And the Winners of the 2010 Articulate Guru Awards Are…

Oct72010
Written by Tom Kuhlmann — Posted in Community, Guru Awards

This guest blog post is by Articulate VP of Community Tom Kuhlmann.


The big day’s finally here. We’re very excited that today we get to announce the winners of the 2010 Articulate Guru Awards.

We really had our work cut out for us when we took on the task of reviewing almost 200 submissions from all over the world. A big thank you to all who shared their rapid e-learning creations with us. Not only did we see some amazing e-learning courses, we also saw outstanding marketing presentations, interactive games, convincing simulations, informative higher-ed presentations, and much more. It was really cool to see how the Articulate community is using their tools in so many innovative ways, to accomplish all sorts of different objectives in their work.

The competition was incredibly tight. In fact, it was so tough to narrow down the list of winners, we ended up awarding five honors: a Gold Award, a Silver Award, and three Bronze Awards. But even beyond these top five, there were at least a dozen submissions that were really impressive and came very close to winning. We’ll be getting in touch with many of those course authors so that we can feature them as Honorable Mentions, both here on the Word of Mouth blog and in the Community Showcase.

As for the winners, we think you’ll agree that the five winning courses really are exceptional. Check them out:

Gold Winner: Dave Richards and e-Mersion

Dave Richards and e-Mersion received the Gold Award for delivering a powerful, memorable message about diabetes and obesity. The compelling visual elements and effective instructional design really make this entry a standout. It’s a great example of simplicity and elegance. Judges particularly noted that the course makes learning easy, because it strikes the perfect balance between information sharing and interactivity. The course also uses a custom player to create a tastefully branded look, while still keeping essential functions at the learner’s fingertips. Congratulations to Dave and e-Mersion for their award-winning course!

View the Diabesity course

Silver Winner: Kevin Thorn

Take one look at Kevin Thorn‘s Guru entry, and you’ll see right away that he loves to build e-learning that informs and engages learners. He received the Silver Award for his fun, game-like scenario that takes you through four intelligence-gathering missions about lawn care. The judges really liked Kevin’s creativity and the way he used a consistent visual design and color themes to make everything feel so seamless. Other cool things you’ll notice in his course include innovative use of Engage and Quizmaker, great use of hyperlinks to create interactivity, and a clever “rucksack” metaphor to help learners see their progress. Great job, Kevin — congratulations!

View the Mission: Turfgrass course

Bronze Winner: Mike Enders

When you view Mike Enders’ course, you get the feeling that you just sat down on your couch to enjoy a fun, hip educational documentary on TV. Except Mike’s course is even better, because he gives you lots of opportunities to interact with the course content. He draws you in from the very beginning by leveraging features like effective video, an interactive knowledge check, nice use of the player’s toolbar tabs, and a great storytelling style and pace. There’s even a nifty web object where you get to share your own thoughts about the course content, and see what others are saying. If you’ve always thought that learning about science is boring, we think you’ll be shocked by what you see in this course. Really nice work, Mike — congrats on your Bronze Award!

View Psyched in 10

Bronze Winner: Nancy Woinoski and Pinched Head

Nancy Woinoski of Pinched Head submitted an engaging course about personal finance and budgeting. The course takes what might otherwise be a dry topic and turns it into an entertaining but realistic scenario, making the content fun and easy to learn. Creative Flash animations are integrated with scenes built in PowerPoint to create a unique look. Way to win the Bronze Award, Nancy and Pinched Head!

View What Your Teachers Never Told You

Bronze Winner: McDonald’s and Kineo

Steve Rayson and the folks at Kineo received a Bronze Award for a course they built for McDonald’s UK. Though we can’t share the entire course because it contains confidential information, below you can view a 3-slide excerpt that contains a content slide, an Engage FAQ interaction, and a quiz question. This course’s clean and simple visual design, nice use of corporate colors, and eye-catching custom player all help make it worthy of a Bronze Award. Congratulations, Steve and Kineo!

View a 3-slide excerpt of the Financial Skills course

All in all, it was definitely a banner year for the Articulate Guru competition! We hope that the winning courses inspire and challenge you to stretch your skills and try new things in your own e-learning projects. (And remember, it’s never too early to begin planning for the next Guru Awards!)

If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Word of Mouth blog so that you don’t miss future posts where we take a closer look at each of the winning courses and many of the other outstanding entries we received.

Thanks again to all who participated in the competition, and a special thanks to Helene Geiger of Prometheus Training Corporation (inaugural Articulate Gold Guru Award winner) and Ron Price of Yukon Learning (authorized Articulate training provider), who served as guest judges and gave valuable input to the Articulate judging team.

23 responses to “And the Winners of the 2010 Articulate Guru Awards Are…”

1

[…] Check out the winners of the 2010 Articulate Guru Awards! […]

2

[…] all we wanted to say for now. Head over to the Articulate blog site to take a look at it and the other winning […]

Pinched Head Blog » They Like Us, They Really Like Us! // Posted at 9:12 am on October 7th, 2010
3

Way to go Mike Enders! Our next video might put you on the top of the charts!

Katie Butcher // Posted at 6:23 pm on October 7th, 2010
4

Congrats to all the winners, just fantastic, full of great ideas and approaches to communication and learning.

David Becker // Posted at 7:24 pm on October 7th, 2010
5

What a ride! Great fun building it and very humbled to be in the company of true Gurus!
http://www.learnnuggets.com/2010/10/servin-up-silver/

Kevin Thorn // Posted at 9:38 pm on October 7th, 2010
6

Fantastic work! It’s great to see how our tools are put to such good effect. I have checked out the first three and I have to say I really dug Psyched In 10. Potentially dangerous subject but handled well. Good use of Articulate tools, compelling voice over with intro video of the narrator. Good use of web objects. Enjoyed the zoom effect in the FAQ. Maybe some audio effects in the quiz and a better-looking player template would have been welcome but, that said, it was the only presentation of the three that I watched to the end! Now to view all the others…

David Moxon // Posted at 10:28 am on October 8th, 2010
7

Congratulations to our winning colleagues!

What’s also fun is that they also share their expertise in the Articulate Forums and on Twitter.

Articulate truly has created an effective user community.

Kudos, winners!

@jenisecook

Jenise Cook // Posted at 6:41 pm on October 8th, 2010
8

[…] Check out the winning entries from the 2010 Articulate Guru Awards […]

9

These are great examples and I can see why they won! The e-Mersion course is beautiful, engaging, and informative. At first I did not think that the Managing Your Money course would be engaging as I’m not fond of the cartoon style, but 30 seconds in and I was hooked. Great information and what a good way to present it! The humor, “military game” theme, and great graphics in Mission Turfgrass were very good, and I loved the interactivity, and Psyched in 10’s presentation of Milgram’s experiment was very well done… and the Mickey D’s UK interface was good too. (our own entry “Green Team” didn’t place, but we were glad to enter anyway.)

Kathleen Harper // Posted at 12:50 pm on October 12th, 2010
10

I agree with David. I really liked Psyched in 10, and it was also the only one I watched to the end. Great job!

DL Carter // Posted at 2:51 pm on October 13th, 2010
11

Absolutely awsome stuff. I’m embarrassed to admit I even tried to compete against these.

3MVeach // Posted at 12:29 pm on October 14th, 2010
12

3MVEACH don’t be embarrassed, be inspired. I am currently in the process of taking another look at several classes that I did previously to see how I can improve them. The winners inspired me to work harder and be more creative in my design, and I am excited to see what I can do. Who knows, I might have something worthy enough to enter myself next year.

DL Carter // Posted at 4:13 pm on October 14th, 2010
13

Congratulations to the winners. They all look marvellous.
Our team had made a humble entry too, and we were wondering if you could help us with a small analysis of our work – Where we need to improve. Will this be too much to ask?
(PS – Our work is titled Earthy’s world)

Poornima // Posted at 4:05 am on October 18th, 2010
14

Hi Poornima- thanks for entering this year’s Guru Awards! If you’re interested in an analysis of your entry, what I’d encourage you to do (and anyone else who’s interested in the same) is to share a link to your course in our Community Forums, and I’d bet you’d get some good input from the community. I can’t promise that the Articulate Guru Awards judges will provide you with feedback, but you’ll likely get some good input from others.

gabe // Posted at 9:14 am on October 18th, 2010
15

[…] http://www.articulate.com/blog/and-the-winners-of-the-2010-articulate-guru-awards-are/ […]

Articulate Guru Awards 2010 Winners « Ajitdanve's Blog // Posted at 9:14 am on October 18th, 2010
16

Congratulations to all the winners. These are GREAT presentations. I am curious to know how the articulate player template has been changed in the presentations “Health Start IQ” and “Financial Skills”. I would love to change the player template for my presentations as well and hence am interested in knowing the details.

Thanks,

Payal

Payal // Posted at 5:31 pm on October 18th, 2010
17

Hi Payal- check out this blog entry to find more information about how to customize the Articulate Player using the Presenter Player SDK.

gabe // Posted at 7:52 am on October 19th, 2010
18

LOVE Mike’s Bronze award! GREAT course! I’m wondering how you got the video that “big” so that it looks fantastic in the course! Congratulations!

sealiz // Posted at 10:35 pm on October 20th, 2010
19

SEALIZ,

The video was shot in HD (1440×1080, 24fps). I ultimately rendered the flv out at 720×480. I then inserted this into an Engage Media Tour Interaction.

Mike

Mike Enders // Posted at 5:41 pm on October 21st, 2010
20

[…] was cool to see some of the Articulate Guru Award courses get recognition at Devlearn’s DemoFest this year.  Diabesity won in the Business Processes […]

3 Ways to Build Remarkable E-Learning » The Rapid eLearning Blog // Posted at 3:36 am on November 16th, 2010
21

[…] the number and caliber of the courses that folks shared with us! It was really tough to choose the top winners from among the 200+ entries! (In case you missed the low-down on any of those winning courses, […]

22

Articulate Guru Awards 2011 will be
Well other countries can participate?

judy // Posted at 11:23 pm on August 8th, 2011
23

[…] […]

How to Start an e-Learning Project | jensaintonge // Posted at 3:17 pm on October 2nd, 2011

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