e-learning

03 Mar

eLearning: Choosing the Right Authoring Tool

e-learning authoring toolkiteLearning in India and everywhere else in the world is slated to achieve a higher growth rate in future with its growing demand and adoption amongst the learners and trainers of all age-groups. eLearning is the learning delivered, supported, and exemplified through digital technologies and media. It includes Online Courses, Computer based Training, Web based training, and any other form to facilitate learning using any web-enabled devices such as a computer, laptop, tablet or a mobile phone. Developing elearning material requires thorough understanding in the fields of education, multimedia, publishing, and digital technologies. Ascezen Consulting offers eLearning solutions using cutting edge elearning authoring tools to empower its clients significantly.

Developing an eLearning module requires meticulous planning and efforts. eLearning developers understand their target audience before developing focused learning material. Their major objective is to design a module keeping in mind the learning objectives of the target audience.

The elearning developers work on following aspects before developing an eLearning course:

  1. Preparing the eLearning material according to the target audience
  2. Planning the course material or lesson list hierarchy
  3. Story-boarding for courses, modules and lessons
  4. Selecting the right tools for developing eLearning material
  5. Translating the storyboards into an interactive and engaging elearning course

It has been found that selecting the appropriate tool for eLearning development remains an important question for many clients. Several eLearning authoring tools are available in the marketplace. Sheer abundance of authoring tools makes its challenging to choose the best authoring tool that meet author’s demands without exceeding the client’s budget.

Each eLearning tool has its pros and cons. Well-informed decision based on the learners’ requirements needs to be taken while selecting the most appropriate tool for development. Most e-learning authoring tools available today are rapid authoring tools that enable a person to create training content without having exceptional technical skills.

Factors to consider while choosing the e-learning tool:

  • Complexity of Courseware:

Select a basic or sophisticated authoring tool based on the complexity of your courseware.

  • Creative Freedom Versus Easy-to-use interface:

A highly significant aspect of choosing an eLearning authoring tool is creative freedom versus simple interface. Some eLearning development tools offer a wide range in eLearning design while the simpler ones may not offer much freedom in terms of creativity.

  • Level of Interactivity:

Select the appropriate authoring tool based on the level of interactivity required in your courseware. For instance, What kind of training component you plan to make? Will it require more of interactive assessments, and simulations?

  • Assess skills of eLearning Design and Development Team:

Select an authoring tool depending upon author’s capability. It is highly significant to analyze the skills of your eLearning design and development team before choosing eLearning software.

  • Analyze Learners’ requirements:

eLearning Design and Development Team should analyze the learner’s requirements before selecting the appropriate tool. It is imperative to have knowledge about your learners’ skills, preferred learning modes, and technical limitations such access to technology.

  • Delivery Method:

Delivery method of your eLearning course should also be taken into consideration before selecting the appropriate authoring tool. How will you impart your course: online, offline or largely through a mobile device?

  • Budget Constraints:

One of the most important aspects is the budget requirements of your courseware. Selection of authoring tools should consider the budget constraints.

Some of the finest e-learning development tools include:

Adobe Captivate:

A part of Adobe eLearning suite, Adobe Captivate is one of the most popular eLearning development tools among eLearning professionals, students and educators all over the world. It is a user-friendly tool requiring little technical prowess. Some focused training and practice will help the developer get going. It offers excellent editing along with drag and drop components.

  • Usability:

Adobe Captivate can be used for creating interactive simulations, software demonstrations, and quizzes. It offers audio synchronization, text/graphic animations, publishing option for both web and LMS delivery and interactive components.

  • Output Formats:

Output files can be produced in a number of file formats including AVI. Adobe Captivate 8 is the latest version of this e-learning development tool.

  • Additional Features:

Adobe Captivate offers a number of options to choose different control bars from the gallery and carry out further customizations with various color schemes. It enables users to create their very own project skin by building it in Captivate Master Slides or developing it in Flash. Features such as widgets, text-to-speech, a quiz analyzer and aggregator, and a quiz have been added to the tool in order to increase its functionality.

MadCap Mimic:

MadCap Mimic is a part of the MadCap MadPak, an authoring suite comprising of MadCap Mimic, MadCap Echo, MadCap Capture and MadCap Flare. This software simulation and multimedia authoring tool allows the user to create fully interactive videos, movies, presentations, tutorials of software or systems, and simulations. The latest version of the tool is MadCap Mimic 7.

  • Usability:

This tool offers powerful single-sourcing features, video support for iOS, YouTube and others, multiple recording modes, multi-language support, seamless integration with MadCap Flare and others. MadCap Flare is a popular technical writing tool used for creating Online helps, User Manuals and others as well. Integration of MadCap Mimic with MadCap Flare ensures incorporation of Mimic outputs into Flare projects.

  • Output Formats:

It is capable of generating output in a variety of formats including Silverlight, Flash, Adobe, Mimic Movie Format, HTML5, PDF, Microsoft, XPS, AIR, and Adobe.

  • Additional Features:

Mimic has a variety of single–sourcing features which help save time and energy by creating content once and reusing it several times. These features are targets, palettes, condition tags, variables, and frame libraries. The users can import Microsoft PowerPoint presentations as well.

Camtasia Studio:

TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio offers all the requisite tools to record computer screen and then convert the recording into well-made professional videos. Developers can share their work directly from the app on various platforms including Screencast.com, YouTube, and Google Drive.

  • Usability:

It is a user-friendly tool that helps to record screen while capturing Web Pages, Software Demos and PowerPoint Slides. It enables in importing media, adding interactive elements and then editing video with the help of Camtasia’s huge variety of editing tools. The videos can be shared on almost any device.

  • Output Formats:

After the editing, the developers can export a movie to a variety of formats such as AVI, MP4, SWF, MOV, RM, MPV, Silverlight-compatible WMV and animated GIF or MP3.

  • Additional Features:

The tools allow users to apply captions, inset title pages, video clips or pictures, add soundtrack and more. Users can highlight the cursor movements or mouse clicks to ensure better understanding of the recorded actions. Camtasia offers Voice Narration, Transition Options, Pan Effect, Quizzing, Zoom Option, and other efficient finishing tools.

eLearning design and development is an intricate process requiring collective efforts of the entire team. Choosing the right development tool is an important aspect of developing an eLearning resource.

Ascezen Consulting offers comprehensive eLearning design and development services across India. We offer a wide range of eLearning services including courseware development, development of training material like training guides, presentations and videos.

eLearning team at Ascezen Consulting is competent to develop:

  • Computer-Based Trainings
  • Web-Based Trainings
  • Storyboards
  • Voice Over Scripts
  • Instructor-Led Trainings
  • Training Guides
  • Demonstration Videos
  • How-To Videos

We are a potential eLearning partner for SMEs across the globe. Ascezen’s commitment towards offering effective and cost saving services makes us the preferred choice among the eLearning service providers in India.

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12 Aug

Use Short Videos to Promote your Business

We have come a long way when it comes to using ways to promote a business. It used to be billboards, magazines or Picture of a collage showing video clip icons, and movie-cameranewspapers a lot time ago. Today, the best way to attract and engage the customers could begin with a short video to promote your business by leaving an impressive message, quickly. Use of short videos to promote your business can get magical results for you.

Use of short videos for advertising picked up with Television ads when we could see people getting hooked on to get the message that was dying to reach them through other media. Whether it is an elevator pitch or a sales pitch, any message can be beautifully delivered through a video with catchy phrases, punch lines, colorful fonts, impressionable imagery, and a dialogue form.

In the initial days of television advertising, people tried to avoid the ads by lowering the volume but today, most people enjoy watching them. With popularity of new media and the booming young population using them, videos have become a powerful tool of communication. A sample video can be seen below.

The video inserted above talks about the business writing services offered by Ascezen Consulting. There can be videos talking about how to use a product or a tool. You can create one for anything you would like to demonstrate or use in training. This one has been created using a pretty simple video creation tool but there is good deal of thinking, planning, and design work before you get that short video to say it all.

It is challenging indeed to keep your message short enough to be covered in a video. As an entrepreneur, you might have volumes to say about the products or services you offer but your audience has limited time. You can’t have their full attention for more than 2-3 minutes. An instructional design professional or an e-learning developer knows the finer points of creating an appealing and effective video.

At Ascezen Consulting, we are capable of creating short videos such as the one above that we did for ourselves. Drop a line to know more about the type of videos we can do for you.

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28 Nov

Top 5 Reasons Why Should You Invest in a Content Vendor?

Top 5 Reasons Why Should You Invest in a Content Vendor?

Image showing a box containing the names of content outputs and work products.In the present business scenario, there are quite a few companies who have a content team or technical publications department in place. They are the ones who understand the value of having content creation or documentation expertise in-house. There are other companies who either don’t have the budget or a permanent need to employ a team of writers and obviously some managers to look after them. Most of such companies rely on freelancers or contractors when they have a content requirement such as refurbishing their website or blog, and may be when a product needs documentation just before shipping it out. Many people would agree that there are challenges in working with freelancers. Here are top five reasons why organizations should seriously consider investing in a specialist content vendor or content service provider.

1. Using A Specialist On The Job Is Always Better

It is always safer to have a specialist do the job. Though it seems anyone with good language skills can produce any kind of content but let’s admit that it is just a myth. Even within the range of content, there is whole lot of variety to be dealt with and there are specialists in handling technical content, business content, web content or something for print media.

Besides, there are some search engine (read google) trends to be followed at a given time, differences in writing styles across geographies and industries. An experienced writing professional would be able to add greater value from all the significant perspectives.

2. An Established Content Services Provider Is More Reliable Than A Freelancer

If a content vendor is a registered company then its reliability quotient is much higher than a freelancer sitting in a remote place, a few continents away. While it is possible for a freelancer to vanish and return with a brand-new profile and persona, it is not so easy for a company that has to create a name for itself and grow its business in the long term.

A content vendor would be more likely to have a business continuity plan and adequate resources to deliver in time even in case of materialization of some risks.

 3. A Content Vendor Can Give More Variety Than A Freelancer

A content service provider would be able to provide a great deal of variety in content solutions ranging from website content, blogs, brochures, case studies to user manuals, online help and training videos or e-learning solutions. A team of independent contractors or freelancers may be able to produce all of this but it would be a herculean task to coordinate and get consistent results in quality as well as timelines.

4. A Content Vendor Assumes More Accountability And Shares The Risks

Some organizations, owing to their domain and industry segment, might often be under the threat of facing legal consequences due to copyright or plagiarism issues. It is imperative to review their content for originality before it is published or circulated. Service-level agreements are one of the means of ensuring that the authors take some responsibility but a vendor company is far better risk-sharing partner than an individual. Besides, a content vendor may employ better means to check plagiarism such as a peer-review process or using plagiarism detection tools.

5. A Content Vendor Saves Management And Quality Assurance Costs On Content Production

Managing a team of freelancers also has a cost. More than the cost factor, it is the ability to judge the quality, originality and cost of content production that needs a relatively much experienced professional with content or documentation expertise.  A freelance writer is self-managed but a team of contractors would need a manager. A content services provider, on the contrary, would be able to provide an expert supervision and project management at a comparable much lower cost than a full-time manager to manage a need-based engagement with freelancers.

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11 Oct

Learning Objectives: Commencing with End in Mind

Learning ought to be a continuous process to stay up with the latest trends. It is not only restricted to the academic lot but includes all who wish to grow. Learning can be in the form of classroom learning, e-learning, by way of actually doing it. No matter what method of learning it is, it will always come with an objective that must be achieved at the end of it. A learning objective is a statement of expected results from a learning session or training module. It can take the form of a list enumerating what the learner is expected to achieve or accomplish after undergoing the learning module.

Learning objectives must be written clearly in the form of learning outcomes. Moreover, these objectives must be measurable or quantifiable. They must aim to elicit the desired behavior from the learner and also help the instructor to make sure that learning took place as planned. No organization would spend money on a learning program that fails to achieve the learning objectives and serves no purpose. Planning of learning objectives can help the organization reap various benefits, as discussed below.

 Advantages of Learning Objectives

  • Learning objectives help in focusing on focus learning areas for better performance.
  • These objectives aid the course developers and trainers in course planning and organizing a course into logical modules.
  • Learning objectives help the instructors to customize the learning material as per the requirement.
  • They allow establishing a relation between the content and the assessments, according to the learning theories.
  • They make learners aware about the course they will go through and what is expected from them upon its completion.
  • They eventually serve as a basis for appraising the performance of not only the learner but also of the instructor or the effectiveness of the learning program.

The above-mentioned advantages clearly emphasize on the need of having the learning objectives in place, with utmost attention and prudence. Therefore, while planning, it must be ensured that the objectives qualify on SMART parameters. SMART is an acronym that stands for:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Realistic
  • Time Bound

Setting SMART learning objectives will make the training or learning modules more effective, practical, and relevant. It is noteworthy that straying away from the clearly-written learning objectives may render your learning efforts a futile exercise.

Learning Theories

There are various theories used for creation of effective learning objectives. Some of commonly known theories include the Bloom’s Taxonomy, Simpson’s Taxonomy of the Psychomotor Domain and Harrow’s Taxonomy of Psychomotor Domain. Among these, Bloom’s Taxonomy is widely used to create effective learning objectives. Developed by Benjamin S. Bloom, the theory covers three domains which are to be followed during the learning program. The categories covered are as follows:

  • Cognitive Domain (intellectual competence i.e. knowledge)
  • Affective Domain (behaviour,  feelings, attitude)
  • Psychomotor Domain (physical or manual set of skills)

The domains are explained as:

  1. Cognitive Domain: Under cognitive category, Bloom has divided it into six stages covering lowest to highest form of cognitive learning. The six levels covered under it are as follows.
    • Knowledge: It involves understanding, memorizing, or simply recalling information shared by the facilitators or instructors.
    • Comprehension: This stage is characterized by profound understanding of the concepts, ideas or information imparted by the trainer, instructor, or a facilitator. The learner—after proper grasp of the concepts—is able to come up with the theories in his own words.
    • Application: In this level, the learner is able to put his knowledge to practical use. It involves practical application of the knowledge
    • Analysis: This level lands the learner into analysis mode where he breaks down the information and concepts learnt in the previous stages. He is able to analyze and draw logical conclusions.
    • Synthesis: In this phase, on the basis of the learning process, the learner is able to combine the pieces of knowledge, ideas, and information in a coherent manner. He is equipped to come up with his own set of innovations and creative ideas on various topics.Evaluation: At this stage, both the learners and instructors can easily evaluate and appraise the performance. Critical feedback is an important component in the entire process for improving the end result.
  2. Affective Domain: It is a vital factor in the theory of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This domain relates to the emotional well-being of the learner. It takes into account the feelings, emotions and attitudes of the learners. It aims to boost confidence and self-esteem of the learner.
  3. Psychomotor Domain: This category includes physical well-being of the learner to ensure active participation. It focuses on the use of one’s own hands or equipment to find the answers or solutions.

Of all the above mentioned domains, it is primarily the cognitive domain that is considered while formulating learning objectives. You can use Bloom’s Taxonomy to make the learning process more comprehensive and the result of it more wholesome.

Also Read: How to Create Learning Objectives

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