The Logical Blog by IconLogic

Moving Classroom Training to eLearning

by Jennie Ruby 

 

When information needs to be moved to a new medium, we have a tendency to try to make the new medium fit the mold of the old. When the Internet was in its early days, websites would often look just like a document: whole paragraphs of text with headings, filling the screen from side to side. But soon we realized that reading on the screen was ineffective, and we learned that a good website chunks the material and uses a series of hierarchical hyperlinks to get us to the exact information we need. 

 

The same is true with eLearning. eLearning is not just an online representation of what we would do in the classroom. It's a paradigm shift. It's a new way of presenting ideas in a way that is observable and learnable in a short time on one's own. Because an adult learner has a limited amount of attention to devote to eLearning, the language and the images need to engage and involve the learner. 

 

The voiceover script of eLearning cannot have the dense layers of meaning and abstract terminology typically used in academic text meant to be read. Instead we need to use plain language, short sentences, and a proportional ratio of text to imagery. 

 

And the methods used in eLearning cannot be the same as classroom methods: lecture, note-taking, discussion.

 

That does not mean that eLearning cannot convey complex ideas and enable adults to achieve learning at a high-level on Bloom's taxonomy. But it does mean that we need to break the ideas down in some new ways, provide interactivity to help learners apply the effort needed to learn the material, and supply knowledge-check evaluations to allow learners to gain confidence in synthesizing and applying the concepts.

 

Even if the audience for an eLearning lesson is individuals with PhDs, text with a high grade-level is not appropriate for an audio voice over. It will come across as a lecture, and adults in the business world will have a hard time holding their focus on it and absorbing it. It will go by the wayside somewhere between email and the next business meeting.

 

The problem is not the difficulty of the content of high-grade-level text, but its density. Too much meaning per word, too many words per sentence, and too many sentences per visual element creates a challenge for an adult engaging with eLearning.

 

In the eLearning world, information, knowledge, and analytical skills need to be broken down into less-dense units and taught in a new and different way. By trying to stick closely with live classroom paradigms for eLearning, we risk having it fail.

 

And if it fails, it is not because eLearning cannot convey complex concepts. It is because of the failure to present the content using the methodology of eLearning.

 

What are your thoughts on this subject? Feel free to post your comments below.

Training: A Primer For Hosting Live, Online (Virtual) Classes

by Kevin Siegel   

 

I received a call from a friend of mine who is the head of human resources at a large company. While the company is typically ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, she was being tasked to spearhead a corporate initiative that was outside of her field of expertise. Specifically, she was being told to move all of the company's traditional in-person training classes online.

 

It seems that corporate was looking to find ways to trim expenses and one sure-fire way to do that was through a reduction of travel expenses. My friend told me that they had 40,000 employees worldwide. When there was a need for a training class (and there were usually multiple classes each month), employees were flown into the corporate offices in New York. Between airfare, hotel, and other travel expenses, the costs were astronomical. In addition, the corporate training facility could only handle a set number of attendees making it impossible to host large groups.

 

The scenario above is the perfect combination of circumstances that makes virtual training rooms ideal: employees who are spread across the country (or the world), limited travel budgets, and inadequate meeting spaces/training rooms. Since my friend knew that I had been developing and teaching online classes for years, she asked for my guidance when it came to selecting the virtual training space for her company. What follows is the information that I shared with her.

What Do You Need to Host an Online Meeting/Training Event?

These days, the technology you need to begin hosting virtual sessions is minimal... no fooling. All that you need is:

• A computer
• Internet access
• Headset or Telephone
• A Meeting Space Vendor

 

The computer

 

You can use any modern computer (laptop or desktop). It doesn't matter if you're a PC user or a Macintosh die-hard, both platforms can be used to host virtual spaces. The power and speed of your computer isn't critical. In fact, when my main computer died just before a scheduled online class, and my backup computer decided to die as well, I hosted the class on my young daughters Dora the Explorer laptop. Her laptop was tiny, cheap, underpowered, and very, very, pink. (The class went great by the way... my students never suspected a thing.)

Internet access

 

Any computer purchased in the past 5-10 years will be able to access the internet out of the box. While you can access the Internet wirelessly, I'd encourage to host your online sessions via a hard-wired connection. While wireless connections to the Internet perform reasonably well, nothing beats a hard-wired connection to your corporate routers like Ethernet cables (they're almost always faster and more reliable).

Headset or Telephone?

 

Some online training rooms support Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOiP), some vendors support telephones (either toll-calls or toll-free), and some rooms support both VOiP and telephones. Should you elect to use VOiP, you'll need a headset plugged into your computer. You can find a computer headset at Best Buy or any office supply store. I'm often asked to recommend a quality headset. Personally, I don't think you can go wrong with any kind of headset manufactured by Senneheiser (their headsets are a bit more expensive than others, but the audio quality is incredible).

While you will likely sound awesome when you are using VOiP, keep in mind that you're basically using the Internet to transmit your voice. If your computer is low on resources, or your Internet connection isn't the best, VOiP won't be the best option. Your voice could sound choppy and your students might miss what you're saying.

 

When I connect to my online classes, I use a traditional telephone with a headset that I purchased at Office Depot (it cost around $50). My meeting space does not offer a toll-free number for me or my students without an extra monthly charge (that can get very, very expensive). Instead, I access the training room by dialing a long-distance number provided once I open my training room. Because my office pays for unlimited long distance (we use AT&T and the option is only $50 per month), I don't worry about long-distance fees. My classes typically last all day so $50 per month for unlimited long distance calls is a bargain.

The Vendors

 

So you've got your computer, a great headset, and access to the Internet. Great! You're just missing the final and most important part of the puzzle... the vendor that will allow you to run your online sessions.

There are many companies that allow you to host online meetings. While some solutions are free (Skype for example), vendors will typically charge you anywhere from $50 per month to several hundred dollars each month, depending on the options you need. In my opinion, here are the top vendors offering online training spaces: WebEx (owned by Cisco), GoToTraining (owned by Citrix), and Connect (owned by Adobe System). I'm not saying that there isn't a perfectly good solution out there beyond the three I've mentioned. However, I've used several different vendors and technology over the years. In my experience, the three vendors mentioned here performed the best.

All three of my top vendors provide a free 30-day trial so I encourage you to test-drive each of their products. When the time comes to set up a room using any of the tools, you'll find it a painless process since there's little to install. With GoToTraining, for instance, I set up an account, downloaded a small application, and was using my first training space in literally 10 minutes. The only issue you might run across when setting up your training space is being blocked by your corporate Firewall. In that instance, you'll need to coordinate your efforts with your IT department so they'll grant you unfettered access to the vendor's site and grant you the necessary installation privileges.

Once you've got your hardware and vendor sorted out, your final concern is what your learner will need to access your virtual room. Like everything else about the virtual experience, getting your learners into the room is easy. All that your learner will need to access your room is the date and time of the meeting, a computer with Internet access, a headset or telephone (just like you), and the address of the training room. (The address is a link you'll create at the time that you set up your virtual room. You'll be able to copy/paste the address and send it to your students via email.)

Of course, there's more to hosting online meetings or classes than the technology. In reality, there's an art form to leading an online class (it's not easy leading a class to a group that you cannot see). If you'd like to learn how to teach online classes effectively, check out my online (of course) Train the Online Trainer class.

eLearning and TechComm: Click, Select, Choose, or Press?

by Jennie Ruby

Right at a time when flat design has become the rage, removing the three-dimensional look that for 30 years (happy anniversary to Windows this November!) has informed us that "this thing looks like you can poke it in! It must be a button!" people are starting to worry and become uncertain about the clear vocabulary that has helped us to write about software and computers for just as long.

In a recent class I had one participant tell me her office has forbidden the word "click" in favor of "select." Another told me that her office had done just the opposite!

The two concerns in question are whether the word "click" loses its meaning on mobile devices, and whether the word "click" is exclusionary toward individuals with disabilities or different abilities.

The good news is that using the word "click" is not ableist, nor is it declaring the hegemony of mouse users over mobile device users. It is just the standard word in technical communications to indicate "execute," on certain kinds of interactive items on screens. In other words, "click" means "hey you, button, do that thing you do."

The button, as with so many things in the computer realm, is an analogy to real-world little pokable nubbins that make things happen on electric devices from vacuum-cleaners to doorbells. Even real-world buttons have undergone some changes in the ways people use them. The buttons on my microwave and stove are now flat to the surface and covered with a plastic sheet so that spaghetti sauce and porkchop grease can't get in and ruin the mechanism. But you still actuate them by pressing them--and most of them still emit a satisfying "click" sound (or a beep) when you do so.

By analogy, "click" is whatever action you do to an on-screen button to make it do its thing. It is executed on various devices and by various computer users in various ways. Many of us already made the leap from "press and release the left button on a mouse device" to "press and release the left side of your mouse even though it no longer has a button" to "press and release the entire touchpad on your Mac laptop so that emits a click sound" to "tap ever-so-gently on the hair-trigger touchpad of your new Windows laptop" to "tap once on the screen of your iPad or phone" to "tap once on the screen of your touch-screen laptop" to "tab to the button and press the Enter key on your keyboard." And with Windows Speech Recognition, to actuate a button, you actually speak the word "click," as in, "Click OK;Click File; Click Bold; Click Save; Click Close," and so on.

To back away from the word "click" right now is as unnecessary, and even nonsensical, as deciding that the Save icon has to be changed because no-one has used an actual mini floppy disk since 2005. The Save icon has become a symbol that will retain its meaning like other permanent glyphs, such as the Arabic numerals or the smiley face. And the word "click" is the way you indicate "actuate" for certain screen items.

But that is not to say that the word "click" should be used for every screen action. By now I hope I have made clear that a "click" is a characteristic of certain screen items-buttons, icons, tools-not of the physical method by which you actuate them. So even though you may also click your mouse to execute the following actions, the word "click" is not the clearest vocabulary word for them.

You "choose" something from a menu, because you are "choosing" from a list of "choices," and once you "choose" the one you want, the chosen command is immediately executed.

choose File > Close

You "select" something that, once you select it, stays selected. You select a cell in Excel. You select part of the text in a document. You select an option from a list and the option stays selected-as in a drop-down list or a list-box. You select a radio button, and you select a checkbox. And they stay selected. Until you "deselect" them.

select the Portrait Orientation radio button

select the Kerning checkbox

from the Font drop-down list, select Verdana

select the first paragraph in your document

deselect the Enable Live Preview checkbox

You "press" a key on a keyboard or a real button on an actual piece of hardware. (The word "press" definitely cannot be used to describe what you do to an on-screen button, because it may create ambiguity: Does "Press Home" mean on the screen or on the keyboard?)

press the Enter key

press the F6 key

press the Power button (on the microwave)

And finally, you "click" an on-screen button, an icon, or a tool.

click the OK button

click the Bold tool

click the Wifi icon

As this vocabulary discussion continues, I would love to hear your take. Is your office using "select" for everything? Are you using "press" for mobile devices? Or tap? Are you combining commands, as in "click or tap the link"? Email me.

References

Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications: "Do not use choose as an alternative to click or double-click. Choose does not convey any additional information to those who do not use a mouse, and such users normally understand the equivalent action that they must take when a procedure step says to click."

Web page: Use Speech Recognition to operate windows and programs

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Do you need to learn how to write eLearning scripts? Come check out my live, online mini course.

eLearning: Become a Pedagogical Agent

by Jennie Ruby 

If you've taken any of our Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline classes, you are probably aware that these programs provide a selection of screen characters--cut-out pictures of professional actors in business, medical, or business-casual clothing posed as if they are talking to you. They are intended for use as a kind of avatar of the trainer.

There is research that shows that using a screen character as a pedagogical agent or learning coach, who speaks informally and appears to be giving the lesson, increases learning. (My reference for this is Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer, eLearning and the Science of Instruction.)

Over the past few weeks, I've had multiple students ask how hard it would be to use themselves as the learning coach. Believe it or not, becoming a pedagogical agent is easier than you think.

 

Put Your Picture into the Lesson. Place a professional head shot of yourself, your trainer, or expert on the introductory slide (including job title, credentials, etc.), and then have that individual record the audio narration for the project.

 

Create your own screen characters. Photograph your expert on a green screen background for a full set of screen characters in various poses. The IconLogic Blog has a whole series of articles on how to do this:

 

Green Screen Part I

Green Screen Part II

Green Screen Part III

Green Screen Part IV

 

Create cartoons of yourself or your in-house experts. You can use the images over and over in on-going training videos. Here is one article to get you started: Using Bitstrips Characters.

If you don't have specific, known individuals in your company to act as your learning coaches, you are not stuck with the same four or five actors that come with your software. You can purchase additional screen characters from The eLearning Brothers. Or you can just make good use of some inexpensive clip art. By trimming out the background in ordinary office photographs, you can get some nice effects.

 

Whether you use generic actors or your own home-grown experts, screen characters are an excellent way to add the personalization, engagement, and local feel that will bring your eLearning to the next level.

 

Once you have your screen characters, how do you know what to make them say? Join me for an afternoon mini course on writing voiceovers to find out.

Adobe Captivate: Text Hyperlinks

by Kevin Siegel   

Over the years I've had more than a few eLearning development clients ask us to create links to web resources on a slide. There's more than one way to accomplish the task. Over the next couple of weeks I'll discuss some of my favorite techniques. Up first, text hyperlinks.

To create a text hyperlink, select some text (the text can be contained within a text caption or a smart shape). Then, on the Properties Inspector, select the Style tab. From the Character area, click the Insert Hyperlink tool. 

 

 

From the Link To drop-down menu, choose Web Page. Next, type a web address into the field.

 

Prior to clicking the OK button, visit the drop-down menu to the right of the web address. I think it's a good idea to select New from the list of options. (This will ensure that the page that appears after the learner clicks is a new page or tab, rather than a page that replaces the current lesson.)

 

 

 

When previewed in a web browser, the text hyperlink will look similar to the image below. If clicked, the learner will be taken to the web address you specified in the Link To area.

 

  

 

Should you change your mind about the text hyperlink, removing the link is as simple as selecting the text and, back on the Properties Inspector, clicking the Remove Hyperlink tool.

 

 

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

See also: Object Hyperlinks

TechSmith Camtasia: Recording Effects

by Kevin Siegel   

When Camtasia developers need to add attention-grabbing visual affects to a software demonstration created using the Camtasia Recorder, the work is typically accomplished by editing the recording in Camtasia Studio. However, using Camtasia's Effects Toolbar, you can add several attention-grabbing visuals while you are recording your video.

Start the Camtasia Recorder. Enable the Effects toolbar by choosing Tools > Recording toolbars and selecting Effects (click the OK button to close the Recording toolbars dialog box).

 

 

Create a video by clicking the Rec button on the Camtasia Recorder.
After the 3-2-1 countdown, the Effects tools appear on the Recording toolbar.

 

Select the ScreenDraw tool to display different Drawing tools. You can select from among frames, lines, highlights, ellipses and even a pen.

 

At this point, you can use the tools to draw all kinds of shapes on the screen (at the same time that you're creating the video).

 

 

Note: You can erase all of the screen drawings by once again clicking the ScreenDraw tool.

 

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you. 

Adobe Captivate: The Cure for Blurry Zoom Destinations

by Kevin Siegel   

 

Zoom Areas are typically used to emphasize an important area of a slide background. They are especially useful if you want your learner to automatically get closer to a specific area of the screen.

To insert a Zoom Area, click Objects on the Main Toolbar and choose Zoom Area.

 

Zoom Areas consist of two parts: the area of a background that you want to highlight (Zoom Source) and where the zoomed area of the background will appear (Zoom Destination).

 

In the image below, I have positioned and resized the Zoom Source over the area of the slide background that I want to get larger.

 

Then I positioned and resized the Zoom Destination on the slide. Remember, the Zoom Source won't move or resize when the lesson is viewed by the learner... that's the job of the Zoom Destination.



Right away you can see that there is a problem with the image in the Zoom Destination. Because a Zoom Area simply enlarges the Zoom Source, and I've resized the Zoom Destination quite a bit, the image in the Zoom Destination is blurry.

To fix the problem, you'll need a larger version of the image shown within the Zoom Source. In this case, I have the original photo of the handsome male model shown on the screen (in addition to being much larger, it has also been cropped similar to the image in the Zoom Source).

To swap out the blurry image in the Zoom Destination with the better image, double-click the Zoom Destination to open the Properties Inspector. On the Properties Inspector, click Add new image.

 

Click the Import button and open the larger version of the photo.



Compare the Zoom Destination below with the version above. The quality of the Zoom Destination image is much better.



If you would like to see a free demonstration of this concept, check out the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

Designing Mobile Learning with Adobe Captivate (Free Online Adobe eLearning User Group Event)

Wednesday, February 25, 7:00-8:00 p.m., Eastern
Location: Live, Online... You Can Attend from Anywhere in the World! 
Price: Free!

Presented by Joe Ganci

More and more people are using mobile devices to access content. You know this and realize that the mobile world is different than the desktop world. You're ready to take the plunge into designing and developing true mobile learning, but where do you start?

During this session, Joe will explain the pros and cons of including certain instructional design features and show how to design and develop alternatives for those elements that will not work on mobile devices. In addition, Joe will discuss features that you may find advantageous when implementing mobile learning. Joe will also make himself available for questions and answers and hopes you'll weigh in with your own observations and experience!

In this session, you will learn to:

• Apply the correct features to a mobile learning design that will also work for desktop.
• Avoid features that will cause you problems in your design. 

Sign up for this live, online session here.

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Joe Ganci is President of eLearningJoe, LLC, a consulting and training eLearning company located outside of Washington, D.C. Joe has been involved in every aspect of eLearning development since 1983.

Learning and Development: Effective Videos, Part 2

by Matthew Pierce  

In last week's article about creating effective eLearning videos, I wrote about video viewership and the ideal length for a video. This week, it's all about keeping viewers interested and the best information to present.

 

Keeping viewers interested

One of the prime reasons that viewers turn off to video is because the delivery of content doesn't engage or appears as boring. The TechSmith Viewer study dug into what makes content uninteresting. There are many ways to be considered boring, just a few of them include: 

• A dull or monotonous speaker
• Content is by nature boring
• The pace of delivery is too slow
• The information is a repeat from earlier delivery of material
• A bad approach has been decided and taken

Overcoming some of these hurdles can be challenging. Audiences can be subjective and depending on your audience size, you may need to determine what is the least problematic approach, without letting the video become too generalized or plain--which will also cause viewers to stop watching.

 

What is the best information to present?

 

Some participants in the study indicated that they actually wanted different information from what was provided in the videos they had seen. This can be subjective as we can't always deliver what they want versus what they need, but we should keep in mind that viewers, especially learners, do tend to have a good gauge of whether the information achieved its objectives. When viewers wanted different information, we found that they were missing details. If the content was instructional in nature, they found there wasn't enough step-by-step instruction. Also, on many occasions the content of the video was not accurately reflected in the description, which can lead the viewer down the frustrating path of starting a video only to discover that it doesn't meet their needs.

 

Finally, viewers indicated that instructional and informational videos were not specific enough. It's easy as a content creator to assume how much any one of your viewers may already know. And since it can be difficult to pre-assess knowledge and deliver just what is needed, testing and being open to feedback from your audience is critical to success.

 

Conclusion

 

As we move into a digital era where video content is becoming king, technical communicators need to find a fine balance between creating videos that achieve their purpose and understanding how their viewers will best consume their content. One cannot exist without the other.

 

The best video will be created by a person who has considered the content, how it is delivered, the amount of details, and even the amount of time to ensure it does not fall flat with viewers. In comparison to entertaining videos, instructional and informational videos need to work a little bit harder to win over audiences; but through a variety of settings, and interesting approaches viewers can stick to your content like glue.

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, check out IconLogic's eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn TechSmith Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

See also:  Learning and Development: Effective Videos, Part 1

Learning and Development: What Makes Videos Effective?

by Matthew Pierce  

 

When you think of what a trainer or instructional designer (ID) does, the first thing that comes to mind is probably not video communication. Nevertheless, video is becoming a larger and more important piece of their workload. While it is still not so common that they will need to work with video daily, it is beginning to have more impact on their daily lives; ID's and trainers will now need to be ready to create videos for their work. 

Because video is growing in usage for the learning and development space, TechSmith Corporation wanted to better understand what makes a great video. If you can determine the attributes that make a video great, perhaps you can reverse engineer those pieces and apply them to your own videos. TechSmith's Viewer Research Study comprised 1900 participants from a variety of roles and industries including financial services, education, government, healthcare, manufacturing, software design and development, and more. The majority of participants fell within the age range of 25 to 64.



Because there are different purposes for videos, questions were asked to help determine what type of video they were thinking of during the research. The types of video were narrowed down to three: Entertainment, Informational, and Instructional. For our purpose, we focused our research on learning from those who were considering informational and instructional video. 

Let the Experiments Begin 

Among the key learning of the research, there are lessons that everyone who is considering creating a video should consider, which when applied will help guide us to creating better and more effective visual content. Like all research, I invite you to run your own experiments and validate the research in your environment and for your particular audience. 

Video Viewership 

With the rise of YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sharing sites, the amount of video being consumed on the web is increasing. According to a report from Cisco, online video users are expected to double to 1.5 billion in 2016. While a lot of video viewership will be focused on entertainment and its increasing ubiquity, not all of it will be. Some portion will be focused on information delivery and instruction. As video viewing increases, there are points you should understand about how to create better videos, which will allow for better engagement and enable you to achieve your end goals. 

Some of the results of the study give insight into viewer habits, which may help you make sure you shape the learner experience. For instance, instructional and information videos are watched most in the morning and the evening. This could indicate that viewers are watching when they feel they have time. This leads to asking, what does the information delivery need that will allow the viewer to get the most from the information? 

Importance of video length 

For a number of years, I have taught people that videos need to be short, concise, and probably no more than three minutes in length. I have found that while this is still the case, it didn't take into consideration what viewers wanted. 

The data from the research indicates that for instructional and informational videos a higher percentage of viewers actually prefer longer videos (with the range varying between four to fifteen minutes in length). When looking at those that were flagged as good or great videos, the length of instructional and informational videos can sometimes be up to 10 minutes in length.



The length of the video may seem surprising; but with more context, it is understandable why a viewer would prefer a longer video. Think about the information you might want to deliver or something you would want to teach; it can be often difficult to condense that information down to a one to three minute video. In addition, other data points indicate that viewers want the right information that will guide and direct them. If the video has too little or too much, they aren't going to want to view it. While it's a difficult balance to achieve, you can solve the problem by asking appropriate questions. You need to understand the problem, and what information or instruction will help to provide the solution.

A number of survey participants indicated that they stopped watching a video because it was not the expected information, the wrong topic, boring, or uninteresting content.



As you start creating videos, remember you have flexibility in the length; but if you provide too much information that is not directly helpful or relevant, the video will be less effective.

Next week: Keeping viewers interested, and the best information to present.

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, check out IconLogic's eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn TechSmith Camtasia Studio, Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

See also: What Makes Videos Effective, Part 2