Tag Archives: elearning

New Features in Lectora X.6

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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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

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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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. 

And Speaking of HTML5… Adobe Captivate!

Posted on by Judy Unrein
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Adobe has been working on the ability to convert Captivate-created SWFs to HTML5 for some time, so I hear. I never made time to try this converter when it was in beta, but I made a contact at DevLearn who let me know this was on its way… and with full interactivity, not just exporting to video.

It looks like the converter is now at “Preview 2″ stage. Here’s the press release from Adobe, including a link to download. I’ll definitely be carving out some time to try this out in the next couple of days. Feel free to let me know about your experiences here!