The Logical Blog by IconLogic

ADVENTURES IN TEACHING: Getting Hooked as a Live, Online Trainer

by Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP

As I write this, I am sitting at home looking out at a storm that has paralyzed commerce up and down the East Coast. I’m making no money. That is because an in-person class I had scheduled for today had to be cancelled. It was postponed until next year. Had I been scheduled for an online course, I would be working, and getting paid, today.

 

I’ve been in the training industry for more than 20 years, and at this point I am making most of my income by teaching online. When I have to go onsite to teach, I feel very put-upon: “You mean I have to get up before dawn? I have to get dressed in a suit? Drive in the hurricane or in the snow? On the BELTWAY???” 

 

When I reflect upon it, I realize that these are strange words coming from an erstwhile hardened road warrior. I’ve taught all over this town (I’m in the Washington, DC, area) and all over this country (I’ve been to 47 of the 50 states!). But now I most often teach from the comfort of my home office. 

 

No, I do NOT teach in my pajamas. C’mon! I know you were thinking that! Usually jeans and a nice shirt, if you must know. The nice shirt is just in case the webcam comes on by accident. (One must at least be minimally presentable, after all.)

 

So how did I first discover teaching online? To find the beginning of my online story, we have to go back almost to the turn of the century. No, not THAT century! The most recent turn of the century. Here is the story of how I became one of the early adopters of online teaching.

 

I was sitting in a manager’s office, because it was one of the few spaces offering some quiet in the busy classroom building. Participants in other classes were chatting in the hallway on their way to their morning break. I tested my headset to see whether that background noise was coming through.

 

“Can you hear the people talking in the hall?” I asked my online students.

 

“No, I don’t hear anything,” came the response.

 

“No” “No”—a string of no’s scrolled quickly in the chat window.

 

I was just beginning my first online class ever. It was the fall of 2001. 

 

Now before you think you can guess what happened next, let me tell you that the horrendous events of 911 had already taken place. And plane travel in the United States was a very fraught topic right about then. I had already had a teaching gig in California cancel. And the flow of students who came in from all over the country to our onsite training center had all but dried up.

 

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 Can you hear me now?

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So when the manager of a company where I was routinely teaching face-to-face classes asked me to look into this new concept of teaching online, I grabbed the chance. 

I did some research. We mailed the usual classroom printed handouts to the scheduled attendees. And now I was in my first online classroom...

 

…when the fire alarm went off.

 

“I can hear that!” said one of my online students.

 

“Oh my gosh! I am going to have to evacuate the building,” I said. To think of not obeying the fire alarm was not possible—right about then, we were all taking our fire drills very seriously. Plus, the alarm was so loud it was nearly physically impossible to stay in the building.

 

So I told my students that if I wasn’t back in 20 to 30 minutes, they should hang up their phones and log out, and we would reschedule the class. I put the audio on mute, I took off my headphones, and I exited the building.

 

It did turn out to be just a drill, and when I got back inside, all of my students were still there! They had talked among themselves, they had made friends and become acquainted, and they had kept their headsets on and stayed logged in until I returned. The rest of the class went off without a hitch. (I have absolutely no recollection of what the class was about.)

 

But that first online class set the new direction for my career. Air travel returned, and that training company went back to business as usual in classroom training. But I was hooked... online!

 

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Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP, is a veteran eLearning developer, trainer, and author. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer and Certified Online Training Professional. She teaches both classroom and online courses, and has authored courseware, published training books, and developed content for countless eLearning projects. She is also a publishing professional with more than 30 years of experience in writing, editing, print publishing, and eLearning.

ADOBE CAPTIVATE: Control the Startup Screen for a Published Project

by Kevin Siegel, COTP, CTT

Not all that long ago controlling what learners see first in Adobe Captivate published eLearning content was as simple as creating a visually-appealing first slide in the project. However, if you’ve created content with either Adobe Captivate 2017 or 2019 things aren’t quite as simple. Perhaps you’ve noticed that a mysterious screen now appears when your lesson opens within most web browsers.

 

The default startup screen is a bit plain-looking (it's nothing more than a gray background and a play button).

 

 

I bet you’re wondering why this screen exists, where it came from, and if there’s anything you can do to control it. The screen (known as an Auto Play screen) is necessary thanks to modern browser security protocols that prevent multimedia (such as eLearning content) from automatically playing for a learner without the learner taking the extra step of clicking a Play button.

 

Unfortunately, the Auto Play screen isn't among your Filmstrip slides so there does not appear to be a way to modify or brand it. However, while you cannot stop a startup screen from appearing, but you can control how the screen looks. Instead of the plain gray screen shown above, I want my learners to see the image below (I created the image with an image-editing program and saved it as a PNG.)

 

 

To use the image as the startup screen, open the project’s Preferences dialog box via Edit > Preferences (PC) or Adobe Captivate > Preferences (Mac). 

 

From the Category list at the left, select Start and End. If necessary, remove the check mark from Auto Play. (In older versions of Captivate, you could control the initial screen seen by learners by selecting or deselecting Auto Play. In recent versions of Captivate (2017 and 2019), Auto Play cannot be disabled, even if you deselect Auto Play. Nevertheless, to use your own image as the startup screen, you must deselect the Auto Play check box before you can browse for an image of your own. I know, I know, deselect to select? it's a bit wacky but it's true.)

 

 

Click the Browse button and a background image. (In the example below, the name of the background I’d like to use is called aquo.png.)

 

 

When I previewed the project, the imported image (which was the same width and height of my project) is used as the startup screen.

 

 

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

eLearnChat: All Things eLearning

I really enjoyed my recent session with Rick Zanotti on eLearnChat. You can watch the interview by clicking the image below.

TEACHING LIVE, ONLINE CLASSES: What You Need to Know About Your Online Platform: Part 2

by Jennie Ruby, COTP, CTT

Today I was teaching an online class on GoToTraining. I use this online training platform about three to five days a week. But today, it threw me for a loop. 

 

Just two days ago, I taught a class on this platform and all was well.

 

Today, I logged in one Instructor computer to serve as my main platform. Then I logged in two additional computers: one as my Slide Display computer and the other as my Software Display computer. I was going to be going back and forth between showing slides and demonstrating software. 

 

Here’s where the loop-throwing part happened. As students are logging in, I am finishing my Instructor setup routine. I need to give the two supplemental computers “Organizer” status, so that I can have full instructor features on them. And I can’t do it.

 

I right-click, as I have done for literally years, and it’s not on the menu. WHA???

 

I hate stress when I’m setting up for a class. After all, I spent all evening last night tweaking my slides. I spent all morning making sure the sample files were correct and ready to go. And now, with students arriving, a basic function I’ve routinely done for years has vanished.

 

Between Monday and Wednesday, the GoToTraining folks had launched a new default behavior: Instead of downloading the App to view the class, computers other than the main instructor computer automatically log in with a view-only Web interface. They can’t screen share. And they can’t be made Organizers.

 

Quickly enough, I found the command for “Give me the full-service App!” and I solved the problem. I even had the satisfaction of answering their survey: “How do you like the new automatic Web login? Why are you changing to App view?” Don’t worry, I was quite restrained in my commentary. 

 

Because I knew that on some level it was my own fault. 

 

It is up to the online instructor to know everything about how the online training platform functions. No doubt I received an email or a newsletter from the GTT folks heralding the new procedure, which I should have read. At least I had done one thing right: I was logging my computers in an hour ahead of class time. Although it was true that one or two eager students were also logging in nearly an hour early, I had plenty of time to solve the problem. And even time to answer the survey!

 

Here are some things that you need to know about your online training platform, as the instructor: First, everything from my previous article on student functionality. Then, you need to know how to do the following:

 

Basics:

• Log in as the Instructor/Organizer/Administrator
• Log in backup computers and promote them to Presenters, or Organizers, or Administrators—different platforms have different roles available

In-Class Functions:

• Share your screen
• Share just a view of an app
• Share a Whiteboard (WebEx)
• Share any window (Adobe Connect)
• Create Breakout Rooms

Communicate:

• Chat
• Audio
• Private Messaging

Other special functions

• Hide your screen icons and programs
• Record the session
• Leave the session without closing it
• End the session

Some online training programs are harder to master than others. If you are at all shaky on any of the instructor/organizer/administrator skills, then you might need to work with a “producer.” It’s the producer’s job to operate the online training platform, help you achieve the technical setup you want, and help the students with whatever issues may come up for them. Having a producer frees you to focus on communicating and teaching, without the distraction and stress of platform issues like the one I experienced today.

 

Do you have advice to share? Stressed out moments over problems that you solved? Please share your stories below as comments.

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Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP, is a veteran eLearning developer, trainer, and author. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer and Certified Online Training Professional. She teaches both classroom and online courses, and has authored courseware, published training books, and developed content for countless eLearning projects. She is also a publishing professional with more than 30 years of experience in writing, editing, print publishing, and eLearning.

ARTICULATE STORYLINE 3 & 360: Forced Learner Navigation

by Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP

There are times where you don’t want your learner to leave a slide until certain criteria have been met.   For instance, there's an interactive game on a slide (a credit score game you'll learn to create in my Storyline Essentials book). The learner earns 10 points by clicking on slide objects that help improve a person's credit score; they lose 10 points if they click something that hurts a credit score. In the end, learners need to get a perfect score (100%) before moving forward with the lesson. (They can reset the game as many times as needed.)

Preventing a learner from skipping past a slide until certain conditions have been met is known as forced navigation.   In my scenario, I forced the navigation by creating one trigger that hid the player's Next button until the learner earned a perfect score. At that point, another trigger allowed the Next button to magically appear.   Notice in the image below that there isn't a Next button on the player (there's just a Previous button).

After getting a perfect 100%, a Next button automatically appears.

To accomplish the task, I needed to create a few triggers that will hide and then show the slide's Next button based on a few conditions.   First, the trigger to hide the Next button:   With nothing on the slide selected, I created a new trigger.   From the Actions drop-down menu, I chose Change state of and selected the Next Button from the On Object drop-down menu.   To ensure that the button isn't visible when the slide appears, I clicked the To State drop-down menu and chose Hidden. Then. from the When drop-down menu, I selected Timeline starts.

At this point, the Next button is hidden and it's not ever going to appear. So to ensure that the Next button appears only after the learner earned a perfect score of 100%, I created another trigger.   From the Actions drop-down menu, I chose Change state of. From the On Object drop-down menu, I choose Next Button again only this time I changed the button's State from Hidden to Normal.   Because I was using a Variable named "percentage" to display the percentage of correct answers, I chose Variable changes from the When drop-down menu and then selected the percentage Variable.   I only want the Next button to appear if learners get 100% after playing the game. That requires a quick condition. I clicked the Show Conditions button and added a new condition. From the List area, I selected Variables, from the Operator drop-down menu I chose Equal to. And lastly, from the Type drop-down menu, I set the Value to 100.

To test the triggers, I previewed the slide and there wasn't a Next button on the player. After I clicked each of the correct answers in my game and got my 100% score, the Next button appeared.

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.

Articulate Storyline 360: Modern and Legacy Players

by Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP

If you're an Articulate Storyline 360 developer, you’ve likely grown familiar with the publishing choices found in the Publish dialog box. Most notably, you can elect to publish as HTML5 only, HTML5 with a Flash fallback, Flash with an HTML5 fallback, or Flash only.

However, if you’ve just recently updated Storyline, you’ve likely noticed that when publishing, HTML5 is the only option.

The publish options you see has everything to do with the project’s playbar (the playbar is the frame around the slide content and contains such features as menu, seekbar, and previous and next buttons). Storyline 360 users have a choice of two players: Modern and Classic. The Modern playbar does not work with Flash (hence the reason that HTML5 is the only publish option. The Classic playbar (which is the only playbar available in Storyline 3), supports both HTML5 and Flash.

 

Switching between players is easy. From within the Publish dialog box, click the Player link.

 

 

From the Player drop-down menu, choose the player you'd like. Note that you can also switch players outside of the Publish dialog box by clicking the Player tool on the toolbar. 

 

 

 

To learn about the specific differences between the Modern and Classic players, visit the Articulate website.

Articulate Storyline 3/360: Beyond the Essentials (2nd Edition)

We're currently hard at work on an update to our Articulate Storyline 3/360 advanced book (we're enhancing/improving several lessons). The book should be ready in just a few short weeks.

"Adobe Captivate 2019: Beyond the Essentials" Coming Very Soon

My "Adobe Captivate 2019: Beyond the Essentials" book is with the beta team and should be available for purchase in just a few weeks.

TEACHING LIVE, ONLINE CLASSES: Asking Review Questions

by Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP

 

Over and over, as we teach our ICCOTP Certified Online Training Professional course on how to teach online, I see students use our techniques correctly—but on the wrong topics. For example, we teach a very specific technique—the overhead question. The purpose of the overhead question is to review material you have already delivered or covered in the class. The purpose is two-fold: you are evaluatingwhether the students learned what you presented to them; and you are encouraging them to do an extremely important part of the learning process: to apply effort in trying to remember the content or skills they just learned.

 

Let me emphasize that last statement. The two purposes of asking an overhead question—where you ask a question first (so that all of the students are trying to think of the answer), and then call on one student to answer it—are these:

1. To evaluate whether your students are retaining the content you have delivered (to see if you need to teach it again)
2. To ask your students to apply the effort to remember it

The neuroscience of learning tells us that the moment of learning a concept or a new skill is not when we first hear or receive it. The moment of learning begins when we try to recall it. Learning begins when we ask our brain to remember. It’s as if only at that moment does our brain tag that bit of knowledge or that new skill as something to move into long-term memory. Something to actually LEARN.

 

Over and over, I see our COTPs-in-training ask the perfectly structured question: ask a clear question; then call on one student to answer it. But those up-and-coming COTPs regularly fail at using the overhead question to do the two things enumerated above. Do you remember what the two purposes of the overhead question are? Look away from this screen and see if you remember. I’ll wait.

 

Did you do it? Did you try to remember? If not, please give it a try now. Look away, and see if you remember the two purposes of the overhead question.

 

That’s right:

1. To evaluate learning
2. To ask the learner to go to the effort of trying to remember it

Here’s a memory aid: “Evaluation and Effort make it Easy to learn.”

1. Evaluation
2. Effort

So how are my COTP students failing at these two purposes? They are using their questions to their students for the purpose of engagement only. Wait. Not another E word! Yes, another E word. And one that is a constant mantra in the field of training. “We must engage our students.” “We must create eLearning that is engaging.” “How can we engage our students in learning?” On and on. 

 

Yes, engagement is necessary. But it is only the first step in the learning process for our students. Sure, they have to be awake, paying attention, and even interested in and thinking about the topic of the lesson. That is engagement. 

But without the other two E-words, learning may not occur. And it almost certainly won’t “stick.”

 

Make sure you are asking review questions—not just engagement questions to introduce a topic and get learners thinking about it—but review questions about what you have already covered. You'll be able to evaluate whether students are learning (you might need to teach the lesson again!). And most importantly, so that you are giving your students the opportunity to do what it takes to truly learn something: to apply effort. 

 

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Jennie Ruby, CTT, COTP, is a veteran eLearning developer, trainer, and author. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer and Certified Online Training Professional. She teaches both classroom and online courses, and has authored courseware, published training books, and developed content for countless eLearning projects. She is also a publishing professional with more than 30 years of experience in writing, editing, print publishing, and eLearning.

ADOBE CAPTIVATE 2019: Interactive Videos

by Kevin Siegel, COTP, CTT

 

I’m a huge video fan. In my experience, videos offer a higher level of learner interest and knowledge retention than just text and/or images. However, as much as I love videos, I’m not happy with a core video limitation… a lack of learner engagement or interactivity. Sure, learners can stop, rewind, and fast-forward through most videos, but those abilities hardly equate to interactivity or engagement. 

 

I was delighted to learn that Captivate 2019 has taken an awesome leap forward by allowing for videos (any videos) to include a high level of interactivity via knowledge checks, learner interactions, and more.

 

To begin, I created a new, blank project with Captivate 2019. On the toolbar, I clicked Interactive Video.

 

 

You can either link to an existing YouTube video or insert a video from your computer. In my example, I selected From your Computer and opened a video loaned to me by Professor Art Kohn.

 

I then added two more slides to my project: two Knowledge Check slides. These slides will become overlays on the video.

 

 

 

On the Timeline of the slide containing the interactive video, I positioned the Playhead where I wanted the interactivity and then inserted two bookmarks (one for each of the knowledge check slides) by clicking the square icon just beneath the Playhead. Bookmarks can be used as breadcrumbs or as targets for jumps. I've found bookmarks to be very useful when I'm working with a longer video and I tend to add them prior to adding any interactive components. (Otherwise I seem to always forget exactly where I want the interactivity to occur.)    

 

 

 

To add the knowledge check slides as overlays (which will then automatically become interactive components of my video), all that was left to do was position the Playhead at a bookmark, and then click the Insert Overlay icon beneath the Bookmark icon.

 

 

From within the Overlay dialog box, the last step was to select a slide and click the Insert button.

 

 

I repeated the Overlay process one more time for my second Knowledge Check slide. On the Filmstrip, notice that my two overlay slides are represented as such by the overlay icon just beneath the slide thumbnail.

 

 

If you'd like to experience the awesomeness of interactive videos for yourself, check out the quick sample I posted to the IconLogic website. And while you're at it, enjoy Professor Kohn's brief video on strategies for boosting learner retention.

 

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Kevin Siegel, CTT, COTP, is the founder and president of IconLogic. Following a career in Public Affairs with the U.S. Coast Guard and in private industry, Kevin has spent decades as a technical communicator, classroom and online trainer, public speaker, and has written hundreds of computer training books for adult learners. He has been recognized by Adobe as one of the top trainers world-wide.