Learn. Show. Repeat.

Author: Matt Guyan

  • My Word for the Year

    A few weeks ago I saw a post by Helen Blunden where she was talking about her ‘word for the year’. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a post like this – Dr Jason Fox and Renee Robson also wrote about their words of the year.

    After reading Helen’s post, I spent some time thinking about my goals for the year and what my word could be now that ‘focus’ was taken 😉

    So my word for 2016 is: Build

    tools for building

    The word build can mean building something completely new from scratch or building on the existing  or knocking down some of the old and replacing with the new. I’m doing a little of each and I don’t see it starting and ending this year, it’ll be ongoing. So, this is what I’m going to do:

    I’m going to build my knowledge and skills in coding, webinar delivery, screen casting, learning theory, online facilitation and curation.

    I’m going to build stronger connections with people in my network and build new connections.

    I’m also going to build my fitness levels to take on the City to Surf fun run in August (this will be the hardest one!).

    While it’s all very well to set some goals, but the first question is ‘what am I actually going to do?’. It’ll be a combination of things – looking for information and people who have skills and experience in these areas, experimenting and trying ideas, learning from the experience of others, practice, devoting time to learning, pushing myself outside my comfort zone and documenting along the way.

    So what’s your word for the year?

  • Looking Closer at Images

    E-Learning Heroes Challenge #114 – Interactive Video: Zooming and Magnifying Images in E-Learning. The brief: This week, your challenge is to share a solution to allow learners to zoom in or magnify parts of an image, graphic, document, or video.

    This was one of those challenges that I wanted to have a go at because even though Storyline has built-in zooming (which is pretty cool) to make parts of an image larger or to get a close up of a section of a scene, I wanted to try to create a way of making parts of an image larger without using the zoom feature. I had this coffee machine image that I’d used for something else and I thought I could use it again this time to explore the different parts.coffee machine

    I kind of flipped the challenge idea on it’s head because rather than zoom in to look more closely at the parts, why not have the parts become larger so they can be seen along with a description. Because it’s a demo, I didn’t build out the interaction completely but just made a couple of the parts clickable – the control panel and the handle where the coffee goes.

    Initially I tried to build all of the interactivity on the slide (base layer) but I ended up needing to use a couple of layers. I created my first layer for the control panel and copied my image and pasted it onto the layer (when you do this, the image is pasted in exactly the same position as it is on the base layer). Then, while still on the layer, I cropped the image so that only the panel section was visible. Next I added a motion path to the cropped image to make it move away from the complete image.

    I decided to use a change of state to make the cropped image appear larger, so I created a new state for the control panel:

    normal and large state

    The great thing about motion paths is that you can add triggers to make other things happen once an object reaches the end of its motion path. In this demo, the image of the panel changes to the large state, the text box description changes state (from hidden to normal) and the whole coffee machine image also changes to a washout state – I added that later – when the motion path animation completes. I repeated this process on the second layer (the coffee handle).

    It was a bit of trial and error to get the large versions of the cropped images to appear in the right place but it didn’t take too long to get it right. I also added a trigger to hide each of the layers when the timeline ends. This worked ok for the purpose of the demo but I’d probably add an object for someone to click on to hide the layer if I was going to use this in a project.

    Then back on the base layer, I inserted two freeform hotspots that give the user something to click on to show their respective layers:

    hotspots

    Interesting fact: Hotspots are 53% transparent!

    That’s it, an interaction that makes part of an image larger without using the built in zoom. You can try the demo yourself by clicking on the image below:

    Zooming and Magnifying

    Let me know what you think and you can see all of my ELH Challenge entries on My Portfolio page.

  • Happy Same Year!?

    Welcome to 2016!

    As a new year is upon us, it’s that time again where folks who blog about learning and development share their predictions for the coming year. It’s always fun to see where people think the field is going and it would be interesting to look back on the year in December to see how close their predictions were.

    So, in the spirit of a new year I thought I’d throw out a few ideas of my own about L&D for the year ahead (specifically for those working in L&D). My overall prediction is that what’s easy to do will be favoured over what’s necessary and while there may be good intentions across the L&D field to change, most of these won’t come to fruition.

    Here’s some specific thoughts:

    Professional Development
    Attending conferences will be the main source of PD for learning folks, after all it’s a day or two out of the office, the food is usually good and there’s the possibility of gathering some forward-thinking ideas from the presenters. Then it’s back to work all juiced up with the intention of ‘doing things differently’ but the ideas will either be forgotten completely within a week or will be blocked by someone at a more senior level and subsequently abandoned without a fight.

    Formal courses will also be relied on for the ongoing development of learning and development folks which will be the reason why courses will be offered as the default option to upskill employees. After all, if L&D people only take courses they’re not exposing themselves to different ways of learning so how can they offer other methods to others?

    Workplace Learning
    Online courses will continue to be used as stand-alone, one-off learning experiences or a way to convert classroom sessions and will involve shovelling copious amounts of content at those who are forced to take them. Considered design, user experience, contextualisation and personalisation will take a backseat to content dumps. Micro, on-demand and social learning will not feature on the L&D radar or be integrated with more formal approaches. Many learning folks will be left scratching their heads as to why courses don’t deliver value or change behaviour and the business will again dismiss L&D as a waste of time.

    Learning Research
    There’s a large existing body of learning research and evidence about how people process information and learn. This year, the research will again be ignored completely in learning design (mainly due to a lack of awareness that it even exists) although a preference for incorporating learning styles and use of the MBTI instrument will remain as popular as ever.

    Social Media
    Using tools like blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yammer or Pinterest will be largely ignored by learning professionals (for personal and workplace learning) apart from a short spike in usage after attending a learning conference. This will fade in the days after the event as pre-conference ways of working and learning take over. The perception of SoMe as ‘goofing off’ will remain strong in organisations and at the same time the opportunity for free, on-demand learning will be lost as connection to people and access to knowledge is blocked by corporate firewalls.

    Same old ways

    While this post is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and generalises everyone, it does reflect what I see among learning and development professionals that I come into contact with. I do know that there are L&D folks who are chipping away at change but they are definitely in the minority. I’m really hoping that the opposite of what I’ve written here happens in 2016 so let’s check back at the end of the year and see…

  • Looking Back at 2015

    Well another year has just about come and gone and at this time of year like many folks who write blogs I like to look back and reflect on the posts I’ve written. Blog writing is a personal thing and everyone has their own style and approach which makes the diversity between writers and topics both interesting and thought-provoking. If I had to sum up where I’m at with my blogging and the style of posts I write in one word, it would be Practicality.

    I read a lot of posts and tweets that are critical of eLearning modules (some for good reasons) and I often tell people that an eLearning module is a learning solution it’s not always the learning solution. But it does have a purpose, so instead of constantly bagging it out, my approach is: Why don’t we do something about improving the standard of eLearning?

    So that’s why I like to share posts that explain how to do something and allow the reader to take something away and maybe use in their own course development. Sure, at the moment there’s a focus on using the tool which is important but I intend to expand this next year because eLearning is much more than knowing how to use an authoring tool.

    I’m learning stuff all the time so why not share the knowledge and put it back into the community so here’s my posts from the year that was, grouped by topic area. Click on a title to view the post.

    Storyline 2

    These posts are about things I’ve learned about or discovered in Storyline 2:

    More than One Way with Storyline 2 – How I updated a slider-based interaction to a button and number variable interaction.

    Template Facelift – How I redesigned my ‘Meet the Team’ interaction.

    Spinning Around with Storyline 2 – How I created a carousel-style interaction using a slider and layers.

    3 Things I’ve Just Discovered in Storyline 2 – I’d just started a new job and my colleagues made me aware of these three handy features.

    E-Learning Heroes Challenges

    These posts take a behind-the-scenes look at how I created some of my challenge demos. I used to call them ‘Showing My Work #x’ but I didn’t think it was helpful to the reader plus it sounded a bit wanky so I started to give them a catchy name:

    Pushing My Buttons – ELH Challenge #89: Creative Button Styles.

    100 Not Out – Celebrating 100 ELH Challenges.

    Bingo Time! – ELH Challenge #98: E-Learning Bingo Games.

    Making Videos Interactive – ELH Challenge #94: Interactive Video.

    Showing My Work #11 – ELH Challenge #18: Using Characters in E-Learning.

    Showing My Work #10 – ELH Challenge #52: Using Interactive Sliders in E-Learning.

    Showing My Work #9 – ELH Challenge #71: Teaching Math Concepts with E-Learning.

    Theoretical

    These posts delve into the area of information processing and cognitive load which are important areas to know about when creating eLearning:

    Designing Effective Multimedia Lessons for Learning – a university essay I wrote about the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and research-based principles that will improve eLearning design.

    The Human Memory System – a university essay I wrote about human cognitive architecture.

    Reflective

    Sometimes I just reflected and put down my thoughts and ideas. I’d like to do more of this next year:

    Half-baked Ideas – a few random thoughts that may become posts of their own in the future.

    Looking Behind the Façade – my thoughts on showing your work and working out loud.

    Evolution – about how my career has changed for the better.

    Practice and Sharing: The Keys to Success – an older post with my two takeaways from LearnX.

    Flipped Networking – about how it’s becoming more common meet people online via social media before in person at a conference.

     

    Thanks to everyone who has read or commented or liked or shared something from this site, I really appreciate it. I’d like to wish you all the best for the festive season and for the new year ahead.

    Who knows what 2016 will hold…

    Ideas for 2016

  • More than One Way with Storyline 2

    Sometimes I like to experiment with ideas for eLearning interactions and a few months ago one of these experiments led me to creating this carousel-style interaction (you can click the image to see a demo):

    Carousel slider demo

    I wrote about it here but essentially it uses a slider to show layers with each image in a different position. I also posted the demo to an E-Learning Heroes Community forum and someone asked if the same effect could be created using buttons instead. The short answer is yes and here’s how I did it.

    I started by making a duplicate of the current slider-based interaction as the layers and positions of the images are set up correctly. I deleted the slider and created a couple of buttons (one for left and one for right) using a square shape and an arrow image that I had on file.

    Button breakdown

    Then I needed to figure out a way to make the layers show (creating the spin effect) depending on which arrow was being clicked. I wanted to make the images spin in the same direction as the arrow that was being clicked.

    The solution I came up with was to use a number variable. Variables are great because they ‘remember’ information and the same variable can be used many times anywhere in your project. You can then use this information to make things happen. The slider interaction uses a number variable but it’s created when you insert the slider. For this interaction, I created my own number variable.

    First, I added my variable via the ‘Manage project variables’ area…

    Manage project variables

    …and called it ‘Count’.

    Count variable

    Then I added two triggers (one for each button) the add 1 to Count if you click the right arrow or subtract 1 from Count if you click the left arrow.

    Add to count

    Then I needed to do something with the Count information – instead of the layers showing when the slider was in a particular position, they’d now show when the variable Count had a certain value.

    show layer trigger

    Remember, clicking the buttons changed the value and so a different layer would be shown each time.

    Because you can’t keep spinning the images around and around, I added some change of state triggers on the arrow buttons that change their state when you go as far as you can in either direction. As a bonus, I also found that by using the buttons instead of the slider, it freed up some space in the middle of the slide that allowed me to add a small amount of text (if required).

    Often there’s more than one way of building something in Storyline 2 and this is another example of this as well as the power that variables can bring to your project.

    To view the updated interaction click the image below:

    Carousel

    You can access the .story file from the Downloads page of this website.