Vikas Joshi on Interactive Learning

Job Aids Come to Help

noreply@blogger.com (poonam) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:30:00 +0000

Since time immemorial, job aids have been in use by workers and artisans of all kinds. A well-designed job aid helps in improving efficiency, cuts down time to get the work done, and reduces frustration.

We recently spotted one opportunity for a new kind of job aid for Raptivity users. Raptivity has the largest number of interaction templates among all elearning tools. Being a specialized interactivity builder that works with all authoring tools, Raptivity continues to the at the forefront of interactivity. Users often express that they cannot locate, much less remember, every interaction in Raptivity. To make the selection of interaction easier and more intuitive we have put together Raptivity Album, a free job aid. To download the Raptivity Album, click here.

Even in the online learning world, some of us prefer a handy printed manual. The newly released Raptivity Album is yours to download for free, print and keep.

One Interactivity Builder for Many Authoring Tools

noreply@blogger.com (poonam) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:30:00 +0000

Of late, some vendors in the e-learning tools industry have started using the word 'interactivity' in a rather loose way. You hear of authoring tools that provide interactivity building features. This leads some users to believe they are getting course authoring and interactivity building in one package!

Of course, we do welcome the efforts by authoring tool vendors to help their users build engaging courses. What is important for course designers to understand is that the state-of-the-art in interactivity is further along. With a tool like Raptivity, which focuses only on interactivity, and works with other authoring tools, you make an investment in interactivity building that goes a long way.

Why a separate interactivity tool? There are many good reasons. One, it does not lock you into one authoring tool or platform. You can use multiple authoring tools - depending on what the content or client demands - and still use the same interactions. Second, you get a large variety of interactions, and more get added with time. Third, among all kinds of content, interactions are the hardest to migrate across platforms and devices. A specialized interactivity tool can anticipate the migration issues and make your work future-proof. Finally, interactivity tools treat each interaction as a unit, which can be re-used as it is, or with tweaks.

Interactivity building is different from content authoring. Course developers use many authoring tools. To make their courses engaging and interactive, they need one interactivity builder.

Innovative Customers in Action

noreply@blogger.com (poonam) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 17:30:00 +0000

According to Tom Kelley, the innovation guru, one of the ten faces of an innovator is that of an anthropologist - someone who really understands what people want, and why. Well, when it comes to software tools, who knows what users want better than the users themselves?

We recently discovered this quite serendipitously. A user on Raptivity community, InteractivityHub, suggested we build a learning interaction that involves characters and speech bubbles. His idea was to allow the course designer to input a dialog, and then for the software to render it in speech bubbles in a sequence. The Raptivity team liked this idea, and the 'Character Dialog' interaction was born.

Another user on the community wrote about the need for cliparts, backgrounds and such media elements people need in course design. Again, the Raptivity team thought it over and came up with the Raptivity Asset Library with over a hundred such assets.

This is the spirit of customer co-creation at its best. With Raptivity Evolve, we continue to build new exciting interactions that premium users get for free. We say to users: Now you are in the driver's seat. Tell Raptivity what you want us to build in the next interaction. We will built it.

Five Ways to Make Online Learning Engaging

noreply@blogger.com (poonam) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:00:00 +0000

A new complimentary whitepaper titled 5 Creative Ideas of using Raptivity in Online Training outlines five innovative ways to make online learning interesting and engaging with the help of learning interactions.

In specific, the paper suggests instructional designers and trainers consider the following techniques.

1. Combining an interactive e-book with a rapid-check assessment to implement an open book test.

2. Using games such as crosswords, TV shows and board games and to make learning fun and exciting.

3. Simulations where user gets to play a role in a situation and apply knowledge to decision making.

4. Using characters to provide opening and closing remarks, intermittent summaries as well as dialogs.

5. Encouraging exploration through the use of walk-through, zooming and other interactions.

While these techniques can be implemented in a variety of ways, the paper suggests over a dozen interaction templates within Raptivity that make the implementation quick and easy. You can download the whitepaper from the Raptivity website.

Using eLearning Tools - It's Like a Relationship

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 07:18:00 +0000

The tools you use for producing e-learning day-in and day-out are no more than a bunch of software, programmed to work in a certain way and produce course output, right? Well, in part that may be true, but you might want to think again about that one.

Consider this: The last time you were stuck with an animation that wouldn't work, or a picture that was looking distorted, or the exam score that wouldn't appear correctly on the LMS - who did you turn to for expert help? The last time you had a great idea on how the tool could be improved, how did you share that with the vendor? And when your team hired a couple of fresh developers new to the technology, how did you arrange for their training?

Products that you use are not just software - they come with professional relationships you build with the vendor, other users and experts in the ecosystem. When you become a user of a product, you belong to a world of professionals that are linked to the product. Every tool you have in your bag is like a relationship.

That is why I am excited about Raptivity Evolve, a remarkable new initiative that brings value to Raptivity users on an on-going way through new complimentary interactions, webinars, samples and more. Also interesting is InteractivityHub, a vibrant online community, where users exchange thoughts and ideas, ask questions and provide answers. The Raptivity Valued Professionals (RVPs) are experts that volunteer their help on community. Raptivity Empower provides an array of complementary services, including in-depth training, to help users get the most out of the tool.

The idea of an innovative software that actively supports an on-going relationship has found good traction amongst e-learning developers. At the end of the day, it is all about relationships.

Infusing Assessments with Advanced Interactivity

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 10:31:00 +0000

Assessments are inherently interactive. There is no assessment unless the learner interacts with the e-learning course in some way. What then does 'infusing assessments with advanced interactivity' mean?

Some instructional designers believe that throwing in some multiple choice questions make learning sufficiently interactive. We would like to question that. Learners are bored to death with the chore of answering the same types of questions: MCQ, Matching, Fill-in and Drag-drop. They need variety. They need to enjoy their assessments. Don't they?

Formative assessments, sprinkled throughout the learning material, aim to perform a knowledge-check. Here, there is huge potential for using a wide variety of exciting interactions.

When the nature of the learning content drives your decision, you might choose interactions accordingly. For example, a product familiarization course may involve labeling, a soft-skill course may use videos or simulations, and so forth.

Sometimes your instructional objective decides the interaction type. This would lead to interactions that require recalling a concept and applying it or simply memorizing it.

Finally, the nature of your target audience influences the choice of interactions. Competitive audiences will enjoy games, those needing motivation could use other types of interactions.

Summative assessments, which occur at the end of a learning module, aim to evaluate the learner and report a score. Prima facie it stands to reason that summative assessments are more serious business, and should somehow steer clear of interactivity. On close examination, though, we find several situations where summative assessments too can benefit from advanced interactivity.

For example, a compliance training can include an assessment delivered as a simulation exercise. Similarly, when teaching leadership development, games can still deliver. The case of interesting assessments for K-12 is more obvious to make. Several questions can be delivered through game-like activities.

In conclusion, then, both formative and summative assessments can be infused with advanced interactivity to enhance learner engagement, enjoyment and retention, without compromising the key goals of knowledge checking and evaluation.

One great example of a simple interaction that works equally well in both types of assessments is Rapid Check. To see a demo of Rapid Check, click here. To hear about the various ways you can use Rapid check, watch this webcast.

mLearning - What Works? What Doesn't?

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Fri, 25 May 2012 21:03:00 +0000

This summer's thought leadership webinar from Harbinger Group attracted over 1000 registrants. Perhaps it was the powerful and relevant theme that drew such crowd: Interactions on Mobile. What works? What Doesn’t? The Raptivity-sponsored event provided several insights in interactive mLearning.

Here's a brief outline of the webinar:

The need for interactivity in mLearning
Characteristics of mLearning interactions
Challenges in mLearning, native vs. web apps
Flash vs. HTML5
Why HTML5
Tips for creating interactive content for mobile

In case you missed it, you can access the slide deck and the recorded webinar here.

The webinar speakers were Janhavi Padture, Vice President at Harbinger Group and Robert Gadd, President and Chief Mobile Officer of OnPoint Digital. 'As always, we hosted the webinar three times in the day to cater to Asia-Pacific, Europe and Americas', added Jamaica Bracken, chief anchor.

4 Must-haves for a m-Learning Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 09:02:00 +0000

These days designing and delivering end-to-end e-learning on mobile devices is on everyone's mind. What kind of capabilties must tools have to support m-learning? Here is a quick 4-point checklist.

Device Capabilties
Depending on the target device, user interface capabilities will vary. The m-learning tool should utilize fully the capabilities of the target device.

Templates
Ready-to-use templates for all supported devices go a long way in ensuring professional presentation while saving time.

Preview Capability
Due to the wide variety of form factors mobile devices come in, preview of learning material is a crucial step before publishing content.

Media support
With an explosion of device types and browsers, it is important to keep track of media supported by each combination. One way for an m-learning tool to create value would be to alert the user when a non-support type is referred to. Even better the tool could intelligently select an alternative media from multiple media provided.

Both the creation and consumption of m-learning content on mobile devices is substantially different from traditional e-learning. Tool vendors will need to keep the differences in view while designing their wares.

Building Your E-Learning Course Design Tool Kit

noreply@blogger.com (poonam) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 02:38:00 +0000

If the title of this post makes you think I will list a whole bunch of tools here, let me first set the expectations right. It is my endeavor to take a look at the e-learning course design process here, so that you can decide how to build a tool kit that addresses all process components.

E-learning course creation is all about having a design process in place to build the right course in time. Every instructional designer follows some sort of an e-learning course design process. What I proposed one such process in a recent webinar titled “Interactive Courses on a Shoestring Budget” organized by Raptivity in November, 2011.

As you may have noticed in the figure shown above, the graphic image of the doughnut has been divided into two parts.

The lower part of the image has process steps such as screen capture, image editing, audio recording and video recording. These steps aid in the creation of assets for the course. These assets add to the picturesque quotient of the course and make it more engaging with videos, images, etc. The lower part also includes one final step of testing, which we will come back to later.

The upper part of the doughnut has processes such as special artifacts creation, interactivity building, content authoring and integration. This is where you assemble the assets and make the course interactive and complete. Interactivity building makes the course content more easy to adapt and retain in an interactive format through games, puzzles, etc. The final milestone is reached when all the assets, interactions, special artifacts created are put together in the content authoring and integration process and thereafter, you test the course on the Learning Management System (LMS).

Every course designer will follow some variation of this process. The process then, forms the basis of your tool selection. Building your e-learning course design tool kit is a matter of identifying the tools that help you execute the process efficiently. Some may be freely available tools, yet others commercially available.

To view the narration of the doughnut given during the webinar, you can view the recording here.

Global Poll Reveals Key Trends in e-Learning Design

noreply@blogger.com (poonam) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 04:11:00 +0000

In a recent online event, we polled hundreds of course designers spread throughout Australia, Europe and USA with four simple questions. The results are quite interesting.

Question 1.
In your experience, over the past several years, are customer budgets per hour of eLearning increasing, decreasing or remaining about the same?

Figure 1: Poll Results on E-Learning Budgets Per Hour of Seat Time

Question 2.

What level of interactivity do clients expect in the courses you deisgn?

Figure 2: Poll Results on Level of Interactivity Clients Want

Question 3.
What types of tools do you currently use for eLearning course creation?

Figure 3: Poll Results on Current Tools in use for E-Learning Course Creation

Question 4.
Do you use a greater number of tools today than you did three years back?

Figure 4: Poll Results on Number of Tools over the Years

My key take away from this set of poll questions is that eLearning budgets per hour of seat time have shrunk, but customers continue to demand higher level of interactivity. Given the pace of technology advancement, producers are able to meet the customer demands by using the right set of tools. That explains the use of a greater number and variety of tools.

Feel free to share your thoughts and interpretations of these poll results.

Raptivity Essential : Now Build HTML5 and Flash Interactions Simultaneously

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:13:00 +0000

As Harbinger Knowledge Products unveils a brand new version of Raptivity Essential that lets you publish interactions in the HTML5 format in addition to Flash SWF format, I thought it would be interesting to talk to Shweta Kulkarni, who was involved deeply in the engineering of this product upgrade.

What is the significance of Raptivity Essential?
Raptivity Essential provides a sufficient selection of templates for a novice user to get a hold of interactive learning. This best seller pack of Raptivity helps users create a variety of interactions like interactive questions, brainteasers, presentation aids, simulations, glossary and surveys. Many of Raptivity Himalaya users have started their association with Raptivity using Raptivity Essential and eventually went on to upgrade their license all the way to Raptivity Himalaya.

What prompted you to go the HTML5 way?
As everyone is now taking their courses to mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones, there is a need of quick transition of eLearning courses to m-Learning platform. Course developers who have already made an investment in Raptivity Essential are looking for a solution which quickly migrates their existing content to tablets and smart phones without hassles. HTML5 support for Raptivity Essential pack will fulfil this requirement and make them HTML5-ready for their future course creation without losing the Flash output.

What makes this a significant milestone?
The entire Raptivity Himalaya library will be available in HTML5 format soon. This release of Raptivity Essential marks a major milestone in that direction. When we started with HTML5 Turbo Pack, and followed up with HTML5 Starter Pack, we were taking baby steps. Now we are nearing 40 HTML5 interactions, the largest HTML5 library of learning interactions available anywhere. And more are in the works as we speak.

What were the technical challenges in porting Flash to HTML5 ?
Most of the challenges boil down to replicating the Flash user experience. For example, take special effects like dissolve, explode, fly, blinds, magnify and so forth. We had coded these relatively effortlessly in Flash. To make them work as smoothly in the HTML5 version wasn't easy.

Standard scroll bars don't work on iPad and iPhone. We designed custom scroll bars. Also, until recently drag-and-drop functionality was hard to implement. We are now betting on new libraries that will make this easy.

Another area is inconsistency in filetypes supported on different browsers. In the Flash world, you worked with an .MP3 sound file and you knew it would work across browsers. With HTML5, you may need .OGG format.

Thanks, hopefully we can do another post on this last topic. Software developers would love it.
Certainly we can. You are most welcome.

Changing Landscape in E-Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:30:00 +0000

During the Thought Leadership Webinar on “Interactive Courses on a ShoeString Budget” in November, 2011, I had a good discussion with Jim Hanlin, President and Founder of Best Training Resources. Jim shared his views on the changing landscape in e-learning.

Vikas: What are clients looking for in eLearning programs?
Jim: What strikes me is that there is a phenomenal change in the eLearning industry in comparison to when eLearning was first introduced. As eLearning is ever growing and getting interactive likewise the clients' demands have also grown over the years. They face a lot of cost pressure on eLearning programs. At the same time, the expectation for developing interactive eLearning courses is also on the rise.

From the Producer’s standpoint – we have to focus on reducing the cost of producing eLearning programs and increase the level of interactivity and graphic rich content. Especially important from supplier’s viewpoint is the decrease in cost for per hour of eLearning development. It has reduced to almost half of what used to be $50,000/hour of level 2 custom content development for eLearning. Suppliers of eLearning courses are looking for tools for better high quality program creation, produce them faster and create them for low cost.

In short, clients are looking for: better, faster, cheaper programs.

Vikas: How have eLearning development practices and processes changed over the past several years?
Jim: eLearning has made a staggering change from mainframes and dumb terminal delivery to page turners with graphics. All of this was delivered in linear fashion without any deviation from the learner path of learning. In 90s, the standards like AICC and SCORM were developed along with LMS and other tools. Later first generation tools came in which helped developer create courses with similar objectives. Then, there were interactive video discs introduced which were bulky. These were soon replaced with CDroms where courses where stored and means to share it others. Now a days, most of the training is delivered by web based technologies. Technologies such as mobile learning, virtual worlds, cloud based learning, Learning platforms, learning with informal learning applications etc are in great demand.

The advances in technology have triggered the extraordinary growth in eLearning courses development tools. The changing landscape is a win-win situation for both the providers and the clients.

Technology has allowed producers to produce engaging programs relatively quickly and in a lesser cost. For suppliers, technology has helped to get customer satisfaction and retention along with getting repeat business. The advancement in technology has brought about such a win-win situation which is endearing for all.

Vikas: What methods are producers using to achieve results the clients are looking for?
Jim: Today, the real advantage to the producers is that they are able to create innovative, creative, interactive and graphic rich eLearning courses at a much faster pace and lesser cost unlike the old times. The best thing to do is have a right selection of tools and make the best toolbox for developing eLearning programs. This is the ultimate survival tool in the market which will allow the producers to stay ahead in the competition and adhere to the customer demands in time within their shoestring budgets.

Vikas: Thank you Jim for sharing your thoughts with us in the webinar. The key takeaway from your inputs is that “the provider with the best set of tools will be the winner”.
Jim:You are welcome.

eSchool Media Award for Raptivity

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:44:00 +0000

Every year the Ed-Tech Readers’ Choice Awards recognize the best products and services in education technology. In the 2012 Ed-Tech Readers’ Choice Awards, Raptivity® has been recognized as the most sought after education technology under the K-12 category. This is a second time Rapvitiy has won this recognition.

eSchool News Award for Raptivity

This award is special as it is based on the voting by educators represening a large number of schools and colleges. Every year eSchool Media asks their readers to choose their top picks for school hardware, software, websites, and services. Almost 1,400 readers had responded through one of their three websites: eSchoolNews.com, eCampusNews.com, and eClassroomNews.com.

The Readers’ Choice Awards is presented by eSchool Media Inc.

This voting-based recognition bears testimony to Raptivity's growing use to improve teaching and learning in schools and colleges of nationwide in the US. We thank the happy users of Raptivity who have vouched for us with their votes.

YawnBuster®, our interactive software for educators and trainers also received an Honorable Mention at the 2012 Ed-Tech Readers’ Choice Award. With YawnBuster®, you always have undivided attention of your audience and that holds true with this mention from our ardent users.

We thank all our users and well wishers for their enduring support and confidence in our products.

Are Your e-Learning Courses Future-Ready?

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 06:20:00 +0000

Designing e-Learning is like shooting a moving target while standing on a moving platform. By the time you are ready to fire, the world changes again and you are back to taking aim.

Take, for instance, mobility. Recently there has been a lot of speculation about the best ways to get applications mobile-ready. The debate heated up especially after Adobe announced that they will no longer be supporting flash on mobile devices. Does this mean that all e-learning designed using Flash needs to be re-written?

The designers at Raptivity talked to several power users to understand what keeps them up at night. Here is what the users said.

The learning interactions I create in Flash today will need to also support HTML5 in the near future.
I should be able to create a wide variety of interactions that learners can play on devices of their choice - laptops, tablets and smart phones.
I should be able to track learner performance with m-Learning content.
I should be able to integrate Raptivity interactions with any authoring tool that supports HTML5.

Last year, Raptivity pioneered HTML5 interactions with its HTML5 Starter pack, now a bestseller. Keeping the pace of innovation, today Raptivity provides more than 15 interactions which can be fully customized for a mobile platform. These interactions let you jazz up your presentations, test knowledge, encourage exploration, and provide references.

That's not all. Very soon, all Raptivity interactions are slated to go HTML5. Raptivity users will be able to create and customize HTML5 interactions in a few clicks which would work on i-Pad, i-Phone, Android powered tablets and other mobile devices. Needless to say, the Flash option will stay.

Once the entire Raptivity library goes HTML5, content authors who target non-Flash devices will be able to play their content in an interactive way, conduct assessments, provide evaluation results and track scores. Learners will play learning games, experience simulations, and get engaged through many more interactions on HTML5 devices.

As the entire world prepares to experience learning content on mobile platforms, Raptivity is set to play its part in future-readying your e-learning courses.

Top Five Budget Breakers in eLearning Course Development

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:02:00 +0000

I recentntly spoke at a webinar on “Interactive Courses on a Shoestring Budget”. This webinar, conducted on Novermber 11, 2011 in three different time zones, was attended by hundreds of instructional designers and e-learning producers worldwide. One topic discussed during the webinar was the top five e-learning budget breakers. It generated a lot of interest and discussion. Just like a balanced diet is crucial to our well-being, likewise a good budget plan is pivotal to any eLearning course. One usually selects a combination of free and paid tools to create courses within budgets. But, even after selecting the combination of free and paid tools the course could go over budgets.

Top5 Budget Breakers

The top five budget breaking situations encountered while creating an interactive course are briefly summarized below for your reference.

The Learning Curve
This is the first and the most obvious culprit. When you look out for development tools, you are in search of tools that make your tasks much simpler. Tools provide a variety of features and they often work in different ways, causing your learning curve to go up. While selecting a tool one should look for consistency of usage across features so that one can use the tool with a very short learning curve.

Raptivity provides a great example. Raptivity has over 150 templates such as games, interactive diagrams, surveys, brainteasers, simulations and many more. Yet, the templates are implemented consistently - so your learning curve is short. When you learn how to build a game, the learning curve of building a simulation is incrementally short. My suggestion therefore is to select a tool which has a short and a shared learning curve.

Sample Creation
This is one is another potential budget breaker. eLearning can take many different forms. It is a good practice to create a variety of samples for clients so that they can understand different options available and make an intelligent selection. The creation of such varied samples creation is a hidden cost and we don’t realize it till the course is completed. I therefore believe that it is important to select tools that allow to create variations of a sample and thus save time and cost of creating them.

Getting Help
Tools provide various ways to provide help to their customers. Some options of providing help are: live support, local representative, independent product experts and online communities.
One should make a wise selection of the right source of help when one gets stuck at some point in the course of mission critical projects. In such situations, one should decide how much to depend on community for advice and its accuracy for such time critical projects. In such cases, the best choice is to go for a premium support provided by the tool manufacturer.

Making Changes
This one is big budget breaker. Your choice of tools could make a major impact on budget for a course. Let us consider a situation where a course requires some tweaking at the end before it is finalized. If one uses custom flash development for the project there are infinite possibilities of getting the changes accommodated in the course. If one has used a tool which has limitations then one will have to start from scratch to meet the changed requirements. But these numerous changes also add up to the extra cost which over runs and you tend to lose track of the eLearning budget. I would suggest you to select a sufficiently flexible tool that permits to do some changes but not many options that it breaks your budgets.

Migration Cost
The final budget breaker is “Migration”. A lifecycle of a course may extend beyond your projections. For example, requests from the customers for LMS upgrades, 508 compliant support, SCORM compliance support, iPad support using HTML5 technology, mLearning, etc. These changes can cause lot of additional work if your tool is not able to meet up with these requirements. The best way to handle such situations is by having a tool that protects you from potential budget problems and helps you makes such changes in time.

To view the recording of this webinar and get more insights into the top 5 budget breakers you can click here.

Twelve Ways to Add Value to Open Source LMS Systems

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:58:00 +0000

I've been too wrapped up thinking about interactivity to pay attention to the pains learning managers must go through for making their Moodle implementations effective. So, when I sat down to talk with Dr Asheesh Choksi, technology consultant and architect, about Moodle, he gave me a 12-point program to add value to Moodle - which was quite an eye opener.

1. User Management
User management is the starting point in making Moodle successful. Here we deal with problems such as grade data privacy, activation and deactivation of users for business reasons, and protecting sensitive business information arising from learning systems from prying eyes.

2. Catalog Management
What does the learner see on logging in? This is the province of content display and catalog management. Examples include news, events, calendar, assignments, course list etc.

Better structuring of information to be shown on landing page to facilitate users to quickly see needed updates and get access to other areas of the system

3. Business Reports
How do you assess the effectiveness of a course delivered? What questions are learners failing consistently? Moodle captures most of the data, but getting it out in meaningful reports needs some statistical analysis and design effort.

4. Student Reports
How cool it will be if a student were to get a special personalized 'recommended for you' list of resources? How about showing a recap of 'your recent learning activity'? A well-customized Moodle can do that.

5. Offline capability
When your learners are always on the go, in far-flung parts of the world, internet connections vary from excellent to un-reliable and even non-existent sometimes. So you need to support offline learning capability. The learner should download the course, go and learn in offline mode, take tests and synchronize the results when net is connected back. This can be done using Google Gears to some extent, or with the Harbinger Offline Player all the way up to SCORM compatible tracking.

6. DRM Support
Worried that someone may copy proprietary content? You need to think about who can access, and what they can do with the courses you deliver. The solution needed is a custom course reader with several lockdown levels (machine access lockdown, copy disable lockdown).

7. Collaborative Annotation System
You want learners to share their annotations on courses. Of course, there could be multiple cohorts learning a course at the same time. Each cohort needs to have his/her own share of annotation space. You don’t want to burden Moodle with the task of managing annotations. The solution is a separate collaborative annotation server, such as TeemingPod.

8. Mobile Support
Learners are flocking to iPads, iPhones and other tablets and smartphones. These devices are supported using MLE Moodle, an opens ource plugin for iOS and Android. This takes some coding but can be done, and well worth it. So your LMS has a mobile nexus with the learners.

9. Payment Gateway
Need to have learners pay using PayPal or some other gateway? You can implement your own payment model such as bulk access, pay-as-you-go, pay-per-course etc. using payment gateway integration.

10. Performance Tuning and Scalability
A lot of times, training can be driven by organization-wide events and initiatives. So everyone wants to access the material at the same time. This results in high user load, and slows down performance. This is when code optimization, caching and other expert solutions from Harbinger - ranging up to cluster server deployment- come handy.

11. Video streaming
Moodle does not stream video effectively. For better streaming experience third party integration with services like YouTube, Kaltura and so on.

12. Virtual Class Room
Synchronous classrooms have the added advantage of a live instructor available at the time of learning. Open source platforms such as Open Meetings or Big Blue Button can be integrated with Moodle to bring in this capability.

I know it's quite a handful, says Dr Choksi, but the effort is well worth it - take care of these points and you will end up with a state-of-the-art Moodle implementation that your learners and administrators will love, he adds.

Getting a Head Start with Mobile Interactions

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 10:52:00 +0000

When Raptivity released its first collection of mobile interactions for iPad and iPhone based eLearning, the path-breaking HTML5 Pack received several accolades. While it was a very useful collection of interactions, it mainly featured a bunch of memory aids such as flash cards. Clearly, there was a need for adding more interactions to make it instructionally more useful and complete.

It is not easy to design HTML5 interactions from the ground up and make them behave exactly like their Flash counterparts. For example, in the iPad world, there is no mouse-over, so any interaction involving mouse-over has to use mouse clicks.

That's why I am excited about the new Raptivity HTML5 Starter Pack. With this new Raptivity extension, you don't have to spend hours thinking about how to emulate Flash-like interactions in HTML5.

Raptivity HTML5 Starter Pack

The new pack features interactions that let you jazz up your presentations. You can encourage exploration by learners. Then there are interactive quizzes that test knowledge and provide feedback. You can also provide ready reference materials for the people on the go. These interactions, together with memory aids available in the Raptivity HTML5 Turbopack released earlier, provide a rich variety of templates that suit a large number of instructional goals.

The following table summarizes the various interactions and their usage. Please note that (H5T) indicates the Raptivity HTML5 Turbopack, (H5S) indicates the Raptivity HTML5 Starter Pack.

Jazz up presentation
Flip the Book	Present a fun page-turner with embedded video and other media (H5S)
Circles	Create interactive concentric circles with callouts (H5S)
Hub-and-Spokes	Illustrate radial relationships with interactivity (H5S)
Slide show	Build image transitions with a soundtrack (H5T)
Encourage exploration
Show-and-tell	Create a step-by-step software simulation (H5S)
Ladder	Illustrate the steps of a process in sequence, and show details (H5S)
FAQ	Provide an easy way to access Frequently Asked Questions (H5S)
Buildup and Rollover	Gradually build up complex pictures and explain each part as you go (H5S)
Test Knowledge
Pairing	Build a match-the-pair exercise with bells and whistles (H5S)
Tree	Allow the learner to build a tree structure illustrating relationships (H5S)
Branching Question	Implement a series of questions with adaptation based on learner’s answers (H5S)
Catch ‘em Fast	Create rapid-fire questions where speed is critical (H5T)
Provide ready reference
Glossary	Build an easy look-up glossary (H5S)
Help memorize content
Flash Cards	Help reinforce and memorize study material on the go (H5T)
Study Card Deck	Help learners in a hurry who need an easy way look up study material using panning cards (H5T)
Study Card Shuffle	Study cards with text, pictures and video get displayed in a sequence (H5T)
Memory Aid Peeler	Let learners peel away virtual pages and discover additional content (H5T)

Try out this cutting-edge product by downloading it from the Raptivity website.

The Future of e-Learning Content after Adobe Kills Flash on Mobile Devices

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 05:14:00 +0000

It is official. Adobe, in a written statement, announced that it will not support Flash in mobile browsers henceforth. As it is, iPhone and iPad don't play Flash content. It will be a matter of time before new versions of other mobile devices (based on Android and other platforms) stop supporting Flash in browsers.

What does this mean for e-learning content? Well, Adobe continues to be committed to supporting Flash on the PC platform. Adobe also says that mobile content can be packaged using Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) and delivered through app stores in the form of native apps. But these might be roundabout ways. Most e-learning developers may turn towards HTML5, in the hope that their content will play across browsers and platforms.

mLearning in Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:40:00 +0000

Recently I had a chance to talk to a speaker at e-Learning Africa 2011 in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Vinod Ganjoo is an e-learning enthusiast who works as Senior Manager - e-learning Business Development at Harbinger. Vinod has traveled throughout the Middle-east, Africa and South Asia on business. He interacts with instructional designers and training managers in several countries regularly.

What's the big excitement about m-Learning in Africa?
VG: The stage is set for m-Learning in Africa. Mobile devices penetration in Africa is expected to pass 50% during 2011. At least eight African countries will have broken the 100% mobile penetration barrier by the end of the year. Some African mobile markets are still growing at more than 100% per annum. African mobile market forecast to 2013 is impressive. Nigeria alone will have over 130M subscribers.

What are the major impediments for the spread of e-learning in Africa?
VG: Internet connectivity is a big challenge for e-learning, particularly in remote areas and in certain countries. Another major challenge is electricity. However, m-Learning is feasible because phone networks are ubiquitous, and you don't require continuous electricity for mobile phone operation.

What are the benefits of m-Learning in this market?
VG: m-Learning is truly self paced, 24X7 learning. It can happen any time, anywhere. The learner does not have to brave a trek to the school, crossing rivers and hills. There are innovative interaction and engagement opportunities. And best of all, there is no need for additional devices such as personal computers. You can reach the fringe student simply using a mobile phone.

What according to you is the biggest challenge in developing content for m-Learning?
VG: I can name three challenges: One, interactivity is necessary. Two, Flash won't work on all phones. Three, programming skills required to produce mobile learning are limited.

Don't rapid authoring tools solve these problems?
VG: To an extent - yes. Many tools support both Flash and HTML5. Some of them even have interactivity - but it is limited to basic interactions such as multiple choice questions, drag-and-drop, click-and-reveal.

And why is that not enough for the African students?
VG: You need to engage students. They will get fatigued and bored with simple interactions. Those are fine for assessments. When the goal goes beyond assessment, you need a wider variety of interactions, such as the ones Raptivity provides.

How did the conference attendees respond to Raptivity?
VG: The response was very good. A lot of teachers and school representatives came and met me. They tried out the software and had a lot of questions. They pointed out to me that they could use Raptivity in classrooms as well, not only in m-Learning or e-Learning.

Thanks, and good luck.
VG: My pleasure.

Using Raptivity with Captivate

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:47:00 +0000

Several Captivate users build Raptivity interactions for use in their elearning and presentation materials. Adobe, the maker of Captivate, has been releasing upgrades and new versions of Captivate over the past several quarters. Naturally, their users want to stay on top of the best ways to use Raptivity within Captivate.

Raptivity for its part has also kept a high pace of innovation, with new releases coming out ever so often. The resources I will cite here are useful for Raptivity 5.5, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 and 6.5.

A recent blog post on the Raptivity blog addresses the integration of Raptivity with Captivate quite comprehensively for Captivate 5.5, Captivate 5 and Captivate 4. In addition, here are some more places you might want to go.

The first place to go is the ‘Using Raptivity Output with Other Tools’ document which you will find under the resources page of Raptivity website.
The Captivate integration steps – if you are trying to work around audio issues – are found here.
One great place to get the latest word on this is the online Raptivity Community. Here you will find discussion forum on Raptivity Captivate integration.
Community forums for all other tools are accessed here.

Raptivity 6.6 Enhanced Element Collection Management

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:14:00 +0000

When a product evolves from one generation to the next, many things get better - sometimes to a point where you find it hard to imagine how they had been before. I am having one of those moments with Raptivity right now.

One recently implemented feature of Raptivity 6.6 has got me thinking. It is the Enhanced Element Collection Management functionality. I know that sounds a mouthful - but the idea is really basic. In designing interactions, you often need collections of similar elements. Examples - a pyramid has levels, a flipbook has pages, a simulation has scenes, an animation has path segments, a rollover diagram has hotspots, an assessment has questions and so forth. All these are examples of collections.

In working with collections, here are some common situations the course developer comes across:

Add a new element
Delete an element in between
Duplicate an element along with its contents
Drag an element from somewhere and place it somewhere else

You can imagine how hard life would be if you could not perform these seemingly simple actions easily. Yet, in the past, users had to resort to all kinds of clever shortcuts and workarounds to accomplish these tasks. That was life before Raptivity 6.6.

Now with Raptivity 6.6, users can use the mouse right-click context menu and easily insert a blank element, delete or duplicate an existing element or alter the sequence of elements with a simple drag-and-drop operation. That makes it easy to duplicate a flash card, re-sequence questions in a TV game and delete that panning card you don't like.

This discussion applies to collections of various elements supported in Raptivity. Certain special graphic elements such as Paths, Highlights, Hotspots and Parts don't get covered under the new functionality. Why is that? Because Raptivity already has a way for you to manipulate these directly from the interactivity editor itself.

If all the user feedback and comments on Raptivity community are any indication, this new feature set is sure to receive a warm welcome! Users will see it as a sure productivity enhancer.

Better Productivity with Raptivity: A Story of Customer Centricity

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:13:00 +0000

When Yehudi Menuhin was asked: "What has music taught you?" he replied: "It has taught me to listen." It is no different with product design. You design products in a flash of inspiration, and keep making them better by listening to your customers.

The Raptivity 6.5 release is full of productivity features that are based on ideas that come straight from the trenches. Here are some examples.

Users found it a chore to delete sample content from interaction templates before adding their own. They needed the sample the first couple of times, but later on they wanted a way to start with a clean slate. That was the genesis of Raptivity's Blank Template.

Another area where course developers faced some inconvenience was in putting together media content for use in interactions. Raptivity now shows helpful information such as recommended image size, sound bit rate, video format, size, frame rate etc alongside the customization window.

As interactivity design came to occupy prime time, a quick step-by-step procedure to build interactions became critical. The new version of Raptivity provides that too - in the customization screen.

Raptivity's productivity enhancements span across the entire product usage experience. Users can convert their trial installation into full use package just by adding a license key. There is no need to install the full package over again. Likewise, while deactivating the product, the license key is detected automatically. These little enhancements bear testimony to Raptivity's commitment to the course developers' productivity.

Building m-learning : Eliminating Redundant Effort

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 05:49:00 +0000

Training Magazine’s Learning 3.0 Conference in Chicago on 4th and 5th October 2011 features a talk by Bijoy Banerjee on what he calls Single Source Content. I talked to Bijoy, Senior General Manager at Harbinger Knowledge Products, about his vision for eliminating redundant effort in building m-learning and e-learning.

Okay, what's the pain point you are addressing?
BB: Today’s learners are prepared to access learning on desktops, laptops, smart phones and tablets. As a training content developer, are you prepared to support all these different devices, their operating systems and browsers? That's what I'm trying to address.

So, where do we begin?
BB: Well, step one is to get out of denial. Acknowledge the challenge. Recognize that the prospect of creating content for all these devices, platforms and browsers separately is daunting - particularly when you think of the separate development and maintenance efforts and cost. Clearly, creating separate content files for each target delivery point is quite an uphill task if not impractical.

And- what's the big idea?
BB: Well, don’t lose heart yet! It’s indeed possible to address all these different devices, browsers and platform by a single content output, developed as a single project, at a single cost allocation. We call it Single Source Content. Single Source Content is a “Single File” of content - HTML5 based - that runs seamlessly on desktop, laptop and all mobile platforms. The content can be delivered online through a learning management system. It can also be carried on the learner's device and played offline. Finally, it complies with tracking standards (SCORM, AICC) and accessibility guidelines (Section 508).

What are the advantages?
BB: With this solution you don’t need to separately plan for eLearning and mobile learning content development. Just develop the content once, and then push it from LMS, as is usual in the case of eLearning delivery, to be accessed by multiple devices and their browsers. Because you need only a single project for developing the content, the single source content solution provides great cost efficiency. Not only that, single source content solution brings great operational efficiency as well - while updating the content, just update one file and the updated the content is available across all! Finally, nothing matters if learners don’t find the learning engaging and interactive. Single source content scores there too!

Interesting, and one needs to dive deeper to understand better. Where do we find out more about this approach?

BB: You can get a sneak peak at this solution in Training Magazine’s Learning 3.0 conference in Chicago on 4th and 5th October. Or you can write to me at info@harbingerknowledge.com.

Thanks, and good luck for your talk in Chicago.
BB: My pleasure, and you are most welcome.

Power vs Ease of Use: Do We Need to Choose One?

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 08:53:00 +0000

Industry gurus have long maintained that authoring tools can be either powerful or easy to use. They say: choose one. I say: I want both. Is that possible? Well yes, if the tool designers pay attention to flexibility.

Consider interactivity templates. The very idea of a template connotes a cookie-cutter approach. Easy to learn, easy to use. How do the template designers maintain the ease of use and yet provide powerful features that the course designer can control?

The answer is in flexibility. Here is a short checklist for template designers who want to build flexible interaction templates.

Element Size and Placement : Provide control to the course designer over the placement of whole elements, not just text labels, images, buttons and videos. Example: An interactive pyramid diagram template where the course designer controls the size and location of the pyramid - in addition to its levels and content.
Ample Space for Text: Some people just cannot say it in a few words. Support for long text strings clearly helps in such situations.
Text Hyperlinks: When there is a need to provide additional information that wouldn't fit the real estate of the interaction, a text hyperlink is the best way out.
Liberal Limits: How many pages in a flip book? How many steps in a process? How many bullets in a slide? How many terms in a glossary? How many hot spots in a rollover exercise? How many flash cards per interaction? The course designer has to exercise judgment in making sure there aren't too few or too many. That said, the role of template designer is to support a wide range between the minimum and the maximum number of such elements.
Video Support : With the explosion of video content over the web, users are expecting video support in several interactions.

This list is obviously illustrative, not exhaustive. The recently released Raptivity 6.5 has several interactions that illustrate the use of these design practices.

Enhancing Interactions with Media Elements

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 09:24:00 +0000

A few years back, e-learning courses were largely static, with a few interactions here and there. As interactivity takes center stage, more and more learning happens through interactions. A learner may spend more time working through a simulation, playing a game or exploring an interactive visual than reading the course material. With this, course developers are increasingly feeling the need to provide additional information elements within interactions.

A large number of interactions today are developed using interaction templates. Templates can however be limiting when it comes to providing additional content elements. For example, consider an interactive Android phone tutorial where the learner rolls her mouse cursor over parts of the phone and explores its features. Now suppose the tutorial designer wants to provide a link to a Wikipedia article on Android - or to a Youtube video featuring the phone device. How cool will it be if the designer could add a button to the interaction itself, linking to the article or the video?

There are several use cases where media elements enhance the impact of interactions:

Assessments where the learner watches a video and then answers questions.
A set of flash cards where the learner gets to pop up a text that explains a mnemonic to memorize what's on the cards.

Diehard fans of Raptivity loved the Raptivity Media Toolbox that was showcased in a recent webinar. Using the Media Toolbox, a course designer can add custom buttons or hotspots to an interaction.

Raptivity Media Toolbox

Each button or hotspot can lead to a hyperlink, which can be a web URL. A button can also pop up a video (.flv/.f4v), an image (.jpg, .png, .gif) or text.

Buttons work great for learners who have the curiosity to click and discover extra content. In other cases, you simply embed text or image media in the interaction - and the media will simply show when the interaction is displayed - no clicking is required. A video can also be embedded, so it starts playing as soon as the interaction loads.

This feature set provides advanced flexibility to Raptivity. Presently it works with certain packs of Raptivity 6.5. For more information visit www.raptivity.com and explore the power of Media Toolbox.