Loved that Julie put out there the fact that we were making MUCH better eLearning back in the days of CD-ROM. Using Toolbook and Director (they both had programming languages if I recall) and Authorware, we made some very cool nonlinear programs that were fun and engaging. When everything switched to dial-up web, I was so frustrated I almost quit the field. So glad I waited it out!
Keep up the great work,
Connie

He breaks the experience of avatar control down to projection. He doesn’t use avatar, but it means the same thing. He uses the general term “doll”. I’m not sure if I like the term, since it’s a new term in a buzzword saturated market, but the concept makes sense.

“A doll is any presence in a game world over which a player exercises direct control. Sometimes the doll is represented by a human figure, sometimes it is a ship, a car, a hand of God, a simple block or dot. It can even be an invisible presence such as the hand that twists blocks in Tetris. Dolls respond to player commands with predictable behaviour, and are his agent in the game world.”

http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/cars-dolls-and-video-games-narrativism.html

Yes, I will be at TechKnowledge. I am on the planning committee this year and I’ll be teaching a Storyline creation station. So let’s hope it’s out by then!

I don’t know that I would call HTML5 “nascent”, but it’s certainly seemed to take much of our industry by surprise. As I wrote in Learning Circuits this week, we’re going to see some growing pains as software vendors struggle to deliver what designers and developers want and I think we will see a little bit of refocusing on coding to be able to deliver what our learners have come to expect in a Flash-heavy world. 

Definitely say hi again at TK… I’ll be at several of the TK Chats as well as those creation station sessions. 

Here are my thoughts: Trivantis was mum on features, as you said. Having been around software development for decades, this suggests to me that the core features aren’t yet working well enough for them to make a commitment about anything that will be in the final shipping product (although I think we can feel assured that HTML 5 will be the foundation for the output options). The fact that the date is still 9 months out also tells us that likely the new version is still a year away.

The other reason (again in my experience) that software companies pre-announce what is essentially vaporware is that they’re trying to mobilize their fans to get excited about the upcoming release (no matter how far it is into the future) and not abandon their platform. In the current environment, this makes a lot of sense given that Storyline and ZebraZapps are already very usable for real work even if not yet released.

One other good thing about Trivantis’ announcement of at least a new interface is that it shows they recognize that the current interface isn’t particularly usable or attractive. I’m glad the program is getting a facelift!

Also, just as an aside, HTML 5 is still a nascent technology. It’s a hot buzzword that everyone wants to build to, but actually building a robust tool that generates acceptable performance is quite another matter. And browser compatibility is still an issue too.

Storyline should be a first quarter, 2012, release.

I signed up for TechKnowledge in late January, Judy. I guess I’m on a conference binge right now. You going?

Best,
Kevin

So, character packs… you can get these standalone and have been able to for a long time, but software makers are starting to integrate them into the software itself, so it’s probably going to be yet another instance of one of my favorite topics: How  Our Software Shapes Our Designs If We Let It. There is some good research out there on using characters and learning agents that supports my experience that it can be a really positive design decision; however, I have no doubt that there will be overuse and misuse. 

I put some thoughts down about learning agents a couple of years ago… what they are, examples of great ones that I’ve seen, examples of awful ones that I’ve seen, development considerations, etc. It might be time to revisit/expand the series. http://onehundredfortywords.com/full-series-learning-agents/

As you mentioned character packs, I am curious what you think of them? This does seem to be an increasing trend. Do you think they will limit or drive ID decisions? For example,… “I’ll do this in my course because I have a character that can show it well”

Of course there are always those reasons. The last one is no longer true as far as I know, you can make HTML5 fullscreen, I believe Voice Central Blackswan demonstrates that. (GV iphone app)

I did stake out a web presence for elearningresearch.org, where people can take the native files from this study and reuse them, and while for the time being, I’m not really going to have time to put a lot of work into that project, it’s there if someone wants to do it.

Now, you could definitely take that to mean that this particular multimedia that I created was unimpressive. I can absolutely concede that… but it was also created using some of the most expensive software that is marketed to our industry. If even that software, used fairly skillfully, can’t create good enough multimedia to make the training memorable, I would humbly submit that our time and money is better spent designing and developing more meaningful kinds of engagement and interactivity.

I’ve noticed this trend as well, and so it’s an issue I’ll be posting about more in coming months. Stay tuned!

I was in that morning buzz at DevLearn and there still is a lot (myself included) confusion on what it is and what it can do. Knowing folks like you, Reuben Tozman, and Nick Floro keep me on the straight and narrow. Thanks for keeping your finger on the pulse in this sector!

They also do Luminosity Lightshow an HTML5 based software application simulation tool which is low cost and produces good results

And, Judy, GREAT analogy. I love this topic. I constantly see over- or under-engineered solutions. For me, the challenge, and the fun, is in finding the right solution for the problem at hand. It’s NEVER just a cookie-cutter answer.

This also generated ideas for a longer response and has been added to my lengthy draft post list…

Perhaps there are no artifacts of my work because there’s just not a lot of work happening

Or, perhaps, it’s tough to articulate intangibles like building a community. Articulate is interesting because they had a good forum in which Tom Kuhlmann was a participant. He was such a good participant that he was brought internally to become their community guy. He came to embody what Articulate was about.  From a customer service perspective, as an end-user of their product there’s a marked difference between Articulate before and after Tom was brought on-board. I’d like to explain it as the fact that Articulate’s approach to customers had to live up to what Tom embodies. They adopted that ethos when they adopted Tom.

That started a virtuous circle where what was once a fairly enclosed product development/improvement process became a community effort that *thrives* because of the input and, let’s say it: fandom.

We should all be so lucky as to do that for our organizations and causes.

And…thanks for the mention!

Very cute videos! These will keep my husband occupied for a while… he’s a big cat lover and agrees with Brian about the no-soul thing.

When I figure them out, I’ll one day post The 140 Magic Words To Say When Refusing A Dead-End Project That Will Make The Client Love You Anyway.

Hmm, maybe that will go behind a paywall…

My favorite push back example was a project that a company wanted years ago — they had a really high turnover rate, and wanted an e-Learning course on the history of the company to improve retention. To which we replied “Um…we’ll build if you really want us to, but we don’t actually think it’s going to solve your problem…”

Amazingly, we didn’t get that project. Go figure.

One of the things that really bugs me about the hard-over crowd that says “you could do that in HTML5″ are the comparisons that would completely change the essence of the solution. To balance that, it bugs me just as much when folks on the other side of the pendulum swing insist on doing stuff in Flash that really isn’t necessary. There is a balance and that balance should consider the whole experience, quality of output, efficacy of comparable outputs, and the effort it takes to reach each output. Most of the arguments I’ve seen for one tech or the other ignore one or all of these in favor of the cognitive bias of the moment.

I’m really excited about HTML5 and can’t wait for it to stabilize and produce market support for more consistent development. But we really aren’t there yet.

However, assuming that your client had a modern browser, the video project you’ve outlined sounds pretty doable. See this page: http://isithackday.com/syncing-video/ for an example of video synchronizing with on-page content. In fact, unless I’m completely misunderstanding the requirements, it sounds like this could actually be done without synchronization, by splitting the video up into shorter videos.

Authoring tools and general skill level for HTML5 are definitely not there yet. I’m trying to keep the elearning industry informed about HTML5 development tools and we’re getting more and more cropping up, but there’s no doubt that they’re still in infancy compared to Flash tools.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Let me know if you want to discuss the video issue further… I’d love to understand more about the project.

Thanks, Brian. Breaking things is my specialty! I’m sure there’s much more exploration to be done here.

I have a client that still runs IE6 as their corporate browser, they want to integrate video que points with a synchronized presentation that enables “question breaks” at various points of the presentation. They would like this presentation to use the answers of the questions to offer opportunities for additional presentation components. They have used me before so they have access to a series of interaction components built in Flash that makes this pretty easy and are only willing to pay the costs for development that they are used to.

Can you point out the parts of this narrative that are / are not supportable using HTML5? Functionally, I think you can bend HTML5 to do the stuff mentioned. I also think using a semantic structure would encourage some rethinking of the input. But it doesn’t matter. Their environment isn’t ready for it. Nor is their pocketbook given the current state of tools.

The cart is cool. The horse is still a fetus. Keep my $1.

For the demos I try at home I’m really impressed with the examples I’m able to find and run in my newer versions of Safari and Firefox. Even so, the experiences are NOT consistent between the environments and in some cases, being a Flash developer, I’m disappointed in the results.

The real kicker comes when I attempt to access these at work. IE7 hates HTML5. Some of the examples work. Others work but look like complete garbage. Others fail to work at all.

In five years I think this’ll still be an issue. I have some clients that still run IE6.

The tools will get better (up until Hype I think there was a seriously false comparison between Flash and HTML5 to do “Flashish” things), the support will get better, and we’ll probably start to see things done soon in HTML5 that people can’t and wouldn’t consider doing with Flash. All that aside, I’m still wary of the false comparisons. Media integration, control, speed of development, and consistency of experience regardless of platform (unless you’re talking about iOS) are benefits of Flash compared with practically any other *tool or platform* on the market.

A rational comparison has got to include more than “feature list wise it compares”. Nuance of execution and time investment for the same outcome have gotta matter. And right now, I think that’s Flash’s edge. That edge will surely diminish. The speed / degree of that happening is anyone’s guess, but it’s not here yet.

Keep up the good work. I always appreciate folks who are at the forefront, willing to test and play and break things to ensure better usability and accessibility!

Ryan, I agree. I’ve been seeing Lectora users ask for SWF output on Trivantis’s forums for years and they haven’t done it, which people may not have liked but the tide is turning. In all of the speaking and writing I’ve done about HTML5 in the last year, I’ve pointed out the huge headstart that Lectora has on other tools in this area. I think it would have been much smarter to just stake out a claim as the top HTML5 development tool by taking advantage of as much of the new features of HTML5 as possible.

I agree with you in that Trivantis should focus their efforts on improving Lectora (especially Online) rather than launching yet another product.

Having said that, the PowerPoint authoring market must still be huge.

Mobile is important, but not an immediate need, for a LOT of orgs. So this fills an immediate need for a product at a very cheap price.

Thanks for stopping by and clarifying, Renee. I didn’t get to poke the voodoo doll, but maybe I will get a pic with it at a future conference.

I also have twin boys, and I think you’re amazing for wanting to get kittens for yours. Very cute, but extra work, and my memory of the 9-month-time was frantic. As everyone says, it does get easier.

BlueVolt has an LMS for the extended enterprise. Open Sesame is a sister company.

My husband says I can rectify this whole situation by getting each of our (9-month-old twin) boys a kitten and posting pictures on this blog, proving once and for all that I have a soul (and probably increasing my readership by tenfold in the process, since as fascinating as my opinions on elearning are, they wouldn’t even start to compare to babies and kittens). My husband, I should mention, is a cat person.

Thanks so much for the correction on BlueVolt… I realized when I wrote it that I wasn’t positive about the relationship. I will correct the post!

In all seriousness, thanks SO much for mentioning us! We are very excited about the growing number of courses in our catalog and building interest in making it easy to buy and sell elearning courses.

One small clarification: BlueVolt (owner of that super cool LMS voodoo doll) is actually a separate company from OpenSesame.

Thanks again for mentioning us! And I hope to meet you at the next PDX elearning meetup.

I am looking forward to more discussions of these tools, too. It’s an exciting time!

Also, I’m looking forward to more discussions about Storyline, Zebra, and other tools!

Clark, because the HTML5 stack includes so many web technologies in use, I believe the answer to your question is Yes. Please take a look at this example that engineers at Google built about a year ago to demonstrate HTML5 capabilities. (Warning: It’s violent.) http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/01/google-html5-quake/ I won’t profess to be an expert on virtual world or gaming platforms, but I’m going to hazard a guess that if Quake can be rebuilt in HTML5, HTML5 can handle immersive learning situations, as well. Thank you so much for your question… and please tell me if you disagree.

Jack, thanks for asking! I often build SCORM-compliant courses that are solely HTML-based… no Flash. So I can confirm that Flash is not needed either to store variables or communicate them to the LMS. In fact, the HTML wrapper is essential to run in the SCORM environment, the Flash component is not. That’s one of the reasons I feel that HTML5 is just as appropriate for LMS-based learning as Flash is… if not more so.

Scott, I agree with your last statement, although I think the percentage is higher. I have not been able to find that many things that business training requires that are outside of the capabilities of HTML5. However, they may be FAR outside the capabilities of what many rapid development tools can offer. I was heartened to see many more HTML5 options coming to light at TechKnowledge and Learning Solutions this year. More on those soon…

First, it was super great to finally meet you at the conference!

The tool I’m most excited to start using is Articulate’s new Storyline. It’s not even an official beta version yet and not scheduled to launch until later this summer, but it is really generating a lot of exciting buzz.

Although Allen Interaction’s new authoring tool, Zebra is still in beta I’m looking forward to playing with it, too.

I’d love to build highly interactive fully immersive simulations that tracks every detail but for most real world needs, it’s overkill. HTML5 maybe good enough and will put pressure on the rapid e-learning vendors.

In the end, HTML5 is probably all we need for 80% of business training.

You’re correct that the unanswered questions about this software aren’t small. In particular, I am interested to see what outputs Zebra provides; you won’t find a more like-minded individual than me in terms of advocating for open, web standard, non-proprietary code in the elearning industry!

And yeah, obviously I can’t answer for another company’s website. But I would direct you to the sample courses there for a better idea of how they think about instructional design. The excitement over Zebra is that it makes true instructional interactivity easy to author — again, this is from when I’ve used the software, not just seen a demo. And this was way early, but I have to hope it hasn’t gotten less powerful in the meantime.

I have a lot of experience with software too, and I think you’re right to be suspicious; most authoring programs don’t deliver where it really counts. I think this one will. And more than that, I hope it will… We’ve certainly waited long enough! Anyway, if you are interested in seeing/trying Zebra for yourself, go to http://www.joinzebra.com. I hope you’ll let me know what you think as it becomes more publicly available.

1) Anything can demo well.

2) “issues around SCORM and 508 ” – (re: 508) accessibility is something that cannot simply be grafted on, it’s something that has to be considered before writing code. As someone who has never been impressed with any WYSIWYG e-learning software, ever, this leaves me deeply suspicious that this could be any better.

3) I am deeply suspicious of any company that makes software, but thinks a large Flash animation in the middle of their homepage with blaring music is a good idea. That’s been held in low regard on the web for like… slightly after Flash became popular.

My question: is this another tool to trap content inside proprietarily coded Flash, or is this a tool that creates open, web standard code?

will definitely luv this one!

Thanks for the opportunity.

Tex.

If I get lucky, I’d love “From Concept to Execution.” Thanks!

Thanks for your generosity!!

: )

Congrats on the new job btw! And being a presenter at Techknowledge! That’s Awesome!

There are lots of Caliper-like tools for both Mac and Windows. But why not stay with the two you know and love?

I think I always have been (less creative in a cube), but now it’s even harder to recover from distractions than before, which is probably affecting my creativity. Hard to know…

@wwickha1 and @usablelearning and I have been tweeting pretty furiously this morning and share your concern about government tracking (and personally, I would find the constant *ding!* very annoying, as well). Here are a few articles we’ve shared for anyone who wants to read more about the motivation side: http://nyti.ms/8ZMQNW and http://nyti.ms/8ZMQNW http://bit.ly/cVDezF.

And if you’d rather delve into the privacy issues, here’s one more down that path: http://bit.ly/cL5m8u. Enjoy!

As it relates to training, I think it comes down to motivation. It has to somehow have an impact on their personal lives to make a difference. At least that seemed to be the commonality in his presentation.

Saw this article tweeted by @mglazer, @hjarche, @charlesjennings this morning: Give e-learning a second chance http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-sector-training/e-learning. Use of short video snippets is mentioned as one of the trends changing elearning now.

I’ve been thinking about this concept for a long time, but I framed it based on the Youtube model. I’m finally getting to the point where my organization is okay with the idea. Because of the nature of our business, I’ve been trying to structure training based on:

o Experience
o Organizational Role
o and JIT.

Of course, the concept is not new, I’ve just been calling them “short training modules,” but I really like the sound of “Trainlet”.

World of Warcraft (aka WoW): An incredibly addictive and popular online game. Technically an MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game), in WLP circles, you may have heard it referred to as a virtual world, or you may have heard of it being used to teach literature and math skills.

Guild: A voluntary organization of players who socialize and play together. Guilds generally have leaders and goals, pretty similar to any organizational structure.

Down: Kill.

Boss: Big, scary enemy that requires more than one person to kill. Bosses drop stuff (“loot”) that increases players’ ability to down bigger bosses, which is why it’s worth it to kill them more than once.

Take care of yourself!

I always thought Verdana just *was* bigger… I am looking at 2 identical paragraphs of lorem ipsum text in Word, both 9-point, and the Times New Roman paragraph is 8 lines while the Verdana one is just over 10 lines. I have to crank the Verdana paragraph down to 7-point to make it fit in roughly the same space. So I must not be getting your meaning…

Of course, Verdana text is much more readable at 7 than TNR is at 9… not surprising when you compare a serif font to a sans-serif one. I do agree that it’s a very readable font… and a friendly one.

I like that method and it has always worked for me. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a different one, though… and with the amount of confusion there is on this topic, I’m thinking maybe I’ll try to come up with a new one. Or sponsor a contest here… would Alcorn, Ward, & Partners care to donate at the Grammar Guru level?

Hey nice post there. I\’m Aaron from rapid elearning courses and I\’ll be following your stuff from now on. Regards!…

I had some work to do last night and didn’t get to check out Quiz Creator much, and I may not use it because I have a lot of full-featured authoring tools, but I have no objection to having more tools in my toolbox. Especially free tools.

The point of this message is really to let you know that I have linked your blog on my own new blog (http://gaylegoudy.wordpress.com/).

If you would like me to remove the link, just say the word.

See you soon. — gg

- Screenflow (version 2.0 coming out in Sept.)
- iShowU
- SnapZ Pro

Screenflow is the only real apples to apples comparison as the other two don’t have the editing capabilities of Camtasia and Screenflow.

I agree with those last two sentences and I appreciate your backing it up with the comments about your school work… because I’ve been concerned that I’m giving ILT design short shrift, maybe because I don’t have as much formal training in that area. And yeah, I guess I betrayed in my comments to Chet that I really do think completely standalone e-learning is harder to design than ILT; there’s no offloading any of the responsibility to the instructor.

Interestingly, yesterday I attended a webinar from Saba called Converting Instructor Led Training to eLearning, and the presenter talked a bit about the different roles inherent in creating ILT vs any kind of web-based learning, so if anyone is really interested in this topic, here’s the link…
http://sabaex.centra.com/GA/main/0000006e3eb49c0122cf773a13007f7a. The playback has been a little screwy for me but go to about 34 mins in for the point I’m talking about.

My masters degree is in Instructional Design for ONLINE learning and my Ph.D. studies are in Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation (encompassing all delivery channels). The difference I note can best be found in the coursework. ONLINE learning courses include ‘interface design,’ ‘instructional media tools,’ ‘project management for e-learning,’ ‘distance education’, etc. The theory courses are the same for both programs. I think the “e” is the different skill set…and it’s a big one. There’s also the skill involved in facilitating online vs. face-to-face – another big difference in my opinion.

One of the reasons we have so much crap e-learning is failure to recognize the difference. Some skills translate but there’s a lot more to it than many people realize.

Some skills definitely transfer. Analyzing a need, for example, seems pretty much the same even if you have a delivery method already assigned to you (and analysis should come before choosing a delivery method anyway, though we all know that doesn’t always happen).

However. I tend to think of e-learning design as interaction design. And models I tend to use (such as Michael Allen’s CCAF) were created specifically for interactive e-learning design. Personally, I think they can be adapted to ILT design, but I’ve never seen an ILT instructional design model focus that much on learner interaction, and therefore I have trouble saying that sure, the skills you have as an ILT designer would serve you well in e-learning with no further study.

That being said, that study can definitely be obtained and new skills can be learned. As Sue pointed out, there are some great courses out there. And all good instructional designers can learn; that’s one of our biggest strengths!

Chet: You’re right… the problem of compensating for the lack of human contact is huge. Recently in my MEd program, I was working on a group project and we chose to design an entirely standalone, self-study e-learning course simply because we felt that was the biggest challenge we could set for ourselves and it would force us to “grapple with” (that became a key phrase) a sort of worst-case scenario. In real life, I’ve found you can often integrate humans even if they’re not in front of the classroom, and it’s often an excellent idea!

She implies a valid point though, so let me be clear that I’m not trying to say that either one is superior to (or more difficult than) the other. The question could just as easily be phrased the other way around, if that were the direction this particular job seeker wanted to go.

Ted app plus iphone = edugeek on the go

I think it’s important to state something here for the general record: I’m not just being a hater by disparaging SL. I am an online gamer on my free time and I understand the emotional impact of seeing and hearing your fellow participants, and feeling like you’re in the same physical space with them. But I’m also very cautious of picking up new technologies — particularly those that may involve large investments — until I’m convinced of the benefit. And that’s really why I’m watching for effective implementations of SL for training.

What would you like to hear about my experience getting an instructional design degree? I would be happy to share!

Keep up the great blogging on your end too — I read in spurts but I always enjoy.

If you check back in, tell the instructional designers who read this blog which software you’re using for your screencasts (how-to videos)… they’re pretty slick.

not sure if you heard of drop.io manager, but we developed it after businesses/professionals asked for a way to mange multiple drops from a single interface with powerful customization, privacy, and administrative options, including an activity stream across all drops. click here to checkout a brief screencast and take advantage of this free trial, if want to play around with it.

http://drop.io/file/freetrialsignup

thanks again,
steve
steve@dropio.com

Would be curious to hear more about your experience getting an Instructional Design degree. I received my Instructional Technology degree 6 years ago in a more traditional/classroom format. Interesting to hear that the hesitancy about the “value” of online degrees hasn’t changed much.

Keep up the fantastic work!

She wrote on June 4 that Will Wright spoke about CYOA as an early form of branching in his keynote at the Innovations in e-Learning conference.

http://minutebio.com/blog/tag/storyboard/

Jeff

If you’re looking to do research of your own, here’s a start.

Toonboom
CodeBaby
SitePal
CrazyTalk
iClone
NOAH
i3Logic

Feel free to add your own!