In the quest to transform a business organization's learning culture, it is important to consider the resources necessary to support such a challenge. To guide us in this quest, it is essential to be very much aware of how learners in this connected age use technology as a means to pursue individualized learning. The recent movement towards developing mobile learning where a learner can use any device anywhere there is high speed Internet access, 24/7 is becoming an important factor not only in formal learning but also in informal learning. In some major cities such as New York, plans are in place to develop Wanfi in which no matter where you are in the city, you have access to the web. The concept of "wifi hotspots" will soon become a curious artifact of this age.Credit: www.allencomm.comThe Formal and Informal Learning EnvironmentsIdeally, a learning culture should include a formal and informal learning component in order to be complete. In the formal learning environment, the use of a blended E-Learning approach would produce the best results. In such an approach the following characteristics would be evident:The Learning Principles Expert in collaboration with the Instructional Designer would focus on designing irresistibly engaging learning experiences in which the learners play active interactive roles.The use of problem based scenarios and simulations in an online environment would be used where collaboration among learners in the assigned tasks is a key skillset that would be developed and assessed.The role of the trainer would be as the "guide or mentor on the side" rather than the "sage on the stage". The trainer could take on an interactive role within the scenario or simulation where he or she helps guide by interacting with learners by asking them important questions during different points in the simulation or scenario. The purpose of the questions is to help the collaborative group clarify their decision making.Immediate and credible feedback is received by the learners. It is the experiential element of this approach that leads to a deeper, sustainable level of understanding.An important upgrading in IT resources is needed in order to transform the learning culture into a learning culture that is able to support both formal and informal learning. There are many companies that attempt to do effective blended and virtual E-Learning with network structures that are out of date.   The Learning Portal  One of the purposes of the learning portal is to promote collaboration and innovation by connecting with designed network structures beyond the walls of the organization. In order to do this globally, we can break learning portals into collections of networks or hubs that service a given area of the globe. The diagram below is an example of a collection of collaborative networks that serve as a template to conceptualize what a learning portal might look like. The arrows represent the pathways for collaboration among networks. Each of the networks have a specific function important to the development of the learning culture for an organization. The reason for the development of such hubs is to overcome the problem of asynchronous access for the purpose of collaboration. So what this means is that a group of employees could login to the learning hub which would then connect them to the network that they wish to collaborate in.This particular learning hub would represent one of six defined areas of the globe.   These structures I have described before but with the advancement of technology since that time, we now have the capability to develop them. Within each of the network structures, interaction can take place in an immersive environment or a variation of it. An example of a regional learning hub is shown below:A description of the function of each of these networks in relation to the learning culture for an organization will be in my next post.[If you consider the above posting worth sharing for the purpose of thoughtful discussion, please feel free to share it on Twitter, Facebook...etc.]

The last post described how the Learning Portal was a gateway to one of 6 global hubs. The following diagram is an example of what a learner might see upon entering the Learning Portal. As I mentioned before, how immersive you want to make the experience is up to the organization. It is prudent to remember a couple points in this regard:Creation of effective immersive functional networks is not as difficult as it once was. We now have the necessary tools to design the immersive environment and they can be quite cost effective. The development of WebVR is just the beginning.If we have learned anything from the experience of Second Life VR  it is that learning experiences that appeal to as many of the senses as possible and are social in nature tend to result in better engagement and deeper, sustainable learning for the learners. We can not defeat the idea that Man is a social animal but we can harness its potential. A Modifiable Rendition of  a Learning PortalCredit: www.on24.com Naturally, the pathways could be modified to suit our interests but it does give you the concept in mind. The Learning Hub itself acts as the core of the central nervous system and could also be a stopping off point for those going and returning to the other networks.Functions of Connecting Networks   In looking at the functions of these connected global networks, there are two points worth repeating:Business organizations are very much like living organisms. Like living organisms, balance and symmetry in the functions of its parts is necessary in order for it to remain vibrant and healthy.In an age of information and learning, the sector of education and the sector of business have a necessary digital symbiotic relationship that under the the previous industrial economy was not there.The Business and Innovation Council--The Path to Collaborative Open Innovation NetworksOne of the confounding barriers to innovation becoming systemic within a business organization is being able to devote enough organizational resources to it so that it becomes a natural company mindset and actually develops into a core value for the organization which like other core values the organization is unwilling to compromise on. There is great inequity among business organizations due to the ability of an organization to marshal enough resources in relation to the organization's size. As a result many organizations fall into the trap of "herding" mentioned in the previous post where an organization becomes merely a purchaser of innovation but never a creator of it. This maintains the industrial economy mindset in a world where it does not fit. The question then becomes:"Is there another potential solution that will restore some equity to organizations that are trying to re-shape their learning culture and establish innovative thinking as a core value?"The functions of the Business and Innovation Council Network are principally :Provide a forum for businesses to encourage new and innovative ideas by employees to be brought forward where they can be discussed openly with an understanding that proprietary concerns need to be addressed.Explore and nurture the development of Collaborative Open Innovation Networks as an alternative to what is presently available.What is a "Collaborative Open Innovation Network and what are its charactertistics"?   Manos Giannadakis (2014) describes the characteristics of COIN's very effectively in the following Slideshare from Dec. 2014: Collaborative Innovation Networks from Manos Giannadakis Another important collaborative characteristic of this type of network is that it would be designed in such a way that it could collaborate with other councils in other global learning portals to share common problems and seek appropriate solutions that will keep innovation moving forward. It could also help coordinate business opportunities to help developing nations within a specific family of nations develop E-Learning access that is more in line with that of developing nations. The form that this could take could range from establishing appropriate infrastructure to the creation of targeted MOOCS to address educational needs specific to a particular region.Next---The importance of Cross-Disciplinary Research and Mentor Networks to business organizations

An important question that business leaders should ask themselves about a Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network is:"Why should a business like us care about making connections or even having a role in establishing such a network? Isn't this more for the academics in research departments at institutions of higher learning?"  In order to honestly answer those questions, you really have to ask yourself  a number of very pertinent questions with respect to your organization:Is being on top of advances in technology that could impact the performance level of our work force have strategic value for the company in a highly competitive global digital economy?In an information and knowledge society, does an ongoing process of mentoring employees in their learning advancement and nurturing the development of new skillsets that are germane to the changing nature of our part of the business sector of value to the healthy growth of our organization?Is collaborative real world problem solving on the part of employees and innovative thinking keys to increasing our organization's ROI?Do we desire to have a healthy balance of servicing our current markets and creating new ones?Cross Disciplinary Learning--What is it? Cross disciplinary learning is an approach that suggests that when we need to find and solve real world problems, that no single set of skills will enable us to detect, analyze, and solve problems in the 21st century.In the past with regards to the instructional designer and trainer for a business organization, these individuals were expected to not only design and deliver effective learning experiences for employees but also to keep up with new knowledge and skillsets that may need to be addressed that could improve performance and compliance with respect to employees."However, when the World Wide Web came along with the ability to share and create new knowledge in all the disciplines, the game changed dramatically for business! It is naive to believe, given the exponential growth in knowledge and technology, that the instructional designer and trainer are able keep up as they did before and still maintain the expected level of performance. The myth of multitasking especially in regards to this issue will lead to mediocrity for business performance against other organizations more in tune with the realities of growth in the global economy. Something else that fits the requirements is needed.Business organizations have stated very clearly that what they want in the way of the primary quality in future employees is that they are problem finders and then problem solvers. They want employees who can act proactively rather than reactively in this regard. They want employees to be able to analyze a situation, detect potential problems and then arrive at preemptive solutions. As pointed out earlier, the instructional designer and trainer can not be expected to meet the new requirements of the roles they play. They need to empower employees to engage and have access to a network where these requirements can be met.So, given the rationale for change, why are some companies so resistant to what needs to be done? Perhaps the actor, Jack Nicholson, said it best in the movie titled: "A Few Good Men":Could this be in part the explanation?Next....A description of the functions of the Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network

Business organizations need access to the latest research that impacts products and services as well as a mentor network that engages employees and empowers them to be innovative and collaborative real world problem solvers. This type of network recognizes that no one individual whether instructional designer or trainer have all the necessary skillsets in order for an organization to move forward. The previous role of the SME and his or her uneasy relationship with instructional designers and trainers needs to be reshaped because it is based on a paradigm from the industrial economy that no longer fits. In the past, your organization's collaboration efforts may have been similar to the pattern below.In re-visioning the pattern of the learning portal, there are also collaborative relationships with a principle difference being that employees are engaged, empowered, inspired and feel that they are making meaningful contributions to the well being and future health of their organization. The ongoing learning of employees in an age of information and knowledge has to be a focal point of each organization's learning culture.When we look at the re-configuration of the Global E-Learning Hub, you will notice that the directional arrows displayed in the diagram represent paths of feedback and responsibility.You will note in the diagram that the Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network reports and advises the Business and Education Innovation Council and provides big data to the Global E-Learning Hub. Keeping in mind that the Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network also collaborates with the Global Higher Education and Teacher Mentoring Network, you can start to understand that in order to keep up with the advancement of knowledge in multiple disciplines that collaborations have to be cross disciplinary in nature. The following are some of the responsibilities and roles that Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network entails:Work with educators, corporate trainers, instructional designers and Learning Principles Experts in the design of irresistibly engaging learning experiences that would then be provided to the Global Learning Hub.Collaborate with educators, corporate trainers, instructional designers and Learning Principles Experts in the design of assessment tools and also take part in the assessment of the learner's (employees) efforts from the perspective of their discipline. This would involve them in providing ongoing feedback to the learner and especially to mentor-learner groups.Be willing to identify promising employees and higher education students who have the right aptitudes and skills in order to recommend appropriate mentor matches. This type of relationship will help develop employee skillsets needed for the growth of the business organization. At this point, the question that probably comes to mind is:"Why is there such an emphasis on education with respect to the health of our business organization?"To answer this question, it is important to remember a few points:Effective performance of employees of an organization is tied to how well they are able to unlearn, adapt, relearn, problem solve and innovate. Unlike in the past, in a global age of knowledge and learning, the relationship between business success and the ability of employees to use formal and informal learning can no longer be considered as separate issues.A term often used as a synonym for mentoring in business organizations is "coaching". For the record, when I speak of mentoring I mean in the fashion as what existed during the times of the craft guilds. The reason is that I believe that if we want to see "exceptional performance" of employees, superior products and services, we have to re-discover the crafts person's mindset for a standard of quality that a master crafts person expected and developed in his or her apprentice. The industrial era and the onset of mass production broke that exemplary work mindset. To accomplish this type of a breakaway from the status quo will require vision and leadership.  In looking at the networks represented and their relationships, "systems thinking" is the key to understanding the dynamics involved and what that might mean for the health and future of business organizations.Next...The influence of global higher education and a teacher mentoring network on upcoming employee skillsets

Put your learner in the action! How? Add a scenario to your online training course, which allows your learners to make choices and experience a simulation of the content they’re learning. Lectora® Inspire 12.1 makes it easy to add scenarios and characters with the new eLearning Brothers integration, and Brother Sean explains how in an awesome video tutorial. Watch the video over on the eLearning Brothers Blog: Scenarios and Characters in Lectora: Have Your Cake and Eat it Too. In case you aren’t familiar with the eLearning Brothers Cutout People Library, it’s full of thousands of character images that are ready to drop right into Lectora. Each character has a transparent background and comes with multiple poses and emotions. You can choose from different industries—business people, industrial people, medical people, etc.—to make your course unique and engaging. (And this is just one part of the eLearning Brothers Awesomeness now included in Lectora Inspire!) Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more helpful tips, eLearning news and resources. The post Engagement Made Easy with eLearning Scenarios and Characters appeared first on Trivantis e-Learning.

I’m a visual learner—that’s what some eLearning professionals would say—because I prefer memorizing from an outline rather than a lecture alone, or reading about a new topic instead of listening to a podcast about it. But how significant really is my "learning style" (visual vs. auditory vs. kinesthetic) in the learning and development community? Many studies from the last few years suggest that learning styles are a myth, a fad, a waste of time, etc. I did some more research to read (visual learner here) about both sides of this learning theory in the education and eLearning communities. Here’s what supporters of learning styles are saying: "There’s nothing restrictive about a learning style," says Dr. James Witte, Auburn University Associate Professor of Adult Education. He actually believes there are several types of learning styles, including cognitive, affective, and perceptual. The perceptual category is based on the five senses and includes the following learning modalities: Visual (viewing photos, film, etc.) Auditory (listening) Kinesthetic (movement) Print (seeing written words) Interactive (verbalization) Haptic (sense of touch or grasp) Olfactory (sense of smell and taste) Hmmm. According to Witte, and if learning styles are true, then I’m more specifically a print learner—not simply a visual learner like I previously thought. Witte takes a more conservative approach to learning styles than other researchers (and some suggest that there are alternate styles such as verbal and mathematical); however, some psychologists argue that learning styles are unlikely and that this learning theory is a waste of time. "We have not found evidence from a randomized control trial supporting any of these," says Doug Rohrer, psychologist at the University of South Florida, after examining studies of learning styles more closely. He advises, "And until such evidence exists, we don’t recommend that they be used." Researchers and learning professionals like Rohrer recommend to instead use training strategies that have been proven to work for all students. On ATD Learning & Development Blog, instructional design specialist Ruth Clark says that instead of learning styles, "let’s invest resources on instructional modes and methods to improve learning." According to professionals like Rohrer and Clark, while I might prefer to learn by reading, eLearning course designers can use training strategies that are proven to be effective with all learners. So, as an eLearning developer, what should you do? Design courses that are audience-focused. Whether you’re a fan of learning styles or you think they’re a myth, you can design training that is successful and focused on the learners taking your course. Here are a few tips for creating successful, audience-focused eLearning: • Get feedback. Do a post-training evaluation to find out what learners like and what they don’t like, so you can make adjustments for next time. • Provide choices. Studies show that learners like to be in control. They like options and personalized training. By offering the choice between watching a video on the subject and participating in a real-life scenario experience, you empower your learner to succeed—the way he or she wants. • An authoring tool like Lectora® Inspire can help you add interactivity and engaging elements to your training. Sign up for a free trial today. • Track your training results to see which strategies are providing the best ROI on your training program. Then use those results to direct future eLearning initiatives at your organization. For more articles on instructional design theory and creating successful training courses, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post Learning Styles in Training Development: Truth or Myth? appeared first on .

Voting for Jane Hart’s Annual Top 100 Tools for Learning is now open. Lectora® made the list last year and we need your help to stay there! Voting closes at noon GMT on Friday, September 18, 2015 and the 2015 Top 100 Tools list will be revealed on September 21, 2015. To make it easy for you, Jane and the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT) have provided several different ways to submit your vote: Use the online form on the C4LPT website. Email your 10 tools to jane.hart@c4lpt.co.uk using an organizational email address (i.e not webmail like Gmail or Hotmail). Specify your role as a learning professional, and whether you work in education or workplace learning or both. Note if you are happy for your comments to be quoted or would prefer them to stay private. Tweet your 10 tools to @C4LPT from a Twitter account that can be used to validate your role as a learning professional. Write a blog post about your choice and tweet or email the link to Jane. Here at Trivantis, we’re all about helping our awesome users, so we wanted to make it EVEN easier for you to vote. I drafted this email template with a few—okay 15 because I’m indecisive—of my favorite learning tools listed to help you get started. Feel free to pick and choose or add your own tool suggestions. Subject: My vote for Top 100 Learning Tools Jane, I work for (company) as a (education/workplace learning/both) professional. My LinkedIn profile is: (link). Here are my top 10 learning tools: ReviewLink Lectora Online Lectora Inspire Lectora Publisher CourseMill® LMS CourseMill Mobile CourseMill Wave Snap! by Lectora eLearning Brothers Template Library eLearning Brothers Interaction Builder Snagit Camtasia GoAnimate BranchTrack TechSmith Fuse Go ahead and quote me/my choice of tools on your site. Thanks! OR Please don’t quote me personally on your website. Thanks! (Your name) Thanks for supporting Lectora and CourseMill! The post What Are Your Top Learning Tools? appeared first on .

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) became popular around 2011 - 2012. New York Times columnist and best-selling author, Thomas Friedman, described them as an educational "revolution." The Washington Post praised them as a way to provide "elite education for the masses." Even our own Stephanie Ivec, published in eLearning Industry, cited the opportunity to reduce costs on courses and better take advantage of certifications by integrating MOOC content. Today, we’re seeing that the growth of MOOCs has slowed from the rapid pace at the beginning of the MOOC craze, according to TechCrunch writer Danny Crichton. In the Google Trends graphs below, he shows stalled search traffic for two well-known MOOCs. (Source: Danny Crichton, TechCrunch) Crichton explains, "We failed to ensure that motivation and primacy were built-in to these new products, and in the process, failed to get adults to engage with education in the way that universities traditionally can." This issue mainly applies to the higher education use of MOOCs. When learners aren’t students on a physical campus, they don’t have social incentives that motivate learners. They don’t have the influence of friends encouraging them to attend classes or a need to avoid the shame of poor performance. If students stop participating in a free MOOC, no one will know. If students stop putting effort into a MOOC, they won’t lose money—which means quitting doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Are MOOCs better suited for corporate training? But these examples are largely from higher education. What about corporate training? One UK-based company that helps people plan vacations, Much Better Adventures, spends the lull during Friday afternoons learning about sustainability. Its employees use MOOCs to drive business benefits, says TechRepublic writer Erin Carson. "For the team at Much Better Adventures, ‘productive’ is an apt description for how they’re using what they’re learning in sustainability." Some workplace learning experts like Jeanne Meister argue that the larger goal is to "use the MOOC movement as the impetus to re-think and re-imagine how your organization designs, develops and delivers learning." So where can MOOCs fit into your company’s training program? Maybe you’d rather create your own training courses that are specifically customized for your employees, simply using MOOCs as a source of content or to supplement their custom training programs. In a world where companies spend millions of dollars to build or buy all types of training, companies can save a great deal of money by leveraging MOOCs or accepting their certifications. Want to get started? Try using the authoring tool Lectora® Inspire to create custom training courses that are interactive, motivating, and engaging. Trivantis CTO John Blackmon suggests using Lectora to create "a course high on video content that has a comprehension test at the end, and gives the user a badge or certificate for their accomplishment." Video-based, MOOC-style content like this is easily supported within Lectora’s authoring tools (sign up for a free trial.) And you can use a system like CourseMill® and CourseMill® Wave to create a knowledge-sharing hub around the content of your MOOC. Comments? Enter them below. The post MOOCs: Hype or a Revolution for Corporate Trainers? appeared first on .

In a recent #GuildChat sponsored by the eLearning Guild, the participants were asked "How is an organizational ecosystem similar to / different than an ecosystem in nature?" The first response was from learning and development professional Mark Sheppard, who said, "An ecosystem is something that is always under threat—whether we know it or not." As budgets get tighter and tighter, learning and development programs often go the way of the dodo. But without the expert knowledge needed to build a learning and performance ecosystem, will your organization still perform well? Or will the weeds take over? Your office likely already has its own ecosystem—one built around the people, workflows, and technologies that support your day-to-day work. According to noted eLearning expert Marc Rosenberg in a Learning Solutions Magazine article, you can build on that. "A learning and performance ecosystem introduces new capabilities that integrate learning and performance solutions into the work environment, where the vast preponderance of learning actually takes place. While training is still important, the overall strategy minimizes the need for workers to leave work in order to learn, reducing work disruption, and placing more learning opportunities directly into the workflow." A good learning and performance ecosystem is built on: Talent management Performance support Knowledge management Access to experts Social networking and collaboration Structured learning Clark Quinn, Ph.D., Guild Master, and founder of Quinnovation, is very firm on the need to support learning. "Learning is no longer a ‘nice to have’, or even an imperative, it is the only sustainable differentiator.  The question is: are you ready?  Are you making the new learning a strategic priority?" he asks on his blog, Learnlets. In Rosenberg’s follow-up article, he says, "a learning and performance ecosystem is not just technology or merely a set of features and functionality. Ultimately, it must be active, alive, and thriving. It lives through its use by people. Without people using, interacting, connecting, and deriving value from it, the ecosystem becomes useless and dies. There will be no learning and performance ecosystem if there is no real change in our views about learning and performance, and about how we practice our craft." All this makes having a performance ecosystem sound pretty important, right? But wait… The eLearning Guild asked later on in the Twitter chat, "When is striving for a performance ecosystem not the correct approach to take?" That’s right, the organization that has an entire white paper on learning and performance ecosystems is now suggesting that you don’t need one? Don’t worry—the other Twitter chat participants were equally shocked and stumped. However, some ideas emerged as the discussion deepened. To me, it’s clear that a performance ecosystem is only as valuable as the effort you put into building and maintaining it. It takes the right tools—like social knowledge sharing platforms and mLearning solutions—and a commitment to making sure the system you’ve built is getting the results you want. Done correctly, a performance ecosystem will help you perform better. Done incorrectly, it’s just another example of that "red tape" everyone loves to hate. Do you think your company has a learning and performance ecosystem? How do you measure results? Share your thoughts below. The post Can You Perform Without a Performance Ecosystem? appeared first on .

"I don’t get variables! I’d rather be nibbled to death by ducks than try to deal with them!" Are you a Lectora® user who cringes at the mere mention of the word "variable?" You are not alone! The concept of variables is very simple, but for whatever reason, is difficult to grasp for a lot of people. So I thought I’d begin this blog series with a topic that isn’t even specific to Lectora. It’s just a concept that, once understood, opens up all sorts of new possibilities for things you can do with Lectora, like custom navigation and branching, simulations, swapping content based on user input, gamification… Pretty much anything you can dream up! In trying to think of how I might describe what a variable is to people new to the concept, I did a web search for "variable definition." Most of the resources I found use a lot of technical terms and get way into the weeds before they even tell you what it really is! And while all those details and terms may be important eventually, they are not needed to understand the basic concept. So to verbally define it as simply as I can think to, a variable is a container! It’s just a boring old container—like a basket, a bucket, or a beer mug. And like most containers, a variable can contain just about anything you want to put in it, or contain nothing at all. (Ok, so you can’t put real beer in a variable, but you can put the word "beer" in a variable! We’ll talk more about that in a minute.) To be a little more specific, a variable is a named container. And to create one, all you have to do is pick a name, like basket, or bucket, or beer_mug. The name can be anything you want as long as you stick to a few simple rules: • Use only letters, numbers, dollar signs $, and underscores _. (No spaces, which is why I put an underscore in beer_mug.) • Begin the name with a letter, a dollar sign, or underscore. (A variable name cannot start with a number.) • Don’t use names that are already used by JavaScript. (JavaScript is the programming language underlying the functionality of what Lectora produces. You can find a list of JavaScript Reserved words here: http://www.quackit.com/javascript/javascript_reserved_words.cfm.) • Don’t use names that are already used by Lectora. (You can see what names are already used by Lectora on the Reserved tab of the Variable Manager.) Best practice for variable names is to choose something that describes what you plan to put into your variable/container. Use names like totalQuizScores, or popup_is_open, or numberOfTries, or currentVocabWord. Like I said before, you can’t put real beer in a variable, but you can put a representation of beer in a variable by using the word "beer." So when I said you can put anything you want in a variable, the catch is that it has to be represented by characters or numbers or both. Some of us are visual thinkers and hands-on learners. I am definitely one of those people and did not catch on to the abstract concept of variables until somebody actually showed me what a variable is. So I built this little interactive piece (in Lectora, of course!) that may help those of you who are like me to see what a variable is. Play around with it and see if it starts to become clearer. So that’s it really! A variable is just a named container, a place to store stuff for later use. In my next blog, I’ll explain how to make a variable in Lectora, how to put stuff into it and get stuff out of it, and why you would even want to use your own user-defined variables in the first place. Liked this article? Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more Lectora Basics, free resources, and product news. Lectora Basics is your intro to eLearning authoring with Lectora. In this blog series, Wendy Miller, Lead Content Developer here at Trivantis, will introduce you to fundamental concepts in Lectora. Wendy is a visual designer and computer programmer with extensive experience developing software, courseware, web sites, games, and multimedia. Other Lectora Basics articles: • Lectora Basics: Using User-Defined Variables The post Lectora Basics: What Is a Variable? appeared first on .

You may have already heard the big news. If not, I’m pleased to announce that ReviewLink™ 3 now allows you to upload Captivate® and Storyline® courses in addition to publishing Lectora® titles for review. We know that our users have many different tools in their eLearning development toolboxes, and we wanted you to be able to enjoy the timesaving features of ReviewLink—no matter how you created your course. In addition, we’ve made ReviewLink responsive. You can view mobile courses from your smartphone or tablet, along with desktop courses. How does ReviewLink make course review more efficient? Your manager, stakeholders, and subject matter experts can provide feedback directly on any page of a course. Each comment has a status—New, Fixed, OK, Not OK, or Archived—so you can easily keep track of your progress. One of our clients, Axcess Financial, saved 80 maintenance hours and 12 weeks of client review per year—just by using ReviewLink! They shared their tips and tricks with attendees at the 2015 Lectora User Conference. Below is a snapshot of their presentation—and no, ReviewLink 3 does not come with a motorcycle! What else can ReviewLink do for you? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used ReviewLink to run a course pilot. By using ReviewLink, the CDC could allow multiple reviewers to share their opinions, while keeping their comments hidden from each other. This prevented one reviewer’s opinion from influencing another’s first impression of the course. ReviewLink is an extremely useful tool for an eLearning developer, and we’re so excited to let you use it on even more courses. Ready to start reviewing? ReviewLink comes with Lectora Inspire and Lectora Publisher when you purchase a Lectora Maintenance plan. In addition, you can buy it separately starting at just $29/month. Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for all the latest product news, free resources, and tutorials. Captivate® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Storyline® is a registered trademark of Articulate Global, Inc. The post Why You Need the New ReviewLink appeared first on .

Creating effective eLearning courses requires good design—even if you don’t have a design background. In this new blog series, "Design Dos & Don’ts," we’re asking designers to share essential graphic design tips and suggestions, along with what not to do in your eLearning courses. For this post, I asked two of our design experts here at Trivantis—Tony Cavalier and Anthony LaQuatra—to share design tips that eLearning developers could use to create effective and professional-looking courses. Take a look at a few important design dos and don’ts that they recommended for eLearning developers: Do: Use custom photography. "Invest in a camera and take your own stock photography," says Trivantis designer Anthony LaQuatra. "It will add a personal element to your course and will set you apart from those using standard paid stock imagery." While quality stock photos can save time, custom photography has its own advantages. For example, seeing a familiar coworker’s face can help to engage learners. For some tips on taking your own stock photos, read this post: Be a Stock Photography Model! Do: Follow web design trends. To make your training look fresh and current, stay up-to-date on web design trends. Anthony says, "Normally, web design sets the tone for the year’s creative trends. Sites like thenextweb.com usually come out with projected trends for the year in January. These can be carried over into courses and other learning materials and can keep your learners interested and your courses up to date." Don’t: Use low-res images. Even if you don’t have the time to do your own custom photography for your course, Trivantis Art Director Tony Cavalier recommends avoiding low-resolution images. "Find an image that is print quality or high-resolution web quality," he explains. "This will make a huge impact in the visuals you use." High-res images will keep your course looking professional, and then your learners are more likely to take it seriously, which makes the training more effective. For more tips on using images in your course, check out this post: How to Choose the Best Images for Your e-Learning. Don’t: Get designer’s fatigue. Tony says, "Sometimes when looking or working on a design for a long time, you tend to bend your perspective to fit your design." For those course design moments when you’re stuck, he suggests: Taking a step back from your desk and looking afar Changing your perspective to look at your design as if you are the user Taking a break and returning to the design later on or the next day can also help change your perspective. What are your biggest design dos and don’ts for creating professional-looking eLearning courses? Share them in the comments below. The post Design Dos & Don’ts: Images and More appeared first on .

Do you ever feel like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, shouting, "I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!" as you struggle to meet deadlines? Sometimes it can be hard to focus when you’re working on multiple projects—or when you’re actually a rabbit in a tuxedo jacket. Our developers and designers here at Trivantis are pros at getting stuff done (just take a look at our service pack and updates page), so I asked them to share their secrets. Turns out, our Trivantis pros have too many productivity secrets to fit into one blog post, so today is just Part 1: General Work Productivity. Later, I’ll be revealing all their best Lectora® shortcuts and productivity secrets!    The Trusted Trio -Laura Silver, Director of Product Management "Use the ‘Trusted Trio’ three-folder system to manage the constant influx of email. All of my email is either Archived or moved to a Follow Up or Hold folder (or inbox using labels if you’re using Gmail)." Check out the details of this life-saving system on Lifehacker. And please excuse me while I go reorganize my inbox. I’d never heard of this until Laura told me about it, and I’m excited to try it out. Tweet at us @Lectora or comment on this blog if you try out the Trusted Trio system. Ignore Everyone -John Blackmon, Chief Technology Officer "As ironic as this may be, my best productivity secret is to take a day off from emails and phone calls. When I have serious work, it requires serious concentration. I turn off the phone and don’t open my email. You would be amazed what can get done with singular focus." Okay, John didn’t actually say to ignore everyone, but he did ignore my email all day. I’m going to interpret that to mean the next update to Lectora will be extra amazing. "Title to Title Copy" Joe Wieloch, Director of Development - Lectora Online "Not everyone knows you can bring up two different titles in Lectora Online! This is a great way to be able to get existing course content and bring it into a course you are developing. From the dashboard open the second title, copy something, and you will be able to paste it into the other title you are working on." Tricky, tricky, right? If you have a main intro section that needs to be in every course, this is a great way to avoid re-creating it every time! One and Done -Wendy Miller, Lead Content Developer "If you use Photoshop to create graphics for your Lectora titles, my tip is to cram as much of the title graphics as you can stand into a single Photoshop file with the layers organized into clearly-named groups and subgroups, much like the Title Explorer in Lectora. I used to create one Photoshop file per page of my title, but found that the ‘cram’ method saves me a lot of time in the end, even though opening and saving the files is slower. Sub-tip: If it’s an option for you, get the fastest machine you can and max out the RAM!" I foresee a lot of purchasing departments getting computer upgrade requests in the near future… Work from Home -Daryl Fleary, Product Manager Daryl tried to get away with just sending the copy and paste shortcuts (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V) as his productivity tip. I made him give me another, and he very succinctly replied "work from home!" This might be my favorite tip, because when I work from home, I have a great free copy editor: What’s your best productivity secret for focusing in the office? Share yours in the comments and stay tuned for Part 2: Lectora Productivity Tips! The post Productivity Secrets from the Trivantis Pros: Pt.1 appeared first on .

When you are building an eLearning course, you will want to ensure that all learners—including those with visual impairments—are able to take your course. In many cases, a learner is using a screen reader software like JAWS, so in order to develop an accessible Web eLearning course, the order of the objects placed on a web page needs to be read in a logical order by the screen reader software. When we say a "logical order," it normally means top down, left to right, just as information would be presented to a person with full visual capabilities. The way that this is accomplished, so that a screen reader can read the web page in this logical order, is for the html objects (text, images, etc.) to be placed in an html document in the actual logical order that you would like them read by the software. Since we are using Lectora®, to design our eLearning courses and generate the html pages when we publish, we must be aware of how Lectora works, in order for the html pages to place our object in the actual logical order needed for screen reader software. Figure 1 - Title Explorer tab view of the title Figure 1 shows a picture of a typical Title Explorer tab view in Lectora, after generating a new course from a template. It has graphics and buttons along with the Course Title and the Page Title, at the title level. Then, there are 3 Chapters, and each Chapter has 3 pages in it. Finally, there is a Test at the end of the course. The way that the inheritance is set up on this course, all of the objects at the title level are inherited by all of the Chapters and Pages. For the test, none of the title level objects are inherited. So, if we were to publish this course to HTML the way that is set up now, it will publish individual html pages for each page in all of the Chapters, and for each page in the test. For the pages in the Chapters, it will place the objects at the title level FIRST on the html page in the order that they are defined in the Title Explorer. Since the Exit button comes before the Help button in the Title Explorer, it will be placed on the html page first, followed by the Help button. When this is read by a screen reader, it will read the Exit button first, followed by the Help Button. Now, after the title objects are added to the html page, then all other objects are added to the html page following inheritance order in Lectora. So, if there were objects at the Chapter level, this would be added next to the html page, in Title Explorer order. Then, any objects at the Page level would be added next to the html page, again, in Title Explorer order. If you have objects that you are not inheriting from a higher level, then they are not added to the html on a web page. So, for the test web pages, since the title objects are not inherited by the Test Chapter, they are not added to the html. The objects for the test web page are added to the html starting at the Test Chapter level, in Title Explorer order, followed by any objects on the test pages, again, in Title Explorer order. Well, that sounds easy enough, right? However, there are a couple of things that you need to be aware of and, of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. First, when you are developing in Lectora, it is very easy to move objects around visually on the pages.  Then, when the html is published and you look at the web pages visually, everything looks fine. But let a screen reader read the web page, and things are not being read in order that you would expect. That is because the way that the objects are placed on the screen to achieve a top down, left to right order visually does not match the same top down, left to right order in the Title Explorer order in Lectora, which we just discussed, for the screen reader to read the objects in the right order. So, when you are moving around objects visually on your web pages in Lectora, ensure that the order that you would like the screen reader to read your web pages is also maintained as well, by checking the order of the objects in the Title Explorer, and reordering the objects in the Title Explorer as necessary. Second, let’s discuss images and accessibility for a minute. Figure 2 shows a picture of the Logo Placeholder image Properties on the Ribbon view. Figure 2 - Logo Placeholder image Properties on the Ribbon view, showing the Empty ALT Tag checked ON For the Logo Placeholder image, we have a property called Empty ALT Tag, which is checked ON. What does this mean? Well, for images, when an image is defined in an html web page, there is an attribute that can be set with the image called the ALT tag. It allows a description to be added with the image of what the image is showing. So, in the world of accessibility and screen reader software, a screen reader cannot tell what an image looks like. However, it can read the ALT tag.  If you have nothing in the ALT tag for an image, hence, an EMPTY ALT TAG, then the screen has nothing to read and will just skip over the image, as if the image was not even there (though, visually, we can see that it is). So, when do you set the EMPTY ALT Tag? As a rule of thumb with accessibility, if the image conveys something that is important to the understanding of the web page or your course, then, we would not want to set the Empty ALT Tag. If the image has no importance to the understanding of the web page, then, we usually set the Empty ALT Tag ON. Images that we would leave Empty ALT Tag ON would include background images, border and line images, etc. If you have the Empty ALT Tag checked OFF, then, the ALT tag placed into the html web page is from the Name field on the Properties in the Ribbon view. You should always use a Name that describes the image well. For example, if the image was a boy licking an ice cream cone, then that is what we would use in the Name field to describe the image ("Boy licking an ice cream cone"). It is considered bad form to describe an image using the words "Image" or "Picture," so you would not describe the image as "Picture of a boy licking an ice cream cone." The screen reader software will indicate to you anyways that it is reading a graphic image when it finds one with its ALT tag set with a description. Now, if you are listening to a web page with your screen reader and you are not hearing the screen reader find or describe an image (even though you can see the image visually) and it was your intent to have the screen reader read the image, then, the first thing we would check is the Empty ALT Tag and see if it is checked ON. If it is, uncheck it and publish your title again to HTML.  Now, for the exceptions to the ordering rules. In Figure 2 there is also another Property for the Logo Placeholder image called Always On Top. If this property is checked ON, it will no longer place the object in logical order on the html page but will add it as one of the last items on the html page after all the others. So, why is this property here? Using Always On Top is an easy way to do layering, especially with images, to get one object to be placed on top of another object, so that visually, the layering looks the way you intended it to look. However, with accessibility and screen readers, this can have disastrous results, so, as a rule of thumb, we never use Always On Top checked ON for accessible titles. There is always another way to do the same thing as Always On Top. For example, with images, if you want one image on top of another image, then, just put the image that is supposed to be on top AFTER the other image in the Title Explorer, and you will have achieved the same results. There is one exception where it is ok to use Always On Top with accessible courses (an exception to the exception). Always On Top can be checked ON IF the object is an image AND Empty ALT Tag is also checked ON.  If you remember from previous, if the Empty ALT Tag is checked ON, the screen will not read the image anyways, so, it does not matter whether Always On Top is checked ON in this particular case. The other exception to the ordering rule is when you have set an action group so that the Set Reading Order to Last is checked ON, as in Figure 3 of the Properties of the Next Button Action Group. Figure 3 - Properties of an Action Group in Ribbon View, showing the Set Reading Order to Last property checked ON Set Reading Order to Last is an Accessibility property for an Action Group that will ONLY been available IF you set the title to Use Web Accessibility Settings, as in Figure 4 in the Title Options of the title. Figure 4 - Title Options showing the Use Web Accessibility Settings checkbox checked ON Inside of the Next Button Action Group in the sample title, we have one object, which is, the Next button. Why would you want to do this? Well, when a visual person takes an eLearning course, he or she will read the content on a particular web page, listen to audio, watch a video, play a game, etc. and then they will click the Next button to go to the next page. A screen reader user wants to do exactly the same thing, which is, read the content and go to the next page. However, they are using screen reader software. The easiest way for a screen reader user to do this is to have everything in order on the html page, first the content of the web page and then the Next button. However, most Next buttons are placed in the title at the Title level, BEFORE the content begins. So, if you remember from before, the objects are placed on the html page at the title level first before the content on a page. So, when the html is generated by Lectora, the order will be reverse from what we want, with the Next button read first by the screen reader and then the content of the web page. Before Lectora had this Set Reading Order to Last option, we would have had to add a Next button to EVERY page in a title after the web page content to achieve the order we wanted. With the Set Reading Order to Last option, we can force anything in this action group to come after the web page content. So, as a rule of thumb, we always create a Next Button Action Group at the title level, place a Next button inside of the Next Button Action Group and turn ON the checkbox for Set Reading Order for Last for the action group. Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more Lectora how-to tutorials and tips on accessibility. Joe Payne is a Web Application Architect who has been developing software in Microsoft development environments for almost 25 years. He has worked in state government for 14 years developing web solutions and has obtained a vast knowledge in Accessibility programming with Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 standards. He has developed eLearning solutions in Lectora for 7 years, including external HTML, CSS, and JavaScript extensions to resolve various web accessibility issues, and has created accessible Lectora templates. He can be reached on LinkedIn at Joe Payne. The post Accessibility: How to Order Title Objects in Lectora appeared first on .

In my last blog, I described what a variable is. It’s just a named container in which you can store a value. But why would you ever want to create your own user-defined variables? The simple answer is when you need to store a value for later use and there is currently nowhere else to store it. You can create your own storage unit out of thin air! Lectora® eLearning software provides a ton of useful variables for you to use automatically, but the Lectora programmers can’t possibly anticipate everything you might ever want to create. Here is a simple example of an instance where you would want to create your own user-defined variable. Let’s say you want to make an interactive slideshow that lets the user click ‘next’ and ‘back’ buttons to navigate forwards and backwards through a set of 10 images. Think a little bit about how this would need to work. You’ll need to know which image to show when the buttons are clicked and also keep track of which image is currently being shown so that you know when to enable and disable the navigation buttons when the first and last images are shown. DING! You need to make a user-defined variable for this because one doesn’t already exist. So, let’s make a variable! Making your own variables in Lectora is super easy. Open the Variable Manager from the Tools ribbon. The User-Defined tab is active by default. Click the Add button at the bottom of the tab. This creates a new variable and enables the Variable Information options on the right. By default, the new variable is named Variable1. But that’s not very descriptive, so you’ll want to change the name to something that describes what the variable will contain. Let’s call the variable _CurrentImage. (Tip: I like to start my variable names with an underscore so that they are placed at the top of the list in the Lectora variable selection menus.) Type that name into the Variable Name field. Now type the number 1 into the Initial Value field and click the OK button. TA-DA! You have magically created a new variable in which you can store a value and from which you can retrieve a value! Ok, so we have set an initial value of 1 for the _CurrentImage variable because we are going to show the first of our 10 images by default when the slideshow starts. So, the number 1 represents the first image. But as the user uses the slideshow we are going to change the value of _CurrentImage every time the user clicks the ‘next’ and ‘back’ buttons, so we know which image to show. To do this we will add actions to the ‘next’ and ‘back’ buttons that add 1 and subtract 1 from the _CurrentImage variable respectively. With these actions, we are both retrieving a value from and putting a new value into the _CurrentImage variable. The ‘IF’ condition retrieves the current value of _CurrentImage first. Then, if the condition is met, the actions then store a new value in the variable by adding 1 to it or subtracting 1 from it. The Modify Variable action is the primary method of putting a value into a variable or changing its current value. But you can also initialize the variable with a value when you create it in the Variable Manager as we did earlier. As for retrieving a variable’s value, you do this every time you use a condition with an action because all conditions are based on some variable’s value, whether it’s a Lectora variable or one that you created. You are also retrieving a variable value when you use a variable in the Value field of a Modify Variable action or when you use one in the Text field of a Change Contents action. But back to our slideshow…  Oh, looky here! It’s the slideshow we’ve been talking about! Playing with it is a lot more fun than talking about it! Give it a whirl and watch what happens to the _CurrentImage variable value when you click the buttons. Also notice how the ‘back’ and ‘next’ buttons disable when the value of _CurrentImage reaches 1 or 10. I could go on and on talking about how the slideshow was built and posting more screen captures, but a better way to understand how it works is to poke around in the source files for yourself! Download Lectora Desktop Version Download Lectora Online Version As I mentioned in my last blog, I am primarily a hands-on learner. So, when I was first learning to use Lectora, getting my hands on other people’s source files and digging around in them to understand how they worked was like gold! If you are a hands-on learner like me, I strongly encourage you to visit the Share section of the Trivantis Community where you will find tons of source files to download, including a slightly fancier version of this slideshow interaction. Also, if you’d like more information about variables and their use in Lectora, a great resource is the Knowledge Base section of the Trivantis Community. Just type "variables" into the Search field, and you will find a wealth of submissions about variables there. Lectora Basics is your intro to eLearning authoring with Lectora. In this blog series, Wendy Miller, Lead Content Developer here at Trivantis, will introduce you to fundamental concepts in Lectora. Wendy is a visual designer and computer programmer with extensive experience developing software, courseware, web sites, games, and multimedia. Other Lectora Basics articles: • Lectora Basics: What Is a Variable? The post Lectora Basics: Using User-Defined Variables appeared first on .

This guest blog was written by Sergey Snegirev, founder of BranchTrack.com, a cool online branching scenarios builder compatible with Lectora®, and owner of INTEA, an eLearning development company. If you are going to DevLearn this year, make sure you drop by the Lectora booth #239 and say hi to Sergey, who will be there from September 29 to October 1. You can also contact him at sergey@branchtrack.com. When a client says, "We need this title to work on phones, tablets, and desktops," it is music to my ears. Such projects require designing multiple layouts and controls, creating actions to switch between different views, and adding a lot of custom JavaScript to make it all work across various devices and browsers. For me, it all means more work and bigger budgets, which is great when you own an eLearning company. Not so great, however, if you are a corporate eLearning developer. The upcoming Lectora Responsive Course Design™ (RCD) (now in beta) makes managing layouts for different devices much easier as well as takes care of scaling your title to fill the width of any device regardless of its physical size. However, catering to multiple devices is still a lot of work. So, I’m offering you a few tips to help you build better responsive courses, faster. Scroll is back Most eLearning courses I’ve seen were designed to fit on a single screen. However, this is not feasible with phones. Trying to fit all your content on a single screen will result in nothing but frustration for you or for the learners trying to read your content in fine print. Thanks to Facebook and just about every website in the world, contemporary phone users love scrolling for new content, so make sure your course has long vertical pages and comfortable font sizes. Lectora RCD will take care of fitting your course width and making the rest scrollable. Adapt Framework is a great example of this approach, now completely feasible with Lectora. Avoid drag and drops I always avoided using drag and drop exercises, as they can be challenging to non tech-savvy users (or users with disabilities) and generally don’t offer much more instructional value than a set of good old multiple choice questions. With touch-screen devices entering the picture, dragging and dropping items around becomes even more of a nuisance to your learners. Less large images, more flat shapes Images look nice, but they don’t scale too well, and cropping them to fit different screen layouts takes time. It is much easier to use flat shapes (such as Lectora shapes) that scale better and don’t get distorted when you resize them. In general, flat colorful shapes are easier to manage and provide a modern look for your course. See the Lectora User Conference App for an example of simple, flat design. Use fonts for icons Due to their vector-based nature, fonts scale up and down perfectly on any device, so you don’t have to worry about your icons becoming fuzzy and unreadable. There are dozens of icon fonts that contain pictograms for e.g. "back," "forward," "menu," "glossary," "important," and so on. The most popular fonts are Font Awesome and IcoMoon. I’ve explained how you can add your own custom fonts to Lectora title in a recent blog. Learn some JavaScript Lectora stands out from other tools with its unique extensibility. You can add custom media players, manipulate strings, use gestures on mobile devices, change font size on the fly, and much, much more. I recommend you start with this 4-part blog series on using JQuery (a library that simplifies many JavaScript tasks) with Lectora. Editor’s Note: Make sure you visit Sergey at the Lectora DevLearn booth and let him know how much you liked this blog post. Stay tuned for information about the upcoming RCD Beta test for Lectora desktop. The post Preparing for Responsive Course Design: 5 Things You Should Start Doing Now Anyway appeared first on .

I know we said that August was a lively month here at Trivantis—I’m going to say it about September too. This month we released a new version of ReviewLink™, our online collaboration tool (sign up for a free trial). We’ve also been getting ready for DevLearn 2015 (stop by booth #239 and say hello), where we’re excited to be talking about Responsive Course Design™ (RCD) in Lectora®. Here are some more September news and eLearning how-to articles: 1. Why You Need the New ReviewLink This article shares all the details on the latest version of ReviewLink, such as how you can now upload Captivate® and Storyline® courses in addition to publishing Lectora titles for review. Plus, take a look at how a few companies used ReviewLink to save time and run a successful course pilot. 2. How and Why: GreenScreen eLearning Video Erik Lord of eLearning Chef talks about greenscreening in this article and accompanying video. He covers how to buy your own green screen and set up your own studio to record a presenter (you can use Camtasia®), along with why greenscreening is an effective eLearning technique that you can use to efficiently create videos that personalize the online learning experience. 3. Nuts and Bolts: Social Media for Learning Part 1: Extending, Including, Supporting Jane Bozarth’s Nuts and Bolts column for Learning Solutions Magazine is always a good read, and this article was an interesting and in-depth look at using social tools to stay connected with learners such as Pinterest boards for onboarding. 4. Accessibility: How to Order Title Objects in Lectora In this how-to article, Web Application Architect Joe Payne explains how to order objects in your Lectora eLearning course so that a screen reader software like JAWS can read them in a logical order for learners with visual impairments. 5. Lectora Basics: What Is a Variable? If you’ve ever been confused about variables, this post is for you. In this article, Wendy Miller explains the concept of variables using an interactive piece (that she built in Lectora!) to show you exactly what a variable is. Stay tuned for more posts like these from Wendy, including post number two in the Lectora Basics series—an intro to eLearning authoring with Lectora. Bonus RCD post by Sergey Snegirev, who will also be at DevLearn with the Trivantis team: Preparing for Responsive Course Design: 5 Things You Should Be Doing Now Anyway. What interesting eLearning articles did you read this month? Share them in the comments below. Captivate® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Storyline® is a registered trademark of Articulate Global, Inc. The post The Best of eLearning in September 2015 appeared first on .

  "Freelancer." "Independent contractor." Consultant." Sound familiar? 50 percent of the American workforce will be freelancing by 2020, according to Freelancers Union projections. They call freelancing "the new normal." According to a July 2015 survey of freelance workers by Upwork, contract history and feedback from previous clients was the number one most important factor in winning a work project. Of course, you can’t just click your heels three times and become a successful freelancer with a steady rotation of clients who will recommend you to others. So, how do you break into the freelance market? I scoured the internet for tips—here they are! 1. Be a social butterfly. Christopher Pappas of eLearning Industry says, "An important part of being successful in the eLearning industry is getting your name out there and growing your online visibility." A great way to achieve this is through social media sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter. He recommends posting "regular updates, publish your eLearning articles that others might find interesting, and keep in touch with current and potential clients." Read more from Christopher Pappas here: 7 Tips Every eLearning Freelancer Should Know to Land More Jobs. Bonus tip: eLearning forums like the Trivantis Community are a great place to network! Join today. 2. Tell everyone you know. While the first tip is about connecting with professionals already in the eLearning market that you don’t know, experts also recommend leveraging connections you already have. UX designer Emil Lamprecht shares his secrets to becoming a successful freelancer in a CareerFoundry.com article, including saying "the very first thing I did when deciding to make the switch [to freelance] was to get in touch with every single person I have ever known and told them my decision. I told them the field I was going to be working in and as it became clear, even the date I was planning to leave my awful day job (in 30 days time). I also told them that I would be more than happy to take on projects straight away…for three reasons: experience, contacts, and references." 3. It’s all about that portfolio. This particular tip echoed across the internet: "Portfolios should be considered the cornerstone for every e-learning professional," says instructional designer and consultant Ashley Chiasson. "For e-learning professionals, and for many folks working in other visual industries, a visual portfolio is essential. I said it. Essential. A portfolio will help you out if you eventually seek to change jobs, roles, or move into a freelance/contracting role, and it will quell the inevitable question from prospective employers/clients, ‘can we see some work samples and/or your portfolio?’" 4. Choose your examples wisely. Another instructional designer, Kristen Anthony, had suggestions on how to make your portfolio the best possible. She says, "If you’re serious about getting experience and building a portfolio the secret sauce that will set you apart (come closer…) is to make stuff that does two things: First, is indicative of the type of stuff you actually want to be doing when you are employed. Second, illustrates to your target audience that you know how to solve their pain points." 5. Pitch to clients you’re interested in. Freelance writer Elizabeth Nicholas says, "Whether you’re a freelance writer, marketer or graphic designer, your clients will be hiring you for your skills, not your comprehensive knowledge of their company or industry." Why does this matter? According to Nicholas, you shouldn’t go after "companies you think you should because of your experience, but rather pursue companies or work you believe in. Why? Because if you’re not interested in the work, it’ll be even harder to finish, since you won’t have a boss looking over your shoulder." See all her tips here: How to Become a Successful Freelancer in 6 Months. And of course, one last tip from your friends at Trivantis: Download a free 30-day trial of Lectora® Inspire, so you can make amazing eLearning samples for your portfolio! The post 5 Tips for Promoting and Pitching Yourself as an eLearning Freelancer appeared first on .

Tracking learner success is always on trend; it’s how learning and development professionals determine the effectiveness of training initiatives. xAPI (often called The Experience API, Tin Can, or the next generation of SCORM) helps us measure learner success by tracking many types of learning experiences. So, for this Thursday’s Trending eLearning Topic, I decided to focus on xAPI and collect resources that can help you understand xAPI and just a few of the possibilities for tracking training at your organization. Here are a few blog posts, articles, and videos on xAPI: • Why the Experience API Is Crucial to Your eLearning Success • The Experience API: What You Need to Know • Lectora Inspire 12.0 Best Practices for xAPI • Rick Zanotti interviews one Lectora® user on xAPI in Lectora Live 9: Jared Schaalje on Lectora Templates & xAPI • Lectora and xAPI If you’re using Lectora, this xAPI Launcher that John Blackmon, Chief Technical Officer at Trivantis, posted in the Trivantis Community can help (another great reason to join the community: • xAPI Launcher John also shared this pdf as an additional resource: • Launching xAPI content without an LMS You can even attend xAPI Camp, a one-day learning event that includes xAPI case studies and ideas. And of course, this trending topic roundup wouldn’t be complete without a link to the experienceapi.com website, where the folks at Rustici Software provide clear and in-depth explanations of xAPI, how it works, and more. Have you used xAPI to track learner activity at your company? Share your experience in the comments or start a discussion in the Trivantis Community. Want more trending topics? Take a look at last month’s post on eLearning for all generations. The post Thursday’s Trending eLearning Topic: xAPI appeared first on .

Sharing—and receiving—criticism on a project at work is tough. "Threats to our standing in the eyes of others are remarkably potent biologically, almost as those to our very survival," explains psychologist Daniel Goleman. In our brains, criticism is seen as a threat to our survival. If criticism isn’t presented well, our brains try to protect us from the threat, which can prevent us from benefiting and improving our eLearning work. As challenging as it is to give criticism on an eLearning course carefully, ensuring that the delivery is smooth and organized can be a huge help. Collaboration software like ReviewLink™ can allow team members, SMEs, and anyone involved in the development process to share feedback in an efficient way, when used correctly. And following the tips below can help prevent constructive criticism from coming across as a threat to fellow colleagues. Special thanks to our Lead Content Developer at Trivantis, Wendy Miller, for sharing her tips for giving and receiving constructive criticism in ReviewLink. 5 tips for giving constructive criticism in ReviewLink: 1. Be very specific about what your comment is referring to. If you are commenting on a piece of content that isn’t always visible on the page, like a popup or a tab, state where to find the content. Avoid vague and unhelpful generalizations such as "Not engaging" unless you plan to provide specifics about how to improve it. 2. Always clearly state the action to be taken by the developer. If more than one person is reviewing the content and there are differing opinions on an issue, try to resolve the conflict and state the action to be taken before sending the course back to the developer.  3. Be diplomatic. "That picture sucks" is not a useful comment. There are no language police on ReviewLink, but try to be as diplomatic as you can and always make a suggestion for how you would like to see something changed or improved. 4. Be a guide. When you provide feedback, you can suggest alternate ideas, but don’t be authoritarian about it. Think of the review process as a conversation, and don’t make your feedback the voice of final authority. Even though you may have a good plan, you still want the developer to have ownership of the course. Here’s a great article with more rules for giving feedback. 5. If more than 1 person is reviewing, read all existing comments first before making a new comment. Your issue may have already been posted and you can add to the conversation if necessary. Make the Comment Summary unique from any existing comments on the page if possible. This will make it easier for the developer to find and address individual issues.  What are your suggestions for giving constructive criticism on an eLearning course? Share them in the comments below. Try ReviewLink free today—sign up for a free 30-day trial. The post The Truth Hurts: Giving Constructive Criticism appeared first on .

With mLearning on the rise, learners are starting to expect to be able to take courses on their mobile devices—and they expect them to look good. There are certain best practices you should always follow to ensure your courses provide the best user experience. First things first: bigger isn’t always better. I know my phone is constantly telling me that I don’t have enough memory to even update the apps already on my phone—let alone download an entire eLearning course! (I use my phone to take a lot of pictures of my cat, as loyal Everything eLearning Blog readers have probably noticed.) John Blackmon, Chief Technology Officer of Trivantis, recommends that you always keep course bandwidth in mind when creating mobile learning. "That 500MB HD video that looked so great on the desktop version of your course just takes too long to download on your student’s phone to be useful. You can create a much smaller resolution version of the video, or perhaps cut out any unneeded sequences so that it is quick and to the point for your mobile user," says Blackmon. File size isn’t the only thing you want to cut down on. You should also consider how long your course would take for the user to complete. "Generally, when the course is being consumed on a mobile device, the user is on the go, and doesn’t have time for a three hour sit down course. Keep the material short and pertinent to the task at hand," says Blackmon. That probably means you shouldn’t add any superfluous cat photos, unfortunately… Embrace the touch screen. "Whether you’re building content for delivery on a smartphone or tablet, remember to design for touch," says Laura Silver, VP of Product Management at Trivantis. "This naturally applies to buttons, which you’ll want to make ‘finger friendly’—easy to tap with the pad of your fingertip." You can check out her tutorial on building finger-friendly buttons for mLearning to learn more. Sergey Snegirev of BranchTrack recommends avoiding drag and drop questions when designing mobile learning. Why? "They can be challenging to non tech-savvy users (or users with disabilities)," he says. "With touch-screen devices entering the picture, dragging and dropping items around becomes even more of a nuisance to your learners." Ready to create some amazing mLearning? The upcoming Responsive Course Design™ in Lectora® is just what you need! Check out this whitepaper for more information and stay tuned for the Lectora desktop beta test of Responsive Course Design (RCD) coming in mid October. The post Want to Create the Best Responsive Courses? Follow These Best Practices appeared first on .

We’re back! Team Trivantis® took a field trip to Las Vegas last week for DevLearn 2015. We had some awesome guests at our booth, Sergey Snegirev and Rick Zanotti, and loved getting to talk to our users in person. (Jen Johnson, Sergey Snegirev from BranchTrack, Daryl Fleary) We also had a blast hanging out with our friends the eLearning Brothers and giving away a free license of Lectora® Inspire. (That’s Jen Johnson, Director of Sales, in the Expo Hall with those awesome bros—and Elvis! Photo by the eLearning Brothers.) Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games at DevLearn 2015. Serious learning happened in the breakout sessions and at DemoFest. So, what were the hot topics this year? 1. xAPI xAPI isn’t really the "new kid on the block" anymore, but it’s still what everyone is talking about. Lectora has supported xAPI since its release, and many people stopping by our booth told us that Lectora is the best tool on the market for xAPI. Learn more about Lectora and xAPI in this post: Thursday’s Trending eLearning Topic: xAPI. 2. Responsive Course Design Our newest feature, Responsive Course Design™ (RCD), generated a lot of buzz at DevLearn. John Blackmon, Chief Technology Officer, and Daryl Fleary, Product Manager, showed a demo of RCD in Lectora. If you missed it, view a recorded webinar from John on RCD in the Trivantis Community. (Daryl and John before their presentation) 3. The Cloud It was clear at DevLearn that more and more companies are moving to the cloud. Some attendees we talked to would only consider products in the cloud! Which makes Trivantis products a great fit-Lectora Online, ReviewLink™, and CourseMill® Hosted all work in the cloud. 4. ReviewLink for All We also got to share our other big news—that ReviewLink is now available for use with Adobe® Captivate and Articulate® Storyline courses in addition to Lectora content. ReviewLink is our online review tool that lets eLearning developers host published courses and manage feedback all in one place. The latest version of ReviewLink is also responsive. Start your free trial and discover a faster, simpler, more effective review process today! We hope to see you next year at DevLearn 2016! The post DevLearn 2015 Recap appeared first on .

The eLearning Brothers recently earned a 2015 Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Learning Bronze Award for Best Use of Games and Simulations. Even better—they used Lectora® to create the award-winning course! It featured a time travel theme, cool cars, and solid instructional design supporting the client’s needs. (The color car you choose doesn’t matter for the course, but it’s fun to have an option! I chose purple, in case anyone was wondering.) The eLearning Brothers team for this project consisted of Bruce Adams, Deb Bowden, and Adam Leibler. The course is called Ally F&I History and takes learners back in time to see the history of Ally through the decades using a time traveling car. We asked Adam to share with us a couple insights into how the course creation went down. Instructional design was key. Adam said there was a clear and open communication with the client throughout the entire pre-development instructional design stage. "We went back over several iterations with the client over ‘okay, what is really important decade to decade,’ and we stayed focused on those learning objectives." Using the right tool. I asked Adam why the eLearning Brothers chose to use Lectora for this project. The choice was partly client-driven. Ally had used Lectora before and knew they would be able to make edits on their own in the future if the course needed updating. The second reason? "We wanted to do things in Lectora that haven’t been done before," said Adam. The final course is packed with interactive elements, videos, music, and knowledge checks cleverly wrapped up in games. (Quiz #1… pretty cool looking!) Our Community Manager, Jennifer Valley, took a look under the hood at the specific instructional design decisions that made this course so great. Check out her thoughts in this post at the Trivantis® Community. The post Creating Award Winning Learning with Lectora appeared first on .

Do you have a spare minute to check out some tips for being more productive? I bet you do—if you read the first installment of Productivity Secrets from the Trivantis Pros. That post focused mainly on general work productivity, but I also promised you more secrets for being more productive in Lectora®. Here they are! Stay Organized "In the Title Explorer, name your objects, variables, and actions so they are clear and meaningful to you. Expand and collapse chapters, sections, and pages so they’re tucked away when you’re not focusing on them. Turn on the ‘Show buttons for hiding objects in the Title Explorer’ option in Preferences so you can collapse title and chapter level objects as well. Watch my webinar on Conquering the Title Explorer." -Laura Silver, Director of Product Management "I think one of the biggest overlooked tools is the ‘My Library’ area. I keep all of my most used media elements there, as well as a few library objects that are frequently used. It’s easy to access—and always present—so it makes things faster than searching for that image you always use somewhere on your hard drive." -John Blackmon, Chief Technology Officer Sneaky Shortcuts = Speed "Set your own Editors in Preferences. If you prefer to use your favorite image, audio, or text editing software, you can set that up in Lectora. Then when you select ‘Edit’ for an object, it will open right up directly in your editor of choice." -Laura Silver, Director of Product Management "In Lectora® Online you can drag images from your desktop or file system and drop them right into your courses.  You can also copy images from image editors or preview applications and then paste them into Lectora Online using the new Paste from Operating System feature. These are things that everyone should try!" -Joe Wieloch, Director of Development - Lectora Online Of course, we all know that an eLearning project doesn’t end with development. There’s still that pesky review and approval process to contend with. Don’t worry—our experts have some tips for that too! Stay tuned for Productivity Secrets Part 3: The Review Process. The post Productivity Secrets from the Trivantis Pros: Pt 2 appeared first on .