Being new to Instructional Design, I have noticed a number of parallels between designing e-learning courses, and designing a functioning and user friendly website.
There are elements of a web page that are important to keep the attention of your audience, help them find what they are looking for, draw their eye to certain areas, and assist them in navigating the site. When a reader first lands on your website, you want the color scheme to be easy on the eye. Instead of using flashing graphics, bright colors contrasting on dark colors, and other techniques that make images or text "stand out", use a color scheme that blends together well. This will not "shock" the reader, overwhelm them, or confuse them, allowing them to look around the page freely.
The same holds true for an e-learning course. It is extremely valuable to use a color scheme that causes the elements of each slide to compliment each other, and provide consistency across the course. Just like on a website, once a color scheme is decided upon, those colors can be used for the different elements including accent boxes, links, imagery, borders, and shapes. Additionally, the course navigation/container should also adhere to this color scheme, not only to match, but to reinforce.
Aside from colors on a website, layout and composition are extremely important. The placement of the navigation, images, text, etc will determine how you reader absorbs the information, and how they will navigate the site. The text should be a size that fits well on the page, but is not too large or small. It should be easy to read, but not too large that it distorts the overall view. Any use of images on the site should also be done in good taste. Use images that are easy to distinguish, do not have colors that clash with the rest of the page, or are too large to fit in an appropriate location.
In e-learning, we need to utilize the limited space we have by creating imagery and text that enhances and accentuates the content. By finding the right balance between images, text and white space, you can draw the eye towards certain elements that in turn allow the ear to pick out and retain information. Having too many images on the screen can confuse and muddle, while having too little can cause the audience to get lost in the audio.
The most important element to design is consistency. On a website, consistency between pages is critical. If the layout is completely different on each page of a site, it will take the reader extra time to navigate back or forward from where they are. That time could cause them to lose their interest. Personally, a website that is poorly laid out and disorganized will quickly have me looking elsewhere for the information. A well designed website will have a consistent color scheme between pages, a navigation bar that remains in the same location on each page (can be a row of links, or images), and a somewhat consistent content layout.
The same is true for an e-learning course. Consistency between slides is critical, even small details such as the location of a text box. If it is a pixel off from the slide prior, it will appear to have "jumped", inadvertently grabbing the attention of the audience. The location of titles, the size and color of the text, and the way objects transition onto the screen are all elements that create consistency for your course, or when used poorly, create distractions.
One of the greatest benefits of having the internet so widely used and accepted in today's world, is the universal acceptance of certain standards. Anyone that uses a computer is familiar with a link, how to click on it, and what will likely happen when they do. This one small detail has allowed for innovative uses of links for many non-web based documents. People now know how to identify links, even if they are not the standard blue color (allowing us to integrate our color scheme). This can be used in any e-learning course that requires supporting documentation be included as an attachment. The Instructional Designer can use this format, and know that the audience will be familiar with it, and know what to do. We are now much more efficient and effective than we were in the days of "refer to appendix A".
Being new to Instructional Design, I have taken what I have learned in web design and applied it directly to designing e-learning courses. The audience is also able to take what they have learned from the internet, and use those same skills to navigate through the course. In a way, a language barrier has been jumped, as we are able to view one or the other with the same elements and in the same way. These elements that create a well-designed and functioning website can thus be used to create an e-learning course that increases comprehension and improves retention.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The ID and SME Team Makes for Smooth e-learning Design
Have you ever began storyboarding an e-learning course, looked at a particular topic and thought, "how on Earth an I going to accomplish this?"
Either there's so much jargon that it might as well be a foreign language, or the subject matter expert (SME) is assuming you can create a three-dimensional hologram to illustrate the script. To make matters worse--getting rewrites authorized and accomplished at this stage of development can be a real hassle.
In order to avoid these pitfalls, it's critical that the instructional designer (ID) be familiar with the subject matter. It's not as if you can master every subject area; so the sensible thing to do is involve yourself in the planning process at the earliest point possible, and participate in conversations between your project manager (PM) and the SME. There are advantages to taking this approach to course development.
First, it's much easier to keep informed regarding the project schedule; and any snags or delays that might be heading your way. More importantly, you'll be able to help minimize delays by providing insight from the ID point of view.
Second, you'll become more familiar with the subject matter as you interact more with the SME during the planning process. For example, you'll have a better understanding of the field's acronyms and jargon. You'll also have a better idea, in a conceptual sense, of the material you have to animate.
Finally, helping the PM and SME plan the course from the very start gives you an opportunity to help shape the script itself. The advantage here is you'll avoid any unpleasant surprises because you've collaborated with the SME to design elements that have the potential to be real problem-children; such as diagrams, charts, graphs, and interactions.
Depending on where you work, it's sometimes the case that the PM is the only person to communicate with the SME; once the course is ready for animation, the ID sees it for the first time. If you find yourself in this situation, have a conversation with management to explain how your early participation could streamline the process.
By getting involved early in the design process, you, as an ID, can kiss goodbye that "how on Earth" moment.
Either there's so much jargon that it might as well be a foreign language, or the subject matter expert (SME) is assuming you can create a three-dimensional hologram to illustrate the script. To make matters worse--getting rewrites authorized and accomplished at this stage of development can be a real hassle.
In order to avoid these pitfalls, it's critical that the instructional designer (ID) be familiar with the subject matter. It's not as if you can master every subject area; so the sensible thing to do is involve yourself in the planning process at the earliest point possible, and participate in conversations between your project manager (PM) and the SME. There are advantages to taking this approach to course development.
First, it's much easier to keep informed regarding the project schedule; and any snags or delays that might be heading your way. More importantly, you'll be able to help minimize delays by providing insight from the ID point of view.
Second, you'll become more familiar with the subject matter as you interact more with the SME during the planning process. For example, you'll have a better understanding of the field's acronyms and jargon. You'll also have a better idea, in a conceptual sense, of the material you have to animate.
Finally, helping the PM and SME plan the course from the very start gives you an opportunity to help shape the script itself. The advantage here is you'll avoid any unpleasant surprises because you've collaborated with the SME to design elements that have the potential to be real problem-children; such as diagrams, charts, graphs, and interactions.
Depending on where you work, it's sometimes the case that the PM is the only person to communicate with the SME; once the course is ready for animation, the ID sees it for the first time. If you find yourself in this situation, have a conversation with management to explain how your early participation could streamline the process.
By getting involved early in the design process, you, as an ID, can kiss goodbye that "how on Earth" moment.
Friday, April 9, 2010
How to Overcome Not-So-Common Articulate Snag-a-roos
So, you’ve developed a killer course. Now all you have to do is publish the sucker and put it out there for the masses, right? Most of the time it’s simple to just publish, review, and get it out there. However, sometimes you encounter fabulous technical problems —you’ll just find yourself yelling at your PC with your arms flailing in the air.
Although we all love articulate as an elearning tool, technical snag-a-roos just happen from time to time, as they do with any software. As you sit their continuing to yell at your PC, think about whether one of following snag-a-roos could be causing you to flail your hands in the air:
1. Attachment Icon Hyperlinks Go Bust
2. Slide Titles Aren’t Showing in the Navigation Panel
3. Publish Process Crashes When a Certain Slide is Reached
4. PowerPoint experienced a serious problem with the ‘articulate presenter ribbon’ add-in.
So now that you’ve looked at these snag-a-roos you nod in agreement and say to yourself: “Ah-ha! Ok, so now what?...” Well, let’s take a closer look at these 4 not-so-common articulate snag-a roos and how to overcome them.
1. Attachment Icon Hyperlinks Go Bust
So you’ve created cool icons that link to PDF attachments for your course. All of your links are working swimmingly. So go ahead and publish your course. Then you review it and find that you need to make a couple of modifications to a few slides. So you go back into your course MS Power Point file, make the changes, and re-publish.
You re-review your course and find that the PDF attachment icon links aren’t working.
You ask yourself: “What’s the deal?!” Well, if you go back into your course MS Power Point, and edit one of the PDF attachment link icons, you’ll see that the slashes of your link have gone from back slash to forward slash. The reversal of these slashes breaks the link from your icon to your designated PDF attachment.
So why’s this happening?...
After you’ve entered and saved your URL
So what’s the best way around this snag-aroo?
1. Just deal with it. Manually change the links as needed each time you re-open and re-save the file.
2. Don’t make your hyperlink a relative link. Make it an absolute link instead.
Example:
http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php/data/downloads/myfile.pdf
When opening and closing your project, MS Power Point maintains absolute links.
As much as we hate the workaround options, hopefully this flaw will be corrected in future renditions of MS Power Point, or articulate will figure out a way for Presenter to work with MS Power Point’s snag-a-roo, correcting the issue behind the scene.
* For even more info about this snag-a-roo, check out this articulate Forum Post.
2. Slide Titles Aren’t Showing in the Navigation Panel
While reviewing your course you notice that some slide titles aren’t displaying in your left hand-navigation panel. “Hmmmm… what could be causing this?...”
First things first, go back into your MS Power Point course file and check your articulate slide settings. Ensure that your slide isn’t set to hidden. If the effected slide titles are set to hidden, unhide them, save your properties and your course file, and re-publish. Now you’re slides should display without fail.
If they don’t, go back into your MS Power Point course file and check your articulate slide settings for potential tiering problems for hidden slides. A visible slide won't display if it is after a hidden slide that’s set to a higher level than it is. To correct this, make all of your slides visible, reset your slide levels, and then hide any necessary slides that you don’t want to appear in the navigation panel. When doing this, ensure that the slides you are hiding are a subset of a visible slide (the visible slide is set to a higher tier).
Example:
Slide 1: Visible: Level 1
Slide 2: Hidden: Level 2
* For even more info about this snag-a-roo, check out these articulate instructions.
3. Publish Process Crashes When a Certain Slide is Reached
Your publish process freezes up when you get to a certain slide. Everything crashes and you get error messages. You go back into your course MS Power Point and republish. It happens again. You’re thinking: “now what?!...”
Here’s the scoop on this one, if you have too many animations or animated shapes within a given sequence, the publish process can freeze up and crash. As your course is publishing, the publish processes the present slide, retains all the previously processed slides, and looks forward to the slides yet to be processed. If there are too many animations within a 3 slide sequence, then this crash will happen. In other words, it crashes because the slide that’s presently being processed is too robust – it’s working hard to not only to process this present slide and the rest of the slides, but it also needs to retain all of the previous slides that have already been processed.
So what constitutes as too many animations or animated shapes? Generally speaking, using 1-10 images per slide, and keeping the animations for these images to about 40 animation steps or less, seems to do the trick. However, many of us have 15 plus images per slide and lots of animation steps for those images.
Here’s what can be done to get around this snag-a-oo. For the slide that’s getting stuck on the publish process, and sometimes the slide immediately before it and after it, try to:
1. Simplify your animations.
Minimize the number of images on your slide, including the number of animation steps used.
2. Break apart animations into several slides.
If you want to keep your stellar robust animations, try breaking them up into 2 or more slides. some of the slides into two or more slides to even out the load.
3. Or try to Convert grouped images in to 1 single image file.
If you have a lot of group shapes or images, right-click and save your groupings as one image file (typically as a JPG or PNG file). Then try to replace your original grouping with the new single image file.
Taking any of these actions will help distribute the load for the flash player playback and should allow you to publish successfully.
* For even more info about this snag-a-roo, check out this articulate forum post.
4. PowerPoint experienced a serious problem with the ‘articulate presenter ribbon’ add-in.
You’re working happily along creating your course in your MS Power Point file. Then you receive a message that PowerPoint had a very bad problem with your Articulate ribbon add-in, and your project crashes.
“Uh-oh. What to do?...”
Usually this indicates that there was a technical issue with the latest installation or update of articulate on your PC.
To fix this problem you could just click “no” in the error message and proceed with what you were doing. But to keep it from happening again:
1. On your PC, Go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs.
2. Double click Articulate Studio '09.
3. Select Reinstall. This will attempt to repair the installation.
After you have repaired the installation, you should be golden.
*For further information about this snag-a-roo check out this articulate forum post and resolution.
Hopefully the tips and tricks shared here will help you overcome some not-so-common Articulate snag-a-roos.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Learning to-go please!
As technology has evolved, I realize how quickly I have evolved and changed my own habits. Where I used to be a late adopter of technology –yes I refused to leave Windows Tab Works!! I am finding myself to be an early adopter! Case in point, my “new”, (but actually now consider “old”, since the next generation is about to release.) cell phone. I am a proud owner of the Motorola Android. Of course I had to have the Droid as quickly as possible. My blackberry curve just couldn't browse the web “well enough”. I didn't even bother going into the store, but rather ordered it online and two days later I was completely connected ALL THE TIME!From text on screen, to audio narration, interactivity and shortened course lengths, e-learning has been constantly evolving. As technology becomes more refined, faster, more complex applications created, a whole new world of learning has been developed in the e-learning space. We come to another crossroads with mobile learning. The ever popular smart phones have revolutionized people’s lives. Can you imagine taking an “e-learning” course on your cell phone? What would it look like? Could it be a traditional course with slides and text? I’m not sure I would really find that very useful or revolutionary…but if you think about it, we really use “e-learning” on a regular basis with the capability of searching the Internet from anywhere. You’re out and you need to know something. In the past we’d make a mental or physical note and try to remember to research it at a more convenient time, when we had the right tools and resources in our possession. Well today, we insist that right NOW is the convenient time. There’s no need to wait, just find it now. We need instant gratification…if you have to wait to learn until you’re in the perfect environment, it’s ineffective.
Consider this example of mobile learning: A few weekends ago, I was out car browsing. After the first dealership I was motivated to check out some other dealerships with cars that I've been intrigued by, but never researched. While sitting in the dealership waiting for the salesperson to return with keys for a test drive, I sat in their waiting area promptly researching the model on my phone, reading facts and quick reviews of the car I was about to test drive. With these facts and thoughts fresh in my mind when the salesperson returned with the keys, I was fully prepared to ask questions and rate the car for myself.
By turning our phones into pocket-sized laptops we are able to provide training to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. I’m anxious to see how technology will further revolutionize e-learning and mobile learning. Until then, I’ll take that knowledge to-go!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)