into those expectations can help you change or improve the way you advertise your course and include material that you, deliberately or not, omitted. Examples: How close was the course to what you expected? How satisfied are you with the material covered? Content eLearning content has to be engaging and fun. But, most importantly, it needs to reflect in the clearest manner possible the learning objectives as set by the SME. We always take for granted that a good instructional design will inevitably lead to this result, but we can never be sure until our learners confirm it. Examples: Did you find the content of the course sufficient? Was the material of the course clear and easy to understand? Rate the content based on how engaged you felt throughout the course. Timing A good eLearning course does not need to be long. In a fast pacing environment, 20-30 minutes is enough time for someone to be adequately trained on a particular subject. Having said that, it is still possible to receive a good rating for a course that is longer than usual, provided it is captivating. Examples: How long do you believe it took you to complete the course? Do you think the course should be shorter, the same or longer? Interactivity Α plain and flat presentation of the eLearning material is always a no-no. Instructional Designers do know that, but this doesn’t always mean that they never give in, especially when they have to deliver numerous courses in a short period of time. On the other extreme, there’s always the risk of adding too much interactivity, making the course nothing but wearisome and repetitive. Examples: Do you feel you had an active role in this eLearning experience? Did you remain concentrated throughout the course? Overall experience This is the section you are likely to check out first when you take the evaluations back. This parameter will measure the final impression the learner acquired. Even if they found the course longer than needed or less engaging than expected, they can still rate it high. Do your quantitative and qualitative analysis and start working towards an update. Examples: Rate your overall eLearning experience. List three reasons why you think that this course was helpful. Suggest three things you would like to see changed in this course. Conclusion The most interesting thing with post-course evaluations is that you receive feedback you might not have expected. It is insightful and positive to hear back from your target audience and this is why you should always implement a post-course evaluation. Tip: for even better results, bring together an evaluation group during the beta stage of the eLearning course development, prior to rolling it out to the market. The post 5 parameters to measure in a post eLearning course evaluation appeared first on eFront Blog.

You’ve acquired a Learning Management System. You’ve been sold a "Just In Time" eLearning tool that, apparently, anyone can use. You have a laptop full of tired old PowerPoint presentations that are churned out every time there’s a need for another induction course, fire safety training or anything else that’s boring, but mandatory. So, all that’s needed now is to find a cheap and willing resource - maybe an intern, or a trainer who doesn’t perform too well in the classroom - to spend a few weeks converting them to eLearning. The result will be a library of courses that can be used over and over again at no cost, reducing training time, delivering key objectives and driving business growth. Right? Well, not quite. Hidden within this scenario are some of the most common and costly mistakes that training managers can make when trying to roll out eLearning on the cheap. 1. Don’t simply re-use existing course content It’s certainly possible to create eLearning courses internally based on existing resources, and there’s no reason why existing PowerPoint presentations, or extracts from recorded webinars shouldn’t play a part in this. But, an eLearning course isn’t the same as face to face training. There’s usually no teacher present to involve, engage, excite and motivate the students, or to pick up the signs that someone doesn’t understand something, or isn’t being stretched. The design of the material has to do all this - and that isn’t a job for a novice. Today’s eLearning authoring tools are certainly very easy to use technically - but they’re much more difficult to use effectively to promote learning. For that, you really need the services of an eLearning professional, with real experience of talking to relevant stakeholders, learning needs analysis and instructional design. 2. Don’t overlook the importance of objectives eLearning courses, like any other training interventions really do need clear objectives. Otherwise, there’s no way of knowing whether they are working, and whether they are going to lead to real improvements in business performance, or tick the right regulatory compliance boxes. Objectives need to state clearly what the learner will be able to do at the end of the course - not what they will "understand", "be aware of" or "appreciate". They don’t always have to be in the form of a traditional list -"At the end of this course, the learner will be able to …" - they might be hidden in games, or real life scenarios, or online role playing exercises. The instructional designer will need to know the target audience to figure out what will work best. But, without any clear objectives, the course is likely to flounder, meander and not really deliver. 3. Don’t make everyone follow the same path A common mistake when first designing an eLearning course, especially if the content is taken from a PowerPoint presentation is simply to use the first module or section as the model for everything else. However, the first module for a face to face course isn’t always the best introduction to an eLearning course - and there’s no reason to force all learners to go through the course in the same order. Some may already be familiar with some topics and want to concentrate on new content. Others may spot a topic they recognize and want to start with that. In many courses, there’s no right or wrong way to work your way through the content, so make sure your course structure doesn’t impose one unnecessarily. 4. Don’t overfill the course with too much content One of the temptations in writing an eLearning course is to include anything and everything that might be useful. Different stakeholders will want to ensure that their pet topics are included, and no-one will be willing to compromise. The result is a cluttered course, full of unnecessary information, tangential issues and volumes of content that don’t really offer any real-world benefits. Stop. Re-read the objectives - what new skills do you want users to achieve? What actually needs to be in the course, and what might be better provided in the form of links to PDF documents, existing internet or intranet content or other resources. Don’t overfill the course - and don’t overfill the screen either! Some experts on presentation skills counsel against ever having more than half a dozen words on the screen at once. Elearning courses can save time, but only if they are carefully crafted to make the best use of learners’ attention. In Part 2, we’ll look at six more important mistakes to avoid. The post 10 Common mistakes when developing and delivering an eLearning course: Part 1 appeared first on eFront Blog.

There is always a gray line between using original ideas and adding your own to them to create a new idea AND to use the original idea as it is. While attribution is needed in both scenarios, people often don’t attribute when deriving an original work and labeling it as their own. In this article, we will share the latest updates on the correct way to derive existing material for your courses and how to attribute them legally. With your eLearning courses serving the international student body, it is better to be safe than sorry! I can recall many instances of copyright infringement in terms of derivative works on an international level. With the world still undivided on the language frontier, derivative works are more common than we can imagine. Having read so many Stephen King, Sydney Sheldon, Nora Roberts and many others, I feel a sense of déjà vu when I see a derivative movie based on the novel. Many times, the author of the book on which the movie is based is never mentioned. This tells me that the movie producers had purchased exclusive rights to the "originality" of the idea of the movie. On the contrary, movies like Harry Porter and Lord of the Rings famously attribute derivative works to their authors, linking the movies intimately to them. This invariably helps with marketing, especially if the movie is made as a series. The basic criteria for creating derivative works According to the US Copyright Protection documents, there are two ways in which a copyright work can be derived for commercial use: 1. Receive permission from the original author on copyright works for derivation. 2. Derive works that are a part of public domain. These are the instances of the different types of derivative works and their examples: A motion picture based on a play or novel (Pride and Prejudice) A translation of a novel written in English into another language (Inkheart by German author Cornelia Funke) A revision of a previously published book (The Bible Testaments) A sculpture based on a drawing (Statue of Liberty) A drawing based on a photograph (Artists impressions on photographs) A lithograph based on a painting (example of Presidents Obama’s lithograph in the YouTube Derivative Works (in Copyright Law) A drama about John Doe based on the letters and journal entries of John Doe (Movie based on the diary of Abraham Lincoln) A musical arrangement of a preexisting musical work (background music copied by different countries to compose songs in their own language) A new version of an existing computer program (simplified computer programs for children) An adaptation of a dramatic work (The remake of the movie Cinderella) A revision of a website (customizing a website for personal business) An overview of the documents and circumstances that allow materials to be found in the public domain Items usually falling in the public domain are historical works of deceased authors. These are archived works found in libraries and online repositories. Many authors create original work only to share it with the public for free use. These are mainly for educational purposes. Latest works in the public domain can also be used for marketing a cause or a business. Several "open source" computer programs build and maintain a community of programmers who constantly use the software and improve it based on their needs. A good place to find how original and copyright works enter the public domain is at the online site: Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States 1 January 2015. Research concerning exclusive right to create derivative works; especially derivative works delivered in an online environment The copyright for derived works based on copyrighted material or public domain material is limited to the "spin off" material. Any work that is new or original in the derived work can receive copyright. A very good example here is the derivative works based on extant research literature on any topic. In the field of education, many researchers have improved or built upon the research experiments of previous authors. We see them attributing the previous authors rigorously throughout their work. We also see them presenting their original discoveries based on previous researches. Most of the journals with these examples are available online through membership. An interesting practice when using two different research papers created by the same author in different times, is to attribute their work using their name as - Collins (2000) and Collins (2015). Perhaps the online environment has the most strict rules in attributing copyright works. Public domain works attributed in copyright works are to be attributed in the exact same way as they appear in the paper being used for a study. The several formats of citing and attributions like APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard to name a few, stress the significance of attributing all works in an appropriate manner. All newly created derivative works need to declare the new material amended to the original works, the year of completion, the time of publication (distribution of derivative works) and the names of the original as well as the authors who re-created the work. Make sure you create this information for your eLearning courses for legal safety of your organization. Analysis of special considerations for educational institutions The main issues in the online educational environment is the translation of an original course into the local language. Local institutions that provide translations of original notes and lectures from international institutes need to declare the original authors to their students. This will promote fair use of the material. It will also encourage the students to look for more material created by the original author. Institutes should also educate their students of the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988: The Berne Convention formally mandated several aspects of modern copyright law; it introduced the concept that a copyright exists from the moment that a work is "fixed", rather than requiring registration. It also enforces a requirement that countries recognize copyrights held by the citizens of all other signatory countries. Knowledge of international fair use of copyright works will encourage you to develop and distribute their own research work with confidence. For an educational or a research institute to be safe from any legal sanctions dealing with copyright laws, the practice of investigating the copyright status of each item used should be made common. Make sure that your eLearners receive reminders and short tutorials on citing copyright material appropriately. In fact, create a short tutorial on copyright and derivative works to be included in your learning management system for free viewing! The post Attributing Derivative Works in your eLearning Courses appeared first on eFront Blog.

It is with a certain sadness that we announce that we shall stop further development for the 3.6 branch of eFront by the end of 2015; this affects the open-source edition of eFront as well. Our team will focus on eFrontPro, our reshaped vision for the next-generation LMS. We will keep supporting customers of Educational and Enterprise eFront editions up to the end of 2016. We shall also offer ample opportunities to upgrade to eFrontPro during this period. References, downloads and support material for the open-source edition will be transferred to a new web-site during the next couple of weeks. I would like to take this opportunity to talk a bit about eFront Open-Source. At this moment we do not have any plans to offer an Open-Source version based on eFrontPro core. It’s not that we don’t like Open-Source. We really do. Heck, eFront was built on top of several Open-Source projects, from PHP to MYSQL. It’s just that merely giving a project away as Open-Source is not enough. Open-Source is not about the license, it’s about the community that is created around a project. In the case of eFront, while there was some interest in the FOSS edition, and we’d have loved to see a large community develop around it, there was never a huge uptake. Whatever the reason for that, rather than keep piling up new editions of eFront FOSS to linger in open source limbo in some code repository, we decided to pull the plug, and focus all our efforts and resources on the commercial version of eFrontPro. Of course, existing FOSS-licenced eFront releases will continue to remain FOSS indefinitely, so if you’re happy with those you can install them as always and build upon them to your heart’s content. We would like to thank each and every one of you that spread the word about eFront FOSS, helped with suggestions, bug fixes and translations or with direct support to other fellow users via the open-source forum. We had a good 8-year run. And for those that want to convert to a commercial offering, eFrontPro is a radically more modern, user-friendly and capable product that only gets better with each passing day. The post Announcing the end-of-life for eFront 3.6 branch, including eFront Open-Source appeared first on eFront Blog.

In the first article, we explored the most common pitfalls that we’ve found eFrontPro users face. We also offered a few quick workarounds that can make your courses pop! In this episode, we’ll dive deeper into what makes a well developed and appropriately delivered course succeed its goals, your goals. With no further ado… 5. Don’t rely on one learning strategy Think carefully about what you’re asking your learners to do. Reading text, text and more text isn’t usually the best way to get people to learn. Clicking "Next" after every screenful isn’t enormously motivating. Different people learn in different ways - some like reading, others like listening, quite a few find images or video more helpful. Many are more engaged by having to do something, to make decisions or choices and learn from the consequences. Some like to learn the theory first, but many more prefer to learn by trial and error. To follow only a text-based learning strategy, and to assume that everyone will achieve their learning goals in this way is a recipe for boredom. 6. Don’t overlook the importance of clear design Today’s eLearning authoring tools are great at allowing you to incorporate all kinds of graphic design elements into your course, but unfortunately, they don’t exercise any kind of quality control. Designing a course often seems to be a matter of starting from a blank screen, or accepting one of the default templates on offer, which are probably nice, but might not suit your content. There are several different issues involved here. Some element of consistency, provided by templates, themes and master slides is important, but it shouldn’t be so uniform as to be stultifying. Maybe experiment with different colors for different topics, or different placement of images on the screen. Clear, consistent design rules let learners know where they are in the course, and help to promote effective learning. 7. Don’t assume everyone is using a Windows PC A few years ago, eLearning designed for an 800 x 600 laptop screen would look OK to most users. Not any more. Although a lot of corporate clients will still insist on all learning taking place in work time on standard PCs, more and more users will either have much larger screens, or much smaller screens (tablets and phones). And with some organizations experimenting with BYOD (bring your own device) policies, your eLearning needs to look good in a much wider variety of sizes. Fortunately, most authoring software can cope with this - but it takes a bit more design work. 8. Don’t rely on boring imagery All too often, good course design is let down by unimaginative use of clip art or stock photos. Groups of fresh-faced young executives gathered around blank laptop screens with exaggerated smiles may be appropriate for some types of learning, but probably not that many. Ideally, you’d have photos and video specially commissioned for each new course, or graphics created by a skilled artist, but most of us have to settle for less. All is not lost however - vintage photographs, striking images, or unusual camera angles can transform otherwise dull subject matter, and attaching a moving path to an image (sometimes known as the Ken Burns effect) can often be more effective than video. Don’t settle for the mundane and familiar. If your learners have seen it before, it’s unlikely to help them remember what you’re trying to teach them. 9. Don’t overlook the LMS When the course is more or less complete, you’ll probably start thinking about how you’re going to host it, and whether it’s going to be compatible with the company’s Learning Management System. Wrong! This should have been part of the planning process from the beginning. Conventional LMSs that rely on SCORM can only really track success or failure on assessments, the number of screens viewed and the time spent on a course. If you have to track other things, you’ll need to find imaginative ways of using advanced features within your course authoring tool to set variables, and perform a few calculations. Most things are doable, but not at the last minute! 10. Don’t forget about assessment and evaluation Finally, the course is ready to roll, and managers are going to want to know if it’s doing the job it was intended for. Are learners learning? Are the relevant business metrics moving in the right direction? To answer these questions, you’ll need to address issues of assessment and evaluation. Formative assessment (within the course) and summative assessment (at the end) may help, but to really assess the return on investment, you’ll need to think about evaluation strategies that track learners long after they’ve completed the course. All too often, eLearning courses are regarded as cheap and cheerful interventions that allow learners to pick up what they need to know and then move on. However, as you now realize, there’s a bit more to it than that! The post 10 Common mistakes when developing and delivering an eLearning course: Part 2 appeared first on eFront Blog.

If there was ever an ideal fit for eLearning that would be the military. After all, it’s one of the biggest employers in any given country, with lots of distributed departments, offices and bases, a constant need for training and re-training its people, and puts an emphasis on standardization. It’s not just about teaching recruits how to march and how to fight either. Any modern military has to train its people in all kinds of skills to support its multi-faceted operations, from cooking and first-aid to electrical engineering and foreign languages. An LMS, such as eFrontPro, possesses all the right kind of features for military use: - It’s massively scalable. It can handle from a small platoon to a whole army division, and all from a single installation. - It can be deployed quickly. You can be over with installation and configuration in under an hour, and all that’s left is to add your training material. - It can be re-deployed at will, for different army units, or with different courses for the same users, whenever the need arises. It saves you time and effort by making it easy to re-use existing material, or adapt it to cover new training needs. - It’s cost effective. While the military in general might have a huge operating budget that’s not always the case for all individual training camps. When you need to do the most with little, eLearning trumps traditional classroom based education every single time. - It’s flexible. The fact that we put the foremost emphasis in ease of use and intuitiveness doesn’t mean that we skimp on features. eFrontPro supports all common (and plenty of uncommon) file formats, can import multimedia files (audio, video, etc), provides interactive quizzes, tons of categorization options for your users and content, instructor-led training and gamification support, and, last but not least, detailed reporting. - It’s interoperable. eFrontPro can talk to all major Single Sign On protocols (LDAP, AD, SAML, Facebook, etc), can leverage the WebEx and BBB teleconference tools, can integrate the OpenSesame eLearning content marketplace, and has a PHP-based plugin API as well as a REST API that can be used to create custom integrations with any third party tool or service. Here are a few major use cases for an LMS like eFrontPro in the military: Orientation With the constant onboarding of new recruits, officer cadets and support personnel, the army will always have a need for orientation courses to introduce rookies to their new environment and give them the basic information they need to be productive fast - stuff such as basic operating procedures, policies, restrictions and guidelines. eFrontPro lets army instructors organize orientation material in lesson units, add video and audio, and include any third party content needed (from Wikipedia to YouTube). Training The military is first and foremost a huge educational institution, training its people not just in the "art of war", but in all kinds of skills, from the conventional (cooking, driving, first-aid) to the more specialized (engineering, martial arts, foreign languages, etc). With eLearning you can handle these training needs in a quick and cost-effective manner, while allowing students to learn at their own pace (after all time is of the essence, not only during the physically demanding training period but, and even more so, when deployed in the front lines). eLearning also makes sense from a logistics perspective: it lets create and continuously update all your training material without costly textbooks and wasted paper, and share courses between different departments, bases and camps, anywhere in the world. There’s also the flexibility to choose whether to run all of your eLearning from a central location (for complete control), or use a dedicated LMS instance for each camp. Whether for onboarding or training, eFrontPro also provides a comprehensive statistics and reporting system that gives superiors quantifiable information and statistics for trainee performance, progress and understanding of the material. Conclusion With its emphasis in speed and ease of use, and thousands of satisfied customers (including several multinational companies and organizations in both the private and public sectors), eFrontPro is a great and battle-proven (pun intended) choice for military training. Take it for a test drive today and see for yourself. Our sales and support teams will be happy to answer any question you might have. The post eLearning for the military with eFrontPro appeared first on eFront Blog.

When adults join a training program, they bring with them two elements: they have varying levels of knowledge and they learn at varying paces. Competency-based training programs recognize these differences and match the training with the learner. Unlike the content-based training, competency-based training programs focus on the trainer. This enables learners to move through topics on an as-needed basis. It also means that the adult learners can progress through the training program quickly, without spending time on material they are already familiar with. They can focus on new content longer. Competency-based training saves time and money for you as a training manager. The basic feature of any competency-based training is that it measures learning that occurs in a training program, rather than time. Simply put, your employees would progress through training based on their skills and competencies regardless of the time needed to complete the course. Compare this with the "seat time" needed to complete a traditional course. In many cases, especially with experienced employees, traditional training is more detrimental than useful in terms of performance. So, what you are doing here is holding the learning outcome constant while letting the time vary. This is the true essence of adult learning. A great recipe for training success. Implemented effectively, competency-based education can improve quality and consistency, reduce costs, shorten the time required to complete, and provide you with true measures of employee learning. So how can you implement a competency-based training program? Follow these four basic rules: 1. Measure employee learning rather than time Why would you want to measure the time taken to complete a training program anyway? Your focus should be the learning achieved in the course and the rate of transfer to the performance context. Allow the flexibility to move through training based on the skills of your learner. This means enabling learners to tackle chapters and exercises in any order they desire. Also, have a grading scheme that measures the quality of online community submissions. If learners respond to each other’s help questions, make them leaders in their area. This gives their peers the idea of exemplary behavior and performance. 2. Harness the power of technology for teaching and learning A typical feature of competency-based trainings is that they are computer mediated. They could be online on a learning management system or standalone. Educational technology provides the desired flexibility to modify the training according to the learners. Technology fulfills the learning measurement requirement of the competency-based program. Have the learners submit their assignments using a variety of educational technology tools. Create links to tutorials or create short tutorials that teach learners how to use a tool to develop an assignment. A simple example is the use of Prezi or Powtoon instead of the usual Power Point tool. In the same way, use Facebook or Twitter to communicate with your learners by creating dedicated course pages in these social media applications. In short, try to re-create the real-world work environment scene through productivity-enhancing technology. 3. Shift the focus from the Trainer to the Trainee When trainers become talking heads, holding scheduled training sessions for a pre-determined time, the instruction takes place at the trainers’ pace. For most trainees, this will be the wrong pace. Some will need to go more slowly; others will be able to move much faster. Competency-based learning shifts the role of the trainer from that of "a sage on the stage" to a "guide on the side." Trainers become the mentors who redirect conversations to synthesize and transfer knowledge according to the work context of the learners. This is one of the biggest benefits of an eLearning course. Learning is more focused on the learner than the trainer. This means that the course dynamics will change with each batch of learners based on their unique needs, experiences and goals. 4. Align competencies with assessments Competencies or performance objectives define the performance in your organization. They enable you, the manager to evaluate your employees based on the performance criteria. Align these competencies directly with the organization’s performance requirements. Then, create practice opportunities in the training environment. These are assessments that will gauge the learning progress. Involve experts in this stage and have the line managers assess the learners during the training program so that improvements can be reinforced. For example, if you have a low-score assessment result, you can increase reinforcement activities to improve competency achievement. This strategy saves time and creates a true competency-based training program. Creating a competency-based mainstream training program is not as challenging as it seems. Good luck. Do share your experiences with us! The post 4 Ways to Implement a Competency Based Training Program appeared first on eFront Blog.

We’ve built eFrontPro from scratch with a revamped architecture and the latest web technologies to showcase our vision for how a modern eLearning platform should be. Now, after eFrontPro has proved itself in the market as a worthy successor to our first generation eFront LMS, and with the latter finally getting the EOL treatment, we’re stepping up our game with new releases delivering even more performance and polish and exciting new functionality. In fact, the first of these new versions has just landed, bringing along two great new features: the Site Builder and the Gamification engine. As both features are quite extensive in their capabilities, we’ll decided to break down their introduction in two separate posts. First we’re gonna have a look at the Site Builder — what it is and how you can leverage it to build great looking web pages from inside eFrontPro. As for the the Gamification engine, stay tuned, for we’ll be covering that in a follow up post. Let’s get site building Managing and displaying eLearning content is the first and foremost duty of an LMS, but it’s hardly enough. As most people who’ve ever run an eLearning portal discovered, you often need to display custom content and messages to your users or the internet viewers at large. eFrontPro has long catered to that need by letting you create content "Blocks", and use them to assemble a customized homepage for your eLearning portal (kind of like Legos for your content). While that covers a lot of use cases, it’s hardly the most flexible implementation possible. To give you even more freedom, starting from this release, we’ve extended on the blocks functionality by introducing Pages. This means that you’re not restricted to customizing your homepage, but you can create a full, beautiful and extensive web-presence solely with eFrontPro and without having to pair it with another CMS like WordPress or Drupal (though, of course, you can always do that too, if you want). The all-new Site Builder lets you extend your eLearning portal with additional pages like an "About Us" or "Contact" page, add promoted courses on the main landing page, implemented your own FAQ section, etc. And the best thing is that, since the Site Builder extends upon the Blocks functionality, if you’re familiar with those then you already know how to use it. The Site Builder even lets you re-use your blocks between pages by simple dragging-and-dropping them on the pages you want. This allows you, for example, to have a "Register Now!" block in all of your pages or have a banner displayed on some specific pages. And if you don’t know where to start from, eFrontPro includes a couple of built-in Blocks with specialized functionality (namely a "Contact Us" block and a "Promoted Courses" block — we’ll keep adding to that list in upcoming updates) to help you begin building awesome looking websites straight away. Can’t wait? The latest eFrontPro update is available immediately to all registered users. Get it while it’s hot, and be the first to play with the new features. If you’re not an eFrontPro user yet, but would like to know more about the platform, email us or take it for a ride for free and join the eLearning revolution with the best LMS in the industry. The post Site Builder on eFrontPro 4.3: A familiar, brand new feature! appeared first on eFront Blog.

Gamification is not all fun and games. Or rather it is, but it’s also a serious business feature that can increase engagement, learner retention and course completion rates, translating to happy users and a nice, big, return of investment. In this post we’ll have a look at the all new Gamification engine landing in the latest eFrontPro, and how you can use it to make your eLearning courses more fun and instill a sense of competitiveness and community to your learners. Game on Gamification, along with mobile learning and micro-learning have been the three strongest eLearning trends in the last couple of years. In fact, gamification has taken not just eLearning but the whole software world by storm, from social media sites to enterprise portals. While the possibilities for gamification are endless, there are a few market-proven, reliable and intuitive techniques that have been routinely employed to "gamify" web applications — and for eFrontPro we’ve chosen to implement exactly those, namely Points, Badges, Levels and Leaderboards. With our new Gamification engine, you can now mix-and-match among all of those options to tailor the gamification experience to your needs and your audience. Let’s go through the basic options on offer: Points Points in eFrontPro are the equivalent of "keeping score" in a game. A user’s total points are shown on the user’s homepage header, while any new points being awarded are briefly displayed in a non-intrusive message. eFrontPro lets you configure when points are to be awarded (for example, when a user completes a course, for each login to the LMS, etc.). The whole scheme might sound simple, but there’s nothing like a subtle touch of gamification to ignite the competitive spirit in your learners. Badges Badges are the equivalent of real world badges (or "medals"). They are visual stamps (images), that are unlocked for certain achievements, and are displayed in the user’s homepage header and profile info. eFrontPro implements a badging system that makes acquiring badges easy in the early stages (e.g after a few logins, or on course completion), and increasingly difficult as the user progresses (e.g after getting a certificate, after getting a perfect grade on a test, etc). This helps to get users hooked in collecting badges (initially) and maintain their interest (in later stages). Levels Levels are a hierarchy that the user can move up on (like getting a promotion at work, or moving up to the next grade at school). All users start on Level 1, and eFrontPro lets you define when a user should get to the next level (for example every X points, every Y completed courses, every Z badges, etc.). Leaderboards Leaderboards are eFrontPro’s "high score" list, showing your user’s ranking under several metrics (points awarded, badges earned, number of certifications, etc). Leaderboards always mention the best user for the selected metric, as well as several students directly above and below the current user. This gives the user a good overview of his or her overall position. Engine on eFrontPro’s Gamification engine allows you to select and modify all available gamification options, and fine-tune them according to what you’re trying to achieve. For example you can choose whether to use points and badges or not (and, for the latter, customize their appearance), or opt to incentivize users to login more frequently by awarding them more points per login. Ready to play? The latest eFrontPro update containing the Gamification engine (as well as other niceties, like our new Site Builder) is available immediately to all registered users. If you’re not an eFrontPro user yet, you’re seriously missing out. Contact our sales or support stuff or take eFrontPro for a ride for 7 days for free and join the eLearning revolution with the best LMS in the industry. The post Playing with eFrontPro’s 4.3 Gamification Engine appeared first on eFront Blog.

Where would we be without aviation? In far fewer places, and we’d get there much slower, that’s for sure. There would be no mass tourism industry, a much hampered global trade, and, one would imagine, no duty free shops. Fortunately, the Wright brothers averted this dystopian future, and aviation is now a $800 billion industry (according to IATA figures). It’s a challenging and complicated industry, with lots of specialties and supporting roles that have to work well together — from pilots, control towers and mechanics to boarding desks and airport management. It’s also a highly regulated industry (which makes sense, considering the risks involved), with IATA, government, airport and airline regulations filling sky-high stacks of volumes and being actively updated. And whether for pilots (for which annual re-examinations are required by law) or for something like an airline’s support desk, the training needs in aviation are a constant. All the above (plus a few more, like the crazy schedules for everybody involved) make eLearning a great fit for the aviation industry. While certain details change, most of the use cases for eLearning in aviation are not that different from any other business. Employee orientation Employee orientation is the task of introducing new hires to your working environment and giving them the basic information they need so they can be productive fast, including your company’s operating procedures and policies, restrictions and guidelines. Airlines and airports hire new people frequently, so automating employee orientation with eLearning software, such as the eFrontPro learning management system (LMS) is one of the best investments. eFrontPro lets instructors organize orientation material in accessible units, add video, audio, images, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations etc., and include third party content (YouTube, Wikipedia, blog posts, etc). It also includes tests, quizzes, automated grading and detailed statistics designed to help instructors and managers assess the training progress. What’s more, in a litigation heavy industry such as aviation, with lawsuits covering anything from traveler treatment and lost luggage to delayed flights and more, eFrontPro’s tracking of training attendance can serve as proof that an organization or business has informed its employees about company policy, sexual harassment laws, etc., in case of legal dispute (of course, as law differs around the world, consult your legal team before relying on this). Training Aviation industry’s rules change frequently and employees are often re-assigned to handle different posts, departments or destinations, and, as we discussed before there are always new hires (including temporary hires for the holiday seasons). eLearning makes handling these training needs easy and cost effective, something important as aviation, while a huge industry revenue wise, often has margins as low as 4%. It also enables you to train your employees at their own pace, without business disruptions which cannot easily be afforded in the fast paced world of commercial flights. And if your training material changes frequently (new IATA rules, new airport guidelines, new operating procedures, etc.) an eLearning based solution helps there too, as it lets you update all your courses without costly textbooks and wasted paper, re-use and expand content, and share courses between different departments and airports, anywhere in the world. You also get the flexibility to choose whether to run all of them from a central location for complete control, or install dedicated platforms in each branch. And with eFrontPro’s integration with content markets such as OpenSesame, you can even buy ready-made professional grade courses in thousands of topics. Last, but not least, eFrontPro provides a comprehensive reporting system that gives you quantifiable information and statistics for your employees’ attendance, progress and understanding of the material. Knowledge retention All businesses have a few employees whose experience is crucial for their day to day operation, or for handling some special crisis scenarios that occur once in a while. Ideally, this shouldn’t be the case, and with eFrontPro it doesn’t have to be. An eLearning solution will help you store this valuable information in a formalized and easily accessible way that can be consulted from existing employees and taught to new hires. Adding that knowledge in an eLearning platform (as opposed to some document management system, or worse, some Word files), makes it immediately usable as training courses for your employees, leveraging all of your LMS’ eLearning features. Conclusion eFrontPro has thousands of satisfied customers, including several multinational companies and organizations in both the private and public sector. It is renowned for its emphasis in speed and ease of use (stemming from our attention to detail and our no-bloat-allowed policy). Take it for a test drive today and see for yourself how, with a modern LMS platform for the aviation industry, the sky is the limit. The post eLearning for the aviation industry with eFrontPro appeared first on eFront Blog.

Graphic design is a process of visual communication using elements such as type, space, images and colour. All of these are important in producing eLearning materials, so let’s look at them each in turn. Content is obviously important, but a large part of the effectiveness of any learning material is the way it’s presented. When your learners are regularly exposed to hundreds of other exciting forms of graphic design in print, on screens and in the street, they won’t pay so much attention to materials that quite simply aren’t that good. But, what is "good"? If you’ve never had any training in art or design, it may be difficult to appreciate the skill involved in making what often appear to be very simple things. Take type for example. Typography involves the design of letters and numbers into consistent groupings, or fonts. Immediately we tend to think of the Roman alphabet (A, B, C) and Arabic numerals (1,2,3) - but these days, typography must also accommodate other lettering systems (Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic and a whole variety of Asian languages), together with other specialized commercial, technical or artistic shape sets. Commonly used symbols - ticks and crosses, check marks, star shapes and arrows - also have their own font sets, as do the wide variety of emoticons now in common use. Until barely fifty years ago, these things had hardly changed since Caxton and Gutenberg, and even early computer systems could only handle a few fonts. However, in the last twenty years, the range of possibilities available has exploded, meaning that anything is possible. Sadly, design skills haven’t quite caught up. Take a look around you. Pick up a newspaper or magazine and open it at a random page. Try to count how many different fonts are being used. You’ll need some definitions to start with. Size is fairly obvious - some letters are bigger than others. They’re usually measured in points, where 72 points equals one inch. Body text - the main bulk of text for reading - will usually be around 10 to 12 points, and there will be a hierarchy of headings of larger sizes. Some will probably be in line with the text, dividing it up into recognizable sections or sub-sections. Others will be offset, perhaps in separate boxes or areas of their own, drawing attention to a particular phrase or quotation. There may be some smaller text alongside pictures or diagrams - these are usually known as captions. However, there will most likely be no more than five or six different font sizes in use on any one page. Weight is another important consideration. Printers and professional typographers use a whole range of terms, but at their simplest, they’re variants of things like bold, italics, narrow and maybe extra-light. Again, you will only find a few variants on any one page. Above all, with both size and weight, notice that they are being used consistently. A particular form of text - a caption, or a sub-heading - will almost always be exactly the same size and font, whenever it appears. The space around it (printers refer to this as "leading" from the old days of lead type), and which is also measured in points will be consistent too. Another factor is the design of the letters themselves. There are many strange font sets available, but most fonts can be described as either serif or sans serif. Serifs are the tiny extensions at the ends of strokes in letters - they originated when stonemasons tried to engrave painted brush strokes, and they developed into consistent embellishments. Serif typefaces, like the variants of Times New Roman used in many newspapers and books are supposed to be easier to read, although the evidence for this is not conclusive. Conversely, most text designed for reading on a screen will be sans serif, often a variant of Arial or Helvetica. But, small differences between fonts are important. The Arial font from MS Word may look good in print, but it doesn’t look at its best on screen. Fonts like Tahoma and Verdana, although very similar, are sized and spaced better for reading online. And some newer fonts like Lucinda or Calibri are even more balanced. What does all this have to do with eLearning? Well, the most important thing is to develop habits of consistency. Just because you can use any shape or size of font doesn’t mean that you should. Don’t change the font size or weight randomly. It’s often better to remove a few words from your text than to change the font size to fit an overly long heading. In design, less is usually more! The post Graphic Design for eLearning: Part 1 appeared first on eFront Blog.

Space is the second element in our definition of graphic design. It refers both to the placement of elements in relation to each other, and to the gaps between them, where there are, to all intents and purposes. Empty space. It’s usually white in printed material, although it may well be coloured, or a muted background image on a screen. Why is this important? Good use of spacing allows the eye to process visual information more easily, and to transmit it to the brain in a logical sequence. Bad spacing doesn’t do this, so your message will get confused or ignored. Start with the shape of the screen, the space in which you are designing your learning. This shape is no accident. Most screen sizes are now based on what’s known as the "golden ratio", which is roughly 1 to 1.6. The golden ratio has a long history in art and architecture going back to ancient times, with buildings such as the Parthenon, Milan Cathedral, the Great Mosque of Kairouan and even Stonehenge allegedly designed with these proportions in mind. It also appears in paintings - either in the overall size of the canvas, or in the placement of elements upon it. Although paintings can be different shapes, and many buildings are far wider than they are tall, there is something inherently pleasing about the 1.6 ratio which lends itself to the presentation of imagery. Text, by contrast, usually works best if presented the other way up. From the earliest days of printing, books using typography have usually been taller than they are wide. The two terms for these alternative presentation styles - portrait and landscape - come from art history, and at a time before mass literacy, they referred simply to different but familiar ways in which artists could present images so that they would be understood. Portraits would essentially be "read" up and down - landscapes, and the symbols within them were designed to be "read" from left to right. In either format however, the eye can only process so much information. If you try to cram in too much, the whole message will get ignored, as there is so much competition for our visual attention. When there were fewer visual messages around, artistic statements, whether in the form of books, buildings or canvasses could afford to be full of intricate and extensive detail. Nowadays, to make things stand out, they need to  be presented more simply, and in their own space. Search for a term like "the power of white space" and you will find hundreds of books, essays and design ideas. Yet far too many business presentations and eLearning courses still present cluttered and busy screens, with words and images fighting each other for our attention. The reasons are varied. It’s partly due to the history of learning material design. A few decades ago, "slides" were prepared on acetate sheets for overhead projectors. These were fairly expensive, so there was a tendency to use as few as possible. This kind of thinking transferred into the design of software like PowerPoint and hierarchies of bullet point levels. It also fitted in well with a culture of compliance and risk aversion - in many mandatory training courses, there is a tendency to insist on presenting qualifying statements and using legally waterproof language which doesn’t sit well with creating memorable messages. Nowadays however, there’s no excuse for screen clutter. The solutions are very simple. Use more screens, with less text on each screen. If you simply have to present six bullet points, use six screens. Some designers also counsel against using more than six words on any screen. The space around text boosts readability, and guides the readers’ eyes towards the main message. If there are too many messages on one screen, most of them will get lost. It really is as simple as that. And as always, try to be consistent. There is a reason why captions and text boxes appear in particular places on slide templates, and why they are spaced the way they are. It’s probably to do with the golden ratio. Although it’s easy to move them closer together to get more on the screen, it’s rarely a good idea. If you do have to move screen elements however, don’t just guess. Check the precise placements in the elements’ sizing or spacing properties, and make sure you use the same measurements everywhere. If headings or text boxes are in slightly different places on consecutive screens, the learner will notice, and it will detract from the content. The post Graphic Design for eLearning Part 2 - Space appeared first on eFront Blog.