E-Learning Resources & Examples for Success

The other day, I had a service technician from Xfinity come by to troubleshoot an issue with my cable connection. While we were waiting for the cable box to reboot, I asked about how he gets trained and what types of training he has to take. He does most of the same types of compliance training we all do. And then as expected, there's also a lot of technical training. Part of his training is blended with some face-to-face, peer guidance, and online modules. Much of it is delivered via ...

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It never fails that after building an e-learning course in Storyline, someone asks if they can get a PowerPoint version of the course. There are many reasons for this request, such as using the content for face-to-face training, wanting a slide deck for subject matter experts, or creating a PDF handout out of the slides. Today, we'll look at a simple way to convert what you created in Storyline and make it a PowerPoint file. PowerPoint and Storyline are Different Applications Before we get started, let's review a few key points ...

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Here are a couple of fun activities around visual design. They're not "e-learning" course design activities but they are relevant because e-learning courses have to be constructed using common design concepts and skills. Go through the activities and see what you learn. What Kind of Course Designer Are You? Click here to view the design activity. Here are a few things that come to mind after the activity:

• There's a tension between being too organized and not being organized enough.

...

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When it comes to the visual design of you course, there's on thing you can do to add context. And it doesn't require a graphics design degree. Replace the bland default template with a single background image. Find the one image that best establishes the context of the course. Once you have an image, there are things you can do. Here are a few simple tips. Determine the Course Context I like to focus on industry. And then within an industry you may have specific environments like meeting rooms and offices. A corporate ...

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You're building an e-learning course and your subject matter expert needs to review and make edits to the course. But they don't have access to your e-learning software. So how do you get them to make those edits? Here are some time-saving tips. What Should Happen Before you start building the e-learning course, you should have a signed and approved script. And then you work from that. Obviously, there will be a final review and there's always some editing to be done. But there shouldn't be a ton, ...

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Who doesn't like free? Recently, I shared these free resources: free animated gifs, free medical images, and free open doodles illustrations. Today, I'm sharing more because you can never have enough of the free stuff. One challenge with stock imagery is that it's stock which means it's mostly generic and doesn't meet all needs. Another challenge unfortunately is that most stock imagery lacks diversity. Here's a good start to fixing that problem. The designers at blackillustrations.com provide a starter pack of illustrations that are free to ...

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Did you know that every two seconds, someone needs blood? And one donation can save up to three lives? 2020 has been a challenging year. And on top of it, the news media seems to focus on all the discord and hardship. Where's the good news? What can we do to make a difference in our little part of the universe? How to be an E-Learning Hero Every week we feature various e-learning challenges. The goal is to use the e-learning tools in different ways. Move past the compliance projects we ...

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In a previous post, we looked at how context helps frame the learning experience. It keeps us from just doing an information dump as we add clarity about our learners and the learning objectives. One way to establish context is by learning what the user already knows. Test their assumptions. This does two things:

• Expose their current level of understanding. This helps them see what they do or don't know about the subject.
• Demonstrate what level of knowledge/competence is required to meet the learning objectives.

How to Test the Learner's ...

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We can use the same words, yet they don't always mean the same thing. They call that "complex equivalence." If we use the same words but don't mean the same thing we'll never have clear communication. This is very obvious in today's culture, especially with our quick tweets and meme screaming where we pack so much inferred meaning into small bites of text. I suspect there's a lot of miscommunication in between the grandstanding. Think of it like an iceberg where the bulk of the iceberg is underwater. What's ...

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A lot of online training starts with pre-existing content, usually some policies, manuals, and PowerPoint presentations. The key is figuring out how to convert a lot of this content into an effective e-learning course. Most of it starts with the objectives of the course. Here are a few things to consider. Effective Online Training Has Clear Objectives You can't build a good course without clear objectives. This seems obvious, but based on what I see, it isn't. Many organizations confuse content with objectives. Content is just that: content. It may be ...

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When I've completed PowerPoint presentations or e-learning courses, I like to save all of the media assets I used in the presentations and courses and put them in a single location. During production I have multiple versions of the files, which is fine. But when it's all over, I like a single place for all the media assets. It makes it easy to locate and not have to dig through all of the versions and duplicate files. In today's post, I'm going to show you a few simple tips to ...

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I ran across two articles recently that made me wonder about the state of today's e-learning courses. The first article was on how websites are all starting to look the same. They did a study to confirm it. In the second article, the author makes some good points on how a lot of this new design is sterile and lacks personality. While the two articles dealt with website design, there are a lot of parallels to e-learning course design. Why Does Everything Look the Same? There are a number of reasons why things ...

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