Earlier today, I got an email about a baby moose that was born in someone’s front yard. As I looked over the email, I noticed that the ads on the side were pushing baby showers and buying cute baby outfits.

By design these ads create relevant links based on the text of the email. In this case the links were not relevant and completely out of the context of the email I was reading. I don’t need cute baby outfits. So I just ignored the ads. That’s what happens when you just create ads oblivious to the needs of a real person.

There’s a lesson in here for those of us who design e-learning. Want your learners to learn? Then create relevant content. If not they’ll ignore what they see in the course. It all goes back to a point I was making in the last post about understanding the learner’s needs. To have the most impact, the course needs to be relevant to the learner. 

Don’t get caught trying to sell baby gifts to someone reading about a moose.

Three Ways to Make Your E-Learning Content Relevant

1. Spend time with the learners in their environment.

A while back, I worked on a course for machine operators in a production environment. Much of the job was loading and unloading a high-speed machine. After spending a few days on the floor talking to the machine operators, I found that the machine intimidated many of the new users. It was extremely large, fast, and noisy. On top of that, the new users were continually reminded of how expensive it was and to not mess up anything. This affected their performance.

I learned a lot talking to and observing the machine operators. Because of the time spent with them, we built the core part of the training around preventive maintenance on the machine. Before they learned to operate the machine, they learned to take it apart, clean it, and put it back together. By the time they started working on the machine, they were no longer intimidated. As a result we ended up cutting a 90-day training process down to less than 2 weeks.

2. Be a bridge between the content owner and the learner.

Typically, courses are built around the needs of the organization or content owner. Many times this happens oblivious to the learner’s needs. Part of your role is to blend the organization’s needs with the learner’s needs.

It’s important to get the learners involved in the development and design of the user training. Learners are able to build a context for the information. New learners are especially valuable because they can share recent experiences and insights while they are still fresh.

3. Put the content in context.

In face-to-face sessions, you can get a lot of mileage when you step away from a lecture format and allow people to work through scenario-based challenges. It keeps the information meaningful and the learners are motivated to learn.

You can do something similar with e-learning. Page after page of content is equal to an online lecture. Change things up. Create branched scenarios and real-world interactions where the learner gets to practice using the information in a way that is relevant to the real-world environment.

You don’t want your learners to tune out and discount the important courses that you build. If you get them involved and keep the content relevant, you’ll have engaged learners.

What are some things you do to keep your elearning courses relevant?

By the way, here’s that moose. Although, I opted not to throw a baby shower or buy it a new outfit.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Meet Customer Needs: A Tale of Two Cookies

I recently heard a story of two girls and their cookies. The first girl bakes a few dozen chocolate chip cookies and goes door-to-door to sell them. She finds selling the cookies difficult. Not everyone likes or wants chocolate chip. Some like oatmeal raisin. Some like peanut butter. On top of that, a dozen is a lot. Some only want six.

The other girl decides to go door-to-door and asks the neighbors what they want, taking orders specific to their needs. She then buys the ingredients she needs for each order, bakes the cookies, and delivers them to satisfied customers.

The first girl committed all of her resources to a product that many didn’t need or want. The second was able to manage her resources by committing them to a product that customers did want.

Build E-learning Courses People Want

There’s a lesson here for e-learning.

Training needs to be designed with the end-user in mind. Typically, we’re like the first girl. We build the training courses based on what we think and then try to sell them. In addition the course is built based on the curriculum rather than user’s needs. And then we commit all of our resources to building the course.

We should be like the second girl and learn to make cookies people need and want. Instead of building the course around information, we should build it around how the learner will use the information.

Today, with rapid development tools, like Articulate 360, we have the flexibility to bake the type of cookies that meets our users’ needs. In the past, it took months to design and build curriculum. Today, training can be built within days.

Since we can build and modify our training so quickly, we are in a better position to build it and get it to the users as they need it. If we find that the information doesn’t work for them or needs to be modified, we can do so on the fly. This saves time and money…and helps to satisfy the users.

“C is for Cookie…That’s Good Enough for Me.”

Here’s a simple cookie-inspired acronym to help you create learning based on the user’s need: OREO.

• Order taking. Keep the cookie story in mind. Don’t just bake chocolate chip cookies. Understand the learner’s needs. Use your rapid e-learning tools to quickly pull together the online courses that people want to consume.
• Results. Organizations spend money on training because they expect results. Design your training courses to meet real needs. As a rapid e-learning developer, you’re in a win-win situation. You can respond quickly to training needs at an attractive price.
• Engaged learners. Build the learning experience in a manner that engages the learner. Engagement means that the course has to look nice and embrace proven techniques on how to present information visually. It also means that we need to engage the user’s learning process and make the course truly interactive. Get them to make decisions that mimic those in the real world.
• Objectives. Make a promise to your learners: This training will not waste your time. Be clear on the objectives and build your training to meet them.

In future posts, we will pull our OREO apart and look at these steps in greater detail.

What type of cookies do you bake?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

In a recent post, Brian Clark, author of the Copyblogger, a site the gives advice on copywriting, suggested to blog authors “…to make an important promise…” to the reader. The promise is to not waste the reader’s valuable time. That advice is just as true to the world of e-learning as it is to copywriters and bloggers.

What’s Your Value Proposition?

The next time you design a training course, think about the learner who has to sit through it. They get bombarded with enough “nice to know information.”

It’s about time they find out why the course is important to them. If you want them to sit through your course, tell them how it’s going to help do a better job or improve their skills. Make a promise not to waste their precious time.

Instead of starting with something like this:

Why not start with this?

What’s My Value Proposition?

After reading Brian’s post, I stuck a note on my computer that says:

“Why is this important to the reader? How are you helping them?”

My personal goal is to help you do the best job you can do. To get started, I’ve included two series in the resources section on the sidebar.

• Rapid E-Learning 101: This 7-part series brings you up-to-speed with some basic ideas about rapid elearning and how to get your project off the ground.
• 5 Myths of Rapid E-Learning: In this 5-part series, we’ll explore common misconceptions about rapid e-learning development and discuss ways that rapid e-learning can help you do a great job and get the results you want.

If you subscribe to the blog, you get a complementary copy of The Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro. In it, I offer time-tested tips, tricks, and best practices to help you do more than just get your courses out the door.

As the blog progresses, I’ll be adding more categories and series. I have some ideas, but I am interested in knowing what you’d like to see.

What tips and tricks are valuable to you? Tell me what resources you need. If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to drop me a line.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

There are a lot of assumptions about rapid e-learning . However, many of them are not accurate. This is our last post in the series, 5 Myths About Rapid E-Learning.

There is a lot of concern about the automated nature of the rapid e-learning tools—that they’ll take creativity out of the process and everything will look the same. This might be true for some; however, the reality is that the only thing that hinders your creativity is you.

One of the things that I find most exciting about rapid e-learning is that I have the tools in my own hands and am not dependent on others to build the training. One of the most frustrating parts of the e-learning development process is working with the programmers. Because they are expensive and have many time constraints, even if you have a good idea, a lot of times you cannot implement it because you’re already committed to a specific direction. This is not the case with rapid e-learning tools.

With rapid development tools you have a lot of latitude and flexibility in changing your project design. If you have solid end-to-end skills you can leverage them to create very good and engaging training courses.

Here are some tips on leveraging the creative opportunities available with the tools.

• Use all of the multimedia capability. PowerPoint and Storyline have nice animations that are underutilized. With some practice it is easy to replicate sophisticated animations.
• Create engaging and interactive courses. Engagement can mean that the courses are visually appealing and have interactive learning elements. Look at what people are doing in more traditional e-learning courses. Try to mimic their styles and see what features you can build in your courses. If you step away from the bullet point look, you can create visually interesting training. In addition, there is no reason why you cannot build more interactivity in the courses. Two great books to help you learn to do this are: e-Learning by Design and Guide to E-Learning. Here are some other book recommendations.
• Win an award. If you want to be creative in the work you do, then find industry awards and create projects that you can submit. If you do this as a habit, you’ll find that you are pushing yourself to build the best training out there.

The e-learning world is rapidly changing. The tools are easier to use and quickly bring knowledge and skills to your learners. While there are some challenges, it is an exciting time to be in the industry. Remember, for every complaint about rapid e-learning there’s probably an opportunity to demonstrate your value. Take advantage of those opportunities and you’ll successfully change with the world.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

We’ve been busy busting myths about rapid e-learning in our 5-part series, 5 Myths about Rapid E-Learning. So far, we’ve learned that rapid development doesn’t make the e-learning course bad. We’ve also demonstrated that rapid e-learning is a first class approach to online training. Today, we’ll explore whether or not it’s good for subject matter experts to use rapid e-learning tools.

Many people are concerned that subject matter experts (SME) are not equipped to develop effective training courses. In some cases, this might be true. However, it doesn’t change the fact that many of them are already delivering some sort of training. They might be answering calls, presenting at meetings, or sharing at the water cooler. Whatever the case, those who design training do so because the need exists. It only makes sense that the rapid development technologies become part of what they do.

There are many benefits to equipping your SME with rapid authoring tools. The training can be developed just in time. Since it is web-based, it can be made available to others in the organization. This saves the SME time of presenting the same information over and over again, and it allows the information to be shared with those who need it, but might not have access to the SME.

The concern about the quality of training is legitimate. Here are some tips to help you.

• Help Your SME. Here’s a list of this blog’s resources to help your subject matter experts build better e-learning.
• Free Help & Resources. Take advantage of the free e-learning 101 series and the free e-books.
• Become a coach. Accept the fact that the SME will continue to build e-learning. The tools are only going to become better and easier to use. In addition, most people who are in training, started as a SME. Instead of trying to keep the tools from the SME, be proactive in getting the tools to them and then become a coach or mentor to help them do a better job teaching what they know.
• Become a SME. It’s a lot easier to train a SME to use a tool like the Articulate suite than it is to train you to replace the SME. The reality is that your job is going to change. If it bothers you that the SME are empowered to build their own e-learning content, now might be the time to consider a change.

The World is Changing

More and more of our interaction online is based on our ability to create and manage our content. Why shouldn’t we expect this to transfer to our work environment?

Be proactive by supporting this change and the people who are using the rapid e-learning tools. In our next post, we’ll look at how rapid e-learning will affect your job.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

In this series, we’ll look at some popular myths about rapid e-learning.

Because the tools are easy to use and just about anyone can create “e-learning” with them, some assert that the tools create bad e-learning. It’s the same argument you hear about PowerPoint. While this might be true about some of the e-learning courses developed with rapid e-learning tools, noted elearning archaeologist, Werner Oppelbaumer, is quick to point out that crappy e-learning existed years before the rapid development tools came on the scene. In fact, he goes on to say that crappy training existed before e-learning was even a form of training.

This isn’t just a recent phenomenon either. Apparently, thousands of years ago, men in bed sheets would pull productive farmers from their fields and bore them with lectures on the nature of justice and the ideal republic.

Look, I’ll admit there’s a lot of bad e-learning out there. I’ve even created some. However, it doesn’t exist because of the tools. It exists because the training isn’t designed well. You cannot blame the tools for poor learning design. The secret is learning to use the tools appropriately. The reality is that having rapid e-learning tools and a strategy to use them is important in today’s business climate.

To get the most out of the tools you need to include sound instructional design and use the tool’s multimedia capabilities to create engaging and interactive training.

• Use a template. One problem with poor e-learning modules is that you have users who aren’t trained instructional designers. It’s important to help them learn some basic instructional design principles. If you cannot spend a lot of time with them, at least create a simple template to help them organize the information. You might not get the most dynamic training course, but it will help move it in the right direction. In addition, don’t underestimate the abilities of your subject matter experts. Most want to do a good job; they just might need a little help.
• Look at what others are doing. You’ll get a better idea of what’s good and bad if you look at what others are doing. There are a lot of examples of e-learning courses and modules. In addition, look at industry award winners.
• Burgers and fries. If I’m in a hurry, I’m more apt to stop at McDonald’s than at a fine French restaurant for a seven-course meal. I wouldn’t make a regular meal of fast food, but many times it’s just what I need….or all I want to invest in. The same can be said for training. Maybe there’s a time where simple click & read training is all you need.

Rapid doesn’t mean crapid! You are in control and can determine the quality of what you produce.

Next, we’ll expose the myth that rapid e-learning is a second class approach to training.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Earlier we looked at understanding the customer’s perspective, and how to jump start your next project. Today, we’ll look at some key considerations when building your e-learning courses.

When building your e-learning it’s important to understand what type of course you are developing. This helps you make the right decisions about what to do and how to use your resources. Not all e-learning is created equal. There are different types of e-learning courses. Some are information-based and some are performance-based.

• Information-based courses are typically driven by regulations or compliance needs. It’s mostly content that is explained.
• Performance-based courses are focused on changes in behavior and real, measurable improvements.

E-Learning Design: Bring Value to Your Organization

You are a steward of your organization’s e-learning resources. It’s important to make the decisions that positively impact the bottom line. A first priority is to make sure that the e-learning courses you build are aligned to the organization’s performance goals. Generally, you’ll always be aligned if you are focused on cost and time improvements. But ultimately, you want to focus on specific performance improvements.

Three ways that you can bring value to your organization:

1. Cost: Focus on managing the cost of projects and development time. You can also focus on the value you bring in comparison to outsourcing.
2. Time: How fast can you deliver the training? Time is money.
3. Performance: Increased performance has a direct impact on the bottom line.

E-Learning Design: Help Your Customers Find the Right Solution

Many times your customers determine that an e-learning course is the right solution to meet their goals. Before investing the organization’s resources in e-learning courses, it’s important to understand if the customer’s assumptions are correct and an e-learning course is the right solution.

Ask good questions and identify clear objectives.

You serve your customers, the organization, and yourself when you help identify the best solution to their goals. There are times when training isn’t the way to get the results the customer really wants. In this case, it’s possible to save the organization money if you can help them see that an e-learning course is not the right solution. You might not get the work, but you’ll be seen as a valuable contributor.

E-Learning Design: Determine What Type of Training Course You Need to Create

When you develop e-learning courses, you have two options. You can use a rapid e-learning tool like the ones in Articulate 360 or you can pay for custom development. Because of this, it’s important to have a process in place to determine when to go with in-house resources and when to go with custom development.

If you do outsource, it’s a good idea to dictate that you want the course developed in an authoring tool like Storyline and then request the source files. This will save you money when you need to make tweaks and edits. You can do them yourself.

Many e-learning courses have no real performance goals tied to them. Their purpose is to convey information or comply with regulations. This doesn’t mean that the information’s not important. It just means the purpose of the course is to disseminate the information, and not necessarily see a performance improvement.

Authoring tools like Rise 360 are perfect for these types of e-learning courses. You can build them quickly. They look great and work on mobile devices. And you meet your customer’s goals with minimal investment. Personally, my default position is that we use the easiest authoring tools unless we can justify spending more time and money building something more complex.

Let me explain.

The rapid e-learning tools are more than adequate to handle most e-learning needs. Why not go with what costs less and is easy to implement? Unless you need custom interactions or more complex design, the easier, the better.

Custom development can be costly. The only way I would go past the rapid e-learning tool set is if the project requires more complex interactivity tied to performance expectations. My belief is that if the customer cannot show a clear link to performance improvements, then it is my responsibility to meet their training needs with minimal cost and time commitment.

This doesn’t mean that the projects are subpar, it just means that I don’t commit expensive resources to a project that doesn’t show a return on investment. Courses that show a clear connection to changes in performance are the ones to which you want to commit the bulk of your resources.

Rapid e-learning tools can help you build most of what you see in the e-learning industry. Development costs are low, the tools are easy to learn, and you can deliver a quality project rapidly.

Whichever approach you take, it’s important to think through the objectives of your e-learning course. There’s a time to use a rapid e-learning tool and there’s a time to commit more resources to custom work. Develop a process to determine when that is. You’ll be able to help your customers get a quality product with the right investment.

Next in the series, we’ll learn to build a simple project plan.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Earlier, we looked at how to be an e-learning hero. Today, we’ll look at ways to jump-start your e-learning projects.

You’re asked to pull an e-learning course together within a couple of weeks. What do you do?

In the past, you may have told your customers that there isn’t enough time to build the training. Today, that’s not the case. E-learning allows you to say “yes” to your customer’s hurried requests.

While the tools do give you a head start, you’re still going to be pressed for time. Here are 5 simple tips to help you prepare for your next e-learning project.

E-Learning Project Tip: Create a Generic Training Template

If you have limited time to develop your e-learning course, you don’t want to spend days trying to determine an approach. With the right template, you can stay ahead of the game. It should include learning objectives, a structure to present the information, and a means to evaluate the learner’s understanding.

You might want to design two or more templates that consider various types of training. One could deal with presenting information in a linear manner. Another could address performance-based training where the user has to learn and apply skills. Regardless of how you structure your template, the main point is to have a design template ready to go.

Of course, with Articulate 360 and the included content library, you have more than enough templates to get started.

E-Learning Project Tip: Create Models for Learner Interactivity

It’s important to engage the learners from the real-world perspective. They want to know why the training is important to them. Interactive e-learning is one way to do that. Interactivity goes beyond just drag-and-drop features. It’s more about getting the learner to connect with (and think through) the information presented in the e-learning course. This could include case studies and problem-solving questions. There is a lot that can be done with interactions. They don’t need to be overly complicated to be successful.

I like this ergonomics example from Prometheus created with a simple labeled graphic interaction. The users are engaged and need to make decisions based on the information presented. They also get immediate feedback after the decision is made. It’s a perfect example of an interaction that is effective and easy to design.

Look at what other people are doing (the weekly challenges are great for this) and make a list of interactions that work and that you could apply to your projects. Then when you start to look at your course content, you can pull from a list of proven interaction ideas. You won’t have to spend time trying to invent some.

E-Learning Project Tip: Create Some Style Themes and Templates

No matter what type of course you build, you’ll still need to have a specific look to it. The nice thing about using Articulate’s e-learning tools is that the player design is complete. You don’t have to spend a lot of time designing navigation features.

Even though the player is ready-to-go, there’s still a need to think through the overall look and feel of the training course. You can gain some ground if you pre-design templates with various layouts and color schemes, as mentioned above. There are a number of times where I’ve pulled one of my templates out of the drawer (so to speak) and the customer was happy with it and ready to go.

Even if you’re using a PowerPoint, you still have a lot of latitude in what you can do. The slides do not need to look like PowerPoint slides. Step away from the bullet points and treat the slide as a blank area and see what you can do.

The key is to have a few design ideas ready-to-go. This way you can put together a quick prototype without a lot of thought about the design.

E-Learning Project Tip: Collect Media Assets

It’s important to have the right images and visuals for your training courses. There are a few things you can do to get ready for your next project. If you’re using Articulate 360, you have access to templates, pictures, illustrations, videos, and icons. Take advantage of them. There are also all sorts of free stock images and resources to be had online.

Build a collection of images that fit the same style and look. You can group images together to create your own visual metaphors. In addition, you can change the colors of the images to match your template color theme.

It’s also a good idea to collect pictures of characters. Again, with Articulate 360, you get thousands of characters and avatars.

If you work in a production environment, you might want to go around and take pictures of the equipment and people working on it.

You can also use a photo editor to create your own graphics. Create boxes and arrows. Apply some effects to add a bit of pop to your screen. You can even build your own graphics in PowerPoint.

Having the right images is important. It’s also a time-consuming process. Start early and build your collection. When you need the image or ideas, you’ll have a great resource at your disposal.

E-Learning Project Tip: Create a list of questions to ask?

The better you are at asking questions and listening, the better you can design your e-learning course. When you’re in a rush, it’s easy to ask the wrong questions, or even to forget the right questions. Having a pre-determined list of questions you want to ask is important to getting the right e-learning course built.

Determine what you need to know about projects and create some questions. It’s also a good idea to condense the list to five key questions and forward that to the client before the meeting. This gives them a heads up on what you need to cover and might save some time.

Final Thoughts

You’re under a lot of pressure to meet deadlines and deliver results. Using Articulate’s e-learning tools plays a large role in getting your work done. The five tips above are some ways to help you speed up your e-learning project development.

This list isn’t exhaustive. What would you do?

In our next post, we’ll review what you should know about designing e-learning courses.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.