New Features Released in Claro

A few weeks ago, dominKnow announced that new features have been added to Claro. I haven’t gotten my hands into it much yet, but from what the guys at dominKnow showed me at DevLearn and after, it seems like it’s been in very active development since I did the overview in T+D earlier this year.  Here are some of the highlights:

  • Linking to other pages within the course. This is a huge step up in interactivity because it enables branching. Woot!
  • Interaction templates. Think Engage/Quizmaker-type interactions and other common types. You can also create your own.
  • Characters and clipart. They’ve licensed eLearning Brothers and other clipart packages to provide a variety of characters, clothes, and poses, as well as general clipart. I really like the design of the “People Browser”; they’ve put a lot of thought into the usability of it, particularly the filters that remember your choices on a course level so that it’s easy to come back and choose a different pose of the same character you’re using.
  • New, extensive template library.
  • Tables and shapes. Just what they sound like.
  • Various usability additions such as find/replace, new keyboard shortcuts, a color picker, and the ability to change formatting on lists.
  • Easy reviewing on a mobile device. I think you’ve always been able to email a link to a course for review, but now you can also pop up a QR code, point your device at the screen, and review. Just like that.
  • Ability to copy and paste pages between mobile and regular versions of a course.

Other enhancements since the review include publishing to SCORM Cloud and, most impressively, a much more developed separation of the content layer from the navigation and visuals. If you aren’t familiar with it, so I’m going to suffice it to say (for now) that if you have content that resides in several courses, it’s possible — and easy — to update it once and have those changes reflected in multiple places.

All in all, this software is becoming more and more interesting to me. It still lacks variables and highly customizable actions, but for people who want easy, usable, reviewable online, and HTML5 publishing, I like how it’s shaping up.

Update: An earlier version of this post stated that Claro included an eLearning Art package instead of eLearning Brothers. Thanks, dominKnow, for notifying me of the error!

Resources on Elearning, HTML5, and Flash from CM Group

I came across Luminosity Studio from CM Group while researching HTML5 authoring tools for my DevLearn 2011 presentation and ended up adding it to my list of tools to be aware of… definitely in the new-tools-with-limited-fuctionality-but-solid-HTML5-publishing category.

And I just came across some excellent blog posts written by their technical director, Alex Mackman (@AlexAtCMGroup). In the age of the Flash vs. HTML5 Ring of Death, I really value well-reasoned opinions and correct information, and he’s giving both. Flash and HTML5 for eLearning is the most recent.

I should note: Luminosity Studio publishes to both HTML5 and Flash.

The ToolBar, Episode 10 – Accessibility. Don’t Be a Jerk.

Logo for The ToolBarEpisode #10 of The ToolBar is now live!

And we have another special guest episode: Brian and I talked with my boss, Diane Elkins, about accessibility: philosophies, design, and tools.

Brian drank Sailing Santa, I drank Collaboration #2, and Diane drank apple cider and Captain Morgan.

New Features in Lectora X.6

If you haven’t heard yet, Trivantis has now released Lectora X.6!

New features include:

  • An option for publishing accessible courses that turns on alt tags, turns off “web 2.0″-style popups, and makes video controller buttons more easily read by screen readers. All of these can be done individually within the program, so it’s more of a failsafe for developers who are already aware of accessibility guidelines than a “now-there-is-a-checkbox-that-makes-my-course-508-compliant” thing, but it’s nice to have.
  • Ability to add text blocks to forms
  • Ability to add streaming audio
  • Ability to select font size, type, and color for imported questions

…And the biggest feature is ReviewLink, currently in beta. Diane Elkins wrote up a comparison among ReviewLink, Adobe Captivate Reviewer, and Rapid Intake REVIEW on the E-Learning Uncovered Blog.

You can see the webinar demonstrating these new features here.

Animated vs. Static Learning Agents – My M.Ed. Capstone Research

You never know what’s going to happen when you go to a DevLearn session with Cammy Bean, folks. In her excellent session on Avoiding the Trap of Clicky-Clicky Bling-Bling, someone asked about the value of onscreen characters and Cammy mentioned the research I did for my M.Ed. capstone project this year… which reminded me that I still haven’t shared it here!

So, for regular readership and those who might have wandered here because of that session, here’s the super-short version:

I created two versions of a course with only a slight difference in multimedia, then invited participants to take the course, tracking behind the scenes which participants were given which version. I reported on the differences in:

  • immediate understanding of the content (level 2 for those of you who roll that way)
  • self-reported engagement measures (level 1)
  • LMS-reported engagement measures (whether the learners finished the course, how much they explored the optional areas)

And what aspect of multimedia did I test? I specifically focused on the use of a fully animated learning agent* — one that moves her lips and gestures with her hands — versus a static (image-only) one. And I found no statistically significant difference in positive outcomes. Zero. Zip. Nada. Bupkus.

So basically, if you’re thinking about sinking a lot of development time or money into developing fully animated learning agents in hopes of increasing engagement or retention, I think this is research that you will want to read. Some vendors of those tools distribute research that others have done, supporting the use of learning agents in some situations, but nowhere in my background research or in this project did I find evidence that animation — lip synchronization, hand gestures, body movements — increases positive outcomes.

You can read the full report here, and I would love to receive your feedback, comments, and questions below.

* A learning agent, also called an animated pedagogical agent (and sometimes dubiously called an avatar), is a character that guides the learner through the course, somewhat like a teacher, although learning agents can be interactive or merely multimedia.