Posts Tagged ‘foundations’

Adobe Captivate 5 — Simulations on Tap

Posted by Jason Willensky on . There have been 1 comment.

Greetings, global citizens of the Litmos eLearning community!

Last time—we talked about authoring tools, and we answered a few common questions about Adobe Captivate 5 and Articulate Studio ’09. As we dive more deeply, we’ll look at the strengths of each platform. This week, we’ll begin our analysis of Adobe Captivate 5.

To clear up a question, you can acquire Captivate 5 in two ways. First, it’s available as a stand-alone program, for $799.00 USD (or $299.00 USD for a qualified upgrade).

Second, Adobe Captivate 5 is available as part of Adobe’s eLearning Suite 2 ($1799.00 USD, or starting at $599.00 USD for a qualified upgrade). The eLearning Suite combines some of Adobe’s best offerings for eLearning (e.g.. Captivate 5) with elements of its powerful Creative Suite.

If you have the budget, consider Adobe eLearning Suite 2. It’s a beast—the package contains Captivate 5, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver® CS5, Photoshop CS5 Extended, Acrobat® 9 Pro, Presenter 7, Soundbooth CS5, Bridge CS5, and Device Central CS5. You’ll probably get your money’s worth from Captivate, Soundbooth, and Photoshop alone. If you already have some of these programs, it probably makes more sense just to add applications a la carte.

As the weeks go by, we’ll look at different feature sets. As we’ve said before Captivate 5 is a loaded eLearning solution that works beautifully as a blank canvas. You can perform layout magic and manipulate fonts, graphics, and animations. You can go quick ‘n’ dirty (but cool) with Captivate’s stock functions, or get crazy and be elaborate.

For now, though, let’s look at Captivate’s magic bullet: screen recording. Imagine you’re in charge of creating eLearning to take your people through a new system (a pretty common situation). If you have to design and develop eLearning for systems, there’s no rapid development tool quite like Captivate.

The image above is from a sample on Adobe’s site. With Captivate’s autorecording modes, you can go in one, two, or three different ways:

  • Demonstration mode (“show me”): Records what’s going on on-screen, but with no user interaction in the Flash movie output. Useful to get your learners oriented to a process or user interface (or just to show them how cool your new system is). Captivate automatically adds text captions that label what’s happening.
  • Training simulation mode (“try it”): Captivate automatically adds click boxes, text entry boxes, and feedback (failure/hint captions). Your learner can interact and perform within the simulation.
  • Assessment simulation mode (“test me”): The click boxes and text entry boxes are there, but the feedback isn’t. You can actually assess your learner’s ability to use the system.

Here’s the kicker: you can rig Captivate to capture in all three modes at the same time. You don’t have to capture three different times; separate output is available for all three modes.

There is also a custom mode available that allows you to create hybrid “demo-sims.” You can use your imagination as you get more comfortable.

Think about it. If you’re short on time, you can take your learner through a rapidly-built “show me-try it-test me” process that actually requires them to perform in a closely simulated environment before they have to go live.

Is it perfect? No way. You’ll need to polish your captures before you publish. Don’t worry: it’s fairly easy to edit the text captions, straighten/speed up the mouse pointer, and make sure the timing is correct. Still, it’s remarkable how quickly you get get something effective to your learners.

The output is also SCORM-compliant, and can be tracked easily by an LMS (such as Litmos). We’ll soon look at ways to use Captivate with your LMS, but here’s a teaser: Captivate’s Advanced Interaction screen allows you to set or disable tracking/scoring/reporting for every action your learner takes.

If you have mission-critical systems training (like financial or electronic medical records), you may want to know how your learners perform on a click-by-click basis. If you don’t want to look under the microscope, you can just track whether or not they’ve looked at parts of the course. It’s your call. Talk to your Litmos team about how to use Captivate output with the Litmos system.

Tip: There’s lots of great conversation about Captivate on Twitter. According to soon-to-be Adobe eLearning Evangelist RJ Jacquez (@rjacquez), a good bet is to search for and use the #AdobeCaptivate hashtag. If you’re new to Twitter and hashtags, here’s a Captivate demo from RJ on how to add a column on TweetDeck for the #AdobeCaptivate hashtag (how meta!).

We’ll look more deeply at Captivate 5 and look at its feature set (this version, for instance, allows you to set up master slides much as PowerPoint does). We’re also going to look at Articulate Studio ’09 and its own magic bullet(s). Stay tuned!

Cheers,

@jwillensky

How Do I Get My Stuff Online?! The Beginning

Posted by Jason Willensky on . There have been no comments.

Here’s a secret about your learning management system (LMS): it’s rarely used to its full potential. The Litmos crew tells me that clients often have questions about how to “get stuff online.” The questions may seem strange, but the same dysfunctional process plays out all over.


If you’re relatively new to the process of getting your organization’s knowledge ready for eLearning, take heart. There is an extraordinary amount of information out there. Over the coming weeks, we’re going to talk about strategies to get your stuff online, and we’re going to direct you to some favorite resources. Of course, we can only scratch the surface—we encourage you to add your favorites in the comments.

Why is it so hard to get that good stuff online? Here are a few typical LMS-client scenarios:

  • A client engages an LMS vendor as part of a single, extraordinary training effort (New system! New product! Merger! Revolution!). A consultant builds fabulous eLearning, the LMS people create a model for a repeatable (and scalable) user experience, employees learn and perform, the LMS tracks and reports—but that’s it. No more engagement. There’s no momentum, because nobody at the client organization is empowered to fully use the LMS by getting additional content into the system.
  • A client has an LMS relationship in place, and all kinds of assets ripe for conversion: PowerPoint® decks, PDF files, Word® docs, static intranet material, new hire/orientation packages, etc. Unfortunately, the mass of collective knowledge sits there, diffuse, gathering dust…
These scenarios are just two illustrations of what goes on. It sounds like institutional paralysis (and maybe it is), but consider your assets:

  • You have an LMS environment in place (such as with Litmos), or you are in a position to set one up. This environment gives your learners a place to go when they need to build knowledge and skills, and allows you to monitor what your learners find most effective.
  • You have content. Lots of content. Reams of content. This is the hard part. Your people could have access to organized and engaging, rather than semi-accessible and static, content. Example: imagine how your workforce could (really) internalize your company’s marketing strategy, if only they actively participated in eLearning modules instead of just doing some reading.
So, how do you get stuff online? First things first: a content dump is doomed to fail. This maxim is what’s known as a “painful elaboration of the obvious.” Taking text, a few pictures, and (maybe) an intern’s voice and throwing it all into a slide show just won’t work. So, a good first principle is to build a short philosophy for your organization’s eLearning.

How will it engage learners? What’s effective? What part of the process is repeatable?

Taken another way, this philosophy answers the question “How do I treat content?” The sexy part of eLearning may involve learning authoring tools and adding effects, but it’s critical to have a solid foundation in content treatment before you start.

Building that foundation is the challenge. There is a paralyzing amount of theoretical and procedural material about building eLearning—websites, academic journals, social networks, conferences, and on and on. Most of it is valid, but getting through it all would take several lifetimes. Suggestion for new eLearning philosophers: read a few books and focus on what the authors have to say. Develop some guidelines. They will serve you well and eliminate the need for a lot of re-work down the road.

A graduate student in instructional design recently asked me to pick two books that I felt would have the most value as she made the transition to a corporate training job. She was going to be tasked with starting a medium-sized company’s eLearning efforts, and the company had a good deal of scattered content. My suggestions:

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer): Fantastic first read about eLearning. and a terrific example of theory-into-practice. Consider this: if you practice what the authors preach, you’ll have a strong idea of how to use text, visuals, audio, and interactivity. As important: you’ll know why.

Better than Bullet Points—Creating Engaging eLearning with PowerPoint (Jane Bozarth): Let’s face it. This software is everywhere. That’s why I like this book. It’s an excellent complement to e-Learning and the Science of Instruction. If you are just getting started, it might surprise you to realize that PowerPoint is a perfectly fine blank canvas for eLearning. Furthermore, you probably already have some PowerPoint skills. Why is this a foundational book? You will not only gain a wealth of hands-on experience (that transfers to other tools), you will also avoid the monsters of bad eLearning: page-turners and endless bullet points.

Please add your suggestions for foundational reading in the comments. As the weeks go by, we’ll continue looking at the essential elements of getting your good stuff online. Next up: authoring tools.

@jwillensky