Where do I start?

In today's environment everyone but everyone does this elearning thing right? I mean there can't possibly still be organizations using purely face to face (f2f) training or paper based distance learning can there? Surely everyone not only has elearning but they also have the right systems to run it on too, right? If this was a Likert Scale I would probably be on the Strongly Disagree button right now! Whilst there are plenty of organizations successfully running blended learning systems on their LMS, there are plenty at various stages of development and a huge number still not yet embarked on the journey at all.


Working in New Zealand; you may have assumed that this was just a local issue with an agrarian culture that's way behind the rest of the World, but you'd be far from correct. I deal predominantly with NZ and Australian organizations, but neither of those societies is in digitally backwards one, the geographical isolation of NZ in particular has made it an early adopter of digital communications across the Internet, the largest growing industry here is online shopping. I've previously worked in the UK for a number of years and encountered the same thing, there are runners, walkers, crawlers, observers, non-starters and ostriches in the world of Learning Technologies.

Some areas of business and education are seemingly more advanced than others here; most banks, insurance, government agencies and health providers seem to be on their journey, but it's amazing how many commercial enterprises haven't yet started. Even more surprising is the number of training providers still holding on to the old world of only f2f sessions. Medium and small sized businesses are often of the impression they neither have the time or money to invest in elearning. Of course, necessity is the mother of invention; organizations with dispersed workforce facing increased pressures on reduced travel expenses are more often than not early adopters in this area, but just because the organisation is a local one, doesn't mean that the training and records need to be the same.. Anyway, let's talk about getting it going..



Step 1; This is a bit like any 'training' in that you need to establish the need. That means finding out firstly about how your organisation currently approaches learning, development and training. The big motivators for most organizations is around time and money, but you should really be focussing on what is the best way to deliver the training ahead of the savings.. Think effectiveness first and efficiency second. Sure, justifying any expenditure to your CEO is going to revolve around benefits and their biggest interest will be around time and money, but think about how you can do things better first.

Step 2; Get some help. Read my previous blog on You don't know what you don't know to get some tips here.

Step 3; Plant the seed, spread the word and any other clichés that essentially mean you need to get key influencers and decision makers on side. You need to form your vision of how this will work and the sell this vision to those key people. It's about taking the first two steps and painting a picture that others can see.



Not a step, but quickly thought I'd add looking up from my breakfast in Koru Club (hey I travel a lot!) that I was surprised to be f2f with our NZ Prime Minister John Key! Good news is that he's got no plans to sell off our Koru Club in the near future!

Step 4; Get your enablers sorted and start the ball rolling. If you're working with very limited budget this is even more key. If you're working without budget look at Open Source offerings as a way to start; Moodle is a great first step towards this and Totara if you have any budget. Authoring tools come in various shapes and sizes with a huge variety of costs to associate that I can't go through here.. We'll do that in another blog, but the Moodle and Totara in-built tools are a great place to start!

Communicate. Whether this is all new to you or your already on your journey towards a truly blended learning environment, communication is the key. You need to continually paint the picture and let people know, involve others and celebrate every success as I talked about in.....



That's all for this one, my planes going to go without me if I don't get moving, by John, safe flight to Christchurch. As always, the opinions here are entirely my own and don't represent anything that anyone else would want to write anyway. If you agree, disagree or just feel like commenting please do so here or to @Nigelkineo or LinkedIn



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Auckland Airport, New Zealand

You don't know what you don't know

Okay on the face of it that's one of those cliche and annoying comments that people make but when it comes to this Learning Technologies stuff it's often infuriatingly true.  The number of times I speak with a client or potential client about developments or possible other ways of skinning the cat (yes, there is more than one way) only for their face to drop as they realise they could have saved the last six months effort if they'd only known that so-and-so feature, software or service existed.  So forgive me if the statement is obviously true, but accepting that at face value why do so many elearning novices strike out there on their own without the necessary help and support?

Firstly there's the almighty obvious answer of money.  There's a large number (and even one or two who may read my blog) that are the sole elearning 'expert' in their organisation and have been given that nice round figure to work with and expected to move the organisation in the right direction.  The first thing you need to do is get yourself in and around a community with common struggles.  In New Zealand the NZATD is a great place to start, but there's numerous other support streams depending upon what you're trying to achieve and what tools you're using.  I'm a big TotaraLMS and Moodle fan; so both of these have their own forums and support access (welcome to Open Source) but so do some commercial products like the excellent Articulate suite and the Adobe lot too.  It's not hard to find help (you just need to know it exists).

It's a lot like going to the gym for the first time out there; it can be quite intimidating out there with the big bodies and grunters; life is a lot simpler with a personal trainer to help you work your way around and show you the pitfalls.  That's where people like myself (learning technology consultants or similar named helpful individuals) can really pay dividends.  We can show you a little of what you don't know and explain the possibilities whilst helping you avoid some of the very costly mistakes it's possible to make in the world of learning technologies.  Whilst many of us in this field are self-taught, it take years to get there and we all have our stories of where it didn't quite go the way we thought!  Be careful when you do this.. my old article here has some advice on this:  choose your partner wisely.

The next thing is to find a 'friend' or mentor who is further down the path than you. If you know someone who regularly goes to the gym, then why not arrange to go with them.  You don't have to match the weights or exercises but you can pick up some great trips along the way, especially if your fitness instructor can help correct some of the bad habits your mentor might have got in to!  Your mentor doesn't have to be the same height, shape, sex or build as you (they can come from a different organisation or sector I'm saying here!), just have to have something in common and get along. 

You also don't need to take this journey on your own.  You need to find someone where you are who can relate, be interested in or at least support you along the way.  If you really are a one (wo/)man band then speak to your boss or mentor within the business. They don't have to work-out with you every time but if they are with you it becomes more fun; not a single journey that isn't better with the right company!

My last piece of advice on the unknown is that it's not a good idea to workout in the dark.  What I mean here as I (as usual) take the metaphor a stage too far, is that you don't have to be alone and in the dark even if you feel that way.  The trick here is to communicate with those around you what you are up to and embarking upon.  Whilst it would be nice to pop in to the gym silently every night and return to work 6 months later (yes, it takes time..) with a perfect bod to show off, the reality is small steps.  If you do this without any help, without letting people know, without celebrating those little successes then your overall likelihood of success is greatly reduced.  Besides when you communicate, you'll be surprised what some of the people you thought wouldn't be able to help are communicate; it's not so dark after all.

The moral of this story is that you will never know what you do not know, but with some help, guidance and friends, someone will know enough to help or point you in the right direction.  Life may be a journey rather than a destination, but it sure helps if you can see which way you're heading on that journey.

As always all opinions expressed above are entirely my own and I reserve the right to be wrong without admitting it.  If you have a comment then please post it here or get in touch with me either directly by email: nigel.young@kineo.co.nz or through LinkedIn or Twitter

Pain in the SaaS?

Just like how the word 'cloud' cleverly took the internet based norm and made it sound a bit sexy, internet based software was given a name facelift and has is now known as SaaS.  For those of you not in the know that's a simple acronym for Software as a Service; which in layman's terms means the software doesn't sit on your computer it resides like a magical kingdom in the 'cloud'.  The question is whether or not it's better to live in a castle in the clouds or grounded like your computer; the answer is predictably that it depends.

When it works really well..

So cloud based systems are always going to be dependent on your internet connection so when you work in office based environments with reliable high-speed internet that's a good start.  When you add in to that a collaborative environment with several developers working together to put projects out or make elearning then there are going to be some significant advantages to being able to share via the cloud; these translate just the same for the software you use.  If you're using software and want to share without a SaaS type platform you have to have a copy of that software on each machine you want to develop on.  Of course if your offices already use a thin client approach (basically your computer is a terminal rather than everything contained on it) then you're already using SaaS for your key tasks whether you know it or not.  Under these conditions SaaS offerings are perfect for you.  A good example of SaaS is your Learning Management System (LMS).  If your LMS is not cloud-based you really would have to question why not if you have access to internet or even intranet.  This option is also great for sharing files.  I work with clients across New Zealand and Australia and sometimes the US and UK so we need to be able to move big files some times and email isn't the best way to do this. Services like Dropbox allow us to do this and access the files wherever we are.

When it's really bad..

When SaaS is bad it's really bad.  The frustrations that are caused when you can't access the site or the software crashes and throws you out are just that much more when you access them across the net.  The biggest issue is usually around the client end internet access.  Lets face it if you're still working in an organisation that believes internet should be throttled to the nth degree then you should probably steer clear of SaaS offerings unless your organisation opens the pipes up for that application.  Of course there's also the SaaS providers service and access.  If they don't have the proper hardware at their end (check out their scalability; how many 'big' clients do they have?) your bandwidth won't matter; you'll get poor service.  Fortunately most services will let you test-drive for free, this is a great opportunity to see how fast it runs, don't just check it at home, make sure you run it through your office too to make sure it's fine.  It does matter where it's hosted too, particularly if the software requires quite high bandwidth; as a general rule the closer the server is to you the better.  The last road-block for you is metaphorically speaking just that, if your organisation is firewall happy and blocks anything that looks remotely useful from coming through the web then think twice about SaaS offerings unless you have the backing of your IT department (hey, I need a whole article on dealing with those guys).

When it makes no sense

So sometimes we get a SaaS type offering just because it's trendy, if it's in the cloud it must be cool right?  Not really, sometimes it makes no sense because it's not the best option and we should make our decisions on what is the best option (with a little financial consideration thrown in for good measure).  A great example of this is when you have a single developer or someone who is dedicated to working in a 'deep' environment with minimal distractions.  It makes sense in these type of conditions to have a dedicated high-end development machine where the development takes place.  If you use a SaaS offering this then negates most of the benefits of the high-end machine and places the pressure squarely back on the internet connection.  You could say the same for small teams geographically located in the same place.  The most obvious example of where it makes no sense is where you have no internet access; believe it or not there are still places in the world where this is the case!

The future..

It's always hard to predict how and where all this will end up but the fact I'm writing this on a SaaS offering, work predominantly on LMSs and use SaaS tools more than I use the software on my computer makes me realise just how much things have changed in the last couple of years and I can't see the trend to the web slowing down.  Eventually internet connection shouldn't be an issue for anyone should it?  But if we all live in the clouds how will we keep grounded?  And how far can you see ahead when your head is in the clouds anyway?

As always all opinions expressed above are entirely my own and I reserve the right to be wrong without admitting it.  If you have a comment then please post it here or get in touch with me either directly by email: nigel.young@kineo.co.nz or through LinkedIn or Twitter

eManagement and Blended Management

Irony seems to be a common thread in my recent blogs. Whilst blogging on the over use of video I posted a number of links to YouTube.. To talk about the over use of push learning I pushed out another blog.. but today as I'm in another airport lounge it strikes me as ironic that for someone who is so devoted to the use of cloud based and open source technologies to deliver learning remotely, I do seem to spend a lot of time traveling. Traveling to deliver face to face training on using a remote learning system or meeting with teams about how this stuff will all work without people having to be in the same geographical location. The point is there often seems to be a disconnect of people's expectations about their systems and what they expect from learners and what they are prepared to do themselves.



Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting here that all face to face meetings are no longer required, that would be as ridiculous as making a decision that all face to face training is no longer required, no this is the same sort of decision that we make for blending our learning. Welcome to the era of eManagement and Blended Management and its use around elearning.
Now the observant amongst you will already note that I work for Kineo Pacific in New Zealand (mostly) and Australia (see above). I'm physically based in Albany on the North Shore of Auckland. When I was asked about this role and interviewed it was done remotely via a Skype interview as the rest of the organisation was based in Wellington. Some of you may have already experienced this and if not you may want to add it to your tools, some of you use it as an everyday tool and some probably believe it can't be effective for something like an interview (but if you're still reading there's hope). During the interview the CEO was asking me questions about why they should employ someone from a different geographical location to manage stuff around their learning technologies. My answer at the time was around walking the walk, how we expect clients to work in the cloud, how we share and work with clients remotely on learning systems that do the same and yet we hang on to the old ideals of everyone working in the same office under close supervision (I may never wear a tie again!). Not only do I stand by that (hopefully they do too) but it goes further, the modern world has never been smaller, this is all to do with the way we communicate; if we insist on management being done the way it was when the world was bigger then expect it to be a bigger task that costs more and is probably less effective.



Just like elearning eManagement is not primarily about financial rewards (but yes, I'm aware most of you still have to sell it that way), but about using the right tools to achieve the tasks.. It's more about effectiveness than efficiency believe it or not. If you're trying to set up a meeting between more than two or three people it can seem to take for ever to get a date and time agreed even in the same geographical location. What usually happens is people get excluded or the meeting gets set back to a mutually acceptable date. This has two immediate effects; firstly people miss out entirely (minutes eventually follow for what they're worth) and secondly the time frames are not dictated by needs but by simple logistics, in essence you lose the ability to control the pace of your project or you build project with lengthy gaps in for just this reason. For me this is the breeding ground for inefficiency and disengagement. The great thing about cloud based meeting tools and spaces is the ability to not only host them remotely but that no-one need miss out; there are several tools with the options to record the meeting or webinar and record questions and shared white spaces.



For training I also find that we get far more focused in a webinar than in a 4-6 hour training day (you can do 8 if you want..). Human attention span is well documented as being short (would you read this blog if it were 10 pages long?) and a 60-90 minute web training session can work really well to cover a few topics. Like your face to face sessions and your elearning it doesn't have to be all push either, you can use the questions and polls effectively and even get participants doing things and use linkages between the sessions (yay, homework again!).

Again, I don't want to replace the face to face, there are times we need to meet people and it's great to meet new people and understand a bit more about them, it's just not necessary all the time. I'm now on the plane to Wellington to run a training session, Monday I'm running a scoping exercise in Brisbane and the following week presenting at a conference back in Wellington and then for another large meeting. Some of that is necessary and some of it truly isn't, but I'm customer focused and if the client really wants to do everything this way, then I usually will. My point here is that most of the time, this is because they don't really think about alternatives and reach for old solutions to modern problems. Think about the reasons why we use elearning; not just the efficiency, but things like consistency, ease of access to information, engagement, immersion and interaction, then apply these ideals to your management and see whether actually that meeting could be done virtually or whether or not it's necessary at all. I love it when clients embrace the cloud tools, we share things in the virtual space (like editing a document or graphic between us without posting or even emailing it) or jumping quickly on to the same system to demonstrate where things can be improved; again it's about the best way of working.

I'll leave you with this final thought as my plane journey is near the end, eManagement and elearning are kindred spirits and all about the way we live and work today. You may not have to adopt either right now, but at some point you will and it will likely be for wrong reason then (money). If you're an early adopter here you have a much greater chance to shape the future and learn (yay!) along the way. As always balance is the key; please don't ignore the person next to you the rest of the day and communicate only by IM, and no Milo isn't buying in to this stuff either!

As always everything here is entirely my opinion and I reserve the right to be way off base as required. I'd love to hear from you either by direct response to this blog, email, LinkedIn or Twitter.. Even face to face of course!

Location:Andrew Mckee Ave,Auckland,New Zealand

Push Me Pull You

So this comes up all the time in the elearning world.  You hear about us so-called experts (note, nobody actually referred to me as an expert, that was a hypothetical) telling you about using pull learning techniques rather than push.  I was speaking to a client a couple of days ago and it occurred to me half way through the conversation that they hadn't actually grasped what the difference was.  Experience tells us that problems are rarely unique and I suspect there's some of you out there who (very quietly of course) don't know the difference between push and pull in elearning.  Of course, maybe everyone already does, in which case I found this interesting piece on Wikipedia about teaching granny to suck eggs..

Push elearning was once what nearly everyone produced without really knowing any better.  I guess it's the Foie Gras of the elearning world where we take our learners and we keep stuffing them full of information (although hopefully the analogy stops there!).  The problem with push learning most of the time is that it makes a huge assumption about the learners before the piece begins.  Often the normal is to play it safe and assume that your learners no nothing at all and then tell them everything whether they not it or not (granny, time to shell some more eggs).

I mentioned some of this last time with the ideas around video and how forcing your learners to watch long videos is tantamount to torture in some cultures, none more so than when they already know everything that is in the video.  To keep granny happy we can let her decide when she needs to know more.  This is the concept behind pull learning rather than push.  It also automatically makes our learning more interactive and puts the onus back on the learner to decide what they need to know to progress.  In the video example we may have a screen asking the learner a question about something.  If they know the answer then they put it in and move on.  Why ask them to learn something they already know.. makes sense right?

The reason a pull course is more interactive is that the learner is forced into choosing from the menu about what information they want.  It also caters for a far wider range of learners and different ways that learners learn.  For example you may have pull resources like audio bites, video, animation, text and even drag and drop activities that can all be used if the learner doesn't get the message we're trying to get across.  It's also much more akin to real life outside of the schooling system.  If I want to learn about something I go to the internet or I ask someone or find someone virtual or otherwise that knows more about it than me; but the way I do that may be very different from you and that's just fine.  If you want to learn then you need to find something out; and surely that's the key to learning; making the learner actually want to learn and motivated to find something out.

The hard part for us as instructional designers or elearning developers (yes, there's a difference) is that it means much of our hard work goes unappreciated.  It seems harsh that you spent hours making a really cool animation that is only going to be seen by 10% of the learners, but this is far better than forcing 90% of people to do something they don't need to do - after all their job is not to marvel at your skills in animation but to subtly appreciate your skills in designing effective learning.

I like Tom Kuhlman's approach to elearning with Articulate and now Storyline:  read this article if you want to know a bit more about this approach :)

If you haven't started designing pull training yet, give it a go.  It works great in your face to face sessions too if you know how to apply the same principles and takes a great deal of pressure off you the instructor/trainer/teacher.  If you need some help in working out what to do with this and where to start then drop me a line.. we can talk about the best tools and how to actually start designing this way.

As usual the opinions in my blog are always my own and if they happen to be correct that in itself is probably more by luck than judgement.  You can find me on LinkedIn or @NigelKineo on Twitter or by email: nigel.young@kineo.co.nz

Video Killed the Flash Developer

Sorry but I'm one of those people who once a song gets in his head it has a hard time finding its way out.  Since yesterday when a client asked me lots of questions about bringing video into their elearning modules I haven't been able to shift Video Killed the Radio Star out of my frontal lobes (don't even get me started on the irony of the song being the first video on MTV).  The follow on was that I made sure the client was aware of the time and place for video and its usage in elearning.  I wanted to make sure they understood there was a time and a place for video usage (not to mention a format and length, quality etc etc) and that it wasn't a mutually exclusive decision whereby video killed other media production; hence my dramatic title.

Video Killed the Radio Star; Buggles

What's right and what's wrong about video in learning is essentially the same thing.  In the simplest of terms it's media rich (lots going on), very easy to produce something with minimal effort and it fills a lot of space.  The good things around that are that you can produce some really effective learning pieces quickly; particularly when you pair them with rapid elearning tools like Articulate, Storyline or RolePlay (and these will often provide the tools you need to convert them to the right sorts of format for web viewing).  Producing good video is a lot like painting (the house type, not the artsy one); it's mostly in the preparation.  There are a gazillion things to think about (lighting, size, audio etc etc) but none more important than the actual aim (no, not the direction of the camera) of what you're trying to achieve.  If you're after a head shot with a whole bunch of waffle that lasts beyond a minute or two then you may be contributing to the death of good elearning!

Now hopefully I've not offended too many homicidal developers out there; there's hope for you yet!  When I talk around having an aim, you should be looking at the video really adding something to your learning.  If there's something really technically difficult to do then yeah, this is the media for you.  Something that may take a 3-D developer weeks of development but you can get across effectively in a 15 second clip; bingo!  After all just because your video is media rich doesn't mean you have to make it exclusive of other media.  When done well you'll often see short video snippets embedded and used with text, imagery and interaction.

Remember that just showing a long video in your elearning package is no different to a teacher just running that old video whilst they put their feet up or try and mark the 300 books they need to mark before tomorrow (personally I found it a pretty good hangover cure too!).  The other thing to remember about video is that when you use it on its own without adding any interaction around it then you have a one-way transmission rather than something that's truly interactive.

Just because the transmission is sent, doesn't guarantee it's received

So what are the alternatives?  Firstly, the best option is to use video sparingly rather than for every time you need to get a point across or teach something.  I mentioned earlier that it can fill a lot of space; this is true in several regards and not least of which in your consideration should be the hard disk space where your LMS probably sits too.  The other is the time your video clip runs for; as a general rule if you have a big piece of video (by big I mean minutes not hours; if yours is hours go back to the story board or give me a buzz) then look at breaking it in to snippets of generally seconds rather than minutes.  The more you can break it down the more use it will be to your learners and the better chance they have to digest replay and get the point you're trying to get across rather than just sit back and watch and think of something else (I recently reviewed someone's course with so much video I was grateful for tabbed browsing and just checked back in every so often to see if it had finished!).

One great alternative to video is to use still shots and voice or text.  This is a great replacement for the massive video introduction by your CEO.  A simple head shot and text says welcome without having to do the video.  You can voice-over if you like (as always consider your audience and their technological requirements) and even have key points flashing up (with learn more type options if you want the learner to pull information).  Don't think you're limited to one picture either, you can change expressions and poses at key points too - look at how the Kineo Essentials demo here .

Video doesn't also kill Flash when done right, there will always be a place in the elearning world for great Flash developers (yes Java you can go here too - especially if you know what SCORM means), as always it's about finding the right balance.  Too much video can be like death by any other form of media (remember slides?  or PowerPoint or Flash animations or woosh sounds or..) everything in moderation and the key is always from the perspective of the learner NOT the developer.

So the conclusion is that we can spare lives in the world of learning technologies, not by excluding video, but by embracing it and using it the right way to enhance the learning experience rather than punishing someone for daring to click here!  Overall I hope the irony of including YouTube links in to my blog is not lost on some of you.. ah well, it is easy to do after all..

As always the views here are completely my own and correct only by absolute coincidence.  Feel free to vehemently disagree with any of them and let me know by either responding on this blog or emailing me at nigel.young@kineo.co.nz or @nigelkineo on twitter or even by finding me on LinkedIn (Nigel Young).  No animals were actually killed during the process of this blog.

Give me a scenario

Is it true that there are no coincidences? Who knows but when something happens repeatedly at some point you have to start paying attention to the signs. Don't worry, this is not the point where I start getting all deep and meaningful or start burning incense or even get incensed, but I have had something mentioned repeatedly in the last day or so that I'm a big fan of and I thought I'd share my thoughts with everyone who reads my blogs (yes you both mean a lot to me). I'm talking about scenarios and their use in elearning.




Okay, yes I sort of did something on this before when I blogged on writing good assessments (http://nigelkineo.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/how-to-make-assessments-meaningful-and.html), but that was more about how to assess using a scenario, here I want to focus on using scenarios to train and how we achieve that and even which software we should use as it's a recurrent question and a hot topic in the elearning world at least for this week.
So writing scenario based training packages takes a few things to achieve, number one you do kind of need a system to write them on and the million dollar question is normally what's the best scenario based elearning authoring tool? This is very easy to answer, but not necessarily the answer you want to hear! Buy the tool that you and your team (okay, this is actually a big point too, but we'll park it and come back to it) think is easiest to use and produces the best content. You may be asking how you know that prior to the purchase and that brings me to my first and simplest piece of advice:

try before you buy now I can tell you to my heart's content what makes xxx the greatest thing since sliced bread but the truth is if you don't like it then it's just like that nasty cheap sliced bread that you're never going to eat and just use to grow mould for antibacterial purposes. If the product doesn't come with at least a little play time before paying your dough (sorry bread metaphor is in my head and you probably already know how I run with these) then something is wrong I think. Send them an email requesting a sandpit or something.. If they won't let you at least do that then I would say it's not the product for you no matter how great some supposed expert says it. Seriously this is just like 'critically acclaimed' movies that I watch sometimes and get the sinking feeling that it's 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back (and hey my blogs don't take that long to read). In fact I've seen some pretty bad Oscar winning movies in my time that have made me both laugh and cry at the points I was supposed to be doing the opposite.

check out the support yeah yeah so it's got videos and a help file, but for me I like a support network, somewhere I can post to and get answers not from the guy who made the bread machine but from someone who actually makes the loaves day in and day out. This is what we lovingly refer to as a community. It comes with an investment in support and a good customer base. TotoraLMS has a great community and it's the strength of open source, but some commercial products are great in this area, particularly the Articulate crowd. It's not the end of the story, but it makes a difference when you can connect with people who've walked the same road or baked the same types of courses you're trying to.




work out the true costs there's an old adage that you get what you pay for. I've adapted this slightly because I think it should say something like at best you get what you pay for, because some very expensive systems are worse than the cheap ones. But true cost for me is financial and time. If a system is cheaper but takes an age to learn, or worse still produces poor results that you'll need to redo and touch up again and again then it's a false economy. The other side of economy is to do with the number of users and licensing model. Once upon a time cloud (what we used to call Internet) software solutions or SaaS (software as a service) was an automatic bad choice for my money as the Internet simply wasn't fast enough to guarantee a good feel, that's becoming less and less of an issue (yes, even in New Zealand!). Cloud based software can often offer the advantages of many users that might be required for scenario based software. Take for example RolePlay; been getting lots of good feedback on this Kiwi cloud product made specifically for scenario based elearning. The great advantage comes when you have lots of trainers around the organisation, with this type of system you don't have to have multiple installs or worry about where the trainer is working from. Of course value wise Storyline offers a great buy, but my point on economy comes down to the number of users you actually have who need the software.




branches galore like all good trees and banks you'll want a system that can support branching scenarios effectively and easily. The first Storyline piece I put together I found really straightforward compared to how I used to put together Captivate products a couple of years ago. Your system should not only support multiple branches from quizzes and choices but also arrange them nice and easily for you to follow what you've done! To write a good scenario piece you'll need to plan out your storyboard and think about what and where each choice is going to take you. Try not to be too linear in your design so that your user thinks they have a number of ways to go rather than they must take the one preset path through the maze. I think it's very frustrating to keep having to go back before you go forward each time in
elearning.




don't force feed in scenarios this may be even more important than ever, but no one really likes having to do stuff and watch ten minute videos when the already know the answer. The best examples I've seen here use the pull idea rather than push, provide lots of options for users to get more information if they want to. For example, you could have books and video resources in the learning if they want to click on the book or video icons, otherwise let them go through quickly if they get it. Sure this means that some people will never see the groovy animation you spent ages making, but that's fine, the learning is about the learner not the developer!

let the user know how they're doing no, not just by telling them their score at the end, but by using characters and expressions when things are going right. A great customer service piece for example, will show how the customer is feeling with the responses that are given, not just with the words but with facial expressions and the voice if using audio too.

I guess that's all for now.. Again I find myself blogging on elearning late at night on my trusty iPad so forgive any typos that probably exist. The next blog will be off the computer probably as my partner is off on a training course in Singapore tomorrow so she's going to 'borrow' the pad for a few days; I will miss them both and I wonder how a worldwide IT company can afford to send its staff on overseas trips to deliver knowledge based learning.. Maybe there's a scenario they could explore too!

As usual all opinions and ideas are probably stolen from somewhere else and palmed off as my own. Feel free to hit me back with suggestions or comments, subscribe, retweet or plagiarise this content. I can be found hiding unsuccessfully at Nigel.young@kineo.co.nz @nigelkineo and even sometimes in person!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Auckland,New Zealand