Apr142014
If you’re looking for a great source of practical, innovative e-learning finds, E-Learning Heroes is the place to look. As usual, this past week was chock-full of community insights and advice on topics like: managing courses, showcasing your portfolio, using clipart, and much more.
Take a peek at some of the bright ideas that Articulate community members shared throughout the week:
Community tutorials
Conversations in the community
New blog posts
Seen on Twitter
Get more e-learning tips by following us on Twitter and joining our E-Learning Heroes community.
Apr72014
Happy Monday, E-learning Heroes!
Feeling a little learner-shy? Stuck on a vexing scenario? Takes and retakes getting you down? Then come check out the most helpful e-learning tips and insights from the Articulate Community to get your e-learning course rolling.
Over the past week, the Articulate community shared visual design tips, techniques to customize your course player, a whole bunch of free stuff to energize your e-learning, and lots more!
Want to share a tip or trick with the community? Post in the forums, record a quick Screenr, or, tweet a link using the #Articulate hashtag. Below is a recap of last week’s e-learning action:
Community tutorials
Conversations in the community
New blog posts
Seen on Twitter
Get more e-learning tips by following us on Twitter and joining our E-Learning Heroes community.
Apr22014
At Articulate, we sell software, of course; but we’re also committed to helping you be successful using it. We want to empower you to build the best courses you can. To that end, we offer all sorts of free resources:
One of my favorite community activities is the weekly challenge. Instead of yacking about learning theory and what e-learning should be, we present mini challenges that help you learn more about the tools and encourage you to play around with ideas that could help you build better e-learning courses.
But sometimes all of that community goodness just isn’t enough. Many of us prefer to have the resources right at our fingertips, literally. In those cases, we tend to turn to books.
E-Learning Uncovered: Articulate Studio ’13
Following on the heels of E-Learning Uncovered: Articulate Storyline, Diane Elkins and Desiree Pinder have released E-Learning Uncovered: Articulate Studio ’13, a new book in their successful series.
Like the rest of their books, it’s filled with detailed and practical information that will take you through the basics on all four Studio ’13 applications.
This book covers how to: use PowerPoint and Presenter ’13, create quizzes in Quizmaker ’13, build interactions in Engage ’13, and record video presentations with the new Replay ’13.
Five things I really like about the book include the:
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Amazing details. You’ll find practical step-by-step instructions for all of the features and common-use cases.
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Design tips. They include lots of design ideas that are more than simple explanations of the features and will help you get more out of the software.
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Time savers. Throughout the book you’ll find time-saving tips and ideas.
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A "Warning, Will Robinson!" approach. Best practices are developed over time and often the result of trial and error. The book does a good job pointing out some of the common issues when building courses so that you don’t have to go through the trial and error yourself.
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Insight from actual e-learning developers. It’s one thing to write a book about e-learning, but it’s quite another to actually build an e-learning course. Diane and Desiree build real courses with the tools they write about. That’s a plus for anyone looking for practical help.
Win a free copy of the book:
The authors are giving away five free copies of the new book. To enter to win one, add a comment and tell us what you like about the Articulate community at the bottom of this post.
We’ll do a drawing on April 30th and announce the winners in the following Weekly Recap.
Good luck!
Post written by Tom Kuhlmann
Mar312014
If your e-learning project is starting to swerve and fishtail toward the breakdown lane, then it’s time to make a pit stop at the largest e-learning repair shop: E-Learning Heroes. You’ll find skilled course technicians who can quickly diagnose, troubleshoot, and restore everything from e-learning fender-benders to completely totaled courses.
And while you’re there, browse around the Articulate Community garage to see what other work’s going on. You’ll learn how to fix deflated courses, rotate and balance content, align interests, and tune up your e-learning engine to get more mileage out of the courses you develop.
Check out the week’s recap right here:
Community tutorials
Conversations in the community
New blog posts
Seen on Twitter
Get more e-learning tips by following us on Twitter and joining our E-Learning Heroes community.
Mar272014
Making organizational changes can be a risky, yet necessary, disruption to any company’s status quo. Even with experts on board to help, it’s time-consuming and expensive. But the U.K.-based company Changefirst helps organizations build the capabilities to implement change effectively. Recently, Changefirst helped a client slash a £400,000 organizational training expense to a £50,000 one—and train four times more people—with an e-learning program created in Articulate Storyline.
For years, Changefirst’s clients had wrestled with the inconvenience, availability, time, and expense of face-to-face workshops. No one doubted their effectiveness, but travel expenses and venue fees alone quickly added up. Not to mention the cost of creating and running programs, and the lost work time for participants. Even a two-day offsite training program could cost over £50,000.
Changefirst’s e-learning module helps learners create a personalized change management plan.
The consultants at Changefirst wondered if e-learning might offer clients a workable alternative. Nathan Brewer, Operations Manager at Changefirst, connected with e-learning developer Phil Mayor from Elearning Laboratory to tackle the challenge. “They wanted online modules that learners could access from computers or iPads, and that featured dynamic content that would respond to a learner’s choices. Yet, the modules needed to be easy for the consulting team to manage and modify. Quite a tall order,” Phil recalls.
Learners can complete the e-learning course in one sitting, or stop and later resume where they left off.
Phil knew Articulate Storyline was the only tool for the job. He explains, “Storyline let me build these complex interactions easily. I created small building blocks that I could then replicate, assemble, and test very quickly to see if they did what I needed. The responsiveness of the software cut my experimentation time dramatically.”
The course itself educates learners on the science and necessity of change in an approachable, practical manner. It starts with a broad look at organizational change and then, section by section, narrows course content according to choices learners make in the course. In each section’s action learning component, participants create action plans for their change initiatives. Exercises include short-answer questions, where learners reflect on organizational changes occurring in their own jobs or the workplace and on how they plan to adapt to them. The activity builds throughout each section, recalling the learner’s previous answers. By the end of the course, each learner has created a personalized, downloadable change management guide they can use to manage an upcoming change.
Learners apply their change management skills to a change they’re currently working on.
Nathan was impressed with what Phil created with Storyline, and liked that the translation support feature made it easy to produce content in seven languages for global clients. “It’s a snap to swap out language, text, branding, and more,” Nathan notes. “These highly interactive e-learning modules are really easy to modify.”
Each section steps learners through a phase of change using Changefirst’s systematic methodology.
And the business upside is huge. With these modules, Changefirst can offer clients a way to deliver its proven methodology to a larger audience at a fraction of the cost. For example, one of Changefirst’s clients recently used the e-learning program to cut their annual training expenses by 87%. When measured on a per-person basis, that represents a 96% reduction in what they paid per learner last year.
“The Storyline modules give our clients an incredibly cost-effective way to build skills rapidly at scale,” Nathan concludes. “Now we can help more organizations implement lasting change successfully, at a more affordable cost. And that’s a win for us and for our clients.”
