Author Archives: Rick

Make Some Space for SlideRocket

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I have to admit it. I’m a bit of  a software junkie. I come to realize this every time I try to rehab my hard drive. I am addicted to prodding, poking, and playing with whatever appears out there in tech land. If I had to psychoanalyze myself, I’m probably motivated by an inner evil lazy-me that always looks for ways to do things faster, cheaper, and easily so that I can spend more time playing video games and drinking coffee. Maybe I’m just really critical and love finding fault in the technology that’s supposed to save our lives or maybe I’m still searching for that magic machine I talked about in a previous blog where all you have to do is pull the switch and all your wildest dreams will come true.

Whatever it is, I recently came across a very cool hosted presentation platform called Sliderocket that, in addition to having a really great name, may very well propel people in the eLearning community do things faster, cheaper, and more easily depending on their needs.

As I mentioned in my Rage Against the eLearning Machine blog, companies often end up deploying tools that are much too complicated for the type of eLearning they end up producing. They know they want to do eLearning so they go buy a robust eLearning tool and give it to the department responsible for training but end up creating some pretty basic presentation style learning — which is fine if that is all you need. So I say, why not look for a tool more in tune with what you are trying to produce so that you can do it faster? What good is all that functionality if you don’t use it or don’t need it?

Be honest. How many of you use MS Excel to do more than add up a few numbers or format a few tables?

 

Sliderocket is one of those software platforms that I think, can really fit the bill as an eLearning tool because it’s much more than a simple presentation tool. It is a powerful hosted authoring platform that handles audio, video, flash, text, PowerPoint import and some basic interaction through hyper-linking. You can create tables and charts with it, draw shapes and even include forms and polls when you purchase the upgraded version. It’s solid collaboration, sharing, versioning and tracking features allow you to work effectively with your subject matter experts and find out who is looking at your stuff.

Best of all, Sliderocket allows you to access your content anywhere from any platform and in either Adobe Flash or HTML 5 formats (although I have not tested it out on a tablet).

Though it’s marketed as a presentation platform, it’s actually not that far off  from becoming a full blown eLearning authoring and hosting environment. All they really need to do is add some built-in quiz-making features, a better built-in hierarchical menu system, a more robust user log in and tracking system (quiz scores and such), and some other behaviors like pop-ups and rollovers. If they added a few of these things, along with possibly of some kind of SCORM support, I think they could give a lot of the bigger eLearning vendors a run for their money. Already, they have laid a solid base for evolving their system with a plugin architecture that allows you to incorporate such things as twitter feeds, polls, quotes and word definitions.

Even without some of these additional features I can see someone using Sliderocket as an effective eLearning authoring tool.  It’s flash-based interface is easy to use and intuitive. If you have ever used PowerPoint you should have no problem settling in and creating something pretty nice – especially given the many included themes available and the ability to customize them.

Do you want to synchronize audio with images and text on the screen with nice fades and transitions? Sliderocket does that. Do you have video? It’s easy to import and add it to a screen with it’s own video controller. Need a menu? Well you can do that too, albeit manually – just create some hyperlinks on your side to various sections and then a menu button on each page that takes you back to the menu. (There is even a hyper-link option that will take you back to where you left off which could be useful).

Now I must inform you that some of the features I mentioned, including the ability to synchronize audio with text and image builds, do require an upgrade from the free plan, but even without those features, there is a lot you can do with some solid instructional design principles and some creativity. I am convinced that with a little imagination you can really stretch the boundaries of what this tool was intended for and create some very nice eLearning courses with Sliderocket. All in all, it’s one more interesting tool in your belt that just needs a little fleshing out in order for it to be that killer eLearning application we are all looking for.

Go ahead. Give it a go and tap into your inner lazy-person as you avoid working on that convoluted task matrix you created  in MS Excel.

 

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Creating Cartoon Scenarios with GoAnimate

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If you don’t mind venturing into the cuddly world of cartoons for your eLearning (which I don’t mind doing once in a while because it can make boring information fun), there are some awesome tools for creating character driven scenarios that you really should check out: GoAnimate and Xtranoral. Each are micro-transaction and subscription-based services primarily targeted at the socially networked Machinima crowd (budding film-makers who like creating their own spoofs, stories, and satires using game software or other easy to use tools) but would be equally useful for groups wanting to add a little something to their eLearning courses. In this post, I focus on GoAnimate but hopefully will cover XtraNormal at a later date.

GoAnimate is a flash-based web-application that allows you to build anything from very simple template driven cartoon dialogues to complex mini movies with animation, voice-overs, and special effects. Take a look at this simple harassment scenario I built in a couple of hours using the tool (no audio).

Click to See my GoAnimate Example

GoAnimate comes with hundreds of different characters, scenes and props allowing you to build anything from a sweeping period-piece epic to a sci-fi action adventure depending on your budget and the amount of effort you want to put into it. If you don’t like the stock characters and scenes provided, GoAnimate let’s you customize to your heart’s content by giving you an interface where you can swap facial features, clothes, props and even import your own backgrounds and other items. If you have ever played an RPG video game where you can customize your character, you get the idea. If you haven’t,  building these characters can sometimes be the most fun part of the creation process. Ok admit it. We all want to see ourselves in an episode of The Simpsons.

Create Custom Characters

Once you have your characters built, you can start constructing your cartoon animation. Goanimate provides two mechanisms for this. One is a simple template-based process that allows you to make simple choices and create a fairly basic dialogue between two characters. This can be perfect if you want to quickly create a scenario where two people are discussing something. The other is a more complex tool that provides a timeline interface where you can create some very complex and impressive scenarios with many actions, characters and scenes.

Scene-based Timeline editor

In terms of eLearning, there are hundreds of applications. Maybe you want to do some soft-skills training to show how to resolve conflicts or demonstrate some of your cutting edge sales principles in action or management training (come on! don’t tell me managers don’t like cartoons too!)  GoAnimate can help you depending on your level of creativity and imagination.  Now I do suggest that you assign the job to someone who possesses at least some of these two last qualities not to mention, an ability to write and a sense of humour. Basically what you are creating here is a short film so make sure you think it through before you attempt one of these cartoon based scenarios.

You can incorporate dialogue into your movies in 3 ways. The first is by means of your standard voice bubbles. This is a classic cartoon convention that almost everyone understands. The second, is a simple text-to-speech feature where all you have to do is type in some text and the characters will dutifully say their lines, albeit in an awkward robotic voice. The third is a voice-over option where you can import your own audio clip and the characters will lip-sync their lines. Perfect for when you have some pretty good voice talent on hand. Personally I don’t think I would use the text-to-speech option because the awkwardness distracts from the presentation. It’s either professional voice over or voice bubbles for me.

Goanimate is a powerful tool for creating compelling cartoon scenarios. It has a breadth of options but you need to be aware that costs for creating this can add up as you have to purchase GOBUCKS in order to select different options, characters and props. Also, if you want to download an MP4 version of your movie to include in your projects you will need to find out more about the commercial licences they offer.

All in all, though, a great way to add some fun when building your eLearning scenarios.

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Rage Against the eLearning Machine – How technology can make fools of us all.

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There is a problem in the world of eLearning and I am not sure how we fix it.

It’s not a new problem. In fact, it has existed ever since the invention of the computer and the rise of the Internet but it continues to plague us. I am sure any time new technology like the printing press popped up throughout history the same problem reared it’s head. I’m talking about the tendency of businesses to over-invest in technological solutions and then skimp on the quality of the content that the technology is intended to serve up.

Far too often, companies who discover that eLearning is the way to go, jump in and invest inordinate amounts of time and money in a system or set of tools, whether it is a new LMS, a Content Management System, Human Resources Management system, or latest authoring tool, only to discover that it is not meeting their needs.

Why does this happen? Because, in my opinion, organizations fail to invest properly in content development. It happens all the time in our technology loving world. Just ask Research In Motion. They have a decent hardware platform in the new Playbook, but fail when it comes to delivering the content people want – the killer Apps. They have not focused enough on getting killer content and are paying the price. The same holds true for organizations looking into eLearning.

Time and time again, I have seen companies implement a new system  or buy a bunch of new eLearning tools and then feel their job is  done. They then assign the task of developing content to people that are often ill-equipped to create effective, engaging online courses. Usually, they give the job to an underfunded training department which must make the shift from from the old world of traditional stand-up training to the new world of online learning. Unfortunately, many of these training people do not have, or may never have, the necessary skills for online training development. This often results in what I call, Plop and Play eLearning.

Understandably, these new “developers”, sometimes not very technically savvy, wanting to keep their jobs and develop their careers, take up tools like Articulate, Lectora or a dozen other content development products and attempt to create some courses to go on their LMS.

Unfortunately, because of their lack of technical or design skill, they simply cut, paste, and plop the content into their tools or systems, in a way they are familiar with without any thought (or with lots of thought but no skill) for this new medium.  What you are left with is very bad eLearning which in turn get’s plopped on to a very expensive infrastructure.

When users access this type of learning, they don’t  care if you have spent a gazillion dollars on your system or authoring tool set, all they see is a bad course that gives them a bad impression of you and your bad system. Did I say this was a bad? Well, this situation isn’t even good for the company that sold you their fantastic tool or system because the average person often does not differentiate between the content and the system behind it.

A case in point. I recently, had a chat with the girlfriend of the owner of a very large LMS vendor. She took an online course at a local  University which uses her boyfriend’s LMS. She was not impressed with this eLearning stuff. She basically said to her boyfriend: ” What kind of crappy system are you selling here?!”  That didn’t sit well with him so he went online and discovered, that, yes, it was a crappy course, done by a professor who might be a genius in his field but knew nothing about online course design, media, information development, or presentation. As with every great technological system, you get out of learning technology what you put in to it. It’s the whole garbage-in garbage-out story. Unfortunately garbage tends to stink up impressions of the entire package it’s in.

This is not just a problem in academia. Not very long ago, a company called us asking if we could help them spruce up a course they had done.  But here is the problem: it was bad – really bad– badly written, badly designed, badly everything. Basically, what the developer had done was simply copy and paste Word documents into Lectora and then added a couple of arrows at the bottom for navigation. This was supposed to be a  completed course that only needed some tweaking.

Apparently, this organization purchased a site licence for Lectora but no one knew how to use it. Since, they were mandated to develop eLearning but were not properly staffed to do so, they left their copies of Lectora sitting on a shelf and hired an external consultant to develop the course. I am not sure where they got this person from, but this consultant did not know how to use Lectora either.  By the time we were asked to quote on fixing the course, their budget was completely spent. We did our best to kept our quote quite low – knowing full well that we would probably end up doing a lot of extra work for free just to make the thing half decent. Unfortunately, it wasn’t low enough.

After three or four weeks, we received a one-line email from an assistant that informed us that our quote was not successful. That’s fine. You win some you lose some. Now I don’t mean to dish up sour grapes or attempt to get back at someone for rejecting us like one might do on Facebook, but I think this illustrates how organizations invest in tools and learning management systems but when it comes down to content development, scrape the bottom of barrel. They are not given the expertise, guidance, staff or budget to do the job the way it should be done and often the wrong people end up leading the way.  It is unfortunate that this organization will end up with very poor eLearning on a very expensive LMS created by a very expensive authoring tool.

As with cooking (my favorite subject),  if the people using the appliances don’t know how to best mix and present the ingredients (even though they know all about properties of the ingredients), all that anyone ends up with is indigestion. It does not matter if you use the best ovens, mixers, utensils and put the final product on golden plates. You need to invest in a good chef and good cooks who know how to use the tools and technology to it’s potential. Perhaps your current cooks have the potential but need to go back to school and be retrained. Maybe you just need new cooks. Either way, if you are going to be in the business of serving food, you need to keep on investing all the way down the chain until you get a quality final product.

For those companies wanting to get into eLearning, I suggest you don’t just throw money at some tools and eLearning infrastructures and expect to get an effective learning program. I can’t tell you how many times I have talked to companies who bought a system or set of tools before they had good eLearning developers or a development process in place. Focus on quality content first and then get the tools that will take you to the next level.

One way to do this is to invest in people with the new skill sets first. I am not necessarily talking about people with an “instructional design” degree. Now they might be fantastic depending on the person you get,  but sometimes, in my experience, these people can bring a lot of nice theory to the table and a lot of buzz words but sometimes a lack of realism and practical skill. Of course I generalize but it has often been my experience.

Here are a few things companies can do to help fix things:

1. Find excellent communicators for your eLearning team – people who can write, think and create.

2. Look for people with  good technical aptitude. This is a must. If a person can’t unzip a file or figure out how to get files remotely using ftp, Dropbox, Sugar Synch or some other service, seriously think about NOT having them working on eLearning in any capacity. Sorry we are talking about survival skills here. Maybe you can teach them but find out if they have what it takes first.

3. Make sure your leaders have hands-on experience or are at least very technically literate when it comes to all aspects of eLearning. I don’t care if he or she is always going to be a manager in the department and plans on moving up the ladder and loves paper-work. Having a manager that has never personally done eLearning or something similar is just asking for trouble.  They need to know if these tools and technologies can do what you are asking them to do and the technical complexities that go with it. If the manager of your department does not know anything about stuff like Flash, HTML 5, LMS, a CMS – get one who does or train one.

4. Get Money. If only this was so easy. Someone, somewhere must  free up some cold hard cash to get these courses. It’s not cheap to do top-notch courses but you need to spend the money to develop training that’s accurate, engaging and complete. Of course, I am not saying you should just throw money at a project. But consider investing more heavily in good course development both in people and budget. If your organization does not have enough money to invest properly in eLearning, you are wasting what money you do have. I can’t tell you how many times I have see something that would have done just as well as a PDF that you hand out or put as html on an Intranet but instead get’s the eLearning treatment. It’s kind of like buying a restaurant-grade oven to cook chicken nuggets with. I know a lot of you are saying, “but my company won’t give me more money to do eLearning.” Consider raging against the machine and being honest with those in leadership about the quality of training they will get if they don’t pony up.

5. Hire experts like us. It doesn’t have to us but we certainly would like that. We and other small eLearning companies have done this for a lot of different companies. We are good at it and efficient because we have been through it before. Our experience with different technologies and types of content means that we know how to roll with the punches and can deal with whatever comes. We are content experts. We will not waste your time as we ride the learning curve. You need to consider if you really need to build an in-house team and spend money on expensive tools to do your eLearning. Maybe you just want to be subject matter experts and manage the development by outsourcing to a proven vendor who does this for a living. It’s always an option.

Let me tell you a story to wrap it up.

In a land not so far away and not so long ago, in a previous company of mine there was a group of documentation and training wizards who promised us a world where, through the magic of SGML, the power of databases and intelligence of sophisticated software all our wildest dreams would come true. All we would have to do is pull a switch and  out would pop sophisticated modular information products whether it was training courses, user manuals, multimedia materials, or online courses. It would be like Charlie’s Chocolate Factory only technical information instead of chocolate.  Needless to say, it was a pipe dream that wasted millions of dollars and many hours and there was no glass elevator to the sky.  The company was Nortel and it is now at the bottom of the sea.

 

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Easy Mobile Learning (Sort of…)

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Ok, so you have some existing e-learning with audio, video, animation that your users access online with their personal computers  (Do we still use the phrase “personal computers?”). Maybe you have created your course in something like Articulate Presenter or Flash where a large part of it consists of more listen-and-learn content and less click-and-read.

Why not make it available on mobile devices as another option so that users can access at least part of (the less interactive part) while on the road? Now by mobile format, I don’t mean true mobile learning. I simply mean video files that can be played on your IPod, Iphone, Ipad, Blackberry,  or Android device much as you would a video podcast.

Here is an easy way to convert your online learning to a mobile format.

Step 1: Get some screen recording software

Get yourself a copy of  Camtasia Studio 6 or 7 from Tech Smith. I use Camtasia and not something like Captivate from Adobe  because, not only is it cheaper, but it has a great Pan and Zoom feature that allows me to effectively zoom in on parts of the presentation and pan across the screen.  These are very important features when adapting something for the small screen that was originally intended for the big screen.

Step 2: Record

Record the main stage area of your course with Camtasia. Camtasia, allows you to record not only what appears on your computer screen, but also the system audio before it comes out of the speakers. This will give you the best sound quality. If you don’t have it set right, you may end up recording  the audio that has been picked up by your external microphone as it comes out of your speakers.  I had to fool around with the audio properties somewhat to get the settings right. In Camtasia Studio 7, in the audio options I chose Record System Audio.

System Audio

In Camtasia Studio 6, you will need to go into the audio options and choose either the Stereo Mix or Speaker Audio. Test it out on a short clip and see if it captures the audio correctly.

Once you know how to do it, you can record anything that you can see and hear on your computer just the way it was created. It is a great way to keep a copy of a video you like, extract audio from a flash movie, create a video from a flash movie. Whatever.

Tip: Some programs like Articulate allow you to let the entire course  play automatically from one section to the next. If you can, set it up to do auto play so that you don’t have to stop and start the recording and have multiple recordings to import into Camtasia. If you can’t do this, you can make smaller movies for each section of your course and then combine them in Camtasia.

Step 3: Import into Project

Once you have your recording(s), you will import them into Camtasia for editing. You will need to create a new Camtasia project. I suggest you choose a size for your project closer to the size of the output you want to create so that you can see how much you will have to zoom in on the material. However, if you want to create multiple sizes and formats for new devices as well as older ones you may want to start with a larger size and scale your videos down later with another tool.  In my case, I wanted to create output for older Blackberry Curves as well as newer Ipod Touches and Iphones.  I wanted various sizes to take advantage of the larger screens so I set my project setting to 640 x 480 and used another tool to process the other sizes and formats of videos.

Step 4: Edit

Once you have your movies in the Camtasia program, it is time to edit them. This will consist mostly of starting from the beginning  and progressing to the end all the while zooming in on key parts of your presentation that might not be as visible on a smaller device.

You will need to make some judgment calls.  Sometimes this may mean showing a full screen and then zooming on a particular image or bullet point, other times you may have to sacrifice showing the larger screen with associated images and pan around the screen focusing on individual elements. Since this is only good for narrated courses where the user can fill in the blanks by listening, there will be some trade-offs.

We did this for one client who had a course that was about an hour in length. In this case, we had to break the video into three parts to make it easier for users to download and  watch them in reasonable chunks. This meant also finding logical breaks and creating a clear title for the beginning and end of each part.

Step 5: Convert

Once you are done the editing, you can export the course from Camtasia and start converting the videos to other formats and sizes. In our case, we chose one of the output formats that produced a standard MP4 file. Once we had the MP4 file, we ran it through a program like Format Factory to give us the various sizes and formats for common mobile devices.  With newer smart phones this can mean quite large resolutions so make sure you keep this in mind when exporting from Camtasia. Also, keep in mind some older devices only handle 320 x 240 video and some only run 3GP. In most cases MP4 is the best format for devices out there.

Conclusion

Though the final product may not be as interactive as some people would like, this is one more good option to make existing elearning content accessible for people on the go.

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Tell No One. Visualizing Elearning (Part 2)

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Chicken and Pig

Most of us have seen a blockbuster that has gone way overboard in terms of “visualization” — sacrificing both a comprehensible story line and any semblance of character development to the spectacle.   Sure these can be nice to look at, but, in the end, are as shallow as the latest Hollywood holographic teen idol.  Some are like a poorly made Fajita — lots of flash and sizzle but no real meat (or Tofu if you prefer) in the middle.

Having said that, as elearning developers, that’s probably not the problem most of us have to contend with. We usually have to work with budgets not big enough to buy a dozen donuts and a coffee.  Not only that, instead of creating a course on how the robots in the movie Transformers were made, we probably have to create a course on the workings of actual electrical transformers. Instead of explaining how the end of the world might come about in 2012, we are more likely to have to describe how “The International Financial Reporting Standards” put an end to old accounting practices in 2013. These are not subjects that motivate most people to reach for a bag of popcorn.

As a result, we need to figure out how to make our productions at least mildly engaging in order to hold our audience long enough that they actually learn something.  That means visualizing on a budget.

One way we can start, (and this might seem really trivial to some of you) is to use representative stock icons to replace or support onscreen text or narration.  Web sites like iStockphoto allow you to purchase some really nice 3D icon sets for your elearning projects.

Here are a few reasons to use icons:

1. They are cheap.  One set of 12 icons costs approximately $10 US. That’s not bad. You will probably have to buy more than one set to get all the images you need but still you can’t beat the price.

Piggy Bank

2. You can have a relatively uniform look and feel for your images. Since the artists usually create multiple sets of icons to cover a wide variety of areas such as multimedia, computers, environment, office icons etc., you will find many different images to represent things in roughly the same graphical style.  In addition, because these images are icons, they are usually very generic looking and can fit in with almost any project you might have.  It’s time to throw away that cheesy clip art!

Industry Icons

3. You can use one icon to represent a number of different concepts. One of the beautiful things about human beings is that they can understand abstract symbolism. Once you associate a concept with an image, people can make connection easily and immediately.

Doctor Icon

4. Icons are in vector format and can be re-sized without lose of quality and animated easily in programs like Adobe Flash.   We keep our library of icons in a Flash file as a kind of vector image library.  That way we can create little animated scenes for our projects or simply put them on the stage and export them in any number of formats and sizes.  It’s pretty handy.

To sum up, using icons allows you to “show” and not “tell” by representing concepts visually with simple, uniform, and high quality images.  They provide an inexpensive and easy way to enhance your elearning titles. You are not going to win any special-effects awards, but perhaps your project will be a little more effective and come in under budget.

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Tell No One: Visualizing elearning (Part 1)

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Samurai Mouse

The End

Fade Out

…Oh Sorry about that. I just had to put the finishing touches on a proposal for an elearning project. Now comes the tough part: the waiting.

In the mean time, let’s get back to our topic on how to relate the “Show. Don’t tell” principle that get’s preached in screenwriting circles to our elearning projects.

One important mantra  related to “Show. Don’t tell” is: “Get in late. Get out early.” Besides being my philosophy for shopping at Wal-Mart, the idea here is that you want to get people into the action as soon as possible while, at the same time, providing context and back story in the most efficient way possible without “telling” too much—hence the “get out early” idea.

Have you ever seen a movie that takes too long to get into the meat of the story or watched a scene that was drawn-out to the point where you thought, “Ok, ok…we get it!”?  It’s painful. This type of thing is a sure recipe for a tuned-out audience because the story starts to drag.

Usually, writers of these scripts worry that the audience won’t get the back story or understand the subtle nuances of the character and so try and “tell” us what a character is like up front with lots of dialogue or flash backs before the story engages.  Sure, the set-up to a story is crucial, and the first ten pages are the most important of the entire script, but it has to be carefully crafted and very succinct. A writer should only give the audience enough information to get them started so that they can build on their knowledge later in the context of the story. The main job of the set-up is to provide a hook that propels us into the heart of the story.

Let me illustrate. Put up your hand if you’ve seen the original Karate Kid. (Come on! I’m sure you’ve tried that crane -kick-move more than once!) Despite its cheesiness, screen writers often use this movie to illustrate good screen play structure. When we first meet Mr Miyagi in the first few pages of the script, we don’t know much about him other than: a) he is the superintendent of the building that Daniel lives in, b) he seems to like Daniel right off the bat, c) he is a bit mysterious, and d) he has a dry sense of humor.

We don’t find out until much later that he was a pilot during the second world war, knows Karate, and still grieves the loss of his wife over a bottle of Saki (sorry for the spoiler). Here, at the beginning of the story, we only get enough information to know that he will be important later on. If the writer would have had Mr. Miyagi explain his whole sordid history on their first encounter with Daniel, we would have totally lost our engagement with the main character and it would have taken away from the big picture of the story.

Now let’s relate this to eLearning. Face it, a lot of  elearning titles are a little slow getting out of the gate. They take too long to get to the action, and by the time they do, we’ve lost interest in the content.  Often this comes in the form of a long-winded  introduction telling us what the course is about and the copious amount of  time (usually in the form of  text) spent describing  the objectives. It may also come in the form of instructions on how to navigate the course, use the help, how to exit, and how to avoid repetitive stress syndrome while clicking through the course intro.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for objectives and I am not saying that we shouldn’t do some of these things (or maybe I am) but we need to be careful about front-end loading our learning so that it takes a half an hour just to find out how to use a course. At the very least, we should not force people to sit through everything if they don’t want to.  We need to design our courses so that these things are self-evident. If we design for the ten percent who don’t know how to click a forward arrow, then we are in big trouble (and so is the ten percent). I think it’s always best to get our learners into the content early so that they can be hooked into it and get where they are going. If we don’t, we risk losing the ninety percent.

If you are wondering how to do this, go look at any popular kid’s video game and you will see some principles. The best ones, show kids how to use the interface while they actually do things in the game–while they are already engaged in the story. The designers of these games try their best not to take learning out of the context of the story in order to teach the kids how to do something. This takes some thought and solid user interface design but is worth it.

I have also come across elearning courses that teach how to use specialized software packages but spend more time up-front on how to navigate the software than on teaching how to use it to perform a job-related task (if they do at all). So first, you have to sit through pages on how to use the course, and then endure pages that teach you how to navigate the software. That’s just not a good use of time and it’s as boring as________. You fill in the blank. (You see what I did there? I made this blog posting interactive!)

I guess my point is, let’s teach people how to use the software to do their jobs and teach them how to use the “features” of the software in context of actually doing something. Let’s not always feel like we need to get in at the beginning, but rather, let’s get in late and get out early and maybe our learners will have some time left over to catch the next show.  Besides, personally, I find that all that front-loaded information presented out-of-context just tends to get lost in the eternal sunlight of my spotless mind.

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