Last week I was watching Screenr’s Public Stream when I noticed a common theme in the screencasts:

They were all perfect.

Now I don’t mean perfect in terms of audio quality, lesson structure, speaker preparedness or even content relevance. They certainly covered the range in those areas:-)

By “perfect” I mean perfect in that they didn’t show any mistakes.

There were no major wrong turns, do-overs or common pitfalls we all make from time to time.

The only mistakes were some “Umms” or “I meant to say…” type trip-ups.

Now I’m open to the possibility that all those screencasts were recorded in one take. It’s possible. But I suspect most screencasters are clicking the Delete button more than once before getting their screencasts “just right”.

If that’s the case, how many learning opportunities were lost by restarting the recording?

Sure it’s important to model correct behavior in training, but isn’t there just as much we can learn from each other’s mistakes and internal conversations for navigating wrong turns and common pitfalls?

This is where the principles of improvisation can help us accept screencasting mistakes and turn them into learning events.

Improv and the Principle of Agreement

If you’re familiar with improv, you’ll know that while improv is unrehearsed and incredibly dynamic, there are some guiding rules  actors follow that enable improv to work.

The most common principle is the principle of agreement. It’s often referred to as the “Yes, and…” principle.

The “Yes, and…” principle states that what’s offered by one actor, must be accepted by the other actor. This acceptance, or agreement, is the building block of the skit.

For example, if one actor hands another actor an invisible object and says, “I’m giving you one million dollars”, the other actor must accept that a million dollars was offered. The second actor would follow up with something l like, “Yes, and it’s all in pennies” <insert laugh track>.

It’s when an offer is rejected that the skit dies.

For example, if the second actor had said, “No, it’s not a million dollars, it’s a bag of rice” the skit grinds to a halt because the offer was rejected and now a new scene must be established.

By focusing on the concept of agreement, the skit continues moving forward regardless of what each actor offers to the other.

Applying “Yes, and…” to Screencasting

Screencasting is a lot like improv. Each time you make an error, consider it an offering. OK, so you’re offering it to yourself, but nevertheless it’s an offer. It’s up to you to accept it or reject it.

How do you reject it? By clicking Delete and starting over. End of skit.

But if you accept the offering, you can turn your mistake into a learning moment for your viewers. You don’t have to keep going with the mistake, just acknowledge the error as a reality of the moment and demonstrate how to back out of it and keep the lesson moving. You can always record your sanitized version later.

Consider keeping a note pad and tracking major  undos or mistakes during your projects. In fact, you could even develop a library of common mistakes professionals make in a particular application.

Examples:

Here are a few possible phrases for using the “Yes, and…” principle in your screencasts:

• “Did you see what just happened? (Yes) I accidentally deleted the masking layer and here’s the steps for restoring the masking layer so we can select and delete the adjustment layer.”
• “So yeah, we animated the slide object to the left and here’s how we reverse the animation to animate it to the right”
• “After previewing our slide we can see the annotations aren’t syncing with the audio and here’s how we can fine tune those in the Audio Editor.”
• “If you’re seeing this dialog window, it means you selected the wrong keyframe on the timeline and you’ll need to click Control-Z two times to go back two steps.”

The thing is to accept the mistake as an offer and an opportunity to share your process for correcting the mistake with your learners.

Here’s an example of a  screencast I did a few years ago showing a mistake and readjusting the lesson: Fireworks Masking Tutorial (:45 into the lesson).

If you’re recording with Screenr and try this approach, will you consider using the hashtag #mst8k? I’d love to track and share your examples!

We released an awesome elearning tool this week. It’s called Screenr, it’s web-based, it’s completely free and the easiest screencasting tool I’ve used.

Sure, because I now work for Articulate, you’re probably thinking I’m biased, and that’s fair, because I am. But I’ve also been screencasting for over ten years, produced some video training courses and maintain a popular video tutorial site, so hopefully that counts for something

But don’t just take my word for it. Check out what others are saying about Screenr:

Read Write Web:

The video quality is very high and thanks to the fact that the embedded player comes with an HD mode, these videos also look very good in full-screen mode.

We should also note that Screenr offers a very nice mobile interface for the iPhone, so even Twitter users on a mobile client will be able to watch your videos.

And another good one from CNET:

[Screenr] is the best option for creating screencasts fast and getting them posted immediately. All you do is let the Java-powered recording app load from the Screenr Web page and hit a button to record a screencast of up to five minutes.

And for even more great reviews, check out what Twitter is saying:

http://twitter.com/screenr/favorites

The video quality is amazing. Here’s an example screencast I recorded the other day. After the video begins, click the Play in HD button on the player to view in high-definition.

Some of my favorite features:

• Twitter integration – you record, you Tweet. It’s just that simple
• YouTube integration – post directly to your YouTube account
• Five minute recording limit – Just as Twitter helped us write more concisely, Screenr will help us screencast more concisely
• Mac/PC compatible – Runs from your web browser so you can easily record from a Mac or PC
• MP4 format – you can even export a non-branded, ad-free mp4 version!
• iPhone compatible – playback on your iPhone

Screenr launches from your browser and has a handy bookmarklet you can drag to your browser toolbar to make recording even easier!

So if you’re creating product demos, guided tours, software demonstrations or elearning courses, I hope you’ll give Screenr a try.

And for those who have already tried Screenr, what did you think? Please share your thoughts and even samples here.

I’ve always felt one of our responsibilities as e-learning designers was to design learning in such a way that learners actually want to take our courses. Keeping our visual designs fresh and a little unpredictable is just one way we can design more enjoyable courses.

Unpredictable? Yes. The more learners know what you’re going to do, say or show, the less incentive they have to actually focus on your course. One way we can connect our visuals to our learners is by using familiar imagery and branding in our elearning courses.

1. Use Your Client’s Logo as the Bullet

It doesn’t matter if your client is Fortune 500 or a two-person consulting firm, everyone likes seeing their courses branded.

Bullets are an easy way to customize a course. Just swap out the default bullets with your client’s logo or other branding elements.

Keep in mind many logos don’t scale well at bullet-sized dimensions. In those cases, it’s a good idea to extract the essential design elements from the logo to create a derivative.

For example, let’s look at the Starbucks logo. Try scaling the logo down to 22×22 pixels. It doesn’t look so hot and we’re probably doing more harm than good at this point.

By examining the logo and isolating design elements we can create new designs that still align with the branding.

And now we have one possibility for incorporating branding into our bullets:

But what about companies with specific policies against using their logos in such ways? No problem! Look to the content to influence the design elements.

Consider a driver safety course. A chapter might be on road distractions with a sub-topic on bicycle distractions.

Yellow caution sign + bicycle illustration = custom bullet opportunity!

So, a pretty simple design tip that usually goes over big with clients.

2. Create Custom Objective Screens

One thing I see a lot of new designers do is treat all content screens the same. They’ll use the same slide template for chapter intros, objectives, activities, scenarios and so on.

If you wanted to make a single design enhancement to your courses, take a look at creating custom objectives screens.

Celebrate your bullets by placing them on a content-inspired slide using a different typeface from the other slides. Handwriting fonts are a great choice for objectives. Why? Objectives are the openers, the icebreakers. They should be friendly, approachable and most of all creative.

Here are a few examples of ways you can mix up your presentation style for course and module objectives.

Extra credit: Create your text using uneven paths for even greater authenticity.

3. Animate Bullets with Style!

Flash-based bullets are another way to add more cowbell to your bullets. They’re fun to create and I’ve seen design teams compete for the most creative animated bullets.

Here are a couple examples. Feel free to download the Flash CS3 files to use as you like.

Example 1

Example 2

#4? Animated Hands

While Common Craft’s animated hands are not technically bullets, they’re used similarly to introduce concepts and graphics.

Final Thoughts

I know there are some active conversations around animation and learning. I follow those conversations and agree e-learning designers should understand the research. But I also feel designers should break the rules once in a while and try new approaches.

I found this gem in buried in my archived bookmarks while preparing for last week’s Articulate Live ‘09 session on e-learning design.

This video is at least 4 years old, but it’s still one of my favorite examples of anthropomorphism for learning. Imagine Sesame Street meets Behind the Music.

Anyone looking for a creative approach to e-learning should take a look at the multimedia storytelling approach used in this video.

Techniques used include first person accounts from Cooper Black, interviews with his friends, family and rivals and graphic design highlights showcasing his rise, fall and rise in popularity.

Squidspot offers newbie and expert designers some awesome Performance Support for type design in a Periodic Table of Typefaces.

Fonts are arranged in groups and  information such as font popularity, type designer and year designed are included.

After you spend some time with the table, check out the awesome type resources used to determine the rankings:

• 100 Best Fonts of All Time
• Paul Shaw’s Top 100 Types survey
• 21 Most Used Fonts by Professional Designers
• Top 7 Fonts Used by Professionals in Graphic Design
• 30 Fonts That All Designers Must Know & Should Own
• Typefaces no one gets fired for using

via Lifehacker

Last week Jane Bozarth and Cammy Bean posted a terrific parody of what Abraham Lincoln’s Facebook page might look like.

While Lincoln’s Facebook page is well-done and humorous, it also serves as a history refresher by including popular, and lesser-known facts, about Lincoln.

For example, are you familiar with all the references in the page:

Did you know Lincoln took on the town bully in a wrestling match and won both the match as well as the respect of the town?

I love this one. It’s a great summary and partly explains why Lee turned down Lincoln’s offer to lead the Union.

I don’t remember learning about Joshua Speed when I went to school, but he’s certainly part of Lincoln history today.

Friends? Really?

And of course this famous quote refers to Lincoln’s unwillingness to emancipate the slaves.

Lincoln’s depression was well documented.

Facebook and Educational Role Playing

Okay, so you get the point. Rather than listing Lincoln’s history in a page or two in a text book, the information is presented using multiple voices, perspectives and formats. It’s more of a conversation than a history book, yet it’s the same information one would expect on a mid-term.

How great would it be for teachers to have similar platforms in their schools to use for educational role play? Teachers could use the pages to engage their students on any subject while using a medium familiar and engaging to students.

Centralized Role Play

Teachers could set up pages for course topics and be the “voice” of the page, while students interact with the teacher through the application.

Using the Lincoln example, the teacher would role play as Lincoln, posting comments, quotes and status updates while students would “wall-to-wall” and interact with the teacher through the page .

This is already done in most online classes using Blackboard where students are required to post two or more replies to other students’ posts. The difference here is the content is presented in a more creative modality than a Blackboard thread.

Decentralized Role Play

In this model, students create and maintain their own page for research topics. The topic could be a historical person, similar to the Lincoln example, or it could anthropomorphize a place or event such as a country, product, economic policy and so on.

Students could also interact with each other’s “pages” and grades could be based on anything from participation to quality of posts.

Offline Workbooks

I get it – most schools won’t have access to their own Facebook technology, or won’t feel comfortable using the live Facebook for classes.

But that doesn’t mean creative teachers couldn’t create generic Facebook activity sheets for students.

I ran the Lincoln example through my Photoshop sanitizer (rectangular marquee and foreground fill) to create an empty shell.

A possible assignment could be to complete the worksheet for a historical event or person using content learned in class or researched on their own.

After a period of time, students could exchange their work with each other and continue the assignment.

What would they include on the blank worksheets?

Students could be asked to provide content from multiple perspectives such as:

• First person updates (what kinds of updates and comments would they make?)
• Second person (who do they interact with? who would post on their page? why?)
• Quotes (from, for, about the person)
• Groups (what groups would they  join and why?)
• Links (what links would they share?)
• Friends (who are they?)
• Flamers (who wouldn’t be accepted as a friend and why?)

Or maybe I’m over-thinking all of this and it’s really just a creative parody?

——-

Facebook for Learning Resources

Educause:
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7025.pdf

Facebook Group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6726749007

Facebook as a Learning Platform:
http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/10/facebook-as-learning-platform.html

25 Facebook Apps that are Perfect for Online Education:
http://www.collegedegree.com/library/college-life/15-facebook-apps-perfect-for-online-education

Facebook Learning:
http://www.jarche.com/2008/10/facebook-learning/

I’m majoring in Facebook, how about you:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/08/magazines/fortune/blakely_facebook.fortune/index.htm

———-

Update:

A K12 teacher just offered her students a President’s Day extra credit opportunity.

Their task: Create a Facebook page for any American President. Awesome!

She further identifies the learning standards addressed in the assignment:

1. Writing
2. Research skills
3. Making connections and drawing conclusions
4. Determining point of view
5. Interpreting quotes
6. Interacting with technology

Good luck Anna and please feel free to share any experiences you can.

Hilarious font parody via Innovative Interactivity.

I’m a big fan of peer-based learning, especially online discussion forums. I learned a lot of what I know about multimedia design from asking and answering questions in newsgroups over the years.

Limitations of Forums

While forums are a great way to reach out to a community with questions, forums aren’t as good at delineating “either/or” type questions, since all answers are rolled-up into the same, single-column thread. This makes identifying  contrasting viewpoints  a challenge.

CreateDebate.com

CreateDebate offers a twist on traditional online forums by creating two-sided, parallel conversations. A single topic is presented and users choose their side by replying in one of the two columns.

Users can add arguments for, or against, the topic, or respond directly to others’ positions. Users can also vote arguments up or down. In theory, weak or unsubstantiated positions would move further down the thread while  stronger arguments move up.

Forum Debates as a Change Management Tool

For managers, forum debates could provide valuable insight for identifying early adopters, influencers and laggards in the department. This insight could then guide change management conversations and strategies.

Learning design teams can use  forum debates to introduce new initiatives such as rapid e-learning, social learning technologies or even virtual worlds for learning.

For example, forum debates could be used to introduce rapid models using SMEs as  content developers by asking, “Should instructional designers or SMEs be responsible for creating rapid e-learning courses?”

There are probably designers who never considered SMEs as possible developers. But the nature of the question implies someone thinks SMEs could be developers. The topic provides an opening for designers to debate the use of SMEs in the development process while providing management an opportunity to identify where to focus change management efforts.

I’d like to see the option to create a third viewpoint for less black and white topics. Anyway, try it out and see what you think.

Would such a forum work as a learning tool?

———-

Update: Last year Tony Karrer wrote about a Fight in the Blogosphere where informal learning was under attack. This is precisely the type of conversation that could benefit from a structured, two-sided debate.

How many times have you heard compliance training is too boring to be taught in an entertaining or meaningful way? Most designers would agree that compliance training is the least glamorous of corporate training. But Yehuda Berlinger just made it a little harder for designers to justify such comments.

Yehuda rewrote US and Canadian copyright laws as verse. Not only is the poetry fun to read but it’s also memorable.

Why would he take the time to rewrite intellectual laws as poetry?

“Because I want to read the actual codes, but can’t do it unless I’m entertaining myself in the process. Also writing summations of each section helps me to remember.” There are so many lessons for all of us right there.

Yehuda links each verse to the actual copyright law. It’s a brilliant exercise in creative summation and would make great learning activities – ILT or WBT.

For example, here’s a line from US law § 114. Scope of exclusive rights in sound recordings:

(a) The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording are limited to the rights specified by clauses (1), (2), (3) and (6) of section 106, and do not include any right of performance under section 106(4).

And Yehuda’s verse:

Sound recordings, but not music
Can be re-performed
As long as it’s attributed
And not grossly malformed

He’s rewritten US Copyright Law, US Patent Code, US Trademark Code, Canadian Copyright Code and UK Copyright Law.

Via TechDirt

Here’s a learning video worth watching. The original, wall-sized video, was created for the Lincoln Museum to “illustrate the scale, scope and tragedy of the Civil War.”

Using the ratio of 1 week:1 second, the video begins with Lincoln’s election in 1860 and concludes with the final surrenders in 1865.

This powerfully emotional video uses animated shape tweens, soundtrack and text labels to tell the story. Amazing.

Here’s a creative way of anthropomorphizing the elements.

At first glance, this one might seem like a lot of work to produce. And maybe it would be for a single person, but what would it look like if an entire class or group were assigned to produce  creative shorts?

Via Getting Things Done in Academia

So by now, chances are you’ve tried, or at least heard about, podcasting for learning. Whether you’re publishing content specifically as podcasts, extracting audio from existing e-learning courseware or interviewing lines of business asking them to share their stories, you’re probably well aware of the benefits of audio-based learning.

Getting Started

If you’re considering incorporating stories and interviews into your e-learning, but haven’t known where to begin, StoryCorps might offer you everything you need to get started.

What is StoryCorps?

The heart of StoryCorps is the conversation between two people who are important to each other: a son asking his mother about her childhood, an immigrant telling his friend about coming to America, or a couple reminiscing on their 50th wedding anniversary. By helping people to connect, and to talk about the questions that matter, the StoryCorps experience is powerful and sometimes even life-changing.

Just as powerful is the experience of listening. Whenever people listen to these stories, they hear the courage, the humor, the trials and triumphs of an incredible range of voices.

By listening closely to one another, we can help illuminate the true character of this nation reminding us all just how precious each day can be and how truly great it is to be alive.

Source: http://www.storycorps.net/about

To get an idea of how powerful these stories can be, check out their home page and listen to some samples.

Do It Yourself

StoryCorps has declared today, November 28, a National Day of Listening. To support and encourage everyone to participate, they’ve put together a free, Do-It-Yourself, guide that includes everything you need to get started with audio interviewing.

Topics include:

• Selecting a storyteller
• Creating list of questions
• Purchasing vs borrowing recording equipment
• Choosing locations
• Setting up and testing your equipment
• Begging the conversation
• Keeping the conversation flowing
• Wrapping it up
• Preserving and sharing the conversation

Most importantly, they offer a Question Generator including a “Great Questions List“. In it, they’ve created common questions around the most important family topics.

Corporate E-learning Possibilities

How can StoryCorps support your corporate podcasting for e-learning initiative?

From an instructional design perspective, we can appreciate the well-crafted, open-ended nature of the questions. Part of our job is to get SMEs to talk, open up and share their knowledge and experience. This is nothing new for us. What is new, however, is our intent to capture their answers in their own words, not ours.

Groups with the most to gain from audio-based interviews:

• Sales training – Sales leaders can share their best practices and techniques. This is definitely an area that doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all training program. New hires could listen to interviews from top producers to gain context around possible sales techniques and approaches.
• Leadership and Executive dialogues – Leadership training, like most soft skill training, is often most powerful through stories, scenarios and examples from actual leaders. While with a former company, we interviewed dozens of current and former CEOs around ethics and leadership topics. They would share their own ethical challenges and experiences and, occasionally, mistakes they made. This made the interviews all the more powerful.
• Production and pipeline management – This is another great opportunity to let experts in the field share their knowledge and best practices.

How could a similar approach be used in your organization to capture knowledge, stories and best practices?

Benefits

One of the benefits of audio-based interviews for learning is its authenticity. It’s one thing for an ID to interview SMEs and rework their answers back into a course. It’s quite another experience for learners when they hear it first-hand from the SMEs.

Another benefit, from a rapid e-learning perspective, is the ability to produce audio courses considerably faster than traditional e-learning courses. Once you establish your interview format, style guide and standard questions, you have what you need to develop audio interviews based on breaking news or policy changes.

And another benefit is that audio-based interviews offer an alternative to traditional e-learning. Audio interviews, podcasts, stories are an engaging way to augment current e-learning offerings. They could also be used as a first-response to breaking news or policy changes while the final, more complete e-learning course is developed.

Transcribing the Recordings

Audio stories are powerful, but there’s great value in supporting as many channels of distribution as possible, so consider transcribing your recordings.

This might even be a requirement for HR and Legal as they’ll probably want to know exactly what is being shared.

There are a lot of companies who offer these services and prices are reasonable. Here are two I know colleagues have worked with:

http://castingwords.com/
http://www.tech-synergy.com/

Additional Resources

Here’s a short list of valuable resources both on mobile learning as well as storytelling. Please feel free to share your own resources.

• E-learning Guild’s Mobile Learning Report – All things mobile learning
• This American Life – One of the best-produced examples of first-person storytelling
• Ira Glass on Storytelling – Interviews with Ira Glass on his approach to storytelling
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah – Corporate Podcasting Strategies provides solid guidance for possible challenges, pitfalls and evolution

Remember the good old days of e-learning development when your courseware would remain fresh and current for at least six months, maybe longer? It seemed even compliance courseware only needed updates a couple times a year.

Not so much anymore. Content complexity, dynamic industry regulations and an increasing need for user input has made courseware design more, not less, challenging than it used to be. Or should I say, more challenging using traditional development models.

Assuming e-learning courseware is your primary training product, what would it look like to offer an alternative, rapid course model based on O’reilly Rough Cuts?

Have you seen these? They’ve been out now for a couple years. From a recent search on both oreilly.com and peachpit.com, it appears they’re gaining momentum.

What are they? Rough Cuts are essentially book unpublished drafts that you can purchase (yes, real money) to access the books while they’re being written. You can even interact with the author to provide feedback and corrections

From their FAQs:

Rough Cuts content usually becomes available anywhere from two to six months prior to a book’s publication. It’s updated as the author and technical reviewers progress, so you’ll have access to new versions as they’re created. Chapters won’t necessarily be written and posted in the order in which they’ll appear in the published version. Rough Cuts titles live up to their name – they haven’t been fully edited, subjected to final technical review, or formatted for print. In other words, they’ll be very current, but they won’t be pretty.

You’re getting the content up to six months prior to release! In addition, you’re able to interact and provide feedback to the authors during this process. And this is from the publishing industry who, historically, hasn’t been the most amenable to digital publishing.

And if you think Rough Cuts are the lighter, “fluffier” titles, think again. They’re covering it all:

Developer:

• Rails
• PHP
• Joomla
• Goolge App Engine

Designer:

• Final Cut Pro
• Photoshop
• InDesign
• CSS

Educator:

• Algebra

Trusting Our Users & Learners

True, you could argue this is just another business model designed to “rapidly” separate readers from their money, but the e-learning 2.0 in me sees this as a creative way to get “something” in front of my learners quickly, while enabling a greater number of learners to participate, and contribute, in the course design process. For this to work, there has to be an element of trust between consumer and publisher.

O’reilly obviously trusts its consumers to understand the tradeoffs of having access to unfinished products. O’reilly clearly states what it is you’re buying in Rough Cuts and trusts consumers to use the information  with the understanding the content hasn’t been finalized.

Combined with input from actual readers, this model has to make the product that much better. The larger question is how many corporate training departments could trust their learners to buy into such a model? Would they throw out words like “risk” and “liability” before trying to understand how such a model could be applied? How could you initiate a grassroots initiative with individual lines of business?

Still an Enterprise, Not a Democracy

This will no doubt be scary for some organizations. To be clear, this model does not mean the process has to be democratized to the point that no clear owner exists. Your SMEs, legal and business owners still own the final, published version. What you’re offering learners is more immediate access to content while capturing learner feedback during your normal course development cycle. Your audience is now participating in part of that design.

I’d be interested to see, either from O’reilly or its authors, how the model (+/-) impacted development times, quality and errata.

The Need for Alternative Development Models

Rough Cuts clearly aren’t for all readers and neither is a similar courseware model. They’re designed for those long tail readers/learners who have a sincere, professional and passionate interest in having immediate access to content today, rather than tomorrow.

Thinking about your organization, its lines of business and the types of e-learning you currently create, could such a model be incorporated into your e-learning offerings?

Who would you need to work with to initiate such a model? Which groups and types of training content would be best suited for such a model?

Predictions for training departments in 2009 are anything but optimistic. Check out a recent Jay Cross post on the state of the industry and forthcoming “cataclysm”.  Clive Shepherd also comments on our industry and offers now is the time for change and taking action.

If you’ve been trying to advocate for more e-learning 2.0 and informal learning, this could be the opportunity you’ve been looking for.

Last night we Netflix’d a PBS documentary on Benjamin Franklin.

I’ve actually seen this documentary before, but this time something stood out: Benjamin Franklin learned to swim by reading a book.

He didn’t learn with a swimming coach, or from ILT or WBT classes, but with a book containing simple illustrations.

The book is called The Art of Swimming and was published in 1696.

The book’s illustrations aren’t the detailed, technical illustrations created by Boeing engineers. Rather, they are simple drawings depicting a series of swimming moves. Benjamin Franklin’s intellectual curiosity also led him to add a few moves of his own to the book. Talk about learning transfer:-)

As we interact with our customers, business units and other trainers to debate which types of content are best delivered in ILT or WBT, blended and so on, it might be helpful to remember that a truly motivated learner will learn from any modality.

Mobile phone companies continue to raise the bar for the most creative compliance public service announcement (PSA).

It continues to amaze me (read: annoy) how groups *outside* the training department regularly design more creative and engaging training than those in the training department.

Consider the most recent Sprint PSA reminding moviegoers to turn off their cell phones before the show:

Awesome! Talk about creative compliance training. Can you imagine something similar in your next compliance, ethics or Code of Conduct e-learning course?

Look, this is nothing new for the film industry. AT&T has Martin Scorsese doing a similar PSA. Just as you’re getting into the clip, Whammo, you’re reminded to turn off your cell phone.

Presentation of Content Matters

Understand that this is not unique content that lends itself to creative interpretation. Rather, this is a straightforward compliance message “reminding” you to turn off your cell phones. What is different, is the presentation of the message.

The compliance message could have been:

• Don’t launder money
• Don’t steal from the company
• Don’t commit insider trading
• Don’t <Anything!>

Using the same approach from Happy the Hedgehog, we could have created intros showing people from various departments in the company. Maybe each person introduces themselves and says what they do in the company. Then, after six or seven people, the final person comes up, introduces himself and what he does: “I’m Bob. I’ve been here fifteen years, I work in Finance and I use the data from these reports to steal from the company.” And the final onscreen text could read, “It takes many people to make a company. It takes one to ruin it.” Find a connect and use it.

In a recent post by Karl Kapp, we’re reminded how “Southwest Airlines takes the boring compliance requirements of airline safety and makes it fun..” If you can make airline safety fun, you can make your e-learning content fun.

One of my favorite quotes around content design comes from Michael Allen: “There’s no such thing as boring content, only boring treatment of content.” I heard that at one of his e-learning workshops over five years ago and I’ve used it with my teams ever since.

With that, do you think the average e-learning compliance course would write a Cell Phone Awareness course?

Most elearning is predictable. Sure, you can upgrade your image subscription from Photos.com to Getty.com, add some Flash widgets, BigShot clips, and so on. Those are all ways to enhance the design. But when we talk about truly engaging content, we’re not only talking about the content, but also the way the content is presented.

Low-tech Works!

For those who think video, multimedia and high-budget production development is required to present engaging content, consider this creative non-smoking PSA from the 1970s:

Can you believe that audio? This is obviously low production value by any standards.

The Bic example could easily have been created with two static images animated as Gifs or Flash. The scenario is what matters most. Granted, the Bic example might be too risque for most corporate audiences, but the concept of two products interacting to deliver a compliance message is spot on. This would make a great opener to a module on appropriate and inappropriate smoking places.

Bookend Modules with “Happy” Intros

There’s no need to re-develop your existing courseware.

Instead, consider enhancing what’s already developed by including engaging, “Happy” intros at the beginning of each module.

You can get a lot of mileage from creative openers that set the stage for a chapter.

Seek Outside Perspectives

If you’re struggling with trying to create more engaging openers, consider reaching out to someone from marketing, sales, IT or any other department. Take them to lunch or coffee. Share your project with them.

You’re not trying to offload the training on others, but rather you’re looking for a non-training perspective on communicating the message.

One idea that worked well was to take the entire team to lunch and hold script read-throughs. We’d read through each module and throw out crazy ideas for communicating each slide. This took a few hours but the end product was always better than what we started with.

The advertising industry is a great place to look for inspiration. One site I’ve used for years is AdCritic. AdCritic that hosts the best agency-created TV commercials. Most of these are commercials trying to sell products, but isn’t that what training is also trying to do?

One of my favorite magazines is Communication Arts. This magazine celebrates the best in visual communication. Each year they offer the best in each area with an Interactive, Advertising, Illustration and Photography Annual. If you skip the subscription, at least pick up those four issues.

It’s all about creativity, having fun and most of all, not taking ourselves too seriously.

Finding Creative Motivation

The cell companies obviously take pride in creating the most talked about, most engaging PSAs. In other words, the more they pull you in with their PSAs, the more you talk about it. The more you talk about it, the more you remember it.

Folks, this is TRAINING we’re talking about. Why can’t this be your training? What would it look like for instructional designers to compete internally for the most creative course opener, module or course? Could creative, good-spirited competition among designers help bring fresh ideas to your courseware?

The media industry realized they have to make commercials more engaging and unpredictable to connect with consumers.  How much longer before e-learning begins connecting with its learners?

I’ve been putting the final touches on my Second Life workshop for DevLearn08. This will be a great opportunity for anyone looking to get started with Second Life as a corporate learning environment.

The workshop will be an all hands-on event where participants will have the opportunity to create personalized environments they can take back to their own organizations.

I’ll post an outline over the weekend but here’s a quick overview of the workshop:

Building Basics: 3D does not have to be difficult. In fact, Second Life offers one of the easier environments for learning 3D.

In this module, participants will learn to:

• Rez, create and select basic shapes
• Move, rotate, resize and link prims
• Build simple learning environments to host live training sessions

Texture Basics: Textures are a great way to create personalized environments with your organization’s branding. Simple prims come alive after your logos, branding and training content is applied.

In this module, participants will learn to:

• Create and upload textures
• Use textures to create galleries and custom branding
• Create and edit transparent textures

Training Scripts: Second Life offers a lot of ways to create meaningful interactions. While these are limited in some ways compared to the types of functionality offered by the Internet and Flash, it is important to understand what’s available and how to configure them.

Some of the learning scripts participants will learn to use and configure are:

• Notecard Giver – share notes, host scavenger hunts, provide lesson plans, tutorials and so much more.
• Floating Text – used for navigation, labeling and general identification of objects
• LoadURL – one of the best ways to blend your Second Life learning environment with more content-rich environments on the web.
• Chat Logger – record learning conversations to post on the web. This is a great way to provide continued learning and support after the main event.
• Teleport Script – Essential for navigating larger sims and builds. Learners will customize teleport scripts to use in their own builds.

Video and Audio: Did you know you can convert your existing Flash-based elearning courseware to video that can be brought into Second Life? That’s right!

In this module, participants will learn how to:

• Configure video players
• Convert Flash-based courseware to QuickTime video to use in Second Life

Training Aids and Presentations: Whiteboards, slide shows and presentation tools are a great way to enhance synchronous and self-paced learning in Second Life. Regardless of one’s pedagogical views on using such tools in the virtual world, it’s helpful to at least understand the available tools, how they work and how to configure them.

In this module, participants will build upon their texturing and scripting knowledge to:

• Configure image slide and presentation tools
• Upload images (textures) to image and presentation tools

Bonus:

To make this an even more meaningful workshop, I’m offering some additional support for participants:

• Video Training DVD: All participants will receive a training DVD covering all lessons presented in this workshop.
• One month of free land: The Multimedia Learning/DevLearn08 sim will remain open for one month after the conference. Participants are encouraged to leave their builds on the land and continue working on them.
• Free Support: Participants will continue to receive support after the workshop. I’ll be available in-world for one month after the conference to provide additional support for workshop builds.

This workshop is designed is to provide the necessary hands-on training and support for participants to begin designing their own virtual spaces.

If you’re interested in learning more, please drop me a note or contact Elearning Guild.

One of the features my team is most excited about in Flash CS4 is the new object-based animation.

This should significantly reduce a lot of basic elearning production times for tasks such as:

• Animated text and bullets;
• Simple image fades and transitions.

Granted, Elearning is (should be) much more than animated bullets and sliding text but this is a popular courseware format for a lot of organizations.

If this new feature reduces development times like I think it will, development managers will have more time to allocate for custom content and interaction development.

Let’s take a look at where production times are spent in a given course. Leaving aside custom elearning development, consider that most corporate, Flash/audio-based elearning contains the following components:

• Intro/chapter screens (5%)- anything from static to animated, narrated scenarios used for attention grabbing openers;
• Learning objectives screens (1-5%) – animated text (maybe with animated bullets) that fade or slide sync’d to the narration. Single screen for course or one per chapter/module.
• Content screens (80-90%)- animated text and image screens that fade or slide images in along with text
• Activity screens (5-10%) – usually template driven t/f, m/c, m/s, drag/drop; scenario/dialogue; etc
• Custom content (5-20%)- probably not included in every project, this is where additional creativity and development are allocated for larger or high-impact projects

Clearly the majority of most courseware development is around content screen development. Maybe I’m overly optimistic about this feature, but I’m hoping it frees up more time for custom content and interactions.

We all know how templates enable design teams and their customers to jump over much of the upfront drudgery and focus on the important part: the content.

Should it then be any surprise that newsmakers would use such templates in their social networking efforts?

Barack Obama’s group obviously wanted to maximize their Flickr juice by rapidly updating their Flickr site with images from today’s news. Today, at least, it appears the production team outpaced the communication team on some of the images.

But should we care that we see their generic captions? The images obviously aren’t generic. They’re real-time and were probably uploaded within minutes, if not hours of the event. What’s the primary purpose here? Is it to provide near, real-time photos of an event we’re  following, or an edited description of the event? (Hint: Flickr is a “photo management and sharing application“) Traditional media will have plenty of time creating content describing today’s events in tomorrow’s papers.

Do you see it as a sign of sloppiness and poor attention to detail on the Obama side?

Or, do you see it as getting something “now” and the rest “later” (maybe)?

I wonder if our perceptions of the Obama’s Flickr site also reflect how we view and treat our elearning design. Does every elearning event: custom, rapid and informational, require the same development cycle? Are there types of content so urgent that a full, 3-pass QC isn’t necessary?

Personally, I appreciate the real-time approach and look past any missing extras. Oh, and I also like getting a glimpse into the Obama Flickr Style Guide

Heading to Las Vegas next week for the AICPA Tech+ conference.

Focus for this conference is on AICPA’s 2008 Top Technology Initiatives.

While Second Life didn’t quite make it to that list, the session should still prove valuable for CPAs interested in learning more about how people are using, learning and working in Second Life.

Some screengrabs from the Second Life build I put together for my presentation: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oque/tags/aicpa/

Anyone who’s ever designed an elearning course, corporate brochure or any form of graphic design, has at one time or another been asked to replace one or more images that could be perceived to be offensive or biased.

In corporate elearning, this can be particularly challenging since so much of our courseware calls for images of people engaged in interpersonal scenarios. Sometimes courses include disproportionate examples of a group (group = gender, ethnicity, class, etc) in one role or another.

Common examples of image bias in courseware can include:

• Images where one group is disproportionately portrayed as the “offender” in case studies or examples;
• Images where one group is disproportionately a manager or authority figure and another group is consistently depicted in subordinate roles;
• Images where a group is depicted as part of a particular social class while other groups are mostly depicted in another class.

Of course elearning scripts never direct media designers towards such bias. Media designers, in pursuit of the “perfect image” may not always keep track of which groups have been used in which ways. They simply look for what they feel is the best image available to depict a particular piece of content.

Instructional and media designers need to take into account the “who” and the, “who’s doing what” as well as the “who’s doing what to whom” in their course designs and image selections to ensure objective and non-biased representation in their courseware.

Here are 10 suggestions for ways to manage image neutrality in your elearning course designs.

1. iPod – Silhouette Effect

This popular photo technique can be used for neutralizing your people photos and drawing focus into the on-screen text and content rather than on the people.

For variety, you can mask out any objects they’re holding for a combined illustration-photo effect.

Solid colors as well as gradients work well.

Variation – Pixel People

This is another effect I’ve been playing with lately and it involves incorporating gaming design elements such as pixel-drawn people, objects and sounds into designs.

A unique contrast emerges when pixel art is juxtaposed with realistic objects and backgrounds. It gives the course design a modern and clean look while removing some emphasis on the people.

What do you think? Does it work?

2. Cartoons or Illustrated Characters

Before you say, “He’s crazy, we can’t use cartoons in our corporate elearning” consider for a moment how professionally illustrated animals or non-human characters could be used as recurring “actors” in your courseware.

Think Schoolhouse Rock meets Pixar.

Somewhat on-topic example: My wife doesn’t enjoy going to Pixar-type movies. “I don’t like cartoons” she always says. But every time I’ve brought (read: dragged) her with me, she was totally engaged, laughed, cried and empathized with the main characters. She was drawn into the story because the characters and story were believable and compelling.

The same can be true for corporate cartoon characters/animals.

3. Hire or contract a 3D designer

Expand your image/concept library by contracting a professional 3D artist to design object metaphors for your particular industry or business. This can be especially beneficial for industries such as healthcare or financial services where specific products and processes aren’t often found in royalty-free libraries.

When I started with my current company, I asked my team to provide a list of common terms and concepts frequently used in their courseware. We then worked with a 3D designer to create objects for each of the concepts. The library proved invaluable in developing our courses and we often relied on the custom objects more than our extensive image library for business-specific instances.

Great solution if you have the budget for it.

4. Review existing elearning courseware prior to designing

If you’re new to an organization or doing consulting work, ask to review their elearning courseware before you start your project.

This is a great way to understand established image use and standards in the organization. Also, ask if they have internally and vendor/externally developed courses and make note of any differences in styles and images used.

5. Define your cast early in your storyboard design

Consider including a cast sheet in your eleanring storyboard that includes all roles, characters and scenarios where you want people represented.

Try pulling all people images at the beginning of the project for review rather than having media designers pull images as they go along.

6. Hold a script read-through before sending to development

Time may not always permit for this but there’s nothing like bringing 4-5 people together for a couple hours and going through the script, slide by slide, to brainstorm concepts and visual metaphors for each slide.

Ask 5 people to describe how they’d visually communicate an idea and you’ll be amazed at the options you’ll have to work with.

7. Don’t use people

Because so much of our corporate elearning courseware is designed to change or improve human behavior, it only seems logical that courseware designs include photos of real people. “You can’t design a compliance course without people, can you?” Of course you can.

As my colleague Adam frequently reminds me, “Nobody’s been offended by lines, boxes and arrows.”

Challenge yourself and your team to consider how shapes, symbols, icons and other graphical metaphors could be used for representing data and instruction.

You could hold a team-building game of Pictionary for starters:-)

8. Allow your learners to select their own avatar or pedagogical agent

OK, this option requires a greater level of programming but it’s a powerful way to allow your learners to customize their own elearning experience.

9. Randomize your people images

Using JavaScript or Flash, you can randomly load images in your slides.

Sure there’s a little more upfront design and development work but this is definitely an option when you’re having challenges with photo agreement.

10. Know your audience

And of course our golden rule of design: Know your audience. By audience, I mean both your learner population as well as your course owners and stakeholders.

The challenge is these two groups are not always the same so it’s essential to understand both groups.

Spent yesterday participating in the Virtual Worlds At Work Symposium talking about using virtual worlds for Sales Training. Thanks to Anders Gronstedt for the invitation.

While most of my development in Second Life has been around new hire training and leadership, I think there’s a really exciting opportunity for using product avatars for consumer education.

Second Life is replete with corporate products created not by the companies but by loyal users. I forget where I heard/read the quote but think it’s a great one:

“Coke was in Second Life before ‘Coke’ was in Second Life.”

The point being that Coke-branded objects were created long before Coke was officially participating in-world.

This hopefully isn’t a surprise since we grew up with these products and are inundated with their marketing every day. Admittedly, one of the first things I created in Second Life was an Apple MacBook that replaced the default typing animation.

So, knowing your customers identify with your brands, use your products and recreate them in virtual spaces, how can you leverage that connection for enhanced consumer training and education?

Consider what it would look like if your company’s products and services could be represented by an anthropomorphic avatar. And, yes, Second Life furries are fun but I’m more interested in using such characters for corporate training and learning.

Enter product-based avatars. They can offer a personal experience that commercials and advertising can’t.

• New way for residents to interact with your brands
• Product comparisons or better, product debates and town halls could be held;
• Product education and awareness

We’ve seen hundreds of anthropomorphic mascots over the years including:

• Tony the Tiger
• Taco Bell Dog
• Mr Stay Puft
• Kool Aid

With virtual worlds, your mascots, products and services can break the fourth wall and actually interact and educate your customers.

Here are just a couple possibilities:

• Pharmaceutical/Health Care: Pharm-based avatars could represent different pills and educate users how they interact with each other. (Ever read the back of a prescription bottle? There has to be a better way of showing what I can and can’t take with my meds.)
• Mortgage/Financial Services: What would it look like if various avatars represented mortgage products and services? A Conventional fixed-30 could debate with a 5yr ARM product and allow participants to learn about the pros and cons of each depending on the consumer’s needs.
• Legal: Avatars representing categories of torts (negligence, nuisance, defamation, etc) could put on a virtual play and learners could ask questions and interact with specific torts.

Just something I’ve been playing around with and I realize there are serious risks involved for some companies.

Maybe one place to start would be internal training. Role play scenarios could take place between your employees with one group as the products and the other as the customer. After some time, the program could evolve and your product-avatars could go “public” and begin working directly with your customers. Of course then the tough questions start coming in.

Could your products hold up in a two-way conversation? Are you willing to find out?

Our move to Dallas continues to get better!

Montse was just offered an exciting opportunity as Team Leader/Project Manager for Dallas County Community College’s Second Life initiative.

Working with DCCCD, Montse will support the development and integration of Second Life into the Dallas County’s seven colleges.

Dallas County Community College District plans to use Second Life to facilitate experiential learning through role playing, modeling and program building, enabling faculty and students to create simulations related to their areas of academic interest.

DCCCD Island, the location in virtual space where these activities will occur, opened on Thursday, April 3, with a virtual groundbreaking. 

In Second Life, DCCCD is co-locating with the University of Texas at Dallas. DCCCD Island residents can travel to UTD’s School of Management Island and its Arts/Technology Island without teleporting, which is the normal mode of travel in Second Life.

If you’re interested in participating or learning more, contact Montse or visit DCCCDs web site for more information.

We recently completed a design project in three months that was scoped at nine.

While I could show you the Visios depicting our design strategy for how we cut corners, enlisted SMEs as developers and reused content, this image pretty much says it all.

Spent the weekend putting the final touches on my Elearning Guild sim for my Espresso Learning session this week on Second Life and virtual worlds.

Espresso sessions are meant to be informal and conversational without slides or handouts, however, I always prefer to have some sort of live demonstration running when talking about Second Life.

This will be an “espresso” session in every sense of the word. I fly into Orlando two hours before my session. Immediately after my session, I race back to the airport to fly home to Phoenix where I’ll spend my “vacation” packing and preparing for our (official) move to Dallas.

Can ambient sounds be used to enhance elearning scenarios without negatively impacting instructional integrity?

There’s been some great conversation around the use of audio narration in elearning. Both Tom Kuhlmann and Cathy Moore have offered up some excellent examples on the appropriateness of audio narration in courseware.

But what about incorporating background sounds to create a connect from the story to the learner? Can interactive narrative techniques be applied to elearning courseware?

Of course:-) It’s not only possible but elearning designers do it all the time.

It can be effective for

• drawing the learner into the content;
• changing up the course flow; and
• communicating course or module objectives without directly listing them.

After NPR pulled back the curtain, we learned how they’ve successfully incorporated sound effects and background tracks into their narrative programming. As elearning designers, you can leverage NPR’s engaging format to enhance your courseware without having to change your elearning model.

Consider the following example:

The audio was recorded and edited with Apple’s Soundtrack Pro which comes with thousands of loops and ambient sounds. If you’re using another audio editor, you can find dozens of sites online that sell loops, foley and ambient sounds.

Some other possibilities could include:

• Safety training: Open the scenario with ambulance sounds, anxious voices calling in the emergency. This could be a black screen (no images) for dramatic effect;
• Automotive Service Training: Begin with a door chime then a car engine turning over; drill sounds in the background with conversation loops in the background;
• Customer Service Training: Open with “audience” or people talking loops, telephone dial tones and keyboard typing. Next fade in some of your own narrated greetings (”May I help you?”, “Thank you for calling [Company], my name is Walter, how may I assist you?” and so on.)

While I am advocating the use of ambient sounds and loops for intros and scenarios, I am not suggesting you use such formats for all content screens. 

Research suggests that such use can negatively impact learning.

Clark and Mayer:

“Background music and sounds may overload working memory, so they are most dangerous in situations in which the learner may experience heavy cognitive load, for example, when the material is unfamiliar, when the material is presented at a rapid rate, or when the rate of presentation is not under learner control.”

So much of our corporate elearning is predictable. We go with one (or two) rapid design models, become efficient and crank it out. From the learner’s perspective, once they’ve seen one course, they’ve seen them all. There’s probably a greater risk of cognitive “underload” in most courses:-) I realize this effect won’t be appropriate in all courses, but it’s one way to leverage multimedia learning in your courseware.

So give it a try, run it by your team and customers and be open to feedback. While we might not always have the influence to change our company’s elearning model, it is possible we can affect small parts of it.

Narration: Robert Rue Voice

The latest versions of Captivate and Camtasia confirm the screencasting & video tutorial industry is quickly evolving. As someone who’s created web-based video tutorials for almost ten years, I’ve tried just about every screen recorder developed.

I still remember recording with HyperCam back in 1998. Trying to capture anything larger than 640×480 required a high end machine and if you wanted to post to the web, you had to get creative with frame rates, key frames and color depth. That’s all changed now and even the Mac has seen viable alternatives to SnapzPro. Most notably is ScreenFlow which was just released a week ago.

If you’re looking for a place to start, you have a lot of choices, but the two most important (PC) applications are still Captivate and Camtasia. Each application offers a very different approach to screencasting so it’s common to find people asking how to go about choosing one or the other.

“Which simulation tool should we use, Camtasia or Captivate?”

I have to smile every time I hear that. It reminds me of another question we often hear in training:

“Should this course be ILT or elearning?”

Let’s jump over the fact we’re asking for solutions before stating our objectives and try rephrasing for a more powerful question:

“How can we integrate Camtasia with Captivate?”

I offer this doesn’t have to be an “either-or” decision. Both Captivate and Camtasia are excellent tools,  each offering advantages over the other.

Camtasia is the tool of choice for professionally narrated software training companies. Lynda, Total Training, and others create their products using full motion, narrated video capture software.

Captivate, in its price-range, is hands-down the best authoring tool for creating software quizzes, simulations and interactions. What used to take days and weeks to create by hand, can be done in minutes and hours in Captivate.

Blend these two applications and you have the ability to create best-in-class learning products:

• Camtasia for your narrated “Show me” demonstrations; and,
• Captivate for your “You try” simulations.

Integrating Captivate and Camtasia into your courses
If you’re interested in making the case for both applications, here are a few challenges you may experience and some suggestions for managing them.

Cost
I realize most corporate training budgets probably won’t provide for the entire design/development team to own both applications but that just means you need to be creative.

• Can your software budget be broken out to get half your team Captivate and the other half Camtasia?
• Consider the make up of your team and design some criteria for who would receive each application.

New application to learn
Not every designer is looking to augment their skill set. Some people are happy to stay with what they already know. How you present the model to them is important.

• Identify those more open to new ideas and looking to try new tools. Their energy and enthusiasm will make the difference.
• Challenge your team to list the most compelling features for their favorite application. In most cases you’ll hear “Camtasia for demonstrations” and “Captivate for simulations/interactions” and they’ll make your case for you.

Course design is different
Designers might find scripting for Captivate easier than Camtasia. If your Camtasia recordings are being narrated in real-time, it’s not as easy to follow the script verbatim. Try working with a high-level outline or storyboard when writing for Camtasia.

Depending on your legal review process, this could also be a challenge. Work with legal to see if they’ll review the final, recorded product. If that doesn’t work, you can always record the lesson and transcribe back into a script for legal review.

Demonstrate the value
Sometimes it’s easier to communicate new ideas by first building a prototype or model. Someone less familiar with both applications my not see the value in using both.

• Take the initiative to develop a working prototype that you can show around. Give them something tangible to think about.
• Record the audio in the highest quality format and use actual content.

Multiple applications to support
As long as your LMS and course player (Articulate, Lectora, custom) supports .swf files, you should be fine. Your developers can assist you with any custom paths or file loading rules but I haven’t come across any technical issues.

It’s usually best to bring IT into these discussions earlier rather than later. There’s nothing more defeating than spending weeks advocating for something that will never work on your network. If you’re familiar enough with the technology and file formats, you might want to work to bring the learning case to your team first.

How an XML mistake changed my perspective
A little over year ago I was asked to represent my division in an authoring tools committee. An organization-wide effort was underway to consolidate the dozens of applications being used. This made a lot of sense and predictably, the top industry applications were selected and the others were retired.

When it came down to choose between Captivate and Camtasia, the lines were grayer and each business unit provided unimpeachable arguments for why they used the tool they did.

In an effort to aggregate the numerous elearning examples provided by the groups, I created a quick XML course file and loaded the samples into a demo course player. Inadvertently, I put some Captivates in the Camtasia chapter. It wasn’t until I QC’d the file that I discovered how nicely they played together. Had I only previewed the code I probably wouldn’t have noticed it.

So, the case was made and both applications were certified. Admittedly, most groups still develops with one application or the other. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of opportunity for combining the two programs!

From Multimedia Shooter, we find USA TODAY’s Interactive Bag of Tricks.

Included are multimedia storytelling options with published examples and a PDF job aid to hang by your desk. The examples are classic interactive storytelling components that any designer should be familiar with.

What caught my attention was the last bullet in Data-driven graphics:

“Experience with databases, queries and data scraping is fast becoming an important part of interactive storytelling.”

Now, it’s unclear just “who” is learning these new database skills, but I’ll bet they aren’t programmers or developers. Most likely, it’s a journalist, interactive designer or media designer who’s having to learn such competencies.

It’s always interesting to follow the new skills each profession is asked to learn. From doctors and lawyers (finally) learning to use the Internet, to multimedia designers learning adult learning principles, it’s all part of our professional evolution.

Be sure to download the PDF and browse the real-world examples.

Lately I’ve been working on identifying some alternative and cost-effective ways for delivering training. It’s an important area of focus for my group right now.

So tonight, while reading through some white papers, elearning blogs, books and forums, I received a joke via email. As someone who loves (and welcomes) interruptions, I opened and read it. The joke wasn’t the least bit funny, but that’s not the point. The point is, the joke was creatively designed.

The joke was text-based but to get the punch line, you needed to click-drag your cursor between two asterisks. The space between the two asterisks was filled with a white-colored font that, once selected, revealed the answer.

NICE!

I wonder how such a technique could be used as part of a follow-up to an ILT or elearning course? Could such a format be effective simply because it’s different and unexpected? Could it have adverse effects if perceived as a gimmick?

Here’s a quick example I put together:

———-

Three Sources of Leadership Power
To be a successful leader, you must understand where power comes from and how best to develop it. There are three sources of power for becoming an effect leader.

The three sources are:
(For the answer, click-drag your cursor from star to star)

* 1. Role power 2. Relationship power; 3. Knowledge power *

———-

OK, so it won’t be part of any formal learning program and you could only get away with it a couple times a quarter, but what a fun and creative way to deliver short, targeted questions for learning.

Kudos to Harper Collins for recently embracing the iTunes model and beginning to offer consumers the option to purchase individual chapters of books (Wall Street Journal).

As someone who purchases too many education and technology books every year, I’m anxious for other publishers to begin adopting similar models. I rarely read a tech book cover to cover but still glean a lot from most of them. Are you listening Pfeiffer? O’reilly?

I wonder how it would look if more corporate elearning courses offered similar choices?

Even today most courses unnecessarily employ full program control. Do you think users would be more inclined to take our courses if they felt they had more navigational control? Maybe.

We know from Clark & Mayer that courses targeted to novice users without a lot of prior knowledge are best designed with higher program control. This means the course follows a more rigid, prescribed path where the learner is essentially “led” through the course or module.

The idea is that novice learners will benefit from being presented the “whole picture” rather than choosing the content they “think” they need. Research validates this and I can live it.

But how much of our corporate elearning is of such complexity that it requires those formats? Does a Level 100 Workplace Harassment course really require such a deep knowledge base that users couldn’t view “Quid Pro Quo” before “Hostile Work Environment”?

Too often it seems Training and its learners are less aligned then they could be. I’ve been on both sides of the fence. I’ve consulted with companies who insisted on “compliance mode” (program control) for their users and I’ve managed internal elearning departments where I’ve taken calls from business units pleading to allow their employees to be able to take “part of the course“.

As elearning designers we need to understand there are different types of training content and our course design should reflect those differences. Not all classroom training is the same (lecture, facilitation, lab) and not all elearning is the same, either.

One of the more meaningful books I read last year was Made To Stick. If you’re a learning professional, you need to read this book. There are many great examples on how to make ideas (read: training) “sticky”.

In particular, the Beyond War scenario:

Statistics are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. They will, and should, almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. It’s more important for people to remember the relationship than the number.

When the anti-nuclear missile group, Beyond War, described the out-of-control arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1980s, no one realized the scale of the growth. Even though a single warhead was enough to decimate a city, the number worldwide had grown to 5,000.

To demonstrate the scale, a Beyond War speaker would pour 5,000 BBs into a metal bucket. BBs are weapons, and the sound of the BBs hitting the bucket was threatening. It was irrelevant whether there were 4,135 nuclear warheads or 9,437. The point was to hit people in the gut with the realization that this was a problem that was out of control.

I love it!

How many elearning designers do you think would have taken the time to create or find a sound effect that simulates 5000 BBs hitting a bucket?

OK, admittedly I Googled for five minutes and couldn’t find any, either. I did, however, have some popcorn and a sauce pan.

A 30-second audio recording of popcorn hitting the pan and one hour of Photoshop/Flash development yielded the following example:

The rest of your course slides could be static and text-based, but what a great way to gain attention for a new chapter or module.

This was just a quick example but hopefully enough of one to demonstrate how a little creativity, combined with intrinsic motivation, can deliver engaging results.