The eLearning Blog

In my last post, I talked about how to ‘think outside the box’ when creating Articulate Engage interactions. Although you can be creative in Articulate Engage, ultimately there are limits to what you can do. This is because Articulate Engage is a form based tool.

In this post, I’d like to look at Articulate Quizmaker — where you can either follow the form, or break the form. Articulate Quizmaker provides a Form View for those in a hurry, but also a Slide View where the design possibilities are endless. Artiulate Quizmaker is where the real action is for creative eLearning instructional design!

One of the biggest concerns for organisations adopting a rapid eLearning approach is that it will devalue the learning experience and overwhelm learners with poor quality programs. But we believe the exact opposite is true. 

Instead, rapid eLearning gets your subject experts back on the front foot and delivering their expertise directly to those who need it. It removes complex, overly technical and long winded development from the equation. It allows your specialists to easily develop programs which are tailored specifically to their learners' needs. Being directly engaged in the course development and design is great motivation and leads to a better quality course and better results.

Here are some benefits of having your L&D team take the rapid eLearning approach:

The great challenge for eLearning designers and developers is to build interesting courses while working within a limited timeframe. With the rise of software like Articulate, we now have the tools to rapidly create good-looking eLearning courses without the need for programming expertise. But how can you catch your learner’s full attention? How can you immerse the learner in the learning experience? Here are three strategies for creating engaging eLearning courses using Articulate.

Well I’m alive...just about! What a week at DevLearn2011 in Las Vegas, so many highlights! It was also an amazing trip as I had never been to Vegas before. It certainly is sensory overload. I feel my office is quite boring now as there’s no constant ‘ding, ding, ding’ of the slot machines or flashing lights and noise of the strip to keep me entertained.

During the first week of November, myself, the Directors and some of our Development team attended pre-conference advanced training workshops in Articulate with Tom Kuhlmann from Articulate and Ron Price from Yukon Learning. Yes, we did meet the man himself and I have a photo to prove it!  We spent a lot of our time with Ron Price, learning advanced techniques in both Articulate and PowerPoint. It really opened our eyes to how much you can do with these tools to make courses more engaging.  We will be adding some of these techniques to our Master eLearning Course. Also, as a result of further training with Ron in Vegas, B Online Learning will be offering basic and advanced training in Articulate next year as we are now the only certified Articulate training providers in Australia.

One of the buzz words at DevLearn 2011 was ‘mLearning’ (mobile learning). Clearly there is a demand for people to be able to learn ‘on the go’. Accessing course content on smart phones, iPads and other mobile devices is appealing for a whole range of reasons. We all know the reasons, but what does it mean for us as eLearning developers?

Our final post rounding out our 5 steps to building an effective eLearning program deals with the tricky topic of technology.

It's not hard to imagine the advantages technology brings to learning development, evaluation, management, communication and administration. The main downside lies in its potentially high cost - making your decision around which technology to use - an important one. Here are some pointers to help you match your requirements with the right solution.

What are the most important technologies to consider?

We are almost at our destination in our 5-step guide to building a successful eLearning program. In previous blogs we have covered off the earlier key steps:

• Strategy
• Design
• Resources

Step 4 in this process is something integral to eLearning management and arguably the most vital of all 5 steps - Content. This either makes or breaks the success of your eLearning programs, so it's not something that you should take lightly.

Two areas should be top-of-mind when creating eLearning content:

Well we are really starting to hit our stride now, we are up to step 3 of 5 in our map for implementing or re-inventing eLearning successfully.

Step 3 in our journey is resourcing. There are really two options facing the eLearning developer: "insource" or "outsource".

It's tempting to make a unilateral decision one way or the other but Rebecca Verity, B Online Learning's Creative Director, recommends taking each project on a case by case basis. Even the most experienced development team, need some outside assistance from time to time. 

Here are a list of primary questions that need to be answered in order to build a solid resourcing plan.

In my previous two blogs I have provided you extracts from a brand new whitepaper from B Online Learning: A map for implementing or reinventing eLearning successfully, the first week we gave an overview of the key 5 steps and then last week we took a look at the first step: Building your strategy.

This week its the turn of the second key step: eLearning design. Design is a key step for one pretty obvious reason, it tells everyone who you are, what you do and how you plan to get there. 

For that reason it is a key step and requires input from all the stakeholders. Gathering their input can be a challenge. We recommend using a mindmap or a concept map to make sure everyone is heard and to keep the discussion at the right conceptual level.

But design is more than the look (the form) of the course its also about the underlying processes and communication tools (the function).

In my last blog post I gave you an overview of our brand new whitepaper called "A map for implementing or reinventing eLearning successfully."

In the next 5 posts we will dive deeper into each of the 5 key steps. This week it is the turn of the first step: Strategy.

Strategy is such an overused, indeed mostly misused, phrase. We have a strategy for almost everything, from fighting a war to getting a seat on the bus! In most cases what we really mean is tactics.

Strategy is the means by which we link our tactics and plan, in other words what we actually do and the sequence in which we do it, to our organisation's overarching objectives. So its pretty important!

The whitepaper outlines some key questions that must be answered if you are to build a successful eLearning strategy.