Tech4learning

Uncovering Articulate Studio '09

A while ago I reviewed a 900-plus page mega-work from Patti Shank that provided an extremely thorough guide to using the top-rating Articulate Studio '09 rapid e-learning authoring tool.  I commented at the time that having a book independently written about your software was a great endorsement for Articulate.

Well now, another book has hit the shelves and I'm equally as excited about this one.

E-learning Uncovered:  Articulate Studio '09 - in less than 300 pages and in a very visual style - provides both a great overview of Articulate's capabilities and clear step-by-step instructions on how to use every element of this software.

What I particularly liked about this book was the fact that it's three authors are clearly power-users of the tool and have supplemented the strict "how to" content with loads - and I mean loads - of personal hints and tips.  These are presented as "Bright Ideas", "Design Tips", "Power Tips", "Time Savers" and "Cautions".  In fact, content-wise, these must account for a very high percentage of the page space in this book.

The flow of content through the book - whilst at first leaving me a bit perplexed - soon turned out to make absolute sense.  After a quick overview of the elements that make up the Articulate Studio suite of products, you are taken through the important matter of creating your first template and setting the key parameters for your project.  Now although the vendor offers some great online support materials, this is one area I've always struggled with, as from within the software, it's not always clear what the impact will be of your various template setting decisions.  With this book, however, both through very clear instructions and some very valuable appendices, you can feel confident about any changes you make do the default settings.

There is also a really good section on how to get the most from PowerPoint, which - of course - is the backbone of most Articulate projects.

In addition to chapter on getting the most from your audio narration, there is also a good section on adding slide annotations, something I now feel much more comfortable doing.

A separate chapter on using Flash, movies and the video encoder has given me lots of new ideas for adding in more multimedia.

There then follows lots of good material on the different ways to publish your content, including timely material for me on exporting the audio as a podcast - and I never knew that Articulate would give you a podcast player for your website.  Supported by another appendix, there are also some excellent explanations of the various AICC and SCORM settings you might need to integrate your modules with your LMS.

The book concludes with chapters on developing the software's Engage Interactions and creating Quizmaker quizzes and questions. Again, some very clear graphics help to ensure you get the results you plan for when setting the various parameters for your quizzes, resulting in less reliance on simple trial and error.  In the section on creating specific question types, I was really delighted to learn about a time-line feature that enables you to control what and when content appears on each of your question slides.

This is a must-have book for anyone who uses Articulate - both novice and experienced users.  I've been using this software for 5 years now and for me, it's now taken on a whole new lease of life.  Oh....and I now really know how to create branching scenarios and have started to include these in all my latest modules.

QuickLessons for Rapid E-learning

Whether you're an individual practitioner, a business corporation or an academic institution, QuickLessons offers an online rapid e-learning content development platform.

Content creation is made easier with a wide range of templates and the results of your labours are exported in the popular Flash format.  A team of developers can collaborate easily throughout a project and content can easily be assembled into reusable learning objects.  As well as text and graphics, media and interactive quizzes can also be included in the final project.

A more complete feature list can be viewed here.

The examples in their Demo Center provide a good insight into the capabilities of the platform.

I'll Show You in a Jing!

There is now seemingly no end to the number of free programs available on the web that allow you to create screen capture movies. 

But Jing, although free, comes from TechSmith, the provider of the popular tool, Camtasia.

You can quickly capture still images, or as is more likely, short video clips of on-screen activity, with up to five minutes of audio narration.  That duration limitation actually encourages you to keep things short and sweet, which I encourage.

You can also add annotations to your screen shots to help focus the viewer (learner) on the aspect you want them to observe.

When it comes to sharing your content, you can publish this to TechSmith's screencast.comsite - you get 2GB of space - or you can publish to your own website, blog or reach out to your audience via Twitter.

If you upgrade to the Proversion, you can add a video feed from your webcam too.  Video quality is also higher and you can compress the finished output to a more efficient size.  You can also share your content to a wider range of sharing websites, including YouTube, and your movies won't have to carry Jing's branding.

If You Can Type, You Can Make Movies!

This is the strapline for a really interesting (and fun) solution from Xtranormal.

Their State software allows you to easily create a 3-D cartoon animation with automatic lip-syncing based on whatever you type.  You can choose from about 45 voices of all nationalities and accompany them with background soundtracks and effects and place the action in a variety of sets.  Your characters can move and point within the animations, show appropriate facial expressions and you can film them from different camera angles.

The final movies are exported in standard video formats, so could easily be embedded into an e-learning package or website.

A set of short tutorials will really show you this tool in action and there are plenty of examples of the resulting outputs.  You can even have a quick play yourself before deciding whether to download the software.  Even with simple trial and error, it was quick to put together a simple "piece to camera".

Rapid Intake - Desktop and Web-based Rapid E-learning in Unison

A few months ago, I spent a while researching rapid e-learning authoring tools and found myself having to decide whether I wanted to go down the non-collaborative desktop software route - feature packed - or forego some of the functionality and choose a web-based collaborative authoring tool option.

I choose the former then, but am still longing for an online SaaS solutioin that is not only feature-rich but also affordable for those with modest budgets and smaller target audiences.

I'm still looking but was interested when I stumbled about Rapid Intake who offer two authoring tools in versions for the desktop and for the browser.

ProForm is the desktop version.  This enable non-Flash programmers to create rapid e-learning courses, with all the usual features.

Unison is the browser (web)-based version.  The colloborative element of this version is enhanced with access to Rapid Intake's third product, CleanCourse, which is a very useful online project management and tracking tool for e-learning developers.

Rapid Intake's website is also packed full of useful resources for all rapid e-learning developers, which also reinforces the high level of support options that are offered as standard to all their clients.

Rapid E-learning - Clearly Articulated

For a developer of a rapid e-learning authoring tool to have an independent publisher commission a book to explain how to use their software is testimony to the market domination of that tool.  To have that book's team of authors led by e-learning development expert, Patti Shank, is proof that this tool can be used to create high quality and instructionally sound content.  And for the book to be over 1,000 pages long and weigh 1.75kg clearly positions this tool as a feature-packed package.

So I was pleased - after quite a few months' delay - to get hold of my copy of Essential Articulate Studio '09.

This book provides a very complete guide to using the four elements that make up the Articulate Studio '09 suite, namely Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage and the Video Encoder.  Each of the different aspects of the software are covered - and I mean "each" - so you won't miss out on anything.  In fact, if the book wasn't so long, I would love to read it cover to cover, as although I've used this tool for over four years now, I know I've only scratched the surface of what it can do.

The first chapter provides a quick overview of the tool, including how to install the software.  The next chapter then goes on to look at the topic of rapid e-learning development, including the preparation required before embarking on a project.

In Chapter Three, the authors introduce the main part of the tool, Presenter, and as well as providing a brief introduction to this part, they also look at what to include as part of your project and good project management techniques.  The next four chapters cover all the elements of this application.

Chapters Eight to Thirteen focus on the Quizmaker software and again begin with some of the background preparation when it comes to creating quizzes and surveys.

From Chapter Fourteen to Twenty Five, the book devotes a lot of pages to individual explanations of the different types of interaction that can be created using the Engage program. 

Chapter Twenty Six brings together the publishing aspects of each of the three main software applications, before the final chapter puts the Video Encoder application through its paces.

The book also includes a CD-ROM that contains a 30-day trial of the software itself, together with a copy of the vendor's own documentation, plus links to some of the support resources on their website.

What I most appreciated about this book was the clear explanations provided at each step and the frequent illustrations.  As a frequent user of Articulate Studio, one of the barriers that has held me back from pushing the tool to its full potential has been the uncertainty about what would happen if, for instance, I tweaked something.  With this book, I don't need to worry about the impact something I do might have - I can see it illustrated for myself.  In particular, thanks to the content of Chapter Seven, I now feel much more confident in customising the player templates.

As well as the step-by-step instructions, the book is full of hints and tips on to get the most from the application.  This is probably the closest the book gets to providing some instructional design coaching.  If anything, given the background of the authors, I was expecting more of a focus on how the software could be used to reinforce sound instructional design techniques, but that's my only "minor" criticism of what is certainly a must-have resource for both novice and experienced Articulate Studio '09 users.

E-learning 2.0

It was with great interest that I started to read this new book.

Not only because I used to work for the publisher's sister company in Europe, but because this was one of the first books I'd seen focusing on e-learning 2.0.

If you buy this book, get it for the good up-to-date chapter (3) on what constitutes e-learning today, including synchronous (live) e-learning and some comprehensive coverage on the "new" phenomenon of rapid e-learning and when you might use it versus the more "traditional" forms of e-learning.  It must be mentioned that the author runs a company that sells a rapid e-learning authoring tool, but although the examples in the book do reference this product, overall, there is little "hard sell".

Buy it for its reference to the concept of social networking in the business world and among adults (chapter 4) and its discussion about podcasting (chapter 5); also for the first specific coverage I've seen in a book about the use of m-learning within the corporate learning arena (chapter 6).

Chapters 7 and 8 focus on what makes a successful e-learning course and if you're using a rapid e-learning authoring tool, then the clearly presented discussions about all manner of design issues will provide a crash course in creating an effective course.

Chapter 9 brings the book to a close with another "first" for an e-learning book - a good attempt at demystifying the world of standards and integration, in which AICC, SCORM 1.2 and 2004 are clearly and simply explained.  I also welcomed the author's realistic take on the subject of reusable learning objects and her honest view - shared by me and others - that there are probably few real good situations where a "pure" learning object strategy would make sense.

Although I enjoyed reading this book, I did struggle with my first reading of chapter 2, in which the author explains the stages that an organisation will go through with an e-learning strategy.  The discussions here seem to align e-learning with website development, which I've never really seen myself, but that's not to say there weren't some good observations.

There is one section though - the author's review of audio within e-learning courses - where I have to use my own 15-plus years of experience to provide an alternative viewpoint to her comment that you should "think twice about deploying audio for your courses".  And I can only speak from my own experience, but from my days of deploying e-learning to over 70,000 staff at a large retail bank (where staff openly requested courses with audio, over those without);through consulting into large multinational organisations; working with two Brandon Hall award-winning e-learning development houses where audio was used throughout every title; to my more recent projects of rejuvenating Captivate-authored software training modules by re-purposing them with audio narration, I can testify that audio does make a very positive difference to an e-learning module. 

This doesn't mean (and here I agree with the author) the narrator reading word for word what is presented on the screen.  Instead the narration should only be reinforced with short bullet points or appropriate graphics.  With in-house rapid e-learning projects, including the voice of the subject matter expert can add the authority and credibility that some learners need to "trust" the content. 

In response to the comment that audio adds considerably to the production times, with my own rapid e-learning projects, it generally take two hours to record an hour of final audio and less than half that time again to perform any edits.  I'm currently able to produce a finished hour of content with audio in about 6 to 8 hours, which is less than half the time mentioned in the book.

But that aside - and thanks for bearing with me and my own personal opinions above - this is a good book for anyone new to e-learning and who's looking for up-to-date messages, which are lacking in the other books on the subject, many of which are now dated in terms of their messages.

Rapid Training Simulations

Many of the rapid e-learning tools on the market today, with some careful planning, can be used to create training simulations of the type where you are trying to replicate a customer interaction, an appraisal meeting or a sales call, for example.

But if I was producing a lot of these, I'd be very interested in the KDSimStudio product from KnowledgeDynamics, not least because my first projects could use the free version of their software.  You can create your simulations by using a combination of wizards and drag and drop features.

As well as creating typical conversations with branching scenarios, you can also add in so-called "coaching tips".

The finished simulations are published in the popular Flash format.

This demo module was produced using the free version.  The free version allows you to have up to 2 characters in the simulation, but for £73 you can upgrade to their lite version, which permits up to 4 characters and an unlimited number of conversation objects.

More advanced Designer and Professional versions are on the way too.

And On Line 5 We Have...

If I was Stateside, this posting would probably be longer, but when you want to record a telephone call in the UK, and at least one party does not have access to Skype (or another VoIP service) and you don't want them to have to dial a number in the United States, then - as far as my research has uncovered - there aren't many options.

I've been looking for ways to have subject matter experts, with busy schedules and no access to suitable recording technology - assuming they had the inclination to fiddle around with any such devices - to record podcast interviews or voiceover narrations for e-learning modules.  If your organisation uses any form of digital dictation service (and you can export the recorded audio files in the correct format for your authoring tool), then that's a good option.

There's also the problem of many IT departments probiting the use of any form of VoIP service.

So whilst acknowledging this last issue, I did note a service called CallBurner.  This service allows you to record Skype-to-Skype phone calls.  You can record them to the MP3 or WAV formats, which are by far the most popular audio file types for both podcasting and rapid e-learning narration.

But what if your caller doesn't have access to Skype or can't use it from where they are located? Well, it is possible to add a "landline" number to your Skype account, called SkypeIn, so they could call that, provided you were using a Skype phone your end.  I'd work from home that day, if I was also barred from using the service at work.  You could also call them on their number (the so-called SkypeOut service).

As well as recording the full conversation, you can also have each side of the call put onto separate tracks.

If you can record Skype-to-Skype, then the service is free.  Otherwise, after a free trial period, you'll have to pay an annual fee of €50.

I'll continue to look for services similar to those in the USA, where your caller can dial a local-call or freephone number and directly record their commentary to a website, which then e-mails you the file containing their audio.

E-learning Gets Vocal

Sometime I hope to be able to blog about a great voiced based tool that could add an aural dimension to asynchronous e-learning objects.  I've known about it for over a year now, but unfortunately, it was withdrawn by its vendor after a few months of beta testing, pending a further overhaul.

But having whet your appetite, I'm pleased to review another tool, in a similar vein, although different in many respects.

VoiceThread offers the ability to collaborate via voice messages around on-screen content.  From a corporate training point of view, the content could be a PowerPoint slideshow.  Not only could the trainer present their slides via video or just by voice, but their trainees could comment back via a number of different methods - voice (via a US telephone number of VoIP), text, audio file or video clip.  

Not only can you comment by voice, but you can also annotate the content as you do so.  The vendor refers to this as "doodling" and your doodles are even synchronised with your commentary.

The VoiceThreads can be shared with others too, so creating larger learning networks.  They can also be embedded into websites and even exported onto mobile devices as video files.  When you've embedded the VoiceThread into your site or blog, the conversations can continue or really get started.

Thanks to the power of sharing, you can see a demo of how to embed a VoiceThread into a learning blog on YouTube.

I think this is a great way to create rapid e-learning that not only enables you to deliver your content quickly across the web, but it also adds in the missing social dimension that has held e-learning back in the past.