Using Audio tracks for your eLearning

I get frustrated every time I hear about an eLearning course that is little more then a voiced over PowerPoint. Have you ever taken a voiced over Power Point? Can you remember anything that was presented? Remember your learners when you are creating eLearning.

Audio tracks with eLearning is a really weak solution because it:
1. Reduces knowledge retention - students become very passive participants. "If I can wait and have someone read to me, why should I pay attention".
2. Reduces productivity: people read at about 3 times the speed of spoken word. A narrated course will take 3 times as long as a text one. "Why take 15 minutes to do a course when I can take 45?"
3. Reduces accessibility: When you create a narrated course with lots of pictures, random access based on topics of interest becomes harder. You have to wait for the course to get back to the item of interest that you wanted, rather than being able to navigate there in 3 clicks/5 seconds.
4. Removes searchability: Adobe recently announced that they are developing technology so that Flash items would become search-able. Finally, after 10 years of Internet, they're starting to think about how people may use it. Meanwhile, outfits such as yours have been pushing flash based courses (PPT-to-Flash converters) because of the high levels of "interactivity" they provide. That's a joke!
5. If recorded video is such a good product, why don't we just record all the college/university professors one time, and then just play the recordings for the students? Why? because it sucks and nobody will pay attention to some boring video. Putting the boring video on-line doesn't make it any less boring, it just makes it easier to turn off.

delivering content to mobile platforms

There are two approaches currently to delivering content to mobile platforms:
1. Require that the student download and install an application to their PDA so that courses can be displayed.
2. Rely on the built-in browser for delivery of content, without requiring each student to install additional software on their platform.

Option 1 gives more multimedia delivery capabilities, but limits the platforms that can be supported since a delivery application will be required for each type of platform (e.g. Blackberry, Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6, Palm, Symbian, iPhone, etc.) This option also has the enormous hurdle of requiring that the student download and install the application before they can even try to access the content.

Option 2 is only now coming into being a possibility because the browsers on these platforms are finally getting mature enough to handle web courses. This option requires the least modification to the end-user's platform, and will therefore result in the greatest success in content delivery.

In terms of course design, the main concern is the size of the end-users screens. Since this size can vary, a design paradigm based more on "web design" rather than "graphic artist design" is necessary. That is, the content should be laid out visually and implemented using the "best of web" ideas, such as allowing the browser to rearrange the content so that it fits the screen to require the minimum amount of horizontal scrolling. Also, the use of multimedia needs to be limited because of bandwidth and delivery/plug-in restrictions. None of the major mobile platforms play Flash yet as part of web pages. Some of the platforms have minimal, or no style sheet support.

The ReadyGo Web Course Builder produces content that can be delivered equally through standard desktop web browsers and through mobile platform browsers. Basic question types such as multiple choice, multiple selection, true/false, text entry, and numerical entry function well on all the major PDA platforms and can be tracked with the Server Side Testing module. Because of limitations in the browser capabilities, we do not recommend trying to deliver SCORM or AICC courses through web browsers. That is, the mobile platform browsers have limited JavaScript engines, so the two-way communication necessary between the course and the LMS will only work well on platforms such as iPhone. Even with these limitations, ReadyGo courses deliver and function well.

Courses created with ReadyGo also have the capability to have their style sheet (look and feel/layout) changed at run-time. By providing multiple links to the course (each with a different style sheet), the same content can be delivered to PDAs, high resolution screens, customers requiring large print, etc. The advantage of this is that the content only needs to be managed and generated once. As soon as it is updated, it will be updated for all the different platforms without additional effort.

Course creators outside of the US

India should be proud of its newly gained visibility in the IT field. Likewise, India should keep a paranoid eye out. The American expression would be "easy come...easy go..." The other expression I would throw out as a caution would be "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That is, India may pull jobs away from the US because of cost advantages today, but tomorrow they will be pulled away from India by China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc. As India's personnel gain experience they will need to compete against staff from the US, Europe, and eventually Russia (which has always had a deep pool of very educated, and very under-utilized talent).

Property and intellectual rights issues should be strongly considered. In the US, because of the legal system, developers have to avoid copying anyone else's ideas and intellectual property. This concept is taking time to take root outside the US & Europe. There are some extremely creative personnel in developing nations, but there is also a large population of new developers that have no issue "borrowing" designs from other developers. Culturally, they see nothing wrong with it...nobody gets hurt. It is not a physical object. Ideas are seen as "community property". Software/courseware is still seen as an intangible object, therefore open to replication.

Yes, it would be good for US personnel to make courses less "American", however, the reality is that the US is a bit of an "island". We Americans love to export ideas/culture, but are rather hesitant about importing ideas/cultural values. Reality #2 is that business goes where the market is, and until the Rest Of World ("ROW") economically grows past the US/Canada GDP, the strongest pole of attraction will still be the US market. And thus, products sold to the US market will still need to be acceptable to the American consumer.

Choosing Authoring tools

Regardless of what you choose, when you are reviewing tools, be weary of
the really slick 2-minute demos.  Some tools look really easy and slick.

Watch the course 4 or 5 times to see how it holds up to repetition.
Will your learners be able to use the content as reference material
during their daily tasks?  Think about what makes Google usable- if
animation was useful, wouldn't Google have the found links fly in?
Choose tools where the content delivers quickly (ie. the end user
doesn't have to wait for a download before the content starts) and the
student can skip over material they already know.

I see authoring tools fall into several categories:
1. PowerPoint Converters: Articulate, Breeze, etc.  Authoring is done in
PPT, and these "tools" just convert it into a slide show, perhaps adding
a test at the end.  Breeze is more of a synchronous delivery mechanism
(like WebEx, Citrix GoTo, etc.).  Instructional design is pretty much
non-existent.  Why does this matter?  If all you care about is
completing the author's task, it doesn't matter.  If you want ROI, and
to get learners to actually use the content, you need to make a good
experience for the learners.  I recommend using these tools only if your
presentation is 2-5 minutes.  Beyond that, the learners will drift away.
You can actually use just PPT 2003 or later without resorting to other
tools if this is your objective.
2. Animated Screen-capture movies/Simulation: Captivate, Qarbon Viewlet
Builder, Camtasia:   These tools create elements that you can add to
your course.  They make good components to put on sub-pages so that
those students interested in further details can drill down to them.
These tools are a little more difficult to use (properly).
3. WYSIWYG tools ("PowerPoint on Steroids"):  ToolBook, Lectora,
Authorware: These tools present you a pretty much blank screen and let
you set up the instructional design from scratch (or from an
pre-existing template).  Generally, you should story-board before using
these tools.   I've seen that these tools have a print-paradigm
assumption.  This means that courses they produce only display correctly
on certain size monitors, and can't be re-sized.  One way the tools get
around this limitation is to take over the entire screen, so that the
student can't really use the course as a guide to an application they
are learning.
4. Web-paradigm tools: DreamWeaver, ReadyGo: These tools produce web
content that delivers properly on multiple browsers regardless of screen
size/resolution. Multi-level navigation is easy to build (so that the
user isn't locked into a linear course flow - they can choose what is of
interest to them).  DreamWeaver is probably too difficult for most
occasional course developers to use.

How to Condense Training

A good way to condense the training is to break it into an on-line part and an in-class part. The on-line part can start with a pre-course session that brings all the users up to a level of knowledge of basic terms and ideas that are required to take the in-class part. After the in-class portion, another on-line course can be given to ensure that the learners remember the pertinent points, have more examples available about application of the pertinent points, and have a chance to refresh/gel the concepts covered in the intensive in-class portion. The adage about "tell them what you're going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them" is very applicable here. In the pre-course, prepare them for the main course. This can include a lot of foundation material. For the employees who already know the material, they can quickly skip over (and they won't feel like you wasted two days of their time with it), while for the employees who aren't yet familiar, they can spend as much time as they need to get up to a basic proficiency level. One of the keys to making on-line training successful is to present each concept 4 or 5 different ways since each learner will benefit differently from the various presentations. Instead of just having PowerPoint slides posted on-line, each page should have content (or links) such as main ideas, case studies, step-by-step procedure, detailed explanation, history of the approach, a quiz (non-graded), a test (graded), a field study, or an exercise. This gives the learners enough opportunities to view the material that they can learn it without having to have an instructor hold their hand through every detail.

As you look over the course outline, it should become apparent what material is the most critical. This material can be presented in the pre- and post-course, but it is essential that it be presented in the face-to-face sessions.

XML - why do I keep hearing this?

I keep hearing "XML XML XML".  Yes, it is a good file storage format -
but it only becomes a displayable content when you combine in style
sheets.  A series of XML pages does not make a course any more than a
series of text pages does.  Downloading and editing XML in a text/XML
editor (like Notepad) is a somewhat cumbersome approach that I wouldn't
impose on an SME.

Besides, with all the extensibility options for XML, we're back to a
tower of Babel.  For example, suppose there is a 3.25.
All we know is that someone called it a value.  How did they calculate
it?  We don't know.  What can we do with it?  We can display it with the
format for "value", whatever that may be.  Instructionally, it still has
no meaning.  The big advantage I see to XML is that you can get
open-source (free) parsers.  So you can break down XML files into the
component variable/value pairs without starting from scratch.  However,
you still need to understand what to do with each variable/value pair in
order to gain any advantage from it.  XML is not a solution - it is an
implementation.

So, I would say "Microsoft Office converters" do NOT fall into the
authoring system categories.  Without going outside the Microsoft Office
tools themselves, you can already save as XML, MS-HTML (their own
special flavors), etc.  You'll need to consider Excel, PPT, Notepad,
WordPerfect, WordStar, TeX, and MS-Word appropriate eLearning Authoring
tools if you consider a format converter a tool also.  A tool should at
least add some instructional value (e.g. trackable test questions).

The category I missed/excluded was LCMSs.  These are database
repositories from which you are able to create courses by assembling the
pieces that have been placed into the database.  Their installation and
support costs/requirements can be quite high.  I prefer a stand-alone
software approach (like MS-Word, MS-Excel, ReadyGo) to authoring
documents, spreadsheets, etc.  Also, I like to review the content before
it is published to ensure that I don't produce ransom note appearances
by just bundling together a grab-bag or content.

Building courses fast

There is more to speeding up the turn-around than using specific tools. The real key is to design the development process for fast turn-around. Several of our customers have used the "Content Factory" approach, and have been able to move from creating 50 courses per year to 450 without adding personnel.

The first step is to decide which courses are "traditional" and which are "rapid". Traditional course will have a longer shelf-life, so one can afford to include more high-production elements. These courses can take up to 2 months to create. Rapid courses are for fast-moving material. They can be created in a matter of hours. The key to the fast turn-around is to dispense with high-production elements like professional multimedia and voice overs.

Traditional course creation typically requires that the content/text people deliver their material to the graphic artists who then assemble the courses with high visual production costs/values.

The course production for rapid content separates the "visual" element, staffed by graphic designers and the "textual" or "content" portion. A tool like the ReadyGo Web Course Builder allows the subject matter experts or the "text" people to assemble the graphics with the content and output the course in a few hours. This way, instead of requiring 2 months for 2 people to create a course, one individual can create a course in a single day. Graphic elements are re-used. They surround the text, which contains the primary information. By implementing the primary content as text rather than graphics (e.g. Flash) the courses can be maintained and updated much more quickly.