June 12, 2008
I mentioned the release of ScreenFlow back in February, and this app is getting some high-profile (and well-deserved) recognition by way of two Apple Design Awards from the 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC): Best OS X Graphics and Media Application and Best OS X Application.
With the high level of quality of OS X applications in general, winning an Apple Design Award is no mean feat. Winning two? Epic!
Nice work, Vara Software.
Sorry Windows users, this one is Mac-only. But the time has never been better (VMWare Fusion) to jump into the Mac end of the pool. Come on in, the water’s fine!
Posted in Apple, eLearning Development Tools 
No Comments »
June 5, 2008
As eLearning developers, most of us are not graphic designers by trade or by training. Many of us have academic or corporate backgrounds. We are, to put it bluntly, visual design noobs. Hacks. Poseurs. We think white socks are perfectly fine with black trousers. And we couldn’t tell the difference between Helvetica and Microsoft’s tacky two-bit knockoff Arial if our lives depended on it.
So if we’re not graphic designers, and we can’t afford to hire a real graphic designer for our eLearning development team, how are we supposed to create visually compelling eLearning without a clue about what we’re doing?
Friends, the answer is simple. Ape the work of someone who does.
Whenever I come across a website with a visual design that inspires me, I take a snapshot of it and file it away. I find it helpful to browse this “digital scrapbook” of tasteful design whenever I’m starting a new eLearning development project. I look at the color schemes. The image styles. The fonts used.
And while mimicking a color scheme is a simple affair, duplicating a font style can be a real challenge. After all, if you can barely tell a serif font from a sans-serif font, how are you going to discern Futura from Avenir? You aren’t.
But never fear, WhatTheFont?! is here!
Simply upload an image containing the font you like and WhatTheFont?!, or WTF from here on out (no, not that WTF), will do its darnedest to tell you exactly what font it is.
I feel an example is in order.
Imagine you stumble across a refreshingly (or annoyingly) honest blog about eLearning design called, oh, say, eQuixotic. And say you are struck - inspired even - by the visual symphony that frames its verbose grandeur.
“This man knows what he is doing!” you cry. (Ah, not so! But I digress…)
And imagine you are attracted in particular to the title font used in the site’s banner. Why, you would just love to use this exact font in your next eLearning project. But how can you determine what that font is?Simple. Go to WTF. Upload the banner image. WTF will automatically attempt to recognize each character. Like so:
You may have to help it along by filling in some of the character boxes. It seems to struggle with the dotted i in particular.Once you’ve ensured the correct characters are identified, click the Search button. And voila, WTF will identify the font with a surprising degree of accuracy:
Indeed, the font used for the eQuixotic site banner is Cholla Sans Regular. WTF FTW!
I love Web magic like this.
So go forth and imitate, my visually-challenged eLearning developer friends. There is no excuse for using ugly, amateurish fonts (Comic Sans, I’m nodding in your direction) in your next eLearning project.
The shame of hopping a free ride on someone else’s caboose will fade over time. Trust me.
Posted in Presentations, eLearning Design 2 Comments »
May 9, 2008
My organization, like many large organizations (and many if not most eLearning development professionals, for that matter), has bought into the Reusable Learning Object (RLO) concept with reckless abandon, implementing a Learning Content Management System (LCMS) (shudder) which shall remain nameless (but rhymes with Neato HorsePen).
This system is not only a horrifically cumbersome environment in which to develop, but, from my experience, it churns out the most banal eLearning imaginable. Personally, I avoid developing in it at all costs. And when I find myself in the pitiable role of the learner, faced with a course that was developed in our LCMS, I do my best to avoid letting out an audible groan while readying my mouse pointer on the Next button.
I found the monotony of flash cards in grade school more tolerable.
RLOs, the theory goes, are merely building blocks (flash cards?) of information that can quickly and easily be lifted from one course and dropped into another. Like a big bin of homogenous parts that just so happen to fit whatever you wish to bolt them to. Why, it sounds almost, well, too good to be true!
It is.
Actually, on paper, the theory makes perfect sense. Achieving peak efficiency is, after all, a noble goal. It’s what keeps business moving ever forward. And with training dollars always in short supply, getting the product out as quickly and cheaply as possible is the name of the game. Why recreate content over and over again?
In practice, however, things start to crumble quickly. The problem is this: if the goal is learning content that’s so generic it can easily be grafted seamlessly from one course into another, it’s doubtful that content will provide any real interest to the learner in the first place. If we’re focused on making the content reusable, are we also focused on making it interesting?
And it’s not just the interchangeable nature of the content that causes the problem. It’s also the authoring tool itself. Because a tool that is designed to assemble a collection of existing parts and quickly burp out a product is typically not a tool that facilitates creativity or innovation. You know, the things that actually make learning intriguing and enjoyable.
Read the sales pitch for any LCMS product. You’ll inevitably find the descriptors “scalable,” “rapid,” “efficient,” and “easy.” You’ll also find a lot of talk about “ROI.” What you won’t find are the adjectives “interesting” or “good.”
I won’t argue that you can’t create compelling eLearning using this type of authoring tool. I will argue, however, that this type of authoring tool doesn’t encourage you to create compelling eLearning. In fact, compelling eLearning is created in spite of such a tool, not because of it.
I tend to see the end product of RLO-based systems (our RLO-based system, anyway) like I see fast food. You have the all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, and sesame seed bun. All the necessary ingredients neatly and methodically laid out for quick and easy assembly. And while this system enables you to crank out that burger rapidly and cheaply, your customer ends up with a meal that neither satisfies the palate nor provides any real nutritional value.
We need to reassess the implementation of the ROL philosophy. Yes, I know, there are a legion of Ph.Ds out there who know more about eLearning than I can ever hope to who will vehemently disagree with me with raised fist and furrowed brow. “Our methodology is sound,” they wail.
But let me lay down the cold, hard facts: as a learner, your eLearning fast food is just not working for me.
I view such LCMS tools as I view certain software applications that can generate music for you automatically by assembling a collection of interchangeable parts and passages. Sure, the result is usually listenable, but you certainly wouldn’t dance to it or load it on your iPod.
And we all know the result of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiment with reusable parts.
Geez, the bad analogies just keep coming. I’ll stop now.
Do we want quick, easy, cheap, and efficient eLearning? Or do we want eLearning that’s good? As a learner, I choose good, thank you very much. And as an eLearning developer, I feel obligated to, um, oblige.
I realize, of course, that for the sake of argument I’m oversimplifying the situation. And I’m sure there are some truly unforgettable, earth-moving, mind-bending courses out there that were built using an RLO-focused development tool.
I personally have never seen one, but I’d love to hear from someone who has.
Posted in Rants, eLearning Design 5 Comments »
May 1, 2008
I finally took the time (long overdue) to read Garr Reynolds’ excellent book on presentation design, Presentation Zen. For those of you unfamiliar with Garr Reynolds, he is the proprietor of the like-named (and likewise excellent) blog on presentation design. I’m a great fan of his blog, so it should be no surprise I am also a great fan of his book.
Since my profession is primarily in eLearning design - not sales, marketing, or classroom instruction - I found myself mentally replacing the words “presentation” and “PowerPoint” with “eLearning” as I read the book. And in doing so found that the content remained right on the money.
In fact, if Garr were to do a quick Find & Replace, he could resend his manuscript to the printer, entitle it eLearning Zen, and have another winner on his hands (I’ll take a mere 20% for the concept, Garr).
Sidenote: I could easily have called my own blog eLearning Zen, as my despair about eLearning so closely matches Garr’s despair about presentations. But hey, shameless derivatives just ain’t my style, baby.
The derision, rage, and scorn subtly (and not-so-subtly) directed at PowerPoint presentations throughout this book echo my feelings about the vast majority of eLearning I have encountered. The PowerPoint-induced fuming of millions is beautifully illustrated via some short quotes by some well-known luminaries in the tech world.
Utilizing the aforementioned Find & Replace technique, allow me the liberty of tailoring these quotes to befit the eLearning scourge:
“eLearning could be the most powerful tool on your computer, but it’s not. It’s actually a dismal failure. Almost every eLearning course sucks rotten eggs.” - Seth Godin”Stop your eLearning before it kills again.” - Kathy Sierra”eLearning Is Evil.” - Wired Magazine
Dr. Michael Allen, at TechKnowledge in San Antonio, actually said (no Find & Replace required here):
“90% of eLearning should be thrown away.”
90%???
He was being kind.
My own disgust with the pitiful state of eLearning rose to the top of my throat today as I was subjected to yet another horrible iteration. The Powers That Be within my organization have seen fit to bestow me with some meager funds with which to purchase some much-needed software for eLearning development. Things never being as simple as they should be, I’m required to input my request using an unknown internal online ordering system (one that is sure to be hopelessly complex and unintuitive). But before I can do so, I’m required to take an eLearning course that will explain the use of this system.
Yes, alarm bells were already sounding in my head.One hour later, I had managed to navigate my way through possibly the most mind-numbingly inept eLearning course I have ever experienced (and that’s saying a lot). Screen after screen of image-free text explaining the background, history, and, almost as an afterthought, the actual use of the system. All told, 99% of the content was irrelevant to me as a new user trying to input a simple software request.
Were there any screenshots? No. Demos? Uh uh. Simulations? Nope. But hey, it did include a few silly “knowledge checks” thrown in to add a little variety to my misery!
A one-page Word document that could be read in 5 minutes would have been much more effective.
Note: I still don’t know how to use the online ordering system.
The irony of being tortured with horrible eLearning in order to purchase the tools to create good eLearning was not lost on me.
And the banner in the default template used in this course taunted me with the slogan “E-Learning: A new way of learning…”
Sorry, this wasn’t learning. And this definitely wasn’t a “new way.” This was everything bad about teaching wrapped up in a mess of HTML, javascript, duct tape and twine.
Yet again we sabotage our efforts to convert learners to eLearning by dumping a worthless product on them and proclaiming it The Future.
Bah.
But I digress. I’ll speak more on this self-destructive habit (that of talking up bad eLearning) in a future post.
My venting complete, I return now to the topic at hand: Presentation Zen (the book), by Garr Reynolds.
Buy it. Read it. Apply it to your eLearning design.
Please!
Posted in Books, Presentations, Rants, eLearning Design 1 Comment »
April 21, 2008
Steve Anthony, a professional voiceover artist, left a helpful tip in the comments section of the On Narration and eLearning post from a couple of weeks ago:
I’d also like to offer this tip; if the narration is sounding ‘read,’ (no matter who is doing it, either in-house or out-sourced) try loosening up sentence structure. By that, I mean short, informal, sentences along with the use of contractions. For example, change a sentence like,
“In this lesson, we will cover the basics of remote desktop access using remote desktop programming, RDP, along with installation, setup and configuration, and user access,’
to
‘This lesson is about remote desktop access. Specifically, we’ll cover RDP, which is the acronym for remote desktop programming. We’ll start with installing RDP. Next, we’ll cover setup and configuration. And, finally, we’ll look at user access.’
Short and simple.
I agree completely with Steve: the frequent use of contractions is a must if you want a free-flowing, natural-sounding narration. “Write it like you’d say it” seems to be a pretty good rule of thumb for writing narration scripts.
In visiting Steve’s site, I was impressed with his voiceover samples. Definitely not the robo-drone or cheesily dramatic styles I’m used to hearing in professionally-voiced eLearning courses. Have a listen for yourself.
On Steve’s resources page, he linked to a guide by fellow voiceover professional Shelley McIntyre, whose casual, natural style I also really enjoyed. The guide is Formatting Scripts for Voice Talent, and I found it a very helpful read - even for in-house narration work using self-confessed non-professionals (like me!). Check it out.
I’ll definitely be pointing my SME teams to Shelley’s guide before they begin writing their narration scripts.
Posted in Audio, eLearning Design 1 Comment »
April 16, 2008
I talked about the super-cool online raster-to-vector image converter tool back in January, bragging about the amazing capabilities of this online tool and raving about my favorite feature of all: it was free.
Yes, I said was free.
Alas, capitalism wins again. It is no longer Vector Magic by Stanford. It is now Vector Magic, Inc. And no longer are your online image conversions free. They now cost tokens. And tokens cost money.
Your formerly-free vector conversion will now cost you close to 3 bucks.
Now, I’m all for free enterprise. And I’m all for profiting from one’s own sweat - be it mental or physical. But there’s something about charging for something that was once free that sticks in the craw.
And honestly, $3 seems a bit steep.
For me, working for a Federal agency, getting something like this funded by the government - even at $3 a pop - takes an act of Congress. Seriously. Your government really sweats the small stuff. It’s the big ticket items they aren’t so worried about.
So a for-pay Vector Magic means no more Vector Magic for me.
It was fun while it lasted. Good luck with the whole business thing, guys.
Bah.
Posted in eLearning Development Tools No Comments »
April 9, 2008
Adobe unveiled its new Adobe TV site today, offering a variety of video-based instructional sessions (with real talking heads!) focused on using its vast arsenal of creative development tools.
I’ve made the obvious argument several times in the past (An Educated Customer Is a Happy (and Loyal) Customer, Adobe Video Workshop: Adobe Teaches You Adobe, eLearning Is Selling, Hold on, Kawasaki! (And Tippie Too!)) that a significant future trend in eLearning involves companies teaching current (and potential) customers how to use their products. Adobe continues to illustrate (pun?) this trend with the new Adobe TV site.
The line between marketing and education truly is becoming blissfully blurred.
If you use Adobe products (and as an eLearning developer, you almost certainly do), have a look at the new Adobe TV site.
As an appetizer, I highly recommend Caffe Fibonacci - Rufus and Tim’s Digital Kitchen, produced in a classic cooking show format. Educational and entertaining - it hits the eLearning sweet spot! Mmmmm!
Might I even be so bold as to give it an eLearning Hall of Fame nomination? Perhaps I might.
Bon appetit!
Sidenote: hey Adobe, how about ponying up some extra bandwidth and giving us the option of high-definition video? I like the full-screen viewing option, but the available resolution hardly does it justice.
Posted in Adobe, Content, eLearning Hall of Fame 4 Comments »
April 3, 2008
The debate rages among eLearning design professionals about the value of narration in eLearning. How much narration is good? Is it good for all courses? Is it good for any course?
I can’t answer any of those questions conclusively, but I can give you my opinion.
As a learner, I’m a big fan of narrated eLearning (note: when done right - more on that in a moment). For me, narration adds an important human element typically missing in eLearning. My most profound (and most enjoyable) learning experiences in school were found in listening to my favorite teachers or professors, not poring over some dry, lifeless textbook. What makes eLearning any different?
And I tend to see eLearning not as a textbook replacement, but more as a classroom-based teacher replacement. If you have a large quantity of technical information for me to absorb, don’t throw it up on click-through screens in an eLearning course. Just email me a document to read. Or better yet, give me an actual book. It’s faster. It’s easier. It’s less irritating.
Text-heavy eLearning page-turners are a mental turnoff. Period.
There are very few eLearning courses I’ve been involved with (or have taken) that didn’t benefit, or wouldn’t have benefitted, from some verbal narration.
So let’s presume for the sake of argument that narration, in most cases, can be a good thing. And let’s examine some things that can make good narration bad.
When I say “narration,” I don’t mean putting long blocks of text on screen that a narrator reads to me. As a learner, it’s frustrating to have on-screen text narrated verbatim. I (like most people) read much faster than I listen (or better said, I read much faster than the narrator can speak). So my eyes want to read ahead of what the narrator is saying. My brain eventually tunes out the narrator entirely. Either let me listen or let me read; don’t expect that I can successfully do both.
This may be a “no duh” argument to many of you, but it’s exactly what our big-dollar eLearning development vendor often creates for us (my organization, to my dismay, does outsource some of our development work - despite my protests). I may not have a Ph.D in eLearning Design, and I may not get paid $50,000 per delivered course hour, but I usually do know what works and what doesn’t work for me as a learner. And I can tell you that reading on-screen text to me does not work.
My personal experience as a learner is backed up by Richard E. Mayer’s Multimedia Learning, in which he reports that removing spoken text from the screen increases learner retention 28% and learner transfer 79%. Those are significant numbers. So if you’re going to narrate, please don’t dictate to me what I’m reading on the screen. It’s annoying. It’s frustrating. And I’ll be scrambling for the Mute button.
Or the Next button.
Now let’s move past the excessive on-screen text gripe and focus on the narration itself. Is there such a thing as good narration and bad narration? Of course.
A poor-quality narration is obviously a buzzkill. No one wants to hear a SME (or eLearning developer) breathing heavily into a $10 headset microphone patched through his budget-line corporate laptop’s cheap audio circuitry with the janitor vacuuming the office in the background. And no one wants to listen to a mumbler or to someone who sounds like they’re spitting out scripted speech. But hey, it happens. To avoid this type of problem, voice work is often outsourced to a professional. Which, in my personal experience, can create new issues.
Professional narrators in eLearning can (and often do) sound synthetic and unnatural. Too smooth, too polished. Too…er, “professional.” In fact, I think the guy who narrates many of the eLearning courses I’ve experienced is the exact same guy who narrated all those horrible science filmstrips back in school. Filmstrips??? Wow, I’m getting old. But not Filmstrip Narrator Man. That man is ageless! And he is now eLearning Narrator Man.
I wouldn’t in my wildest dreams claim to be a fantastic narrator myself, but I prefer listening to someone who sounds like a real human being (even if it’s a little rough) to some anonymous script-reading automaton who’s trying way too hard to replicate the voiceover for a summertime action movie trailer.
Am I alone in feeling this way?
And don’t get me started about those ridiculous text-to-sythesized-speech services. If you don’t care about your learning material enough to get a real human being to narrate, it must not be important enough for me as a learner to pay attention to it.
Robo-voices should be ostracized by the eLearning development community. Ostracized with extreme prejudice.
“Look Dave, I can sense you’re getting really upset about this eLearning course…”
HAL 9000, the eLearning course narrator.
I would have a hard time believing that any organization doesn’t have enough in-house talent to narrate an eLearning course. Sure, you don’t want Monotone Bob in Accounting ruining your course with his stilted, mind-numbing drone, but Veronica in Marketing has a silky-smooth voice. Or perhaps Jake the eLearning development intern would do. He has great vocal energy and can read out loud without sounding scripted. Hey, why not? “Pull up a microphone, Jake. Afterwards I’ll buy you lunch!”
eLearning narration is not a dramatic reading. It should sound natural. It should sound like, well, a really good instructor teaching a really interesting course.
Some people have the ability to read a script without sounding like they’re reading a script. And all of them aren’t professional voiceover professionals. And some of them are right there in your office! Find them. Use them.
Yes, there will be a bit of equipment and software to buy. No, you can’t record in the middle of the company cafeteria. You’re going to need some quiet space (I do mine at home). You may even want to build a poor man’s portable sound booth. Fortunately, technology has bridged the previously-wide gap between affordability and quality when it comes to audio production, and you can get set up for great-sounding narration work for a few hundred bucks. Seriously. I’ll discuss my own approach in future posts.
Many of you probably do narrate your own eLearning courses. And for that I salute you (if you do it well, of course). For those of you who do tap professional voiceover people, there’s nothing wrong with that. Not at all. But for the sake of learners everywhere (like me), try to find a narrator who knows how to, um, “keep it real.” They are out there. Really.
I’d love to hear some of your experiences with eLearning narration. What’s your approach? What do you like or dislike? Are my gripes simply the lunatic mutterings of a raving narration-obsessed madman?
Please share. I can take it.
Sidenote: and please, if you do use a professional narrator, please don’t include some cheesy stock photo of a foxy model and pretend she is my instructor.
“Hi. I’m Carmen at Corporate HQ. And not only am I a knockout with perfect teeth and a professional headshot, but I’ll also be teaching you about our company’s ISO 9001 quality management system today. With my sultry, yet flawless, professional narrator’s voice.”
Puh-lease.
It’s just insulting.
Posted in Audio, Rants, eLearning Design 10 Comments »
April 1, 2008
Do not miss 5 Secret Tips from an E-Learning Pioneer on Tom Kuhlmann’s (of Articulate) The Rapid E-Learning Blog.
You’ll LOL. You’ll cry. You’ll ROFL.
Sadly, this spoof is less ridiculous than much of the “serious” corporate training I’ve seen.
Happy April Fools’ Day to all.
Posted in Uncategorized No Comments »
March 24, 2008
OK, time to lay down some cold, hard truth. Anyone who has used both Apple Keynote and Microsoft PowerPoint for presentation work knows that Keynote absolutely, positively kicks PowerPoint’s trash to the curb when it comes to the quality of its visuals. Yes, PowerPoint has more widgets, gizmos, gadgets, and doodads, yet it still manages to pump out content that looks, well, sorta primitive. You’d think after all these versions of PowerPoint that Microsoft would finally figure it out. And I had high hopes for PowerPoint 2007. Apple had blazed a shiny trail with Keynote - surely Microsoft would, um, “pull a Microsoft” and duplicate it, right?
Sadly, I was doomed to disappointment.
Yes, there are some nice new features in PP 2007. Great features, even (layer management is a true blessing). Unfortunately, the “ribbon” interface continues to befuddle me. But ultimately, PowerPoint still doesn’t come close to Keynote in what really matters: its output.
Enter the new Web-based presentation builder, SlideRocket. SlideRocket is built upon Adobe’s AIR foundation and promises Keynote-quality slides and animations from a browser-based development tool.
So while creating online presentations isn’t necessarily of much interest to many eLearning developers (and to those who wail “Bah, PowerPoint isn’t eLearning!” I have a few words for you in a future post), imagine being able to snag some of these beautiful Flash-based animations, created quickly and easily without Flash skills via a Web-based tool, and insert them into your eLearning course via your development app of choice. Yes, it sounds delicious to me too.
My development app of choice, as I’ve mentioned before, is often Articulate Presenter (and Engage). Now, Presenter is limited in the number (and quality) of PowerPoint animations it can replicate in Flash. A limitation I had always attributed to Flash, not Presenter. In fact, despite my secret prayers for an OS X version of Presenter for Keynote (hey, a guy can dream), I always assumed Flash to be the weakest link, simply not able to allow Keynote-quality animations. However, seeing what SlideRocket is doing with Flash is truly impressive. My blame may have been misdirected. Or, to be completely fair, I should just say “the times, they are a changing.”
If PowerPoint + Articulate can’t give me the beautiful visuals I strive for, perhaps SlideRocket + Articulate can. And ultimately, what’s stopping a Web-based app like SlideRocket from eventually becoming an Articulate alternative? Why, nothing at all!
Maybe I can’t run Articulate stuff natively in OS X with Keynote-quality visuals. Not now. Probably not ever. But will a Web-based tool like SlideRocket someday give me that ability? Again, a guy can dream.
In the meantime, it’s Windows XP (Ack!) running PowerPoint (Ugh!) and Articulate via virtualization using VMware Fusion on my Mac. A kludgy and annoying solution. Visually less than refined. And hopefully not forever.
So check out SlideRocket. And perhaps even sign up for the public beta if you’re feeling like a trailblazer.
Sidenote: to the cynics who said Web-based apps would never equal desktop apps, prepare to eat much crow over the next few years.
Posted in Presentations, eLearning Design, eLearning Development Tools 1 Comment »
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I'm an eLearning developer and presentation designer looking for (and striving to create) eLearning and presentations that delight as well as educate and inform. Please join me.