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This is one of the best instructional videos that I have come across. Some highlights of this video:
I downloaded the trial version of Articulate Storyline and have been playing with it. The best thing about Storyline is that Try Me Simulations are automated. You just need to open any web application and perform the tasks as you record your screen and then insert the slides as Try mode steps. Your job is done. All your mouse clicks/text entries are captured and when you preview, the same actions are available for the learner/user to try out. Isn’t that cool? But there are still some things, I am trying to figure. I see that not all actions get converted to Try mode. For example I captured a screen where I moved sliders to set image quality. Storyline captured these actions but these appeared as a demonstration after publishing. Also the caption appears only when you click on a button or you place your cursor on a text field. I want to move the caption before the hotspot appears, but haven’t been able to do. Still figuring out. So that’s all I have to share for today. More later. Ask 3 different people, the question : What is Instructional Design? Now compare and contrast the responses. I am sure you will be amazed at the different perspectives you get. As far as I know, Instructional Design exists in different forms and Instructional Design might mean different things to different people. How you perceive/describe Instructional Design depends on your:
Here are 3 scenarios to illustrate this: PS: Some scenarios here may apply only to Indian workplaces. Scenario 1 Instructional Designers working in a company catering to e-learning/training requirements of various organizations work on various subjects (soft skills, K12, technology), and develop e-learning courses/training programs for varied audience. In such a situation, they do extensive needs analysis, audience analysis, come up with new ways to engage learners for every project because every project is unique. The requirements, strategies to design the training, budget and so many other factors differ with every project. Scenario 2 An Instructional Designer has to create a new learning environment (game based learning program on mobile devices) for underprivileged kids residing in some remote village in India. Now this is a highly challenging task. This would require lot of research skills, creativity, time and budget more than anything else. This kind of work is more analytical and creative. Scenario 3 Instructional Designers working in a software product company mostly catering to internal training requirements may not be paying too much attention to learning needs analysis, audience analysis, design strategies for every project because the audience and their needs are fixed. The objective in this case is to release all the required technical training material in a short time for learners to consume quickly. It is more important to provide the right information, in an understandable language in a short time than anything else just to help learners do their job. This kind of work demands creativity within limitations. To serve the purpose, Instructional Designers work on low budget rapid e-learning courses, mostly text based with little interactivities. Simulations and demonstrations are used when necessary. Standard e-learning templates and course developments guidelines are available. These templates are designed keeping learning needs and learners in mind . Improvements to the course development process or templates happen after every release based on learner feedback. Following any other approach other than this will mean waste of time and money for the organization. You could call this content development. Yet the content itself might be of great instructional value. Scenario 4 A trainer delivering a training on some topic may or may not be the one who actually designed the program. He/she might actually do a brilliant job without even knowing Instructional Design principles or theories. Now here is a question for you: Where are you located? What is Instructional Design to you? Please leave your thoughts in the Comments section. I would like to hear from you. Its been ages since I blogged and am I really feeling bad about it? I still can’t figure out. I was just wondering why I stopped blogging:
Reasons could be many. But then I don’t want to stop sharing stuff here. Probably I should start writing snippets – a few lines or a paragraph about something that I want to share. What do you think? I recently changed my job and have been busy getting adjusted to the new environment, learning new technologies and picking up some Articulate skills. This is the first time I am actually using the tool and I experienced a shorter learning curve. While the tool is very easy to use, there are issues that crop up every now and then and the issues are varied. In this post, I would like to talk about a recent issue that I faced while using Articulate 09 and show a way to resolve the issue. I sent a mail to the Articulate team and they quickly sent me a fix. Let’s talk about the issues and the fixes now. I faced two major issues while publishing my e-learning course: Issue with the label of slide number in progress bar
Solution
Email icon didn’t show up after publishing the course Articulate applications are not currently supported using a large DPI setting. If you are using 120 DPI some symptoms are:
Solution You can resolve this issue by following the steps outlined in the Knowledge Base article below. Presenter ’09: Hope you found this post useful. Stay tuned for more posts. Do you have experience working with Graphic Designers? How would you interact with Graphic Designers and get things done? How would you sort out difference with Graphic Designers? These are common questions asked to Instructional Designers. These questions may not make sense to you, if you do not work with Graphic Designers in your organization. In some organizations, Instructional Designers also wear the hat of Graphic Designers, especially if they are working with rapid e-learning tools. In some other organizations, where Instructional Designers work with templates, they have no direct interaction with Graphic Designers. However in custom e-learning companies, where flash based e-learning courses are developed, Instructional Designers work as a team, where Graphic Designers play an important role. In such a set up, creative differences between Instructional Designers and Graphic Designers are just too many. Instructional Designers conduct needs analysis and come up with course structure, design ideas and instructional strategies. Based on these ideas, they create the storyboard with explicit design instructions to the Graphic Designer. But then finally, when the e-learning program is developed, though the course structure/content remains the same, the presentation is completely different from what was initially planned. How do Instructional Designers deal with such issues? Here are some tips: PS: I read this article – Working with Graphic Designers: Are you a graphic designer, or a non-designer? How do we work together? and the tips in this article are very valid. In this post, I use these tips and make it relevant to Instructional Designers. 1. Involve Graphic Designers right from the Analysis phase
2. Don’t try to design alone
3. Keep designers in loop while storyboarding
4. Sort differences before designers begin development
5. Follow up with designers during development
6. Make sure designers also test the e-learning program In most companies, it is the Instructional Designer’s responsibility to test the e-learning program before it is shipped to the client. Since Graphic Designers also play an very critical role in e-learning development, they must be involved in testing.
7. Acknowledge and appreciate designers’ work
_________________ You have any tips to work with Graphic Designers? Please post in the Comments section. Agree or not, ours is a very weight conscious society. Meet people after ages, the first thing they tell you how fat or how slim you look. Most often it is either a compliment on your weight loss or a criticism on weight gain. Aishwarya Rai’s weight gain became a national issue, recently. Sounds funny but it’s true. Why am I talking about all these here, you may wonder? Well, I do find a striking similarity between dieting and learning. You got to do both these right to get good results. So in this post, I use dieting as an analogy to convey how to do your learning activity the right way. Here we go: 1. Start with a small target, something that is doable It is highly ambitious and unhealthy to lose 20 pounds in a month.Rather you must target about 10 pounds or less in a month, which is doable. Likewise while learning, you need to set short targets. For example, if you are trying to learn a new programming language, a reasonable target is to write basic programs within 1 or 2 months and then you move to the next level. 2. Choose a program that fits you There are tons and tons of diet plans all over the internet. You need to keep your target in mind, and then choose a program that fits your requirement. Let’s say I need to lose 2 pounds in a month. I would choose a plan that will help me achieve this target. For example, I will eat frequently but small meals throughout the day. I will choose a diet plan that has a lot of sprouts and fruits, some vegetables and less carbohydrates included. I cannot forgo milk and sugar completely so I will include them in my diet in such a way that they do not add to my calories and keep me away from my target. Probably I will do some light exercise 4 days a week. Likewise, when you are starting to learn something, you will find lots of learning tools/ schedules/plans/material. Plan your learning in such a way that you learn effectively. For example, you are trying to learn Photoshop and are freaked out by the instructions in the help manuals. Then stop. Do you enjoy watching videos? If yes, look up videos on YouTube and try out the tasks in Photoshop. This will probably speed up your learning. 3. Enjoy the process Be it dieting or learning, you need to enjoy it. Believe me, if you do not enjoy, you will never get the results you want. Let’s say, you are on a detox diet for 7 days and all through you feel deprived of pizzas and burgers. There are a lot of chances that you give up your detox diet much before the 5th day or you end up frustrated/distressed at the end of the 7th day. Either ways, it is not working well. You must never force yourself to eat something that you do not like and never starve. Likewise, when you are learning something new, make sure you are enjoying it. For example, if you are taking up an e-learning program in your organization just because it is a part of an induction program, then let me tell you it is as good as not taking the program. Instead if you think, you need to be aware of the company business, process/policies and more, so that you can contribute better and it will add value to your career, it will make a lot of difference. 4. Don’t get desperate about results You diet for two days and expect the weighing scale to show a pound lesser. No way! This is not going to happen. You need to give this some time. Likewise, while learning, don’t overwork your brain. This will end in a lot of tension and frustration. Most students in India fail to learn, because all that they see is the grades/marks they need to score in the examination. You just need to focus on your target which is reasonable to achieve and keep working towards it. Learning will happen automatically. ___________________ What do you think of this post? Please leave your 2 cents in the Comments section. Target Audience: Beginner/Intermediate (Instructional Designers/Content Writers/Technical Writers) _______________________ Before I get to the crux of this post, here is a short note on what prompted me to write this post: I like taking good photos, though am not particularly interested in photography. I find it really hard to work with SLR settings. So I settled for a camera which has a lot of automatic settings and some basic SLR settings, that are easy to work with. I was not sure what to do with the options AV/TV. So I googled to learn about these options and stumbled upon lot of articles. I did get something out all of those articles I read. But then, I was still confused. It is then I found this article : How to use aperture priority, AV (for Canon) or A (for Nikon) mode on your digital SLR camera. While I clearly learned how to use the AV option in my camera, I realized that this article very nicely illustrates the 4 essential steps you need to follow to teach a new concept/technique to a user/learner. And this prompted me to list the 4 essential steps here. So here we begin:
Always define/explain the new concept/technique with an example
The assessment below not only gives a recap of the steps but also allows the learner/user to practically try out the steps to use the AV mode.
_________________________ So what do you think about this post? Please take some time to post a comment. Its been quite some time since I connected with you all. So I am just curious to know what you/other Instructional Designers are working on these days? Please go ahead and take this poll. Feel free to choose more than one response. If you are working on custom e-learning, please do not choose the rest of the options. I am sure the results are going to be interesting  Loading ...Hi All, My sincere apologies to all of you who come to this blog regularly. Its been a year now and haven’t been able to write much or post useful stuff here. I have been reading all your comments and even queries. I am so sorry for not responding. I am taking some active steps to revive this blog. As a supplement to this blog, I have created a Facebook group which will serve as a learning platform for all us. Here’s all you have to do:
Let’s get to know one another, interact and discuss Instructional Design through this group. Hoping to see you all join this group. Thank you
Rupa Rajagopalan |
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