In an operating room, when the surgeon asks for a scalpel, it’s right there.  The same can be said for any vocation.  When you’re doing a job, you tend to be faster and more proficient when you have the tools right by you, rather than spending a lot of time looking for them.

There are some simple things you can do to improve your production process.   A lot of it has to do with organizing your assets, like clip art, images, and other graphics.  In this post, I’ll show you a few techniques that I use to make my production easier.

As you’re working in PowerPoint, you move objects on and off the slide.  You change fonts, align shapes, and experiment with different colors and layouts.  When you make these types of edits on your real slides, you can run into problems.  It’s easy to accidentally mess things up which cause you to spend more time fixing mistakes. That’s why I use the following techniques.

Move Objects Off Screen

Your actual slide area is only so big.  The good thing is that you’re not limited to working in just the slide area.  You can always move objects from the main slide off to the side.  When you publish your course, you won’t be able to see those objects that are not in the slide area.

So, when you want quick access to some objects or pictures, just load them on the slide and move them off to the side.

Create a Staging Area

I like to create an extra slide (or two) that I put next to the slide I am working on.  I use it as a staging area.  This allows me to work in the staging area and not mess up my real slide.  This really comes in handy because working with layers in PowerPoint can be a challenge.

For example, if I need to ungroup an object:

• I’ll create a new slide.
• Move the object there.
• Make my edits.
• Move the edited object to my real slide. 

Using the extra slide as a staging area gives you the freedom to work without messing up the real slides.  It’s not unusual for me to have multiple blank slides that I use to work on my graphics and animations.  They’re just temporary slides, so when I am done, I just delete them….OR…

Hide Your Slides

Because PowerPoint lets you hide your slides, you can create as many extra slides as you like without deleting them.  When you publish your slides, the hidden slides are not published.

• Select your slide(s)
• Right click and select "hide slide" from the menu.
• Hidden slides will be faded out and there is a slash line through the slide number.

The benefit to hiding slides is that you can create as many extra slides as you like.  You can us slides to create an instant access library.  For example, put all of your clip art and graphics on a series of easy-to-access slides.  Then hide them.  You have access to the slides when you need them and they never show up in your published course.  That saves you the time of doing a bunch of inserting of pictures and graphics.

This is also a good way to pass those assets on to someone else.  All of your graphics and images can be stored on extra slides within the project. 

Another benefit to the hidden slide feature is that you can have multiple versions of the same course.  For example, suppose you have a course for production workers and one for their supervisors.  Essentially, the courses are the same; however there are some differences that are covered in extra slides.  Don’t create two courses.  Instead, hide and unhide the slides you need and then publish the two courses from the same PowerPoint file.

Here’s a quick tutorial to show you how what I covered in today’s post works.

Click here to view the tutorial.

Using these simple tricks will help you save time and manage your project assets.  By creating hidden slides with all of your graphics, you never have to worry about losing them or messing up your real slides.  Develop the habit of using staging area slides and the hide slide feature and you’ll find that your production process becomes a little faster.

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If you’re like me, when you use PowerPoint to build your rapid elearning courses, you end up doing a lot of copying and pasting of objects.  Or you seem to be inserting the same images over and over again. Well, here’s a tip that’s going to save you time and make your life a whole lot easier.  Your family will love you, coffee will taste better in the morning, and "three little birds will line up on your door step, singin’ sweet songs of melodies pure and true."

Understand the Clipboard

When you copy an object, it gets loaded into a clipboard.  The clipboard is a temporary area that holds the copied information.  This allows you to go to a different location and paste the clipboard object.

Use the Clipboard as a Temporary Library of Objects

Most people already know how to copy and paste objects on the screen.  In fact, my guess is that it is one of the most frequently used features in PowerPoint during the production process. 

What most people don’t know is that the clipboard can hold up to 24 items.  This comes in handy because you can preload it with all sorts of content.  Then when you need it, open the clipboard and paste it on the slide. 

The steps are real simple:

• Click on and copy your object: CTRL+C.  This loads it into your clipboard.

• Open your clipboard. You can find the clipboard by pressing ALT+E, then B.

• The clipboard is open and shows you all of the objects that are loaded in it.  When you need one, click on it and it will paste onto screen.  It’s as simple as that.

Check out the Tutorial

Click here to view the tutorial.

If you find that you’re always copying and pasting the same stuff, this is a time saving tip.  To really get a sense of how ii works, just watch this quick tutorial that I put together.  It gives you an idea of how using the clipboard can make production a lot faster.

Feel free to share any tips and tricks that you use by clicking on the comments section.

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I’ve gotten a lot of emails about my last post on creating simple puzzle animations in PowerPoint.  Based on some of the questions in the emails, I thought it would be good to go over some simple tips and tricks that I’ve learned over the years.  They help make working with PowerPoint more productive.

Review the tips below and then watch the tutorial for more detailed information.

Click here to view the PowerPoint tips tutorial.

The tutorials are a little more detailed than the post so they take a little more time.  The link above takes you to the entire tutorial.  If you want to see individual parts of the tutorial, click the links below:

• Selecting objects (4:07)
• Duplicating objects (2:32)
• Grouped objects (6:29)
• Keyboard shortcuts (2:31)
• Right clicking (1:28)
• Grids & guidelines (5:37)

1. How to select objects on the screen

• Click and drag the mouse to select objects on the screen.  Only those items that you drag over completely are selected.  So, you can avoid selecting objects by not dragging over the entire image.  This works really well when trying to group and ungroup clip art.
• Select and unselect objects by holding down the shift key and clicking on them.  I’ll drag the mouse over a bunch of objects to capture them all, then the ones I want to remove, I just SHIFT+click on them.

2. How to duplicate objects and slides

• You can quickly duplicate objects and slides, by placing your mouse over an object.  Press the CTRL key and you’ll see the mouse with a "+" sign.  Then click and drag the object where you want it to be.  You can do the same for slides in the viewer modes.  Just CTRL click and drag the slides.
• Another option is to select a slide or object and press CTRL+D.  That duplicates the object.

3. Leverage grouping and ungrouping of objects

• Right click on objects to group and ungroup or use shortcuts:
  • PowerPoint 2007: CTRL+G (group) CTRL+SHIFT+G (ungroup)
  • PowerPoint 2003: CTRL+SHIFT+G and CTRL+SHIFT+H
• I’ve slowly been building my own library of custom content.  I’ve developed the habit of converting my grouped objects into vector images and then reinserting them in the slide.  This way I can easily use them elsewhere.  By saving them as vector images, I’m also able to ungroup and edit them inside PowerPoint.

4. Keyboard shortcuts & right clicking

There are a bunch of keyboard shortcuts that you can use to make your production process faster.  The options for PowerPoint 2003 and 2007 are a little different. 

There are some basic shortcuts that I use all the time for copying and pasting.  I also do a lot of grouping and duplicating.  I can’t go through every shortcut in this post.  However, if you review the links below you can see what they are.  You might even find features that you didn’t know existed.

Here are links for the two:

• Shortcuts for PowerPoint 2003
• Shortcuts for PowerPoint 2007.  Pressing the ALT key will also reveal your shortcuts.

In addition to learning some keyboard shortcuts, get used to right clicking on objects.  That will always open a context sensitive menu that reveals options and features available to you based on what you right clicked.  It will save you a lot of time looking for menu items.

I love PowerPoint 2007 and think it really helps make PowerPoint a better tool to author elearning.  I’m going to do a post on my observations in the near term.  However, if you’re between PowerPoint 2003 and 2007, I found this quick reference guide on the Computerworld site with a good comparison of the keyboard shortcuts for both products.

5. Use the grid and guides to help align objects

Using PowerPoint’s grid and guides will help you keep objects aligned.  As you can see, the menu lets you modify the grid spacing, snapping of objects, and drawing guides.

I use the drawing guides on every project.  They help me align my objects across screens.  Duplicating them is the same as duplicating anything else in PowerPoint.  Select the guide, hit CTRL, and then drag the guide where you want it.

PowerPoint is a very effective tool to build elearning courses.  The better you get at using some of PowerPoint’s features, the more effective you’ll become when building your courses.  Hopefully, these tips and tricks will help you become a little faster at what you do.

If you have some tips and tricks you’d like to share, just add them to the comments section.  Also, feel free to share these with others. 

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I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking for a quick way to build puzzle animations.  Usually the requests are to build them with no additional software or advanced graphics skills.  They also added the words famous to all of us in the rapid elearning world…no time and no budget.

Building a puzzle animation is simple and only takes a few minutes.  I built a quick demo of how this could be done just using PowerPoint.  Click on the link to see the published version and then learn how I did it by reading the rest of the post. 

Click here to view the puzzle demo.

Build a Puzzle

When building animations, the key is to trick the mind into thinking that what it sees is what it sees.  In this case, we want it to look like puzzle pieces are added to the screen to build an image. 

Instead of building individual pieces and adding them to the screen, what we really do is hide the complete image underneath the entire puzzle.  As we remove the puzzle pieces, part of the image is revealed.  This creates the illusion that we’re building a puzzle, piece by piece. 

To create this effect, you’ll need a clip art image of a puzzle that can be ungrouped and modified in PowerPoint.  A quick search of PowerPoint’s clip art will give you one. 

• Ungroup the puzzle clip art and change the fill color to match the background color of the slide.
• Place the image that you want to reveal underneath the puzzle image.
• Duplicate the slide and then remove a puzzle piece from the clip art.
• Continue to do this until the entire image is revealed.

Here’s a tutorial to show you how I built it. 

Click here to view the puzzle tutorial (9 min).

That’s it.  Pretty simple, huh?  In essence you’re just creating a hole that peeks into the layer beneath.  So you’re really not limited to just the puzzle shapes.  You can use it to create the illusion of images that are cut or sized to the screen area.  So instead of actually editing the image, you just modify the “hole” that you place on top of it.

This is a quick and simple way to create a puzzle without having to do a lot of editing of your graphics.  If you have some tips or tricks, feel free to share them in the comments section.  Also, if you have some questions about other tips and tricks like this, feel free to send them my way.  I’ll see about doing some simple tutorials.

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A while back my wife’s computer crashed.  So I did a search online, found the information I needed, and then learned to do the repair.  While I was going through the pages of content, at no time did I complain about the lack of interactivity or the fact that the content wasn’t media-rich.  In fact, the only thing that concerned me was finding the right information to solve the problem.

I found the information I needed and applied it to my problem.  Because of this, I learned to solve the problem and build on my existing knowledge of how to fix laptops.  This seems to come in a lot handier now that I have a Vista-based PC. 🙂

One of the dilemmas we face when we create elearning courses is that those taking the course aren’t always compelled by an immediate need to learn like I was with my wife’s laptop.  They’re usually taking the course because it’s compulsory–either their employer requires it, they need some sort of certification, or it’s part of an educational program. 

This doesn’t mean the course is useless or irrelevant.  It just means that the reason for taking it might not be to meet an immediate learning need.  And because of that, it becomes more challenging to help people learn from the information the course presents. 

This is when a scenario or problem-based course comes in handy.  By presenting the right type of situation, you can get the learner to think and make decisions which helps them process the course content and make it part of their knowledge. 

A traditional course would be like the computer manufacturer giving me a handbook with all of the information on how to repair a computer.  A scenario-based course would be like a real situation where I actually need to make the choices that are part of repairing a computer.  Both approaches give me the course content.  But instead of just reviewing it, I’m presented with a problem and then use the information to solve it.  But, I think you’d agree that actually solving the problem becomes a better learning experience than just seeing the information.

When you build your next course, instead of just presenting information, figure out how the learner will use it and then build scenarios around it.  Here are three questions I ask to help me think through, and then build, my scenarios.

What situations require the learner to know this information?

Step away from just giving them information and build a scenario.  There’s a reason that the course content is important to the learner.  Creates a circumstance where the learner gets to use the knowledge that you hope the course creates.  The benefit to this is that for an experienced learner, you’re going to help them confirm what they already know.  And for a novice learner, you’ll be able to help them learn.

I once had to build a course on environmental training for the managers of production facilities.  The client opted to do a series of information-based modules.  While the modules satisfied the need to get the information out to the managers, they did little to help the learner integrate the information in their daily practice. 

To remedy this, instead of information modules, we could have presented a scenario where a government inspector comes to the site and issues a $1 million fine because of the high level of emissions.  The manager has to create a report for the CEO that details why his site was fined $1 million and then what actions he needs to take to ensure compliance with the laws and reduce emissions. 

What choices could they be expected to make in that circumstance?

Once you’ve determined your circumstance, you need to figure out what types of choices a person would make.  This is where the subject matter expert can lend a hand.  They could share different experiences and possible outcomes.

You want to make the choices real and not so obvious.  The last thing you want to do is offer one solid choice and two choices that are easy to weed out.  Life isn’t like that.  Instead it’s usually a matter of making some decisions and then dealing with issues that come from those decisions.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to always have a right and wrong choice.  You can throw in choices that are somewhat right and somewhat wrong and force the learner to pick from the best of the choices.  You’ll be able to address the nuances in the feedback.  Also, by not always having the right choices, you’ll be able to create other situations that spin off of the bad part of the choice.

For example, in the environmental training, these could be the choices:

• Contact the CEO immediately to notify her of the fine.
• Research the issue, and then contact your regional manager to discuss the next steps.
• Take corrective action so that the problem is fixed and then create a report for the CEO.

They’re all viable options and none of the choices seem obviously right or wrong.  This makes you stop and think through the potential outcomes.  And that’s what you want to have happen.

What are the consequences of those choices?

Each choice produces a consequence that generates feedback.  This is where you can introduce some of the specific course content that they’d normally just get in the “click and read” course.

You could make very direct statements such as, “That’s not a good choice because the current law requires….”  This allows you to share some of the course content.  Then a follow up step could be to meet with the manager or some other situation that allows you share even more info. 

Or you can make it flow more like real life.  Instead of stating that “this choice is right or wrong” you just have a follow up situation that produces some more choices.

Let’s look at the environmental training again. 

• If you contact the CEO, this could delay getting the issue fixed while her team reviews options.  In the mean time, the inspector comes back to check up on your site. 
• By researching the problem, you’re able to find out what needs to happen and can discuss with your manager.  In the mean time the local news has broken the story and your company stock is down.  You’re CEO isn’t happy.
• Fixing the problem is good.  However, your manager and CEO are upset that they didn’t hear about the problem first.

This type of tension is what produces the learning.  As I think through these options, my first thought is to know exactly what the company expects me to do. 

You want a healthy level of uncertainty, but not make it seem so difficult that you’re not motivated to learn how to overcome it.  Uncertainty feeds into the learner’s curiosity.  I addressed some of this in an earlier post about leveraging tension and curiosity in your elearning courses.

Whenever you attempt a scenario-driven approach, the immediate concern from your client or subject matter expert will be about how they can ensure that the information they want to share makes its way into the course.  Here are a few ways to do this:

• Share some information as you set the stage for the decision-making.  A question could be stated like this:  “In 1979, the EPA passed this law, which states….”  That gives the learner some information and then sets the stage for the scenario. 
• Provide information as part of the feedback.  You could be very direct with the feedback: “That is not correct.  The current law states that….”  Or, you could have the learner do some research and then answer a follow up scenario or question.  “Go to the company web site and look at the current requirements.”
• Create some help lines.  For example, you could just add links to additional information.  If you use Engage, you could build an FAQ or similar type of interaction as a drop down tab.  Here’s an example of how that could work. 
• Create help assistants.  This is similar to the first approach.  Only in this case, instead of an impersonal help resource, create a virtual character than can provide the information.  For example, the glossary interaction that you see in the example I provided could just as easily be a link to Susan, the Human Resources Manager.  If you add an image or video and some audio, it makes the help seem much more personal.
• Create a virtual guide.  The guide takes you through the course with the understanding that at any time you need additional information, you click on the guide for tips and clues.

Information by itself is meaningless.  It only holds value if the learner knows what to do with it.  You want to know how the learner will use the information and then build your scenarios around that.

These three questions provide a simple structure for scenarios.  They help you convert information that might normally be presented in a standard linear format and put it in a context that is more like the learner’s real world.  The more you can make the decisions relevant to the learner’s world, the more likely they’ll be engaged with the course and actually meet your learning objectives.

What are some techniques you use to convert your course content to relevant learning scenarios?  Please share them in the comments section.

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Think of learning and instructional design from the perspective of playing the “I Spy” game.   You say, “I spy with my little eye…a red box.”  And then you wait forever while the other game players look for the red box.  Maybe they find it; maybe they don’t.  In either case, you’re at the whim of the ones looking for the box because you don’t control how they go about looking for it and whether or not they even find it.

Instructional design is like starting with, “I spy a red box over there in the corner under the picture of the sailboat.”  With this type of guidance, you’ve gotten the person to look in just the right spot.  It doesn’t make playing “I Spy” fun, but it makes teaching a lot easier because you’re less dependent on them learning through a more informal process (which has its own benefits but can be more time-consuming).

Ultimately, how you structure and present your content impacts how people learn and gain their understanding.  There are a number of approaches that you can take when presenting your course content. For this post, I explain three simple techniques and follow it up with a quick demo.

Show them the big picture and let them see everything in context.

You can present all of the information at one time.  This can help the learners see the overall context and make connections.  It also gives the learners the freedom to explore the screen content and puts them in a position of discovery.

One of the challenges can be that the learner might “see” the information, but might not really be making the right connections.  In essence, it’s like saying, ‘I spy something important.”  And then hoping that the learner knows what it is.

One way to address this is to guide them to look for specific information on the screen.  For example, instead of telling them the information, ask questions that provoke thinking.

What benefits do you see in this approach?

Point out those parts of the screen that are important.

This builds off of the first technique.  You still give the learners all of the information up front.  However, by pointing things out on the screen, you’re able to draw their attention to those things that are more important than others.

It’s the difference between, “I spy some important information,” and “This information is important.”  By directing their attention, you can give them the big picture and still focus on things more specific.  This can be done with simple annotations or animations.

Only show them the information as you get to it.

Don’t distract your learners with information they don’t need.  Instead, use progressive builds to reveal the information on the screen.  Basically, you’re breaking the information into manageable chunks and then giving it to the learners a little at a time.This can be an effective technique if you’re trying to teach something new or complex.

Going back to the “I Spy” game, it’s like saying, “I spy a red box, but it’s in the top left corner of the screen.”  That immediately tells people where to look and they aren’t distracted by things outside that area.

The drawback to this technique is that it can be slow for those who are quick learners or already understand the content.  Thus, they have to wait for you to get to a place where they actually learn something new.

Consider how the user navigates the course.  If I add animations on the screen, I like to free up the navigation so that the learners can go back and forth.  This gives them the power to review the information.  Sometimes the narration can be too slow, or we set automatic animations timed at what we think is an “average” reading speed.  We do this to accommodate the “average” learner, but from my experience, it really accommodates no one.  In fact, you’ll get complaints of “too fast” or “too slow” anyway.  Why not just give the learners the ability to navigate at their pace?

One of my favorite player features is the scrub bar.  Not all course players have them.  However, when it’s available, I like to drag it back and forth to review the animations or parts of the screen without having to go through the entire screen from the beginning.  One of my biggest pet peeves is a screen with 5 minutes of information and no way to jump to the middle if I want to refer back to some information on that screen.  The scrub bar lets me quickly jump to a specific point of information.

Watch the demo.

I put together a quick tutorial to show you how the simple techniques work.  Click the link below to watch it.

Click here to view the demo.

These three techniques are generally neutral with no one being better or worse than the others.  How you use them just depends on your subject matter and the learner’s expertise.  You also need to consider your learning objectives and how you’ll help the learner meet them.

What simple techniques would you use to present information to your learners?  Leave an answer in the comments section.

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As I was surfing the web, I came across Nicholas Carr’s recent article in which he asks if “Google is making us stupid.”  It’s an interesting read.  He discusses the impact that the Internet has on our reading habits and ultimately on the development of who we are and our ability to think.

I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose.  That’s rarely the case anymore.

 

Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, [and] begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I could have written those words!  I’ve also developed this habit of quickly scanning for key points and moving on.  In fact, just this week my wife got a book on parenting and asked if we could read it together.  The Olympics were on and I’m not a big fan of men’s synchronized diving, so I picked up the book and spent about 15 minutes skimming through it.  That was enough for me.  I got the key points and now I’m ready to go discipline my kids in a new way.  In fact, one of their punishments will be to watch men’s synchronized diving.

So what does this have to do with elearning?

It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse…”

Carr’s article raises some issues that could impact how we design our elearning courses.  Our learners are being conditioned to process online content a certain way.  It impacts how they see, retrieve, and process information. If these reports are correct, and we’re developing a new way of reading (or retrieving information), then this needs to be a consideration as we design our elearning courses.

Here are some points I jotted down as I read the article.  Actually, I had to read it a number of times because I kept skimming through it. 🙂

Accommodate the “power browsing.”

Instructional designers need to consider web surfing habits.  Whether it’s right or wrong, people who are online have been developing habits that they bring to the elearning course.  Design courses to accommodate these power browsing habits.  If you don’t, chances are you’ll lose a connection with the learner which will make the course ineffectual.

Steven Krug’s book,  Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, is an excellent starting point.  He has a lot of good before and after examples that are very relevant to how you’d design your online learning experience.

Pull main ideas and critical points into focus.

When people are online, they tend to look at the screen and quickly scan for information.  They’re not changing that habit for your course.  Structure the information so that it is easy to recognize the critical pieces.

I discussed this in a recent post on basic design.  There’s no need to bury important information and force the learner to find it.  Instead make sure the important parts are evident and then build follow up information around it.

Move from linear to exploratory.

Most elearning courses are focused on a linear presentation of information.  Real learning doesn’t happen when you give the learners information.  Instead it happens when they use it.  So your instructional design needs to become less about presenting information and more about getting the learners to use it.

Free up the way learners navigate the information.  Instead of linear presentation, give them a reason to need your course content, and then the freedom to find what they need.  Based on how you build your course, you’ll be able to assess their understanding and give them the feedback that is appropriate to their needs.

You won’t have to fear that they miss something because you’re not controlling the navigation.  In fact, if you look at the image above, you’ll notice that all of the same information is available to the learner, it’s just not delivered the same way.  The instructional design is not in the information but how YOU design the course for the learners to use it.

Pull the learner into the real world.

The following statement reminded me of a lot of the issues we tend to have with our clients and subject matter experts.

The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.

Too much focus is on the information and not enough on the use of it.  In fact, one of my pet peeves about elearning is that because we can efficiently give people information, we tend to abdicate our responsibility to coach them through using it.  For all of the elearning courses I had to take over the years, I can only recall a handful of follow up conversations with my manager about them.  It’s a lost opportunity to set expectations and build the social relationships that are so critical to our success.

When we read online we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

It’s time to engage the learners and connect them to the real world.  There are a number of ways that you can blend the content from the online course with learning activities outside of it that are relevant and meaningful to the learning process.  Here are a few ideas:

• Use case studies or problem-solving scenarios.  At a minimum, build them into your elearning course so that the learner knows how to apply the information to a real-world context.
• Incorporate the course with real-world discussions.  Instead of solving the case study online, have the learners solve it and then discuss the solution with their peers or managers.  Of course, this depends on the type of course, but it can be very effective.  I used to use it in peer-coaching environments.
• Create real-world activities.  I’ve built courses with activity journals.  The course would cover certain information and then the learner was required to locate that information at their site and document it.  For example, if part of the environmental policy was to locate and review the site’s emissions log, we
  had the learner actually do that and then report on the finding or use that information elsewhere in the course.

The main point is that just because you do a course online, doesn’t mean you can’t blend the course content with offline activities.

Leverage all forms of media.

Too many elearning courses are dependent on just the text or narration.  If you want your course to be effective, you have to make full use of your tools.  And this doesn’t mean you have to be an expert multimedia programmer or Hollywood producer.

Combining easy-to-use digital technology with rapid elearning software gives you all sorts of capabilities.  You can incorporate graphics, video, audio, interactivity, and web-based technologies.  It really just depends on getting the most out of the tools.

Here’s a list of previous posts that discuss ways you can get the most out of what you do:

• What Everybody Ought To Know About Using PowerPoint for E-learning
• Why Looks Matter in E-Learning Courses (And What You Can Do About It)
• Understanding Multimedia For Rapid E-Learning
• Create Engaging E-Learning Courses You Can Be Proud Of
• How to Add Scenarios to Your Rapid E-Learning Courses…Rapidly!
• 5 Ways to Bring the Web Inside Your E-Learning Courses

There are those who cringe at some of this and equate it to the dumbing down of our courses or learners.  That’s not the case.  It’s just that we have to build elearning courses that connect with the way our learners receive and process information.

For example, if they speak Spanish, we build Spanish courses.  Since our learners are developing a sort of techno-language, we need to build courses that the learners can translate and use.  I’m sure we’ll be reading more about this in the years to come.

I’m interested to hear what you think.  Add your thoughts by clicking on the comments link.

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Those who design elearning courses are the bridge between the client who has specific expectations and the learner who has to take the course.  Ideally, the learner has expectations but sometimes they take the course because they have to and not because it’s what they want to do.

Building the bridge for performance-based courses is a little easier.  Because the client has performance expectations, you’re better able to build the learning environment around performance.  So they tend to be more relevant to the learners.  Ultimately, the learner knows that the measure of success isn’t in the course, but instead in improved performance.  So their motivation is a different.

It’s more challenging when you build information-based courses.  I’ve found that the client is almost exclusively focused on the information rather than the learning.  This is where the instructional design comes in.  How do you create a learning process when most of it is focused on information?

The good thing is that motivated learners require less effort on your part.  For example, I was doing a home improvement project and need to learn how to put up crown molding.  I did a search online and found the information I needed.  It was bland information with boring old text, no multimedia, and interactivity.  However, I didn’t mind, because I was motivated to learn.

So the key to success is to influence the learner’s motivation.  This works for performance or information-based courses.  To do this, put yourself in the learner’s perspective and answer these three questions.

It’s important to develop learning objectives and then build the course content around meeting those objectives.  This is good.  However, what that usually translates into is a bullet point list of “You will learn this…” type of objectives.

While showing a list of objectives to your learner isn’t bad, what you really want to do is convince the learner that this course is valuable and will make a difference in what they do or know.  When the learners understand that the course has value, their motivation increases.  And motivation translates to a better learning experience.

So when you craft objectives for the course, it’s less about presenting a list and more about getting the learner to perceive value and understand how the course helps them.  That’s why scenarios and case studies are so effective.  They show the learner the course information in a relevant context.  This helps them perceive its value.

No one likes to waste time on irrelevant elearning courses.   When people commit their time to a course, they want to know why it’s important and then what they’re expected to do with this new information.

That’s why you build your information around what you expect the learner to do.  Even compliance training is built on a foundation of performance expectations.  You don’t prevent hearing loss because your employees know they need to wear ear plugs.  Instead, you prevent it because your employees are actually wearing the ear plugs.

Everything centers on what actions you expect.  When people know what the expectations are, they’re diligent to achieve them.  Let’s go back to the argument in a previous post about why people just click through the course.  The reason they click through is because they perceive that the content is not relevant.  In that case, the only performance expectation they have is to complete the course.  So they are diligent to demonstrate that they can complete the course.  In a sense, because we haven’t answered the first two questions, our course design incents them to click through to completion.  You can prevent this.

• Make the course relevant to the learner.
• Help the learner understand how they’ll use the information.
• Create a way for the learner to prove they understand it.  The closer you can get to how they would apply the information in the real world, the better the learning experience. 

Quiz questions are fine, but the reality is that we rarely have to make multiple choice decisions outside of elearning courses and the occasional Cosmopolitan survey.  Ideally we design a way to measure the learners understanding that is more than selecting correct answers.

I read of a school that was teaching about nutrition.  They could have given a quiz to measure understanding.  Instead, they had the children design a week’s worth of menus for a summer camp.  The menus had to be healthy and they had to explain their choices.  As you can imagine, based on the menus designed, you’d get a better sense of the learner’s understanding than if you just had them select from a list of correct answers.

I’ve been in this industry long enough to know when and why we make the courses we do.  The reality is that a lot of times the courses are pointless and don’t warrant a lot of extra effort.  In fact, you might actually save the organization money by making them as simple as possible and letting people get back to work.

I also know that it’s a lot easier to make courses centered on the information rather than the learner.  They require less effort and time.  And to get around learner dropout (which can be anywhere from 25% to 50%), we’ll do things like lock the navigation and make courses compulsory.

However, if you really want to bring value to your courses and make them meaningful to your learners, answer these three questions:

• Why I am taking this course?
• What am I supposed to do with all of this information?
• How can I prove I know it?

How would you design your courses to answer these questions?  Share your ideas by clicking the comments link.

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Recently, I was talking to a manager who let me know how much he hates the elearning courses he has to take at his company.

“As far as I’m concerned, the people who design these things are elearning fascists.  It’s bad enough that the courses we take are pointless, but the navigation is also locked so we can’t click to advance until the course lets us. I hate that!” 

“But, I have to lock the course.” says the instructional designer.  “If I don’t, the learners will just click the next button and skip to the end.  I want to force them to watch the videos and other content so that they get the information.”

No one likes wasting time and in the process being treated like a child.  However, the organization commits a lot of its resources to the training and they want to make sure that people take the time to learn the information.  They definitely don’t want the employees skipping through information that might be critical to the organization’s success.

So how do we make this a “win-win” for the learner and instructional designer? 

Understand Your Learners

Sometimes we treat people liked they’re scanners.  We think that since they SEE the information that by default an exact duplicate is scanned into their brains that they can reference anytime it’s needed.  That might be the case for Bill Clinton, who’s rumored to have a photographic memory (except under deposition).  But it’s not the case for the rest of us.

Suppose you’re teaching a class on how to make coffee.  While the students are all exposed to the same information, they’re not necessarily focusing on the same things, let alone learning the same. One person might be thinking about ways to roast beans and another wishes he had a cup of coffee right now.  Yet another person is following what you’re saying, but wonders if there’s another way to make coffee.  And someone in the back starts crying because she thought you said “coffin” which reminded her of a recent funeral she attended.

So no matter how well you think you designed the course, each person looks at the content from a slightly different perspective, which creates different understanding.  Courses need to be designed to accommodate the uniqueness of each learner.  And that doesn’t happen by trying to control them.

Free Up the Navigation

It’s true that a lot of learners just start clicking on the next button until they can leave the course.  So our gut reaction is to lock the navigation and force them to look at all of the content.  But does this really make sense?  

People aren’t scanners.  Even if they did look at all of the content, it doesn’t mean they know it.  Locking the navigation and exposing the learner to information doesn’t make it more understandable.  In fact, it most likely gets the learner to focus on when the slide ends rather than what’s on the slide.   

Frustrated learners don’t learn.  Let’s say you want to learn how to add cells together in Excel.  The first 20 minutes of the course is all about the interface, which you already understand.  However, you notice in the menu that on slide 20 you can learn about “adding cells.” 

So you click on slide 20 and get the message that you can’t access it without looking at all of the previous slides.  Of course, you can’t click through them because some instructional designer thought you needed to learn about interfaces before you can learn to add cells.  And to make matters worse the next button doesn’t appear until the narration is done.  So you end up wasting 20 minutes before you can get the information you need.  How do you feel about the course at that point?

People don’t learn the same things from the same content.  The reason we value collaboration so much at work is that we understand that diversity of thought and varying perspectives help fill gaps and remove blind spots in our thinking.  If we acknowledge that about problem solving at work, then we also need to acknowledge that when crafting elearning courses.  Each person is unique and will approach the course from a unique perspective.  That influences how they understand what you’re trying to teach them.  Shouldn’t the learning experience accommodate the uniqueness of each learner?

Step Away from the Solution and Work on the Problem

Locking the navigation is a solution to stopping learners from clicking through the course.  However, it doesn’t address why they’re clicking through it in the first place and not focusing on the content.  Instead of locking the navigation, create a course that removes the reason to just click the next button.

Guide the learner through the course, rather than forcing the navigation.  The player navigation is just a way to get from one piece of information to the other.  That’s not instructional design.  Instructional design is about guiding the learners through the course content so that they can learn.

Think of the course like a 400 page reference book that contains all of the information you need to do your job.  Whenever, you have a question you go to the reference manual.  How effective would it be if the reference manual’s page turning was locked and you always had to start at the first page rather than go to the information you need?

Give the learners the freedom to demonstrate their level of understanding.  Now let’s apply that to elearning.  Essentially, the course content is like the reference manual.  The goal isn’t to get them to read all of the content.  Instead, the goal is to get them to DO something.  The content only supports the DOING.

Considering this, don’t design your course to navigate through content.  Instead, create an environment where the learner has to demonstrate understanding of the content by doing something.  By focusing on the desired action rather than the content, the learner’s better prepared to learn.  The content is just a resource to help them gain understanding.  When you lock access to the content, you’re actually hindering the learning process. 

Make the content relevant to the learners.  Instead of just dumping screen after screen of information, present a problem for them to solve.  The problem solving requires them to demonstrate their level of understanding which is what you want to assess.  If they don’t know how to solve the problem, they’ll look for a solution in the content you provide.

Most likely the course exists because the client wants something to be done a certain way.  That means you build your courses around the behaviors or actions you expect from the learners.  Thus, you assess them on those expected outcomes.   Having the learners VIEW information is rarely an effective measure of a successful course.  If it is, you’ll probably be out of a job soon.

If you focus on the desired outcome, that will allow you to unlock the navigat
ion.  It also helps accommodate each learner who will come to the course with different levels of expertise and experiences.  Some will go through the courses in a linear process.  Some like to take a quick look through what the course covers and then go back.  Even others, will look for things they don’t already know.  How they access the information really isn’t that big of a deal because that’s not the objective of the course.

Your ability to measure their understanding will come from the problem solving that you build in the course.  If they know the information, they’ll prove it through the problem you give them.  If they don’t, you’ll know exactly what they’re missing and you can give them feedback specific to their real needs. 

This approach creates courses that are relevant to the learners and you won’t have to worry about them clicking through the course just to get to the end.  Even if they did click through the course, they wouldn’t be able to work through the case studies you give them unless they know the content, which forces them back to the information they don’t already know.

In either case, you have a win-win situation.  You get people to go through the course successfully and have a way to truly assess the learner’s level of understanding.  And the learner has the flexibility to access the information to really learn based on their unique perspective, experience, and current level of understanding.

How would you build a course that frees up the navigation for the learner and still meet your learning objectives.  Share your ideas here.

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Because a large part of elearning involves the learner viewing the screen, it’s critical that the visual elements you choose enhance the learning experience.

Today, I’ll touch on three graphic design principles for instructional designers.  They will help you build visuals that support your design and help you build more effective courses.

Use layouts to convey meaning and relationships.

When you place text and graphics on a screen, you can’t assume that the learner automatically understands what it means.  Your job is to create relationships and guide the learner’s understanding.

Look at the image below.  Without explanation, you’re left to wonder what the relationship is between the characters.

Now, look at the next image.  Same characters, only they’re organized better.  Because of proximity and spacing, you’re able to imply relationships without even presenting other information.  This helps guide the learners with less explanation.

However, the reverse can also be true.  Through poor design, you can imply relationships between information on the screen that doesn’t exist.

Use patterns and repetition to organize your content.

Since you’re introducing new ideas, you can assist the learning process by using repetitive elements and patterns.  They help organize the content and bring a sense of unity to the course.

For example, there’s a lot of information in the image below.  However, it’s not easy to understand it because it’s all chunked together.  I get tired just looking at all of that text and I have no inclination to explore more.  In addition, because of the way it’s presented, I don’t know what the information is and what it means to me.

Give the learner visual cues so that they’re able to follow the course content and understand how it all fits together.  This is especially true for online courses because people have developed web surfing habits, where they quickly scan the screen for information.

If you look at the image below, you’ll notice that by using some repetitive elements the information is easier to process.  In this example, bold headline means title and underlined text represents sections.  As you can see, the learner can quickly scan the information and determine where it fits into the scheme of things.  By repeating something like the underlined text, the learner intuitively knows that those things are related.

You’re not limited to text.  You can also do the same thing with the graphic elements.  Whatever you design should help the learner sort the information and create a sense of comfort with knowing how the content on the screen is related to each other and the overall objective of the course.

Use just the right images.  No more.

Whether you use text or graphics, all of it needs to support the objectives of the course.  If it’s on the screen, then it should contribute and not detract from your course.  This includes the visual style, fonts, colors, and symbols.  They all contribute to the communication process.  Make sure that they’re contributing to your message in the right way.

Suppose you’re watching an elearning course on public parks and you see the image below on the screen.  What does that image tell you?  If you’re like me, you’re expecting something about the environment or litter in the park.

Without communicating anything else, the image is already starting to tell you something.  That’s how you want to use images, symbols, or any other graphics on your screen.  You want them to contribute to the course.

On the flip side, there’s a tendency to put decorative images on the screen to fill in blank spots.  Or sometimes, the client wants to “jazz things up a bit.”  Avoid that.  Don’t litter the screen with useless elements.  Some studies show that decorative graphics can negatively impact how learners process the information.  So you run the risk that you are actually impeding the learning process.  Not only that, but like the image above, if the image communicates information and it is not related to the course content, you end up confusing the learner.

You don’t need to be a Photoshop pro or a professional graphic designer.  However, to craft an effective elearning course it’s important to understand the principles of graphic design.  I touched on a few in this post, but there’s a lot more to learn.

If you’re looking for a good book to get started, I highly recommend The Non-Designer’s Design Book.  The book covers the basics of visual design.  It has great examples and is easy to get through.

An important part of instructional design is the use and layout of your visual elements. How you design your screen tells your learners where to look and what’s most important.  And you want the information on the screen to support the learning objectives of the course.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.  Feel free to share them by clicking on the comments link.

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In an earlier post, we looked at how to build better courses by trimming out some of the content.  Many of the follow-up comments and questions speak to your role as an instructional designer.  In fact, it’s a question I was asked in a recent email:

What is the role of the instructional designer?  And how do I convey that to my clients and subject matter experts?

As I was contemplating a response, I stumbled upon this video that does a great job illustrating the value of instructional design.  Watch the video first and then I’ve got a few observations.  If you don’t have access to YouTube, click the link below the video.

Click here to watch video.

As humans, we’re wired to learn and we’re always learning.  There’s really not a time where we’re not learning.  Learning is just what we do.  And we have a natural way of learning that is not dependent on taking a formal course.

Learning happens through our experiences and through the things we see and hear.  We learn in our quiet moments as we reflect on life.  And we learn in our social interactions and conversations with others.  And sometimes we even learn through elearning courses. 🙂

A formal course intrudes on the learner’s natural learning path.  This intrusion is neither good nor bad.  Essentially, we’re just circumventing the natural learning process by not waiting for the learner to stumble upon what we need them to know or do.  So we manufacture a learning experience.  And in that sense, the role of the instructional designer is to help the learners make sense of the new information they get.

The video above is an excellent illustration of some key points concerning instructional design.  Imagine the video was the content of an elearning course.  There’s a lot of information and a lot going.  If you sat the learner down in front of the video and offered no guidance, who knows what they’d focus on?

Some might try to understand the big picture and spend time figuring out where they’re at and why they’re in two teams.  Some might just observe the basketball skills.  Still others might try to pick up clues listening in on the conversations.

There’s a lot going on and if you just left it up to the learner to figure out, you’d waste a lot of time and probably won’t get the results you need.  So, instructional design is more than just an information dump.  Instead it’s about helping the learners make sense of the information.

Fortunately, as you watch the video, the narrator does offer some guidance.  He provides a basic objective: “This is an awareness test.”  And he gives some direction to look for passes by the team in white.  That’s easy enough to do.

For the moment, let’s discount the bear and just look at what happened.  There’s so much activity and information that without clear instructions you’d focus on the wrong things.  Because he gives clear instructions, you’re able to answer his question.  In fact, while the moonwalking bear is obviously intended to catch you off guard, the reality is that the clarity of the instructions helped you see past the bear and focus on the goal of counting the passes.  You were able to do what he asked despite the distractions of all of the other activity.

And that’s one of the critical pieces of instructional design.  Because you’re manufacturing a learning experience, you don’t want the learners focused on twenty things.  Instead, you’re trying to get them focused on very specific pieces of information.

Now let’s flip it around a little.  Admit it.  Unless you already saw this video, it was kind of shocking to think that something as obvious as a moonwalking bear could have passed before your eyes with you completely unaware.

There’s a lesson in there for us all.  We can become so intently focused on our perspective that we miss the “moonwalking bear.”  This is true of our clients, our managers, our subject matter experts, and even us.  We don’t know what we don’t know.

This is why collaboration and good analysis comes in handy.  It helps expose us to multiple perspectives and keeps us from counting passes, when the critical information is walking right passed us.  And we’re able to pass that on to our learners.

Make a mental list of everything that is going on in the scene.  How many people are there?  How many teams?  What type of ball?  What are the people saying?  What is the ethnic makeup of the people? Is that a police siren or ambulance? Which team has the best ball handling skills?  The list could go on.  And as you can see, there’s really a lot of information to collect and process.

Without instructional design, the learner might or might not get the information they need.  Because of instructional design, you can get the learners to cut through a lot of extraneous information and get right to the important stuff.

What you do as an instructional designer is take the information and expertise of a tenured subject matter expert and deliver it to the learner.  And in doing so, you compress the learning process saving time and money.

Now let’s look at the video in its entirety.  It’s clever.  I’ve watched it a few times and I’ve shared it with others.  I’ve reflected on how to use the video as an illustration for this post.  I’ve also used it in conversations with my kids and some friends.  So the video makers have done a great job engaging me.

There something for us to learn here: good design engages us.  When we’re mentally engaged, we’re more apt to remember and learn.  And as you can see from the video, it’s not interactive.  Yet it is effective.

Not all of our content can be cleverly packaged like this video.  In fact, most people would rather have clarity than cleverness to start.  And that is the first step in engaging your learners.  The information needs to be clear and have real meaning and purpose for the learners.  Once they understand why it’s important to them, they’ll
be more apt to have a meaningful learning experience.

Learning is a complex process and there’s a lot more to be said about instructional design.  The key point is that instructional designers provide value when they’re able to pull the content together to craft courses that are focused and meaningful.  What do you think?  Feel free to add your ideas by clicking on the comments link.

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I once had a client who was adamant about never using “cartoons” (as she called all illustrations) in her elearning projects. For her, we either used pictures of real people or we didn’t use graphics at all.  This caused some problems for us because we didn’t have a lot of images of real people with which to work.  On top of that, we didn’t have a large budget that allowed us to buy want we needed.

This issue wasn’t new to me, and from what I gather from the emails I receive, it’s pretty common.  Over the years, I’ve learned to work with tight budgets and limited resources.  In a previous post, I shared how I use stock photos to create characters for my elearning courses.  Today, I share some tips and tricks on how to find free or inexpensive stock images.

Multi-task and put on your photographer’s hat.

Get a digital camera and take your own images.  With some practice and basic understanding of photography, this is a very viable option.  In addition, people like to see themselves and their friends in the courses.

I’ve also found that using this approach offers some side benefits.  As you recruit subjects for your photos, it’s a good way to show that a new training program is being developed.  You can leverage this as a way to get some buy-in for the project from your future learners.

At one place I worked they called us trainers the “upstairs people.”  Culturally they did not see us as part of them. The fact that some of the learners can help with the construction of the course goes a long way in them accepting it.  I’ve found this especially true in the production environments where the learning departments are separated from the day-to-day grind.

Obviously, shooting your own photos doesn’t work for everyone or all elearning projects.  However, it is a cost effective approach and with some practice very viable.  Besides, you can always use a graphics program to fix you bad photos later.  🙂

Find free images.

When it comes to working with limited resources, my mentor, Dr. Werner says, “Before you spend a dime, invest the time.”  With a little searching you’ll find that there are all sorts of places to get free images.  Here are some of my favorite options.

• Microsoft Office Online.  Microsoft offers quite a few really nice images.  For example, just do a search of “business people” to start.  If you’re like Bono and still can’t find what you’re looking for, then click around on the picture’s key words to get ideas for more images.
• Stock.xchng.  This is a good blend of free images and links to relatively inexpensive stock images.  They even have some interesting tutorials for aspiring photographers and graphic artists.  You might find the tutorials relevant to editing your images.
• Flickr.  There are many photo community sites like Flickr where people upload their photos for use based on the Creative Commons license.  Here’s a link to learn more about Flickr’s Creative Common agreements.  While the quality for these images is “hit or miss,” as you can see from the link, there are over 7 million images that are available by attribution, where all you have to do is give credit for the image.  Compfight is a great site that makes searching Flickr easier.

Free is good, especially if you have more time than money.  However, free also offers some challenges such as image quality and easy access to just the right images.  You also run the risk that eventually you run out of pictures and your sexual harasser also has to play the role of senior manager.  While this might work in some cases, this probably isn’t preferable.

Use inexpensive stock photo sites.

There are a number of inexpensive alternatives to the free sites.  Typically you can pre-buy credits and then just download images when you need them.  If I do an external client project, I’ll budget in the cost of stock images and go that route rather than the free alternatives.  It ends up saving time and you get better quality.  Plus, you avoid licensing and copyright issues.

The stock photo sites are generally easy to navigate and not only can you find the right images, you can usually find them as a series.  This comes in handy when you want an image of the same people in various poses or environments.  You can also download watermarked images to use while you’re building your course before you make the commitment to buy.

I’ll look for a certain style and then click on the photographer’s profile to find more from that photographer.  Sometimes you can also contact the photographers and have them shoot specific photos for you at a reduced price.  It just depends on how “starving” the artist is.

You can always find inexpensive stock photo subscriptions. In fact Graphic Stock (which has a good selection) regularly runs a $99/year subscription with unlimited downloads. They also have a video  and audio service that is reasonably priced.

Paid stock images typically are better quality and offer more choices.  The challenge with them can be the licensing and royalty agreements.  Make sure that you read the license before you download and use the images.

When you look for images, you can end up spending a lot of time.  Make sure you budget that time into your projects.  Sometimes, I’ll make a list of the images we need and let the client do the leg work.

Here are links to some additional sites that were recommended by blog readers.

• Morguefile
• Openphoto
• Stockvault
• Dreamstime

This should help you get started with the next elearning course where you have to use more than clip art.  If you know of any good resources or have additional tips and tricks on getting access to free or low-cost stock images please share them with the community by clicking on the comments link.

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.