Tips to make your Rapid Elearning a Success

Rapid elearning is not about finding cheap and simple ways with design, but rapidly translating a great design into a working product. Bad design can never deliver a good final product. To begin with, the instructional designers should be task centered rather than being content centered. Usually clients are blamed for bad products, but one should realize that clients are not designers, and therefore are not expected to know the best way to design elearning.

Even today most elearning still focuses on content followed by a quiz. The best way would be to involve learners in a real world activity, and providing information only if required. Flash is a great multimedia platform to present interactive content.  Interactivities are not only about mouse rollovers or click and reveal, but to make learners do realistic work in a safe environment. 

Learners should be treated as adults with the liberty to choose what information they need. In real world you would not get information easily, but you’ll have to seek out based on the needs of task in hand. People like to explore things that look nice and appealing. An ugly and sloppy course is not going to win you audience. However, you do not need to be a trained graphic designer to make your course look good. Rapid authoring tools like articulate PowerPoint are great for doing outstanding design work like layered graphics, masking, vector graphics, and quick fix graphic effects.

Rapid elearning assessments have a bad reputation. After a lot of slides that just provide information, the last activity learners wants is a quiz that rates them on how much they remember. On the contrary challenges should be designed that will help learners to practice a skill, rather than just remembering things.

eLearning – The Best Solution for Productivity Problem

eLearning has helped a lot of people to achieve their dream of getting educated. In the modern world everyone wants to be the best, for which the learning process has to be nonstop. The world is changing at such a speed that it has become really challenging to keep up with the latest trends and cope up with the market needs. It is normal for different people to have different pace of learning. Even research shows that different people have different styles to learn and remember things. This makes it really challenging for the teacher to fulfill needs of each and every student by the traditional ways of teaching. As a result learners prefer to have an automatic version of their teacher than a physical one.

This is where eLearning helps a great deal to tackle problems related to low productivity, caused due to lack of knowledge and skills. The people who have knowledge don’t necessarily have time to train each and every employee within the organization. eLearning is the best solution for such problems, where online content in the form of courses or videos can be created and shared with the employees. The entire process of creating, delivering and assessing course material is done through a Learning Management System, also known as an LMS. The administrator of the Learning Management System decides who all can access the course material.

eLearning enables employees to keep themselves constantly updated with new technology and skills, enhancing their productivity and making them more efficient. The best part of the Learning Management System is that you can go through a course several times, and rewind or pause it according to your convenience. It is like having access to your tutor 24 x 7. Cloud based Learning Management System  allows you to be more flexible for creating and sharing content in the form of text document, notes, presentation or videos. You can test and assess employees’ performance, and even track their progress using an LMS

Rapid eLearning through Software Simulations and Screen casts

Software simulation tools cannot be used for developing any type of learning, but focus on creating training content for specific system or software application. Software simulation can be divided into interactive simulation development tools and screen capturing tools.

Screen capturing tools are used to capture and record anything that is visible on the computer screen within a recordable area. It captures the mouse clicks, movements and onscreen changes along with voice overs. You can record the voice overs through an attached microphone simultaneously while capturing the screen. Instructions and explanations are generated automatically while recording based on the user’s actions. You can edit the recordings later by using the tools before publishing the output. With the help of editing you add more value to the important content and simply eliminate the unnecessary parts.    

On the contrary some tools do not allow full editing for just in time authoring and publishing. In this case the published output is usually in the form of a video, which can be viewed on desktop as well as on web. The tool can also add the standard tracking features with the published output so that you can directly upload the output. This is called a “Screen cast”, which can be directly uploaded to any LMS that follows standard compliance.

Nowadays new technologies allow you to record the screens for small just in time screen casts, eliminating the need to download or install any software. Another brilliant tool is Scriveners, which in collaboration with Twitter eliminated the need of a third party delivery platform. An excellent example of sophisticated screen capturing tool is Camtasia Studio. Combine it with some features and you can automatically insert instructions and call outs based on user’s actions.

A screen cast however is not necessarily interactive.  Except for the playback controls you cannot interact with the elements shown in the video. In order to create a better impact and assess learner’s performance it is imperative for learners to try the “try out” functions through simulated application software for which they need training. In such scenarios you need a tool that does much more than just capturing screens. These tools help to develop guided simulations, wherein the learner is guided through a set of steps to achieve a specific objective in the application training. The context based feedback lets the learner know about the minute details of the application. The published output is not just a passive video, but is in a complete interactive format such as Flash SWF. Using these tools you can also develop the course just out of screenshots of application.

Learning Management Systems for Success

After the economic crises manufacturing industry professionals are looking for new ways to help them survive in the new economy. Manufacturers are now turning to Learning Management Systems to make their employees efficient, and reduce training cost to achieve their goals. Over the last 10 years corporate training has added a lot of online training in their classroom sessions. Employees can learn online through Webinars and elearning courses at their own pace, and track their progress and results through a Learning Management System. Learning Management System (LMS) helps companies to administer and manage training for a few employees or thousands of people.   

Due to the high cost of implementation LMS has only been really available for the Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies. But the emergence of cloud based LMS has brought down the costs to such an extent that mid size and small companies can also afford these systems. Companies where training its business partners or employees is an integral part should consider using an LMS.

A company looking for an LMS should first determine their goals of training. LMS can be used for improving overall performance, compliance training or inspiring a corporate culture. The company also needs to define the amount of success achieved with training. The company needs to decide who will be adding and updating the LMS users. Somebody amongst the human resources, department heads or the employees themselves needs to take responsibility for signing up users for courses.  Companies can choose to have different tracts or let employees pick courses beyond immediate requirements. Lastly companies also need to determine how to manage and track progress to see if the LMS training is successful or needs modifications.

The company can now look for vendors after it has got a thorough idea of what it is looking for. Once the company finds the right LMS it should start with simple things to get the ball rolling. Don’t wait for too long. Instead start getting used to the program and see how it can benefit the company. Evolve the program from there to include more departments and training modules. Using the LMS for fundamental understanding and following it up with robust classroom instruction makes corporate training more universal and effective. It reduces costs and lets you know that you are headed in the right direction.

Delivering Training Overseas

What makes online learning so successful is its global reach. You can easily deliver training to audiences across the country as well as around the world. If you are thinking globally it becomes important to consider local cultures while developing the content and, designing and delivering training.

Translation is not the answer for overseas training, as it is not necessary and practical, particularly if you are looking to deliver trainings in multiple countries that speak different languages. The best way is to use global English while designing and delivering training overseas. Global English is English which is fairly simple to understand, and is free of local idioms and phrases that do not make sense in other countries. For example – An American developing a training module should avoid phrases like “it rained cats and dogs”, as it won’t make sense in other countries. Instead the writer should simply say that it rained heavily.

In some cultures the audience wants more of a training facilitator who will ask the group to contribute in the session and make it more interactive. As a matter of fact a major assumption of adult learning theory is that adult learners have experience and want to share that experience. On the contrary in some cultures learners are not comfortable with the idea of speaking up like that, and would rather expect the trainer to be “the” expert in the room who would provide all the answers. In some cultures it is common practice to call on people, which may not be accepted in other cultures.

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Apart from developing a good training module, the writer also needs to have knowledge of the country for which the course is being developed. For example – an online learning course on driving principles describes that the center lane is the safest lane to use on a multilane highway. But it does not apply in the city of Dubai as the drivers there use center lane exclusively for overtaking. The basics of this module may have applied to any culture, but some specifics like which lane to use, could be swapped out for local driving habits, laws and customs. In order to maximize the success of training, the trainer should pay close attention to local details of the culture and country the course is being developed and delivered.