Web Learning

Here are some answers to questions I get from blog readers. Many of the ideas for my blog posts come from these questions. However, sometimes there are questions that don’t warrant a full post, but may be of interest.

The Rapid E-Learning Blog shares practical tips and tricks to help you become a rapid elearning pro.

It is hosted by Tom Kuhlmann who has over 15 years of hands-on experience in the training industry and currently runs the community at Articulate.

Talk at the opening of the International Conference on Methods and Technologies for Learning at the Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily. Unfortunately rushed,

What if Andy Warhol had it wrong, and instead of being famous for 15 minutes, we’re only anonymous for that long? In this short talk, Juan Enriquez looks at the surprisingly permanent effects of digital sharing on our personal privacy.

A Universidade Aberta portuguesa lançou no dia 25 de abril o primeiro curso MOOC,  Massive Open Online  Course, designado  por  iMOOC no quadro da iniciativa pan-europeia OpenupEd, desenvolvida pela European Association of Distance Teaching Universities  |EADTU|, com o apoio da Comissão Europeia.  Esta  iniciativa  foi apresentada pela Comissária EuropeiaAndroulla Vassiliou (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-349_en.htm),  envolvendo várias universidades europeias.

Apply what you’re learning to your elearning courses

Practice, practice, and when you have more time, add some practice.

Focus on diverse demos and activities.

Portugal é um dos onze países que vai integrar a iniciativa “MOOC”, no âmbito da qual estarão disponíveis gratuitamente cerca de 40 de cursos ‘online’, em 12 línguas diferentes, anunciou hoje a Comissão Europeia.

A iniciativa, que conta com o apoio do executivo comunitário, é liderada pela Associação Europeia de Universidades de Ensino à Distância (EADTU) e envolve, principalmente, universidades abertas em Portugal, França, Itália, Lituânia, Holanda, Eslováquia, Espanha, Reino Unido, Rússia, Turquia e Israel.

Cerca de 40 cursos estarão disponíveis gratuitamente e em 12 línguas diferentes (as 11 línguas dos parceiros e o árabe) no âmbito desta iniciativa.

Os temas dos cursos, adianta a Comissão Europeia, “vão da matemática à economia, passando pelas competências digitais, o comércio eletrónico, as alterações climáticas, o património cultural, a responsabilidade social das empresas, o moderno Médio Oriente, a aprendizagem das línguas e a escrita de ficção”.

Not all elearning courses are created equal. Some seek to share information and build awareness while others may focus on action or changing behaviors. When building elearning courses, I usually separate them into two buckets: information or performance.

The Museum of Underwater Archaeology contains exhibits submitted by underwater archaeologists and maritime historians from around the world

The online Museum of Underwater Archaeology (MUA) is a 501c3 non profit organization incorporated in 2004. Its mission is to assist and promote the use of the Internet by ethical professional, student, and avocational underwater archaeologists. In support of that goal the MUA helps underwater archaeologists present their research to the general public by creating web based museum style exhibits as well as announce their latest projects. The MUA will also propose and work toward creating new online resources for research and sponsor a blog to share ideas.

Here’s a common scenario. Someone emails and asks about an elearning tutorial I have on the blog. It’s not always easy to find the specific tutorial buried in a given post. In fact, there are many times I either forgot that I had created that tutorial or I can’t recall where it’s at either. I know. It’s part of getting older.

Today I am going to fix that. I have listed every blog post that has a video tutorial that shows how to create something related to online learning. So, if you’re just getting started with building online learning courses (or new to the blog), now you have a handy resource with links to all sorts of rapid elearning tutorials.

At a recent elearning conference I ran into my mentor and elearning thought leader, Dr. Werner Oppelbaumer. He was showing off examples of elearning courses and offering tips on visual design for elearning.

While he was swamped as usual, I was able to steal a few minutes of his time and talk about his latest Werner Labs project and asked if he had any tips to share for the blog readers.

A large part of your success hinges on the relationship you have with the course’s subject matter experts. They play a critical role by providing guidance, expertise, and context for much of your course’s content. However, the subject matter experts can also be a source of frustration. Many times they won’t budge when it comes to getting rid of extra information. Or they have their own ideas on how the course should be designed which conflicts with yours.

In today’s post we’ll review some challenges when working subject matter experts and how to overcome them.

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Subject matter experts play a key role when developing your course content. Because of this you’ll want to develop a good working relationship that is respectful. Often I find that our industry complains a lot about the subject matter experts. They’re not our adversaries. They’re partners in the organization’s success. By following some of the tips above you’ll build a good relationship and shape the perspective to build effective and meaningful online courses.

Many of the blog’s readers are forced to work with limited resources especially when it comes to building the assets for their elearning courses. As many of you have discovered, when working with limited resources we have to MacGyver much of our production.

In a recent post on how to create templates for online training, I used the image below. While the image is simple, it is a combination of three graphics and all of the editing was done in PowerPoint.

Discussion of the concept of Massive Open Online Courses as they evolved from the development of open online learning and evolved into a means of offering social and immersive learning online. The context was a discussion of officials from the University College of the North in manitoba, which is mandated to provide learning to numerous communities scattered across a large northern environment. For audio and vidio please see http://www.downes.ca/presentation/314

Education legend Sir Ken Robinson picked the talks he loves — all full of insight, bright ideas and, of course, creativity.

They’re happy to give away their online privacy but say they’re not. A new study by the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future and Bovitz Inc. suggests that Millennials (ages 18-34, aka “digital natives”) are completely confused.

Templates are great because they provide some structure to the design of your online training. But many times templates become so rigid that instead of helping the training design, they inhibit it.

Building an effective online training program requires packaging the right content with the right type of learning experience. However that often doesn’t happen because it’s easier to pull a lot of information together, create some slides, and then publish a course.

To top it off, many of these types of online courses are merely repacked content that already exists on the organization’s network. So instead of building a real learning experience, we’re just repurposing existing content.

There are tons of free textures and background images online. Some good and some not so good. It can be a bit overwhelming looking for textures so I went through some of the free textures and included the ones I think work well for elearning courses.

To save you some time, I looked around and only added textures that are free to use for commercial projects. Of course, it is a good habit to give props to the source of the free file. If you can’t give them a link back, at least go to their site and let them know you appreciate the free help.