1/18/07 Meeting – How Much & How Long Part I

If you couldn’t make it to last week’s eLearning SIG, you missed out on a treat. Dave Goodman is the founder of SoftAssist, and he gave a focused demonstration of the levels of eLearning interactivity. His simulations and modules were highly interactive, which is why they win consecutive awards in our field. The following is part 1 of 2 of the notes I took.

Click here to download the slides Dave used during his presentation.

Why Companies Invest in eLearning

1. There is a desire to reduce the cost of learning (travel, food, lodging, etc.)
2. There is a desire to provide, primarily in the IT area, online learning as a means of becoming technically current
3. When companies understand that learning is an investment in change management, there is a need to improve performance, and training is important
4. Learning is perceived as a required option to create new thinking in various lines of business – learning becomes a business initiative rather than an HR project
5. Companies who have a need to re-create their image, brand or product/service, see learning as a means of gathering knowledge to redesign the corporate future

Levels of Interactivity

1. PowerPoint Conversion (i.e. Breeze, Articulate)
2. Templates – Design once and reuse (i.e. Lectora)
3. Custom Level 1 – Text, graphics, assessments, some interactions
4. Custom Level 2 – Custom Level 1 + interactions every 3 screens, stronger instructional design, case studies, game, audio, etc.
5. Custom Level 3 – Custom Level 2 + very strong instructional design, animation, video, higher engagement, deeper immersion, etc.
6. High Impact Simulations – Outside the scope of this presentation, primarily for process control, central command, the military, and medical equipment endeavors

PowerPoint Conversion

• You need to get the “hidden knowledge” of the instructor into the converted PowerPoint.
• Brain Shark is great for SMEs with limited time – they can talk their way through the presentation and it records them over the phone.
• Check out this site to compare PowerPoint to Flash conversion tools.

Templates

• Templates are great for volatile content that changes frequently.
• Lectora is a good tool for designing template-based courses.
• You can also design a template in Flash, and then populate it with text located in an XML file. XML enables you to make quick real-time changes to the course.

See Part II for continuation of notes.