Announcing the Winners of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009

Mar102009
Written by Gabe Anderson — Posted in Guru Awards

Yesterday was a whirlwind day. We had a very successful Articulate Live ’09 users’ conference and we announced the winners of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009.

You can really see the power and flexibility of rapid elearning in the submissions we received. There were some organizations that just a few years ago would not have had the budget or programming expertise for elearning. Yet today, not only do they have the tools, they’re confident enough to submit their work for consideration. That’s being empowered!

What stood out from the more than 100 submissions was the variety and the approach people took in designing their courses. Some of the entries dealt with very serious subjects and some were more lighthearted and humorous. We also had submissions from all over the world. Thank you to all who submitted.

After reviewing the courses, I can tell you that the bar has been raised and that this was a much more competitive contest than last time. With the release of Articulate Studio Pro ’09, we have more powerful tools than before. But more impressive is how people are getting the most out of those tools. In fact, there were so many quality entries this year that picking just three winners wasn’t easy… so we picked the top 5. We have a gold, silver, and three-way tie for the bronze.

Check out the winners below.

Gold Winner: e-Mersion

Congratulations to e-Mersion, the Gold Winner of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009!

Dave Richards, president of e-Mersion, submitted this award-winning CPR course, which gets the heart pumping. The judges really liked the way e-Mersion made full use of the tools in Studio ’09 Pro to create a very compelling and interactive elearning course.

Check out how e-Mersion seamlessly integrates the Articulate products and makes full use of the features by adding Flash video and background music, and by providing learners the choice of learning about CPR or just jumping right in and trying to save a man’s life:

View the e-Mersion CPR Course

Silver Winner: New Mavens

Congratulations to New Mavens, the Silver Winner of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009!

Chris Wirick of New Mavens submitted this course on a software product called Evernote. His goal was to step away from the typical “elearning look” and focus on a simple, yet strong design. And it worked.

Because that’s what the judges noted. They liked the clean and striking design, a compelling story, great-sounding narration, and a really creative approach to interactivity (be sure to check out the section on the iPhone Evernote app), along with a Quizmaker ’09 quiz designed to look like the iPhone interface:

View Chris Wirick’s Evernote Course

Bronze Winner: SSC

Congratulations to SSC, the Bronze Winner of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009!

Tim Buteyn, Director of Training with SSC, submitted our bronze winning course, which takes a topic that could have been a boring page turner and turns it into a compelling story. What also stood out was the way he used a custom player from Articulate partner Kineo to create a different look, along with the use of video and interactivity to reinforce the learning:

View the SSC HIPAA Course

Bronze Winner: Joann Swanson

Congratulations to Joann Swanson, the Bronze Winner of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009!

Joann Swanson created this relaxing presentation on Creative Visualization. The judges were impressed with her graphic design and style, the way she integrated the Articulate Studio ’09 products, and her effective use of multimedia, from the background music that helps set the tone for the subject matter to her use of Flash movies for subtle effects:

View Joann Swanson’s Creative Visualization presentation

Bronze Winner: Ad Giants

Congratulations to Ad Giants, the Bronze Winner of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009!

Heather Beaudoin, Education Manager with Ad Giants, submitted this marketing presentation, which outlines the company’s product offerings. The judges were impressed with the overall style and design of the presentation. They commented on how everything was tightly integrated and made good use of the software’s features:

View the Ad Giants Product Tour Course

Overall, the judges were really impressed with each winner and how they used Articulate Studio ’09 Pro to create effective, interactive, and engaging products.

We also received some really impressive submissions from companies and individuals like 42 Design Square, Cognizant Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd, Monarch Media, eVision Design, Globus, Volvo Penta, Waste Recycling Group, Teach America, Dan Rollins, and Chris Kelly. We’ll show them off in future posts.

So stay tuned to this blog (subscribe here) as we dig deeper into the Guru Awards 2009. We’ll have some in-depth reviews of the winning courses and look at what tips and tricks they offer so that we can build better elearning courses.

Congratulations to all the winners! And thank you to everyone who submitted this year.

A big thank you, too, to Helene Geiger and the team at Prometheus — the Guru Awards 2007 Gold Winner — for their input as guest judges in this year’s contest.

24 responses to “Announcing the Winners of the Articulate Guru Awards 2009”

1

[…] Submission is now closed. Learn more about the Guru Awards 2009 Winners. […]

2

These are great examples. I would love to see some of the ones that didn’t win just to get ideas from what others are doing. It would be particularly useful to me to see all of the presentation that relate to training users to use software.

Curtis Rushing // Posted at 10:50 am on March 11th, 2009
3

[…] from the ever-crazy “life in general,” I was scrambling to finish my submission for the Articulate Guru Awards 2009 – a project I put together in my so-called “spare time” (much to the dismay of my wife […]

4

I’m really impressed with these (as I suspect we should beA).

I’d love to know how some of these were achieved – particularly the emulation of the search on the Evernote example!

I’m going to be using Articulate to do some software training (along with another app) and was very interested.

Kita Coles // Posted at 7:25 pm on March 12th, 2009
5

Hi Kita- Glad you liked the winners! In the weeks ahead, we’ll be looking at some of the features more closely.

As for the search emulation in the Evernote iPhone demo, that was created with Quizmaker ’09 using the Fill in the Blank question and customized via Slide View mode.

gabe // Posted at 7:32 am on March 13th, 2009
6

@Curtis & Kita: We’ll be doing a series of posts on the guru award winners and looking at what they did in their courses. We’ll also be looking at some of the other entries.

Tom // Posted at 12:55 pm on March 13th, 2009
7

You mention that the course produced by Springfield Service Corporation utlized a custom Articulate player from KINEO. I went to their site and didn’t see any offerings to build custom players. Do you have any additional info on how to aquire custom players from third party companies?

Mike Gallagher // Posted at 1:24 pm on March 13th, 2009
8

Hi Mike- You might want to email or call Kineo directly to inquire. They definitely create the custom players; they just might not advertise that on their site.

gabe // Posted at 2:14 pm on March 13th, 2009
9

Hi Mike:

Try here which includes contact info: http://www.kineo.com/documents/rapidelearning.pdf

Sheldon Swimmer // Posted at 8:04 pm on March 13th, 2009
10

[…] en France par Skola-Blog, les résultats du « Articulate Guru Awards 2009 » viennent de tomber. L’objectif de l’opération lancée par Articulate était de récompenser […]

11

Hi, Congratulations to all the winners. The Kineo Articulate Services including custom skins can be found here http://www.kineo.com/rapid-elearning/articulate-e-learning.html.

Steve Rayson // Posted at 8:48 am on March 15th, 2009
12

Congrats to all the other winners – some great stuff this year. I felt truly honored with my Silver award and find myself in great company with the other winners.

I know Articulate will be showing some tips and tricks from my Evernote tour as well as from the other winning courses in the coming weeks, but I will also be talking about some of my techniques on my own blog on eLearning design, eQuixotic.

http://www.equixotic.com

So if you found the Evernote tour of interest, please jump in and subscribe. I’d love to share some of my own insight, and hear some of your insight as well.

Chris
New Mavens

eQuixotic // Posted at 1:56 pm on March 16th, 2009
13

[…] Last week was a blur.  Monday started with Articulate Live ‘09 and ended with the eLearning Guild’s Annual Gathering.  In between, I delivered three presentations, met hundreds of people, and we announced the winners of our Guru Awards 2009. […]

14

Wow! Thanks for sharing for all of us that didn’t get to attend! Great examples of e-learning!!

Shauna Smith // Posted at 9:07 am on March 17th, 2009
15

FYI, the Ad Giants Product Tour Course is not cross-browser compatible.

It launches in IE6 but not in Firefox 2 / Flash Player 8.

Cheers
Alfred

Alfred Low // Posted at 9:43 pm on March 17th, 2009
16

Hi Alfred- I just tested the Ad Giants course on Windows XP with Firefox 2 and Flash Player 8 r42 (8,0,42,0) and it worked just fine.

What are you seeing when you try to launch it?

gabe // Posted at 8:21 am on March 18th, 2009
17

[…] Check out the winning entries from the 2009 Articulate Guru Awards […]

18

[…] Check out the winning entries from the 2009 Articulate Guru Awards […]

19

[…] CPR course won the Gold Medal in the Articulate Guru Awards. I’m not sure why. It goes against everything Ruth Clark (and others) teaches about cognitive […]

How Not to Use Articulate | Brian Dusablon // Posted at 10:52 am on March 31st, 2009
20

[…] Check out the winning entries from the 2009 Articulate Guru Awards […]

21

[…] Check out the winning entries from the 2009 Articulate Guru Awards […]

22

[…] Check out the winning entries from the 2009 Articulate Guru Awards […]

23

OK Thanks to this post, I am making modifications/updates to my HIPAA course. This is a perfect example of how to make a potential boring page turner into a fun course.

Thanks to the community and TOM

Astrid Case

Astrid Case // Posted at 2:22 pm on January 23rd, 2010
24

[…] software for about a year. Just as I was learning about the Articulate community last year, I saw a blog post announcing winners of the 2009 contest. I looked through the Community Showcase and learned very […]

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