Thursday, April 5, 2007

eLearning Design - Posts about Designing eLearning

I received a question about a particular eLearning Design challenge that someone was facing and I realized that the title of my blog and the way I post doesn't really do justice to talking about design and patterns in designing eLearning in this blog. I'll try to work on that, but here's a list of posts that are relevant to eLearning design and eLearning patterns:

What Clients Really Want
The basis for many of the eLearning design decisions.

Top Ten Suggested New Year's Resolutions for eLearning Professionals
Several elearning design patterns are discussed.

Significant Work Needed to Help Instructional Designers
Changes required in ISD, ADDIE and HPT in order to adapt to the current design environment.

eLearning 1.0, 1.3 and 2.0
The move of eLearning design towards SME and user-generated content.

Course and Courseware are Fading - The Future of eLearning
How we must adapt to the fact that our designs cannot rely on larger chunks of learning - especially in Corporate eLearning.

Future of ISD, ADDIE and HPT
Big impact on how we will be designing eLearning going forward.

Learning Design Different Now? and Future of ISD in a World of Read/Write Web
How is Learning Design different when we are using different learning techniques, especially bottom-up techniques based on.

Learning Design in a Nut Shell
My simple attempt at what learning design and eLearning design is all about.

Reference Hybrid
A particular pattern for designing eLearning.


Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Captivate and Articulate for Interactive Slide-Based Presentations

I got a question (and you know I love questions):
We are being asked to use Adobe Captivate on a project. I understand that Captivate is great for simulations and demonstrations of computer tasks, and can be used for scenario-based training for that kind of content. All good.

However, this project doesn't involve ANY simulations, demonstrations, or scenario-based training. It's an employee orientation that consists of many (500) slides of text and graphics. We'll make the slides fun with graphic effects and movies, but that doesn't change the slide model.

So, I thought that Articulate Presenter might be a better choice for this project. What do you think?
First some good news - I happen to like both of these products and if you look at my posts: Course Authoring and Rapid eLearning Tool Satisfaction and eLearning Course Authoring Tool Satisfaction - More you can see that both of these tools score pretty high in satisfaction. So I'm not alone in my opinion about these tools.

Certainly, as the person asking the questions states, if you were going for Software Simulation eLearning then Captivate (or the other tools list in my post) would be more appropriate than Captivate. But, in this case, it's not simulation, it's interactive presentation.

For the task described, where the source is initially MS PowerPoint slides, Articulate Presenter is going to be easier to use. Especially if you have animations or anything beyond the slides in your source PowerPoint. There's actually another product that Adobe offers - Adobe Presenter based on Breeze that is a plug-in or add-on to PowerPoint that allows you to continue to author in PowerPoint but it doesn't offer the same level of interaction support as Articulate Presenter.

From the question - "make it fun through graphic effects and movies" doesn't necessarily imply interaction - quizzes, games, etc. But I sincerely hope that somewhere among your 500 slides, you plan to make things interactive. However, if you really are not, then either Articulate Presenter or Adobe Presenter should be fine. I just feel sorry for the person going through the content.

One last point to make on this - these tools are not mutually exclusive. Captivate can be used to create Flash movies that can be embedded inside of Presenter. So, if there's a brief interaction that you feel can be created best in Captivate, you can always do that as well. So depending on how stubborn the person is who is pushing for Captivate, you might suggest that you primarily use Presenter and use Captivate for certain aspects.

Moodle in Corporations

Clive just posted - Apples and Pears - about the eLearningGuild's new report on Learning Management Systems. I was one of the authors of the report and it was interesting to have an opportunity to interview people and see the numbers produced through a pretty extensive interview process.

Clive points out one of the more interesting discoveries in the survey results numbers - Moodle comes back as being used inside lots of corporations. In fact, it appears near the top in market share even among larger corporations.

However, as Clive points out, this is somewhat misleading (and the report covers the difference between an CMS, LMS and TMS). We had a fair amount of debate among the researchers about how to handle the fact that Moodle comes out being used inside a lot of corporations, but often used in a very limited fashion. We tried to handle it by drawing distinctions where possible, but the fact remains that lots of companies are using Moodle.

On the other hand, you should know that when a corporation uses Moodle they often are using it for some very simple course delivery, creating assessments, etc. In fact, if you only have a couple of courses or you need to put up an environment for a couple of eLearning courses, then Moodle may be a great option.

At the same time, every large company that I interviewed who had indicated they used Moodle, were only using Moodle as a short-term solution on the way to something more or as a targeted solution.

Bottom line - consider Moodle for these kinds of situations. But to paraphrase Clint Eastwood - A man's got to know Moodles limitations.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

April Big Question - Content Vendor Value

Since I'm likely not going to be blogging for about a week starting Friday, I thought I'd get an early jump on this month's Big Question from LCB - ILT and Off-the-Shelf Vendors - What Should They Do?

I'll be curious to see what kinds of responses come out around this topic. There's really a lot at stake in this question in that it goes far beyond the question. The reality is that all providers of content are competing in a flat world, with easy access to virtually every other information source and many different, alternative means of content creation. In this world, content producers face real challenges. And this isn't just in corporate training and education. My post - Disruptive Changes in Learning - points to examples such as TV, Music, Press, etc. If you are a producer of content, you are now competing with many new sources.

As a content vendor providing training (Instructor Led or eLearning), you are naturally having to compete with each person's ability to find information via a Google search or through access to a service like Safari (which makes all of the O'Reilly books fully searchable).

One of the most important questions is:
What's the added value provided by content providers over alternative information sources?
While I often hear lots of answers to these from vendors, it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to have a compelling differentiation. So, there's real problems, especially if you stay with traditional models of Courses and Courseware - see Course and Courseware are Fading - The Future of eLearning. You can't afford to be in that business going forward.

(One exception to this rule - for things like most compliance training where companies are wanting to "check the box" - they will continue to use courses and will want short versions and box checking. Lowest cost will dominate. But courses and courseware will remain.)

The good news is that there's also some hope for innovative companies who can move beyond the business of Courses and Courseware. Generally customers are buying something more than a course or courseware. In IT world, they are transitioning their staff from Java to .Net or from .Net 1.0 to .Net 2.0. In sales they are moving to consultative selling. It might be a culture change initiative. Or employee engagement. Or customer satisfaction. Etc. There's always more to the picture than providing courses and courseware.

My belief is that there's great opportunity to make smart use of new kinds of eLearning Solutions that will have real impact on the actual results that people care about. Take customer satisfaction. In a recent solution for a large retailer, we provided tools that:
  • Showed customer satisfaction numbers (that already existed) at the store level so that store managers could identify areas where they needed work.
  • Provided a variety of possible interventions the store manager could use (some with content, some that were more like a series of meetings-in-a-box).
  • Had store managers create an action plan composed of the steps of these interventions and had that approved with their district manager.
  • Helped them remember needed steps and track progress.
  • Prompted the district manager's involvement appropriately to reinforce actions.
  • Tracked the results so we could figure out what interventions worked and which didn't.
This intervention is worth many millions of dollars to the client. Far more than it cost to implement. It attacks the issue of helping store managers to improve customer satisfaction. While there's quite a bit of content created, it's not really about the content.

There's also this old CEO adage:
There's margin in mystery.
In other words, because we aren't coming in and saying "here's some content we are selling you" - instead, it's a whole system, and tracking, and hitting people with communication over time - it's not as obvious what's going on. Under the hood, it's not terribly complicated, but it's still got some mystery. Probably the best example of this that I've ever worked on was eHarmony. If you've ever taken a personality profile, you know how they come back and seem to know you. eHarmony does that as well. It allows them to command a premium. Same thing is true of a more recent client MyShape. When there's mystery, you can command a premium. More on this in Matching Algorithm.

If you look at things like Gallup's Q12 Employee Engagement system, it's not terribly complicated, but it sells well because of the mystery.

Now the good news is that it's easier than ever to create solutions that are more interesting than simple courses and courseware. You can hit people many times over the course of time. You can hit them in new ways. On new devices. In virtual training environments (sandboxes). As an example, if I've got a conversion of an IT staff to .Net 2.0, I probably don't want to ship them all to classes at one time. Rather, I'd like to get them trained up a bit and then have them get coached over the course of time. Plus, when it's new technology, having to get it set-up is always a pain as well - maybe you can provide sandboxing support. Further, I probably have some superstars that I give more training to at the start and then provide them with tools and systems to get the rest of the staff up-to-speed. Do you think they can do that on their own? Probably not well. But with some support they might be able to. Maybe the management needs some training as well, but that won't be classroom. Maybe they need some on-going coaching over the beginning of the project. In fact, if you are providing risk reduction over the first few projects, then maybe the solution isn't really training on .Net 2.0 but rather a transition to .Net 2.0 development capability. There's likely a suite of offerings and a series of things that need to happen to get them transitioned. If it was only getting some folks up to speed on .Net 2.0, well they could read a book or go use Google. There's a lot of other barriers.

I know that I'm probably not helping define a specific enough game plan for any vendor and maybe this isn't practical for some people. But my suspicion is that most vendors need to move in this direction in order to sustain margins.

I'm hopeful that we are going to see some interesting discussions on this topic.

Corporate eLearning

Corporate eLearning

Blog posts related to Corporate eLearning:

Learning Management Systems (LMS)

Learning Management Systems

Updated Nov. 2010

My most popular post around LMS is (by far):

LMS Satisfaction Features and Barriers

Here are a LOT of other posts that look at all things Learning Managment Systems (LMS): And resources found via eLearning Learning's pages on Learning Management Systems and LMS. Click these links to find a constantly update Best Of posts on these topics. But here are some great resources:
  1. LMS Resources- aLearning, May 8, 2010
  2. LMS RFP- eLearning Technology, October 25, 2007
  3. More Than One LMS Option- aLearning, February 14, 2010
  4. Other Open Source LMS Solutions- eLearning 24-7, April 14, 2010
  5. Take This LMS and Shove It- Living in Learning, May 19, 2010
  6. LMS Satisfaction Features and Barriers- eLearning Technology, September 20, 2007
  7. LMS Template- eLearning 24-7, May 21, 2010
  8. LMS and Social Learning- eLearning Technology, March 31, 2009
  9. LMS: A Quick SWOT Analysis- Upside Learning Blog, June 16, 2010
  10. The Great LMS Debate- Element K Blog, June 11, 2010
  11. A Learning Portal is Not an LMS- Getting Down to Business, May 18, 2010
  12. Potential Questions to Ask When Having an LMS Demo'd- Discovery Through eLearning, January 14, 2009
  13. LMS Selection Process- eLearning Technology, October 18, 2007
  14. Five Things Not to do While Selecting an LMS- Upside Learning Blog, August 27, 2009
  15. When to LMS- Learnlets, May 18, 2010
  16. The Standalone LMS is Dead- trainingwreck, October 24, 2009
  17. Open Source vs Commercial LMS- Learning Next, April 18, 2007
  18. LMS Launch Happens in 11 More Sleeps- Discovery Through eLearning, September 10, 2009
  19. Eight Tips for LMS Implementation- Upside Learning Blog, February 17, 2010
  20. Open Source LMS- eLearning Technology, December 10, 2009
  21. The Real Cost of a Free (Open Source) LMS!- Upside Learning Blog, April 29, 2010
  22. Listing the Steps of the LMS is Difficult- Discovery Through eLearning, February 16, 2009
  23. Top 13 LMS (and Learning Technology) Blogs- Upside Learning Blog, April 15, 2010
  24. Goodbye LMS?- eLearning Technology, September 5, 2006
  25. Why Do We Have an LMS?- MinuteBio, July 11, 2010
  26. Why bash the LMS?- Learnlets, May 10, 2010
  27. Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS?- eLearning Technology, July 26, 2006
  28. Enable Learning Anywhere with World’s First Portable LMS- Ignatia Webs, September 29, 2010
  29. A case for the LMS?- Learnlets, May 6, 2010
  30. Test LMS- eLearning Technology, September 10, 2008
  31. Free LMS Comparison Template- aLearning, May 22, 2010
  32. Open Source LMS Comparison- The Learned Man, April 27, 2007
  33. New Kind of LMS?- eLearning Technology, January 11, 2007
  34. Low Cost LMS - Help Needed- eLearning Technology, February 10, 2009
  35. Tracking Without an LMS- eLearning Technology, May 17, 2006
  36. The LMS – Will It Survive?- Upside Learning Blog, May 11, 2010
  37. More LMS Options for Associations on a Budget- aLearning, April 25, 2010
  38. Sakai 3 Development Process- Experiencing eLearning, June 9, 2009
  39. The Right Way To Go About Open Source LMS- Upside Learning Blog, October 23, 2009
  40. LMS Moneyball- eLearning 24-7, March 15, 2010
  41. Standalone LMS is Still Dead (rebutting & agreeing w/ Dave Wilkins)- trainingwreck, May 15, 2010
  42. Looking for THE SCORM Resource?- MinuteBio, June 12, 2010
  43. The LMS must die- Learning Conversations, August 15, 2010
  44. LMS Contracts – What U Must Have, Need 2 Know- eLearning 24-7, January 8, 2010
  45. LMS: Strategy or Tool?- Upside Learning Blog, March 18, 2010
  46. LMS = Losing My Smile- aLearning, February 5, 2010
  47. Test SCORM Courses with an LMS- eLearning Technology, January 13, 2008
  48. LMS & LCMS Directory- eLearning 24-7, July 8, 2010
  49. LMS Customization- eLearning 24-7, December 8, 2009
  50. Learning Management Systems - Trends and Issues (Brandon Hall Research) Webinar- Discovery Through eLearning, July 8, 2009
  51. Informal Learning Blog » LMS, we hardly knew ye- Informal Learning, September 4, 2006
  52. Moodle: Email Notfication Problems- eLearning Blender, April 16, 2009
  53. ZaidLearn: Any Free Hosted CMS or LMS? (Yes, Obama Says!)- ZaidLearn, May 16, 2009
  54. A Defense of the LMS (and a case for the future of Social Learning)- Social Enterprise Blog, May 12, 2010
  55. Moodle LMS: Hot Potatoes is Now Free!- The E-Learning Curve, September 15, 2009
  56. Association LMS Report & the Entrepreneurial Jeff Cobb- Web Courseworks, November 20, 2009
  57. Blackboard reinforcing the Status Quo- Learning Technology Learning, October 12, 2009
  58. The 21st century LMS- Clive on Learning, October 27, 2009
  59. Picking the Right LMS Logo and Design- eLearning Brothers, January 12, 2010
  60. Resources for the LMS Selection Process- Kapp Notes, October 21, 2007
  61. The writings of Lee Kraus: ContentTracking by the LMS- Learning and Technology, January 10, 2007
  62. Kineo Insights Webinar: The Truth About Open Source – a conversation with Sakai’s Executive Director- Learning Visions, February 25, 2010
  63. Should an LMS be the only route to learning?- Good Practice, December 9, 2009
  64. Learning Management Systems: Expert Advice- The eLearning Coach, April 28, 2010
  65. Dear Blackboard …- Dont Waste Your Time, September 20, 2009
  66. Adobe Captivate: Analyze and Chart Quiz Data Without an LMS, Part II- I Came, I Saw, I Learned, September 8, 2010
  67. Top 5 tips on how to make courses SCORM compliant- Spicy Learning, May 7, 2010
  68. Tackling a New Captivate Project- In the Middle of the Curve, August 21, 2009
  69. Open Source life, LMSs beyond Moodle- Learning Rocks, December 18, 2008
  70. Captivate 4 patch update- Adobe Captivate Blog, May 30, 2009
  71. Text messaging in your teaching- eLearning Acupuncture, March 24, 2009
  72. First eLearning- The Learning Circuits Blog, October 1, 2008
  73. SharePoint and the LMS - Time to Converge?, February 9, 2009
  74. Is Google Analytics the new LMS?!, April 27, 2010
  75. Is Google Analytics the next LMS? (continued), May 10, 2010
  76. SharePoint and the LMS - Time to Converge?, February 9, 2009
  77. The 21st century LMS, November 28, 2009
  78. The Future of the LMS, August 31, 2009
  79. OLAT: Swiss Quality Open Source LMS by Joël Fisler, February 24, 2010
  80. What do your learners want from the LMS?, August 17, 2009
  81. LMS is Dead! But Long Live LMS!, October 29, 2007
  82. SyberWorks LMS e-Learning Implementation Podcast #32 Preview, November 6, 2009
  83. Check It Once … Check It Twice: Your Guide to Choosing the Right LMS by Jessica Athey, July 6, 2010
  84. The Perfect Learning Management System (LMS), July 21, 2008
  85. LMS Spotlight: Litmos, September 10, 2010
  86. When Publishers Buy LMS Companies, October 28, 2009
  87. LMS is no longer the centre of the universe, May 4, 2010
  88. Friday ReFlects #2 - LMS Edition, May 28, 2010
  89. Why it’s hard to find an LMS, September 25, 2008
  90. Who Is Using Moodle? We are!, August 12, 2009
  91. LMS Customer Support Expectations, July 17, 2009
  92. eLearning Development News » Is Moodle your LMS?, May 7, 2007
  93. gLMS is coming - Google Gears, June 3, 2007
  94. Connectivist and Constructivist PLEs, September 21, 2010
  95. How to enrich your free Google based LMS, May 20, 2010
  96. Will at Work Learning: Elliott Masies LMS Wish List, February 15, 2008
  97. Facebook vs The LMS: Can Someone explain this to me?, March 20, 2010
  98. The LCMS at a Crossroads, March 10, 2009
  99. LMSs that kick ass: Saba, January 2, 2009
  100. Learning Management Systems that kick ass: Generation21, November 28, 2008
  101. Mobile Learning at the Tipping Point by Ara A. Ohanian, June 10, 2010
  102. Cut to 30% eLearning Development Costs, August 17, 2009
  103. Sakai: Open Source … Open Minds by Larissa Biggers, December 13, 2009
  104. New SyberWorks Media Center Article – “Hosted (SaaS) Vs. Licensed Cost Analysis of a Learning Management System/Learning Content Management System (LMS/LCMS)”, June 9, 2009
  105. Beyond Control?, April 30, 2009
  106. Justifying that LMS, October 13, 2009
  107. Kill Compliance Training, October 12, 2007
  108. Have LMSs Jumped The Shark?, March 20, 2009
  109. LMSs that kick ass: Learn.com, December 26, 2008
  110. LMSs that kick ass: Meridian KSI, December 19, 2008
  111. Tracking Instructor-Led Classes in an LMS, July 19, 2008
  112. Moodle: A fantastic tool for informal learning - and not just “e-learning”, August 31, 2009
  113. LMSs that kick ass: ElementK’s KnowledgeHub, January 16, 2009
  114. LMSs that kick ass - OutStart, January 23, 2009
  115. Stats on LMS Costing & Implementation Time, May 3, 2010
  116. Camtasia - LMS - LCMS - Best of eLearning Learning August 2009, September 8, 2009
  117. The LCMS at a Crossroads, March 10, 2009
  118. Introducing the SCORM Cloud, December 9, 2009
  119. Thinking Out of the Box: How the University of British Columbia School of Nursing Created a Practice e-Portfolio by Fareed Teja, February 23, 2010

Related Topic Pages

eLearning Resources

eLearning Resources


Various posts around eLearning Resources: