RSA Animate - The Secret Powers of Time
A really interesting perspective on modern learners…5 mins 40 seconds in…
“A fresh look at Instructional Design” - eLN webinar presentation
Designing Online Learning
E-Learning in the 21st Century #25
Our educational systems, so far, look as if the internet hasn’t been invented yet. Scratch most conventional academic departments and you see little hint of restructured courses, let alone restructured thinking.
Great article and a challenge to all educators and instructional designers involved in Higher Education. Read the full article by Prof. Cathy N. Davidson of Duke University.
Premier Pro meets YouTube meets Articulate #24
Whilst exploring the virtues of iSpring, it dawned on me the increasing power that YouTube has with regard to e-learning. Up until very recently any e-learning content tended to shy away from linking to other parts of the web, but now that the internet is truly mobile this is becoming less and less of a problem. Just look at this video. 3 minutes of footage at High Definition (1080p - 180mb!) uploaded to YouTube in 3 minutes! No hosting issues, fast, reliable and available anywhere and any time. It looks like iSpring does it seamlessly, whilst Articulate does it with a bit of a work-around (Gabe Anderson has a Screenr that shows you how). I am betting that the new version of Articulate will have this as a feature in their next release of Articulate Studio.
Alternative to Articulate? #23
I’m a huge fan of Articulate. Where Adobe Captivate was once the first choice in my Instructional Designer/Developer tool kit, it was soon displaced by the versatility and sheer quality of Articulate Studio ‘09. However, I’m going to check out what iSpring Presenter has to offer. At first glance I like the option to create a single .swf (something I still find useful with regard to Adobe Captivate) looks like really useful feature, as do a wider variety of skins. A 30 day trial follows…
e-Learning Recipe for Success #22
The Chartered Institute of Professional Development is an excellent source of information regarding the effectiveness of e-learning within organisations. Visit the link for details, but here are four key principles that are useful for Senior Instructional Designers and Learning and Development Managers to remind themselves of:
- Start with the learner - recognise the limitations of the population that you are trying to reach.
- Relevance drives out resistance - if the e-learning material is seen as relating to something that matters in the organisation, people are more likely to try to use it.
- Take account of intermediaries - Much learning requires an intermediary to advise and direct the learner. This is just as true of e-learning; it will not be successful if taken in isolation from other learning.
- Embed activity in the organisation - this is a subtler point but follows from the previous one. E-learning modules should be seen as one element in an organisational learning strategy; where possible their use should be linked with instructor-led courses and other human resource management systems (for example performance appraisal).
- Support and automate - this final catch-all point reinforces and underlines the others. E-learning does not offer us the opportunity to automate all our learning processes. Instead it is a powerful new element in a wider strategy which requires support for learners in the context in which they learn. (CIPD, 2009)
New Carousel Interaction #21
I was really impressed by the new carousel interaction created by Dave Burton that appeared on the Articulate Word of Mouth Blog. I’m coming to the end of a production process for 10 courses, each having an acknowledgements section for the various SMEs that have contributed content or expertise. So far I’ve struggled to find the best way to present this feature. Now I have the answer!
My top tip with this interaction is to make sure that image is a perfect square. This ensures that each image has equally rounded corners.
