Project. The Revolution is Coming: Consumer Tablets and E-Learning « E-Learning 24/7 Blog. Top 10 LMS/LCMS Trends and Forecasts « E-Learning 24/7 Blog. 10 Tips on Using Tables in Your E-Learning Courses. I had a blog reader ask about the best way to animate a table in her rapid elearning course. Like a lot of things, it’s usually less about the best way and more about understanding the many ways that you can do something. Once you know what you can do, it’s easier to choose the best option that meets your objectives. Her question did cause me to think about some of the different ways you can use tables in an elearning course.
So I put together ten ideas that may help the next time you need to add a table to your course. Click here to view the table demo. The No Frills Approach Just add the table and do nothing else. Simple PowerPoint Animations Use PowerPoint shapes or images to point out things on the table. A downside to this approach is the time it takes to build the animations and get them just right. Progressive Reveal Animations Another way to use on-click animations is to cover the table with rectangles. Just-in-Time Annotations Articulate Presenter has that cool annotations feature. Create E-Learning Templates With a Consistent Clip Art Style. It would be great to have a graphics artist on staff who could build the graphics you need for your elearning courses. But the reality for many of us is that’s not going to happen.
So you’re left to fend for yourself. In previous posts, I shared a lot about how to customize your clip art so that you have some flexibility when building your elearning courses in PowerPoint. In today’s post I want to expand on that a bit by showing you how you can use a single clip art style to create your basic elearning template. Find a Style You Like Look over the clip art that you have and locate a style that you like.
A few things that I look for: Characters: What type of people, poses, and variations exist? Objects: What objects are available that I can pull out and use? Lines and shapes: Are there some shapes or lines that I can pull from the clip art and use in other places? Play Around with Ideas Try to build a template structure using elements from the clip art. You might also change up the look. Online training and conferencing advocates continue to ask the wrong question. The April 19th issue of eLearning Guild’s Insider Newsletter has an article titled, The True Value of Online Training, which has a link to a whitepaper titled, How to Promote the Value of Online Training Within Your Organization.
Although this is obviously a marketing piece to promote Citrix Online’s GoToMeeting Corporate product and does have some useful suggestions for selling Web-based programs internally, it sets up a false dichotomy: online vs. in-person. No one can deny that online programs offer a substantial cost savings over in-person training and conferences. The authors write: Members of the training profession often debate the hard and soft performance gains from employee training in today’s workplace, but on one subject there is no argument. The single most effective way to eliminate in-person training related costs is to replace classroom instruction with online training. Rapid elearning tools generally fall into one of two groups: freeform and form-based authoring.
PowerPoint-to-Flash publishing is freeform. You start with a blank slide and then build your structure and interactivity. And the other type of tool is form-based where the application has a pre-designed structure and the developer only needs to add content like text, narration, and multimedia. Hit publish and you have clean, professional output. Most rapid elearning courses use a combination of form-based modules and PowerPoint. A good example of this is the Pallet Jack demo. Click here to view the Pallet Jack demo.
As you can see, it doesn’t have that “PowerPoint” look and the integration between form and freeform generated content works well. The Truth About PowerPoint Most PowerPoint criticism is misguided. Books like Beyond Bullet Points and Slide:ology have done more than enough to show how to use PowerPoint for more than bullet point presentations. Do you build the Flash movie in Flash? The Truth About Rapid E-Learning. The E-Learning Department of One by Greg Kearsley. One-person e-Learning departments can be busy, lonely places. Here are ideas that will help you with budget, time, and assistance! Most guidelines for e-Learning planning and implementation address the needs of larger organizations and assume a certain level of staffing, IT support, and budget.
And historically, only large corporations had sufficient resources to do e-Learning. But more small- and medium-size companies are getting involved with e-Learning without the availability of such resources. In fact, the main growth area for e-Learning over the next decade or so is likely to be in the domain of small companies and non-profit organizations. Typically in these settings, a single person is responsible for all e-Learning activities — an e-Learning department of one. In this article, I focus on e-Learning problems and strategies in this context (see Table 1).
Table 1 Problems and strategies for the e-Learning department of one Budget Case study: Buying off-the-shelf Resources needed 1. 2.