Making eLearning Engaging

I sometimes get asked how I make an online course engaging to my audience and what do I do to keep learners motivated to complete the training. I generally try to work the following aspects into all my online learning that I design.

First off you need accurate, clear and concise learning objectives. Let’s break that down a little. First off I want my learning objectives to be accurate. Take the following objective as an example,

“Given the necessary equipment, you will be able to correctly change a flat tire on a car.”

Your learners should be able to change a flat tire on a car. As soon as it becomes clear that your course isn’t going to deliver on that promise, the learners will tune out.

Next I want my learning objectives to be clear and concise. This is more an issue of writing than anything else. Take the following sentence for example,

“By the end of this online course you will learn everything that you need to know to perform your duties as a stock clerk.”

This learning objective needs to be broken down into more specific duties of that job and the objectives should have some level of expectations. As it stands now they are a little vague.

All of this comes down to delivering what you promise. Accurate, clear and concise learning objectives set your learners up for success as they know exactly what to expect from your course. Don’t include any optional information that makes the course longer than necessary. If your job is to teach people how to correctly change a flat tire on their car, don’t include a history of the automobile – it doesn’t contribute to the learning objective, no matter how interesting it might be for some. If they sign on expecting one thing and get another, they will likely exit the course prematurely.

Another aspect of creating engaging and motivating online learning is the principle of keeping your users involved in learning, which also relates to the previous aspect of having accurate, clear and concise learning objectives.

I like to follow the PAF model of learning. PAF is an acronym for Presentation, Application and Feedback. Once I have broken down the learning into the smallest pieces I start off by presenting the information to the learners. I then ask the learners to participate in some application of that knowledge or skill. This is usually some form of knowledge check where the user completes an activity. On the tail end of that application I provide some feedback. At this stage feedback should be meaningful. For example, I don’t just want them to know they are right or wrong, I want them to consider why they are right or wrong so I usually provide them that opportunity to learn from their mistakes.

Of course I also try to make my online learning have a look and feel that is compelling as well. I think we can all think of examples of online learning that looked like little effort was put into the creation of the presentation. That usually turns me off and can distract from the various tasks at hand. Delivering something that is well thought out and visually appealing can keep you interested in what the course will offer next.

Why Does Adobe Captivate Keep Crashing!?!

One of the most common questions I get from new eLearning designers is "Why does Adobe Captivate keep crashing?"

I know this is frustrating. The fix is relatively easy if you own your own PC but can be problematic if you work for an organization that has an IT department managing all the PCs. You see you need to grant administration rights to the Adobe Captivate Application. Of course I'm referring to the Windows version of this software. Perhaps there is something similar on the Mac side. Sorry, I just don't know.

In this short video, I explain the procedures for you to do it if you have full control of the computer. You may want to show the video to your IT Department if you are running into a break wall on this one.

Responsive Design Considerations For Your Interface

While preparing my latest video for my YouTube channel, I started to consider that the standard navigation controls we typically place on our eLearning projects may need to be reconsidered. In this case I designed a project for desktop, tablet landscape, tablet portrait and smart phone portrait views. When you consider how we physically interact with these devices, we do something different with our hands in each case.

The great part about Adobe Captivate 9 is your ability to create unique layouts for each break point. Check out what I did in the following video.

Get Microsoft Office For Practically Free

I've spoken about this before but with the new version of Office released I thought I would remind everyone about the Microsoft Office Home Use Program. If you haven't heard of it before you might be wondering why Microsoft would essentially give away one of their most important software packages for next to nothing. Well, I think it comes down to training. From Microsoft's perspective the more people who know how to use Office, the more people and organizations will purchase the software. The benefit to an organization is clear. If their employees are using Office at home, they require less training on Office at work. It's a pretty good benefit.

Anyway, you can find out if your workplace offers the Home Use Program from the following site:

http://www.microsofthup.com

Responsive Design - Is It Worth It?

While I have fooled around with responsive design, I haven't completed any real projects for my clients in responsive design; that is until now. At this point I can now speak from experience and say that responsive design is worth the effort.

First lets consider what that effort equates to. When I design responsive projects I need to prepare the same material anywhere from three to five different ways (depending on your needs). Obviously if you are designing training for a mobile workforce that all have the exact same iPad as one another, this will be much easier. The truth is that every person is different and while some of the devices might be shared across a large portion of your audience, one person may want to view your project on a smart phone, while another might only want to complete training at home on their PC or Mac. Ensuring you have the widest possible range of resolutions and checking your project on as many devices is strongly encouraged.

Now of course this goes against rapid design, so how to do you rapidly develop responsive design. The solution is to design a rock solid template. Experimenting with sample content as you design your template will help you prepare default font sizes for different screen sizes and also address what you will do with images, logos, characters and other on screen elements. My advice is to have as much of your content live in narration as possible. For example, if the knowledge that is required is in the narration, it not only doesn't matter what size your screen is, but also what items are on the screen. I have looked at certain break points and decided that I just don't have the room for that great image, so in the end I take it off the screen sizes where it doesn't work.

The advantage of offering responsive design is obvious. More people can access your content from more places and during more times. If you are restricted to just taking training at your PC at work, you are only going to complete that training while sitting at your desk when you have nothing else pressing to complete. I don't know about you, but that doesn't describe anyone I know. If I could complete my required training while riding on public transit, or at home during down time, that's when I would do it. As an Instructional Designer, I want more people to complete my training not less. It's better when I need to show how effective my training is.

Here are a couple of my recent videos where I have addressed the challenges of responsive design. Please take a look. Remember I'm available for consultation if you or your company are thinking about implementing any type of eLearning for your organization.

How You Become a Good Instructional eLearning Designer

“Everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think”
— Steve Jobs

I’ve had the opportunity to work with other instructional designers who have been assigned the task of developing eLearning after years of only designing instructor led training. I don’t envy these folks. Not only do you need to build off the foundation of all that you have learned as instructional designers, but there is a technical aspect to the job that isn’t easy to come by.

I was reminded of the process that I go through, while listening to an early interview with Steve Jobs who was talking about how everyone in the country (United States) should learn to program a computer. He felt that this would teach people how to think. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to review another eLearning designer’s work who rather than just working the problem and breaking it down into smaller chunks, they spend great effort coming up with complex solutions. These complex solutions become overly complex on their own that they often create all new problems for the designer to have to solve.

Here is my advice to designers who may find themselves in this situation in the near future; take an introductory course in computer programming. It’s not that you need to learn to code to design eLearning but it teaches you to look at a problem a certain way. I’ve learned this skill and when you think this way, simple code like solutions come to you that are easy to implement. You learn to look at a problem and break it down into easy to understand chunks. From there you can apply what you already know about creating solutions to problems. You soon discover that these problems broken down into smaller steps are not so different than the solutions you have created before.

Don’t have the resources for this? Sign up for a trial of Lynda.com and enroll in one of the many programming courses they offer. If you spend a few hours a day for the seven days that you get for a free trial, I think you have enough under your belt to begin to think the way Steve Jobs described.

By the way, the interview I watched is here if you want to watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZAJY23xio

How to Create eLearning When Learners Have Different Requirements

There are many cases where a branch aware course can be useful. Of course the obvious is in scenario based learning. You may want to provide a different version of the quiz depending on how the user interacted with the rest of the course. Another example is choice of language. Perhaps your organization has speaks different language or lives in different geographical locations and requires different knowledge. In one case I designed some online training for an airport that had employees who worked in different terminals. For them, the training required different content for each of those scenarios, but also a different quiz was required as well.

In this video below I show users how they can make their Adobe Captivate project branch aware so that different learners can be evaluated on different knowledge. Please have a look.

I'm Starting to See Adobe Captivate 9 Differently

As I start my second week of working with Adobe Captivate 9, I'm beginning to see the software differently than when I first began testing it. Originally I was convinced that the new effects panel was going to be the clear winning feature for me. If you have had the misfortune of having to work in the effects panel in Captivate 8 or earlier, you would know what I'm talking about. You could only preview and work on one effect at a time, you could not add effects to grouped objects, the panel itself didn't play nice with the timeline and certainly couldn't be docked with the properties panel. Well the new effects panel is great, but my feelings for the new Captivate are actually affected by an entirely new and different feature.

I'm talking about multi state objects. For me this is becoming the real game changer. I have begun a series of experiments where I take either one of my old tutorials or one of my old projects and reimagine them by incorporating multi state objects. so far I have used them in a couple of ongoing projects I'm working on, plus I rerecorded several of my YouTube videos using this great new feature. Here are the videos for you to enjoy.

Of course, I want to be clear that the effects panel is great, the new knowledge check question slides are also great, I can't wait to get my hands on some SVG images as well. Wow, just the fact that I now have smooth round tripping with Audition is such a time saver, but I think multi state objects are the big win for Captivate 9 (at least for me they are).

Motion Path Effects and Animation in Adobe Captivate 9

This is probably the biggest improvement in Captivate 9 over previous versions. Previously Captivate's effects panel was poorly designed as it interfered with the timeline and didn't allow you to preview these effects easily. Now, the new panel makes sense. It no longer interferes with the timeline and in fact enhances it. Check out this brief video from Adobe.

Geo-location Enhancements in Adobe Captivate 9

One of the problems with geolocation enhanced Adobe Captivate projects in the past was that they were difficult to test. Now in the preview project option you can emulate a geolocation to truly know if your project will work as expected in the locations you specify in the training. Check it out in this video from Adobe.