Congratulations to the 109 Globe University & Minnesota School of Business Online students who have dedicated themselves to meeting perfect attendance during the Spring 2015 quarter.  To meet perfect attendance while taking online courses is defined as meeting the discussion board deadlines and expectations each week (Monday through Sunday).  Perfect attendance takes dedication and these students have shown that to reach this accomplishment.  Congratulations! Perfect Attendance for Spring Quarter 2015 The post 109 Students Achieve Perfect Attendance for Spring Quarter! appeared first on Globe University Blog.

On July 28th, the Veterinary dentistry class at Globe University - Moorhead, offered free nail trims and provided information on pet dental health at the 25th Annual PAWS walk. This was a service learning project for the class. The students prepared a display board that contained dental care information and held a drawing for a basket of dental health products that was given away at the end of the walk. Seven Globe University veterinary technician students participated in this year’s event. Our students helped at the event and aided in Fargo’s Homeward Animal Shelter which raised over $36,000 for homeless cats and dogs in the Fargo-Moorhead Community. Heather Klefstad, Special Events/PR Coordinator for the Homeward Animal Shelter was very impressed with the leadership and professionalism from the Globe University students. "The Vet Tech students at Globe University, adde d to the already great event. We appreciate their help with the event, the nail trimmings and the education that they provided to our community was incredible," said Klefstad. Homeward Animal Shelter is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, formally named the F-M Humane Society.   The post Moorhead Students Educate Community About Pet Health appeared first on Globe University Blog.

Did you know that each month we share a free download—the Fab Freebie—in our monthly Trivantis eNewsletter? Yup, that’s right—we give away a FREE download every month! It’s pretty awesome. Here are the two most recent Fab Freebies: Seamless Repeating Slideshow For the July Fab Freebie, we built a seamless repeating slideshow using images from the 2015 Lectora® User Conference in Nashville. This animation can be customized with your images to work for any type of course. Animated Office Environment For the June Fab Freebie, we built an animated office environment using images from the eLearning Brothers stock library. Download the Lectora 12 library object to use it in your own course! What other Fab Freebies have we shared? Take a look at these: • Drag and Drop Interaction • Button Kit • Tabbed Pages Interaction Get all these Fab Freebies—and more—in the Trivantis Community! Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more free resources, eLearning help, and product news. The post Fab Freebies for the Win appeared first on .

It’s a multi-device world out there. We all know it. More than 60% of online adults in the US and the UK use at least two devices every day. How many devices have you used today? So far I’ve used my personal cell phone and my work computer, and it’s not even noon. Alaska Air knew that their pilots needed a device other than a desktop computer to access their training. After all—they’re busy flying all over the world! They might not always have access to a desktop computer. That’s why Alaska Air uses CourseMill® Mobile to deliver pilot training on iPads—and Lectora® authoring software to create mobile friendly content! Take a look at this recap from the 2015 Lectora User Conference and follow Alaska Air’s lead in creating a better mobile experience with Lectora HTML extensions. But, mobile is more than just smartphones and tablets. According to a Tech Pro Research survey, 29% of companies surveyed were using, planning to use, or budgeting for wearables and have included them in their BYOD plan. Tech Pro isn’t the only company that sees wearables on the horizon. Have you heard the phrase "Internet of Things?" The Internet of Things, or IoT for short, includes things like the Apple watch or other wearables. Craig Weiss of E-Learning 24/7 says, "The hottest item for wearables and IoT right now are the fitness trackers. Fitness in fact is super hot for IoT, which if you think about it, why isn’t it (IoT) being used for PE or school exercise classes as we speak? I can’t think of one school that uses IoT fitness for their PE or exercise class." As a Fitbit wearer myself, I thought Weiss’s idea was pretty genius and almost a no-brainer once I read it. For example, childhood obesity is a significant challenge in America right now. Programs like Michelle Obama’s "Let’s Move!" fitness program are working to counter that, but could we do more? What if every child had a wearable fitness tracker and could use that to see how their activity translates into calories burned and how what they eat impacts their health? You could take that idea even further and add a social component to fitness tracking—or any other type of training. Adding a little bit of friendly competition is an easy way to get kids interested in an activity, but you might be surprised by how well that works with adults too. An easy way to host and share web-based courses, videos, documents, and more is through CourseMill® Wave. Encourage your team to share the results of their training activities. For the youth fitness example, it could be a group of students choreographing their own hip hop routine and then sharing the video they took on a smartphone—and the number of steps their fitness trackers counted—on CourseMill Wave. For a corporate organization, it might be a video of one person demonstrating how to set up the printer to print on unusual sizes of paper—something I showed a colleague just last week! There are so many things you can do with mLearning today! For more mobile musings, free downloads, and Lectora tips, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post Where Is mLearning Going? appeared first on .

We’re bringing back the Thursday’s Trending eLearning Topic blog series, so today we’re going to talk about the future—a popular topic not only in the eLearning industry, but also in the whole world. For example, right now I have a poster in my office at Trivantis (from our recent "Find the Future" themed user conference) with this quote: "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." -Eleanor Roosevelt.  At that 2015 Lectora® User Conference in Nashville, our users shared some awesome ideas from the future-focused training they’re creating using Lectora. Here are just a few ways that they’re finding the future: • Colleen Liley of Alaska Air shares tips on using Lectora to create mobile training courses: LUC 2015 Recap: Creating a Better Mobile Experience • Emil Heidkamp from Sonata Learning discusses balance in gamification: Balancing Difficulty in eLearning Games & Simulations To see photos and more about the Find the Future LUC 2015 conference, read these blog posts: • Here’s an overall summary of the week: Future Highlights: 2015 Lectora User Conference Recap • One of our awesome keynote speakers reflects on "Lessons from Nashville" here: 2015 Lectora User Conference Recap by Donald H Taylor The future of learning management is here. Take a look at what advanced reporting capabilities allow you to do for your learning and development program: • Watch this recorded webinar: Custom Reports Made Easy • If you’d prefer, you can read the blog post that Stephanie Ivec wrote about the webinar: eLearning Lesson: Custom Reports Made Easy Like this Trending Topic post? Check out one of my favorite past posts: Thursday’s Trending e-Learning Topic: Engaging Training Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog so that you don’t miss the next Trending Topic, plus Lectora tips, and more. The post Thursday’s Trending eLearning Topic: Future appeared first on .

Engaged learners are what we are actually looking for in eLearning. In this article, I’ll share 6 tips to create engaging eLearning courses that will allow you to increase your audience’s engagement levels by using a variety of eLearning resources, techniques, and strategies. How to Create Engaging eLearning Courses: 6 Tips for eLearning Professionals How your learners feel towards their learning matters. When the eLearning process engages them, apart from indicating the eLearning course’s quality, it motivates them to persist more, procrastinate less, and learn more effectively. When your eLearning course fails to engage your audience, it means that it simply does not work. Therefore, your learners’ engagement should always be your main concern. Employing synchronous and asynchronous learning has proven to be a particularly engaging strategy; using a wide range of eLearning resources and approaches increases interest, curiosity, and commitment, elements which are fundamental in creating engaging eLearning experiences. Use these 6 tips to make absolutely sure that your eLearning deliverable convinces your learners that it is worth sticking around for. 1. Make sure that your eLearning course is well-structured.  People dislike ambiguity; and when your learners start a new eLearning course, most of it is uncharted territory for them. Especially when following a mixed approach, the structure of your eLearning course must be as clear as possible. A well-structured blend of online resources offers clear-cut eLearning objectives and goals from the beginning. Include specific instructions regarding the guidelines, the estimated workload, and the assessment rules, as well as how interactivity among you, your learners, and the eLearning content will work. This last one is particularly important, as interactions can be significantly facilitated by structure. Carefully structured eLearning courses increase your learners’ confidence about their competence, which in return increases their level of engagement. The more logical and coherent the structure of your eLearning course is, the more easily your audience will navigate through it, and the more interested they will be in following your eLearning approach. 2. Create attention grabbing, relevant, and challenging eLearning content.  Capturing your audience’s attention has the biggest impact on their knowledge retention, and in order for your eLearning course to be attention grabbing, it must both stimulate your learners’ curiosity and be relevant to them. Using a variety of eLearning resources, such as video, audio, avatars, music, and animations, has a significant effect on your learners’ engagement and can dramatically decrease the tendency that they may have to get bored and drop out. It is quite simple: the more interesting your eLearning course is, the more engaging it will be. Furthermore, engagement levels increase in proportion to personal relevance levels; when your learners can relate to your eLearning content, they can absorb the information faster. Use stories and scenarios that offer real world benefits and practical examples of the content. By helping your learners understand how they can put what they are learning to use, you will motivate them to enjoy the eLearning process by doing something not only interesting, but also useful to them. Finally, given that the greater the effort the greater the sense of accomplishment, engage your learners by offering them challenging eLearning tasks and assignments and the opportunity to satisfy their need for achievement. Inspire them to stretch their limits to a better performance via a combination of eLearning activities, such as stimulating eLearning games and branching scenarios that test their critical thinking and problem solving skills. 3. Reassure your learners with your presence.  One of the keys to online learning is to reinforce your learners’ sense of belonging by following a variety of approaches to make sure that they don’t feel alienated or isolated. Reassuring your audience that they can easily approach you when needed is a great way to engage them. Providing them with your contact information is not enough presence for an instructor. Make sure that you actively participate in online discussions to give advice or inspire brainstorming. You could promote the use of social media as an eLearning platform, for instance, by creating an eLearning Facebook group related to your eLearning course, and regularly communicating with them via frequent online chats. This way you will not only establish and enhance an eLearning community by encouraging your learners to interact with each other and exchange ideas and thoughts, but also, and perhaps most importantly, foster a sense of presence that will inspire even the most introverted members of your audience to express themselves. 4. Monitor your learners’ performance.  To make sure that the eLearning experience you offer not only engages your learners but also keeps them engaged, you need to monitor your audience’s levels of engagement throughout your eLearning course. Start monitoring their performance as early as you can, preferably in the first week, and identify these learners who are performing poorly by taking advantage of your learning management system; most learning management systems generate automated performance reports. Use quizzes and tests as online activities and give extra time for your face-to-face interactions with your learners, for instance via video calls, to comment on their test results, answer their questions, and resolve their issues. Having a clear idea of your audience’s performance at all stages of your eLearning course will allow you to observe when and why their engagement levels peak and drop, so that you will be able to take all the necessary measures to keep them high. 5. Offer your audience timely feedback.  Providing your learners with feedback about their performance is essential to building and maintaining engagement, and online learning can significantly facilitate the performance evaluation process. Again, your learning management system will allow you to use its automatically generated reports for offering feedback to your learners in an online environment, but the key here is to make sure that your feedback is immediate. Giving your audience the opportunity to correct errors quickly enhances their retention, as it allows them to immediately learn from their mistakes. Delayed assessments are, more often than not, barely useful; instant indications of performance and progress help your learners stay engaged and interested in trying harder to perform better. 6. Follow up to recapture the disengaged.  Sometimes, even if you are sure that you have taken all the necessary measures to engage your learners, there will still be members of your audience that are more vulnerable to procrastination, disengagement, and, ultimately, to dropping out. To prevent such occurrences, make sure that you maintain a personal contact with each one of your learners, especially with those who have showed a clear tendency to stop engaging, usually at key points, such as tests or difficult assessments. Online learning offers a variety of ways to contact and offer your support to your audience: emails, live chats, threaded discussion boards, blog comments, and video calls. Any of these strategies will help your discontent learners communicate their problems and concerns. Make sure that you offer them the opportunity to negotiate disengaging conditions, such as assessment due dates or alternative ways for evaluating performance, and you will be able to recapture all members of your audience, even those who were hesitant to respond to their eLearning experience from the start. Keep these tips for engaging eLearning courses in mind and help your audience become true agents of learning, rather than passive recipients. Now that you know all about how to create engaging eLearning courses, you may be interested in learning more about how to avoid drop-outs. Read the article Get Them Hooked: 6 Tips To Improve Learner Retention In eLearning Courses And Avoid Drop-Outs and discover how to direct your learners’ attention, improve their retention, and ensure the success of your eLearning deliverable. For more guest blogs by industry insiders, plus Lectora® and CourseMill® tips, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post 6 Tips to Create Engaging eLearning Courses appeared first on .

This month’s Best of eLearning list includes articles on everything from new ideas for learning—like wearables and Snapchat—to how to speed up your eLearning development with Lectora® variables. I even included a bonus blog post at the end… with some free eLearning downloads. Take a look at these 10 eLearning articles that I chose from the month of July: 1. Getting Social with Lectora Instructional designer Jennifer Valley discusses pros, cons, and tips on adding social media to your learning campaign. 2. Nuts and Bolts: It’s Not Just About "Compliance": Accessibility in eLearning Jane Bozarth discusses the importance of creating training that’s usable for everyone in this Learning Solutions Magazine article. 3. eLearning 101: Getting Started With Online Training This article provides an interesting history of eLearning, along with the basics of how to start creating training courses. 4. Toolbox Tip: Using Lectora Variables This post on Learning Technologies Blog explains how to speed up eLearning development by using Lectora Variables. 5. What You Need to Know About the Experience API (xAPI) Learn the basics of the Experience API (xAPI) and how you can use it to track learning experiences in your training.  6. 10 Interaction Design Books The eLearning Coach Connie Malamad has selected ten interaction design books that have good lessons for learning experience designers. 7. Improve Your eLearning Flow with the Signaling Principle The eLearning Brothers share how to follow Richard E. Mayer’s Signaling Principle in eLearning design. 8. Where Is mLearning Going? See how Alaska Air uses mobile learning to deliver pilot training on iPads, along with ideas for incorporating wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) in learning. 9. Oh, Snap! 4 Ways to Use Snapchat to Tell Training Stories Check out these ideas for using Snapchat Stories in your learning and development strategy. 10. eLearning Lesson: Custom Reports Made Easy See how easy it is to create live desktop shortcuts to your reporting dashboard with Live Excel and CourseMill® learning management system. Interesting thoughts on Snapchat, right? While I’m not sure that will become the next big L&D phenomenon, it’s an idea I hadn’t seen before. And since I promised you a bonus blog post, here it is: Fab Freebies for the Win. To get next month’s Best of eLearning post, plus more Lectora tips, and eLearning news, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post The Best of eLearning in July 2015 appeared first on .

First time eLearning developers, this blog post is for you. If you’re new to eLearning and building your first course, read the tips below to find out where to get started, where to get answers, and more. And if you’re an eLearning pro, keep reading to find out how you can save time and share your expertise with beginners (or connect with other experts)! Here are 5 tips to help you jump right into eLearning development: 1. Get started right away with cloud authoring. If you want to start creating your course immediately, a cloud authoring tool like Lectora® Online is the way to go. With cloud authoring, you don’t have to wait to download any software because everything is online. And with Lectora Online’s easy-to-use interface, you won’t waste time trying to learn a difficult tool. 2. Remember that your SMEs are there to help. SME stands for subject matter expert. If you haven’t already met them, these are the experts on the topic your course will teach. SMEs are a valuable resource, so take advantage of meetings with them: prepare notes ahead of time, ask plenty of questions, and take their concerns and criticism of your course seriously. 3. Connect with more experienced eLearning developers. When you’re building your first training course, you don’t want to waste time if you get stuck. Connecting with other developers who have been creating courses longer than you will give you a community to ask for help if that happens. Sound like a plan? Join the Trivantis Community today! 4. Watch the experts demonstrate best practices. Catch up on free webinars by watching recordings in the Trivantis Community. You’ll learn timesaving Lectora tips, course examples from users just like you, and more. Want more info on a particular topic? Search for it in the Knowledge Base or post a question in the discussion forum. 5. Include a post-course evaluation. Ask your learners what they thought of your course: what they liked, what they would change, and how easy it was to navigate. You can include all these questions in a post-course evaluation, which will show you what you can improve in your design next time. Questions about Lectora or which software is right for you? Email us at Info@Trivantis.com! For more eLearning tips, news, and the occasional freebie, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post First Time eLearning Developer? Jump Right in with These 5 Tips appeared first on .

The term "Internet of Things" was coined by British entrepreneur Kevin Ashton in 1999. So for the rest of this blog, every time I say "Internet of Things," I’m going to need you to read it in a British accent in your head. Okay? Great! I think we’re off to a good start. According to research firm Gartner, Inc., there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. Other estimates say 30 billion. That’s a lot of things. What exactly are these things? The Internet of Things refers to the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity allowing them to exchange data with the manufacturer, operator, or other connected devices. This includes: • The fitness tracker you’re wearing on your wrist • That fancy Nest thermostat that learns your heat preferences over time • Heart monitoring implants • Automobiles with built-in sensors • And so much more Here’s how Wired.com described the Internet of Things: "The Internet of Things revolves around increased machine-to-machine communication; it’s built on cloud computing and networks of data-gathering sensors; it’s mobile, virtual, and instantaneous connection; and they say it’s going to make everything in our lives from streetlights to seaports ‘smart.’" For the 2015 budget, the UK Government allocated £40,000,000 towards research into the Internet of Things. The reasoning? "This is the next stage of the information revolution, connecting up everything from urban transport to medical devices to household appliances." They also lowered the duty on beer, spirits, and cider… I think it’s time for me to go visit our partners in the UK! In a previous blog, I briefly discussed Craig Weiss’s idea of using Fitbits for learning, which is a great Internet of Things strategy. How else could the Internet of Things impact eLearning? Suppose workers in a dangerous factory environment wore activity trackers that sensed when they performed tasks incorrectly, in ways that could endanger themselves or other workers? The activity tracker could submit data about an employee’s erroneous action back to the company’s learning management system, and the learning management system could automatically assign that employee a refresher course on safety procedures. A key part of the Internet of Things is the cloud.  Wired contributor Daniel Burrus notes, "The Internet of Things doesn’t function without cloud-based applications to interpret and transmit the data coming from all these sensors." Luckily, we’re already in the cloud at Trivantis! Not literally—our office is on the second floor. But we are working hard to bring you full-featured, cloud-based learning tools, like the knowledge sharing platform CourseMill® Wave. Who knows what we’ll be bringing you in the future of the Internet of Things! Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more hot topics, industry trends, and eLearning tips. The post eLearning and the Internet of Things appeared first on .

A learning experience is only worthwhile if it gives learners tools and skills they can use in the real world. In this article, I’ll discuss the characteristics of performance assessment, present 3 different types of performance assessment, and share 4 tips for using performance assessment in eLearning to ensure that your learners are able to apply knowledge both in and out of the virtual learning environment. Performance Assessment in eLearning Performance assessment determines a learner’s level of mastery and proficiency when completing "authentic" processes, problems, or tasks. Learners must utilize a diverse range of skills and their pre-existing knowledge base to tackle the challenge on their own, and prove that they are able to apply previously learned information in real world environments. For example, corporate learners might be asked to complete a task using the point of sale to determine whether they have the knowledge and skills it takes to operate the system. A performance assessment can also include a "finished product" which students must develop and display to their peers. Essentially, this form of assessment determines how well learners can apply the information they have acquired, rather than how much information they have acquired. Marc Chun, an Education Program Officer at the Hewlett Foundation, highlighted 5 key attributes of an effective performance task [1]: 1. The student must participate in a real-world scenario that features a problem, challenge, or situation they would encounter in realistic environments. 2. The performance task must involve an authentic process which accurately reflects the complexity and ambiguity of challenges they would face in the real world. 3. Each task must require higher-order thinking, such as critical thinking and analytic reasoning skills, to solve the problem or overcome the challenge. 4. The finished product or outcome of the task must genuinely reflect what the individual would produce in real life settings. 5. The evaluation process or criteria must be fully transparent. All learning objectives, goals, and desired outcomes should be addressed in advance. 3 Types of Performance Assessment The three types of performance assessment below incorporate Chun’s key attributes for effectiveness. 1. Online Portfolios. Throughout the eLearning course, learners collect their best performance-based examples, which are then evaluated at the end of the eLearning course. Learners are encouraged to provide feedback and insight for each piece. For example, they might identify skill sets that need to be developed in order to improve the outcome. 2. Online collaboration projects. Learners work together to create a website, and online presentation, or any other online project that showcases their skills and knowledge mastery. For more advanced learners, you can even ask them to create their own branching scenarios that their peers must complete. 3. Online Simulations. Learners participate in a virtual scenario that centers on a real-world challenge or situation. They must apply their knowledge and skill sets to navigate through the simulation and achieve the desired outcome. 4 Tips to Use Performance Assessment in eLearning Now that you know what performance assessment is—and a few different types—keep these 4 tips in mind as you draft your assessment strategy. 1. Create a mission statement. Before your learners begin a performance assessment in eLearning, they must have a clear idea of why they are being evaluated. Create a mission statement to help them understand the evaluation methods and eLearning goals. Your mission statement should answer these questions: • What is the purpose of the performance assessment—what specific skills will be evaluated? • What is expected of learners? • What should your learners know at this point? Be as specific as possible so that both you and your learners know exactly what you are looking for and how you will be monitoring learners’ progress. 2. Context is key. The most important aspect of a performance assessment in eLearning is that it must be authentic. Simply asking your learners to complete a task or online scenario is not enough. The learners must apply their skills and information from the course in order to complete the online task, as they would in the real world. You are preparing them for the world outside the virtual classroom, and a performance assessment lets you know if they are ready to take on the challenges that await. 3. Develop a specific set of criteria. Successful performance assessment in eLearning has a pre-determined set of criteria that is the same for each member of your audience. This puts every learner on equal ground and gives learners the opportunity to evaluate their progress at various stages of the eLearning course. Explain what specific elements of the task will you be examining, and how much weight each element will carry in terms of overall score. For example, if the eLearning course’s primary goal was to develop a particular skill set, this would be your main focus in the assessment, and all other elements would be secondary. You can also ask your learners to take part in the criteria development process, so that they are able to identify what skills or information they think are vital. 4. Develop performance assessment that requires a broad range of skills. One of the most significant advantages of using performance assessment in eLearning is that you have the opportunity to evaluate a wide range of skills. The most realistic assessments require your learners to utilize multiple skills and pieces of information to tackle challenges. Performance assessment in eLearning encourages them to combine their skills, talents, and abilities in order to achieve a favorable outcome, and you can evaluate this process in real-time. Rather than just asking them a series of questions or asking them to outline in writing the process they would use, you get to see it in action, such as through an online collaboration project like the group presentation or website suggested earlier. This results in more accurate and effective feedback and evaluation because you are able to monitor how they apply knowledge and use their skills to navigate every step of the task. One of the most significant advantages of performance assessment in eLearning is that it can be used to assess any online course. Whether it’s mastering a task or applying knowledge to solve real world problems, performance assessment can be a powerful and versatile tool to evaluate the ROI of your eLearning content. Bonus performance assessment tip: Online simulations with branching scenarios are one of the most effective ways to assess the performance of your online learners. Read the article Effective Branching Scenarios In eLearning: 5 Tips For eLearning Professionals to discover the 5 tips that can help you develop effective eLearning scenarios for your audience. Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more guest posts from industry experts, plus eLearning tips and trends from the Trivantis team. References: Performance Task Assessment and Teaching: Learning from Chun and CLA/CWRA The post Performance Assessment in eLearning: What eLearning Professionals Should Know appeared first on .

The Kirkpatrick Model for training evaluation is kind of like Old Faithful. It’s been around since the 1950s and provides an easy to understand framework for evaluating your training program. Here is the model as described by the Kirkpatrick Partners: But is the Kirkpatrick Model still valid? In a recent #chat2lrn Twitter chat, Donald Clark of Plan B Learning started a bit of controversy with this tweet: Ouch. I wasn’t the only one who thought his phrasing was a little harsh: When it comes to the Kirkpatrick Model and its four levels of training evaluation, everyone has an opinion—and they’re not always flattering. Clark calls it a "useless fossil," consultant Dan Pontefract compares it to a cockroach that has stood the test of time without evolving at all, and others in the learning community refer derisively to the "smiley sheets" the model uses to procure training feedback. However, not everyone hates the Kirkpatrick Model. Another #chat2lrn participant pointed out that it’s important to use vocabulary that is meaningful to your stakeholders. Familiar evaluation terms can help those who hold the purse strings to be more comfortable with trying out a new learning method, such as gamification. But maybe that model needs a new twist? To Kirkpatrick or not to Kirkpatrick is not a new controversy. Many of the anti-Kirkpatrick articles that participants shared during the chat were a few years old. So why haven’t we found a new evaluation method yet? Well, there are a lot of ways to evaluate training programs. Then I saw this tweet about Robert Brinkerhoff’s Success Case Method: Cathy Moore is a hugely respected training designer; I knew if she was recommending an evaluation method, it was going to be good. Plus, I love her blog. Here’s the description of the Brinkerhoff Evaluation Institute (BEI) from their website: "BEI helps organizations achieve their objectives faster by conducting thorough yet practical evaluations of the key programs that contribute to their success.  We use data-driven analysis to measure and document program impact and identify actions to milk more value from program investments." For a great outline of the differences between the Kirkpatrick Model and BEI’s Success Case Method, check out this article by learning and performance consultant Tom Gram: Evaluating with the Success Case Method. Have you used either of these evaluation methods? Or, do you have a different way of determining training effectiveness? Share your techniques in the comments below—we may do a follow-up post if there is interest! Remember, the right authoring tool gives you a head start in creating the best training program possible. Download a free 30-day trial of Lectora® Inspire today! And of course, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for all the best eLearning tips, free resources, and the occasional cat photo. The post Is It Time To Kill the Kirkpatrick Model? appeared first on .

August is a bittersweet month. It’s my birthday month, which is great (for me, anyway), but it also signals the end of summer, which is not so great. However, it’s been a pretty lively month here at Trivantis. Those of you who are subscribed to our monthly eNewsletter know that we launched the beta of our Responsive Course Design solution for Lectora® Online this month (sign up), and we couldn’t be more excited. What else happened in August? Take a look: 1. Responsive Course Design in Lectora Normally I stick with written articles for the Best of August, but I wasn’t going to tease you with a mention of Responsive Course Design and not give you more details! Enjoy this recorded webinar from our Chief Technology Officer, John Blackmon, filling you in on all the juicy details. 2. Template Tuesday: File Folder First off, "Template Tuesday" is a great name for a blog series, and I’m mad I didn’t think of it first. Second, this is a great Lectora template from the eLearning Brothers with easy customization options. Check it out! 3. 7 Tips to Streamline Translations We love bringing you tips ands tricks from industry experts, and this post by Jennifer Valley is full of great info for anyone who needs to translate or localize a training course. 4. eLearning Authoring: Taking the Next Step with xAPI If xAPI isn’t on your radar, it needs to be. This new standard allows you to track so many more of your learners’ activities than standards like SCORM. This article from Learning Solutions Magazine gives you some great examples of what you can track with xAPI (subscription or eLearning Guild login required to read the whole article). Bonus post! We also covered xAPI on the Everything eLearning Blog here: Why the Experience API (xAPI) Is Crucial to Your eLearning Success 5. eLearning and the Internet of Things Is the Internet of Things the next big trend in eLearning? It does correlate nicely with cloud computing and the mobile revolution… Find out more in this article. Did I miss any articles from this past month that you loved? Let me know in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more monthly roundups, product news, and tutorials. The post The Best of eLearning in August 2015 appeared first on .

Name: Degreed Website: www.degreed.com Headquarters: San Francisco, USA Vertical: Higher Education, Lifelong Learning Tech: Web App Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. Degreed turns learning into skills. Our unique platform allows individuals and organizations to find, track, and recognize ALL learning. We're learning a million different things from a million different places, throughout the course of our lives. ALL of that learning should count for something, we're giving learners a new form of academic credentialing. Our mission is to jailbreak the degree. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. David Blake, Founder and CEO was part of the founding team at Zinch (started in 2007 and was acquired by Chegg). Eric Sharp, Co-Founder and CTO. How was the idea for your startup born? Ever since David took his SAT's in high school he's been fascinated by the model of higher education. This curiosity turned into a passion and an obsession to create better systems for the future of education and examining what that future will look like. Degreed was created because we all feel frustrations with the current higher education process and the problems with the credentials that are offered by higher ed. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. We believe that the college degree- the current de-facto way we measure education today, fails us in providing a totally complete picture of what we know and can do. We are helping people unlock opportunities through validating their lifelong education from any source. Who is your target audience. Individual learners and companies who are looking for a better way to track, measure and recognize all knowledge and skills. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. Individual profiles are free for users. Enterprise clients use Degreed as the only enterprise learning portal built for learners first. This offers Administrators the flexibility to allow employees to learn at will and a simplified way to manage and track employee learning. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. $1.8M Seed, $7M Series A. Series A round led by Signal Peak Ventures and Peak Ventures. How can people get in touch with you. social media: Twitter @degreed Email: Munk@degreed.com or David@degreed.com

In this episode of MEP, David McCool, President and CEO of Muzzy Lane, joins the program to talk about educational gaming and education technology in general. Guest Bio: David McCool has been in the software industry for over 20 years. He co-founded Muzzy Lane Software in 2002 and serves as its President and CEO. Dave has played a key role in the design of Muzzy Lane’s software and games. He led Muzzy Lane’s very successful launch of the Making History Gaming Headquarters, an interactive website that allows Making History players to chat, share game mods, review and rate content, and post After Action Reports. Prior to Muzzy Lane Dave co-founded Aptis Communications, a VC-funded developer of carrier- class networking products, in 1997. As Director of Software Dave built and ran a 25 person software group and was the architect of the Aptis software system. The company was sold to Nortel Networks in 1998 and went on to do more than $600 million dollars in revenue from its CVX product line. Dave began his career at Shiva Corporation, a developer of network-based peripherals, in 1987 as the 3rd employee. During his 10 years at Shiva he rose from Software Engineer to Business Unit Manager, also playing key software design and management roles along the way. Shiva went public in a very successful IPO in 1994. Dave graduated fromMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1987 with a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Show Notes: (01:55) Dave’s background (04:11) I’d like to dig into the process in the development of the game. Just my assumption, tell me if I’m right or wrong, and try to elaborate on it. You kind of leverage the internal talents you have of your developers and designers, and then you also partner with these content providers and subject matter experts in the development of these games. Is that correct? (06:00) Is it just publishers that you’re working with and some instructors and subject matter experts? Do you see something that’s more commercial with some of the games that you’re coming out with or are you just focused on working inside the formal schooling? (07:00) Niall Ferguson (07:44) What are the other future projects, what are the current projects you’re working on now? (08:53) I always like to ask about the efficacy of some of these initiatives. Do you have any data or analytics that you’ve worked with the publishers on how students have engaged and how these have led to students’ success or student outcomes? (09:53) Do you see any future iterations now that we’re seeing some of these really new emerging models come in education as far as competency-based education, skills-based learning? Do you see an alignment or a fit for educational gaming as you see it with these new models? (10:29) College for America (12:17) What do you see as a future developments in the next five to six years with educational gaming? (13:35) On Nintendo and kids on iPads playing games (14:15) What gets you most excited about the future of education and learning? (15:45) What about what gets you most frustrated about the future of education and learning? (16:35) You’ve been successful in this space since 2002. With all the influx of venture capital and movement in education technology in general, what is your take on it? What do you think the implications are of the increased interest in education technology? (18:08) If you could have dinner with one person you admire, past or present, who would it be and why? *Winston Churchill  Links: http://muzzylane.com/ http://making-history.com https://www.facebook.com/pages/Muzzy-Lane-Software/11092794179 https://twitter.com/muzzylane http://www.mhpractice.com/ For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

Data analytics platform BrightBytes has raised a $33 million Series C led by Insight Venture Partners with participation of Bessemer Venture Partners, Rethink Education and Learn Capital. Nick Sinai, Venture Partner at Insight Venture Partners, will join the BrightBytes board of directors. Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based startup previously raised $18.5 million across several rounds, bringing the total raised to $51.5 million. BrightBytes data analytics platform enables school administrators to better manage tasks like technology efficacy, dropout prevention, at-risk student identification, data privacy and safety. According to BrightBytes, approximately 1 in 5 schools in the United States use the Clarity platform. At the time of its Series B in March 2014 the ratio was 1 in ten schools. The new capital will be used to grow the product’s user base among K-12 teachers and to grow the team. Further Reading BrightBytes Receives $33 Million Series C Led by Insight Venture Partners to Further Accelerate Growth | PR Newswire Links brightbytes.net

Education Entrepreneurs, the non-profit that was part of UP Global and ran Startup Weekend EDU, merges with New Orleans-based edtech incubator 4.0 Schools. The merger is a result of the acquisition of UP Global by TechStars in June. While TechStars follows a for-profit model, UP Global and Education Entrepreneurs operated as non-profits. Under the new ownership grants by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could no longer be operated. Under the merger, 4.0 Schools will operate and grow the Startup Weekend EDU events in the United States while the Techstars Community Programs team will continue to service Startup Weekend Education events taking place outside of the U.S. Education Entrepreneurs program manager John Baldo joins the 4.0 Schools team full-time while Mandela Schumacher-Hodge is stepping down from her role as Director. Further Reading Techstars Partners with 4.0 Schools to Grow Education Entrepreneurs | 4.0 Schools Link educationentrepreneurs.co

Sphero (formerly Orbotix) introduced a new version of its popular ball-shaped robot which specifically targets the education market. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBQ1APvIsTk The robot is called SPRK and comes with a series of apps and lessons that aim to teach coding and spark interest in science. SPRK has a clear shell, showing the inner workings of the robot. To get teachers, parents and students into learning with SPRK, Sphero created three sets of lessons, CORE, Middle School and STEM Challenges. CORE lessons explore the principles of math and science through programming. Middle school lessons challenge students in grades 6-8 and are aligned to Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. STEM challenges are multi-day experiments foster creative problem-solving and teamwork. SPRK is available in the United States for $130 and Sphero provides some assistance for teachers who are looking for funding and grants via the company website. Founded in 2010, Sphero raised over $90 million in venture capital to date including Foundry Group and The Walt Disney Company. Link sphero.com/sphero-sprk sphero.com/education

In this episode of MEP, the founder of Soomo Learning, David Lindrum, joins us to talk about the importance of instructional design, the digital evolution or lack thereof in higher education and where he sees things going. Guest Bio: For 20 years, David has lived and worked at the intersection of transformational learning and web technology. Working to create digital assets with major publishers including Pearson, Thomson (Cengage), and McGraw, he launched both MetaText and Shadowbox before founding Soomo as a lab for learning innovation. David’s heart is in creating transformative instructional design, and he excels in utilizing web technology to meet specific instructional challenges. His recent interests have extended to the field of course analytics, where he creates tools to enable data-driven design and targeted teaching and intervention strategies to create stronger student learning experiences. Show Notes: (01:54) David’s background (03:15) What is it about books that has captivated you and what gets you interested in the art form? (04:45) Let’s dive into your current project and what you’re doing at Soomo Learning to revolutionize how people learn and how they look at a digital textbook. Tell us about Soomo Learning, its foundations and where it is today. (06:52) Let’s say somebody is just used to the ebook being what it was 10 years ago, a non-interactive material for a student to go through. What is the technology and how is the experience different from a Soomo book rather than the PDF-type ebooks? (11:38) Have you seen specific types of students that have improved their outcomes based on your delivery method for this content? What have you seen in the analytics? (14:03) It sounds like faculty really like the ability to target where students are succeeding and where they’re potentially failing and then being able to make interventions at that specific point. Is that the main reason that the faculty love the experience with Soomo? (15:08) What do you believe will be in the next 5 years, not just about innovations and e-textbooks but also innovations in business models and where institutions are? Are we making progress? (18:30) Can you give us a peek behind the curtain of some creative things that you’re thinking about as far as new functionality in the next year or 2 years? Maybe some collaborative type things?  What are you looking at for improvements? (21:25) What’s the book that you most recommend to people you care about, friends, family, colleagues? Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller (22:37) What about documentaries? Do you watch them, and if you do, what’s your favorite? The War Room Good Hair (27:00) If you could have dinner with one person you admire, past or present, who would it be and why? Cornel West Links: http://soomolearning.com/ http://www.lindrum.net/ Contact Info: david.lindrum@soomolearning.com For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

Name: Think Olio Website: www.thinkolio.org Headquarters: New York, USA Vertical: Higher Education, Lifelong Learning Tech: Web Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. Think Olio is a learning hub that connects teachers to hosts in their community to hold informal, in-person classes for lifelong learners. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. David & Chris met in a social entrepreneurship course at Baruch College. How was the idea for your startup born? It started with a sad realization as we neared graduation: We may never see some of our favorite professors again, nonetheless get the opportunity to continue learning from them. And we really weren’t ready to stop taking classes, but we also weren’t sure we wanted to commit to (and pay for) grad school. This is when we came up with the idea for Think Olio. We thought: let’s take our favorite teachers — the very best ones — and let’s put them in intimate, local venues and make it easy for them to teach accessible, affordable classes in the community. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. A lack of options for lifelong learning. No easy way to host lectures and classes for teachers and professionals. We also hope to make interdisciplinary learning commonplace. Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them? Our main competitors are either all online or they are tied down to a single location. You could think of TED talks as a competitor, but Olios are much more intimate classes rather than large auditorium-style lectures. Skillshare and Udemy are dependent upon peer to peer learning but they are entirely online. Meet-up facilitates in-person get togethers, but they are not learning focused and not curated in the same way we are. How many users / downloads does your service have? 261 learners 30 teachers 20 hosts/venues In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. NYC. We are focusing on sustaining individual neighborhoods to perfect the model, then growing to new areas based on teacher interest. Right now we are in Brooklyn, focusing on Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy and Fort Greene. Who is your target audience. The lifelong learner: museum goer, podcast listener, book reader, with a curious mind. How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product. Each class is different but we market each Olio with the help of each of the three parties (teachers, hosts, learners). The teacher brings sign-ups, the host brings sign-ups, and we also bring sign-ups. Everyone is incentivized to spread the word, so word-of-mouth marketing is very strong for us. Learning is inherently social, so it is always more fun to bring a friend to an Olio. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. The teacher decides the price of the class then keeps 50% of the money made. The host gets 30% and then Think Olio keeps 20%. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. We have won almost $40,000 at different pitch competitions. We have not taken any outside investments yet. We are undecided about when we will seek funding. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. We have held over 25 classes in only our first 6 months. What are the next steps in growing your startup. We are launching a 1000 teacher campaign where we ask people to nominate their favorite teacher to use Olio. It is our 1000 thank yous campaign, and people get a chance to thank the teachers who have really impacted them and share them with friends and family by nominating them to teach a class in their community. i.thinkolio.org/thanks How can people get in touch with you. chris@thinkolio.org david@thinkolio.org @whatisolio

News Corp wrote down the value of Amplify after another disappointing sales season leading to an operating loss of $24 million, leading to a $371 write-off. In a conference call News Corp CEO Robert Thomson said the company is already in advanced negotiations to sell Amplify to a potential investor. Launched in 2012, Amplify is a tablet-based learning and analytics platform for the K-12 market. The subsidiary also manufactured its own tablet device but has now stopped the production. News Corp will stop advertising Amplify to new customers but continue to serve existing ones and develop the curriculum software. Amplify is based on the assets of Wireless Generation, an education company News Corp acquired in 2010 for $360 million. Joel Klein, CEO of Amplify, also confirmed talks with an outside investor in a memo to the employees and that the Amplify management team was considering to participate in the investment. News Corp hoped to turn its digital education business into a growing division for the company, shaking up the textbook market and compensate for declining revenues from newspapers and media. The company invested over $1 billion into Amplify and is expected to get around $100 million out of the sale. Further Reading News Corp Posts Loss on Education Write-Down | WSJ Education unit drags News Corp to loss | BDLive News Corp.'s Amplify education experiment: What went wrong? | ZDNet News Corp. Planning to Sell Off Money-Losing Education Unit | New York Times News Corp. to Exit Education Business With Amplify Sale | Bloomberg Links amplify.com

Keeping its pace of edtech acquisitions, Blackboard announced that the company has acquired Nivel Siete, a Moodle provider based in Colombia. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Founded in 2002, Nivel Siete has over 200 customers reaching over 400.000 learners in Latin America. The company will continue to operate under the Nivel Siete brand. Interestingly, as EDUKWEST reported in July, Blackboard itself might be up for sale for up to $3 billion. WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackboard today announced the acquisition of Nivel Siete, a leading Moodle provider operating in Latin America. By joining their forces, the two companies will be able to offer more services and solutions to organizations that leverage Moodle, one of the most widely used learning management systems (LMS) in the world, and support a greater number of learners to achieve their educational goals. Nivel Siete offers a variety of learning solutions, hosting, support and consulting services that help organizations succeed in their teaching and learning initiatives, especially those that focus on the use of e-learning for talent management and training. Headquartered in Colombia, the company serves over 200 customers in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. "The addition of Nivel Siete to the Blackboard family testifies to our commitment to open source," said Matthew Small, senior vice president and managing director, international at Blackboard. "We are seeing strong momentum for our open source solutions and in particular for Moodlerooms, with the addition of more than 80 new customers around the world in the last few months and a significant growth in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Our open source solutions play an integral part in our strategy and we will continue to support their growth. I am thrilled to work together with the team at Nivel Siete and improve the educational experience for learners in Latin America." "We are excited to join forces with Blackboard and help learners and organizations be successful," said José Diáz, CEO at Nivel Siete. "By working together with Blackboard we will be able to enhance the range of solutions and services we provide to institutions and businesses across Latin America. The local Moodle community will benefit from this acquisition, as it will open up new opportunities to share knowledge and best practices." Today's announcement marks the latest investment made by Blackboard in open source after the recent acquisitions of Remote-Learner UK and X-Ray Analytics technology. Since officially joining the open source community in 2012, Blackboard has been contributing to Moodle with code, quality assurance, platform integrations and bug fixes. It has also supported many community gatherings across the world. For more information about Blackboard, please visit www.blackboard.com or follow @Blackboard on Twitter. About Blackboard Inc. Blackboard is the world's leading education technology company. We challenge conventional thinking and advance new models of learning in order to reimagine education and make it more accessible, engaging and relevant to the modern day learner and the institutions that serve them. In partnership with our customers and partners in higher education and K-12 as well as corporations and government agencies around the world, our mission is to help every learner achieve their full potential by inspiring a passion for lifelong learning. For more information about Blackboard, follow us on Twitter @Blackboard. Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release. Actual results may differ materially as a result of various important factors. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause the Company's views to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. SOURCE Blackboard Inc. RELATED LINKS http://www.blackboard.com

Ellucian announced that private equity firms TPG Capital and Leonard Green Partners acquired a majority stake in the higher education SaaS provider from its current owners Hellman & Friedman LLC and JMI Equity. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but sources told Reuters that the deal could value Ellucian around $3.5 billion. The deal is expected to close by the end of this year. Ellucian is based on the assets of Datatel and SunGuard. H&P and JMI acquired Datatel in 2009 for $570 million. In 2012 Datatel acquired SunGuard’s higher education assets for $1.8 billion, renaming the company to Ellucian. Ellucian currently serves 2.400 institutions in 40 countries. Last month the company announced that it will create 50 new jobs in Dublin. Both TPG and H&P have been active in the education technology space in the past months. TPG led lynda.com’s $186 million Series B in January and sold Wikispaces to TSL Education last year. H&P acquired Renaissance Learning for $1.1 billion in March 2014. Further Reading TPG Capital and Leonard Green Partners Agree to Acquire Majority Stake in Ellucian | Press Release Exclusive: TPG close to $3.5 billion deal to buy Ellucian - sources | Reuters

MOOC platform Coursera announced that it has closed part of a Series C round. The first closing totalled $49.5 million led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and joined by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Times Internet (TIL). Coursera expects to add on an additional $10.1 million from GSV Asset Management and Learn Capital, others in a second closing later this fall. With the new investment Coursera will be focusing on international expansion and sees potential growth markets in emerging economies in Latin America, China, and India. Already today three-quarters of platform users come from outside the U.S with China being the largest market with over 1 million registered learners. Beside being a new investor in the platform, Times Internet will also provide marketing, advertising, and strategic support to build awareness for Coursera’s offering in India. Coursera is set to focus on lifelong learners as well as helping learners to advance in their careers and acquire the skills necessary in today’s workforce. According to Coursera it currently offers 1,100 courses, has nearly 15 million learners, half of whom seek to improve their career or livelihood. As a consequence, Coursera intends to more than double its Specialization offerings this fall. Further Reading Coursera Secures $49.5M in Series C Funding to Expand Access to Job-Relevant Learning Opportunities From the World's Best Universities | Marketwired

Blended Learning 2015 Summit Sydney, Australia - Learn how to better utilize existing technology to improve student achievement. Register by end-of-day this Friday August 21, to save $1,100* on your Blended Learning 2015 registration with the Super Early discount. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.