As video is slowly becoming indispensable part of our e-learning courses there are more chances to overdo the things with video. There are some common myths related to usage of video in e-learning which we'll try to look at today.
Videos are expensive affair: Busted! Videos are no longer an expensive affair, simple camera and some basic video editing software with mac or windows is all it takes to make a simple hard-hitting video.
But Video will require great skills: Busted! We've been living with with videos for more than half a century almost now and the technology has so advanced that anyone can do it with proper learning. Learning and keeping an eye on the synch between audio and video to get desired effects is all it takes. These are learnable skills!
Macs are better than PC for video editing: Busted! Machine or operating system hardly matters you can make your video on your laptop using the operating system you have. No need to look around for anything else.
Flash/Quicktime is the best media streaming software: Busted! Flash is more universally available compared to Quicktime and is more wholistic for programming and interactivity. But then whichever codec you use is going to compress the video.
Frame rate, that's confusing: Not really! Well 24 frames per second (fps) works well with any sort of video we would like to put up. The films use this rate and its accpeted rate for films internationally without burdening the bandwidth much during streaming.
Finally, there will be more myths as we advance more with our videos and usage but as long as we do know the desired output no myth can stop us.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Simple Graphic Tips
A well done course with all the proper assignments, perfect assessment, interesting content its a total failure without simple graphic spruce up to make it good enough for the user. Lets look at simple graphic tips to spruce up our online content.
Text:
Most simple fact that most of the content is written, use a simple to understand non-fancy font that is kept same throughout the course. I would personally recommend anything from sans serif family like Arial, Calibri, Tahoma etc.
Try not to use too small or too big font and don,t over do bolding, italics or underline. Avoid big titles, they kill the content. try to bring a normal font size title.
Color:
Use neutral colors for background and avoid dark, bright and loud colors in the background. Create a color scheme for you course and stick to it as you'll stick to the fonts.
Images/ Pictures:
Pictures can be elemental in conveying your content to the user but then it's elementary to use pictures that are non-distracting. Try to use pictures which speak of the subject they're used for. If we have to picture a surgical tool try to picture it in a box or its compartment unless its animated. This will take user attention on the tool rather than its background or the person holding the tool in the image.
And finally image size should be such that it is balanced with the content, try and give half the screen to image and rest half to the text to keep the balance.
Graphs/ Diagrams:
Graphs and diagrams help to take across a point or statistic/ data to the user in a visually attractive way. Use relevant graphs and diagrams wherever possible but neither try to cram up lot of information in a small graph nor too little information in bloated graph. Try to achieve a balance in you representation. If needed merge or divide the graph and information for simplicity of understanding.
Take away:
Finally, great content presented with consistent colors, font and related graphs and images in right context will not only make course easy to understand but increase its appeal to the user.
Text:
Most simple fact that most of the content is written, use a simple to understand non-fancy font that is kept same throughout the course. I would personally recommend anything from sans serif family like Arial, Calibri, Tahoma etc.
Try not to use too small or too big font and don,t over do bolding, italics or underline. Avoid big titles, they kill the content. try to bring a normal font size title.
Color:
Use neutral colors for background and avoid dark, bright and loud colors in the background. Create a color scheme for you course and stick to it as you'll stick to the fonts.
Images/ Pictures:
Pictures can be elemental in conveying your content to the user but then it's elementary to use pictures that are non-distracting. Try to use pictures which speak of the subject they're used for. If we have to picture a surgical tool try to picture it in a box or its compartment unless its animated. This will take user attention on the tool rather than its background or the person holding the tool in the image.
And finally image size should be such that it is balanced with the content, try and give half the screen to image and rest half to the text to keep the balance.
Graphs/ Diagrams:
Graphs and diagrams help to take across a point or statistic/ data to the user in a visually attractive way. Use relevant graphs and diagrams wherever possible but neither try to cram up lot of information in a small graph nor too little information in bloated graph. Try to achieve a balance in you representation. If needed merge or divide the graph and information for simplicity of understanding.
Take away:
Finally, great content presented with consistent colors, font and related graphs and images in right context will not only make course easy to understand but increase its appeal to the user.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Getting E-Learning Right
When a course gaps the bridge between learner and educator with right content the results are clearly seen with high test scores, retention and performance. Such courses remain engrained with learners and educators for some time.
The way a state of art course with all the frills of social media, web 2.0 used to optimum with poor content is a failure so is the course with best content with no frills of these technology. To get your e-learning right you must be able to get a balance - balance of content and technology!
But then to get this balance we must be able to grab attention of user. A bright flashing light by the driveway is good enough to grab your attention to a strawberry vendor but then the broken van, shabby seller and rotting strawberry won't get you engaged enough to stop by and buy. So the core mantra to get your e-learning right is a right balance between attention and engagement :)
Now imagine the same flashing bulb on the drive and a perfect strawberry truck with great strawberries and great seller by another end, it does no good either as before the driver notices the truck he will be either distracted or bored or probably both.
Grab attention of your users with right technology and content titles and then engage them with ease of your easy to understand content presented with a choice of right options with e-learning. But the key here is to be sure that don't get them distracted or bored with superfluous graphics and videos. Perfect balance will help us get e-learning right!
The way a state of art course with all the frills of social media, web 2.0 used to optimum with poor content is a failure so is the course with best content with no frills of these technology. To get your e-learning right you must be able to get a balance - balance of content and technology!
But then to get this balance we must be able to grab attention of user. A bright flashing light by the driveway is good enough to grab your attention to a strawberry vendor but then the broken van, shabby seller and rotting strawberry won't get you engaged enough to stop by and buy. So the core mantra to get your e-learning right is a right balance between attention and engagement :)
Now imagine the same flashing bulb on the drive and a perfect strawberry truck with great strawberries and great seller by another end, it does no good either as before the driver notices the truck he will be either distracted or bored or probably both.
Grab attention of your users with right technology and content titles and then engage them with ease of your easy to understand content presented with a choice of right options with e-learning. But the key here is to be sure that don't get them distracted or bored with superfluous graphics and videos. Perfect balance will help us get e-learning right!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Mantra for Enhanced Learning Experience
There is a simple mantra for delivering not just an e-learning course but an enhanced learning experience – Engage your learners!
Yes, in my e-learning pentagon I touched upon this angle and here now I write some simple tips on how you can engage your learners.
1) Break the course into independent modules: Yeah I know we all do that, but then we link and sometimes even arrange them like train bogies, one following the other!
What we need to really do is make them independent of one another. Break them free- let it be a roller coaster ride and let your learner decide which one he chooses first and which one he has had enough of!
2) Spruce up the course with varied contents, use texts, animation, graphics, video, audio, discussion forums, chat, etc. This will help you to appeal various facades of learners as an individual and /or a group.
3) Web 2.0 has made it pretty obvious for us to implement social media as part of our learning experience. Facebook, Flickr, blog, tweeter, etc. will help the learner to take learning to an unofficial level, breaking down traditional learning boundaries.
4) Add different levels of interactivity with peer-peer and peer-tutor; discussion forums and chats also try to engage the learner in building part of the course taking interactivity to another level!
5) And finally do not over deliver, what this means is Keep It Simple and Sober; do not overdo the course with lots of images, tests, graphs or interactivity, get a balance of everything. Best way is to get some users involved to understand how we are getting along!
Yes, in my e-learning pentagon I touched upon this angle and here now I write some simple tips on how you can engage your learners.
1) Break the course into independent modules: Yeah I know we all do that, but then we link and sometimes even arrange them like train bogies, one following the other!
What we need to really do is make them independent of one another. Break them free- let it be a roller coaster ride and let your learner decide which one he chooses first and which one he has had enough of!
2) Spruce up the course with varied contents, use texts, animation, graphics, video, audio, discussion forums, chat, etc. This will help you to appeal various facades of learners as an individual and /or a group.
3) Web 2.0 has made it pretty obvious for us to implement social media as part of our learning experience. Facebook, Flickr, blog, tweeter, etc. will help the learner to take learning to an unofficial level, breaking down traditional learning boundaries.
4) Add different levels of interactivity with peer-peer and peer-tutor; discussion forums and chats also try to engage the learner in building part of the course taking interactivity to another level!
5) And finally do not over deliver, what this means is Keep It Simple and Sober; do not overdo the course with lots of images, tests, graphs or interactivity, get a balance of everything. Best way is to get some users involved to understand how we are getting along!
Monday, July 20, 2009
Five commandments for developing an e-learning course
When starting with any e-learning course there are five commandments I generally follow, I call those commandments as the e-learning pentagon.
Purpose:
Any e-learning course that we develop will have its purpose, as simple as we need to have a learning objective. Why are we creating this course? What is the motivation for creating this course?
Investigate:
As you understand the purpose of your course you should also investigate the content. No wonder there would be subject matter experts at aid but then while developing a course you need to develop an understanding of the subject.
When creating a clinical nursing course you must investigate and find out more about the lingo, terms, and make it a very clinical course!
Audience:
When you see a course do you feel that it is either too easy or too difficult to understand? That’s because one has missed an important angle of the pentagon, the audience!
When developing an e-learning course one needs to develop an understanding of his audience, you need to think from the learner’s point of view.
Engage:
Interactivity – gets the learner hooked to the course. Engage him with small interactive modules, tests quizzes, animation, etc.
Test:
Pilot run your course before releasing, you’ll be surprised with the last minute house-keeping you will need to do!
Purpose:
Any e-learning course that we develop will have its purpose, as simple as we need to have a learning objective. Why are we creating this course? What is the motivation for creating this course?
Investigate:
As you understand the purpose of your course you should also investigate the content. No wonder there would be subject matter experts at aid but then while developing a course you need to develop an understanding of the subject.
When creating a clinical nursing course you must investigate and find out more about the lingo, terms, and make it a very clinical course!
Audience:
When you see a course do you feel that it is either too easy or too difficult to understand? That’s because one has missed an important angle of the pentagon, the audience!
When developing an e-learning course one needs to develop an understanding of his audience, you need to think from the learner’s point of view.
Engage:
Interactivity – gets the learner hooked to the course. Engage him with small interactive modules, tests quizzes, animation, etc.
Test:
Pilot run your course before releasing, you’ll be surprised with the last minute house-keeping you will need to do!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
What Is This Buzz All About?
What is this buzz all about? E-learning! But then don’t we all know about e-learning? Isn’t it that technical thingy where we post text files, quizzes, questionnaires with some images and graphics, to save a whole lot of time and money spent to distribute it otherwise, so we all know about it. What’s the big deal?
CRAP!
E-learning goes much beyond posting text files or quizzes online. It’s creating a platform to share the information, knowledge in an interactive environment. Yeah a part of it includes creating quizzes or posting text, but then that’s it, it is just a part of the process!
E-learning is a tedious task which involves understanding the learning aim and needs, understanding the content and understanding ways for its best representation to help the users grasp the knowledge the best way. Developing and using the graphics and interactivity, blending it with current online trends, developing new ideas, managing budget and the time schedule so that the course is ready in time for users. Finally, bringing together the subject matter experts, graphic designers, instructional writers and technical team to work together in harmony to blend in there inputs. All in all, it’s a wide array of different activities – overlapping, separate, independent and dependant!
E-learning is not bombarding the learner with knowledge but getting the learner to actively participate in learning, challenging his/her ability, allowing him/her to take initiatives, addressing a range of his/her skills while mocking a scenario. It’s all about giving them an interactive environment where they can, not only learn but hone and use the skills they learn while they learn them.
All in all, e-learning is a step to get the user out of the passive learning experience to an interactive learning experience, which involves investment in terms of time, money, resources, people, technology and a whole lot of information disseminated with a lot of thinking!
CRAP!
E-learning goes much beyond posting text files or quizzes online. It’s creating a platform to share the information, knowledge in an interactive environment. Yeah a part of it includes creating quizzes or posting text, but then that’s it, it is just a part of the process!
E-learning is a tedious task which involves understanding the learning aim and needs, understanding the content and understanding ways for its best representation to help the users grasp the knowledge the best way. Developing and using the graphics and interactivity, blending it with current online trends, developing new ideas, managing budget and the time schedule so that the course is ready in time for users. Finally, bringing together the subject matter experts, graphic designers, instructional writers and technical team to work together in harmony to blend in there inputs. All in all, it’s a wide array of different activities – overlapping, separate, independent and dependant!
E-learning is not bombarding the learner with knowledge but getting the learner to actively participate in learning, challenging his/her ability, allowing him/her to take initiatives, addressing a range of his/her skills while mocking a scenario. It’s all about giving them an interactive environment where they can, not only learn but hone and use the skills they learn while they learn them.
All in all, e-learning is a step to get the user out of the passive learning experience to an interactive learning experience, which involves investment in terms of time, money, resources, people, technology and a whole lot of information disseminated with a lot of thinking!
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
e-Learning......
Gone are the days when students studied in a classroom where teachers tried to pour out what they knew. Traditional teaching has revamped and reinvented itself with the advent of web technology. With the advent of internet we are facing a generation which has no living memory of a world without internet!
E-learning in itself is an umbrella term for providing online (computer based) learning solutions. Now this includes a variety of teaching material, coursework, assessment, discussions, chat and many more features of web 2.0 shared over the internet/intranet which is either a part of a distance or a classroom learning program.
In the early days it was predicted that e-learning will radically change the learning paradigm and classroom teaching will be long forgotten in the history, but as e-learning has matured its shown a symbiotic relation and the traditional classroom teaching has evolved and today we see the advent of blended learning which is bringing together the best of both worlds!
E-learning in itself is an umbrella term for providing online (computer based) learning solutions. Now this includes a variety of teaching material, coursework, assessment, discussions, chat and many more features of web 2.0 shared over the internet/intranet which is either a part of a distance or a classroom learning program.
In the early days it was predicted that e-learning will radically change the learning paradigm and classroom teaching will be long forgotten in the history, but as e-learning has matured its shown a symbiotic relation and the traditional classroom teaching has evolved and today we see the advent of blended learning which is bringing together the best of both worlds!
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