Creating e-Learning Courses

Converting PowerPoint to SCORM compliant content for uploading to EL

Susanne Kulesa — Wed, 13 May 2009 21:34:37 GMT

I am in the process of researching software to convert our training material, which we create primarily in PowerPoint, to a SCROM compliant format so that we can upload the course to EL.

I have discovered that there are many choices of software, other than the two I have heard mentioned, namely Articulate and Lectora. I am gathering information on features and pricing and have found similar features but a huge variety in prices for the different products.

I am curious to know if anyone else has been through this same process. Or if you are using a conversion or authoring tool to assist you with creating or converting SCORM compliant courses, what product are you using and how do you like it?

By the way, I'm happy to share or discuss my findings with anyone that is interested.

Leadership Academy

Mark Zimmerman — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:23:32 GMT

I'm Human Resources Coordinator with Porter-Starke Services, a mental health organization located in Northwest Indiana.

Our goal is to develop a Leadership Academy to provide new supervisors, middle managers and executive level directors with training in a variety of areas perhaps at different levels or tiers. We have initially identified areas in general areas, such as management basics, leadership skills, financial management, human resources, IT, marketing, clinical services and back office support.

Essential Learning offers many courses which we currently use and assign to various positions, but wondered if any of your organizations have developed a Leadership Academy using Essential Learning and other outside resources in the development of a training curriculum.

I don't believe in re-inventing the wheel, so welcome your comments, suggestions or the opportunity to network with you via e-mail or telephone. My e-mail address: mzimmerman@porterstarke.org.

Thank you!

Give us your best suggestions

Danny Singley, Ph.D. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:09:56 GMT

As you can imagine, it is only possible to develop or revise a certain number of courses in a given year. We do our best to deploy our resources where they will do the most customers the most good. This forum is your chance to inform us of what is important to you personally. Your input will help us decide what new courses to add and which courses need to be revised. Please note that we are constantly in the process of working on courses and the suggestions that you place here are not likely to be adopted overnight, but they absolutely will help us decide where to focus our efforts.

I suggest that you start a new forum thread for each course or course topic that you'd like to discuss so that everyone in the conversation can weigh in and share their opinion.

Tip of the Week #8: Some Resources for Learning About E-learning

Michelle — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:13:00 GMT

Instructional Design.... or Storytelling?

If you have to choose between learning instructional design or storytelling, believe it or not you are better off going with storytelling. Do you know why?

Because good storytellers engage learners. This doesn’t mean that you should opt out of learning instructional design. Just consider learning to be a better story teller. People remember good stories because they can relate to them and they can connect the course content to real life.

If you are new to e-learning and want some good resources, check out the following books:

(From Tom Kuhlman's rapid e-learning blog: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/5-simple-ways-to-get-started-with-e-learning-development/)

E-Learning by Design: This one covers all of the basics well.

Performance Consulting: This is a great resource to help you build a training course that will focus on real results.

The Non-Designer’s Design Book: You’ll learn basic design principles and how to organize the content on your screen to create more visual impact.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability: The author has good before and after examples. While the book focuses on web usability, most of what he says about web pages applies to elearning, as well.

E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: A terrific book that explains the research behind why you should and shouldn’t design your course a certain way.

Child CPR Course

Hilary Davis — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:36:28 GMT

Hi! My name is Hilary Davis and I work at BehaviorCorp in Carmel, IN. I am not sure if I am posting this in the right place but I could not find a Forum that fit. I was wondering if anyone had a course in Infant/Child CPR that they would be willing to share?

Thanks!

Do you have a favorite authoring tool?

Michelle — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:53:04 GMT

Do you use a course authoring tool that you really like? If so, please share with us here what it is and why you like it so much?

Do you use Articulate? Captivate? Lectora? Any others?

We want your feedback about which authoring tool has a "thumbs up" and which are ones to avoid.

Thanks for sharing with us!

Michelle - Director of Instructional Technology at Essential Learning

Tip of the Week #1: How NOT to Write Really Bad Learning Objectives

Michelle — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:44:00 GMT

Welcome to my E-learning Blog!

In this blog we will talk about everything e-learning. Each week I will introduce one tip or trick to help you write outstanding e-learning course content that will make your course really pop!

Please feel free to comment on any of these blog posts and share your own ideas, tips, and tricks. This blog is for you - so please use it and make it work for you.

This week our first tip and trick is:

How NOT to Write Really BAD Learning Objectives!

Yes, we have all seen them... you know, those learning objectives that are so poorly written that you can't figure out what the heck the point of the course even is!

So let's talk about how to write GOOD learning objectives. Okay?

When writing learning objectives for your online course, you need to take the following steps:

STEP 1) Identify your goal for the course.

1. What do you want your audience to walk away with?

2. What do they need to know? What do they need to do?

STEP 2) Define your audience.

Who will be taking this course? What is the purpose of the course? Content should be meaningful and relevant for that audience, which means you may need to do an analysis of your learners. What is their education level, familiarity with this content, etc?

STEP 3) Make sure your learning objectives focus on student performance.

They should answer the question… what is it that your students should be able to do at the end of the course that they could not do before? When writing objectives – use action verbs that are specific and measurable.

Some examples of these action verbs include describe, implement, explain, compare and contract, list, report, analyze. They should state the behaviors students will be expected to perform.

Examples of poorly written learning objectives are:

1. Understand the importance of teamwork.

2. Demonstrate knowledge of how teams are formed.

How do you measure "understanding" or "demonstrating knowledge"?

I am attaching a list of action verbs you can use when writing learning objectives to this post.

Here is a question you might be thinking to yourself....

Why do we even need to include learning objectives?

When students can see how the material is related to their educational or professional goals, they can see the value of the course. The all important WIIFM (What's In It For Me!)

Objectives communicate what the instructor or course writer is trying to teach; what the students are to be expected to be able to do; how their achievement will be measured; and what will be accepted as evidence that they have achieved the goals.

You have a lot of latitude in how you write your objectives. You’re not stuck in any particular model. What’s critical is that the objective is performance-based and that who the learner is and what she needs to know prior to starting is clear.

Please feel free to add your comments below.

Thanks and happy blogging!

Michelle

Rapid E-learning Blog Posts (Tom Kuhlmann) - Wiki

Michelle — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:58:35 GMT

Tom Kuhlmann's Blog Posts:

A Roadmap for Building an E-Learning Course

February 16th, 2010

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/a-roadmap-for-building-an-e-learning-course/

Suggestions for how to make course elearning courses more effective and more engaging and visual.

Here’s How to Add Personality to Your E-Learning Courses

February 9th, 2010

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/heres-how-to-add-personality-to-your-e-learning-courses/

Using fonts to add flair to your course.

Why E-Learning is So Effective

February 2nd, 2010

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/why-e-learning-is-so-effective/

Nice article about why elearning is more effecitve than traditional learning.

5 Essential Rapid E-Learning Tips

December 8th, 2009

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/5-essential-rapid-e-learning-tips/

Five essential rapid elearning tips for working with PowerPoint.

Articulate - Love it or Hate it?

Michelle — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:08:04 GMT

Hi everyone,

I am considering adding Articulate to the list of authoring tools we currently use to develop our courses. If you are familiar with Articulate, can you give me your thoughts about it? Do you love it or hate it or somewhere in between?

What are the pros and cons of using it?

Would you use another software package if you could go back and start over?

Thanks - I really do appreciate all feedback.

Michelle

Tip of the Week #3: Using Readability Scoring to Improve Your Writing in E-learning Courses

Michelle — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:31:00 GMT

Exerpts of the following blog post are taken from Cathy Moore's outstanding e-learning blog called (Posted: 07 Oct 2008):

Making change: ideas for lively elearning from Cathy Moore

To see the complete Cathy Moore post go to: http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2008/10/how-to-get-everyone-to-write-like-ernest-hemingway/

Using Readability Scoring to Improve Your

Writing in E-learning Courses

Probably everyone on your team agrees that elearning should be concise and lively. But does everyone agree on what “concise and lively” looks like? Here’s one way to get everyone on the same stylistic page.

Quantify, quantify

When we talk about writing style, we can get bogged down in personal preferences that are hard to communicate. But if we use readability statistics to quantify style, it’s easier to guide writers.

I’m not talking about the nearly useless “ninth-grade reading level” requirement in your corporate style guide. Instead, let’s look at the Reading Ease measurement that’s part of Word’s readability check. It’s a much more practical guide, especially if you compare your score with that of familiar publications.

What does this chart tell us?

Want to be popular? Aim for a high score.

The highest-circulation magazines tend to have the highest readability scores. Coincidence? I think not!

Instructions can be short and lively

I included Better Homes and Gardens and Family Handyman because they cover a lot of the same territory that elearning does: they motivate you to make a change and tell you how to do it. They also manage to get a high readability score while using terms like “oakleaf hydrangea” and “personalized wrench.”

What score should you aim for?

Many plain-English advocates suggest aiming for a score in the 60s, and that’s my preference, too (this blog post gets a 63). I’ll settle for the 50s if necessary.

Unfortunately, a lot of elearning ends up in the 40-something “Suits” category thanks to corporate drone.

De-drone to improve your score and motivate learners

The reading ease formula considers sentence length and the number of syllables in words, so short sentences with short words score better. But changing your style to get a higher score can also have a profound effect on how the reader feels about you. Here’s an example.

It is expected that all employees will strive to achieve the highest standards of customer service, as service excellence is a competitive differentiator in the market and improving customer service is key to the Firm’s strength as a business. To that end, this course demonstrates the six-step Customer Delightification process which…

Our competition does a pretty good job of customer service. But soon they’ll find out that “pretty good” isn’t good enough, because we’re going to do better. This course will give you …

Here are some quick ways to increase your score:

Say “you” and “we.”

Cut 98% of adjectives and adverbs.

Write active sentences that make clear who does what.

Use strong verbs instead of wimpy “is.”

Look for tacked-on clauses (”blah blah, which…” “blah blah, because…”). Turn them into standalone sentences.

How to check your score in Word

The readability check is part of Word’s spelling and grammar check. So, check your spelling. If you don’t see a window with readability statistics, you need to turn on the feature:

Open Preferences.

Choose Spelling and Grammar.

Check the box next to Show readability statistics.

Check your spelling. You should see the readability results.

Be sure to check a big chunk of text–500 words or more. Short snippets give unreliable results.

Check both on-screen text and narration scripts

All the text associated with your material should be concise, easy to understand, and direct. A lot of narration sounds dull and de-motivating because it’s coming from the “Suits” category.

Why not use grade level?

Grade-level statistics have too much baggage. People worry about offending their audience by writing “below” their educational level. For example, a stakeholder could say, “Our learners all finished college. Therefore, we should write at grade 16. Writing lower than that dumbs down the material.” Using the reading ease score and keeping the conversation focused on magazines read by adults avoids these issues.

Grade levels aren’t global. “Seventh grade” means different things in different cultures, while the reading ease score isn’t tied to the US educational system. You can really localize the process by determining the reading ease scores of local magazines and comparing your materials to them.

Tip of the Week #10: Step 1 - Planning

Michelle — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:09:00 GMT

STEP 1: PLANNING

The first step in writing your online course is planning. Planning involves many things including completing a needs analysis, identifying your goals and objectives, and writing your learning objectives and course description.

What is needs analysis? How is it completed? Why is it important?

In simplest terms, a needs analysis includes all the activities used to collect information about your students' learning needs, wants, wishes, desires, etc… The process also sometimes involves looking at the expectations and requirements of other interested parties such as the managers, administrators, customers, and other people who may be impacted by the training program. A needs analysis can be very formal, extensive and time consuming, or it can be informal, narrowly focused and quick. Some of resources for conducting a needs analysis may include surveys and questionnaires, test scores, and interviews.

The information gleaned from a needs analysis can be used to help you define course goals. These goals can then be stated as specific teaching objectives, which in turn will function as the foundation on which to develop the content, materials, tests, assignments and activities. Basically, a needs analysis will help you to clarify the purposes of your language program.

Reflection Moment:

Have you ever taken a class that has made you wonder, "Why am I here?"

How do you think students can help convey to their teachers what their needs are? When you are in a class, do you think about what you need to get out of it? What things do you do to either make your needs known or meet those needs on your own?

Next week we will look at the next part of Planning which involves identify goals and objectives for your online course.

Stay tuned for more information soon!

Tip of the Week #7: Common Test Question Mistakes

Michelle — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:28:00 GMT

I recently came across an excellent blog post by Tom Kuhlman and wanted to share it with you.

5 Common Quiz Question Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

We are all guilty of making at least 1 of these mistakes when we create test questions - but information is power and we can start changing our habits today!

1. The questions are either too easy or downright stupid.

We’ve all seen them. You take a quiz and there’s one good answer choice and all of the rest are obviously not right (or plain silly). It’s like the course designer just went through the motions. This type of quiz question does nothing to measure the learner. What’s the point of the quiz? Why’s it even there? Put some thought into the quiz and make it meaningful.

2. The questions are set up as "gotcha" questions.

I worked on a project once where the customer gave me a list of questions and half of them were trick questions. His rationale for the trick questions was that if the learner really understood the content, theyʼd pick up on the nuances of the questions. Thatʼs nonsense!

3. Questions ask about content that’s not covered in the course.

Sometimes there’s a tendency to pack more teaching into the question. We figure that we only have access to the learner for a short period of time, why not just add more content as we ask a question.

4. The questions are way too wordy and make it difficult to understand.

This is a common issue with policy training or courses that deal with regulations. Questions that could be simple look like they were written for someone taking a bar exam.

5. The learner doesn’t know what to do to answer the question.

This issue is less to do with the question and more about providing enough direction to the learner. Think about what you put on the screen and the directions you give the users.

Click here to read Tom's entire blog:

http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/5-common-quiz-question-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/

Tip of the Week #11: Step 1 continued - Planning

Michelle — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:35:00 GMT

Writing effective learning objectives is a critical part of planning.

Learning objectives (LOs) should focus on student performance.

They should answer the question… "what is it that your students should be able to do at the end of the course that they could not do before?"

When writing LOs – use action verbs that are specific and measurable.

Some examples of these action verbs include:

describe,
implement,
explain,
compare and contract,
list,
report,
analyze.

They should state the behaviors students will be expected to perform.

Examples of poorly written LOs might be:

Understand the importance of teamwork.
Demonstrate knowledge of how teams are formed.

Examples of properly written LOs might be:

Explain three reasons why teamwork is important.
Describe the 5-step process for the formation of teams.

You will receive a list of action verbs you can use when writing LOs in the E-learning Resources Handbook. If you don't have a copy of it, please email me and I will send one to you - mreeder@essentiallearning.com.

Thanks!

Michelle

Adoption Specific Courses

Lesley Erickson — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:30:40 GMT

As a large, national non-profit focusing on child welfare and adoption, many of our staff have commented that they would love to see some new courses developed specifically for adoption social workers, foster care social workers or pregnancy counselors.

Learning Essentials tutorial

Gaye James — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:05:02 GMT

I've created a tutorial in Learning Essentials for Microsoft Office and am unsure how I might upload this as a course in Essential Learning. Any ideas how this works?

Thanks!

Gaye James

Tip of the Week #9 - 5 Steps to Writing Online Courses

Michelle — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:41:00 GMT

Over the next 5 weeks I will go over the 5 steps you will take to write an online course. Below I will briefly mention each of the steps and then go into detail about each of them in the ensuing weeks.

1. Plan: When planning for you course you need to know what the objectives are for the course. Ask yourself: “What will the learner will be able to achieve as a result of completing the course?”

2. Organize Your Content: How can you best organize the content into manageable topics and then separate main ideas into manageable chunks of information (sub-topics)? Organizing main ideas into appropriate chunks will help students focus on one idea at a time and not become overwhelmed with too much information.

3. Edit/Write the Content: How can you deliver the material in a way that will ensure learning actually happens?

4. Decide on Instructional Methods You Will Use: What are the most effective ways to present the material including showing the learners how to do something and providing them with opportunities along the way to demonstrate their grasp of the knowledge you have provided. Will you have practice questions and case studies/vignettes with questions and feedback? The more interactive the course is, the better the learning outcomes will be for the end users.

5. Create the Test: How will you assess the student’s performance?

Are You Managing Your Email or Is Your Email Managing You?

Michelle — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:06:00 GMT

Are You Managing Your Email or Is Your Email Managing You?

Yes, I know, this is not a tip or trick about writing e-learning. So, allow me to get a bit off topic here and talk about something we all have to deal with every day -

that dreaded e-mail!

Did you know that we can spend upwards of 15 hours a week answering and writing emails? Scary thought, isn't it? Recently I came across an article called 4 Ways to Take Control of Your E-mail Inbox written by Productivity Expert, Sally McGhee. I thought I would share some of her terrific suggestions with you here.

As Sally points out, "no doubt you've opened an e-mail and thought, hmmm, not sure what to do with this. I'll deal with it later!—and promptly closed the message. If you do this over and over again, it doesn't take long to end up with several hundred (or thousand) messages in your Inbox. Developing a new approach to processing your Inbox will help you to gain more control, improve your response time, and keep up with critical actions and due dates."

Sally suggests that we use the following strategy to help us control email overload.

Use the "Four D's for Decision Making" Model

The "Four D's for Decision Making" model (4 D's) is a valuable tool for processing e-mail, helping you to quickly decide what action to take with each item and how to remove it from the Inbox.

How many times have you opened, reviewed, and closed the same e-mail message over and over? Some of those messages are getting lots of attention but very little action. It is better to handle each e-mail message only once before taking action—which means you have to make a decision as to what to do with it and where to put it. Under the 4 D's model, you have four choices:

DELETE IT

DO IT

DELEGATE IT

DEFER IT

By using the 4 D's model on a daily basis makes it easier to handle a large quantity of e-mail. Her statistics show that of the e-mail you receive:

•	50 percent can be deleted or filed
•	30 percent can be delegated or completed in less than 2 minutes
•	20 percent can be deferred to your Task List or Calendar to complete later

Of course, if you have a backlog of hundreds of messages, it will take time to get to the point where your daily routine keeps you up to date. It's important to get that backlog down, so setting chunks of time aside to work through it. Then you can really enjoy processing your messages every day using the 4 D's.

To see her entire article, go to http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/manageinfo/email.mspx

STEP 4: Visual Design Matters

Michelle — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:19:00 GMT

Visual Design: How Will The Course Look?

Tom Kuhkmann - my hero in course design and development - recently posted this in his blog. His blog is excellent and I highly recommend anyone who develops courses to subscribe to it: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/a-roadmap-for-building-an-e-learning-course/

The two images below come from a recent CrunchGear article. Don’t worry about what the products do or the merits of one product over another. If you only had five minutes to play with one device, which one would it be?

If you’re like me, you’d choose the one on the left. It’s colorful and inviting. I want to pick it up and start playing with it. The other one just doesn’t look as inviting. Think about your course design. Is it inviting from the start?

Design matters. It conveys to the learner that what they’re doing is important and worth their time. Consider yourself a set designer for a Broadway play. You are given a limited amount of space, and in it you need to create an immersive experience. Your goal is pull the learner into the course first by capturing their attention and then by creating a learning environment that is both relevant to the content and engaging to the senses. I like this quote about set design:

"The scenographer visually liberates the text and the story behind it, by creating a world in which the eyes see what the ears do not hear."

This doesn’t have to be complicated. We’re not all professional graphic artists. But there is room for us to place more emphasis on the visual design of our elearning courses.

Tip of the Week #2: Writing a Better Course By Shedding Some Words

Michelle — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:25:00 GMT

If It Doesn’t Help Meet the Objective, Take it Out of the Course!

How do you determine what to keep and what to leave out of your course? These three questions can help you make that determination.

1. What’s the learner supposed to do?

Design the course from the learners’ perspective. What are they supposed to do at the end of the course? Training focused on just sharing information gets tricky because the focus is less on doing so the measurable expectations are not as evident. In those cases you need to ask how the learner is expected to use the information in the course. This helps you shift the compliance content out of the information bucket and into the performance bucket to make it relevant to the learner’s performance expectations.

2. What course content will help the learner meet the course objectives?

Once you understand the objectives and performance expectations, sort the the course content and identify what information the learner needs to meet the course goals?

You’re trying to find the content that is critical to meeting the objectives. The rest of it is just extra information. There’s a place for it, just not as the essential course content.

3. How will the learner use this in the real world?

Why does the learner need to know this information? Which situations does the learner experience in the real world that requires knowing the course content? How will the learner use the information?

Put the Course Content into the Learner’s World!

As you sort the content, you’ll end up with two piles. One pile has “need to know” information and the other pile has “nice to know.” The “need to know” is used to build learning activities to help change the learner’s behaviors. The “nice to know” is resource data to provide additional information if the learner wants or needs it.

1. NEED to Know 2. NICE to Know

Have the learner use the “need to know” information in a real world context. Instead of doing an information dump with multiple slides of bullet points and text, create a situation where the learner needs to use the new information. Generally, you’d do something like this to share the information with the learners:

§ Set up the real-world scenario and then provide critical background information.

§ The learner will go through a decision-making process. At that point you can provide additional information.

§ After the learner makes a decision, you can provide even more information as feedback.

As you can see, this simple approach gives you three ways to pump information into the course that you might have previously just put on a few screens with bullet points.

Use the “nice to know” information as a way to augment the course content. Some learners like to know more before they make decisions. They’ll want some of the information you pulled out of the course.

There are a number of ways you can provide access to the additional content without dragging down the course or interfering with the learning process. Here are a few ideas.

§ Compress the data into resource tabs. For example, you can build FAQs or a Glossary that can easily hold all of the contextual information that you weeded out of the main course content.

§ Create additional documentation that the user can access. You can put it online as a simple web page or publish a PDF that the learner can download and use as a resource later.

You’re always going to have more information than you need for the course. Clear learning objectives (tied to performance expectations) provide a framework for filtering out the critical information from all of the extra information. Keep focused on how the learners use the course content and build activities that let them get the information in a way that’s real to their world. In this way, you’ll streamline your course content and build courses that have a positive impact on your organization.

I look forward to your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to add them by clicking on comments below.

Thanks.

Michelle

Tip of the Week #4: What Are the Differences Between Elearning and Traditional Learning?

Michelle — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:23:00 GMT

How Is the E-learning Environment Different?

To start with, e-learners don’t actually read when they are taking courses online. Instead, they scan. Studies show that 79% of people scan the web pages instead of reading word for word. So it is easier for the learner to miss important information in an online format.

Reading – or scanning - from computer screens is 25% slower than from paper. So as content writers, we must eliminate anything extraneous.

In e-learning, users control the pace of learning. They decide how quickly to go through the course and how thoroughly to review the material.

Online learners are very self directed. Unlike in a classroom environment where teachers control how and when learning takes place, with e-learning, students will only learn if they are motivated to learn. And particularly with adult learners, they will ONLY be motivated to learn if they think it is relevant to their personal, professional lives.

E-learning must be an active experience by the learner. Passive involvement doesn’t work well in this type of environment. An active learner will integrate new knowledge more readily than a passive learner. Creating interactive content that is engaging is also the best way to motivate e-learners. The more learners are involved with the material and are afforded opportunities to practice and test mastery of concepts the more motivated they are through out the learning process.

E-learning offers a dynamic environment where multiple presentation strategies, types of media, and instructional methods are possible.

So – this is just a brief overview of how the e-learning environment is unique compared to traditional learning environments.