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Designing Digitally, Inc. on Second LifeFinding the Best E-Learning Company for your Needs
Posted on Sat, 07/31/2010 - 00:51
Finding the Best E-Learning Company for your Needs
Finding the right e-learning company for your project can be a difficult process. The process for selecting an e-learning development company is similar to how you might go about interviewing someone for a position within your company. Both can be equally challenging if you don’t know the right questions to ask or what to look for. You want to choose the company that understands your design challenges and objectives, your budget and can bring you ideas you might have never considered. How can you get all of that from one company? Follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way to partnering with the best e-learning company for you.
- When interviewing anyone for a creative position, it’s important to remember to request to see samples of the e-learning company’s work.
- Prior to interviewing each e-learning company, send them some background information about your company and the project you have in mind. During the interview, ask them to describe your company and project objectives. Whichever e-learning company you choose should understand your company and project objectives precisely.
- Make sure the e-learning company has experience with the technology you need. For instance, if you want to include 3D simulations in your e-learning module, make sure the company you’re working with has experience in this area and ask them for a sample of their work using this specific technology.
- Ask the company about their instructional design philosophy and experience. Their philosophy should match up with that of your organization. This ensures that both parties know what the overall outcome should be.
- Any e-learning company you work with should understand if it's important that the ability to update the content of your e-learning program exists. In some cases it could be extremely important for you to be able to modify the content or add additional content at a later date.
- If possible, you should consider interviewing the design team at each e-learning company. Knowing how their team works together to get the project done can help you have a better understanding of how your project will come together in the end. You’ll specifically want to make sure that team members communicate well with each other.
- Consider the long-term value of your e-learning program and which e-learning development company can bring you the best solution
When you’re getting ready to make a decision, request a quote from the e-learning company. After the interviewing process is completed, creative samples are reviewed and project quotes are analyzed, you’ll be ready to choose the right e-learning company for your needs.
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Launching Your Own E-Learning Project
Posted on Fri, 07/23/2010 - 01:38
Launching Your Own E-Learning Project
What if your boss put you in charge of this initiative? Hopefully, these steps below will better prepare you to have an effective instructional experience for your learners through development. We explain what you should do as a client, and what to look for when creating your e-learning project.
1. Target Your Audience – Setting up training for an engineer is vastly different than setting up training for a sales representative. You need to determine who the audience is and what will be the most effective learning strategy for them. Keep in mind the education level of your audience as well as seat time for the module. Different levels of interactivity and content detail will need to be considered for your audience when choosing the most effective learning strategy for them.
2. Medium – Know what technology you would like your learners to use during their learning process. This is the time where you decide how you will plan on using your development. Some mediums include kiosks, web - based training, CD-ROM's, and Learning Management Systems (LMS). If your going to use a Learning Management System, you need to decide which LMS you will be using because the development of the module will vary depending on the system. Make sure to look at your company limitations, for example if your learners will not have the ability to use/install Flash, then it would be in your best interest to not develop the project in Adobe Flash.
3. Features – By choosing your features ahead of time, you will have a better grasp of the time frame to complete your project. A few e-learning project features include: closed captioning, drag and drop questions, scrolling text, 2d & 3d animations, audio/voice over, streaming video, illustrations, and pre and post assessments. A good understanding of the features is essential to understand how large the final product will be.
4. Design –The design of your creation does not just mean choosing a color for the interface and slapping your logo at the top. All aspects of the design must be considered in creating a successful e-learning project. Without thinking about the design as a whole you will find users will be confused on how to navigate through the module, and finding the features that are located within the e-learning project. Not only must your content keep the user engaged but the design of the interface and the way the content is presented is a major factor in assuring your message is getting across. Users should not be distracted by the way something looks or where it is located within the project. The design should present the information in a way that is intuitive and facilitates the learning experience.
5. Content – Ensure you are obtaining realistic initiatives for your project and remember to view the material from a learner standpoint. This will also eliminate confusion from a novice user attempting to learn your processes and protocols. Learning objectives are what drive your overall goals, while the content is what drives each topic. Content will always be king in e-learning projects so make sure that the majority of the time invested into your project is focused around the content development and storyboarding.
6. Make it fun! - Create an e-learning project that your staff can learn easily from and have fun while doing so! People learn in life because it’s applicable. Often times they learn because they want to, but in this case there will be people that are the opposite. So while in the storyboarding phase make sure you think about the fun factor.
7. Development – This should never start until you have the final approval of your storyboards. Look through your storyboard, features, and medium and determine the best way to start development. If you are looking for a simplistic module with minimal interaction, try developing in Captivate,or Articulate. If you are looking for something with a lot of interactivity, try developing in Adobe Flash, Silverlight,or Sharepoint. Remember to consider your LMS in this stage as well. You want to make sure that your module is SCORM or AICC compliant if necessary. There are many different types of development tools other than the ones listed above that you can use to get your project complete. Once you have researched and chosen your editing suite you can begin putting your storyboard and features together into your module design.
8. Testing –Every development should go through a testing phase where multiple users go through the module and provide their feedback. Consider having focus groups and involve both people who will be using the system as well as users who mimic the target audience in terms of content knowledge and experience. By having focus groups, you will be able to alleviate any issues that may arise within your development that you or your team may have overlooked. Make sure the design is user-friendly and the content is achieving your learning objectives. Testing will insure a smooth implementation of your training solutions and will insure your learners are not distracted by development bugs and errors.
9. Implementation– During the development phase, your team or vendor may have asked (or should have) if your e-learning project needed to be SCORM or AICC compliant. This is critical to importing your course into a learning management system (LMS). AICC & SCORM are two very different programming languages that allow for communication between the user and the LMS. These coding languages are applied to the e-learning project so that they can send and receive commands to the LMS such as bookmarking, pass / fail, complete/incomplete, timing of the course, or even saving answers into the LMS. This coding preference is determined by the learning management system you are going to be applying to this e-learning project. During your design and planning phase we strongly suggest discussing with your technical team to determine what preference your LMS uses. This is critical to easily uploading your entire course as a zip file into your LMS. Without this the course is a standalone system that has no ability to be easily setup in the LMS nor can it track user progress. Once you do have the correct coding you are able to quickly import this e-learning project into your LMS. Beware, we suggest working with the LMS admin to ensure they show you how to exactly import a course in using AICC or SCORM as that process is unique to each LMS.
10. Tracking the results... – Your first e-learning project has now become a bigger venture than you anticipated. Now not only do you want to create the course for the users but your boss wants you to provide results for your effort. This is where your learning management system comes in. There are many options to learning management systems ranging from open source systems, up to large scale enterprise systems. We recommend doing some research on LMS systems and their features to choose the one that fits your learner’s needs. In the near future we will provide a post regarding open source systems for you so come back to the blog.
Hopefully, the process above will assist you in developing out your e-learning project. If you would like to learn more about how we can assist you in developing this process contact us today!
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Augmented Reality - What is it? How does it work? Where is it taking us?
Posted on Wed, 07/07/2010 - 04:58
Augmented Reality. What is it? How does it work? Where is it taking us?
John here, Interactive Media Designer for Designing Digitally, Inc. Over the past several months, we have been developing augmented reality applications for clients. With this new and exciting technology we have been giving our clients' users a fresh new experience and a whole new way to interact with both the virtual world and the real world. I wanted to take some time out to share this amazing technology our team is working with.
Great! What is Augmented Reality again?
Augmented reality, at a very basic level, turns the real world into a canvas in which developers can construct user experiences. It makes the world we live in a playground for virtual sights and sounds. It gives us the opportunity to deliver information and entertainment to the user with real world context. To place augmented reality into a more technical light, it allows us to take visual information and map it directly to objects within real life footage. What makes augmented reality so ground breaking is that all of this tracking happens in real time. Have you ever driven by a restaurant and wondered what time it closes? Augmented reality could look at that restaurants logo along with GPS information and display a virtual billboard over the restaurant with the information you need. It may sound like science fiction but it is already being set in motion.
I think I follow. How can I use Augmented reality right now?
Although augmented reality is still in its infancy, when you look at the grand scheme of things it can still be a valuable tool in multiple fields and at various levels. Everything from simple greeting cards to educational tools to branding and marketing tools can effectively incorporate augmented reality. The simplest examples of augmented reality are novelties and publicity gimmicks. For instance, you could send someone a birthday card. When they show the card to their computer's webcam, a 3-D birthday cake would grow out of the card. A more serious example is low cost hands on virtual training. An auto mechanic could use physical tools to work on virtual car. A surgeon could perform virtual practice surgery from his computer while still using his hands. These are all possible with technology available today, but as hardware becomes faster, smaller, and more portable, applications such as these become even more cost effective and feasible.
Amazing! Where is this going to go in the future?
As the technology develops, you will see augmented reality mini apps more and more often in day to day life. Real time data will be streamed to us about everything we see, smell, hear and touch. We will be able to interact with this data in order to make more informed decisions. Heads up displays will show us detailed history on cars and homes for sale as we pass them on the streets. We at Designing Digitally, Inc. are excited to be at the forefront of this amazing emergent technology. Before you know it the virtual will become real and the real will become virtual. We hope to help blur these lines.
Please print the PDF listed in the link below then open the demo, also listed below. (Note: to view this demo you must have a webcam)
Step 1 - Click here to open the marker PDF you need to print
Step 2 - Click this link to activate the Augmented Reality and your webcam.
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