This guest blog post is by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
Even if you’re new to e-learning, you know that it’s impossible to predict what kinds of design challenges you’ll face from one project to the next. A great way to achieve e-learning success is to buddy up with others who can share their wisdom, guidance, and food for thought. Fortunately, the Articulate community has plenty of all those things.
To help bring good fortune to your e-learning journey, below is a collection of all sorts of new tips & insights that the community shared during the past week.
Need some help noodling out some creative ideas for a course you’re building, or about how to leverage your Articulate software to get the job done? Just post in the forums & you’ll get helpful feedback in no time.
This guest blog post is by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
Before you tackle whatever’s on your e-learning plate this week, treat yourself to the helpful tips, examples, and ideas the Articulate community dished out over the past week — we’ve gathered up the really good stuff right here. It was especially cool to see more folks continue sharing about their experience of building their Articulate Guru Award entries. Be sure and dig into their learnings & examples, as well as the many other great insights that your fellow community members shared.
It’s that time of the year again, Articulate fans! Step right up to the ballot box and help your favorite elearning authoring tools earn their 6th consecutive honor as the Best of Elearning!
Each year Elearning! Magazine holds a readers’ favorite awards where you cast your votes for the best of the best.
1. Best Learning Management System (SaaS, Open-Source, or Content Supplier provided) <--- Articulate Online
9. Best Rapid Development Tool <--- Articulate Presenter
10. E-learning Development Tool <--- Articulate Presenter
14. Video Capture, Production, Publishing Solution <--- Screenr
15. Assessment Tool <--- Articulate Quizmaker
18. Best Presentation Tool <--- Articulate Presenter
Your vote matters:
Eighty-three percent of Elearning! Magazine readers recommended an e-learning product or solution over the last 12 months, according to an Elearning! Survey conducted November 2008. And, 61% of the respondents said award recognition impacted their decision to consider and/or purchase from honored vendors.
Click here to get started. It only takes a couple minutes. And we will be grateful. Thank you.
This guest blog post was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
You people have been busy! We’ve received nearly 200 entries from all over the world for the 2010 Articulate Guru Awards! Thank you, Articulate community, for building and sharing some amazing e-learning courses! In the coming weeks we’ll be taking a careful look at each one, so that we can crown the new gold, silver, and bronze winners. We’ll also be sprucing up the Community Showcase to include not only samples of the winning courses, but also some very impressive honorable mentions. We think you’ll really like what you see!
If there was a common theme we heard from the folks who submitted, it was, “Wow, I really learned a lot by doing this project!” That’s what’s cool about a challenge like the Guru Awards — it’s a great chance to get creative, stretch your skills, and try some new things.
In fact, in this week’s Articulate community recap below, you’ll see that some Articulate users have already started sharing their learnings.
How about you? What new things have you learned, either in preparing your Guru entry, or in your other e-learning projects? Aspiring gurus want to know. We invite you to tell the community about your latest e-learning discoveries by posting in the forums. Or share via Screenr or Twitter. (Remember to include the #Articulate hashtag in your tweet, so others in the community will be sure to see it.)
This guest blog post was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
It’s another new week! As you’re tackling your e-learning to-do list, don’t forget to catch up on the tips & tricks your fellow Articulate community members shared last week. To make that easier, below we’ve provided a best-of-the-best list for you to check out. And remember: entries for the Articulate Guru Awards are due this week! Don’t forget to submit yours by Wednesday, August 11. It’s free to enter, and if you win, you get a cash prize and free software — not to mention a lot of adoring fans when your work is featured in the Community Showcase.
This guest post was written by Articulate Customer Support Engineer David Fair.
Videos are a great way to enhance the appeal and effectiveness of your e-learning courses. Many e-learning developers like to insert movies onto their course slides, but did you know you can also add a video to the presenter panel in the sidebar of your course? And if your video is taller than it is wide, you can even fill your sidebar with video if you want. This can create a unique look that really catches the eye of your learners or clients:
Inspired by a previous blog post by Dave Moxon, I’ve recently been experimenting with adding video to the sidebar, and I wanted to share with you some ideas to try in your own courses.
Some Examples of Sidebar Video
Here’s a little intro to what sidebar video can look like. In the following screencast, I’ll show you a few examples of a video that contains scrolling images, as well as some continuous-motion videos. Take a look:
Now let’s walk through some how-to’s. To create a video of scrolling images, you’ll first need to set up a PowerPoint file to contain the images you want to include. Here’s how:
You can download the source files I used for my example here.
Next, you’ll configure your slideshow to display in a portrait orientation, and you’ll play the slideshow while recording it with Screenr. In my demo, I used dimensions of 320 pixels wide x 754 pixels high, which resulted in a video that, when resized for the sidebar, ended up being 233 x 549 pixels. That filled my sidebar nicely, but you can experiment with the dimensions that look best for your video and content. Once you record your slideshow, you just need to download the MP4 from Screenr and insert it into your course’s presenter panel. That’s what we’ll cover in this tutorial:
The following screencast describes a few additional things I did to enhance my learners’ viewing experience . One tip is to use a custom pre-loader to reduce the likelihood that learners will have to wait for your video to load. You can find examples of pre-loaders that folks in the Articulate community have shared here and here.
Another Cool Way to Use Sidebar Video: Full-Motion Video
In this final screencast, I’ll show you a couple examples of full-motion video in the sidebar. You can use Screenr to create similar videos, or you can use Articulate Video Encoder to crop an existing video to a size that’ll fit in your sidebar. You could even look into using an online service like this one to feature a full-length video of a narrator. Take a look:
I hope this gives you some new ideas for ways to incorporate video into your courses! Questions or feedback? Feel free to start a thread in the Community Forums and we can discuss. I’m looking forward to hearing about how you use this technique!
This guest blog post was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
Here we are again to make your Monday a little more exciting! We don’t want you to miss out on the great tips the Articulate community shared last week, so we’ve rounded up the e-learning awesomeness for you right here. It was an especially lively week in the forums, with lots of insightful conversations. Great timing on all the idea-sharing, too, because the deadline for the Articulate Guru awards is just nine days away! If you haven’t yet submitted your entry, now’s the time to put on the finishing touches — you have till Wednesday, August 11. Looking for technical help or design ideas? Just post your question in the forums to tap into the knowledge of your fellow Articulate users!
This guest blog post was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
Chris Sullivan is a self-described “sous-chef, cooking up tech comm and social media for AVST.” And the hottest item on his menu these days is rapid e-learning.
AVST is a global telecommunications company with more than 15 million users, and Chris manages their Training, Documentation, and Social Media groups. He oversees the development of training for AVST’s end users, reseller technicians, and OEM partners.
As you can see by his photo, he’s crazy-excited about what e-learning has done for the bottom line of AVST’s Training group! I’ll let him tell you his story:
Why AVST Transitioned to E-Learning
“Five years ago, we delivered all of our training in classrooms, which was super expensive. Classes typically required a week of dedicated time and a ton of money in facility expenses and travel costs. This was an especially big issue because we were rarely able to hold classes outside the U.S., even though our products are used around the world. Plus, all of the hardware and software used in training had to be managed and maintained, and that’s costly, too. We would ship 900 pounds of crated gear by freight truck from one location to the next, and it took hours to set up and tear down.
“E-learning changed all that. It’s available anytime, it’s way cheaper, and it’s accessible from any internet connection. By 2009, we had used Articulate Studio to transform all of our classroom training into e-learning. During the transition time, our Training group dropped our expenses by 22% and increased profitability by 62%!
“Because it’s so scalable, e-learning enabled us to reach two important audiences that we couldn’t reach before: (1) technicians who were outside the U.S. or who weren’t able to travel, and (2) customers who needed training. Once we moved to e-learning, we had a huge spike in training participation because so many more learners could now access our content.”
Pat Haney, Senior Technical Trainer for AVST, also explains that having a more flexible format for their training content means they can now be more agile about giving learners just what they need: “We can easily convert the courses rapidly for other purposes — for example, we trimmed down our administration course to provide a more streamlined, basic course for learners who need that. What used to require a one-day trip to a customer site now requires just a quick afternoon webinar.”
“Not Only Does it Make Sense For Our Business, it Also Fits Our Learners’ Needs Better”
How have learners responded to the shift in content delivery? Chris says they’ve eagerly adopted e-learning:
“That’s the great thing — not only does e-learning make sense for our business, it also fits our learners’ needs better. Back when the only option was classroom training, everything was always full-dose content. So, even technicians who needed to learn just installation and maintenance ended up sitting through hours of training they might not need.
“Now, with e-learning, we can offer content in bite-size pieces. Learners can mix and match their learning to suit their needs, rather than being forced into a time-consuming one-size-fits-all approach. Courses are always available, and learners can review them any time they want.
“Plus, e-learning really enabled us to spread our education footprint. Now we can easily serve dozens of countries where learners previously couldn’t afford to attend live classes because of the travel burden.
“In 2009, which was the first year our training courses were 100% online, our training revenues rose 63% over the previous year. And our training satisfaction surveys consistently show high marks — 92% of users surveyed would recommend their online training experience to others, and 98% rated the training as ‘good’ to ‘excellent.’”
What about AVST’s customers and resellers? How has the transition to e-learning affected them?
“We’ve seen great outcomes with them, too. It used to be that their sales cycles were extended months out, because of training bottlenecks. They had to wait for technicians to make their way through a battery of live courses to complete their certification process. Now, technicians complete the courses they need, when they need to, online — which means they can train in days instead of weeks or months. The lag time in the sales cycle has been virtually eliminated because learners aren’t locked into a rigid classroom schedule or constrained by travel. We’ve also seen a decrease in support calls.”
Why Articulate?
Sounds like a pretty big leap, to go from 100% classroom training to 100% e-learning! Why’d you choose Articulate software to do it?
“I spent a couple months investigating the options, and Articulate Studio was clearly the simplest, most robust package. We’ve relied on the entire suite to pull off all this progress. We use Presenter, Engage, Quizmaker — and to make things as seamless as possible, we also use Articulate Online to host our lessons and courses.”
What e-learning initiatives are you working on right now?
“The courses we’ve produced so far have been so successful that we’re now in the early trial phases of offering e-learning to some of our OEM partners. So far, they’re really pleased with the lessons and courses, so we’re going to keep developing that segment of our training offerings.
“Also, I’m looking at ways to connect the voice of the customer more deeply to our company and products through our social media efforts. Screenr’s going to be a great tool for that, particularly if we’re able to get customers to create and share their own tutorials. That shouldn’t be hard, since Screenr’s free and fully web-based.”
What words of wisdom do you have for other organizations who are looking to rely more on e-learning?
Our number one goal is to engage the learner. Without that, nothing else matters, because if the learner isn’t engaged, learning won’t happen.
Since AVST provides primarily technical training, engagement can sometimes be a challenge. But my Senior Technical Trainer, Pat Haney, has found some really creative techniques to keep students interested — humor, video, interactions, challenges, and great examples. He keeps coming up with better and better content! Engage has been his tool of choice lately, since it allows him to create rich interactions with ease and flexibility. Here’s a quick show-and-tell that Pat prepared to show some of the things we’re doing.”
Congrats to Chris, Pat, and the rest of AVST for using rapid e-learning to cook up some amazing business results! You can find Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn, or visit the AVST blog if you’d like to continue following this company’s adventures.
This guest blog post was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
If you’re searching for a great source of practical, innovative e-learning finds, the Articulate community’s the place to look. As usual, the week that just ended was full of all kinds of community insights and advice. Take a peek at some of the ideas you & your fellow Articulate community members shared throughout the week:
This guest blog post was written by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks.
The week gone by was packed with some great resources from your fellow Articulate community members! If you didn’t get a chance to take it all in, here are some highlights of the must-see tips the community shared. And while you’re checking these out, don’t forget it’s Articulate Guru season! Submissions for the Guru Awards are being accepted through August 11. It’s free to enter, and if you win, you get a cash prize, free Articulate software for both yourself and the school or charity of your choice, and a prominent spot in the Community Showcase. Don’t miss this great opportunity to show off your work!
“E-learning changed all that. It’s available anytime, it’s way cheaper, and it’s accessible from any internet connection. By 2009, we had used 
Sounds like a pretty big leap, to go from 100% classroom training to 100% e-learning! Why’d you choose Articulate software to do it?
