Learn. Show. Repeat.

Tag: learning design

  • Letter to an eLearning Creator

    Dear eLearning Creator,

    I don’t normally do this but after what was one of the greatest hours of my life, I felt that I must. I’ve just completed a wonderful eLearning course that you created and I wanted to personally let you know how much I enjoyed it and that I was so engaged from start to finish.

    Day-to-day I’m quite busy in my role, however when I received the notification that I needed to complete my module I was happy to stop what I was doing, set my phone to voicemail and get started. Actually, a quiet hush fell over the entire office when they found out that another course was ready as everyone was hungry to consume more content.

    I love PowerPoint! I often see it in meetings so right from the beginning of the course there was a cosy familiarity about it. Even though I was sitting at my desk at work, using my company computer and sipping from my company branded coffee cup, I was delighted to see that our logo was visible throughout the entire course to remind me of where it came from. Not only that, you applied the our branding guidelines consistently and faultlessly throughout – the fonts, the colours and even the distance of the logo from the top right-hand corner of the screen – which really added to the experience.

    I was thankful for the navigation instructions you provided up front. I use computers and the internet a lot here and at home, and I did have to log into our learning area and click on a link to open the course, but I was pleased to find out that clicking on a ‘Next’ button would take me forward, ‘Back’ would take me backwards and ‘Takeaways’ would have some extra information. The progress area came in handy too as it was useful to see how many of the 143 slides I’d completed.

    I must admit that I was a little unsure about what I’d get out of completing the course but to my relief you let me know on the objectives slide what I’d be able to do by the end. I don’t quite remember what they were (they were some good verbs though) but if you say that I can do those things then I believe you!

    Having the audio narration read everything on the screen for me was delightful! It allowed my senses to really soak up the material and it was clever that I couldn’t skip ahead until the audio had finished (meaning that I wouldn’t miss out on anything). I found the pictures in the course made the text less dull and the characters used reflected the happy and diverse mix of people working here. The animations you used certainly jazzed up the information and my right hand got a good workout from all that clicking, dragging and hovering!

    You saved the best part until last – the knowledge check! (by the way, this sounds so much nicer than quiz or test). I thought that presenting the questions in a game show format was so fun! How did you know that true and false questions are my favourite? Multiple choice questions are a bit trickier but luckily I could have as many tries until, by process of elimination, I finally picked the right answer. I appreciated that I wasn’t just right or wrong but that I was Correct! or Incorrect! Funnily enough, that’s just how my boss says it when I answer one of his questions.

    It was a bittersweet moment when I completed the course. I was sad that it was over however the gazillion points I received plus five gold stars did cheer me up as did the ability to print out a certificate to keep and treasure (which incidentally now hangs proudly on a wall in my home).

    Well, that’s all I wanted to say and even though I will probably never meet you, keep those information courses coming – more often and longer would be great. I speak on behalf of my all colleagues when I say THANK-YOU!!

    Signed,
    The Engaged Learner.

    Image source: JPPI on morgueFile.com

  • 5 Books Every eLearning Professional Should Read

    Even though we live in a digital world I still love reading paper books. This post has been floating around with me for a while and the idea for it came from a post by Ryan Tracey called ‘5 papers every learning professional should read’.

    This post is pretty much the same but with books instead of papers. I’ve chosen each book because they’re easy to read (over a period of time rather than one sitting), they provide useful strategies that you can implement and they provide a great reference that I go back to.

    I’ve listed them here in no particular order:

    eLearning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer

    One of the first books I read when I started in eLearning and over time I’ve discovered that anything written by Ruth Colvin Clark is well worth a look. What I like about this book is the theory (working memory, cognitive load and related principles) is explained in a straightforward way and there’s practical examples based on research of what can be done to improve eLearning design.

     

    Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen

    This one also has a good mix of evidenced-based theory and ideas that can be implemented into your own designs. It looks at learning from a wide perspective – how we process and store information, how to design for skills and for knowledge as well as motivation and the learning environment. I’ve got the first edition but there’s a second edition now available.

     

    The Accidental Instructional Designer by Cammy Bean

    This book written by someone who started out much like I did – transitioning into the role of instructional designer. There were many times throughout the book that I related to Cammy’s experiences. She covers a lot of ground – different skills of an ID, working with SME’s, ideas for gaining attention, writing, visual design and meaningful interactivity – that includes avoiding what she calls ‘clicky-clicky bling-bling’.

     

    Visual Design Solutions by Connie Malamed

    Graphic design is a skill that I’ve had to work on (and continue to work on). This book is chock full of ideas to improve the visual element of your modules and looks at how to organise screen objects, working with images, typography and using imagery to enhance explanation and as part of storytelling.

     

    Show Your Work by Jane Bozarth

    The practice of showing your work is about making the stuff in your head, the ‘how-to’, visible for others to see and use. Find out more about what it means to show your work and see the many, many real examples shared by folks from all walks of life.

     

    What do you think? What books would you add?

    5 books

  • How I created a Custom Quiz-style Interaction in Storyline 2

    Recently a friend of mine contacted me as he had an idea for an interaction he wanted to create in Storyline 2 and needed some help with building it.

    He wanted the interaction to work like this:

    • A question with five answer options.
    • Two of the five answers were correct.
    • Only a maximum of two answers could be selected.

     

    He also wanted a ‘submit’ button and once clicked, then he wanted:

    • Feedback for each answer to be shown.
    • An indication of which two answers were correct.
    • To still see which two answers were originally selected.

     

    With a bit of experimentation and a few prototypes I was able to create something that met his needs and this post is about how I got there.

    Originally I thought about using a freeform question slide but as I didn’t need to worry about scoring so I went with a regular slide.

    I started by inserting a place for the question and the five answer options on a slide and I also created a ‘selected’ state for each answer option. Next I created a submit button and set the initial state to hidden – my idea was to change it to normal when two answers are picked (or become selected). I’d also need to make the other three un-selected answers become inactive once the second answer had been chosen. I abandoned this idea when I realised all the triggers I’d need to make it work.

    My next idea was to create a layer and place the submit button on this own layer. The reason I did this was because I remembered that in the layer properties there’s a setting where you can prevent the use from clicking on the base layer (click in the box to turn on the setting):

    Slide layer propertiesUsing this setting would take away the need to come up with triggers for making the un-selected answers not work as once this layer is showing nothing on the base could be clicked on. But I did need to figure out triggers to make this layer show – which was after the second answer was selected – based around the state of my answer options. So with 5 answer options there’s the following 10 selection combinations:

    1 and 2, 1 and 3, 1 and 4, 1 and 5, 2 and 3, 2 and 4, 2 and 5, 3 and 4, 3 and 5, 4 and 5.

    So my 10 triggers to show the layer with the submit button on it (based on the state of the answers) were variations of this:

    Show layer trigger

    Note: In this trigger, the order the answers are chosen doesn’t matter so choosing answer 1 then answer 2 is the same as choosing answer 2 and then answer 1.

    Once the layer with the submit button is showing, users are not able to click on the base layer and select any other answers (in hindsight, the way interaction is set-up means that you can’t change your answers once you’ve picked two). The trigger on the submit button is to show another layer that contains the feedback, which answers are correct/incorrect and it still shows the selected answers on the base. I positioned the answers on this layer showing which are correct/incorrect directly over the answer options on the base which means the selected state showing.

    As this is a prototype I haven’t focused on the slide design, it was more about seeing if I could achieve the functionality he wanted. Click on the image below to see a demo and if you’d like to download the .story file click here.

    quiz style interaction demo

  • 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…

  • Integrating Motivation with Instructional Design

    As an Instructional Designer, motivating learners is an important consideration because in reality learners are not always motivated to learn. They are busy, have other things to do, don’t see the course/session as being important or have had a bad learning experience in the past. I’ve written previously about motivation – Motivation and eLearning – which was about satisfying autonomy, competence and relatedness needs of learners. I’ve come across Dr John Keller’s motivational design model known as ARCS and thought it was worth sharing.

    The ARCS model comprises four major factors that influence the motivation to learn – Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction. It’s described as a problem-solving model and helps designers identify and solve specific motivational problems related to the appeal of instruction. The model was developed after a comprehensive review and synthesis of motivation concepts and research studies. It has also been validated in studies across different education levels.

    Dr John Keller

    The four categories of motivation variables consist of sub-categories along with process questions to consider when designing:

    Attention = Capturing the interest of learners, stimulating their curiosity to learn.

    • Perceptual Arousal: What can I do to capture their interest?
    • Inquiry Arousal: How can I stimulate an attitude of inquiry?
    • Variability: How can I maintain their attention?

     

    Relevance = Meeting the personal needs/goals of the learner to affect a positive attitude.

    • Goal Orientation: How can I best meet my learner’s needs? (Do I know their needs?)
    • Motive Matching: How and when can I provide my learners with appropriate choices, responsibilities and influences?
    • Familiarity: How can I tie the instruction to the learners’ experience?

     

    Confidence = Helping the learners believe/feel that they will succeed and control their success.

    • Learning Requirements: How can I assist in building a positive expectation for success?
    • Success Opportunities: How will the learning experience support or enhance the learners’ beliefs in their competence?
    • Personal Control: How will learners clearly know their success is based upon their efforts and abilities?

     

    Satisfaction = Reinforcing accomplishment with rewards (internal and external).

    • Natural Consequences: How can I provide meaningful opportunities for learners to use their newly acquired knowledge/skill?
    • Positive Consequences: What will provide reinforcement to the learners’ successes?
    • Equity: How can I assist the learners in anchoring a positive feeling about their accomplishments?

     

    The following link is to a YouTube video where Dr Keller discusses the ARCS Model, some background in its development and the addition of volition to the model.

    ARCS: A Conversation with John Keller

    Apart from the motivational aspects of the model, what I really like about ARCS is that it puts the learner at the centre of the design process.

    After all, that’s how it should be.

     

    References:

    arcsmodel.com

    Keller, J. M. (1987) Strategies for stimulating the motivation to learn. Performance and Instruction. 26 (8), 1-7.