Learn. Show. Repeat.

Author: Matt Guyan

  • The Next OzLearn Tweet Chat is on 10/3/15

    OzLearn logo

    On Tuesday 10th March at 8:00pm AEDST (UTC +11hrs), @OzLearn is having its next monthly twitter chat. This month, the conversation will be based on David D’Souza’s (@dds180) blog post – The Death of L&D: A Post Mortem and we’ll be talking about the future of the L&D profession. You can read David’s interesting post by clicking here.

    To join the chat, go to Twitter at 8pm on 10/3, search for @OzLearn and join in the conversation (don’t forget to add #ozlearn to your tweets).

    There is also an OzLearn LinkedIn group where you can view the Storify of the chat afterwards.

    Hope you can join us for the chat!

  • Flipped Networking

    On the 17th and 18th of February, I attended and presented at the Ark Learning Assembly in Melbourne. Over the two days there were many interesting speakers talking about a range of topics including working out load, gamification, MOOCs , knowledge management as well as organisational case studies. For me though the hands down, without a doubt, best part was meeting people who up until the Assembly, I had only known online. One of these people, Vanessa North, who I knew through Twitter, summed it up best when she called it ‘Flipped Networking’. As she said, “you used to go to conferences, meet other people and then keep in touch (usually via e-mail). But now it’s the opposite, when you know people via Twitter and then go to a conference you feel like you already know them.”

    Learning Assembly

    I completely agree.

    While I haven’t been to a lot of conferences, the ones I did attend in my days before twitter usually consisted of a bit of chit-chat with the people sitting near me. But now, being actively connected with others means that I seek people out who I know will be there or they find me. Handshakes are often replaced by hugs and the conversations become an extension of the usual 140-character messages. With flipped networking, relationships are strengthened and deeper connections are formed.

    The same thing happened at the Third Place dinner between the conference days. There I met several more people face-to-face who had only been virtual connections up until that point. The only downside is that there wasn’t enough time to talk with everyone.

    Third place Melbourne meetup

    At the assembly we talked about the idea of the ‘new normal’, which was about how things are changing in the learning space. For me, that’s what flipped networking has become.

  • 3 Things I’ve Just Discovered in Storyline 2

    Storyline 2 has heaps of great functions to help create fantastic eLearning, so many in fact, it’s hard to know them all. But in the past couple of weeks I’ve come across three hidden ones (well, hidden to me) that I wish I had known earlier. I wanted to share them here because if they’re new to me, chances are they’ll be new to someone else too.

    #3 – Moving Objects with Arrow Keys

    Ok, I’ve known for a while that you can move objects (shapes, text boxes, images) using the arrow keys but sometimes I found that they didn’t move far enough and then the next move was too far! That’s because when you move something with an arrow key, it moves by 8 pixels at a time.

    But if you hold down the CTRL key and press the arrow key, it just nudges the object by just 1 pixel! This is really good for making those fine on-screen adjustments.

    Note: You can also do this in PowerPoint.

    #2 – Size and Position

    This comes in handy when you want to have different objects in the same place on-screen across different slides. To find the position of an object:

    Select the object and right-click:

    Size and Position

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Select Size and Position

    Then click on Position:

    Position box

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    You’ll see the horizontal and vertical position of the object on the slide. In this case it’s from the top left corner but you can change it and go from the centre. Now you can line up your objects on different slides by using the same position for each!

    Note: You can do this in PowerPoint too.

    #1 Hiding Base Layer Objects via the Timeline

    When working with layers, have you ever wanted to hide some of the objects on the base layer? I sure have! SL2 does give you the option to hide all objects on the base layer and when I’ve wanted to only hide some of them I thought you had to a shape to cover them up. But it can be done using the timeline.

    Click on the layer.

    Look at the Timeline and you’ll see a tiny little arrow near Base Layer Objects:

    Base Layer Objects closed

    Click on the arrow and it will now point down and all the objects on the base layer will be shown:

    Base Layer Objects Open

    Next to each object is an ‘eye’ symbol.

    Click on the eye of the objects that you want hidden (it will turn grey and the objects will hide on screen).

    Here’s a before:

    Before

    And After:

    After

    Each time you are on that layer the objects you’ve selected will be hidden. You could have different settings for different layers if you wanted too.

    Well that’s it, three little functions I’m glad I now know about. Hopefully they’ll come in handy for you too!

    Special thanks to Beck and Ruth for telling me about these three gems.

  • Showing My Work #8

    Often when we talk about our work, we talk in terms of ‘what’ we did. The Showing My Work series of posts aim to also capture the ‘how’ something was done.

    E-Learning Heroes Challenge #57 – Preventing Workplace Violence. The brief: This week your challenge is to show scenario examples designed to prevent or address workplace violence. You can structure your demo any way you like – just be sure to include some type of scenario.

    For this challenge, I decided to use a branching scenario. This type of scenario gets learners involved in a situation and takes them down a path based on the choices they make (as opposed to just being right or wrong).

    One of the first things I did was to re-read a couple of great posts about branching scenarios:

    Build Branched E-Learning Scenarios in Three Simple Steps by Tom Kuhlmann

    When Do You Need a Branching Scenario? By Cathy Moore

    Because this was a demo and I had limited time, I decided to create a simple branching scenario around the theme of workplace bullying. In the scenario, you are an observer to a situation and you need to make a choice as to what you should do if you saw these events happening.

    Out of the four possible choices, there is one correct action and three different results for the other three actions. Rather than using feedback layers, you move to a new screen based on your selection. You’ll see the consequences of your decision and have the opportunity to select another action.

    Storyview

    None of the consequences say directly if they are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, instead there is a reaction by one or both of the characters in the scenario and another decision may have to be made. For an incorrect choice, the follow-up question is ‘Now what will you do?’ I used radio buttons for each response and depending on the selection made; it takes you to one of the four slides. The different actions are repeated on each slide (except the action that was selected).

    Slide triggers

    For the background I used an office style picture (to give context) and made it semi-transparent so it didn’t dominate the screen. I place the image on a Master slide to keep everything consistent.

    While branching scenarios take longer to develop and build, the experience for the learner is much improved and, in the real world, if we make an incorrect choice we can often make another decision to get things back on track.

    Here’s my demo, you can click on the image to view it:

    Workplace Scenario

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

  • The Next OzLearn Tweet Chat is on 9/12/14

    Ozlearn tweet chat

    On Tuesday 9th December at 8:00pm AEDST (UTC +11hrs), @OzLearn is having its final monthly twitter chat for 2014. We are very fortunate to have Nigel Payne – @ebase – join us! You can read an introductory post for the chat by clicking here.

    To join the chat, go to Twitter at 8pm on 9/12, search for @OzLearn and join in the conversation (don’t forget to add #ozlearn to your tweets).

    There is also an OzLearn LinkedIn group where you can view the Storify of the chat afterwards.

    Hope you can join us for the chat!