Visually presenting facts in online courses

What do you do when you have an eLearning course that contains a bunch of facts: numbers, trends, statistics, rates, and so on? How do you make your graphs, maps, charts, and tables visually engaging? More importantly, how do you help your learners remember some of this information?

At CommLab, we do a lot of courses that are heavily fact based. We recently did one on maternity. Among others, it included facts about birth and mortality rates of mothers and babies, worldwide birthing trends, and some historical data.

The client did provide us with some graphs and a map. But how do you make the information related to the graph “stick” in learners’ minds? From our own experience as learners, we know that a bulleted list of facts on the screen will not become a bulleted list of facts in our brains; we have to make a special effort to remember these facts. When we’re done with the course, we find that the audio and text have just left a few traces of information in our minds. Not only are bulleted lists boring, they do very little to help learners remember information.

We’ve all seen infographics online and been amazed by how they make facts come alive. So our instructional designers decided to use animated infographics to get away from the bulleted lists. These infographics had the following elements:

• Graphs
• Color-coded maps to designate developed and developing countries
• Timelines
• Icons to represent concepts: all major concepts would be represented using icons. The visual style we decided on was silhouette. We also defined the colors for these icons. These were: pink, shades of gray, white, and black.

Some examples of icons we used:

These icons appear in synch with audio over the graphs, maps, or timelines and give learners a handle to remember some of the facts. See examples below.

EXAMPLES

I. Graph with icons

II. Bullet points replaced with icons

III. Timeline with icons

Tell us how you’ve been getting away from bullet points.

Related posts:

1. Getting Away From Bulleted Lists – Part 2

The make-or-buy decision, as defined in the Encyclopedia of Management, is the act of making a strategic choice between producing an item internally (in-house) or buying it externally (from an outside supplier). The buy side of the decision is also referred to as outsourcing.

Let us begin by looking at the various areas of outsourcing in the eLearning context. Most outsourcing of an eLearning solution falls into one of the three areas: Content, Technology, and Services.

Content here not only includes broad business and technology content such as online courses in Leadership, HR or soft skills and courses on application training, but also includes deeper vertical content solutions in competency areas such as product, process, and sales training in specialized industries.

However, I’d like to share a caveat here for the technology related area: When trying to get technology requirements in place, do not settle for solutions that have an LMS component attached to a regular ERP application. Such solutions, though seemingly attractive, can quickly become an administration and maintenance nightmare.

When it comes to content, most organizations make the mistake of purchasing a huge library of catalogue courses and deploying these across the organization en masse. This scenario is equivalent to giving employees the keys to a library and asking them to go and pick whatever books work for them. Most learners find it overwhelming to be offered so many options. And besides, each business is unique, so the off the shelf solutions sometimes may not fit your business context perfectly.

While it is true that there are some good off-the-shelf solutions for a few areas of your need, most training requirements need tailor-made solutions. This is where custom courseware can come to your rescue. Next, it is a matter of deciding whether to develop this custom courseware in-house or outsource this requirement to eLearning companies whose core competence is the design and development of courseware.

Related posts:

1. Do you Build or Buy? Questions in the eLearning Context
2. Common Objections to Outsourcing eLearning
3. Choosing between Off-the-Shelf and Custom Content

Yesterday afternoon, I spent a fun hour with our Learning Design team in one of their brown bag sessions on presenting content effectively. Each team member was to make a brief 10 minute presentation on their home town, which would be judged by an in-house panel and the rest of the participants on various parameters such as clarity (style, potential to enable retention), visuals (relevance, appeal, potential to enable retention), engagement (fun, interest, enjoyment), etc.

The assignment was simple enough – the presentation was to be brief, contain text and images and other elements such as animation, trivia, other media etc. However, the most interesting requirement was that it was Not to be presented but to be viewed as a slideshow, minus audio/narration.

The results were terrific (by the time the presenters finished, the audience was ready to pack its bags and visit each presenter’s home town!). And eye-opening. Each slideshow was a refreshing demonstration and a powerful testimony of how well-thought out content and visuals can ’speak’ volumes even in the absence of audio and actively engage an audience.

So what does all this have to do with eLearning? For me, there were several takeaways, but I will limit this post to a brief discussion of how powerful each of those presentations was even in the total absence of narration. (An aside: movies in the silent era had a lot going for them – because every element of the ‘presentation mix’ spoke really loud!)

A lot of times, we as course designers feel that a course cannot be effective without being supported by audio narration. In the early days of course development, we used only text and graphics – no narration. Then audio began to be used, though not extensively. Just enough to give a personal feel and help the learner make an emotional connect with the course. But today, it seems to be used by default. And many times, not used very effectively at that. Without getting into the controversial debate on audio catering to a specific learning style or using audio narration to meet accessibility requirements, here are a few thoughts:

Yesterday’s presentation reminded me that in the absence of ‘noise’, wel-crafted online text and powerful visuals still continue to be the most compelling way to engage learners, create a sense of anticipation, grab the audience’s attention, anticipate and ask questions and provide answers. The effectiveness of the ’silent’ presentations made me wonder if sometimes, in our eagerness to engage learners, we may have gone overboard with audio that does nothing more than annoy learners.

I don’t know whether I belong to a silent majority that wants little or no narration unless there is a valid instructional reason to do so or whether most online learners do really prefer audio to invariably accompany a course. That said, I do feel that if used correctly, it has tremendous potential. We’ve all experiencedthe power of effective audio in online courses.

What is your personal preference with regard to the use of audio in online courses and what would you strongly recommend we avoid?

Related posts:

1. Effective Voice-Over In ELearning!

Recently, I read an article on how all learning charts are wrong. People don’t actually remember 10% of what they read and 20% of what they see. While I agree with the debunking of this myth on the surface, I’m not entirely convinced that some of the myths aren’t true. Since those percentages were just estimations derived from Dale’s Cone of Experience, the exact percentage may be wrong, but the notion was correct.

If you think about your own schooling, what sort of things do you remember most? For me, they are the projects where I had to research and complete and the tutoring sessions I did with other students in varying subjects. Do I remember anything that was taught by a teacher who stood in front of the class talking? Not really, unless something extraordinary happened during that lesson, like when the class clown decided one day it would be funny to suddenly stand up, drop his pants and walk up and down the aisles. Okay, so I remember what I saw that day in Science class, but I don’t remember what the teacher was droning on about.

Would learning online differ from learning in a traditional classroom environment? I believe it does in that the student is in more control of an online course than in a classroom, which means that each individual student can take the amount of time he or she needs to learn the material. Self-paced material is the greatest advantage of learning online.

So, if we have a more remedial student or someone not computer savvy, does that mean they cannot take online courses? Of course not! Any well made elearning course guides the learner through the material. Just because there’s no teacher standing over the student doesn’t mean there is no help at all. Flashing buttons and spoken instructions are just a couple of methods used to help a learner navigate a course. However, other than help with navigation and perhaps having access to an instructor to answer questions, an online course puts the onus on the student to learn rather than the teacher to teach.

A good e-learning course will take into account that a class is comprised of people with varying levels of skill. Some will be more advanced, while others will be remedial. As long as the course is geared with the beginner in mind and is self-paced, it will be able to be used by all levels of skill because the more advanced students can navigate faster. The course should also factor in the Cone of Experience. So, instead of just spoken instruction, there will also be visual and written modes of instruction. Ending a course with the opportunity for the student to use the new knowledge will help increase the rate of retention as well.

It may not be exactly 10% of what we read, 20% heard, 30% seen and 90% said and done, but I do believe the levels of retention follow along the lines of Dale’s cone. If a student uses the newly-acquired knowledge to teach someone else, the likelihood of them remembering what was taught is far higher than if they are just taught through reading and spoken instruction.

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1. E-learning Over Traditional Classroom Instruction
2. The Differences Between E-Learning And Websites
3. A Summary of Responses to “Sage on the Stage or Guide on the Side?”

While creating a storyboard for online courses, I usually turn to templates to make my task simple. If you’ve more than a few members of your team working on the same project and you need the look and feel of the course to be consistent when done, it is ideal to use templates. 

Templates include various different elements such as buttons, icons, color schemes, images, games and much more. Tools such as PowerPoint master slide layouts allow you to have a range of pages ready to insert content. The whole idea of a template is that you can use the elements an infinite number of times for different projects. Let me tell how I benefit from using templates while developing online training course: 

• First, it saves time and effort. Re-creating buttons, icons, colors, etc, each time when I create a storyboard is time-consuming. It is nice to have a few sets of interface, layouts, icons, buttons, colors and frequently used components handy. I enjoy dragging and dropping the elements into the place and voila, I’m ready to roll out a course!
• A library of templates elements is valuable to whose (like me) do not have web or multimedia designer at their disposal. An amateur takes a long time to create a Flash movie or design a button than an expert. Besides, the quality of work may not be up to the mark. I prefer to focus on creating good learning materials for the course rather than drawing a pretty button.
• Many of the clients I have worked with prefer their courses to have a consistent look and feel – same colors, quality and more. They provide me with their readymade set of templates to use for developing of course materials.
• If a company is using LMS, there are certain requirements for proper functioning. By having custom-designed templates compatible with the LMS, life is easy for all of us. Templates mean less troubleshooting time and faster turnaround of course development.
• Not all IDs (yours truly!) have web designing or multimedia skills. It is best to have various elements of templates created by experts as it gives a touch of professionalism to the courses. I just need to edit the template and its elements to add the course content.
• As I mentioned earlier, an ID has to create good learning material and not design templates and elements. By using templates while developing courses, IDs can think of creative ways to make a course interesting and churn out more courses in a short span of time. 

These are the few benefits that I see from using templates while creating an e-learning module. 

Do share your thoughts with me on the same.

Related posts:

1. Elements of Storyboards
2. Articulate Engage a Good Substitute for Flash Interactivities
3. The Humble Storyboard is almost 80 years old. Is it time for its retirement?

A month ago, Connie Malamed posted a discussion in LinkedIn inviting readers to donate storyboard formats to be offered as a resource to the eLearning fraternity. Many have offered the formats they were using. You can find them at the eLearning coach. I too sent a couple of them (yet to be uploaded; Connie is a terribly busy person but still finds time to maintain an extremely useful site for learning professionals like us).

That started my thinking about this fairly “low-tech” component in a high tech world of technology-based learning and corporate training. I was amazed to discover that our ubiquitous storyboard is actually an 80-year old Ancient . The humble word document that serves us in developing eLearning courseware has an interesting history. According to Wikipedia, the first storyboard was developed at the Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s for the 1933 Disney’s Three Little Pigs! I also learnt that it is used in many ways by many professions – Film, Theater, Advertising, TV, Publishing, Business, eLearning…

We at CommLab use MS Word to make our storyboards. PowerPoint is also used by some and Authoring tools by a few. But I think ‘MS Word’ is by far the most extensively used in developing online course storyboards. Connie has a very useful section, “Storyboards for eLearning” on her site for those who wish to pick up some tips.

I wonder if we can give the ol’ storyboard a ‘makeover? Can we come up with a tool that offers all the following.

• Desktop Publishing software like Ventura or PageMaker to build a tailor-made formats with ease
• PowerPoint to create some elementary animation
• Clip Art Gallery for images / photographs
• Various Assessment Components that can just be selected and populated
• Audio / Video Gallery of music, standard instructions, video clips…
• Dictionary and Thesaurus

Any more ideas?

Thank you for reading my blog. I look forward to your comments.

RK Prasad

CEO

Related posts:

1. Elements of Storyboards
2. Translating and Localizing eLearning to Reach Global Audience – CommLab’s Experience
3. Templates For Creating Online Courses

We started Elearning Edge on June 2, 2009 (four months to date) with a purpose of making it a one-stop platform of ready-to-use resources for learning professionals.

Our experience in the elearning industry for the last 9 years has resulted in a large accumulation of useful resources like assessment components, templates, online courses, ILT courseware, PowerPoint decks, webinars, graphic components – everything and anything that will help learning professionals.

It is really gratifying to see that the membership has crossed 1000 in just four months. I am taking this opportunity to thank all the members for joining us.

I would also like to ask what resources you would want to help you succeed in your jobs and make your working life easier.

What else can we do to make this group, eLearning Edge the largest eLearning group on LinkedIn?

Share your views!

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]]> http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning/elearning-edge-in-linkedin/feed/ 0 http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning/translation-and-localization-using-lectora http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning/translation-and-localization-using-lectora#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:41:46 +0000 Abdul Razzaque Hussain http://blog.commlabindia.com/?p=437 Related posts:

1. How to design Translation File Format for Multi-lingual elearning Courseware Development?
2. How to Customize the Questions Functionality using Variables in Lectora?
3. How to make Lectora Courses Compatible to Cross LMS?

Kolb’s learning theory introduces us to four distinct learning styles (or preferences), which are based on a four-stage learning cycle – learning by feeling, watching, thinking and doing.

In other words, we all agree that individuals learn uniquely, combining a mix of the above preferences to bring out their own unique style of learning. We also appreciate that although there are as many unique learning styles as there are individuals; we can categorize them into a finite number as shown very elegantly by David Kolbe.

My question is how practicable or feasible it is to try and accommodate various learning styles while designing a course, be it classroom or online?

In a classroom, the elements of instruction used seem to depend more on what the instructor/facilitator is good with rather than on addressing a variety of learning styles that the audience brings to the class.

As far as online courses are concerned, I agree we all make sure that there is a judicious balance of content, graphics, animation and interactivity.

But is there a more objective method to decide how much of each is recommended? I don’t remember collecting data on the learning styles of the target audience before sitting down design a course. Is there any research available that suggests a general distribution of learning styles in a given population?

If we know, even in general terms, the distribution of learning styles in a reference set of population and if we can get hold of an objective method of deciding what instructional elements we can use and in what proportion, I think our training programs will be much more effective.

I would welcome my colleagues to respond with their knowledge and experience in addressing this area.

Thank you for reading my blog.

RK Prasad

CEO