Monthly inspiration – Getting geeky with coding

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Extreme Computer Nerd

Over the last month I’ve found myself working with code in both two of the big elearning programs Adobe Captivate 8 and Articulate Storyline. Once you can code in either of these programs your options for interactivity and adding interest open up expotentially.

This example below uses conditional coding (if this happens then these things will happen) in Captivate 8. My client wanted text boxes to close automatically when the next information icon was clicked on i.e. only one text box could show at one time. Here is a mocked up file simulating the solution, it was trickier than it looked…

 

Articulate Storyline is much easier to code in than Captivate and Lynda.com is well worth the investment to get you started.

In the Storyline example below, coding enables me to give individualised feedback to the learner at the end of the activity - dependent on the choices they made on previous slides. The actual activity was to write a system note where the learner gets feedback on their specific note choices. This draft example will show you how it could work in real life.

 

If you haven’t yet delved into the world of coding in your rapid elearning tools, I highly recommend investing the time in learning this – you will become the master of the tool and have much more options for getting creative.

Click follow me to receive more updates on this geeky stuff or other elearning instructional design areas. I’d love to hear your thoughts on coding in these rapid elearning tools.

4 tips to choose the right text for your eLearning course

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Does your text make a good first impression?

Girl Squinting Her Eyes

Psychology tells us that first impressions are powerful for forming lasting impressions. Did you realise the way you use text in your elearning courses creates a powerful first impression of the overall quality of your course? For a start, text needs to be easy to read. When text is difficult to read it puts the learner off progressing further into the course. Difficult to read text detracts from well written content. The first impression of your course is set even before your audience has a chance to digest any of the content.

How can you choose the right text to make a good first impression? Here’s some tips to get started:

Reduce the amount of text

I’m a minimalist when it comes to text, the less the better. A picture is worth a 100 words and a video or animation is worth 1000.

Avoid content dumping and having large blocks of text. Ask your subject matter expert what the desired behaviours are and what these look like in the real world. Then look for ways to replicate these behaviour choices rather than writing them.

Use a good font size

Use font size 16/18 or bigger for body text.  Headings should be even larger. Text that is too small is an instant turn off for many people – it is a no compromise design flaw. Nobody wants to be squinting to read the text - make it easy for your audience.

If you have been designing the course it’s a good idea to test your font size and style on someone else before committing to it throughout your course. Also test how it will look on the device/s that your target audience will be using.

Contrast you text colour

Colour contrast is important to make text easy to read. This is where either dark text is placed on a light background or light coloured text is placed on a dark background. See how the high contrast text is so much easier to read than low contrast text:

own graphic

Avoid CAPITAL text

As well as having the risk of yelling at your audience (unless that is what you want to do) text in capitals is very difficult to read. Imagine you are travelling in a car, capitals are like applying brakes to your reading journey, the mind has to stop to read capitals. This is why I don’t use capitals for all but the first word in headings – it makes them much quicker and easier to read. Of course, there are comprimises when organisations insist on captialised headings in their style guides.  Where I have the choice however, I choose not to capitalise each word in a heading.

my block text graphic

No-one wants to work that hard to read text!

To make a good first impression of your elearning you need to make sure your text is easy to read. Hard to read text through using large blocks of text, small font size, poor contrast, and excessive use of capitals is off putting to your audience and will detract from well designed content.

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy these posts:

Putting personality back into text

Performing an elearning makeover

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Rapid prototype vs storyboard?

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No Problem

Traditionally elearning courses have been storyboarded so the instructional designer can plan the content and activities and get feedback before starting to build the course. Storyboarding allows you to check your design is on target with expectations before investing time in developing.

However, sometimes it makes even more sense to rapid prototype rather than storyboard. Rapid prototyping is where all or some parts of an elearning course or activity are roughly built i.e. it’s a working model that’s not in the finished polished state. Rapid prototyping shows what you intend to do – whereas storyboarding tells what you intend to do.

So when does it make more sense to rapid prototype rather than storyboard. Put simply – when it is more useful to show how it works rather than tell how it will work. Here are some situations when I choose to rapid prototype rather than storyboard:

Working with SMEs or clients new to elearning

If I’m working with clients that have little or no prior experience of elearning I will prototype parts of elearning interactions (or show them a similar elearning interaction) so they can see exactly what a drag and drop, system demo, contextual feedback, or a branching scenario looks like.

When look and feel is important

Look and feel is always important but sometimes you might need to show rather than tell look and feel. This could be an advantage when a client’s preferences are to see how it works. It could also be wise to prototype part of a course if you are investing a lot of time and energy into the look and feel of a theme, or if you’re a developing a series of modules that will all have the same look and feel. Better to have solid agreement at the beginning rather than developing 10 modules, only for the client to ask you to change the look and feel afterwards!

When rapid prototyping will save or not add any more time

Sometimes I’ve actually found it quicker to skip the storyboard stage altogether and go straight into rapid prototyping an elearning interaction. For example, I usually go straight to prototyping for software simulations. I do this as I find it more useful/quicker/easier to get feedback from a prototype (working model) than from a storyboard presented on paper. Even though it may take slightly longer to rapid prototype it saves me time as it’s part drafted in the tool already and it results in a clearer vision of what the final product will be.

For a complicated interaction

If the interaction is complicated it can be useful to roughly prototype and get feedback from stakeholders before investing the extra time in perfecting the interaction and graphics. It’s also useful when it’s difficult to explain a type of interaction. For example, I’m currently prototyping an interaction in Articulate Storyline where the learner will receive individualised feedback based on their previous choices. It’s hard to explain what I’m doing in text, but I’ll show you the rapid prototype once I’m done – push the follow button to subscribe and get notified of when this is ready for you to view.

What do you think about rapid prototyping? Are there times when you choose to rapid prototype rather than storyboard? I’d love to hear your thoughts – follow me to hear more of mine.

Monthly inspiration – the awesome tool Videoscribe!

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Have you heard of videoscribe? Do you use it?

Videoscribe is a seriously cool tool that allows you to create whiteboard animations in a fast and effective way.

I’ve used it to tell stories, for example a customer’s journey through an organisation. I’ve also used it to show pharmacy technicians how to solve complicated calculations (kind of like the Khan Academy). I have many plans to utilise this tool more in the future now that I know how to bend it to what I want it to do.

Don’t worry you don’t have to be a graphic artist to use this tool. Videoscribe comes with it’s own stock of images, you can also make your own images using a SVG drawing tool such as Inkscape for Windows or idraw for Mac

It publishes well into the big elearning tools like Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate. Or alternatively you can use it in it’s .mov or .flv published state to make it run seamlessly across multiple devices – just like the example given above.

Can you see ways you could utilise this tool in your elearning? I’d love to hear your thoughts, or maybe you have a cool tool you’d like to share too?

 

Do your Characters have character?

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picture narration3

Characters like the one above that tell you a whole lot of information are boring and add no value to the learning experience. It’s even worse if they are used in the same static pose and have no emotion. Would you want to spend your precious time with someone who has one fixed expression and insists on talking lots of information at you?

Using characters in elearning is now becoming more prevalent as text based Powerpoint looking elearning decreases. However, it’s not enough to just add characters into a course - they need to be used well. They need to have both purpose and personality. Do your characters have character?

I recently looked at an example course from a company, although it had nice looking graphics and characters, it was immediately obvious that the characters had no ‘character’. They were being used just to “tell content” or narrate information. They were in a static pose and showed no emotion or reaction to any of the content in the course. In fact if the characters were removed from the course it would have had no learning impact as the information could have been “told” without the characters being present at all.

So how can you give your characters character? Here’s a few tips:

Make your characters converse rather than tell

Use characters to simulate realistic conversations, thoughts or decision making. Make their conversations (whether written or in audio) sound like what a real person would say in that context. Check with a SME (subject matter expert) if the conversations, thoughts and decisions of your characters’ sound realistic for your audience. Adjust where needed.

Have characters that convey emotion

Use your characters to add emotion into your elearning. To do this you will need your characters to display a range of emotions realistic to the context you are giving. If you are using photo images of characters it is often worthwhile to subscribe to a specific elearning stock image site – check out this post. When using illustrated characters make sure that they are either available with different emotions or that you are able to edit them yourself to show a range of emotions.

Create body language

Body language is a strong part of communication. When you have static images of characters use a variety of poses to simulate body language. This movement of different poses will help to give your characters personality and make them seem more realistic. As well as having a variety of poses you can also use different angles and include close-ups, mid-range and full view images of your characters to increase interest.

When using characters in elearning make them add value to your learning content. Check that they are active characters where they are part of the content and context rather than passive characters who are just talking content at you. Use the tips above to make sure your characters have character.

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Making your elearning theme come to life

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Young man in suit looking astonished in laptop. Surfing the inte

To make your elearning theme come to life you need to build atmosphere and emotion into it. There are many ways in which you can do this to make a memorable elearning experience.

Consider all the elements of your course and make them fit your elearning theme e.g. learner goal/challenge, language style, type of interactions, graphics, fonts, animations, audio, and video. It’s like having a consistent overarching story running through the whole elearning experience, where everything looks like it belongs together.

I recently built a compliance course focused on on a futuristic theme. My clients wanted a positive focus in their compliance training by doing the right thing for the customer rather than focusing on avoiding breaching the legislation.

Having the right theme – futuristic – helped put the positive spin into this elearning course. Here’s how I built atmosphere and emotion into my theme.

Start with a learner challenge

It’s motivating to jump straight in and start with a learner challenge. This can be as simple as asking the learner a question. For my futuristic theme, I gave a couple of sentences describing the situation and then asked the question “what future will you create” with a two photos of the same customer, one with a happy expression and the other looking nervous.

Font to match the theme

Getting the right signature font to match your theme works well for creating atmosphere. For my theme I downloaded the “Back to the Future” font from dafont.com and used it to match my theme…

In to the Future - da font

Background graphics to match the theme

This is where I thought about what graphics in the background could add value to building the theme and experience. With the futuristic theme certain things popped to mind like space, time travel, motion, black hole, speed. With a couple of well placed searches in stock sites I was able to locate the perfect background graphic for my theme:

Abstract Motion Background

Sound for scene setting

Using sound to set the scene can be a very effective way to develop the right emotion. For my theme I downloaded a futuristic sound woosh to match the fly from left entrance of the ‘In to the Future’ title.

Animation and motion

Use motion and animation to match your theme and build interest. Choose a couple of styles of animation and keep it simple so it doesn’t overwhelm the learner. In my theme I used two types of animation: in the initial slide I animated the ‘In to the future’ title and the three following statements to fly in from the left. At the beginning of each branching scenario I also added a spin to the slide transition.

Matching language

It’s important the language style matches your theme no matter whether it’s spoken audio or whether it’s in writing. To match my futuristic theme I needed to make sure the language I used was in future tense. I also keep my language conversation as this tone fitted my theme, topic and audience.

 

There are lots of other ways to build atmosphere and emotion in your elearning theme, such as developing characters and the overacrching story. An important thing to keep in mind is that the visual, audio, and interactive elements, as mentioned above – add to your theme, rather than detract from it.

 

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Elearning stock graphics, why subscribe?

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It’s important to get your graphics right in elearning so they add value to learning. I often use photos to convey realistic conversations and evoke emotion.

If you are doing several elearning projects it is worth subscribing to a site that specialises in elearning stock graphics. Here are a few reasons why investing in elearning stock graphics are worth it and make developing elearning easier.

Time saving

Using stock graphics that are tailored for elearning saves a lot of time. Here’s how they can save you time:

  1. People graphics come already cut out so there is no need for you to clear cut them in Photoshop or other image editing tools. This could save you as much as 10 minutes per graphic. My last project used about 20 different people images, using elearning stock gave me a saving of approximately 200 minutes of photo editing time.
  2. You’ll have a huge reduction of search time looking for the right characters that also have multiple poses and expressions. Elearning stock characters already come with a large variety of poses and expressions, you no longer need to accept that cheesy grin pose. Subscribing to an elearning stock site will give you a wide choice of characters with different ages, ethnic backgrounds and dress (casual, business, industrial, medical). You can pick people images that will relate to your audience without having to extensively search for the right images on a standard stock site.

Convey character emotions better

As already mentioned elearning stock people come with a range of expressions and poses. Using expressions makes it much easier to get emotion and reality into your elearning stories and scenarios.

Here’s a small sample of different expressions that one character uses:

many expressions

Use conversation templates for inspiration

Some elearning stock graphic sites have conversation templates that you can download. The advantage of the conversation templates is that you can borrow ideas for how to build a realistic looking conversation by using different character angles and background images.

Other useful stuff

Subscribing to an elearning stock graphic site often gives you access to lots other useful stuff. Two of my favourite elearning stock sites are Elearningbrothers and Elearningart. Both of these sites have a huge variety of cutout people, background images, speech bubbles and downloadable elearning templates.

As well as the above Elearning Art has some cool isometric characters, hand written fonts and office objects. Whereas Elearning Brothers has downloadable game and activity templates, elearning sounds (e.g. correct and incorrect feedback sounds), and character videos.

Using elearning stock graphics won’t eliminate the need for the occasional standard stock image but it will reduce time and energy spent on getting the right characters and emotion into your elearning.

 

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