“’What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or  conversations?’”

Most of us agree that the use of images and graphics in e-learning help the learners make visual associations. However the images or graphics need to be relevant to the content being presented. They need to support the text and be used, not for diversion, but a clear instructional purpose.

Even a relevant image or graphic can hinder learning if the page isn’t designed properly. ‘Some Best Practices’ can contribute to developing a better learning experience.

1. Don’t Distract
   We usually have a tendency to use visual eye candy that conveys little or no new information. Graphics are unnecessary if the text itself prompts the formation of mental images. If they are not relevant to the text, graphics become distracting. For graphics to aid the text, the text must be understandable independently. Graphics should then provide a clear representation of the content to be remembered, without extraneous information.This principle is supported by Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory. The dual coding theory, a theory of cognition, was first advanced by Allan Paivio of the University of Western Ontario. The theory postulates that the human cognition consists of two subsystems that process knowledge simultaneously, one processing the verbal objects and one dealing with visual objects. The two systems have different functions; the verbal subsystem processes and stores linguistic information whereas the visual subsystem processes and stores images and pictorial information. While the two subsystems can be activated independently, the interrelations and connections of the two systems allow the dual coding of information.
2. Proximity
   Just like proximity creates a bond between people; it can also create a bond between the various elements on a single page. How close together or far apart elements are placed suggests a relationship (or lack of) between otherwise distinct parts. It’s something to keep in mind while designing the page layouts and interaction.
3. Alignment
   How you align text and graphics on a page and in relation to each other can make your layout easier or more difficult to read, foster familiarity, or even provide an element of excitement.
4. Consistency
   Repeating design elements and consistent use of type and graphics styles within a course shows a learner where to go and helps them navigate the course.
   • Ensure that page numbers appear in the same location from page to page.
   • Ensure that major and minor headlines are consistent in size, style, and placement.
   • Use a consistent graphic or illustration style throughout the course.
5. White Space
   Designs that try to cram too much text and graphics onto the page are uncomfortable and may be impossible to read. White space gives your design breathing room.
   • Keep enough space between paragraphs of text.
   • Make sure that text does not run into frames or graphics.
   • Keep a generous margin.

This is what comes to my mind, mostly common sense media design. Have suggestions? Add a comment.

Since times immemorial, teachers have held a prime position in our lives.

In India, they have been respected and idolized, followed and worshipped. While the names used to refer to them may have changed over time, but the role that they play continues to remain the same.

On Teachers Day (5th September), I wrote a small piece for a leading local daily – Sakaal Times. It talks about the evolving role of a teacher in this modern world that’s fast becoming dependent on technology for every aspect of our lives. Below is the online version of the article.

How do you think the concept of a teacher will evolve further? Do share your thoughts and comments below.

What other ways can you cut elearning to fit?

Two that he describes I found particularly interesting, the first about Interaction, where he mentions “Games do talk back. In fact, nothing happens until a player acts and makes decisions. Then the game reacts back, giving the player feedback and new problems.” This is markedly different from the type of discrete feedback that’s present in conventional eLearning interaction. The observation that games give the players new problems is particularly cogent; eLearning interactions don’t change the environment itself based on player actions, games constantly do. Second, when he writes about risk taking as a part of game-play – “Players are thereby encouraged to take risks, explore, and try new things. In fact, in a game, failure is a good thing.” This is again a marked contrast to the types of environment/interaction typically found in conventional eLearning.  I am yet to come across conventional eLearning which rewards failure, or makes it easy to accept failure as a part of the learning environment. Games seem to do exceedingly well at both.

You can find more interesting information in the paper itself, check it out.

It was easier said than done, here are some lessons we picked up along the way.

1. Focus On A Few – We all want our sites to work perfectly across the whole range of browsers and the multitude of devices that may access it and seek information. While idealistic, discard this thought right away, its just not practical for designer and developers to create a universally portable site like that. One goal of the design would be identifying target devices that potential users will have. If the users predominantly use iPhones, then focus on developing for that platform. If you have loads of users in Continental Europe and Asia, you’ll find that Symbian is the preferred platform. A vast number of phones out there today use WebKit to render content, but that doesn’t really guarantee the content will render identically across devices.

2. Use Emulators – It’s not feasible to have each and every device available on a particular platform to test on. It’s more sensible to use emulators for the target devices during the initial stages of design and development. Almost all major platforms have emulators. Here is a post about some tools that are used for mobile learning development from one of our stellar developers. You can also quickly switch the user agent in your browser to see what the site might look like. Safari builds this in, while Firefox can support it using a plug-in.

This is a good place to test your site across varied platform and devices: http://www.perfectomobile.com/portal/cms/Services/overview.html

3. Use Device Specific Style Sheets – This is perhaps the most elegant solution to rendering content across a variety of browsers/platforms. Add a mobile device specific style-sheet that will render content based on the capabilities of the device accessing, the web server can then determine which content to serve up.

A couple of interesting places to find more information about this:
• http://davidbcalhoun.com/2010/using-mobile-specific-html-css-javascript
• http://css-tricks.com/resolution-specific-stylesheets/

When I was considering the design of such sites, I found that usability pundits advocate making mobile-only sites because mobile users are in a hurry; they’re on the go and want to perform one specific task and then finish. Isn’t that true of every site? They often give the example of a restaurant – users of a mobile site would just want to know the location, hours of operation and perhaps the menu/prices. Come to think of it, if I used a desktop-based web-browser I’d be looking for similar information. I firmly believe all browsing activity is driven by an information/task-based need, regardless of device and location.

Take a quick glance through this simple but interesting presentation about the media design of such sites.

1. Creating Successful m-Learning Strategy – Part 3
Third and final post of the series on creating successful m-learning strategy, based on the mLearnCon workshop, this post discusses about the tools and techniques used for developing mLearning courses.

2. Upside Blog iPhone App Is Here– Download Today
Details about the various features of the Upside Blog App – a free application that runs on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, enabling users to stay in touch with Upside Learning Blog on the go.

3. Mobile Learning: An Upside Learning Point of View
Further to the developments in the mLearning domain, ‘Mobile Learning – Here and Now’ is a Point of View paper published by Upside Learning that is available for a free download. It takes a comprehensive look at mobile learning – starting with the basics and delving deeper into the nuances of mLearning design.

4. Rapid Prototyping for Mobile Learning Applications – I
This post lists some key elements to be considered before jumping into ‘rapid prototyping’ for a mobile learning application. The second part of this series discusses the levels of fidelity and determination of the right level for mobile application design project, while the concluding part explores various questions (and the answers thereof) to be taken into account when considering rapid prototyping tools.

5. Training Plan For iPhone Application Development
Details out a training plan for iPhone application development that can help beginners create productive and utility kind of applications easily and effectively.

6. 21st Century Education From New Learning Institute
Features 2 (out of 12 videos on the 21st Century Education website) by educators explaining what works and what does not in our education system. They argue what should be done to actually deliver 21^st century education.

7. eLearning Outsourcing: 5 Keys To Make It Work
Focuses on how to make outsourcing work for your business, and lists the 5 key elements that require consideration to ensure that outsourcing delivers the goods now and in future.

8. Seth Priebatsch Talks About the Game Layer On Top of the World
An interesting TED video by Seth Priebatsch about the four game dynamics (with respective examples) which bear serious implications for designers and developers of learning.

9. Digital Instructional Media Design 101- Basic Usability
Second post in the Media Design 101 series, this article specifically addresses the issue of ‘Usability’ in the basic media design principles pertinent to the presentation of information. The first post focuses on some basic principles of designing electronic instructional media— specifically pertaining to the presentation of information, detailing what it takes to design a better learning experience.

10. Work Is Changing; Is Training Changing Too?
Lists and discusses the six fundamental shifts, as mentioned in an article by John Hegel lll and John Seely Brown on HBR blog, which will occur in the way we work, and their effect on training.

The six shifts they talk about:

1. The Red Queen was optimistic – The red queen in Through the Looking-Glass said – “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” However as it turns out we are running ever faster but still losing ground. The authors claim that despite long-term increase in labor productivity, the average return on assets of US companies have steadily fallen to almost a quarter of what it was in 1965.
2. Value ain’t where it used to be – The source of value creation is changing from stocks to flows of knowledge and the means of value creation from push to pull.
3. Asia is the new global center of innovation – Westerners generally have a narrow view of innovation, limiting it to breakthrough technology and product innovations. There’s a need to expand beyond product, process, and management innovation to institutional innovation.
4. The collaboration curve supplants the experience curve – As collaborative working comes of age, we may, for the first time, have an opportunity to turn diminishing returns performance improvement into increasing returns. The World of Warcraft game is a wonderful example of this.
5. The “Dilbert Paradox” holds the key – CEOs cite talent as their number one priority, yet Dilbert cartoons, which actually depict our workplaces suggest otherwise, are very popular suggesting that people find the actual workplaces are closer to what Dilbert depicts. Authors believe the paradox arises as CEOs focus on hiring and retaining the best talent but not on developing them.
6. Passion is everything – Passion drives the questing disposition that is essential to employee performance as they react to the inevitable unexpected challenges today’s work environment presents. The authors’ survey shows that just 20% people in organizations think they are passionate about their work. And this ratio is lower in larger organizations.

The article has many embedded links that support authors’ claims and connect to equally interesting articles. You should read the whole article to get a complete picture.

In a nutshell the ones mentioned above are very important trends that we need to take note of and try structure our organizations around.  Easier said than done but there’s no alternative.

Is Training Changing?

The article has a strong view, advising us to take a long, hard look at how we manage our organizations’ structures, processes, talent, and collaboration. Even though the pace of change within training is not rapid as of now, but it will only increase from here

I expect the future of training to be shaped sharply by the above listed trends and the advancements in learning technology itself. There is much for business leaders to focus on, and training is one of the important parts of the matrix. Training needs to call for a redefinition of its purpose, process, and structure. Mobile Learning and Social Learning will perhaps be the two biggest elements of an individual’s personal learning environment in the future and both of these only further emphasize the power of pull.

In eLearning, usability is simply about designing interfaces to the content that learners find convenient and practical to use.

The courseware we design need to be logical, intuitive, and clear to the learners who take the course. We often spend a lot of time and efforts in trying to make our courses look pretty. What we need to remind ourselves is that ‘Eye Candy’ does not translate into a better learning experience; it might even detract from the intended outcomes of the program.

One of my team-members Aneesh, chose to describe it:
Alice went down a rabbit-hole and found herself in ‘Blunderland’. Blunderland was a beautiful place with amazing illustrations, delicious interactions and eye candy trees. Alice loved it. However, in just a few minutes, Alice felt something amiss. There were no signs to tell her where she was, and there was no rabbit, caterpillar or lizard to guide her. Blunderland certainly looked wonderful, but Alice felt trapped. All she wanted was to get out of Blunderland as soon as possible.

Here’s some food for thought — Do learners taking a course which scores high on aesthetics but low on usability, find themselves in the same predicament as Alice in Blunderland? As instructional designers, we should spend a little more time thinking about basic usability — we won’t regret it.

Some pointers to prevent your course from turning into ‘Blunderland’

1. Tell learners where they are —
   You can use multiple techniques to highlight the learner’s location in the course. Some techniques include:
   • Designating a page “title” that appears in the Title bar
   • Having a “Banner” at the top of the page
   • Having a different color on the navigation bar that designates the current page
   • Having a separate heading for the screen.

   You can also use a visual map, progress/status bar and page numbers to do this.

2. Clearly tell users how to move forward and backward —
   Use text to tell learners where they are and how to move back and forward.
3. Tell users how to “get there” from “here”—
   Use visible links showing the learner where to go. These links can be at the top, bottom, or side of the page.
4. Clearly set the signpost on the page —
   Some of the more common elements of navigation (“back”, “next,” “forward”) provide very little context – forward to what? As a learner, if I’m being given an instruction, I want to know a bit more about the outcome should I follow the instruction.

   Perhaps a more useful approach is a “button bar.” This provides not only the physical “button” to move forward and backward within a section, but also a textual reference saying where the user is now. If visual buttons are used, then they must have textual rollover tooltips.

You’ll certainly want to ask some questions before investing a rapid prototyping tool for mobile applications. Every tool has its own features – weaknesses and strengths.  Explore these fully before making the (not large) investment.

• Is the tool easy-to-use? Or does it have a steep learning curve? Would users need training, and of what sort before becoming proficient with the tool?
Can it be adapted across a variety of design projects?
• Are there reusable bits, like common controls, widgets, stencils, templates?
• What sort of output does it give? Can you share that output easily? How can comments and changes be logged in the design?
• Are there any collaboration features?
• What about the cost? Is it a one-time purchase or a yearly license requiring renewal? Is it a single user license or multi-user?

While answering these questions can definitely point you in the direction of the right tool, you’ll want to involve all stakeholders in the discussion and decisions on the final purchase. While the design team will be the primary users, it’ll need support from all quarters to be up and functioning smoothly. Be clear in setting expectations, both from the prototyping process and the prototype itself. You don’t want to get into an endless cycle of changes to the prototype. As you go along some way with using the tool and have built some prototypes consciously reuse component to reduce the time spent on prototyping. Know where you are going with the prototype – that it’s a prototype and not the actual solution. You may find that some of the expectations on fidelity are unnecessary.

Don’t include imaginary elements and controls in your prototype that may be impossible to recreate on the actual target mobile platform. An example – the use of multitouch, when the device touch capabilities do not offer support for it. While this may seem really obvious, speak to developers before prototyping; better still, involve them, their developer’s view will offer insight that might just lead to a more realistic prototype.

Prototypes are reviewed by multiple stakeholders, be clear about what review is expected, and what is acceptable and what is not. Try to get stakeholders doing reviews to be objective rather than subjective. It’s easy to say ‘I don’t like the text style for the title’, difficult to say ‘why and offer an alternative’.

Lastly, a prototype doesn’t really need to include every bell and whistle the application might possibly have. Keep in mind you don’t have to prototype everything.

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Here’s a link to some interesting tools you might consider using when prototyping for the iPhone or iPod Touch – http://www.henkwijnholds.com/sketching-prototyping-tools-iphone-apps/sketching/

I’ve written about the issues and considerations often, here on this blog. It made sense for us to put our thoughts about mobile learning together to create a primer of sorts – its meant for individuals, groups and businesses just exploring the possibilities possible with mobile technology.

You can download the paper from here.

Hope it helps you with your mobile learning strategy. More questions? Put in a comment here and I’ll attempt to answer.

He talks about four dynamics, and gives examples. Given their increasing influence, and as game dynamics invade our lives, there is less doubt in my mind that games are the way substantial learning will happen in the future.

1. Define Clear Objectives
If you don’t know where you want to go any road could take you there. This applies to eLearning Outsourcing equally well. If you are not clear about what you want from a particular eLearning project you can be sure no one else is either. The vendor will often create a sketchy picture of your goals and try and achieve that. That’s NOT what you want.

• Use well defined Statements of Work when outsourcing eLearning projects.  Detail the vendors’ and your responsibility as accurately as possible.
• Define the ‘level’ of output by using reference of previous projects (your or vendor’s). If you can add more details good. Just agreeing to something like ‘Level 2 output’ is fuzzy and will create confusion later.
• Study and understand the Project Scope Documents and Design Documents well before you sign them off. If you don’t understand them your vendor will be happy to walk you through the documents.
• Include any specific goals your senior management has from the program and articulate that for the vendor development team and yourself. If these come in late in the development cycle costs will escalate and timelines are sure to be affected.

2. Follow Process
You’ve checked the vendor’s process documents & maturity models and how they’ll work for your projects when you selected them. Now it’s time to allow the vendor to conform to that process and those models,  and for you to emulate them yourself. There are times when deadlines are advanced, and you may be tempted to skip that prototype stage. Skipping an earlier stage comes at cost – the quality or delivery dates suffer due to endless modifications and rework. Apart from the additional cost, it would also mean frustration for the development team. You need to stand by and conform to the process in the best interest of your project.

It’s very important to understand your role in the project process. Reviews & feedback on the many deliveries you receive along the way need time commitment from you. A Common mistake clients make is to assume it is a simple task and can be done quickly. Have someone capable & experienced to do that work. I suggest you check with your vendor during the kick-off stage about the time based project needs and at which stages. A day’s delay from your end could sometimes lead to more than a day’s delay from vendor’s end especially if you are not working with a dedicated team at the vendor.

3. Get the Communication Right
On outsourced projects sometime communication can become more important than the actual deliveries themselves. We’ve heard clients complaining that the lack of information bothers them more than the missed deliveries. At most times they feel confident of handling the situation if timely information is available about the status of the project rather than find out at the 11^th hour about deliveries being missed or delayed. But that’s something any responsible vendor should do.

It is important to setup proper communication channels and keep them open to create an environment of confidence & trust between your own team and the vendor’s development team. Signed off specifications documents and approved prototypes should not necessarily hold you from having discussions on new ideas that may emerge. Also provide constructive feedback whenever there’s an opportunity. This tends to prompt the vendor to commit even more to your project.

If you are working with a vendor on multiple projects have periodic review discussions to evaluate how the relationship is going. Iron out any persistent issues in the processes or otherwise. Be forthcoming in resolving your side of issues too.

4. Define and Measure Quality
Like beauty quality is subjective too.
While a sense of ‘quality’ should emerge from your defined objectives you still need to clearly spell out what you mean by quality. Understand your team’s and management’s collective expectation about quality and make sure your vendor knows and understands them clearly. Ensure to list individual details about features, elements and any other specifics of the program that you consider a part of good or acceptable quality. For instance some clients consider the amount of animation and interactivition to be an indicator of high quality while others don’t.

Quality is what TRULY affects the outcomes of the program in a real sense. A good quality product will have the intended learning impact on the audience. I suggest you focus on what the learners are supposed to ‘do’ or ‘perform’ after the program and whether that’s being achieved by the program.  While you may add several bells and whistles to an eLearning course, the core has to be solidly focused around achieving that single most important objective. The cost of bad eLearning is much higher than you think.

It’s a good idea to define the quality assessment criteria for a program and approve checklists the vendor will use for testing. This will the development team give output that’s closer to your expectations and will eventually require less number of iterations.

5. Think Long Term
As your organization grows, you will probably outsource eLearning projects more. Every time you work with a new vendor it’s a learning experience for both the teams as they come to understand each other and their unique working culture and style. After working together on a few projects the communication and understanding between the teams reaches a level where projects start to flow smoothly. It just does not make sense to switch vendors every now and then. Think of your vendor as a possible long term partner from the very beginning. Invest in building their understanding of your organization, how it functions, and what’s the short term and long term goals; the returns will be well worth the effort.

If you work with an innovative vendor, it helps your team to develop new thoughts and skills too. This in turn could help you sell your services better internally or to external clients. Encourage discussions with your vendor to explore advances in the field and how you could take advantage of them.

One way to greater involvement is to revamp the engagement model with your vendor from being just a ‘cost-reduction’ or ‘staff-augmentation’ option towards becoming a ‘strategic-partner’. Getting formal engagement model agreement in place helps vendor commit resources and energy to think about advancements for your organization holistically rather than just work on a per project basis. Think business performance improvement & strategic capability building beyond cost savings.

Lastly I feel you should remember that your partner needs to be profitable to remain in business for the long term and be a suitable strategic partner. Don’t splurge but be ready to pay for experience and expertise.

I believe these five keys can you help you reap the benefits of eLearning outsourcing to the fullest.