Integrated Learnings

JUNE 5, 2013

'By Jonathan Shoaf. I''ve always been a software junkie. I''m happy to spend some money on a software product when I know it will save me hours of effort over the course of the next year. So when new software comes out, I''m like a kid at Christmas opening up the gift to see if I got what I wanted. These days, Adobe is the software vendor I''m using the most.

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Integrated Learnings

MAY 15, 2013

'By Shelley A. Gable. A few years ago, I was a co-researcher on a study that investigated the factors that influence informal workplace learning. The literature on the subject frequently references learning from mistakes as a typical form of informal learning. So how can we leverage this natural way of learning in eLearning lessons? Nudge learners to assess their responses.

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Integrated Learnings

APRIL 14, 2013

'By Shelley A. Gable. What was the last book. you couldn’t put down? The last movie. you couldn’t stop talking about? The last song you found yourself playing repeatedly? While you may feel drawn to each of these for different reasons, chances are, you have emotional connections to them all. Perhaps you found one of them profoundly relatable. Maybe one was uplifting.

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Integrated Learnings

APRIL 3, 2013

By Jonathan Shoaf. I've discovered recently I don't like the term e-learning. This is because I recently had to go through the process of understanding what salary you pay someone who is an e-learning developer. It turns out that it varies dramatically depending on who you ask. This is because everyone has a different idea of what e-learning is and what it takes to develop it.

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Integrated Learnings

MARCH 25, 2013

By Dean Hawkinson It seems like only yesterday that we began to see websites being posted for the first time on advertisements as the internet became more and more popular among advertisers and consumers. It got to the point that you were hard pressed to find advertising without a website associated with it. Jump several years into the future to today where we now carry the mobile internet in our pockets with our smartphones and tablets, and are never without the internet at our fingertips.

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Integrated Learnings

MARCH 7, 2013

By Jonathan Shoaf. I recently came across an infographic about determining the costs of a custom e-learning course. From my years of experience doing e-learning, I think the graphic is dead on. To summarize, it lists three important factors that determine the cost of an e-learning course: Graphics and multimedia. Level of interactivity. Instructional design time.

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Integrated Learnings

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

By Shelley A. Gable. How often have you encountered eLearning packed with information, yet lacks an outlet to apply that new knowledge in a meaningful way? Designing eLearning around problems that learners encounter on the job can help avoid this pitfall. Scenario-based training prompts learners to solve problems they will encounter on the job, helping to ensure we prepare them to perform their jobs successfully.

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Integrated Learnings

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

By Jonathan Shoaf. I remember the first time I heard the term SCORM. I was a software developer working on a quizzing product that needed to export data to a variety of e-learning systems. It was suggested we should support SCORM. So I researched but quickly got lost in the minutia of details and acronyms -- AICC, CMI, SCO, XML, ECMAScript, manifest, packaging, and API.

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Integrated Learnings

JANUARY 24, 2013

By Dean Hawkinson Recently, I had the opportunity to design my first paperless classroom course , which used iPads to support its delivery. The purpose of using the iPads was to replace paper-based workbooks and job aids , and provide learners with easy access to training resources. As a designer, it stretched me into areas of project management that I had never experienced before.

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Integrated Learnings

JANUARY 17, 2013

By Joseph Suarez. We use Lectora a good bit for eLearning development. As with any tool, it’s always helpful to see tips and tricks from others that you can add to your own projects. If you're working with Lectora and need some assistance, here’s a list of helpful resources available online. Official Resources from Trivantis. Lectora University : Trivantis’s own collection of helpful resources including recordings of all past “Inspiration Wednesdays” webinars and downloadable course examples.

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Integrated Learnings

JANUARY 9, 2013

by Jonathan Shoaf. There are common temptations that instructional designers and e-learning developers succumb to. Resist these and your learners will thank you. Let's look at a few of the more common temptations lurking out there to torment those who partake in e-learning courses. Temptation #1: Using a PowerPoint Mindset. The first temptation that leads to bad e-learning is using a PowerPoint presentation mindset and applying it to the e-learning world.

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Integrated Learnings

JANUARY 2, 2013

By Shelley A. Gable In perusing the blogosphere, Twitter , and Facebook at the turn of the new year, I noticed several expressions of relief that the world has not ended and resolutions to make 2013 the best year yet. For many, this includes trying new things. The posts from this blog in 2012 offered advice for trying out new eLearning authoring tools and other technologies as well as advice for trying out various instructional approaches.

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Integrated Learnings

DECEMBER 19, 2012

By Joseph Suarez. Each time a major eLearning authoring tool or LMS vendor announces they are (or will be) supporting the Tin Can API , the eLearning community can be heard giving a simultaneous cheer and moan. Why would the “ next generation of SCORM ” cause such a mixed reaction? Here's my interpretation. Cheers: In the short term, Tin Can support is perceived as a good thing because it means organizations will theoretically have the capability to migrate from SCORM to what's being promoted as

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Integrated Learnings

DECEMBER 12, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. I recently started reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, and the chapter on cognitive ease offered all sorts of implications for eLearning design. Promote a good mood. The Finding : Kahnemann describes a study in which participants needed to rely on intuition to complete a task. The study found that participants in a good mood doubled their accuracy, while those in a bad mood performed poorly.

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Integrated Learnings

DECEMBER 5, 2012

by Jonathan Shoaf. As a boy growing up in a neighborhood full of kids, I understood the importance of a challenge. A challenge is where you put all your skills to use to beat an opponent. The challenge pushes you beyond your current skill level. It is something to prepare for and something to learn from. In my days the challenges involved things like throwing rocks, wrestling, and bicycle racing.

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Integrated Learnings

NOVEMBER 28, 2012

By Joseph Suarez. Add that item to your cart? Download a 30-day trial demo? Sign up for our monthly newsletter? Anytime we are called to act on the web, we are being asked to make a decision whether or not to fulfill the intended goal of the site owner. Web designers refer to such an attempt as a “call to action,” a sales and marketing term referring to any prompt or trigger leading toward a sale.

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Integrated Learnings

NOVEMBER 18, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. As technology. continues to command an increasingly prevalent role in our lives, it seems that our brains. still respond better to a human touch. We can use this knowledge to help improve recall. from eLearning lessons. The research…. I’m in the midst of reading e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer (it’s really a must-read for anyone who designs instruction).

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Integrated Learnings

NOVEMBER 7, 2012

by Jonathan Shoaf. Adobe Connect is one of the leading virtual classroom products on the market. It has this reputation because it is user friendly, feature rich, reliable, and provides an identical experience for all users on all systems that support Adobe Flash. Adobe Connect competes in both the web conferencing and education markets. There are several reasons it competes well when it comes to corporate learning.

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Integrated Learnings

OCTOBER 31, 2012

By Joseph Suarez. This is the third post in a series dedicated to best practices when using the eLearning authoring tool Lectora. Part 1 detailed how to optimize user preferences, and Part 2 went over using actions and variables. Part 3 will be all about text and formatting text in Lectora. Using Lectora text styles. As mentioned in a previous post , Lectora text styles define the font, color, and size settings for selections of text or entire text blocks, and they automatically update all affec

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Integrated Learnings

OCTOBER 24, 2012

by Dean Hawkinson One of the growing trends in eLearning and mLearning these days is the use of video. Video, when used properly, can be a very effective tool in supporting the learning process, whether as a part of an eLearning course or as standalone videos delivered via mobile devices. I have been involved in several training projects that included video, and thought I would offer some thoughts around best practices and cautions when using video in an eLearning course.

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Integrated Learnings

OCTOBER 10, 2012

by Jonathan Shoaf. You know when to hire a plumber. You know when to hire an electrician. But do you know when to hire an e-learning developer? How do you know if you need a web developer? Let's take a look at those roles. First, let's look at an e-learning developer. An e-learning developer will have the following abilities: Knowledge of how to use an e-learning development tools such as Adobe Captivate, Lectora, or Articulate.

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Integrated Learnings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

by Jonathan Shoaf. Some people get excited about the new fall TV shows in September. Baseball fans get excited for the MLB playoffs in October. Developers, like me, get excited for new releases of software. All the new features and improved workflows.how exciting! Now that I've taken a look at the new release of Adobe Captivate I find myself only somewhat excited about making the upgrade from the previous version.

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Integrated Learnings

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. Ever been handed a PowerPoint. slideshow by a client, with the request to convert it into some kind of eLearning thingy? Oh…and then also told that you only have a week to get it done? (And of course, this is in addition to whatever you already planned to accomplish this week.). Even if you can’t influence “the powers that be” to allow more time for a proper analysis. or to use a different approach, consider taking the actions below to produce a reasonably effective eLearnin

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Integrated Learnings

AUGUST 30, 2012

By Dean Hawkinson. If you have been developing eLearning for any period of time, you have probably used several of Adobe’s applications to create engaging and interactive courses. With Adobe Captivate , you can create some great system simulations. With Adobe Flash , you can create interactive elements that take your courses to the next level of engagement and even create entire courses.

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Integrated Learnings

AUGUST 23, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. A typical training design is to start by telling learners everything we want them to know about a topic or a task, and then we eventually give them an opportunity to practice. For a training project I recently started, a team member said something that resonated with me: Let’s make sure learners are practicing this stuff as early as possible.

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Integrated Learnings

AUGUST 15, 2012

By Joseph Suarez. Though at times challenging, a good instructional designer can transform a complex process into a simple message in the hopes that knowledge will be transferred and retained. However, many factors -- both preventable and unpreventable -- can interfere with that message and hinder learning retention. One such preventable barrier is poor visual readability.

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Integrated Learnings

AUGUST 8, 2012

by Jonathan Shoaf. Flags are common everyday objects. When a flag is raised into position, it has meaning. Flags are used as signals. The are used in races to signal caution, final laps, and victory. They are used in the Olympics to signal an athlete's country, when an athlete goes out of bounds, or commits a penalty. Flags have meaning. When it comes to developing e-learning, flags can be very useful.

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Integrated Learnings

JULY 26, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. Most of us know that cramming isn't a very effective learning strategy. At least not for long-term recall. Some of us figured it out on our own in school, and some of us were warned about the perils of cramming by our parents or teachers. So why do we sometimes design our training to be like cram sessions? Think full-day (even multi-day) workshops crammed with more product information, or sales skills, or whatever, than anyone could possibly absorb in that amount of time.

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Integrated Learnings

JULY 18, 2012

By Joseph Suarez. Imagine two scenarios. First, you are driving in a car down an open road with the windows down. Second, you are standing in a crowded bus stuck in traffic. Now imagine how the available space around you in each scenario would make you feel. Chances are the car seems less stressful and more inviting (no offense to public transit). That almost claustrophobic feeling of being on the bus with little to no breathing room is exactly how our eyes perceive a document, presentation, web

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Integrated Learnings

JULY 11, 2012

by Jonathan Shoaf. The term calorie is most commonly associated with foods. It is used to measure the energy producing value of foods. Most of us know that unused calories turn into stored energy known as fat. Calories are also used to fuel the human body to do new and exciting things. We need calories to function! Today I'm talking about knowledge calories.

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Integrated Learnings

JUNE 27, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. I recently started teaching myself how to play harmonica with the help of a book from the For Dummies series. And I'm impressed. These guys are good instructional designers. That said, I realize that the point of these books is to instruct. But that's the point of a lot of books, and not all of them do it well. So kudos to them.

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Integrated Learnings

JUNE 21, 2012

By Joseph Suarez. One helpful feature of Lectora that is often neglected is “Text Styles.” They provide an easy way to set the font, color, and size settings for selections of text or entire text blocks. Best of all, when a Text Style is updated, any affected text in a course is also updated. For example, if you are asked to change the page titles of an entire course from blue to green, you could do so with one quick change rather than manually fix every page.

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Integrated Learnings

JUNE 17, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. Many eLearning courses walk learners through a detailed process flow within the course, and then the eLearning courses tell learners that a job aid with the same information is also available for reference later. Instead, consider directing learners to the job aid first. Teach them how to use it, prompt them to refer to it to help them solve a scenario , and provide any supporting clarification and tips as needed within the scenario's context.

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Integrated Learnings

JUNE 6, 2012

by Jonathan Shoaf. Many of us know the common scenarios. Victor has a great PowerPoint deck on the new widget. Make it available online. Sally created some great videos on changes to the old process. Post those on the corporate site. Work with Jordan to put the face-to-face training in Adobe Captivate so we can roll it out to the rest of the organization at low cost.

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Integrated Learnings

MAY 30, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. Have you ever seen a news story about someone with a phenomenal memory? Maybe someone who could miraculously remember sequences of numbers or objects? Have you ever been invited to attend a workshop that promises to help you improve your memory? Perhaps it promised to help you remember people’s names, among other day-to-day things?

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Integrated Learnings

MAY 25, 2012

By Jay Lambert Trivantis gave a sneak preview of their upcoming Lectora Version 11 release at this week's user conference in Chicago. Many of us have been nervous that Version 11 brings a complete interface redesign (yes, I still fondly remember the old "traffic lights" from before the previous redesign). But the switch to a ribbon format seems sleek and even user-friendly at this point.

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Integrated Learnings

MAY 23, 2012

By Shelley A. Gable. It seems that many of us in the training industry are avid readers, particularly when it comes to reading for professional development. And while I’m sure I’m not the only one with an ever-growing reading wish list, I’m also continuously on the lookout for recommendations to add to that wish list. If you’re in search of recommended reading for eLearning insight, consider some of these sources of inspiration ….

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