Year: 2010

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Writing & Grammar Workshop: More on Funny… or Not

by Jennie Ruby

I was happy to receive multiple responses to my humor article last week. During my article, I asked whether humor has a place in training materials.

One reader wrote that the reason you don't see much humor in training materials is that humor is hard to create, or create well, so that many writers don't even try. Another reader agreed, saying that it was about time "a few brave souls take the risk and thereby encourage others to catch the humor wave."

My comment that use of humor might make learners take your material less seriously was pooh-poohed by one reader, who said that use of jokes in a key-note speech, for example, "never has us leaving the auditorium feeling that we can't take the speaker seriously."

Another reader said it is probably fear of not being taken seriously that makes us steer away from attempting humor in the first place.

A reader recalled a specific cartoon from a For Dummies book that sticks in her memory and reminds her of an important point about the topic. That story proves the point of another reader, who stated that the use of humor is not a distraction as long as it helps cement a point that directly relates to the learning objective.

Several readers said that humor is best left for use in the live classroom, where the trainer can gauge the learners' reaction. I received stories about one trainer who had a roomful of people singing out loud, and another who cracked up a group with a fun "test" question that let learner's admit that the software they were learning could be a pain.

One reader commented that her team leaves the humor to the presenter or instructor, adding, "when the written materials are so dull, it's easier to be funny."

Whether learning materials should be dry like a dictionary or witty, friendly, and informal may depend a little on the topic and audience. But at least a few of my readers say it is time we worked a little harder to add some humor-or at least some wittiness-to our work.

My thanks to Dan, Joseph, Sara, a Sr. Instructional Designer in SoCal, Glenda, and Dollie for their thoughtful and fun comments on the topic.

***

Are you an eLearning developer who has been tasked with creating an effective voiceover script? I'm teaching a new online class in May called Writing Effective eLearning Voiceover Scripts. During the class I'll be teaching you how to define the appropriate voice and tone for a narrative text. You will learn how to take specific steps to create the engaging and personable writing style that voice-over narratives require. I hope you can join me. Click here to learn more. I also teach the Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts class. You can learn about that here.

***

About the Author:  Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. She is a publishing professional with more than 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.
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Adobe FrameMaker: Defining Bookmarks

by Barbara Binder

Bookmarks are navigational links listed in the Bookmarks pane in Adobe Acrobat (and Adobe Reader) that display page content in the Document pane. I use them as an always-visible, clickable table of contents.

To that effect, I normally create bookmarks that match my table of contents. For example, if my table of contents lists the chapter titles, along with the first and second level headings, then I make sure my bookmarks do the same thing. Here's how:

  1. Open a completed FrameMaker document or book.
  2. Choose File > Save as PDF (or File > Save Book as PDF).
  3. Name the file, and then click Save.
  4. Click the Bookmarks tab at the top of the PDF Setup dialog box:

    Bookmarks tab

  5. Leave Generate PDF Bookmarks selected. Press the [Shift] key on your keyboard and click the right-pointing arrow between the Include Paragraphs and Don't Include lists. (Shift-clicking will push everything over to the Don't Include list).
  6. Scan the Don't include list and double-click only the paragraphs you want to include in the bookmark list.

    In my example, I'm moving ChapterTitle, Heading1 and Heading2 back to the Include Paragraph list.

  7. Take a moment to set up the hierarchy, or Bookmark Level, by using the double chevrons to indent the secondary, and in my example, tertiary titles.

    Bookmark Hierarchy

  8. Click Set to generate the PDF.
  9. If you don't immediately see the bookmarks in the Acrobat file, choose View > Navigation Panels > Bookmarks.

    Finished bookmarks in a PDF.

The bookmarks panel will list the paragraph text for the paragraph tags that you specified, and you can expand and collapse the various heading levels, based on how you indented the paragraph tags with the double chevrons in step 7.

If you are publishing your PDF electronically, don't forget to make the Bookmarks Panel and Page the default under  File > Properties > Initial View in Acrobat because you can't count on the average reader to know how to display bookmarks:

Acrobat Initial View

***


If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker 9 class. Too elementary for your skill level? How about the Advanced FrameMaker 9 class? Hope to "see" you there.

***

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

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Acrobat: Super Size Me!

by David R. Mankin

You want a big sign! Nothing permanent, but you'd like to
make a quick, VERY large printout. Your printer, however, can't
accommodate
paper larger than legal size. Let me show you how to print a
"normal-sized"
document to larger proportions… using Acrobat!

The
print dialog box in Acrobat is one of the most flexible and thorough
I've ever
seen. If you think about it, it would have to be feature-rich since
professional print shops accept PDF files as press-ready media.

The
secret to
printing a PDF file to a desired size is in the Page Scaling drop-down
menu. To print an 8.5 X 11 inch page to poster
size, you'll change the Page Scaling option to Tile all pages.

Next, select a desired Tile Scale percentage. In my
example, I chose 200%. The print preview shows exactly how the
pages will be imposed onto (in this example, 6 letter-sized pages).

Acrobat page scaling

I kept the
default Overlap of 0.005 inches, but you can dial in whatever you'd
like. All
that's left is to print and assemble your pages like a puzzle–either
with
tape, glue stick, etc.

That was easy. You can use the page
scaling options to
print multiple pages per sheet of paper as well.

So it seems you
can either save the environment by printing
a document on fewer sheets, or ruin our planet for future generations by
making
posters out of letter-sized PDF files. So much power in your hands from
one
dialog box! Who knew? If that type of print page scaling
flexibility came as a surprise, you might want to consider signing up
for my next online Acrobat class (I've
got one coming up in a few short weeks) where you'll learn a whole bunch
more.

***

About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop
publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that
wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe
Acrobat.

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Links of the Week

Captivate Wins Gold

This week, Brandon Hall announced the results of its inaugural Excellence in Learning Technology Awards… Captivate 4 bagged Gold in the Best Advance in Technology for Rapid Authoring category.

***

Adobe Captivate and Adobe Presenter: The Best of Both Worlds

Captivate and Presenter are often confused. RJ Jacquez, Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe breaks through the confusion in his BLOG post and offers a demo showing best practices for inserting Adobe Captivate projects in Adobe Presenter. A must read and view! Nice work RJ.

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Adobe Captivate 4: Creating Variables on the Fly

by Lori Smith

Variables in Adobe Captivate 4 bring a lot of versatility to a project. Creating the variables you need for a project before you begin to add objects and create advanced actions is a best practice. But what happens when you are in the midst of creating a Text Entry Box and realize that you have forgotten to define a variable?

All you'll need to do to create the variable is close the Text Entry Box properties that you were working on, choose Project > Actions, select the Variables tab, create the variable, save it, close that dialog box, go back and re-open the Text Entry Box properties, click the Advanced tab and enter your variable. Whew! That was tiring!

Lucky for you, there is a little shortcut…

Assuming you have forgotten to create your variable beforehand, you can create it on the fly while still within the Text Entry Box properties.

Here is your Variables window before you create your Text Entry Box:

Variable before the text entry box

Next insert a new Text Entry Box onto a slide (or display the Properties of an existing Text Entry Box) and go to the Advanced tab.

You can see in the image below that there are no variables to choose from in the Variable Associated drop-down menu.

Named variable

Type the name of the variable you'd like to create in the Variable Associated field.

No vairable in the drop-down menu to use.

Click OK to close the Text Entry Box properties and check out your list of variables (Project > Actions, Variables tab). Wow! There it is!

Variable now in the list of variables.

Very cool. Of course, I am now going to get on my soapbox and tell you that even if you create a variable on the fly, you should always update the Value and Description fields of the variable at some point.

***

Join me in May for live, online training on Adobe Captivate Advanced Actions. And if you need to learn Captivate, we offer two online classes (Beginner and Advanced). Click here for details on the Beginner class. Click here for details on the Advanced class.

***

About the author: Lori Smith is IconLogic's lead programmer and Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) in Adobe Captivate. Lori has a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from MIT as well as a Master's in electrical engineering from George Mason University.

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eLearning & mLearning: In Fonts We Trust

by AJ George

There is no denying that the most important thing about eLearning is solid content. But could you be inadvertently making your content harder to read and understand by using the wrong fonts? Is good font selection really important? Read on to discover the many surprising ways fonts can affect your content.

Some Fonts Read Better On-Screen

eCommerce Consultant Dr. Ralph F. Wilson did a study back in 2001 to determine if serif fonts (fonts with little lines on the tops and bottoms of characters such as Times New Roman) or sans serif fonts (those without lines, such as Arial) were more suited to being read on computer monitors. His study concluded that although Times New Roman is easily read in printed materials, the lower resolution of monitors (72 dpi vs 180 dpi or higher) makes it much more difficult to read in digital format. Arial 12 pt was pitted against Times New Roman 12pt with respondents finding the sans serif Arial font more readable at a rate of 2 to 1.

Serif fonts
 
Source: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm
 
Wilson also tested the readability of Arial vs. Verdana on computer screens and found that in font sizes greater than 10 pt, Arial was more readable, whereas Verdana was more readable in font sizes 10 pt and smaller.

So should you stop using Times New Roman in your eLearning lessons? Not completely. For instance, you can still use Times New Roman for text content that is not expected to be skimmed over quickly or read in a hurry.

Some Fonts Increase Trust

A 2008 study by Sharath Sasidharan and Ganga Dhanesh for the Association of Information Systems found that typography can affect trust in eCommerce. The study found that to instill trust in online consumers, you should keep it simple: "To the extent possible, particularly for websites that need to engage in financial transactions or collect personal information from their users, the dominant typeface used to present text material should be a serif or sans serif font such as Times New Roman or Arial."

If you feel your eLearning content will be presented to a skeptical audience (or one you've never worked with before), dazzling them with fancy fonts may not be the way to go. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use fancy fonts from time to time to break up the monotony of a dry lesson, but consider using such non-standard fonts sparingly. Use the fancy fonts for headings or as accents, but not for the bulk of your text.

The Readability of Fonts Affects Participation

A study done at the University of Michigan in 2008 on typecase in instructions found that the ease in which a font in instructional material is read can have an impact on the perceived skill level needed to complete a task.

The study found that if directions are presented in a font that is deemed more difficult to read, "the task will be viewed as being difficult, taking a long time to complete and perhaps, not even worth trying."

Based upon the aforementioned study by Wilson, it is probably not a good idea to present eLearning material, especially to beginners, in a Times New Roman font, as it may make the information seem too difficult to process or overwhelming.

Different Fonts Convey Different Personas

If you are creating eLearning for business professionals, you might want to use a different font in your design than you would for eLearning geared toward high school students. But what font would you use if you wanted to convey a feeling of happiness? Formality? Cuddliness?

In a study (funded by Microsoft) by A. Dawn Shaikh, Barbara S. Chaparro and Doug Fox, the perceived personality traits of fonts were categorized. The table below shows the top three fonts for each personality objective.

Fonts persona

Source: Img Src: http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/81/PersonalityofFonts.asp
 

Click here for Part 2 of this series, Easy Font Resources.

***

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the just-released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

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Adobe FrameMaker: File Info and MetaData and PDFs… Oh My!

by Barbara Binder

As a long-time Adobe Acrobat instructor, I've spent many hours showing Acrobat students how to modify and enhance their PDF documents. They learn how to add bookmarks, links, movies, document properties, and more.

These are great features that should be part of any interactive PDF document, but if you put them directly into the PDF, you will overwrite them if you ever have to enter corrections into the source file and then regenerate the PDF.

A much more efficient workflow is to do as much work as possible in the source files. In this article, I want to show you how to enter  document information directly into FrameMaker so that it will be in the PDF document as soon as you create it.

File information, called metadata, is often added to the document properties of a PDF document to make it easier to search. (You can view the properties by choosing File > Properties, and clicking the Description tab.) To enter this information into FrameMaker in advance of the PDF conversion, follow these steps:

  1. Open a FrameMaker document (this also works for a book file).
  2. Choose File > File Info.
  3. Enter your metadata into the following dialog box (if you are not sure what to add into the various boxes, please see the notes at the bottom of this article).

    FM File Info.

  4. Click the Set button.
  5. Save the document.
  6. Choose File > Save as PDF.
  7. After naming the PDF, choose your favorite conversion settings and click the Set button.
  8. When the file opens in Acrobat, choose File > Properties > Description to see the metadata displayed in the resulting PDF.

    Acrobat Document Info.

Notes on XMP Fields:

  • Title: Use a good, descriptive document title.
  • Author: Identify the person or group responsible for the document.
  • Subject and Keywords: Can be used either alone or together, to categorize documents by type.
  • Copyright: Copyright information.
  • Web Statement: The location of a web page describing the owner and/or rights statement for this resource.
  • Job Reference: Supply number or publisher's job references.
  • Marked: If the information in the file is copyrighted, pick Yes. If in the public domain, pick no. When unsure, pick Unknown.

***


If you are new to FrameMaker and want to get up to speed quickly, join IconLogic's instructor-led, online Introduction to Adobe FrameMaker 9 class. Too elementary for your skill level? How about the Advanced FrameMaker 9 class? Hope to "see" you there.

***

About the author: Barbara Binder is the president and founder of Rocky Mountain Training. Barbara has been a trainer for nearly two decades and has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

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eLearning: What’s in a Name?

by AJ George

When it comes to learning over the internet, there's been a lot of debate in the industry over the name "eLearning." People can't decide if they should use e-Learning, eLearning, virtual classes or online classes. Others are wondering if they should use the "e" in eLearning at all.

There are plenty of opinions when it comes to the debate. However, opinions are like cell phones, and these days, everybody's got one. To add some fact to opinion, I recently ran a Google Trend search to find out what the everyday Google searcher was using when looking for training via the internet.

I compared eLearning, e-learning, virtual training and online classes.

eLearning trends

I found that eLearning, e-learning, and online classes were all on pretty equal footing. It seems that eLearning gets the most hits and is gradually gaining momentum. On the other hand, the phrase "virtual training" was rarely searched.

Once upon a time e-learning was a hot buzz-word, but that was back in 2004. During the past six years, the dash in e-Learning is becoming obsolete. In fact, there has been talk of dropping the "e" in eLearning altogether.

If you compare a Google search for learning to the above search phrases, learning blasts them all out of the water. Of course the problem with searching for the word "learning" is that it is a very broad and commonly-used word. Unless you work for Moodle, chances are that if you brand your training content simply as "learning," your customers may never find you.

I also took the Google Trend tracking a bit further to compare mobile learning, mLearning and m-learning.
 
mLearning naming trends
 
M-learning didn't have enough search volume to even be ranked with the other two terms. Mobile learning  dominated to a large degree and mLearning hasn't quite caught on. I'm convinced that over time the use of mLearning will continue to increase. But for now, to increase SEO I would suggest using both mLearning and mobile learning, just to be safe.
 
Note: I tried the Google Trend search with and without quotes around the two-word terms (ie "mobile learning") and found that it returned similar results either way.

***

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of the book "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and the just-released "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." You can follow AJ on Twitter at http://twitter.com/andrayajgeorge.

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Acrobat: Think Reader Can’t Do That? Presto! Now it Can!

by David R. Mankin

If Acrobat was free, everyone would own it. Acrobat is a very sophisticated application allowing you to work with, create, enhance and edit those amazing PDF files.

Sadly, Acrobat isn't free and not everyone owns it. People who do not have Acrobat still need to work with PDF files, which is where Adobe's free Acrobat Reader comes in. Reader, a very capable piece of software in its own realm, allows you to browse, print and interact with PDFs.

However, Reader is a Read-Only application… at least that's what most people believe. Why? When downloaded and installed on a computer, Reader is in fact just a Read-Only application. But that is only true for some PDF files.

A PDF file can be given the ability to save form data (from a fillable PDF form), have comments and markup added and signed digitally… in Reader! These special fortifications to a PDF file must be enabled in Acrobat itself (not Reader), and are applied to PDF files individually.

To add these capabilities to a PDF file, you must have the PDF file open in Acrobat. Then choose Advanced > Extend Features in Adobe Reader. Acrobat presents an information dialog box which explains what capabilities are being added.

Features Will Become Available screen...

Once enabled, the PDF can't be edited. For this reason, Adobe has wisely given you a button labeled Save now, which opens the Save As dialog box and allows you to give this super-charged PDF file a unique name (preserving the original PDF for possible future edits).

Send the enhanced PDF to someone who has only Reader, and they will see that the document's capabilities are extended and they will be able to utilize the file in ways otherwise impossible in Reader!

***

I teach two levels of Acrobat online (yes, the program is that deep). Click here to learn about my beginner Acrobat class. Click here if an advanced Acrobat class is more your style.

***
 
About the author: David R. Mankin is a Certified Technical Trainer, desktop publisher, computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.
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Adobe RoboHelp: Synchronize the TOC Automatically

by Kevin Siegel


One of the three most common features of any help
system is the Table of Contents (the Index and Search features are the others).
However, even while most Help Authors take the time to create a detailed and
seemingly helpful TOC, most Help System customers will not look to the TOC first
when they are trying to get help. Instead, customers they will typically look to
Search the Help System or use the Index.

Why don't Help customers look
to the TOC first when looking for Help? As helpful as the TOC might seem to a
Help author, the TOC is typically laid out in a logical order that's only
logical to the person who created the TOC.

If customers saw the topic
they were looking for on the TOC, there's a good chance they would click the
topic on the TOC and open the topic. The problem is that a typical TOC might be
made up of books inside of books inside of books. There is simply very little
chance that the topic in question is open for the customer to
click.

RoboHelp's Synchronize Table of
Contents feature will automatically show where a topic is located on the
TOC while customers use the Index or Search feature to get help.

On the
Single Source Layouts pod, show the Properties of either  FlashHelp or WebHelp.
Click the Next button and select Synchronize Table of Contents and then select
Automatically from the drop-down menu at
the right.

Synchronize Table of Contents Automatically

Generate and view your project. Use either Search or
the Index to find a topic that is on the TOC. The topic will be highlighted on
the Table of Contents. Believe it or not, the more your customers see the topic
on the TOC, the more likely it will be that they will use the TOC to find and
open the topic in the future.

***


Need to learn Adobe RoboHelp
8… and fast? I'm teaching a live, online RoboHelp class at the end of this
week (April 29-30). Click here to sign up or learn
more.

***


Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/kevin_siegel.