Shaun Beaty

I am nearing the end of the eLearning Guild conference for 2009 with some mixed emotions.   Many of the sessions have been informative, but it seems the focus has been turned to corporate training rather than eLearning in general.  I am a little dissapointed because some of the sessions have been labeled  as addressing eLearning or blended learning in general, yet, many of them have been sales pitches for a particular product.  Usually, the sale ”session” are outlined in advanced, so you are aware the motive of the presentation.  I appreciate the advance warning, so it’s even more frustrating when the session advertises something related to eLearning theory but turns out to be a typical sales person standing in front of the room telling you their product is the best thing since the internet (notice I did not say sliced bread, trying to stay up with the times?). 

So far, the two most informative presentations have been by RJ Jacquez, who is the Senior Product Evangelist at Adobe for their new eLearning suite.  Now, I know this contradicts my eariler statement, yet I knew his session might be a sales session.  To my surprise, in each session he focused more on the design theories of elearning and how they could be accomplished by using a few of Adobe’s products.  Not only was this a strategic move, it was also an “amabassador” type move because he also discussed how the products not only conform to “best practices” of eLearning, but they can also work with other types of software, products and platforms.   Since we already own the majority of the eLearning suite, which was obtained through our departments purchase of web design premium and other single software purchases, it was nice to see RJ demonstrate how they have been successfully used in both the corporate and educational environment.  His presentation has inspired me to create a list of best practices for delivering synchronous online courses, which many of our instructors at CSU are looking at trying to incpororate into their blended classes.  I hope to gather the input from my fellow “ID’s” and use the list as talking points for our initial kick off meetings that we might have with interested faculty.

Lunch break has concluded and I’m off to my afternoon sessions.  Let’s hope they focus more on elearning theory and application and less on the sales aspect of a particular product.

sbeaty eLearning

Today I attended the pre-conference session of the annual eLearning Guild conference in Orlando Florida.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with my love of eLearning, The eLearning Guild is one of my favorite conferences next to the DevLearn in San Jose.  The conference has daily sessions that discuss the use of eLearning, from both the pedagogy of eLearning to the use of technical features, from PowerPoint to interactive web 2.0 tools.  The session that I attended today dealt with the use of Flash and how it can be used within eLearning.  As pointed out in the session, Flash is a great elearning tool, yet, unless you are a Flash developer, it cannot be a consistent Rapid eLearning tool.  Flash development is a timely process, one that takes a large amount of time to develop simple features.  As I discovered in the later section of the course, many of the features we created can easily be produced using other software such as Adobe Captivate.

 The morning section of the session dealt with the basics of Flash, including key frames, motion tweens, creating shapes and incorporating audio into the timeline.   The afternoon session focused on experiential learning, where we were given a particular scenario and had to create it using Flash.  Since I am an experiential and hands on learner, I really enjoyed this part of the session since I was able to play with the different tools within the software.

A few key features that I learned during this session include:

·         There are some cosmetic differences between CS3 and CS4.  Since I am using CS4, some of the tools are located within different menus or sections of the software.

·         Flash is not a Rapid Learning tool.  Developing interactive simulations and demonstrations can take a long period of time to create, test and deploy. 

·         Captivate files can be imported into Flash and then saved as an .flv file.  This is important because I have many instructors asking for .flv files instead of .swf, many which are produced by other third party softwares such as Camtasia, Captivate and Presenter.

·         Flash CS4 is an amazing tool and should be a tool within all eLearning developer’s arsenals.

Overall, the conference has started out meeting my expectations.  I look forward to the next two days!

sbeaty eLearning

I read an interesting Chronicle article this week titled “These Lectures Are Gone in 60 Seconds” (http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i26/26a00102.htm) which discussed “microlectures”.  According to the article, a “microlecture” is a recorded audio snippet of what was formally a sixty minute lecture.  The lecture has been broken down to the key concepts and is then presented with assignments and discussions.  At first I was a bit skeptical about the idea, yet, after reflecting upon the use of it, I discovered that this is not a relatively new concept.   Within eLearning, designers and developers have been encouraging the use of multimedia to present concepts and ideas, including audio, video and some type of kinesthetic learning.  According to the lecture, many thought that the microlecture would be replacing traditional lecture and the students would not be absorbing enough to fully comprehend the concept at hand.  Yet, when these lectures are combined with another learning activity that prompts the students’ critical thinking skills, the students are discovering more and diving deeper into their own understanding and knowledge.

I think the microlectures are a great alternative to traditional method.  In fact, I thought that students should be able to create their own microlectures of sort and publishing them to a discussion, allowing for another method of expression and thought.

Amazing what technology can do and how it can be applied to learning.

sbeaty eLearning

This past week has been quite interesting when it comes to technologies that support eLearning. Through work I was able to get a copy of the new version of Captivate (version 4) and spend some time discovering how the software can be used to create interactive eLearning modules. I have been a fan of Captivate and have used it extensively in the past to create basic presentations, convert existing PowerPoints and produce simple software demonstrations. Because of my experience with the previous versions, I was interested to see what improvements had been made. After spending an hour going through the tutorials provided by the software I discovered a few features that I found useful and can have an impact on eLearning. Some of these features include:

• Text to Speech: By pasting text into the notes section, an audio version is created. The process was pretty simple and I even had the option of choosing a male (Paul) or female (Kate) voice. Paul’s voice sounds like Hal from 2001: A Space Odyessy, however, Kate’s voice was soothing and invited the user to continue with the presentation. This can be a great time saving tool if you do not want to record your voice and it’s a nice option to have for the auditory learners.
• Customizable widgets have been added to the version all that can create more compelling learning experiences. Many of these widgets include question types for assessment, games and even standard certificates to indicate completion of a task, module or unit. Plus, if you have any flash experience, widgets can be created in Flash and then imported into the Captivate Library. Also, many users share widgets they have created and can be accessed through Adobe Exchange.
• You can output files to avi, which can be streamed or even uploaded to YouTube.
• Variables can be used to personalize the learning experience throughout a scenario by using learner provided data, such as the users name.

These are just a few features that I think will really help enhance the learners experience. Are there other features of Captivate that you think are critical for eLearning?

sbeaty eLearning Captivate, Learning Technologies

I created this blog for a class assignment and one that can be used in by teachers, and school administrators.  The purpose of the blog is to share my ideas, findings and reflections of related design and development approaches to both Resident Instruction (face to face), blended and eLearning.

sbeaty eLearning School