eLearning Deconstructed

Creating eLearning Rockstars

Visit us on Social Media

Adobe Captivate 8 – Using Standard and Conditional Advanced Actions

Leave a Comment

This is a 7-Part video series. It shows you how to use Adobe Captivate 8 to add checks as a learner clicks through various parts of your e-learning course. Once they go through the required sections, you then display a Continue button. This allows them to continue moving through your content.

This demonstration uses shapes and images I show and hide. It also uses variables and standard Advanced Actions that show the images, change a variable, and jump the course to a specific slide. It also includes using conditional Advanced Actions to check the value of several variables, and if they meet a certain criteria, show the Continue button.

If you would like to read the full article about this process, you can find it here:

Adobe Captivate 8 – Requiring Multiple Items to get Visited Before Showing Other Content

Adobe Captivate 8 – Requiring Learners to Visit Multiple Items Before Showing Other Content

Leave a Comment

One of the things I have thought would be interesting to create in my eLearning is the ability to visually show a user that they have or have not visited a section. I was also interested in the ability to take this a step further – the learner would need to visit multiple sections before I gave them the ability to move on to the next set of content.

I am regular Adobe Captivate user. I don’t typically use Articulate Storyline. However, a while back I took a look at it because I was curious what it offered. One of the features I liked was the “Show When Visited” trigger. I could build this structure within a course “out of the box” very easily.

This was something that was not immediately available in Captivate. However, once I saw it implemented in Articulate Storyline, I knew there had to be a way to do it in Adobe Captivate.

[Read more…]

Visual Design Trend – Monochrome for a Modern Look

Leave a Comment

For a more modern visual design, consider adding monochrome images to your courses. These images are stark, sometimes overexposed (meaning lots of white and a loss of details), and typically black and white.

They don’t have to be just black and white though. Sometimes a pop of color is intriguing. If you have the capability, you can add the pop of color yourself and have it match a primary color of your course.

Monochrome visual design doesn’t always have to be black and white either. It really just means a single color. This could be a cool blue color. Sometimes, it is also sepia (tan/yellow). Other times, it might be shades of brown or green.

[Read more…]

Eight eLearning Skills and Roles You Need to Know About

Leave a Comment

Step-2

As I was sitting in the various discussions of the 2011 Learning Solutions conference, it became clear to me that my career path was in a huge state of flux. I was both excited and scared at the same time. At my office, for quite some time, I was the sole Instructional Designer/Media Developer for my team. I handle the eLearning development of content for two enterprise systems that serve the financial industry. We had other people with the same role as I held throughout other areas of the company, but in our group, I was the only one. In my role, I use at least eight different eLearning skills and roles on a regular basis.

IT ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH TO CHANGE JUST ONE THING OR LEARN ONE NEW SKILL/

What had me a little concerned about all this change was that it was so interconnected that it wasn’t like you could really just pick up one thing, change that, and be done.

If I wanted to discuss eventually implementing xAPI, I had to bring the discussion of updating our Learning Management System to the table. I had to be able to understand how xAPI worked and it wasn’t documented clean enough for us non-programmer types.

If I wanted to bring video production into our deliverables, I needed to learn motion graphics, new video editing software, purchase the necessary equipment, and have a reliable way to deliver this content to my audience.

If I wanted to discuss implementing mLearning, we needed tablets to test on, we needed a familiarity with HTML5, we needed tools that could publish in that format, and we needed web servers we had ready access to use for testing.

Of course, the overarching concern in all of this was internet/data security. Being part of a financial services company requires a very high level of security. No direct access to WiFi, levels of control as to how large of a file you can put on a web server, and an LMS that affects multiple training and IT groups within the company.

[Read more…]

Mobile Technology is Changing Our World at Blinding Speed

Leave a Comment

 

Step-1

 

 

 

 

 

LEARNING AS YOU KNOW IT IS CHANGING…FAST!

Every so often, there is a moment in time that changes your perspective on what you do and how you do it. Mine occurred in March 2011.

That day, I walked into the eLearning Guild’s conference here in Orlando, Learning Solutions. I had a mission from my manager – learn about mobile technology and learning (also referred to as mLearning). We were starting to do research into what it would take to start delivering training to our clients on mobile devices. These devices would either be a tablet (probably an iPad) or maybe on a phone. What I did not expect was the actual conversation that was really happening at that conference.

What I learned was that social media, the flipped classroom model, storytelling, and hand-held devices were changing the way people acted, thought, and learned. It was as if someone had literally dropped a bomb on the world I was familiar with.

All of a sudden, I needed to be thinking about was bite-sized learning, HTML 5, video production, social media in the workplace, learning environments, and responsive web design.

BOOM! I knew my world changed immediately and I needed to bring the message back to the office that I had seen a shockwave on the horizon of the training industry and that we better start thinking about it immediately or we would be hit with a tsunami of change and we would get run over in a few years.

[Read more…]