3 Tips for Creating Effective eLearning

eLearning can be a very successful training medium if executed well. The rollout of eLearning programs can save organizations on training costs, with the added benefit of faster delivery and the reach of a wider scope of employees.  Creating eLearning that is both effective and engaging however, can sometimes be challenging.

Here are three tips that are useful when working on eLearning projects.

 Learning Objectives

Having a clear idea of what your learning objectives are helps to shape the content of your course.  When writing objectives, be specific and focus on connecting these goals with what you want learners to take away at the end of the learning. By making objectives clear and concise, I find that I am better able to focus in on creating targeted evaluation pieces.

 The importance of great images

Images can truly help bring life to learning. That being said, not all images are created equal. When selecting images, try to include those which help to connect content to the real world. Learners tend to grasp information more easily when presented with a quality visual.

Also be mindful of including the right image size and provide the correct placement to match the content being presented.  Choosing images that really connect to the subject matter can help make concepts more relatable to learners.

 Create engaging learning

Because eLearning cannot necessarily cater to learners in the same manner as classroom training would, it is important to incorporate activities that are engaging and can keep learners interested in the subject matter. Since adults learn by doing and are most engaged when all senses are utilized, creating activities that appeal to multiple senses can be highly effective.

An example that uses a learner’s visual, auditory and kinaesthetic senses for instance can be a game. If done well, games can serve to positively affect the learner’s ability to understand and retain complex material. The advantage of activities such as these is that the content can seem less daunting and more fun, as learners are rewarded for their participation.

 

This list is not everything that is needed but provides a few key guidelines to consider when conceptualizing and designing eLearning. To learn more about the work that we do at Pathways please visit our website athttp://www.pathwaystrainingandelearning.ca/.

eLearning Graphic Strategies – Boost your normal maps!

As any 3D artist would I really do appreciate the technical artistry that is normal mapping.

The simplified explanation: a 2D texture that when applied to a 3D shape instructs the surface which direction to bounce light. Creating the illusion of high details on a low detail surface.

In the old days the process would be quite taxing. It required a high poly mesh, this models details would essentially be mapped to the low poly. See the picture below for a reference.

However, in the last few years several tools, have been developed that pull normal information from imported photographs, which is a HUGE time saver. Generally, though these tools are best used for flatter surfaces, and tiling textures especially.

Recently I have been creating several materials for game development. Materials that require color, and normal information, and several are tiling. In my never-ending search for better tools, I stumbled upon this great tool: Knald.

Knald – Knald Technologies

Knald does several things, but the stand out feature for me is its photo to normal map capabilities. To be frank, they are stunning. So good in fact that I think that feature alone is worth the cost.

 

I invite you to check out their website/gallery and if you still need convincing give the Knald trial a free download. And see how great the tool is with regards to normal map generation.

If you would like to learn more about gamification, graphic design, or eLearning development, please visit www.pathwaysinc.ca

Creating Accessible eLearning Modules

When creating eLearning modules, we naturally want to make them as interactive as possible. However, we must be mindful of the special needs of some users who are unable to experience the module in the same way as most of us. How do we make the experience of eLearning fair and accessible to all, and at the same time keep it fun and interactive?

Closed Captioning

Viewers with hearing disabilities should not be kept guessing what the audio track is saying. Closed captions should be available and easily toggled on/off depending on viewer preference. This function will be appreciated not only by the hearing impaired, but also by people whose first language is other than English, people taking the module in a noisy environment or unable to use the speakers or headphones. Often, even viewers who have sound will prefer to keep the closed captions turned on.

There are several good ways to create closed captions in Storyline, and I will delve deeper into this issue in a future article. However, if you would like to see some tutorials on different ways to tackle this issue, the following link provides a variety of solutions:

http://www.articulate.com/support/storyline/how-to-create-closed-captioning-in-storyline

Keep closed captions in mind when you are designing the template of your module, and reserve a strip of space at the bottom of the screen for the closed captioning text. If you don’t, you may find that the closed captions overlap important elements of your page, such as text or buttons near the bottom of the page.

Closed captions should include any text spoken by the narrator which is not already present on the screen. Use simple, easy to read font such as Arial, preferably in white on a strip of black background.

Tabbed Interface

Not all users will be able to navigate the screen using a mouse, and not all users will be able to read the screen. To facilitate users with these needs, there are various screen reading programs that will read the screen either as text-to-speech or using a Refreshable Braille display. One of the most popular of these readers is JAWS (Job Access With Speech). You can read the details of this software on the following Wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAWS_%28screen_reader%29

To make your Storyline module compliant with JAWS, you have to ensure that your interface and navigation are tabbed. This means that the viewer can use the [TAB] key to jump between selectable elements on the screen, and the [ENTER] key to make selections. These keys are configurable to the specific device the viewer uses, so that even persons suffering from paralysis are able to navigate and make selections in the module. There is a great deal of information available on this topic, and I encourage you to do some internet searching to learn more.

There are some pitfalls to keep in mind when making sure that your module is JAWS compliant. For example, tables and charts can be a real nightmare. The JAWS reader will continue reading every entry and element, and the viewer will be unable to make any selection until every cell in the table is read. Drop-down menus were also problematic in Storyline 1, and I’m curious to find if any of these issues were improved in Storyline 2. In any case, be sure to carefully test your module for JAWS compliance using the keyboard instead of the mouse for navigation.

Interactive Activities

Some interactive activities are not suitable for keyboard navigation, and therefore are not JAWS compliant. For example, drag-and-drop activities are difficult if not impossible to navigate using only the keyboard. Whenever possible, modify the activities to using multiple selection, where the user can tab to the correct answer and select it with the [ENTER] key. To liven up your activities, you can always add some visual interest, such as animations. Be sure to describe any relevant visual content so that JAWS will read it to visually impaired persons.

Documentation

A final step to completion of your accessible eLearning module is creating an Accessible Word and PDF document. This document should be a textual description of the entire module, slide by slide, with effort to retain as much of the experience of the module as possible. Question slides should cite the question, possible answers, correct answer, as well as feedback for both correct and incorrect answers. Interactive slides should describe the activity, and likewise give correct responses including feedback.

Once the Word document is created, it must be checked for accessibility. This ensures it can be read by a screen reader. It should contain a proper Table of Contents as well as Headings, which will be converted to Chapter Bookmarks when exporting to PDF. Word has a feature to Inspect Document > Check Accessibility under the File menu, which will help you resolve any problems within the document. Finally, you can Save as Adobe PDF, also from the File menu. Under Options, ensure you have checked Enable Accessibility and Reflow with tagged Adobe PDF, and Create Bookmarks with Convert Word Headings to Bookmarks. This will make sure that your PDF is fully accessible.

You can make your Accessibility Document available as a hyperlink from within your module, so that users can download it and print it, or use it with their screen reader software. A good idea is to include it in your Resources menu.

If you would like to learn more about accessibility and eLearning, please visit our company website, Pathways Training and eLearning, at http://www.pathwaystrainingandelearning.ca/.

Closed Captioning in Storyline 2

When developing an eLearning module, you will often need to provide closed captions (CC) that can be toggled on and off. There are several ways to do this, and I want to share a method with you which works the best for us as Pathways Training and eLearning.

Let’s first examine some other ways and their deficiencies. You could create closed captions by placing text boxes on tracks in the timeline, and timing their start and end to the audio. Although this method works, your stage will show all of these text boxes overlapping, and it will be difficult to edit them. You will have to toggle off the visibility of all other CC tracks to edit the one you’re working on, and that takes time. Further, if you forget to toggle some tracks on when you’re done, you will not see those lines on the slide. Therefore, using text boxes on track in the timeline to do closed captioning is not very efficient and can lead to errors. There are better ways to do it.

A method we used until recently involves creating a CC layer on the Slide Master, and a text box there with a variable to display the text. We use the variable name “CCtext” to store the current string for closed captions. To display it in the text box, you must type %CCtext% into it. Storyline will recognize anything enclosed in percentage signs as a variable. We used a separate variable, “CC” to toggle the layer on and off.

The advantage of this method is that you can change the value of CCtext at any time, on any slide. Simply place a cue point on the timeline, and create a trigger that will change CCtext to the appropriate string when you need to update the line. No need for overlapping text boxes and messy timelines with many tracks. All of the CC text can be updated in the Player Triggers section alone. Cue points on the timeline can easily be adjusted to time the close captions perfectly.

The disadvantage of this method is that if you want to toggle CC on and off from the player menu, you will need to use a bit of Javascript code. The code merely toggles the value of the Boolean “CC” variable. This doesn’t seem too complicated, but the problem is that in Storyline, Javascript will not evaluate during preview. That means you have to publish the module to see the functionality. This can really be inconvenient, as you have to “trust” the code to function properly.

However, there is another solution! Set up your CC layer as described above through the Slide Master. Then, create a blank slide in your module, disconnected from any other slide. Let’s name this slide “CC Toggle”. The slide will be empty and set the timeline to be zero – drag the “End” of the timeline back to zero. Create two triggers on this slide: (1) Toggle variable CC when timeline starts, and (2) Jump to previous slide when timeline ends.

Essentially, this slide will toggle the CC variable and then jump back to wherever it was called from. This is done without Javascript, and is flexible to use from any slide in the module – as long as said slide uses the CC SlideMaster that we set up earlier. Now you can preview your slides with CC toggling functionality.

The only drawback that we could find is that when you toggle CC with this method, the slide you are currently on will restart. This can be remedied if you set your slide options to resume saved state when revisiting, however, you likely don’t want to do that for most slides. Still, replaying the slide when toggling CCs is not necessarily a bad idea, and it’s unlikely to be intrusive as closed captions are not toggled frequently. Usually, the user would turn them on or off once or twice during the module, and in that case it’s acceptable to replay the current slide.

Until an integrated CC solution is available in Storyline, the solution presented here will allow you a flexible and pre-viewable option to implement closed captions. We hope you will find it useful.

To learn more about our company and how we contribute in the field of eLearning, please visit our website at http://pathwaysinc.ca/.

eLearning Trends 2016 – Cloud-Based eLearning Solutions

There are quite a few concerns about surrounding cloud-based elearning solutions such as a lack of IT support resources, data security or unreliable access. While these are all valid, great strides have been made to resolve those issues and provide a solution that has a great many benefits.

Firstly, cloud solutions are easy to use and support. You don’t need to install software on each computer and you don’t need specialized IT staff to maintain the system; this is all done by your solution provider. Another benefit is probably the most important to most organizations – cost. You can customize your solution so that you don’t have to pay for features that you don’t need. Another advantage is the cloud can be accessed anywhere by different devices so geography doesn’t play in as a factor.

Lastly, for those who are losing sleep over data security, there are a variety of safety measures that can be used such as data encryption and SSL. You can also password protect your platform to allow certain individuals access to certain areas of the training.

Contact me at matttklinger@pathwaysinc.ca to learn more about how we can help you with your elearning needs.

eLearning Graphic Strategies – 3D Rendering Part 2: Pre rendered vs real time

This blog is a follow up to my previous post – LINK- If you haven’t read it I recommend checking that one out first to provide some context.

 

Following on the heels on my post about to 3D animation. I outlined what to me is the main hurdle of Pre Rendered 3D animation. Which was render time, and the most logical workaround to this solution is the utilization of Real Time Rendering.

What’s the difference?

Pre rendered graphics

Pre Rendered graphics run all of the graphical computations to create the images before hand (this is render time) and then those images are compiled into an image sequence or movie.

Visual Fidelity: Highest level of render quality and visual fidelity

Render Time:     Varying, can be relatively quick, but generally the more realistic, and complex the longer it takes, ranging from minutes to hours.

Camera Type:    Camera movements and paths are set and established prior to rendering.

Result:                  Most often than not, either video or still image.

Real time graphics

Real Time rendering is when the image that you view is computed in real time.

Visual Fidelity:  Great level of visual fidelity.

Render Time:     Zero render time as images are rendered in real time.

Camera Type:    Camera is mobile and scenes can be navigated. Alternatively, cameras can be setup and pathed to create a video as well.

Result:                  Can be an interactive/explorative piece, a video or a still image.

Examples

Historically, real time rendering has always looked far worse than pre rendered graphics. However with the passing of time, technological innovations have given way to higher and higher levels of quality produced by real time renderers. To track this progression just look into the rapid evolution of the videogames industry and it’s graphics which of course are rendered in real time.

For a more concrete example check out this video link. While this video is just over a year old, the levels of realism produced by modern real time graphics engines is essentially indistinguishable from real life.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRqMbHgBIyY

If you would like to learn more about eLearning development, please visit www.pathwaysinc.ca

Intrinsic Learning Motivation and Gaming

I started out playing adventure and platforming games on PC. One of the things I have always enjoyed about games is trying to find all the available and/or secret content the programmers managed to put in. With adventure games, sometimes getting stuck on a puzzle meant you had to click on every possible thing on the screen or try every possible combination of inventory item you could think of. The programmers sometimes made something unusual and fun happen when you tried one of those things even if it didn’t do anything to help you progress. These days, I am sometimes actively disappointed when I make a choice in a game that advances the plot instead of taking me to an new sidequest. There was a time I even learned how to use glitches in some games that let me look at places or do things the developers didn’t intentionally want the player to do or look at.

The proliferation of game articles and videos documenting game Easter eggs shows that I’m not the only one who wants to experience everything that a particular game could possibly give a player. It’s the thrill of finding out whether a darker texture on a wall is actually a secret doorway, or if you’re allowed to interact with another character in a non-scripted way, and then finding out if the developer had made anything for you to experience once you’ve tried it.

Now, that motivation to explore, to find out more, if only we could apply that to workplace learning today.

MOTIVATING YOUR LEARNERS

Games can appeal to both types of learners (the extrinsically motivated and the intrinsically motivated), and gamification can make your material exciting and interesting to both types of learners as well. There are a lot of learners who are motivated by competition or rewards to do a task, otherwise known as extrinsic motivation. Learners who are motivated to do a task because they find it fun, exciting or enjoyable are intrinsically motivated.

In most cases, it’s easy to appeal to the extrinsic learner by adding awards, badges, leaderboards and other rewards that can be counted and compared to other learners. Ways to appeal to an intrinsic learner could include giving them options and avenues of exploration.  A lot of material is presented as a single avenue – railroading the learner through an infodump. A better way to present your information is to think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure novel, with many choices that take the learner to different information paths. An intrinsic learner will want to reread a choose-your-own-adventure to find all the possible endings.

So think about who your learners are, how people enjoy different aspects of gaming, and you can make your training engrossing and fun for all your learners!

eLearning Graphic Strategies – 3D Animation Rendering Part 1

Recently Hollywood blockbusters have largely fallen into 2 categories. Films that heavily feature CGI, ex, superhero or disaster movies, or fully animated films produced by Pixar or Dream Works.  The reason is pretty clear, 3D animated computer graphics are very, very, pretty.  Able to create anything desired in any artistic direction, 3D animation is even showcasing its use in the eLearning world. Over the last year, our programming team has utilized 3D animation in a variety of projects with varying scopes. But there is an important factor to consider before implementing 3D animation to your project.

Traditional animation requires a lot of time. For 2 reasons,

1. Everything has to be built.

Based on the requirements of the animation, all of the assets will need to be modelled, and designated materials, and in some cases custom textures as well, and complex particle effects. Essentially, the more complex the demand, the more tools and processes will be required to build it. Think about the differences between your

Monsters University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzPioph8CIVs

Vs.

Zack and Quack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1F7Xrm7VdU

But, having made those assets, they are now part of your asset library and are ready to go for future use.

2. Everything has to be rendered.

To keep it simple, rendering is the act of taking the 3D scene and creating a 2D image out of it, and during this process all the calculations take place, (lighting, particle, bounce, to name a few).  This typically requires maximum use of your computer and you have to wait for the process to run its course. If you want to learn more check out the link below. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_(computer_graphics)

The primary stumbling block of rendering is the sheer quantity of the frames required. For an example think about the following scenario. At 25 fps (frames per second) a 3 minute animation would require 4500 frames to be rendered. To put things into context it took the masters over at Pixar 29 hours to render a single frame of Monsters University. And 100 million CPU hours to render the film in it’s final form.

Let’s hope there are errors found later that need to be corrected and then re-rendered. Yikes!

With all that in mind, using careful project planning, and creative design that keeps within project scope we are able utilize the power of 3D animation to create truly dazzling elements to supplement our eLearning modules.

In the next chapter of this blog I will explore the applications and functions of Real Time Rendering and its viability with regards to eLearning.

If you would like to learn more about eLearning development, please visit www.pathwaysinc.ca

2016 eLearning Trend to Watch – Big Data

You don’t need to be an IT expert to have heard the expression “big data”. This refers to large quantities of data that are gathered and analyzed to expose different patterns, tendencies, and associations. This can be a very useful tool when considering your elearning objectives and how big data stats can help fine tune your training based on concrete stats. Most elearning solutions require a custom approach so why not take advantage of big data analytics to help custom tailor your learning activities?

Making sure that your learning solutions have effective reporting tools and user feedback will only help as you move forward with whatever training projects you have. Let the big data you have access to help you focus on key areas of your elearning course design and research!

Why (and how) you should incorporate badging into your eLearning strategy

Remember the participation badge you got for showing up to your grade 9 track and field competition? This isn’t that.

I’m talking about acknowledging the mastery of knowledge and skill sets to encourage iterative and deep learning. Done properly, badging can recognize the internally motivated among us.

But I don’t want to dismiss my (and your potential) initial resistance to badging because I believe it helps us better focus on the success criteria for valuable badges. Badging meets resistance because those of us who got participation badges considered them utterly worthless and we did so precisely because they were issued to anyone who managed to just show up for the race. To participants who trained for the day and genuinely competed, the badge was insulting and demotivating. Done hastily or half-heartedly, badges can discourage learning. To be effective, badges must:

• Be issued selectively, probably on the basis of some pre-established criteria,
• Be issued by a credible person or institution and
• Be publishable (or displayable) in a place that is meaningful to the recipient.

Effective badging requires planning and preparation in both the design and build (development) phases of your eLearning project.

Designing badges

As any member of the scouting movement will tell you, participants are required to complete a tasks and then present evidence before being they are awarded merit badges. Badges in eLearning should mirror this structure. If you have established performance outcomes and rubrics (your learner success criteria), you’re on the road to badging.

However, if you only have a fuzzy idea of what the performance outcomes should be, then you need to invest more time in the planning and design phases of your project to establish these criteria before you are ready to leap into the world of badges. An eLearning vendor can help you identify performance outcomes and map them to a learning strategy so that your badges are relevant. Already have those success criteria defined? Beware of badging overkill. Don’t apply badging for mandatory content as it defeats the motivational purpose of badging and rapidly diminishes their stock.

For badges to be valuable to learners, they must have a compounding effect. A single badge tells something of a learner’s interests and skills, but an amalgam of badges tells a fuller, interwoven and altogether more interesting story about their interests and abilities. Its this prospect of telling the fuller story that motivates learners to seek out, accumulate and display badges for professional development. (More on displaying badges in the section below.) Done properly, badging should be integrated into your eLearning strategy.

Building badges

At their heart, badges are images with metadata; metadata are what distinguish a meaningless participation badge from a sought-after badge for professional development. Badge metadata contains information on the evidence of a learner’s concept mastery, the validity of the issuer, the duration of the badge’s validity and any other vital information the issuer wishes to communicate.

On the subject of the duration of a badge’s validity, setting time limits (or expiry dates) on badges makes perfect sense as most knowledge and skill sets require maintenance to remain current. Once expired, badges shouldn’t disappear. After all, the currency your skill and knowledge set is not the same as not having that skill or knowledge set. Your badge’s metadata will determine its credibility, so consider this issue with care.

Because badges need to be published in a place that is valuable to the learner, they must be platform agnostic. In other words, just as learners have the freedom to accumulate (or to elect to not accumulate) whatever badges they want in whichever order they choose, so too should they have the freedom to decide where and when to make those badges visible. If you’re delivering your learning via LMS, find out if your LMS supports badges and if they can be exported from your LMS to be published on other platforms such as LinkedIn.

Getting started

Properly planned for, designed and delivered, badging can support learning in the modern world by providing relevant, flexible, interesting and valuable methods of credentialing. So how do you get started? I firmly believe that experience is the key to relevant instructional design and development. You can’t design and build badges without first experimenting with them as a learner. Go out and earn some badges!