Online Training, Learning Management System, Blog. Litmos

eLearning Guild's #mLearnCon 2011 conference is in session

2011-06-21T21:21:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am sitting at my desk really wishing I was at mLearnCon again this year. It has moved from San Diego up to San Jose for it's second year and I'm banking on it being a whole lot bigger with the ever-increasing popularity of mobile learning.

Seeing as I can't be there in person, I'm glued to the backchannel and am once again amazed at the people that can live blog a session and not only does it makes sense, but it has no spelling mistakes! Now that's real skill.

Right now mLearnCon is wrapping up the first day of the conference, which means that the many attendees will be having some drinks and moving on out to find their dinner. I would even hazard a guess that there might be some karaoke going down later on.

If like me, you can't be there this year, then make sure to tune in to the backchannel on Twitter by following the #mlearncon hashtag.

Here are just a few of the awesome tweets coming out of today's sessions:

Blog posts in the #mLearnCon tweetstream:

Developing a Learning Strategy for Mobile and Social (Keynote)
Flurry: Time Spent on Mobile Apps has Surpassed Web Browsing (Techcrunch)
Why Should Somebody Buy This instead of an iPad (Technologizer)
How to Customize QR codes with your Brand's Identity (Content Developer)
HTML5 and CSS3: great web sites and resources for keeping with latest information (@nickfloro)
Jeremiah Owyang mLearncon keynote mindmap (Learnlets)
Airline Pilots Switch to iPads (Good Transportation)

Looking forward to reading some more great tweets & posts tomorrow!

@Schnicker

Awesome news for the future of your favorite LMS

2011-06-10T14:28:00.000-07:00

Today we're really excited to announce that Litmos has been acquired by Callidus Software Inc (NASDAQ: CALD) a premier SaaS company in the US!

Rich Chetwynd our founder & CEO had this to say;

“We are excited to join the Callidus family of SaaS solutions and look forward to continuing to innovate our product to deliver the best online learning system on the market, Callidus global coverage, dedication to SaaS, and operational maturity will allow us to be even more effective in delivering outstanding customer service and innovative solutions to our growing base of satisfied customers. With half of our clients in the United States, Callidus is the perfect environment to nurture our future growth in the rapid LMS and Mobile Learning markets."

So will anything change?

Well you can rest assured that the same friendly team will be running the show, but one big change is that the core Litmos team will be relocating from Auckland, New Zealand to San Francisco, USA. This is awesome news as it's going to make it soooooo much easier for us to support our growing US customer base and also make it really easy for us to attend lots more of the industry events to hang out with our elearning buddies. Callidus also has a global reach meaning more people on the ground in more countries which is a big win for our customers in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe.

Finally, with the backing of a strong SaaS company like Callidus we will have the ability to grow the team which, other than just making it an even more fun place to work :-), will also result in faster development times for many of the new features that we want to build into Litmos for you.

We can't wait to work with the smart minds at Callidus and continue to innovate in the mobile and learning management system space.

If you're interested you can find the official press release here

@Schnicker

#LoveYourLMS

4 out of 5 US doctors plan to buy an iPad #mLearning #healthcare

2011-06-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

'Wireless Health' including mobile technology, medical and healthcare data collected at the recent Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance (WLSA) 6th Annual Convergence Summit in San Diego, indicates 4 out of 5 US doctors plan to buy an iPad in the next year. This makes it pretty clear that the medical health revolution is well on it's mobile way!

Here's a pretty infographic from Karten Design detailing the information:

Another interesting stat in there is that 5 billion people have access to a mobile phone, which represents 72% of the world's population. Now that is accessibility!

If you're currently considering purchasing a content authoring tool, a learning management system or another online software product, it makes it all the more important to ask the vendor questions about their current and future plans for mobile. With the mobile learning industry having grown $326M in 2010 over 2009, it would be a mistake not to consider how your content is going to perform on mobile devices.

@Schnicker

Articulate Studio '09: Yes,They Are E-Learning Heroes

2011-06-06T18:27:00.000-07:00

Litmos community! Good morning/afternoon/evening to you all.

As I may have mentioned before, there are two fairly dominant players in the market for off-the-shelf eLearning development solutions: Adobe Captivate and Articulate Studio '09. Both of these tools make an excellent main development platform. You can even use them together, inserting Captivate's remarkable screen recordings (demos and simulations) into a beautiful shell created with Articulate.

We've posted quite a bit about Captivate, which recently got a sudden (to me, anyway) version bump to 5.5. The new version looks outstanding, but it rendered a few in-progress blog posts obsolete. After I play with the new version, I'll share thoughts, techniques, and time/labor -saving tactics.

So... this is a good time to talk about Articulate Studio '09: the great looking output, the nuts and bolts of its four components, the amazing Articulate community and ongoing dialogue with (and among) users, and where to find exuberant Articulate folks on Twitter.

Articulate, with its tight PowerPoint integration, has a short learning curve. Really short. Tanya Coomes (@tanyacoomes), in the excellent E-Learning Uncovered: Articulate Studio '09, writes "You can learn everything you need to know to develop a course in a matter of hours." It's all true, people.

The Output

Let's begin at the end, shall we? It's easy to rapidly prototype a course in Articulate and come up with something visually impressive. The Articulate player itself is gorgeous, intuitive, and scales beautifully for different screen sizes and resolutions.

Here's an early shot of a super-rapid mentoring course I've been working on for an organizational development consulting firm called ODScore (BTW, check out Christy Pettit - @odguru - on Twitter; she's charming, she's innovative, and she let us use screen shots).

It takes almost no time to put together a prototype of your course in a customized player. The course outline and player controls are superb. Learners love them, and your employer or clients will be blown away by the look and feel. Just wait 48 hours before showing it to them; you'll want them to think you sweated over agonizing design choices.

Of course, you still have to put together great (and great looking) content to put inside the player -- but the Articulate player's no-brainer elegance has a subtle, practical purpose. Visual/instructional design whiz and ace illustrator Kevin Thorn (@learnnuggets) says: "Navigation elements are published with the player, allowing me to concentrate on design."

Articulate Studio '09: What is it?

Articulate Studio '09 is made up of four components; all of them can be launched within PowerPoint:

Presenter: Presenter, at its core, converts your PowerPoint into LMS-friendly, SCORM-compliant Flash output.
Engage: Engage allows you to customize pre-built interactions based on the type of content you want to share (e.g. labeled graphics, timelines, circle diagrams). I'm not going to lie--I know a lot of people who create entire courses using Engage templates and interactions. Why not? It's great (and great-looking) rapid output. Here's an example of an Engage Tab interaction:

Quizmaker: Quick (I mean quick) engine to build question slides: true/false, multiple choice, Likert scale (survey), hot spot, drag-and-drop... go crazy. Plus, you can free-form much of the look and feel of your questions -- a big difference from other tools.
Video Encoder: Converts 14 video formats to Flash (.flv) for inclusion into your courses. Necessary if you need to convert video for your course. Just don't include a talking-head lecture.

When you install Articulate Studio '09, you'll see a new ribbon element in PowerPoint. You can access all Articulate functions from the ribbon. Think of it this way: you can work normally creating slides in PowerPoint. When you want to insert an Engage interaction, create a blank slide and click the green Engage Interaction object on the ribbon. Follow a similar process for Quizmaker Quiz. These sub-programs will open and practically walk you through simple (but flexible) creative steps.

We'll look closely at Presenter, Engage, and Quizmaker in future posts.

It Takes a Village: the Articulate Community

The Articulate community might be its biggest asset.

The tool is so flexible, the company is so friendly, and the users are so passionate that an "anything is possible" feeling surrounds the tool itself. As the eLearning Guild's Brent Schlenker (@bschlenker) astutely puts it: "I like the Articulate community. They contribute to the community without hesitation"

The vendor/user collaboration is on display at Articulate's unique website: E-Learning Heroes. If you want to ramp up your ability to use a tool, there's no better place. Tutorials, active dialogue, answers to questions, free templates... it's nuts. One of the key players on the site is Articulate's Tom Kuhlmann (@tomkuhlmann). Tom's Rapid E-Learning Blog can be accessed from the E-Learning Heroes site. Tom is a funny, engaging guy -- and his blog is the most useful (in my opinion) collection of wit, wisdom and practical application in the field.

You can also find a great group of (even more) Articulate staff on Twitter. Check out this list, which is curated by Articulate's Community Manager David Anderson (@elearning).

Summing Up

Like Captivate, Articulate is a widely-used rapid development tool for eLearning. There are plenty of wonderful tools out there, but these two have strong community backing. I would urge a new practitioner to use them both and get creative.

Last Word

Not only is Captivate getting enhanced, Articulate is working on enhancements to Studio. Furthermore, Articulate is in beta with a parallel product called Storyline that's generating tons of buzz--take it from Kineo's unimpeachable Cammy Bean (@Cammybean).

Thanks to Judy Unrein (@jkunrein) and Articulate's David Anderson for contributing their time and expertise.

Cheers!

@jwillensky

Activity feeds, email tracking, and more in the Litmos Dashboard

2011-06-05T03:36:00.000-07:00

When you're offering self paced online learning courses you can potentially have people accessing your courses at any time of the day. So, how do you keep track of that?

Well of course there's the Litmos reports that you can use when you want to get the big picture but from an operational point of view you really need a dashboard that feeds you information about all of the interactions between you, your courses, and your learners.

Enter the Litmos LMS Dashboard! This gives you an instant picture of the activity around your online courses and quick access to all of the people, courses, and teams that are currently using your LMS.

Check out the following video for a quick overview.

And here are a few of the highlights:

Sales activity chart - For our ecommerce customers, one of the stand-out new features is the new course sales chart. This gives you the last 30 days worth of sales data so you know how many courses you've sold and how much money you've made.
Email tracking - If you're sending out emails to hundreds of learners then chances are a few of the emails might bounce. To help identify when this happens so that you can fix it up, we've added advanced email tracking that displays reasons for many of the bounced emails right on your dashboard.

Our Litmos upgrade is now live!

2011-05-29T15:57:00.000-07:00

The highly anticipated upgrade to the Litmos learning management system is now live!

If you have an account with us, just log in and you will see your shiny new Dashboard feeding you more information about overall account activity than you ever could see before.

If you don't have an account with us yet, please sign up for a free 14 day trial account to see what all the excitement about.

Litmos enhancements as of this upgrade:

Desktop Browser

New system terminology - Learner and Administrator
Customize the Complete / Incomplete course terminology via the Account area
Search boxes everywhere
Improved navigation on learner side
Improved course library on learner side
Enhanced admin Dashboard now shows activity feed, eCommerce information, recently viewed people and courses, plus much more
Bulk learner imports now do field mapping rather than use our template
Ability to update a Video, PowerPoint, Audio or Flash module rather than delete and upload a new one
New user profiles, activity feed and extra fields like adress, employee id, Twitter etc.
New results override so admins can manually update the results of a module / course
Better linking between learners, teams and courses on admin side to make it easier to drill down
100% customization of email templates.
Greater control over when email notifications are sent
Course listing widget no longer displayed on course listing page
New overall courses complete pie chart in Reports
Admins can now download learner certificates from their profiles

Mobile Browser

Big improvements to the mobile device user interface (UI)
Litmos assessment modules are now available on mobile
Litmos survey modules are also available
Offline mode for assessment modules

@schnicker

US mLearning Market for 2010 Up $326M on 2009

2011-05-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

Well if you ever had any doubts about the growing popularity of mobile learning, this report should put those to rest. Ambient Insight have published a revision of last year's US Mobile Learning industry report which covered 2009-2014, this time covering 2010-2015.

Back last year I wrote this post covering the stats from their August 2010 report. But now due to 'favorable market conditions', Ambient Insight have revised their predictions upwards and it's definitely worth re-visiting the numbers.

Introductory points

The US market for Mobile Learning Products and Services reached $958.7M in 2010 (this figure was $632.2M in 2009).
Top buyers of mobile learning remain to be the same:

USA
Japan
South Korea
the UK
Taiwan

Highest growth rates are in China, India, Indonesia and Brazil
By the end of 2015 China will be the second largest buying country after the US

The current US Mobile learning market is being driven by:

Consumers and healthcare were early adopters and still dominate
Corporations have been late adopters until recently. The growth rate for this sector is now 29.3%.
The second highest growth rate at 26.1% belongs to NGO, non-profit, and association segment

The content distribution channel is expanding rapidly:

As of February 2011 there were over hundred app stores across the globe, growing by 1-2 stores a month
There are over 650 telecom operations in the world and there are now "white-label" app store platforms that allow them to launch branded pre-stocked app stores quickly
In October 2010 Apple introduced a new Special Education sector in their app store. At launch it had 85 apps in five categories. This expands the reach of mLearning to over 5 million US school children that need specialized content to mitigate cognitive and physical impairments

Networks are getting faster and devices smarter

As of 2010, 28% of US phones in use were smartphones. By early 2012, 34% will be smartphones.
In 2010 and 2011 tablet device makers launched products specifically designed for eLearning tending to target early childhood, PreK-12 and higher education.
By the end of 2015 the US will have the largest 4G coverage in the world (Lightsquared)

Explosion of new mobile learning content:

The twelve types of packaged applications and content purchased by the eight buying segments included in the report are:

Language learning
Travel and tourism
Academia test prep
General education, study guides, and reference
How-to-manuals and guides
Simulation and game-based learning
Location-based learning
Medical, health, nutrition, and fitness
Business, sales, and finance
Handheld decision support and performance support
Professional licensure, continuing education (CE), and continuing medical education (CME)
Professional training and development

It's interesting to note down their definition of mobile learning too:

'Ambient Insight defines Mobile Learning as knowledge transfer events,
content, tools, and applications accessed on handheld computing devices.'

You can red the report summary here or purchase the full report on their website.

And speaking of mobile learning, don't forget about the eLearning Guild's mLearnCon conference coming up June 21-23 in San Jose, California. I went along last year - it was the first time it was held - and I can personally vouch for the huge value in attending. Whether you're looking for advice on designing mobile content, deploying to mobile devices, the right tools to use or learning management systems with mobile delivery, this is the place to go.

@Schnicker

Vote Now - Best of Elearning! Awards 2011 #Litmos #LMS

2011-05-17T20:05:00.000-07:00

It's rolled around again and the polls are now open for the Elearning! 2011 awards.

If you have 20 seconds to spare (you know you do!), please click on the link below to vote for Litmos in Category #1:"Best Learning Management System (SaaS, Cloud-based, or open-source only)"

Here's all you need to do:

Click on the vote now link below
Fill in category #1: Best Learning Management System (SaaS, Cloud-based, or open-source only) as per the pic below - with your own spin of course :-)

3. Vote for more categories if you like, scroll down, fill in your details and click Submit.

Click to Vote now!

Thank you from the team at Litmos!
@Schnicker

#LoveYourLMS

My #1 Tip to Conquering Your Nerves

2011-05-15T20:24:00.000-07:00

Flickr photo by Tony George

Even though we all breathe, all the time, many of us don't know how to breathe properly. Wouldn't it be cool if you knew how to use your breath to relax and calm your nerves to achieve instant clarity and focus? Whether you're a teacher or trainer addressing a classroom, or you're a student taking that final exam, I'd like to pass on a trick that I've learned through yoga to help you achieve instant calm through the breath.

The Problem.
Most people when they get nervous begin to breathe in short shallow breaths from the top of their chest. This type of breathing produces adrenalin which instantly puts your body in to a nervous fight or flight mode. For sure it's useful when you're in a dangerous situation, but not when you're trying to relax in to an exam. The more you breathe like this, the more adrenaline you get, and the more nervous you feel.

The Solution.
What you want to do instead is breathe nice and deep from the bottom of your belly so that your body's air supply is fully recycled providing your body and mind with a fresh sense of calm and clarity.

How to do it.
First off, check whether you are breathing correctly. Lie down or sit up nice and straight, and put your hands on your belly. Breathe in and out through your nose where both the inhale and exhale should be of equal length. What you should notice is your belly rises considerably on an inhale as your body fills with air, and falls on an exhale. That makes sense right? Well try it. You'll be amazed at how often this is not the case.

If that's not what's happening, try pushing your belly out on the inhale and suck it back on an exhale. Practice it over and over. This way you're getting fresh air circulating through your body.

The trick.
If you can't do it or it takes too much concentration for you to get there, there's a simple trick to instantly switch your body to this type of deep breathing. Press your tongue to the back of your top front teeth, then move it up just a little to where your teeth meet your gums. Now breathe through your nose. This automatically puts your body in to a deep breathing mode and you should feel your belly rise on inhale, fall on exhale.

Likewise, if you were to move your tongue to the roof of your mouth your breath will move up to your rib cage. Finally, if you flip your tongue to the back of the roof of your mouth, you will find yourself doing short, shallow breathing from the top of your chest - the one you want to avoid when trying to calm down.

Hopefully this technique will help you to focus in and study for that final exam, deliver a killer company presentation or ace an online assessment!

- Nicole
@Schnicker

Effortless mobile learning on the iPad

2011-05-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Mobile is certainly a buzz word right now and not just in elearning circles. As many of you know, Litmos released one of the first mobile LMS solutions for iPhone, Android and iPad about a year ago. It was a great entry into the mobile space for Litmos and allowed us to start working out what our customers truly wanted out of a mobile learning solution.

Currently the mobile version of Litmos enables your learners to watch videos, listen to audio tracks, read news, notes, messages and download documents like PDFs. As of next month we're very excited to announce that mobile access will also include surveys & assessments.

Offline access for assessments

Using the latest HTML5 technology we've made it possible for your learners to complete assessments even when they're offline. So if your learners are on an aeroplane they can still complete the assessment and when they go back online their answers will automatically sync with your Litmos account. It's really clever :-)

Administrator dashboard

We've also added a cool new dashboard for Administrators and Team Leaders which gives you a real-time view on all of the activity happening in your Litmos account. Whether its assessments being completed, emails being sent or courses being sold now you can keep track of all this and more while you're on the move.

E-Learning 24/7 Gives Litmos LMS Thumbs Up!

2011-05-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

On April 9, 2011 Craig Weiss of E-Learning 24/7 posted up a product review of the Litmos LMS on his website.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous to read it as I've followed his blog for a while now and know just how tough a critic he can be. I was hoping that he liked using Litmos, of course, but more than that we were looking forward to some constructive, 'no holds barred' feedback from an industry leader who has tested and reviewed so many of the LMSs out there.

Well, I'm very pleased to say that the admin side of our system was reviewed and received a whopping 10/10! The learner side received a slightly lower 7/10 but we knew there was room for improvement there. In fact, that is exactly why our next upgrade in June 2011 includes many enhancements to the learner side UI and functionality. Hopefully, we'll be able to convince Craig to take another look to see if we can bring that 7 up a few notches!

Anyway, we're allowed to brag a little, right? Good. Because I really wanted to post up Craig's final, very positive comments:

'It is a magnum engine in a Lite system racing down the LMS road'

And here's a tweet that Craig sent out a little later on:

Please do check out the full review and if you have any questions at all just ask us.

For more commentary on the eLearning industry, products, and events follow Craig Weiss here on twitter @diegoinstudio.

- Nicole
@Schnicker

Healthcare Services Move to eLearning

2011-05-04T22:09:00.000-07:00

We're not sure if it's something special that we've done, but every day we're seeing more organizations in the health and medical sectors moving their training programs online. Litmos is becoming quite the crowd favorite! Which is great, as we love the idea that we can help make learning easier for such important industries.

Last week I took some time to ask one of our wonderful clients about their organization, their experience with online learning and how Litmos plays a part...

Lane County Health and Human Services promotes and protects the health and well-being of individuals, families, and our communities. Health & Human Services (H&HS) is a broad-based organization which oversees health, mental health, social services, and offender programs in a largely subcontracted system. The subcontract providers are our community partners in a complex service delivery system. The department provides a wide array of direct services, offered on a sliding-scale fee basis.

How did you find out about Litmos originally?

I researched different e-Learning sites to find one that was affordable, easy to administer and easy for the end-user to understand and navigate. Litmos stood out above the rest.

How were you delivering your courses prior to using an online system?

When I first became responsible for the administration of department-wide HIPAA training, we were using a three-part system. The first part consisted of having newly hired employees watch a two-hour video of a lecture given on the topic as it relates to the County as a whole. The second part consisted of a supervisor sitting down with the employee and discussing our department-level policies and procedures as well as how HIPAA played a part in their particular worksite. The third part was a proprietary software which consisted of a slide show and test on keeping data secure. Each part had a separate certificate to be signed and sent through courier to me for tracking.

Why did you choose Litmos as your learning management system?

I moved over to an online course as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, I started with a different online system which turned out to be hard to use for the end-user and not very flexible for the administrator. I looked at every online system I could find within my budget and was thrilled to finally find Litmos. It had everything I needed, except for one reporting feature, which they were considerate enough to add when I told them about it. What really sold the site to me was the fact that it was flexible. If I wanted to change the look or the type of media down the road, it was easy to do. The responsive and communicative staff was also a huge plus.

What benefits do you see in using an online system like Litmos to deliver your courses?

Provide a way to make your tool available offsite as well as onsite
Enable easy tracking and reporting
Are basically familiar to end-users who use other web sites for various functions (especially Litmos)
Are easy to update
Free up your IT staff from maintenance (which pays for itself)

- Tina Baker, Lane County

@Schnicker

Guerrilla-style Rapid Development with Adobe Captivate, Part I

2011-04-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Hi there, Litmos community!

This week, we're going to shift gears. Today's post is the first of a multi-course feast.

In the coming weeks, we'll talk about a guerrilla process for systems training. As internal or external training consultants, most of us know what it's like to be understaffed (or over-committed), without a project manager, while facing a time crunch. A scoping/task analysis/design/development cycle can crawl along, especially with reviews and slippage.

I'm proposing that with a little front-end work and a tracking spreadsheet, it's possible to compress some design/development steps by using Adobe Captivate as your task analysis tool -- while you capture.

Consider this situation: You've been assigned to create eLearning for a new system. Deadlines are tight. You're going to do task analysis. You're sitting with a subject matter expert (SME), who is walking you through the steps of a system task. Question -- would you rather make notes and create a flowchart in Visio, or would you rather capture a movie of what your SME did? I prefer movies to parallelograms and six-point text—I'm going with "movie."

Using guerrilla strategy for task analysis:

Generates an immediate Captivate movie of each task.
Gives you an editable capture early in the process--if your SMEs actions are valid, you're much closer to having your end product.
Saves (lots of) time—even if a SME is thinking on the-fly, this process is still ultimately faster than constructing and editing flowcharts. If you have to scrap/redo a few captures upon later review, so what? The additional time is limited compared to flowchart analysis and review.

Here's a rough process for late-in-the-game, guerrilla systems training:

Guerrilla Scope

Choose broad content areas (identify modules).
Pick tasks that fit into those content areas (identify tasks).
Get sign-off on your module/lesson sequence, but allow your client some minor wiggle room (somebody always forgets a task; it's OK).
Create your tracking spreadsheet (I call mine a capture log).
Identify who your SME is for each module and lesson.

Guerrilla Development

Build a template for your lesson format and navigation elements (e.g. Intro/Show Me (demo)/Try It (interactive simulation)/Summary).
Create a test lesson for the LMS, and refine as needed.
Track (in the spreadsheet) confidence levels for system build stability and current process.
Track your Show Me/Try It captures and edits.
Edit captures on your own time (i.e. without using your SME's time).
Track issues.
Gather specific content for your intro/summary slides.

Guerrilla Finishing Up

Create your lessons: stitch together your intro, captures, and summary into one Captivate movie.
Receive your tiara or crown.

There are a few tricks to make this whole plan work:

Get comfortable enough with a simple process in Captivate to pull it off. When you're sitting with your SME, you should be moving as confidently as you do in Microsoft Word. I'll give you some hints in a future post about how to do this.
Build your spreadsheet at the beginning. This effort will save you from madness. I'll show you an example of what to track, and how to track it.

Here's the deal: A few years ago, I was subcontracting on a time-sensitive systems training project for a large hospital. I suggested the guerrilla process (It's a movie!). I was politely, but firmly, told I was nuts. Well, now I'm running an eLearning project for another hospital—on the same system, with more travel, and even less time to completion. I'm doing it my way -- in the weeks to follow I'm going to share guerrilla process with you, along with step-by-step examples and direction.

I want to clarify, refine, and build a case study for this process -- so your comments are appreciated. Next time—a comparison of old school/new school processes, a look at simultaneous task analysis and capture with Captivate, and how to use your tracking spreadsheet to ward off evil spirits.

Cheers!

@jwillensky

Efficiency in eLearning: Master Slides in Adobe Captivate 5 (Part II)

2011-03-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

Greetings, Litmos community!

We've been taking a look at how to create efficiency when designing/developing eLearning in Adobe Captivate 5. Adobe recently added a killer master slide feature to Captivate.

If you're familiar at all with how to use multiple master slides in PowerPoint, you have some idea of how effective this function could be when creating eLearning.

Master slides are cool. You can reuse elements (like backgrounds and text boxes) without pasting them in over and over again. You can create multiple masters for different slide types (e.g. intro, body, summary). Why should you really care? The payoff:

Master slides will save you time--massive amounts of time.
Master slides limit mistakes and rework.
Master slides allow you to direct your energy towards content; you won't have to reinvent the wheel placing repeatable objects on each slide.

For example, I've been working on a delightful (and completely fictitious) course called Gaming 101. There are two main content areas (each with its own slide type): the odds for different casino games, and an etiquette guide for some of the world's most sumptuous casino-hotels.

Throughout the course, I need to repeatedly create two types of slides to introduce chunks of content --so I've built two master slides:

Let's take a look at our first master slide (the one we'll be using for our discussion of the odds).

Everything you see is part of the slide master: the opaque yellow rectangle at the top, the semi-transparent rectangle at the bottom, the two text captions, the wholesome background image, etc.

Like in PowerPoint, you can name these masters. This one (our "odds" slide master) is called Fate: Body. As you would insert a new slide in PowerPoint with the desired name or layout, you can do something similar in Captivate 5--insert a slide and select what master to use from the Properties window (not shown, but it's conveniently on top of you when you're working in Captivate).

After inserting a new slide, we can add our slide-specific elements, such as additional text, graphics, and whatnot.

Here's an example:We've added text to the right of our boilerplate, and an appropriate image (the roulette wheel). On the bottom, you can see stock Captivate image buttons for navigation.

Imagine if you had to do a slide like this for each game of chance. The master slide is an enormous time saver. You wouldn't want endless repetition (i.e. 15 of these slides in a row), but you can use masters when repeatable elements make sense (such as introductory slides for each chunk of content).

Here's an example of our Etiquette slide, master (top) and actual slide (bottom):

Pretty elemental stuff: we added the name of the place and the hotel (Macau; Lisboa), the buttons, and a picture of the hotel in question.

I would encourage you to learn master slides as you start using Captivate. This iteration of the software is terrific -- you won't have to deal with the heartbreak and baggage of a career spent without it.

Soon, we'll look at some resources for learning more about Captivate: from Adobe and from the broad network of practitioners out there.

Cheers!

@jwillensky

P.S. With a house edge of 5.6%, roulette is a lousy play. Stick with craps (0.6%) or blackjack (0.8%).

Efficiency in eLearning: Master Slides in Adobe Captivate 5 (Part I)

2011-03-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

¡Bienvenidos, Litmos community! Those of you tasked with converting your organization's content into rapid eLearning -- we're looking at you.

Previous posts have looked at cross-functionalit y between Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Captivate. The relationship between PowerPoint and eLearning is like an up-and-down romance. PowerPoint brings some cool stuff to the table, but can often gain the upper hand and stifle eLearning creativity. Although importing existing PowerPoint into Captivate is a great way to get some rapid output into your LMS, the danger exists that your learners will see nothing but mediocre PowerPoint converted to Flash.

Round-trip editing and some re-engineering (in accordance with your eLearning philosophy) will help, but ultimately you may want to build from scratch within a tool such as Captivate or Articulate.

Working from scratch is daunting, but current rapid eLearning tools allow you to re-use objects and create templates. We're not going to create detailed feature tutorials (there are plenty out there). Our goal is to emphasize specific features that scale well and lead to process efficiencies. That sounds dull—we'll show you things that allow you to get shiny eLearning up and running.

The specter of PowerPoint looms, in the sense that there's often an analogous function baked into an eLearning tool. One of the strengths of PowerPoint is its way of handling master slides. The slide master is an element of the design template that stores information about the template, including font styles, background design, and color schemes.

If you've never done it, you can create multiple master slides in PowerPoint, which is a huge time-saver. Create and name master slides (like an intro slide, a body slide, a recap slide, etc.) with your design elements. Insert new slides based on the desired layout, add text an images, and boom—quick presentation.

The point is that Adobe Captivate 5 has an excellent master slide function as well. You can work with masters much as you would in PowerPoint, but with features slanted towards your eLearning philosophy. Simply create a new master slide from the Insert menu, and you can begin to customize re-usable slides for different parts of your course. You can label the slide (Intro, Body, Summary, etc.) and add elements: text captions, rollover captions, rollover images, highlight boxes, text animations, widgets, images, animations, and even video (as FLV or FLV4 files).

Master slides are a huge time-saver. In Part II, we'll detail a quick process for creating and using master slides in a Captivate 5 project.

Cheers!

@jwillensky

Up by the Bootstraps: Adobe Captivate 5 and Microsoft PowerPoint

2011-03-03T17:27:00.000-08:00

Hello, Litmos community!

Last week we talked about Adobe Captivate 5 and its marvelous ability to create demonstrations, simulations, and performance-based assessment for systems training. This feature has enormous cash value for those of you who want to quickly show something impressive to your organizational overlords. Furthermore, you can rapidly develop eLearning and get your learners something (relatively) immersive.

Of course, life in the fast lane isn't all systems training. Many people ask how to leverage existing non-technical content from their organization. Let's talk about this issue—with an enthralling magic bullet and the inevitable soul-crushing caveats.

I'm amazed at how often someone tells me that their organization's knowledge, skills, and attitudes are sitting there in a bunch of PowerPoint presentations, just waiting to be extracted for juicy eLearning modules. The proposition isn't that simple, so a tactical approach to using this content is helpful.

First, let's consider what Captivate can do for you if you have a great deal of existing PowerPoint content. Here's how Adobe puts it in the help file:

"You can import and edit Microsoft PowerPoint presentations in Adobe Captivate. Imported slides can be edited in a Microsoft PowerPoint environment from within Adobe Captivate. You can choose to link to the source PowerPoint presentation to keep it in sync with the Adobe Captivate project."

What does all of this mean? First, it's easy to import a PowerPoint presentation (or individual slides) into a Captivate file. Hint: this is the magic bullet (note: you can also start a new Captivate project from a PowerPoint).

Second, you can link up your PowerPoint presentation with the corresponding Captivate file and perform round-trip editing; the Captivate platform is smart enough to help maintain any edits in both files. This function is deceptively powerful: it will help you maintain version control (and your sanity).

Also, you can update PowerPoint presentation changes made outside Adobe Captivate. Time-saver: you can send the PowerPoint file to a subject matter expert for a sanity-check or updates. After the file is returned, you can use the synchronization function within Captivate to maintain the integrity of the content. In the old world, you would have had to go through an iterative process with lots of emails, gnashing of teeth, and general frustration.

The point is that you can get a lot of content into usable eLearning format pretty quickly. The trouble is that you can't just convert PowerPoint into eLearning and usher in a new golden age. You're going to have to tweak stuff. Here come the caveats, veiled threats, and suggestions.

Garbage in, garbage out. We've written to excess about having an eLearning philosophy. Many presentations are death-by-PowerPoint. Page-turners. Too many bullet points. The unspeakable horror of comic sans. Check out Garr Reynolds' excellent Presentation Zen blog for ideas on how to make your presentations sing/shine/soar. Follow him on Twitter -- @presentationzen.
Learn about the art and science of using PowerPoint as an eLearning artist's canvas. Buy Dr. Jane Bozarth's book, Better than Bullet Points. Jane is on Twitter, too.
Get down with some theory. Here's an amazingly lucid post from Dave Ferguson on Ruth Clark's principles.
Follow the practitioners; they're in the trenches. Heed Cammy Bean's maxim to avoid clicky-clicky bling-bling in eLearning. Heed it.

It's a paradox. PowerPoint can be an incredibly valuable tool, but if you rely on preconceived ideas of what a presentation "should look like," you'll probably create ineffective eLearning.

Practice, and test your output in your LMS. Contact the Litmos team if you have questions about testing.

Cheers!

@jwillensky

Adobe Captivate 5 -- Simulations on Tap

2011-02-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

Greetings, global citizens of the Litmos eLearning community!

Last time—we talked about authoring tools, and we answered a few common questions about Adobe Captivate 5 and Articulate Studio '09. As we dive more deeply, we'll look at the strengths of each platform. This week, we'll begin our analysis of Adobe Captivate 5.

To clear up a question, you can acquire Captivate 5 in two ways. First, it's available as a stand-alone program, for $799.00 USD (or $299.00 USD for a qualified upgrade).

Second, Adobe Captivate 5 is available as part of Adobe's eLearning Suite 2 ($1799.00 USD, or starting at $599.00 USD for a qualified upgrade). The eLearning Suite combines some of Adobe's best offerings for eLearning (e.g.. Captivate 5) with elements of its powerful Creative Suite.

If you have the budget, consider Adobe eLearning Suite 2. It's a beast—the package contains Captivate 5, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver® CS5, Photoshop CS5 Extended, Acrobat® 9 Pro, Presenter 7, Soundbooth CS5, Bridge CS5, and Device Central CS5. You'll probably get your money's worth from Captivate, Soundbooth, and Photoshop alone. If you already have some of these programs, it probably makes more sense just to add applications a la carte.

As the weeks go by, we'll look at different feature sets. As we've said before Captivate 5 is a loaded eLearning solution that works beautifully as a blank canvas. You can perform layout magic and manipulate fonts, graphics, and animations. You can go quick 'n' dirty (but cool) with Captivate's stock functions, or get crazy and be elaborate.

For now, though, let's look at Captivate's magic bullet: screen recording. Imagine you're in charge of creating eLearning to take your people through a new system (a pretty common situation). If you have to design and develop eLearning for systems, there's no rapid development tool quite like Captivate.

The image above is from a sample on Adobe's site. With Captivate's autorecording modes, you can go in one, two, or three different ways:

Demonstration mode ("show me"): Records what's going on on-screen, but with no user interaction in the Flash movie output. Useful to get your learners oriented to a process or user interface (or just to show them how cool your new system is). Captivate automatically adds text captions that label what's happening.
Training simulation mode ("try it"): Captivate automatically adds click boxes, text entry boxes, and feedback (failure/hint captions). Your learner can interact and perform within the simulation.
Assessment simulation mode ("test me"): The click boxes and text entry boxes are there, but the feedback isn't. You can actually assess your learner's ability to use the system.

Here's the kicker: you can rig Captivate to capture in all three modes at the same time. You don't have to capture three different times; separate output is available for all three modes.

There is also a custom mode available that allows you to create hybrid "demo-sims." You can use your imagination as you get more comfortable.

Think about it. If you're short on time, you can take your learner through a rapidly-built "show me-try it-test me" process that actually requires them to perform in a closely simulated environment before they have to go live.

Is it perfect? No way. You'll need to polish your captures before you publish. Don't worry: it's fairly easy to edit the text captions, straighten/speed up the mouse pointer, and make sure the timing is correct. Still, it's remarkable how quickly you get get something effective to your learners.

The output is also SCORM-compliant, and can be tracked easily by an LMS (such as Litmos). We'll soon look at ways to use Captivate with your LMS, but here's a teaser: Captivate's Advanced Interaction screen allows you to set or disable tracking/scoring/reporting for every action your learner takes.

If you have mission-critical systems training (like financial or electronic medical records), you may want to know how your learners perform on a click-by-click basis. If you don't want to look under the microscope, you can just track whether or not they've looked at parts of the course. It's your call. Talk to your Litmos team about how to use Captivate output with the Litmos system.

Tip: There's lots of great conversation about Captivate on Twitter. According to soon-to-be Adobe eLearning Evangelist RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez), a good bet is to search for and use the #AdobeCaptivate hashtag. If you're new to Twitter and hashtags, here's a Captivate demo from RJ on how to add a column on TweetDeck for the #AdobeCaptivate hashtag (how meta!).

We'll look more deeply at Captivate 5 and look at its feature set (this version, for instance, allows you to set up master slides much as PowerPoint does). We're also going to look at Articulate Studio '09 and its own magic bullet(s). Stay tuned!

Cheers,

@jwillensky

So tell me about the Litmos LMS?

2011-02-14T16:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I write an email and think that this information should really be explained better on our website or perhaps even the blog. So heres my email response to a few high level questions about Litmos.

I hope this helps if you're taking the first steps in finding a new LMS.

1) Will we be able to host the system ourselves?

Litmos is a SaaS (Software as a Service) based LMS that's accessible online, anytime.

You will find many installable LMS products around but they all have lengthy setup/installation processes, require ongoing software updates and an IT team to manage the servers they are hosted on.

In contrast you can get your Litmos LMS up and running within minutes, we take care of the hosting/IT and you also benefit from regular feature upgrades such as mobile access.

2) Is Litmos secure?
With regards to security, all Litmos accounts are password protected and must be accessed over bank level SSL from a web browser. Our servers are hosted at Rackspace, a world leader in hosting and we do daily offsite backups of students records/results.

3) Is Litmos open source?
Litmos is not open source but we are SCORM certified. I'm not sure if you're familiar with SCORM or not but it is a standard for allowing any compliant elearning content to work with any compliant LMS. As a general rule, being SCORM certified should be a consideration when selecting an LMS.

4) Can Litmos be integrated with other systems?

Yes. Using our API we have clients connecting various in-house systems to Litmos to manage user accounts, access training results etc. We also have automated report exporting that enables the easy export of custom formatted data to complex systems such as SAP.

How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! Intro to Authoring Tools

2011-02-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hello, Litmos community! For those of you tasked with making an organizational transition to eLearning, we salute you—in all your overworked glory.

In a previous post, we emphasized the point about having an eLearning philosophy (and standards) in place to encourage you to begin at the beginning. Tools change and evolve. You will probably master multiple platforms. Your personnel may come and go. Nevertheless, the philosophy you adopt and build will work across tools, and can be shared with different people.

We're going to shift our focus to rapid eLearning authoring tools. Most of our attention will be on two industry heavyweights: Adobe Captivate 5 and Articulate Studio '09. Nothing against excellent tools like Raptivity or (cloud-based) Udutu, we're just thinking about what our broader audience is likely to use.

What to look for

As an organizational learning person, you probably have lots of source material (often PowerPoint presentations) to convert. Here are some questions you might want to ask when investigating authoring tools:

What does the software look like?

Captivate 5 operates (primarily) as a stand-alone tool. Articulate Studio '09 has several components—the typical user scenario involves using these components from an additional ribbon tab within Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 and higher.

Can I work with existing PowerPoint presentations?

Captivate allows you to import PowerPoint presentations and even perform "round-trip" edits back to PowerPoint source files—you can keep the files in sync. This feature is useful if you work with subject matter experts (SMEs) who can use PowerPoint but not Captivate. Articulate components, as we mentioned, are typically accessed within PowerPoint via an Articulate ribbon tab.

Can I create good-looking output from scratch?

Yes—both Captivate and Articulate function beautifully as a blank canvas. You can:

--create text captions.

--import graphic elements.

--control sizing and layout.

What about learning interactions?

Both Captivate and Articulate feature ways to incorporate Flash-based interactivity (no programming knowledge required). As we talk further about tools, you'll learn about creating learner interactions, judiciously using animation, and building quizzes.

How do I get new ideas and support?

Both products are thoroughly supported by the manufacturer, but the great joy in using these tools comes from interacting with their respective user communities. Adobe Captivate has both a forum and an exchange, where users make their work (such as widgets) available for use. Articulate has a helpful and passionate user community, and the company itself sponsors @tomkuhlmann's wonderful Rapid E-Learning Blog.

Can I create simulations?

Many users need to create systems training. Captivate got its start as a Macromedia product called RoboDemo—it made its bones as a simulation tool, and it's one of the great strengths of the program. You can create demonstrations, interactive simulations, and even hands-on assessments.

Articulate is often used in concert with other tools (such as Captivate or TechSmith's Camtasia) to create a simulation environment.

If Captivate handles simulations as well, why would I want to use it with Articulate?

It's subjective, but many people swear by the gorgeous output from Articulate. Inserting a simulation built in Captivate gives you the best features of each tool.

Do these tools play ball with my LMS?

Always check with your LMS vendor, but both Captivate and Articulate are SCORM-compliant. Litmos customers: ask the team any questions you might have about compatibility.

We're going to look at these tools in detail. Next post: a look at Adobe Captivate's features, and how to think about them from an organizational perspective.

Cheers!

@jwillensky

Hot Learning Industry Events to Attend in 2011

2011-02-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

I've been asking around my eLearning network on Twitter to find out who's going to which events this year and this is what I've come up with so far in the training, eLearning, mLearning and immersive games areas:

ASTD Techknowledge 2011: February 2 - 4, San Jose, California, USA.
Game-based, Web 2.0 and mobile technologies, eLearning and Instructional Design: February 2 - 4, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Training 2011 Conference and Expo, February 7 - 9, San Diego, California, USA
Adobe Learning Summit: March 21, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Enterprise Learning Summit 2011: March 22, Alexandria, Virginia, USA.
Gametech 2011: March 22 - 25, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Learning Solutions Conference & Expo: March 23 - 25, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Sloan Consortium Blended Learning Conference & Workshop: March 28 - 29, Oak Brook, Illinois, USA.
ASTD 2011: May 22 - 25. Orlando, Florida, USA.
eLearning DevCon 2011: June 15 - 17, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
mLearnCon 2011: June 21 - 23, San Jose, California, USA.
Sloan Consortium International Conference on Online Learning: July 11 - 13, San Jose, California, USA.
27th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning: August 3 - 5, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
LearnX 2011: September 14 - 15, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
World of Learning: September 27 - 28, Birmingham, United Kingdom
ulearn 2011: October 17 - 18, Christchurch, New Zealand
E-LEARN 2011 - World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare and Higher Education: October 17 - 21, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
DevLearn 2011: November 2 - 4, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
Elliott Masie's Learning 2011, November 6 - 9, Orlando, Florida, USA
Canadian Society for Training and Development (CSTD) Annual Conference, November 16 - 18, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Online Educa Berlin: November 30 - December 2, Berlin, Germany.

Please add more events to the comments section! To find out about more 2011 events check out Clayton Wright's super duper comprehensive list here.

@Schnicker

How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! Philosophy Break

2011-01-24T00:21:00.000-08:00

Greetings, worldwide Litmos community!

This was going to be a post on the nuts and bolts of Adobe Captivate, but... it's not. A few people have asked me what I meant by choosing an eLearning philosophy (subtle, gently probing, questions like "What are you talking about, fool?"). OK," philosophy" was a bit grandiose. We, the people of Litmos, are nothing like these four guys you see at left.

Philosophy? The idea is to pick an initial set of guidelines or principles for development. As long as these guidelines are clear, valid, tested, and learner-centric, it almost doesn't matter what you choose. The idea is to pick a set of rules and get started. Let's talk about it.

OK, you're ready to strap on your jetpack and visit the fantastic world of eLearning. You've identified content that's sitting there in old PowerPoint decks, PDFs, and whatnot. You've fielded crazy training requests from stakeholders in other units. What's next? Get an authoring tool? Fun! No—that's not it. Stop.

Think before you play with authoring tools. Keep this (not genuine) Zen paradox in mind: it's not about the tool—it's about the learner. It doesn't matter what tool you're using. By thinking ahead about the look and feel of your eLearning, you can take your practices and use 'em with any authoring tool. You can also use them across different delivery platforms, such as mLearning for mobile devices.

Did you read your Ruth Clark? No? OK, we'll let you cheat. Here's an article from Learning Solutions magazine that encapsulates Dr. Clark's six main principles.

Get these six principles down in advance, and you will save yourself a lot of heartache and revision.

There are plenty of ideas that work, but starting with a sound philosophy— and being consistent with it— will put you (and your projects) on the fast track. If you choose another set of principles, fine. Just pick something. I chose the Clark principles as an example because so many practitioners I respect have used them for years. It's a great, concise set of guidelines.

Why do I say "it's not about the tool?" Consider Dr. Clark's contiguity principle: at its heart, this principle states that "placing text near graphics improves learning." You can, and should, do that sort of thing with any authoring tool you use—Captivate, Articulate, Raptivity, etc.

As we talk about tools, and as you experiment, keep your basic principles in mind. These principles will also help you evaluate tools to see if they are appropriate for what you need to do. With a set of guidelines, you will also set the tone if you bring in or mentor other developers.

Without these principles and guidelines, you will have to reinvent your plan of attack from project to project, and from developer to developer. This process would be as futile as trying to dunk a basketball on a giraffe (hat tip to eLearning wizard Tracy Parish, aka @hamtra, for the metaphor).

We're going to talk extensively about authoring tools, but I hope you take this piece to heart. No matter what tool you use, no matter what medium you develop for (mLearning, anyone?), you have to have some basic guidelines in place.

Next time: We talk about authoring tools.

Bonus question: Can you identify the painting at the beginning of this post?

Cheers!

@jwillensky

How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! The Fun-filled World of Authoring Tools

2011-01-03T16:52:00.000-08:00

Let me wish you a happy and productive new year from the Litmos blogging team! It's time to continue with our occasional manifesto on how to bring eLearning to your organization (and maximize the use of your LMS). This is a food-for-thought post on authoring tools.

Many Litmos clients (and others tasked with magically converting an organization’s assets into eLearning) struggle with process at the outset. There is a seemingly endless stream of information, and quite a high percentage is good information. Nevertheless, making a choice is difficult. In our last post, we took a look at how to resist the tyranny of choice and begin to approach (attack?) your organization's content.

An immediate suggestion was to devise an approach to eLearning (using maybe one or two sources from books, from noted practitioners, or from courses or workshops) that appeals to you, and base your initial design/development guidelines on that approach. You will always have time to refine and expand your organizational philosophy—the important thing is to get started.

Getting started often means choosing an authoring tool. There are stand-alone tools. There are tools that function as plug-ins. There are screen capture tools. There are cloud based-tools. That tyranny-of-choice thing is going to pop up again. Newly minted organizational eLearning gurus and neophyte instructional designers are often paralyzed by one-best-way thinking; with so many tools in the

marketplace, where to start?

Here's an idea: Jane Hart, founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT), has put together an excellent directory of learning tools. In addition to the heavyweights (e.g. Articulate and Captivate) the directory includes some fantastic task-specific tools like Jing that can make life a lot easier. Check the directory out. Bookmark it. Think about what you need to do (PowerPoint conversion? Simulation? Screen capture?). Consider this--there doesn't need to be a single solution. Many of these tools complement each other.

After you've come up with guidelines for your eLearning approach (Look and feel? Use of audio? Level of interactivity?), you can start experimenting with authoring tools. If you haven't adopted principles from a source like e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, this is an excellent time to do so. You'll save yourself a lot of time and pain later on.

At the beginning, you may want to choose a tool that provides muscle (different ways to create input, Flash output) and a great deal of flexibility. Two giants of the industry are Adobe Captivate and Articulate Studio '09. If you are taking an organizational lead, I strongly recommend experimenting with these tools. Both are available as full-featured demos, and you should be able to master the essentials very quickly. Here's why these tools are a good place to start:

1. Both allow you to work effectively with existing PowerPoint files, yet both are an excellent blank canvas for scratch projects.

Captivate allows import of PP presentations (and round-trip editing).
Articulate Presenter is integrated with PowerPoint itself (see below).

2. Both have extraordinary support communities (soon, we'll be looking at these resources in greater detail).

3. Both allow you to judiciously add interactivity and graphic elements (buttons, arrows, quiz interactions, etc.) to static material with ease.

4. These tools come from stable, well-staffed companies. If you invest in either (or both), you will likely see long-term support and improvements.

In the coming weeks, we'll take a look at both of these tools in greater detail. They are by no means your only options, but using them will help you get moving. The key is to practice and use those guidelines you've developed.

Until next time!

@jwillensky

How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! The Beginning

2010-12-21T19:58:00.001-08:00

Here's a secret about your learning management system (LMS): it's rarely used to its full potential. The Litmos crew tells me that clients often have questions about how to "get stuff online." The questions may seem strange, but the same dysfunctional process plays out all over.

If you're relatively new to the process of getting your organization's knowledge ready for eLearning, take heart. There is an extraordinary amount of information out there. Over the coming weeks, we're going to talk about strategies to get your stuff online, and we're going to direct you to some favorite resources. Of course, we can only scratch the surface—we encourage you to add your favorites in the comments.

Why is it so hard to get that good stuff online? Here are a few typical LMS-client scenarios:

A client engages an LMS vendor as part of a single, extraordinary training effort (New system! New product! Merger! Revolution!). A consultant builds fabulous eLearning, the LMS people create a model for a repeatable (and scalable) user experience, employees learn and perform, the LMS tracks and reports—but that's it. No more engagement. There's no momentum, because nobody at the client organization is empowered to fully use the LMS by getting additional content into the system.
A client has an LMS relationship in place, and all kinds of assets ripe for conversion: PowerPoint® decks, PDF files, Word® docs, static intranet material, new hire/orientation packages, etc. Unfortunately, the mass of collective knowledge sits there, diffuse, gathering dust...

These scenarios are just two illustrations of what goes on. It sounds like institutional paralysis (and maybe it is), but consider your assets:

You have an LMS environment in place (such as with Litmos), or you are in a position to set one up. This environment gives your learners a place to go when they need to build knowledge and skills, and allows you to monitor what your learners find most effective.
You have content. Lots of content. Reams of content. This is the hard part. Your people could have access to organized and engaging, rather than semi-accessible and static, content. Example: imagine how your workforce could (really) internalize your company's marketing strategy, if only they actively participated in eLearning modules instead of just doing some reading.

So, how do you get stuff online? First things first: a content dump is doomed to fail. This maxim is what's known as a "painful elaboration of the obvious." Taking text, a few pictures, and (maybe) an intern's voice and throwing it all into a slide show just won't work. So, a good first principle is to build a short philosophy for your organization's eLearning.

How will it engage learners? What's effective? What part of the process is repeatable?

Taken another way, this philosophy answers the question "How do I treat content?" The sexy part of eLearning may involve learning authoring tools and adding effects, but it's critical to have a solid foundation in content treatment before you start.

Building that foundation is the challenge. There is a paralyzing amount of theoretical and procedural material about building eLearning—websites, academic journals, social networks, conferences, and on and on. Most of it is valid, but getting through it all would take several lifetimes. Suggestion for new eLearning philosophers: read a few books and focus on what the authors have to say. Develop some guidelines. They will serve you well and eliminate the need for a lot of re-work down the road.

A graduate student in instructional design recently asked me to pick two books that I felt would have the most value as she made the transition to a corporate training job. She was going to be tasked with starting a medium-sized company's eLearning efforts, and the company had a good deal of scattered content. My suggestions:

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer): Fantastic first read about eLearning. and a terrific example of theory-into-practice. Consider this: if you practice what the authors preach, you'll have a strong idea of how to use text, visuals, audio, and interactivity. As important: you'll know why.

Better than Bullet Points—Creating Engaging eLearning with PowerPoint (Jane Bozarth): Let's face it. This software is everywhere. That's why I like this book. It's an excellent complement to e-Learning and the Science of Instruction. If you are just getting started, it might surprise you to realize that PowerPoint is a perfectly fine blank canvas for eLearning. Furthermore, you probably already have some PowerPoint skills. Why is this a foundational book? You will not only gain a wealth of hands-on experience (that transfers to other tools), you will also avoid the monsters of bad eLearning: page-turners and endless bullet points.

Please add your suggestions for foundational reading in the comments. As the weeks go by, we'll continue looking at the essential elements of getting your good stuff online. Next up: authoring tools.

@jwillensky

Let Me Introduce Myself...

2010-12-09T20:03:00.000-08:00

Greetings, Litmos community! Thanks to Nicole and Rich, I’ll be helping out with the blog. Our goal is to speak to (and with) Litmos trial users, Litmos clients, eLearning peers, and anyone getting into online learning.

The Litmos team gave me one strict editorial requirement—Write about whatever you want. While the business thrives by helping you to “love your LMS,” we’ll be using this space to explore eLearning ideas and strategies that complement your use of an LMS.

eLearning, online learning, distance education, web-based training… whatever you call it, it’s a broad and perpetually changing topic. The community of practice is talented, passionate, and (often) wildly opinionated. This blog is a response to questions about strategy and content—questions that range from “I’ve picked an LMS vendor, what do I do now?” to “We’ve droned our learners into unconsciousness. How can I create a conversational tone in eLearning?”

We’ll talk about development tools, content development, and trends in online learning. We’ll speak with industry luminaries about topics that strike a chord, and we’ll take a look at training needs in specific industries.

In the coming months, expect posts on any or all of the following:

Moving one’s content online. What are the steps?
Strategies for the newer instructional designer
Choosing an authoring tool, such as Adobe Captivate or Articulate Studio ’09 (Or both. Or neither. Or something else.)
Creating a personal learning network
Storyboarding, storyboarding, and more storyboarding
Social media tools for professional development (or How I Met the Litmos Crew on Twitter)
Design inspiration from art, music, literature, and media
Social media tools for organizational learning
Support networks for authoring tools —where to find help
Industry-focused posts—what are training-related hot buttons in healthcare? Compliance? Technology?
Success stories and cautionary tales—interviews with Litmos clients
Project management basics for eLearning
Online Learning industry developments / awards / new tech / new companies / new tools / conferences
Writing for clarity, and scripting for tone

You’ll see a strong focus on resources. For example—instead of explaining how to use a specific widget in Adobe Captivate or create a specific effect in Articulate, we’ll point you to those who have done remarkable work, and shared their expertise with the community.

This blog is solution-oriented, but there’s no way it’s going to push “one-best-way” thinking. It’s our small part of a global conversation, and the posts are really just starting points. If our efforts make you think, or point you in a new direction, great. You are always welcome to comment as you see fit, and please share alternative processes, resources, or strategies. Thanks!

@jwillensky

Big welcome to our new Litmos Blogger - Jason Willensky! @jwillensky

2010-12-07T19:59:00.000-08:00

We are very excited to announce the arrival of another blogger on the Litmos scene! Although I'm not going anywhere, we decided there was a need for a fresh perspective and voice of expertise to mix it up a bit and we've found our guy.

For many he will need no introduction, but for those yet to be acquainted with Jason Willensky (@jwillensky) I can personally vouch for his passion for learning, eLearning and instructional design, not to mention his quick-witted and skillful retorts and his love of great food! Last year when I went to DevLearn in San Jose I had a few days to kill in San Fran beforehand and it was Jason's food and beverage recommendations that kept me busy running all over town making sure not to miss a thing - he's that good!

Jason brings this same quest for perfection to his work and writing. If he were to fill in a 'me-in-a-nutshell' form it might sound a little something like this:

Based in Phoenix, AZ (by way of New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles)
B.A. in English from Arizona State University
M.Ed. in Educational Technology from Arizona State University
Former corporate trainer with The Vanguard Group (financial services)
Independent instructional design consultant since 2001
Fan of social media, crosswords, and dining out

Jason will be posting regularly on the Litmos blog on a range of different topics, but I'll let him tell you more about that in his first post which is coming right up...

@Schnicker