Creating a Branching Question - Adaptive Type Using Raptivity

This blog on Raptivity's blog site discusses using Raptivity for Adaptive Knowledge Check questions.  There is an example included.

What I'm reading now

I'm reading "Learning Articulate Storyline" by Stephanie Harnett.  Check it out at http://bit.ly/12I6Mih 

Customize Lectora’s Table of Contents with Visited-page and Chapter Icons

Learning Solutions Magazine @LearningSolMag published my article "Customize Lectora’s Table of Contents with Visited-page and Chapter Icons" today.  Check it out at  http://bit.ly/Scw3cO  This is my first published magazine article.

HTML5 or Flash ?

Ok. I'll admit, right up front, that I'm not going to take sides on this one.  I've been a long-time developer using both HTML-based and Flash-based solutions. I'm quite comfortable using either technology to get the job done.

To use a mechanical analogy: Say you hand me either a pair of needle-nose pliers OR a pair of lineman's (or "combination") pliers. These are certainly different tools and have different functions...but, I can sure squeeze/pinch/etc. the heck out of something with either one. The same can be said for HTML5 or Flash; each have their own specific set of advantages, but both come in quite handy, when it comes to getting the job done, especially from a software solutions perspective.

A recent blog article on http://www.trainingindustry.com further discusses HTML5 and Flash's differences, but supports the above idea that either/both technologies work well. The article goes on to discuss "HTML5 in Learning Solutions" and highlights some advantages. Namely, Semantics, Multimedia, Graphics, Device access, and Offline Storage. I'd suggest viewing the article at http://www.trainingindustry.com/learning-technologies/articles/using-html5-in-learning-solutions.aspx to get the full description behind these.
One part of the article stands out to me, which I will quote here:

HTML5 in Learning Solutions: Collaborative Learning
There is yet another aspect to the learning equation and how HTML5 can play a role that is quite distinct in the world of learning solutions, with respect to social collaboration. Just about everyone is familiar with social networks these days and the benefits of staying connected in the personal and professional world. HTML5 makes it easy to build solutions around collaboration among a group of experts and learners. Collaboration in the online world is so powerful that it can change the way everything works.

I agree with much of this. Thinking towards social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and/or other, it becomes clear that we developers need to plan for implementation of these technologies, not matter what platform for which we are creating content. Take the JSFiddle example below, showing how easy it is to grab Tweets using jQuery. Click the 'Result' button to run the simple script.

 Of course, this is a rudimentary example, but think of the possibilities implementing the social aspect for our clients, as we deploy to desktop units or even mobile devices, using HTML5.  Certainly, I am not taking sides here - I will continue to use both Flash and/or HTML5 where needed...however, I use the example above to remind us, as developers, that we can continue to think past our current technological reach.


For now, we'll see how the comparison between the two solutions work out. I'd wager that both will be around for quite some time, for us to all argue over, even if one dies on the vine. (...I mean, there are still developers out there programming in Authorware, right?)

Great post in UXmag.com on User Experience Leadership.

I wanted to point out a great article I read today on UXmag.com - 5 tips for effective UX Leadership by Paul Holcomb. His insights speak to many of the frustrations I know I feel when working on a project, especially when working in isolation (functional silo!). How do you move beyond being seen as the deliverables person, and move into a more strategic role within your company, or with your clients.

Greg often talks about what questions need to be asked BEFORE a project starts - and it is almost as if he and Paul got together on this article. I think it is because, from a UX perspective, these are common sense considerations. But common sense depends on common perspective, and when most of our co-workers or clients are NOT looking at things from the UX perspective, but rather from a project management or team management or even SME perspective, those things that are common sense to us aren't necessarily going to be common sense to them!

Check it out - its a great read!

Wade

How to Replace the Master Page in SmartBuilder

I recently found myself in a situation where I needed to update the Master Page on 5 different lessons.  Through client revisions and added functionality, the original Master Page had evolved a great deal. I was frustrated to learn that although you can copy entire pages via the Page Sequence List (Edit/Page Sequence from the Authoring Stage), the Master Page is not included in this functionality. Faced with the prospect of recreating all of the actions in the Master Page across all 5 lessons I decided to search for a more efficient solution to no avail. My search was not completely fruitless as I did turn up a few capabilities that when combined can produce the same effect.

7 steps to Replacing your Master Page

1. Open your lesson and save a copy.
   
2. In your new saved copy, open the Page Sequence dialog and delete all of the pages in your lesson. (You will need to be viewing the Master Page to accomplish this as SmartBuilder will not allow you to delete a page you are currently viewing)
   
3. Save this cleaned out lesson as a template
   
   
   
   
   
4. Publish your new template. (found in My Content / Work in Progress /Templates) This will place your template in My Published Content / Templates allowing you to apply this template to a lesson.
   
   
   
5. Open your lesson that needs the Master Page replaced, choose to view/edit the Master Page. On the Authoring Stage, press CTRL A (select all) and then Delete.
   
   
6. Delete your Actions.  If you view your Action list you will see that all of the actions are now colored red.  This is because all of the objects these items were tied to have been deleted. Delete all of these Actions.
   
   
   
7. The final step is to apply your saved template to your now cleaned out Master Page. From the Design Tab in the Template Pane, (on the bottom right) click on Apply Template. Locate and select your template in the Select Template dialog box.
   
   

You have now replaced your Master Page!  To apply this method to additional lessons simply repeat steps 5-7 on the desired lessons.

Know of an easier process?  I would love to hear it!

What I 'Got' from eLearning DevCon 2012

It goes without saying (...or, um, typing...?) that there was much to learn from this year's eLearning DevCon 2012 (http://elearningdevcon.com/), or "ELDC2012", held in the very beautiful Salt Lake City, Utah, June 6-8th, 2012. Greg Gardner, Damian Liska, Stephanie Spinapolice, and myself - all from ICF International - had the distinct honor of participating in ELDC2012 in several ways, such as:

Stephanie Spinapolice at the ICF booth

• Presenting on highly technical topics
• Giving bring your own laptop ("BYOL" sessions)
• Having an exhibitor booth...
• ...As well as being a sponsor the conference itself

However, beyond this, there are some very important 'take-aways' from ELDC2012, which I shall list here in no particular order or fashion:

Michael Sheyahshe giving presentation

• SLC is beautiful
• Having never been to Utah for any reason, it was nice to see such breathtaking views.
• People are excited to both learn about and utilize technology
• Directly after my talk on Augmented Reality ("AR"), one audience member used the information from my talk to create AR for her friend's band. While she was amazed at how easy it was, saying it took her 50 seconds, from start to finish. It is one of the best compliments, as a presenter to have someone actively use information I've given, almost directly in front of my eyes.
• ELDC2012 participants are highly diverse, ranging from Designers, Developers, Programmers, and anything in-between

• During my sessions and presentations, I noticed how diverse the audience members, participants, and other presenters were. As I answered questions and had ensuing conversations afterwards, I found that ELDC2012 participants came armed with questions and interest levels all across the board. They certainly kept me on my toes.
• Social networking is alive and well
• Not only were there many continuous Tweets on ELDC2012, I also made several friends at the conference, using social networks.  Power to the people !  :)
• Thoughts on thinking



 Neuroscientist, Dr. Art Kohn

• Dr. Art Kohn's Keynote on "Know the Mind. Know the Learner" was insightful and entertaining. The 'tricks' he played on the audience's minds - such as making the majority of the audience think that he had list the word that he had not listed - reminded me of a recent article in Wired on the way our minds, specifically memory, works. Wired's The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever, outlines how "our memories are not inert packets of data and they don’t remain constant", based on brain chemistry and neighboring receptors within our grey matter. Dr. Kohn's talk on the difference between encoding information the brain and retrieval of knowledge supported this notion...at least in my brain.
• Apparently, there are several celebrity sightings in SLC
• One of the several friends I made - from both presenting and via social networks (i.e., Twitter) - encountered not one, but two celebrities during ELDC2012. The first, Jay Mohr, was in our hotel at the university for some odd reason; next my Twitter friend spotted Katherine Heigl at the airport. Lucky...

In all, ELDC2012 was a wonderful experience and I'm proud to have been a part of it and look forward to seeing what eLearning DevCon has to offer in the near future.

Ready for eLearnDevCon

I'm sitting in my hotel the day before the eLearnDevCon conference starts.  I've checked in, received my materials, verified all the sponsor materials have arrived and identified the rooms my team and I will be presenting in.  We are giving 11 presentations over the next three days on topics ranging from augmented reality to getting ISD and technology teams communicating better. Check our our sessions. It should be exciting to speak with the eLearning community and share ideas about how to improve eLearning products.

In addition to presenting, I'm planning on attending numerous presentations.  How do you decide which to participate in and which to read through the materials later - since you can't go to all of them?  The line up is very strong, containing topics each of my team members can attend, learn and implement through the coming year's worth of work.

Preparation for the conference has been exhausting - getting regular work done while getting sponsorship packages created, working with our corporate social networking people to figure out how best to use this medium while at the conference, oh yeah, and getting the sessions ready to present.

I trust all attendees are as excited about the conference as I am.  Let me know your thoughts.

Using Photoshop Actions for Rapid, Quality E-Learning Images

When developing eLearning courses, particularly those of a longer variety, we often create re-usable page templates that include elements such as the GUI, a content area, and a designated space for graphics.  A simple picture (and its thousand words) often is the best visual tool for supporting the content, but just plopping down a raw image typically will jar the overall look-and-feel (especially if your GUI is up to modern standards) and can throw off the entire course (think of a Porsche with primer paint...).

Giving the image an appropriate border treatment or other graphic enhancement (whether we’re talking altering the photo itself or adding things like drop shadows or reflections) will allow your image to work like a part of the team, rather than a distraction that should be benched.

Of course, image treatment takes work and time...and remember my reference to courses "of a longer variety?" What to do when you need treated images on several pages?

You could spend all your time replicating the same graphic design technique over and over...Or you could do it once while recording your technique in Photoshop as an action and then apply that action to your stack of images, potentially saving you countless hours otherwise spent in a PS rut.

http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/photoshop/mass_resize/

Overview of Tech Trends

New blog entry that about technology trends and their importance to eLearning and mLearning, based information found in The 2011 Horizon Report.

http://edeveloperstuff.blogspot.com/2012/03/emergence-tech-trends-from-2011-horizon.html

Speaking at eLearning DevCon 2012 in June 2012

Team members Greg Gardner, Michael Sheyahshe, and Damian Liska are speaking at eLearning DevCon 2012 in Salt Lake City this June.  Congratulations!

Michael Sheyahshe is presenting "Hi-5! Leveraging HTML5’s Power for Gaming/Simulation in Online Learning."

Damian Liska is presenting "Souping up Unison: Customizing your Own Templates."

Damian Liska and Michael Sheyahshe will co-present:

1.  "Here’s the Scenario: Using SmartBuilder to Create Smart Scenario-based Learning," and
2. "Augment your eLearning with Augmented Reality."

Greg Gardner will be presenting:

1. "Techniques in SCORM 2004,"
2. "Skinning mLearning Content with Your Own CSS,"
3. "The eLearning Programmer’s Toolbox: Choosing the Right Tool," and 
4. "Maximizing SCORM 1.2 courseware for an LMS." 

Additional information can be found at:

http://elearningdevcon.com/

Speaking at Lectora User's Conference

Team members Mike Raines, Michael Sheyahshe, and Damian Liska are speaking at the 2012 Lectora Users Conference in Chicago this May.  Congratulations!

Michael Sheyahshe is presenting "KAPOW!!! Comic Book-Styled Exercises to Increase Interactivity and Engagement."

Damian Liska and Mike Raines will co-present "Leveraging Lectora’s Objects and Interfaces to Communicate with Embedded Objects."

Additional information can be found at:

http://www.icfi.com/events/conferences-and-trade-shows/2012/05/luc

and

http://www.trivantis.com/lectora-user-conference-2012

Teaching an old dog new Lectora tricks

I recently completed a SCORM 1.2 based e-Learning project using Lectora Enterprise and a Saba LMS. The client wanted bookmarking and stipulated that cookies could not be used. Since we were loading this into an LMS the bookmarking was not an issue, we simply checked the "The published course will prompt to restore the last viewed location within the LMS." checkbox in the SCORM Options tab. Inside the SCO itself we tracked individual pages visited with variables. We then used these to place check marks next to internal Topics and Lessons completed within the SCO. The problem was when a student would complete a SCO and come back none of the internal topics and lessons would be marked as completed.

I knew that if I checked the "Retain variable value between sessions" check box for each variable I could track this using cookies. Since we could not do that, however, I was at an impasse. The Help Section states "Select this to retain the variable's value through subsequent launches of the published title. With this selected, if the variable value has changed, the next time the user launches the published title, the variable will load with the previously modified value." but it does not specify how this will be done except by the use of cookies.

I first looked at using SCORM 2004 and using objectives to track topic and lesson completion. While that would have worked it also created an environment where I needed to write a lot of JavaScript code. Knowing that this would entail a lot of testing and could not be truly re-usable with my other developers I re-visited my initial assumptions. None of my clients ever allow cookies so the "Retain variable value between sessions" check box for each variable has been strictly forbidden. I knew there had to be another use for the checkbox since I know I'm not the first developer to come across this.

I went ahead and checked the box, published as SCORM 1.2, loaded onto the SCORM Cloud. It worked as advertised with no cookies. Hmmmmmmm - how did it do that? Time to read the Debug logs. Evidently when you check the "Retain variable value between sessions" check box for each variable and publish to SCORM Lectora's SCORM code writes these variables to the cmi.susped_data object. This gets loaded back to the SCO from the LMS each time you open the SCO. Presto!! the variables retain their values.
I went to the Lectora Forum numerous times during this process to no avail. Unfortunately, I had my mind set on tracking objective not tracking simple variables. After I figured it out I went back to the Forum and searched on suspend_data there it was.

Moral of the story - don't get caught looking at a problem in only one way. Once I stepped back and re-visited options I had earlier thrown out, I found the answer.