It's that time of year....upgrading and improving my courses

It's that time of year when once again the kids are back in school, the evenings are getting cooler, the leaves are just starting to change colour, and I'm stuck looking at our Core Curriculum courses.

I've learned a lot from so many great elearning people and resources over the past year that when I look at my courses from last year I cry. They could be sooooo much better, but when you're a department of one with limited time, money and resources you often get stuck with something that gets you by, but not the something you're truly happy to put out to the masses.

My first struggle for this year's revamp is WHMIS. The mere word makes one cry. Last year's attempt to put this online for 2700 staff, all with many different roles was successful in that they completed it. It was unsuccessful from my point of view in that it was very very boring. Read, click, read, click, quiz. This year I wanted to try (at least minimally) to make this and a few other courses better. Still with a very limited amount of time. Facing 6 courses and about 4 weeks to fix them up...the odds are not in my favour.

I did get a really good start on taking the language of the courses and scaling it back dramatically. The number of words per screen were okay, but still way too wordy. The level of the language was also to high for some within our organization. Paring this back and simplifying the wording should at a minimum get the courses down 5-10 minutes each in time. (I refuse to tell you how long some are....next year's task).

After the language improvements the next part I want to tackle is the engagement the courses include. I'm having trouble coming up with global scenarios that apply to all types and levels of staff. Perhaps I'll brainstorm something next year. What I have started to do is at least change some of the placement of quiz questions. Instead of being lumped at the end they are embedded into the material. My goal is to create "mini" scenarios that can be answered regarding various pieces of information instead of one overall scenario for the course to be centered around.

I'll share one example here. It's still not exactly the level I'd like to get this course to, but it's a start and it's better than last year.

Last year I shared my use of the Carousel Engage activity to explain various WHMIS (my activity) symbols. This year I decided I didn't just want people to just read through all the material that this interaction held, I wanted to take it a little farther and turn it into more of a "scavenger hunt". Using the interaction can they answer questions about the various symbols or hazardous materials?

I've added 2 screenrs below to show how I created this. You can also find detailed explaination on how do to this from Dave Moxon's Articulate eLearning Blog - "How to embed engage 09 within quizmaker 09"

• Embedding an engage carousel interaction into an #quizmaker quiz. #Articulate (part 1)
• Embedding an engage interaction into quizmaker - part 2. #Articluate (thx @articulatedave http://bit.ly/vAudW)

Here's to hoping the feedback this year from participants is that they like this new format to the material.

Thinking Inside of the Circle May Be Just What You Need

Okay, so the real saying is "Think Outside of the Box", but two postings I saw this recently were so far out of the box for me that I started to wonder if it's a way of thinking I can every accomplish.  Maybe my thinking is outside sometimes, but the real genius is inside the circle or tip-toeing around the triangle or maybe skipping around the hexagon.  Whatever the phrase might be, these two gentlemen displayed some great ingenuity.

Bruce Graham is one of these gentleman.  He's a frequent responder in the Articulate Community forum (a place where users of Articulate can gather help on the product in general, but more specifically on elearning design and delivery tips, tricks, and general idea sharing).  Recently someone (Jenise Cook) asked about her course on protecting your SIN#.  She was just looking for some different ways to perhaps present the material.  Various ideas were shared by a few different community members, but the one that stuck out for me was Bruce's.

His thought, which again I thought was brilliant, was to present the material back to the learner in a completely sarcastic manner.  In a way this would showcase to the learner that the main points of the lesson should be "so obvious" to the average user that there should be know doubt in their mind that they should know and remember this information.  The "over the top" course would reinforce the lesson, most likely, in a humoristic manner that would stick to the learner.

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing hobbies in America. Anyone who has your Social Security number can use it to get other personal information about you. But HEY!. That's OK - we're all friends here.  Lesson One - DO NOT MAKE EFFORTS TO PROTECT YOUR NUMBER

The lesson is filled with humour and sarcasm (maybe way I like it so much), but the overall summary or morale of each lesson is solid and factful.  A brilliant twist on a normal lesson delivery.  Spin the tale into a way the learner would never imagine.  Shock them with the material and it will stick.

The other example of ingenuity was from Thomas Baker (and if you haven't added his blog to your readings you should - an incredible and fun interactive teacher).  How much do you love this pic?

At Universidad de los Andes in Santiago, Chile. Thomas Baker having fun in class doing Limbo. Students waiting on their turn. (Source: La Tercera newspaper) via Final: The 80-20 Rule Re-Visited: Implications for Teacher Talking Time #ELTchat (blog posting)

His example to think differently about how to present material came from a posting he did on his blog 23 Educator Roles an Imagined Interview with Stephen Downes.  We've been taking CCK11 together this year and Stephen is one of the co-facilitators of the "course" (MOOC).  Thomas took an article (The Role of the Educator)  from the Huffington Post written by Stephen Downes and then re-wrote it into his blog as a series of questions and answers.  As if he was the one giving Stephen the interview.  Asking him questions of the material that was in the article and then using the article material as the answer to the question.

What a simple yet ingenious way to present material back to a learner in a different format.  It broke a long article in to manageable chunks.  It place that bit of human interaction back into what was just text and from, originally, one perspective.  More importantly it was well received by Stephen as well.

These two examples have me looking for more and more ways to think very differently about the way I would  like to present courses to learners.  Give them something they don't expect and look at the material from a completely different point of view.  I will be watching, reading and learning from these gentlemen for many years to come.  I thank them both for opening my mind to new and different possibilities.

How wonderful the PPTA file can be!!!!!!!

So I've saw a wonderful screenr from Jeanette Brooks about the reasons why a PPTA file is created when you are producing a course using Articulate Presenter, but I didn't really get it until today.

Last Friday my work computer crashed, AGAIN, but this time it was fatal and my computer had to be reimaged.  Essentially anything on my hard drive was gone.  This has happened to me before at work.  Not a large problem normally because I save most of my files onto a network server.  That was until I discovered that with each of the courses I created using Articulate, the colour schemes, player templates, etc. are also stored on my hard drive.  The crash wiped them all out.

Being instructional designers using rapid instructional tools I'm sure you can appreciate the need to use the same if not similar templates. So what's a girl to do when they are no more.

ENTER the ARTICULATE FORUM.  What a wonderful and joyful thing!!!!

I searched the Articulate Forum for a solution...couldn't find one....posted the question....searched some more assuming I'm can't possibly be the only person with this issue....and voilà there it was....my solution....hiding in the middle of someone else's question.

There post: http://www.articulate.com/forums/articulate-presenter/18335-s-weird-day-articulate-land.html  and in one of the responses MY SOLUTION.

ENTER the PPTA file.  What a wonderful and joyful thing!!!!

So, one needs only to open a previously published course.  Navigate to the Publish area and resave the Player Template (In Project) as a new name.  The same can be done with the colour scheme by navigating to the Player Template area, Colors, Edit Color Schemes, New and enter in a new name for the scheme.  Both are now resaved into your Articulate presenter to be used over again in a new project.'

Many thanks to Brian Batt (@articulatebrian), Jeantte Brooks (@jeanettebrooks), Justin Wilcox (@justinawilcox), and JP Redman (Articulate User) for all helping me solve my issue of the day.

A little boost of creativity for stress relief with #Articulate 's Captain Smiley

So today has been more than a little stressful so as I sat here pondering how to get through it....a small twinkle of fun and inspiration hit me.  I think my Articulate Captain Smiley might need to start thinking of halloween costumes.

And so...I present...Captain Smiley's possible 2010 halloween costumes.


"Boo" - Spooky Smiley

"Arg Matey" - Pirate Smiley

  

"Where is my conditioner" - Clean and Fresh Smiley
(A little red paint, could turn this to Psycho Shower Sceen Smiley)

"Ho Ho Ho" - Santa Smiley

Cirque Du Soliel Smiley

"Aloha" - Hula Smiley

"Reach for the Sky" - Buckaroo Smiley



"Mmmmph!" - Mummy Smiley

 Hope "we" made your day a little more smiley.

(honestly....I could dress him up all day...stay tuned for more???)

Using #Articulate #Quizmaker Hotspot questions in a different way

I posted a question on the Articulate Community forums about a paper based questions that I was having difficultly changing to an online question.

The question is this (image below) based on the diagram you just labelled, pick 3 correct sites for an I.V. start. Of the 10 labels, 5 are correct and the instructor wants the learner to pick 3.


Seems simple enough until to try to put it online. I use Articulate to create my courses and the questions are all based on choose all correct answers. Which is fine and easier. In fact, it's probably what I should have done here. However, if you do want to do a question like this, here is the solution Tom Kuhlmann showed me and my application of his solution.


Tom's solution is to use the hotspot question type in a very unique way. Instead of choosing one large area, you very carefully and selectively freedraw the area that contains the correct choices.

After starting to work on his solution I started getting caught up with the...well how many choices/times do I allow the learner to try this to get the question right. After several brainstorms tring to figure this out.

Realizing that was all to complicated for a question that is only worth 3 out of 50 total marks, I stepped back and relooked at how I could simplify the entire question and keep the basic premise.

I ended up adding a blank slide at the beginning that states exactly what the learner will do. Pick 3 spots, only 3, no extra attempts. Branched one correct attempt to another and used standard feedback for incorrect choices. Then I ended with a final blank slide with an image of the 5 correct areas that could have been chosen.

Here is my Screenr that captures how I used Tom's solution to fix my problem. Thanks to everyone that did assist me in solving this over-complicated question.

Swapping Bullet Pts for a HotSpot Series of Questions (#Articulate)

I'm going nuts lately trying to take 6 topics of core training that we have to give to staff and turn it all into elearing in a matter of a month. Currently the material is all in Word format and has been presented, tested, and marked that way for 6 years. I'm so grateful that it's going online, but if the staff think it's nuts to complete they should trying seeing what it is like to create the content.

After looking at the (what seems like) billionth page of bullet points I'm losing my edge as to another creative way to integrate the material into the course. For one particular section, instead of having them look through points or simply click through slides, I created this Articulate Quiz that has a series of fill in the blank questions. Instead of having them drag or type the word to complete these sentence I created a series of hotspot questions.

It was a simple way to use very simple graphics and swap them out one after another for each question. For those questions that I couldn't find the "right" graphic for in that particular clipart series I went with just a simple word instead. I'm happy to share the quiz/interaction here and the clipart I used was from Microsoft Clipart - Style 1541. I'd also be very appreciative of any/all feedback or comments. Sometimes one worries that they may have simplified the task too much for the audience of learners.

Navigating an Online Course ( #Articulate Engage Interaction)

Recently while looking at some examples of various elearning courses I decided that my "help" section of my own course was incredibly too long and perhaps annoying for learners. One example I saw had a quick one screen shot that people could click around.

I decided I needed something similar to this, but bearing in mind that I have learners that may have never taken an online course at all.

I created, using Articulate Engage, an interaction that is a static screen shot of a typical course here at work and the various components that the learner may come across while taking the course.

I think it's still a little over complicated (way too many things to explore). But I do believe it is a better attempt at showing the learner how to navigate through the course than my first try (1st Version - Navigating an Online Course).




Feel free to use the same interaction if you wish by getting it here: Navigating an Online Course (simple interaction)

Articulate Interaction - How to Navigate an Articulate Based Course

I've been working for months and months to get an LMS up and running for my organization (do a search for LMS on my blog and you'll see the overall journey) now the real fun begins. I now have so many people coming to me asking for this course to be created and that one. Seems as if everyone has something that has to be taught by the end of the year to all staff because the Ministry of Health says so. Regardless of that fact the LMS is now slowly being populated with courses and not just classroom based.

One of my concerns though is not everyone in our organization is familiar with taking an online course. Many would be able to just sit down at a computer and know immediately how to navigate though a course. Some who have never taken an online course would still be technically savvy enough to work their way through on their own. But, then there are all the others who are less technically inclined and perhaps even a little afraid of trying this "new" method of learning.

These are the staff that I need to consider when creating a course and need to include a "how to navigate" lesson or tutorial. I'm using Articulate to create courses for our learners. During the pilot of the LMS one of the courses created had many slides at the beginning (that could be skipped) that explained all the components that the learner would see or could see while taking the course. Once the pilot was over I discovered that this was probably not the best method for delivering the tutorial piece. Letting them skip over it was good, but it still muddled the over all look of the course. So what I have done now instead was to create the same interaction, but have included it instead as a help tab that can be accessed at any point during the course.

I've included a short Screenr video below that lets you see the interaction as it runs within a course. I have tried to make it "neutral" so it could be inserted into any course and that anyone could use it in their courses outside of our organization.

It's all about REUSE! So, if you'd like to use the interaction yourself please feel free to download and use it in your own courses.

Download: How to Navigate an Articulate Based Course Interaction.

How I Created Help Tutorials for My LMS

Since I had so few people come out to my drop-in sessions about the new LMS I was completely unable to train the 2700+ staff on how to use the system. I do think that we were able to configure it and create labels that make it fairly self-explanatory. Also, although it looks nothing like something staff here familiar with online learning would be use to, I believe the navigation is similar and this should help minimize the panic calls that will inevitably come to me.

Another step to creating this LMS more user friendly is that I am creating small one to two minute tutorial videos for learners to walk through should they need help. I've broken them into very small chunks and the reason for my thinking here is to allow the user to only have to view those sections of the system where they need assistance.

The steps to create my little videos isn't quite as streamlined as one might imagine, but after doing 4 or 5 of them now, I believe I've got the process worked out.

1. First I open up the LMS as a student would. I take many screen captures walking them through one step to the next (i.e. the screens one would see when looking to see what courses they are enrolled in). There are tons of tools to use to grab a screen capture, but I've been using the function included within Evernote.
2. I put all my screen shots into PowerPoint and then add some "pretty" text bubbles to each screen shot explaining in a few sentences what they see on that screen. I then copy the text in the bubble into the notes area to function as a script for the tutorial.
3. Next (I'm using Articulate) I open up the option to record narration and I read the "script" out loud. I am not producing my tutorials with sound because too few computers here have speakers, but it does create a good timing mechanism for advancing slides based on the spoken text.
4. After this step, I use the annotations to highlight or point out what is being shown on that screen shot.
5. I then go into the Audio Editor and "silence" the sound on each slide I just recorded text on. This is more a cosmetic aspect because I don't want the speech to be accidentally heard if I produce the tutorial in a different manner. I haven't been reading the text as perfectly as I would want to if I was expecting someone to actually listen.
6. Once this step is done, I publish the file and then view it in my browser window.
7. The next piece was finicky only because of the intranet system we use and the LMS feeds into it. The intranet does not accept FLV files it only takes SWF files. The reason I say this is it would have been very easy to capture the published file with Screenr.com (another articulate fabulous tool). But I couldn't figure out how to get the flv to swf without buying something somewhere. So instead I minimize my browser window to "just the right size" use Jing and start walking through the tutorial I created.
8. As the tutorial indicates to the learner to advance the page, I do manually and the video capture continues to capture the entire tutorial as if it is running on its own. The reason for video capturing the tutorial and not just loading it is again an intranet quirk that doesn't let me load up all of the files that are created when one publishes a "course" using Articulate. It wouldn't matter what I used, the intranet allows one file at a time and that is all.
9. Finally on my "login" screen to the LMS I have listed beside the login button all the tutorials I have created. They are not perfect in that they are only 500 px x 375 px (again an intranet limitation). Within the LMS however, I also video captured the tutorials in a larger size so that they are readable.
10. Lastly I plan on breaking down the original slides I created and minimizing them into a more handy printable version as well that learners can take away with them should they choose too.

Here is an example of one of my tutorials (captured with Screenr.com):

Reflecting on "My Big Find" of the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering '09

It dawned on me today that I've been able to come away with one truly "Big Find" from my attendance at each of the last three Annual Gatherings. There are many, many finds to be had but, I think the "Big Find" is that one new person that amazes, inspires, and teaches you something you didn't know before. Meeting this person makes you want to learn all their tips and tricks, and keeps you driven to keep learning more about the elearning field in general. They are much like that latest television show you always watch or tape so you never miss a single episode.

For the first of my attendance that was Brent Schlenker. His presentations inspired me to begin blogging. My second year of attendance was B.J. Schone, his blog and his knowledge about mobile learning kept me reading each an every one of his posts. I'll admit I've also sent him many questions over the past two years about elearning and LMSs.

This year I think the "Big Find" was Tom Kuhlmann. I happen to come across a flyer in the lobby and after reading it walked into the expo to see if I could get my hands on a Captain Smiley from the Articulate booth. Not only did I add to my little collection for squeezey characters, but to my surprised I learned so many neat Articulate tricks from him in just 30 minutes.

I'm sorry to admit here, that it wasn't until I walked away that I realized why his name was so familiar. Tom is the author of The Rapid eLearning Blog. What I love about his postings is that they may come from the Articulate camp, but you need not have the tool to find his postings useful. Each week there are simple and practical tips, tricks, and demos that anyone can incorporate into any of their training. The past few weeks have included:
Mar. 24, 2009 3 Easy Ways to Create Silhouette Characters
Mar. 17, 2009 Here’s Why PowerPoint 2007 Helps You Build Better E-Learning
Mar. 10, 2009 50 Practical Tips & Tricks to Build Better E-Learning
Mar. 03, 2009 3 Proven Techniques to Add Creativity to Your E-Learning Courses

This gentleman was truly a great find of this year's Annual Gathering. Thanks Tom for the continued inspiration to make my learning more engaging for my audience.

Great Day One at AG09

Well the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering for 2009 has once again not disappointed. I've learned so many great new things here today. I find it amazing every year that I seem to learn more from just networking and speaking to people over the lunch hour and at demo booths than some of the actual sessions.

I found a flyer in the lobby about Captain Smiley (which I'll insert a picture of once I return home) and went off to visit the Articulate booth. Turned out to be one of the best half hours of the day. I listened to Tom Kuhlmann and learned some amazing tricks. Simple enough tricks that will take me a few times to get right, but really neat ways to bring even more into your courses.

I found out through the dinner discussion board that the Shuttle was going to launch. Then looking at information about the best place to view it over the lunch hour, I found Nasa's Twitter link. Later in the afternoon, sure enough a tweet from Nasa that the launch had be cancelled. I'm loving Twitter more and more.

My lunch discussions also gave me a few brainstorms about how to get more buy in for social tools from the CEO and upper management. One included getting our physicians more interested in using Twitter to collaborate and consult with one another on cases. Sounds like a great idea and if you can get physician buy-in then you're definitely part way there.

I did my breakfast byte session this morning, which wasn't exactly what I envisioned it to be and I'm unsure if I gave the participants any more than they already knew. However, I really enjoyed the experience and I think it has better prepared me for tomorrow's session.

I'm looking very forward to the rest of the Gathering and all it has to offer. Oh and a big shout out to my many new Twitter Friends. Tweeple? Twiends? you get the idea. Oh and follow http://twitter.com/jzurovchak he's got great tweets going out during each of the sessions he's sitting in on.

Articulate Workshop At AG09

I'm sitting in on the Articulate workshop today at the eLearning Annual Gathering 2009. It's been a fabulous workshop so far. I've learned many tips and tricks that I didn't yet know or experience from my limited time of using the program.

Yukon Learning has sent a great group of trainers and facilitators to assist with the class. I have enjoyed that they have one person presenting (Ron Price) and then several others hovering in the room to assist with any troubles or glitches that learners are having. There is also a technical person, that I used, that is here to assist with real computer problems. I needed assistance downloading an add-in so I could particpate in the class.

Great job to the session and the group.