Hello all,We are currently engaged in the external vs internal design within my team. We have the desire to become less dependant on external suppliers for workbook, handout design to e-learning, without of course sacrificing quality. We are a central design team ( working across 5 regions) but also work on different platforms (NT/XP) and are looking at investing in some tools and software to help us on our journey.Can anyone share any successes or points to consider when going down this route?A project has also now been raised to integrate rapid authoring tools within our organisation. It's probably some way off but I'm keen to understand how to create professional and user friendly e-learning. I've found some information on this and wanted to share.Has anyone got anything similar or hints and tips to succesfully design this sort of content?ThanksMikeInsiders Guide To Becoming A Rapid E-Learning Pro.pdf
Replies
Interactivity.pdf
We use Presenter and Captivate. They both have their merits, but I think innovation is all about creative uses of the simple technology available.
My favourite blog is the Rapid eLearning Blog - http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/ As you will see from the link, it's an articulate blog however you can implement the ideas in other applications.
Good luck!
Laura
I would suggest an investment into a enterprise solution i.e. Learning Content Management System to meet your diverse organisational, publishing and media requirements. A single portal for your staff will ensure successful outcomes and you will be able to manage production, project plans, content, etc. Should you require assistance in your selection and/or strategy, please advise and we can take this discussion off-line.
Regards,
Dennis
We do a lot of workbook, handout and e-Learning stuff internally using Captivate and Articulate along with Acrobat, word and powerpoint. Fairly similar to Andrew Greaves but we utilise SMEs much more.
However, I would challenge you on a point that we came up against. And it's the word "Professional". I think we (learning community) are a bit hung up with creating professional content. As far as I can tell "Professional" means corporate and often uses flash. However, I would argue that Professional actually means "gets the job done well". So a nicely formatted workbook is nothing like as professional as an averagely formatted workbook that really, really helps the user do what they need to do.
Sure, presentation is important but content is king. (I won't get into that argument!). I've produced some achingly beautiful eLearning that has been praised for being VERY professional and is frankly rubbish - because it's not hitting the intent.
What I think I'm saying is if you use rapid tools don't try and make it look like the external providers offerings. You'll fail. Instead focus on short, snappy content that gives the user exactly what they need. They'll keep coming back for more. Captivate and Articulate are great for this.
Again - happy to discuss more as I can give a pretty strong case study in this.
Final thing - just because they're called rapid doesn't mean it's quick. It means it's quickER than doing it another way :)
We are nearly down to selecting one providor and should have the tool to play with soon to demonstrate to others within our organisation.
I will take your comments (and all the others) on board and ensure I pitch this in the right way and not as the 'answer to all our prayers'.
Will no doubt come back to the group with some more questions soon
Thanks
Mike
We use Flash, no rapid development for us. Our agency figures we can do a 30 minute module with professional voice over for about £8,000 with animation and interactions included. We can do it rapidly, one project we took 6 weeks to develop 5 modules with simulations for our new ERP system. The outside providers offered us an off-the-shelf course for £300,000.
Kevin
Great post and one that a lot of us have to struggle with. Also Tom Kuhlmann is good to read as he demystifies the world of design in many ways, most of them positive.
Our organisation has recently taken eLearning production in house but have consistently managed the production of workbooks and handouts etc. internally for a long time. We have found, as you have have probably guessed, that we can achieve similar standards of quality in our materials as those we buy in externally. There are 2 areas to consider; the skills of your people and the tools you have available. These things are not mutually exclusive but there are distinct principles to think about.
The tools available to all of us allow for high production values, whether you are using Word or PowerPoint (Tom's favourite), or high-end tools like Adobe Photoshop to create the content and tools such as Adobe Indesign (Desk-top publishing) or Articulate or Atlantic Link's Content Point for putting the content together and deploying it. Therefore the final output that is delivered to your users will be professional in finish. However just because these tools 'render' visual design so well they do not make us all designers.
That being said there are basic design principles that are easy to implement and easy to find out about, through blogs such as Tom's and a multitude of sources readily available on the internet, that most of us can follow and use.
If you do not have the visual design skills in-house then a good way to spend some of your budget is to commission a graphic designer to produce the 'look and feel' and provide you with templates to work with. The graphic designer should partner with you in order to understand your brands (external and internal) and dive deeper into them in order to use them to deliver your messages; from organisational values through to the use of images ( and other multimedia principles) to enhance your communications.
One thing we do here is then to supply Word files to our teams who write the words that go into their workbooks etc. (letting them concentrate on what they are good at), the word document can then easily be 'flowed' into Indesign (which we have purchased) to lay the pages out in a way that communicates the training effectively using a template provided by the graphic designer. It is with reference to communicating the training that the core design principles apply across the board from handouts to eLearning content.
This gets you up and running and it soon becomes easier to tweak what you have as your visual confidence increases.
Finally (although it's not a total recommendation) at a push if your designer also provides templates in PowerPoint you could use one of the many tools out there that can covert this to Flash so it can be deliver on line with some interactivity. Is this eLearning - yes, just, although not as innovative or as engaging as it could be. It's a good way of starting to use the tools mentioned above.
I've just concentrated on visual design here as from your profile I'm assuming your a pretty good instructional designer. The same rules apply though, the tools alone won't make you a designer in any discipline.
Hope that starts to help.
Casson
I find this website really helpful, especially the reports in the e-learning top tips section: http://www.kineo.com/elearning-tips.html.
Jo
Just picked up your conversations above, we are currently going through a similar process although we don't have the budget for huge external resources.
Our success so far has been based on a moodle site which is good and open source but found the layout of study material was not to our liking so we carried out the research and have invested in 2 bits of software - Captivate for screen capture purposes for software demos and Engage for lesson formats.
Both are easy to use, you could almost use the straight out of the box. The way it has worked for us was we had placement undergraduates (young and with a grasp of IT) doing the design side working alongside technical experts for content purposes, this is working well as the technical expert can concentrate on what they are good at and are only called upon when needed.
The other method we have used is some video broadcasts with technical experts not directly to camera but in an interview format, we have a simple blue screen, HD camera, lapel mikes and Premium Pro for production. Again the videos are loaded onto our Moodle.
The major draw back being the better we get at design and layout side of the e-learning the more we want to start again.
Happy to discuss further if needed.
Andy