Last month’s podcast was about choosing a Learning Management System.

Episode 21 is the second of the series, exploring things to think about when implementing a Learning Management Sysyetm (LMS). This video tutorial compliments course 5 of the Connect Thinking E-Learning Academy – Choosing and Implementing a Learning Management System – available to Academy members – click here for a demo.

Why not download this free e-learning training resource from iTunes.

Or read the transcript.

Or watch the entire free e-learning tutorial series on our YouTube channel (episode 21 is embedded below).

“What’s love got to do with it?”

- apologies and admiration to Tina Turner

Last week I used the word “Love” to describe the attention to detail required to build a quality e-learn. I later wondered whether the term was a bit “over the top” for readers. Was I portraying my passion for all things ‘e’ with a little too much exuberance? Would anyone know what ’love’ meant in relation to e-learning quality?

I don’t think I have ever met a person working with e-learning who has not been passionate about the medium and the opportunities that learning technologies can and will avail our staff, our learners. But we need to have a little more than passion. We need to understand what quality looks like, how quality is experienced, so that we know how to pay attention to detail during development.

Sometimes it is the people around us that don’t understand the time and effort required to develop an e-learn – the trial and error required to learn the authoring tool – the stretch often required to see beyond the content to find ways to create meaningful activities and scaffold the learning.  Like any multimedia production, e-learning requires good scripting and good visuals to enable a learner to learn through the e-learn. As learning professionals we need time to give e-learning the love and attention it needs to become ‘quality’.

However you can, ensure to work with your reporting manager to get the support you need to create quality e-learns.

And, be an e-learning advocate and ensure poor quality e-learning doesn’t creep onto your Learning Management System (LMS).

I  have recently had a number of recent enquiries about webinar (virtual classroom) design and facilitation training for learning professionals recently. That’s great to see, as I think webinars are largely under-utilised in organisational learning.

Their value is obvious (enables social learning, cost-effective, supportive of geographically dispersed learners, supportive of generative learning activities). However, participative webinars do require specialist skills in learning design and facilitation.

Webinar design and facilitation resources from Connect Thinking

10 Things That Make E-Learning (Webinars) Work (YouTube video)

Part 1: Click here

Part 2: Click here

Article in HR Magazine 9/11, pp34-36: The Virtual Classroom: 10 tips to make e-learning work: Click here

I am guest speaker at a free webinar on Participative Webinars, scheduled for February 7, supported by Redback Webconferencing: Click here

Webinar design and facilitation training from Connect Thinking

E-Learning Academy members have access to the course and accompanying resources Webinar Instructional Design and Facilitation: Demo course click here

I also facilitate a 1 day workshop on webinar design and facilitation. I conduct these in the classroom, so that participants can see both facilitator view and learner view during the training. Webinar workshops are tailored to participant specific needs and generally include the following topics:

• Prepared webinar demonstration
• Learning in a virtual classroom
• Designing for the virtual classroom
• Facilitating and managing a virtual classroom
• Lunch  Design – your turn
• Running a session – your turn
• Review of workshop and take home points
• Net steps for your organisation

I hope the resources are helpful to you. If you would like further information on Academy membership or webinar workshops, please contact me 02 8824 3340 or use the contact form.

Question from a client:

I  am working with Subject Matter Experts to manage the development of an e-learning course. What can I do to help the SMEs understand what is required for a quality e-learning outcome?

There are a couple of overarching things we need to achieve when working with SMEs:

• Help SMEs become discerning of what quality is. We can do this by exposing them to quality e-learning examples and critiquing these as a group (see checklist below).
• Help SMEs realise that their content as they know it (copious pages of text) cannot all be included into an e-learn. E-learning requires instructional design that will help enable learners to understand and digest the content in a meaningful and time efficient way. Typically, content from the SME needs to be culled and then carefully chunked and sequenced for includion into the e-learn. Learners can be educated on how to access and use the ‘detail’ (such as a policy, guidelines etc) as and when they need it.

To help critique the quality of an e-learning course, here is a small checklist:

Checklist of e-learning quality

1. Content needs to be succinct and concise, so that it is easy to digest and interesting. To get a concept of what I mean here, have a look at Cathy Moore’s excellent Slideshare Dump The Drone 

2. Lots of meaningful activity. There should be learning activities throughout the course to help learners build confidence in their understanding of the important concepts. Cathy Moore talks about leading with activity, and then introduce the content that reinforces the activity outcomes.

3. The visual design needs to appear organised. There must be consistent use of font, space, colour, graphics and multimedia. This puts the learner at ease and minimises cognitive overload.

4. Navigation must be consistent throughout the course and options kept to a minimum so as to not confuse the learner on what they need to do.
Tip: For Articulate users who add Engage templates amongst screens created in Presenter, please remove the Engage navigation at the top. Keep to one navigation at the bottom of the screen.

5. Graphics and multimedia are thoughtfully used to create real-life context about the topic at hand. Use graphics to reduce text burden, such as flowcharts.
TIP: Be prepared to spend 50% of your development time on sourcing and creating congruent, meaningful graphics.

6. Attention to detail. Make the learner feel as though the e-learn has been created with love by ensuring there are no typos, that text is properly aligned & consistently spaced, there is a consistent editorial style throughout etc.
TIP: Use plenty of testers to proof your e-learning course before going live.

There is, of course, a lot more to achieving quality e-learning. However, if you are able to at least have SMEs agree to ensure they achieve these six factors, then this will go a long way towards a quality outcome.

If you don’t have quality e-learning on-hand to critique with your SMEs, have a look at some e-learning provider websites for examples.