Vikas Joshi on Interactive Learning

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.

New Milestones for LearningHarbinger Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 05:54:00 +0000

LearningHarbinger blog was selected in “TOP eLearning and Workplace Learning Blogs”

http://blog.efrontlearning.net/2011/04/top-elearning-and-workplace-learning.html

A recent post on LearningHarbinger blog (Explore Bloom’s Taxonomy Using this Interactive Resource) was selected among “Top eLearning Posts for 2010”. Check out this article for the entire list: http://www.elearninglearning.com/wpblog/top-113-elearning-posts-and-28-hottest-topics-for-2010/

A big thanks to all readers, guest contributors, blog followers and the team at Harbinger Group.

Mobile Learning and Interactivity

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:30:00 +0000

Does mobile learning need interactivity? Even more so, says Janhavi Padture, one of the invited speakers at Washington Interactive Technologies Conference, hosted by SALT (Society of Applied Learning Technologies). I talked to her to get her take on the subject.

Mobile content is short-duration, small-screen. Why bother making it interactive?
JP: There is inherently a greater chance of distraction since the learner is on the move. So the need for delivering engaging content is even greater.

Give us examples of interactivity on mobile devices.
JP: Real time polling, games, interactive diagrams.. there are several more.

What are some of the technology challenges in mlearning?
JP: Course designers must understand the differences in the various mobile devices, operating systems and browsers. There are many implications. For instance, the languages for native app development differ based on OS, iOS uses Objective C, while RIM and Android both use Java, but different SDKs of that! Or for that matter the media supported by browsers is different. Firefox doesn’t support H.264 format, while Safari will only support that, and Google introduced the new WebM standard but supports both WebM and H.264 formats. So then comes the debate of whether Native or Web apps and Flash or HTML5.

So, is there a ‘right way’ to design interactive content for mobile devices?
JP: There is no right or wrong. The best method is to come up with a checklist of requisites for your mobile learning interactivity. For instance, is this a performance support job aid where internet connectivity cannot simply be assumed? If so, native app makes sense. If you would like to develop once and deploy on multiple devices and desktop, you are probably better off with HTML5 web apps. Or if you must have stunning visual effects probably Flash is the best option today. As one attendee rightly pointed out, in order to be compatible with old versions of desktop browsers they decided to go with Flash. I presented this decision process as a simplified visual aid as we talked through each scenario.

What are the ideal characteristics for mLearning interactions?
JP: Best mLearning courses are modular, interactive and non-linear. There is the ability to selectively render content. There is a good balance of text and media content. Performance tracking is supported (with SCORM). Flash and HTML5 options exist for web apps.

What tips did you share for developing mobile learning interactions?
JP: We talked about Edumercial, i.e. extending the concept of commercials to education, and how that is so relevant to mobile interactions, because just like commercials it needs to be short and it needs to stick.

We also talked about videos & animations make great interactivity components for mobile as long as used effectively and not excessively.

Thanks and hope you enjoyed the conference.
JP: Indeed. Not surprisingly Government sector representation was the highest among attendees. It was good to interact with them and exchange views.

A Learning Interaction Look-up Table

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 05:12:00 +0000

Here is the quick learning interaction look-up table I promised in an earlier post for instructional designers to locate some of the best examples of the various types of ready-made interactive elements.

Interaction	Tool	Where used	Examples
Games	Raptivity Games	Combine challenge with fun using super-charged learning games	Click
	Raptivity MindPlay	Accomplish learning outcomes with game shows and strategy board games	Click
	Raptivity WodPlay	Introduce popular crosswords and innovative letter games in your eLearning	Click
	Raptivity Booster	Games, simulations and learning aids	Click
	YawnBuster Competitive Games	Games for groups to collaborate and compete in classrooms	Click
	YawnBuster Training Games	TV games and letter games for a multiplayer classroom setting	Click
Simulations	Raptivity Simulations	Simulate real-life learning experiences using award-winning Raptivity simulations. Build guided adaptive scenarios, explorative branching simulations, immersion learning situations and whiteboard simulations	Click
	Raptivity Standard 3	technical training -overview visuals, flow diagrams and software simulations.	Click
3D Artifacts	Raptivity 3D	Enrich Content Presentation with 3D Objects and Virtual Worlds	Click
Social Interactions	TeemingPod	Embed polls and discussions in web content, invite discussion around presentations	Click
	YawnBuster Business Activities	Get learners in a classroom to brainstorm, prioritize, build mind-maps, t-charts and collaborate	Click
Active Learning	Raptivity Active Learning	Achieve comprehension, application and analysis - three key middle layers of Bloom's taxonomy - in adult learning	Click

Flash in eLearning - Seven Traps to Avoid

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:11:00 +0000

Flash is a free cross-browser plug-in that allows interactive content to play on most browsers and computers.The sophisticated Flash development environment allows programmers and designers plenty of room for creativity. No wonder then, a lot of e-learning is built using Flash.

If you are considering the on-going use of Flash for developing e-learning, here are seven traps to avoid.

7. The frame rate trap
Flash files can support multiple frame rates. By itself, your interactive component shockwave file (.SWF) will play okay regardless of the frame rate. The trouble starts when you integrate it with an authoring tool that presumes a different frame rate. You will find output distorted, or simply not showing. Ensure that you match the frame rate of the container application.

6. The de-compiler trap
Reverse engineering experts can start with your .SWF file and get at the source code of the program you have painstakingly developed. If you care for protecting your code from being reverse-engineered, consider the use of code obfuscators.

5. The broken path trap
Often your Flash program refers to external content files (such as a voice-over stored in a sound file, or an image stored in a bitmap file). When delivering the SWF, make sure to maintain the relative path, or else your content will not play because of broken link.

4. The text formatting trap
When working with text that needs rich formatting, especially when working with foreign languages, you may want to consider using a sophisticated word processor to get the text exactly as you want it to be, and then carry a snapshot of it into the Flash file. This will result in a more pleasing text output.

3. The image distortion trap
Flash objects scale and distort images that do not conform to the presumed size requirements. Better to use an image editor to crop images to recommended size and avoid distortion.

2. The CPU cycles - battery life trap
If you are delivering a mobile learning application, be aware that Flash code is CPU-intensive and can drain batteries sooner than the end-user would like to.

1. The iPad trap
If you wish to deliver your interactive eLearning on iPad (or iPhone or iTouch) then you will need to consider HTML5 in the place of Flash.

Five Types of Interactive Elements for Next Generation Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 04:24:00 +0000

In my last post, we looked at the next generation content authoring. In this post, I include an interactivity that will help you explore the five types of interactive elements for next generation learning. Use your mouse pointer to explore any of the five panels here, and click on the little round button at the bottom right of each panel to know more. Click "Restart" button on bottom right to go back to the panel. Enjoy!

Next Generation Content Authoring - From LearnX, Sydney

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Tue, 31 May 2011 05:23:00 +0000

LearnX 2010 in Sydney, Australia was a special occasion for Raptivity because of the Best e-learning tool award. Here, I also had the opportunity to deliver a session on the next generation content authoring. The goal was to outline the various aspects trainers and educators need to consider while designing their training material for next generation learners.

Content authoring has moved way beyond creation of simple textual pages and assessments. Today, learners are exposed to variety of high-end digital experiences and they expect the same in their learning. Learning interactions such as learning games, branching simulations, virtual worlds and social interactions are becoming key elements to keep learners motivated and engaged in the training material. Here is a recap of the key points in the session.

courtesy australiaphotos.co.uk

1.   Next Generation Learning
The new generation of tech-savvy learners has grown up with mobility, net browsing, games and social networking. These learners have a low attention span. Yet, they are prepared to interact, and they expect great experiences.

2.    Types of Interactive Elements for Next Generation Learning
There are five types of interactive elements that I highlight for this discussion, that characterize the next generation learning. They are: games, simulations, 3D artifacts, social interactions and active learning. Examples of games would include mini games, word games, TV game shows and strategy games. Simulations could include software simulations, branching scenarios or exploration exercises in an immersive experience. 3D artifacts include virtual worlds and 3D navigational objects. Examples of social interactions that can aid in learning include polls, discussions, chat and collaboration. Finally, scenario-based learning and activity-based learning round out the active learning repertoire.

3.   Tools for Creating Training Material
Raptivity, YawnBuster and TeemingPod are examples of tools that allow you to create interactive learning quickly and easily.

Soon I plan to post a quick look-up table for locating some great examples and templates for such interactive elements cited above.

7 Fun Ways to Get Participation and Collaboration Going in Classrooms

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 16 May 2011 05:44:00 +0000

Yes, I hear you. Preparing to teach a class is hard enough. Who has the time to add fun activities? Well, you do - given these no-frills group activities that only take minutes to build, whether you use a board, a flip chart or an interactive software like YawnBuster.

Show of Hands
Conducting a quick poll is a perfect icebreaker in the beginning of a class. Start with a question like 'How many of you know that..' or 'Who wants to ...' and watch the hands go up.

Brainstorm
Invite ideas, and get your learners' creative juices flowing. You can combine brainstorming with a poll - first get all the ideas out there, and then have people vote on them. Or you can have them prioritize those ideas collaboratively. See an example here.

Express Brainstorm
Add excitement to brainstorming by creating teams, by limiting the time for ideation, and by assigning a score. Check out this example.

T-chart
Whenever you have two sides to an issue (as in a debate) or two aspects to compare (as in pros and cons), use a T-chart and have learners come up with bullet points on either side. It encourages thinking and creates a useful visual comparison. Here is a T-chart built in a class.

Mind Map
Ideas are understood better when learners understand their relationships. Mind-map is a powerful graphical technique for representing relationships. Introduce ideas and ask the learners to help build a mind-map. For a mind-map building example, click here.

Parking Lot
Get distracted by too many questions? Create a parking lot and park the questions away. At the end of the class, answer each question. Want to see how it works? Click here.

Key Takeaways
Every now and then during your presentation, ask your learners to summarize their understanding and write down a line of two on an online memo pad for everyone to see. At the end of the class, your key takeaways are ready! Click here for an example that shows how key takeaways are collected.

To get a free white paper titled 'Adding Fun to Learning with YawnBuster' click here.

Korea's Gigabit Internet to boost eLearning and mLearning

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 09:10:00 +0000

In my blog on the interactivity technology and its applications, I reviewed the famed ubiquitous city (U-city) project in Seoul that promises several new experiences in the day-to-day lives of citizens. That was a while back.

In a recent article, New York Times reports that home internet may get even faster in South Korea. South Korea already boasts of the world's fastest internet connection (Hong Kong and Japan rank #2 and #3, respectively.) That said, the government wants to do more. By 2012 end, every South Korean home will enjoy one gigabit per second connectivity - ten times faster than what it is currently.

The gigabit internet will create new possibilities for e-learning and m-learning. The use of video and other rich media will become easier, interactive experiences will download and play faster and learning will get better.

Harbinger Knowledge Products has introduced a Korean version of Raptivity, the e-learning interactivity building software. It will be interesting to see the kind of video usage in interactions - given the high speed connections content authors can take for granted.

Avatars in eLearning: Best Practices

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:07:00 +0000

Avatars are interactive animated pedagogical agents. Avatars personalize a course, add variety to learning, especially in long modules on complex subjects. A life-like ‘human’ interface makes the learning experience more ‘real’. An avatar doubles as a learning assistant (learning aid) that guides the learning by either answering questions, or guiding the learners, linking to external content and so forth. Research has shown improvement in learning outcomes when avatars are used.

Avatar by Melissa Clark

Clearly, the benefits of using avatars in e-learning seem to be overwhelming. One should expect to find them everywhere. Why, then, do several course designers avoid using avatars?

Here are the top 4 reasons, according to Janhavi Padture, Director - Learning Solutions at Harbinger Knowledge Products.

Avatars be distracting or even annoying if not used properly or when used excessively
They do not mimic human-like natural expressions, movements or lip synchronization
Sometimes an avatar simply does not fit in the user experience
Avatars are Often expensive to build and difficult to customize!

Hmmm. Those are the pros and cons. Is there a list of best practices for using avatars in e-learning? Sure enough, here is what Janhavi recommends.

Give course authors (and possibly learners) the ability to customize the avatar.
Make the avatar instructionally relevant – it should fulfill the interactivity needs of a learner.
It should augment content, not be the content.
Avatar should support 2-way interaction. It is not just a video or a cartoon. It responds to the learner's needs and provides helpful guidance.
Wherever it makes sense, allow learners to turn off avatars if they want to. For example, if a learner is revisiting a 'How to’ instructions page, this will help.
Last but not the least, avatar should be used for a specific purpose, such as online guide, answering FAQ, explaining a process, guiding learners during branching scenarios, etc.

In addition, the ability to build some level of intelligence into the avatar is a nice to have.

Do you use avatars in e-learning? What tools do you use? Why don't we see enough of them? Do you agree with the adoption problems we have cited? Should an avatar act as a presenter - a talking head, or animated narrator? Do students develop a relationship with avatar? Or is it just a gimmick?

Next Generation Audience Response Systems for Teachers and Trainers

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:09:00 +0000

Audience Response Systems (ARS) establish interactivity between presenters and their audience. Traditionally ARS consist of several units of wireless hardware (a clicker pad which looks like a remote control) used by the audience, and it is combined with a presentation software used by the presenter.

Among the several well-known benefits of ARS, the most important one is that it creates an interactive and fun learning environment. Presenters can gain and retain audience attention, help increase knowledge retention, and confirm audience understanding of material presented. This is done in several ways: polling anonymously, tracking individual responses, displaying polling results immediately and so forth. Some presenters gather data or even take attendance using ARS.

According to Wikipedia, audience response systems may present some difficulties in both their deployment and use.

The per-unit purchase price of ARS devices
The maintenance and repair of devices when owned by a central unit or organization
The configuration, troubleshooting and support of the related presentation software
The reliability and performance of the devices

One can further state that the next generation should support some, if not all, of the following requirements.

Must work in a webinar / online meeting environment where people are not in the same location. Increasingly, meetings and classes take place in this mode. Clickers are no good for webinars.
Must avoid the need for purpose-built special hardware even when the audience is physically in same room (refer to my earlier post on Microsoft Mouse Mischief)
Should provide the option of using generic reliable hardware such as computers, tablets or even smart phones as participation devices
Should work with popular presentation software such as PowerPoint
Must allow free text entry (apart from selecting from multiple choices)
Must make it possible for the presentation software to share with everybody the result of participation instantly, thus fostering interaction

Any other thoughts on the next generation audience response systems?

Content Authoring with Video Interactions

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:52:00 +0000

Trainers have long known the importance of video in all types of training. Digital video has now become so commonplace that nearly everyone knows how to shoot video using a camera or a smart phone, upload it to Youtube and share it with others. It is high time these two trends converged. Content authoring needs to embrace digital video.

The newly announced version 8.0 of Elicitus, a leading desktop authoring tool for trainers, educators, subject matter experts and other e-learning creators worldwide, makes this happen.

Creating great courses with Elicitus requires no programming. Even users with no page design experience can create visually appealing courses with Elicitus. Videos can now be added to topic pages and customize the size of the video. Various types of video such as AVI, MPG and SWF are supported.

Users can easily import existing PowerPoint® presentations directly into Elicitus with great accuracy. What is more, Raptivity interactions are easily inserted in the courses and tracked. On the output side, Elicitus allows you to choose from many form factors to suit the needs to diverse screens such as iPad, smart phones, laptops and so forth.

A 14-day free trial is available on the Elicitus web site.

mLearning marches ahead: new trends in mobile learning

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:16:00 +0000

Robert Gadd has written an insightful post on emerging trends in enterprise mobile learning for 2011. His predictions are backed by his long experience with mobile learning. They ring true, given the telltale signs of some of the changes he discusses.

His predictions are, in brief:

mLearning projects get bigger,
device diversity is the "new normal",
apps trump browser-delivered content,
authoring tools evolve to deal with mobility,
tablets explode,
private social networks support business centric social interactions,
mobile device/os vendors consolidate,
new experts provide consulting on mLearning and
new features exploit technology capabilities inherent in devices.

In his prediction concerning authoring tools he points out the possibility of authoring tools providing 'publish to HTML5' option. Gadd follows this up with another post titled New mlearning Authoring Offerings - Wave #1 where he discusses two leading tools that have already provided HTML5 capability.

Celebrating 5 years of Raptivity : Form is Temporary, Class is Timeless

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 06:07:00 +0000

In the game of cricket, they say a player's form is temporary, but the class is timeless. Likewise, when a product stands the test of time, it deepens your belief in the innovation and quality underlying it.

Five years is a long time in the software industry. As we celebrate 5 successful and growing years of Raptivity, the world's first and leading rapid interactivity building tool for eLearning creators, it gives me and the team at Harbinger Group immense joy and a sense of fulfillment.

At the same time, Raptivity's growing customer base and growing sales charts imbue us with a sense of expectancy towards the future.

Raptivity started as an innovative solution to the eLearning developers dilemma - how to create interesting and engaging content without spending the time and money for programming interactivity.

As we developed the solution and patented the key invention that underpins its working, we realized that the market not only loved the concept, but they were hungry for more and more ready-made interactive templates. So we developed games, simulations, exercises, 3D elements, visuals, job aids, presentation aids and dozens of other interaction models. The Raptivity library today boasts of 249 such interactions, the largest anywhere in the world.

At the same time we realized our customers needed flexibility and features. So we added SCORM tracking, unicode compliance, accessibility, advanced editing, voice-over recording and loads of other features. Raptivity's ground-breaking enhancements continue unabated, with support for HTML5 and mobile publishing for smart-phones, tablets and so on.

The biggest reward for us has been the overwhelming acceptance by our user community, now spread in 57 countries at the last count, the 57th being Nepal. The product has made eLearning interactivity quick and easy for thousands of instructional designers, subject matter experts, course creators, trainers and educators in corporations, government and education. Every time we receive an email from a customer how much they appreciate the product, or our customer support - it is a moment of celebration for us.

Raptivity has brought many accolades to Harbinger Group. The list consists of over a couple of dozen international awards including Red Herring Global 100, Deloitte Asia Pacific Fast 500 (three years in a row), eLearning Guild (Platinum and Gold), LearnX Australia (Platinum and Gold), Software Satisfaction Award (UK) and several others.

Last but not the least, the young and talented team working on Raptivity (and our other innovative brands such as Elicitus, Raptivity Presenter, YawnBuster, SiteJazzer, TeemingPod) deserves a mention. Their sincere and hard work has made this dream come into reality. The most beautiful pieces of architecture are built one brick at a time, and they know this better than anyone else.

Business wire and several other publications cover this milestone here.

Interesting Business Scenarios Found while Going Down the e-learning Path

noreply@blogger.com (Vikas Joshi) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:13:00 +0000

Over several years of working with clients in corporate, educational and government organizations, we have noticed that some business scenarios come up time and again, when it comes to e-learning content development. Here is a short list for you to review, and perhaps you can identify with one or more.

We have lots of course material in PowerPoint and would like to use it for e-learning, without necessarily converting it all to Flash.
I have just rolled out in-house e-learning development, and my content authors must get up to speed fast. They are new to technology, and they get overwhelmed by too many options.
My team has learned their tools, but they need to churn out courses faster.
My authors only understand Spanish (or Chinese, or Arabic).

Elicitus Express, a lightweight content authoring tool, helps overcome these dilemmas. The web site offers a 14-day free trial. You can check it out here. There is also a product called Elicitus Studio where one can author content around Raptivity interactions - without spending a lot of money on an authoring tool.