eLearning Dude

Add a simple pause in the middle of a slide in Adobe Presenter

2011-12-01T13:00:00.001-08:00

This seemingly simple request turned into a frustrating search for an answer.

Adobe's Support recommends you add "Pause after each animation" from the publish advanced settings, or I alternatively you could select "Advance by User" from the Slide Manager menu.

But these don't help for inserting a simple pause in the middle of a slide, and it wasn't until I stumbled on page 18 of a PDF from the University of Calgary that I felt very silly for not knowing how to do this before.

In the AUDIO edit of all places, we can right click the time line and choose "Insert Command" to add a Wait for User pause in the middle of a slide.

Goodbye *.swf hello student cheating

2011-11-17T08:11:00.000-08:00

Adobe's business shift to focusing on producing development tools for HTML5 is fantastic. I believe there are a lot of champions and promoters of HTML5, but few realize for something like this to be fully applied and improved we need leaders like Adobe to provide us with the development environments where we can create our media without being concerned with something like writing Javascript Canvas Code.

There's just one small thing that's been on my mind however, something we've taken for granted. The SWF File format provided us with a 'reasonable' amount of security in terms of hiding answers to questions. It's far from secure, all you need is the ability to download the file, decompile it, and root through the source. However, this process for students is more cumbersome than actually just learning the material, not to mention technology that they're probably not familiar with.

As we move towards a Javascript, XML, HTML system for providing Assessments, we may find that increasingly web sophisticated students will find it easier to access answers to questions. You may not realize how quickly a determined student could root through your client side code, but any web familiar individual looking for a quick grade will find it quite easy to exploit your unsecured method of storing answers.

Tools like Quizmaker, or Captivate have provided us a fantastic way to create portable Learning Objects. Now, for reasons of security we may be forced into using our Learning Management System's proprietary Assessment Engine, limiting the shelf life and portability of our content.

Access Score Variables from an Articulate Quizmaker Quiz

2011-11-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

I often get developers to my blog that are interested in using Articulate's Quizmaker to enhance their custom Flash based eLearning courses. I have previously written about how to load a Quizmaker quiz into your own Actionscript 2.0 swf and still report to SCORM. What if we want to do our own custom reporting? How do we access Quizmaker's score variables?

Well, assuming you've loaded the quiz into a MovieClip "_root.myContainer" here you are:

Score in % = _root.myContainer.g_oVariableMgr.m_arrVariables[7].m_nNumber
Total Points Awarded = _root.myContainer.g_oVariableMgr.m_arrVariables[2].m_nNumber

The Passing Percent = _root.myContainer.g_oVariableMgr.m_arrVariables[5].m_nNumber
The Passing Points = _root.myContainer.g_oVariableMgr.m_arrVariables[6].m_nNumber

Total Max Points = _root.myContainer.g_oVariableMgr.m_arrVariables[4].m_nNumber
Total Answered Max Points = _root.myContainer.g_oVariableMgr.m_arrVariables[3].m_nNumber

Enjoy!

Combine multiple SCORM packages into one

2011-10-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

When moving to a new LMS you may find that it’s view of what makes up a ‘Learning Object’, ‘Module’ or ‘Course’ is quite different than what you are used to. This was the case when I was transferring content from Dokeos to Learnflex.

I had to find a way to quickly combine the modules I had exported from Dokeos (which was using learning paths) into one SCORM package. The tracking of each individual SCO was not neccesarry in this instance as it would only have a final assessment that needed tracked. My first thought was to launch RELOAD and start building a new package using all the exported files and my knowledge of the structure of the course. RELOAD however seemed to suffer from slowdown as soon as I was dealing with lots of items, I quickly became frustrated with having to wait to add a new page or module, so I began thinking about a faster way.

I loaded up a couple of exported IMSManifest files that I had exported from Dokeos. One thing I immediately noticed was that the “identifierref” attributes used in the files were numbered and unique. With that knowledge I figured the fastest way to combine Dokeos exported SCORM packages into one package was to manually cut and paste the XML files together. (or to use a script to do this that I should really just write and put online for others to use… will certainly update you if that happens) Anyways, for those proficient with XML here is what I did:

The first XML file will be your starting point, wrap all the <item>’s of this manifest into one <item> tag.

tip: replace the <organization> tag with<organization identifier=”some id”> <item identifier=”some id”>, and then replace the bottom </organization> tag with </item></organization>.
For each package you wish to add, create a new <item ></item> and paste the items from that IMSManifest into your new <item> tag.
For each package you wish to add copy all the <resource> information and paste into the main file’s <resources>

This will give you one giant manifest!

If this solution doesn’t help with your problem Dave Mozealous also has a solution that may be what you are looking for. See: http://www.mozealous.com/repackaging-articulate-content-to-allow-multiple-scos/

Missing Files from an Exported Dokeos SCO

2011-10-03T13:17:00.000-07:00

I was working on moving content from Dokeos to Operitel’s Learnflex LMS when I noticed that there were missing assets from Dokeos’ exported packages. I was not familiar with how the original courses had been developed, if they were built offline or by using Dokeos, but for some reason or another, the course relied on assets that the Dokeos system was not aware of.

While I have not discovered why this occurred, I did find a very quick way to resolve this problem and have a working SCO that I could transfer into another LMS. The solution relied on using both Dokeos’ SCO export, and its document file export.

From the learning path Export the required SCO
Unzip the SCO and take the IMSManifest.xml file you’ll find inside and copy it to a new folder. You can then delete the zip you downloaded.
In that new folder create a folder called "document"
From the course home go to documents
and select save (zip)
Unzip all the contents and copy the files into the “document” folder you created
So your new folder should have the imsmanifest file and a document folder with all your content, simply zip these together and you will have yourself a working SCO!

Improving the Modern Learning Management System

2011-09-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

Users of any online system are constantly providing essentially data regarding their habits and needs, most Learning Management Systems are just now starting to take notice of this data to build a learning environment that follows its learner’s path through products, time spent on content, and performance on assessments to provide a system that organically adapts to the specific individual.

By moving away from a static system of delivery to a system that understands and adapts to its user’s behavior we can provide a presentation to facilitate better learning. Think about it from an in classroom environment, the Teacher knows their students and can adapt lesson plans and one on one communication directly based on the needs of the student. Alternatively, the students as a whole provide valuable feedback to the teacher regarding their understanding of the material.

Let’s evaluate a couple key specific functionalities a LMS should supply to meet this demand:

Easily establish relationships from Questions to Content and report back to the learner suggestions for further reading based on their performance on course questions.
Determine popular content through tracking of page hits, time spent, or user based ranking report back to the instructor this information to allow for improvement of the course.

We can expand on this through a variety of functionality, some of which has been available through SCORM but should be better incorporated into the LMS itself:

Time tracking - Allow the user to set the amount of time they want to spend on each lesson, provide feedback to them on how much time they have spent so far
Automatic Content Notifications – When new content is added to a course the LMS should automatically display this to any interested Students
Lesson Plan Recommendations – Using a data relationship between offered products the LMS should be able to recommend enrollment in other courses based on current enrollment and completion
Most recent interactions– Instead of simply content bookmarking, the LMS should be able to provide a reminder to learners of their most recent activity within the system

As a developer I can spend the time to create a SCO that stands on its own and offers most of this functionality using javascript, or even some server side code, but this functionality needs to be available globally within the LMS and should be applied either automatic or by non-technical developers of online learning with a reasonable investment of time.

Excellent example of displaying statistics

2011-02-11T06:48:00.001-08:00

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four:

Obviously something like this has a high production value, and is out of scope for most elearning development, but what can we take from this video and put into our products?

1. Enthusiasm - Like your favorite teacher, Hans enthusiasm for this subject comes through in his presentation. The more interested we can be about the subject when creating products the better the quality. It is not unlikely that you may be doing audio in your elearning products, so think about getting a narrator who's excitement for the subject can come through!

2. Visual - Although the graph on top of the video may be to flashy for most of us to create, it's not that crazy to imagine developing a flash based graph that shows these stats moving about. This graph makes use of real time and some great colors and sizes to help display a huge amount of information in a relatively simple and interesting manner.

3. Time - As a learning 'chunk' this video is fantastic. Coming in at only 5 minutes it is something that can be viewed on the go, or in between doing other work. It has a clear focus of what it is going to teach and does not get bloated or distracted along the way. Our learners can have short attention spans, especially if the subject is dry, or the power point presentation is not that flash. By keeping things short and focused we can best make use of our learners time.

5 Tips for creating Portable eLearning Products

2010-10-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

If you needed to convert your products to a new LMS tomorrow how prepared are you?

Having just finished working on a large scale conversion project (explaining the absence of posting) I feel that I have learned a lot regarding how we should develop our products to prepare for the future. Sometimes we make decisions to band aid problems, or to try and utilize every last functionality of an LMS, and while this is not always a bad thing, we must keep in mind the consequences they could have if we ever try and use our content in a different system.

For now here are 5 things to think about regarding developing portable eLearning products:

Don't use authorware specific to a Learning Management System

There are fantastic Authorware products out there that can help you build courses not tied to any specific LMS, you may think you're saving time by using your LMS's page builder, but you could be trapping your content, and giving yourself unnecessary functionality constraints.
SCORM or other standards

Always build products with a standard in mind. And don't just rely on publish settings, take a read through some resources online or take a small course to get yourself knowledgeable about what it means to create a SCORM package, or to have SCORM reporting.
Always test the import and export functionality

Taking nothing for granted when it comes to this! SCORM packages are quite gentle and every LMS has it's own quirks, just go hang out in a thread 27 pages deep in a moodle forum to find that out. My advice to you, test your LMS export, take that package and try it out using something like Scorm Cloud.

Shopping for a new system? Make sure you test your exported packages with their import functionality so you don't get stuck make small changes to xml files!
CSS!

I like to do a little trick where all my SCORM packages point to two different CSS files, one hosted on my LMS and referenced by packages I import to hold style that brands the courses with the organization. And one in the package with some default styles (for H1 p a br etc.) so that the course would display well on it's own.

This way if the organization needed to complete a system wide branding change, we could achieve this through all products by modifying one file.

Is this completely against the idea of portable packages? maybe, ha! but I can still give share or move this course and have it display just as well with the css file included in the package.
Don't trap your assessments in the Learning Management System

Most Learning Management Systems have Assessment tools, and some of them can build really great Exercises or Exams. However, if you want to be prepared to migrate your content between systems, you are way better off using an application that will publish SCORM based SCO's that are not confined to one LMS.

Have you had experience with course conversion? I would love to hear about other development strategies to keep in mind!

"no matter how you came about your knowledge, you should get credit for it."

2010-08-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

Bill Gates on Online Education:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/06/bill-gates-education/

Computer Science getting the recognition it deserves?

2010-08-02T19:58:00.001-07:00

Not so much a direct eLearning story, but related none the less:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2010/07/bill_to_combat_comp_science_cr.html

Load an Articulate Quizmaker Quiz into your Flash Object and Track Score

2010-07-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is an update to a previous post in which I proposed a way for you to load a quizmaker quiz into your flash project and track the score. I have now worked on a second version of this that works with most browsers, as the original solution was only for IE 7+.

For the HTML part, simply use Articulates published html, and swap the name of the swf it is loading. (you will also need to change the width and height)

In your flash project, for the onLoadComplete of the quiz, you must set all these variables:


function onLoadComplete(mc:MovieClip)
{
 mc.vHtmlContainer=_root.vHtmlContainer;
 mc.vCaptureRC=_root.vCaptureRC;
 mc.vUseFSCommand=_root.vUseFSCommand;
 mc.vLMSPresent=_root.vLMSPresent;
 mc.vAOSupport=_root.vAOSupport;
 mc.vIE=_root.vIE;
 mc.vResumeData=_root.vResumeData;
}

Basically these are all the initializing variables sent by the Javascript/HTML to the flash quiz to let it know if it's in an LMS and also what type of Browser is being used.

There is one small code change that I made to api.js, this was to get the solution working in IE6, For some reason the only way I could get scores tracking in my LMS on IE6 was to add an alert box to the DoOnClose function in quiz.js


function DoOnClose()
{ 
   if (!g_bCloseExecuted)
   {
      if(IE6)
      {
 alert("");
      }
      g_bCloseExecuted = true;
  
      if (g_bAOSupport)
      {
 PostResultsOnUnload()
      }
   }
}

SCORM Cloud

2010-06-17T08:36:00.001-07:00

Fantastic and Free! Site that helps you test any SCORM courses you're working on. Have been using it to debug several issues, and it's been nothing short great to work with.

Check it out: cloud.scorm.com

Apple Infographic

2010-06-03T06:21:00.001-07:00

Had this sent to me from onlinedegrees.org, I don't endorse or really have any feelings about their site or business since I am not familiar with it at all, and this is clearly just a means of promotion for them....that being said, I still thought the infographic was worth re posting, with the aforementioned disclaimer.

Using Handwritten Fonts

2010-05-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

Notice anything awesome about this post?

I was inspired by Tom's post at his Word of Mouth blog on using Handwritten Fonts to add personality to your e-learning courses. I've been using his free font sets in several flash objects and captivate presentations and getting great feedback, but didn't even think about using handwritten fonts in HTML pages because of the issue of converting and embedding fonts.

Then today I read a fantastic post at Net Tuts which outlined Google's Font API which allows for easy embedding of any of Google's supplied fonts, and sure enough they have this fantastic Handwritten Font called "Reenie Beanie"

Now we can add a touch of hand written fonts to our html without having to worry about creating images of the text, or having the font not show up on the end users system.

Thanks Google!

Apple's thoughts on Flash

2010-04-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

Very interesting posting by Apple.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

With the demise of the PC as we know it now looming in the future, we should pay a close eye on where technology is heading. I don’t read this as Flash will not be successful in the long run, but I do believe that Flash will need to respond through their own software releases. All in all we want to follow these things closely so that we can develop for the trend and not find ourselves converting because we chose beta when everyone else chose vhs.

One problem that I face in developing in HTML5 is that a lot of user base I run into in elearning would not have the browser support for that. Given that I field support issues from clients using IE 5.5, it may take some time before I can introduce an HTML5 based course into my development. However, to develop for mobile learning it does seem that HTML5 may have the upper hand based solely on the expanding consumer base of Apple devices.

Hide the Review Quiz button from an Articulate Quizmaker Quiz

2010-04-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

Very similar to my earlier post on removing the Finish Button on an Quizmaker Quiz. The Review Quiz button can also be removed by creating our own swf in flash with some small actionscript that we will insert into the first slide/question of the Quiz.

So, in flash create a new fla and on frame one layer one just add the following actionscript:

_root.g_mcFrame.mcReviewQuiz.swapDepths(_root.getNextHighestDepth());
_root.g_mcFrame.mcReviewQuiz.removeMovieClip();

Publish this to a swf, then in quizmaker insert that swf onto your first question or slide, this code will make sure that review quiz button gets removed!

Enjoy!

Get Student Name on Print Results Page in Articulate Quizmaker using SCORM

2010-04-07T13:01:00.000-07:00

Seems to be a couple requests for this one, but basically the problem is that by default there is no way to put the Students name on the Print Results page other than selecting the prompt student for name checkbox in quizmaker.

Well no worries, this is actually a simple fix, as long as you're publishing for your SCORM LMS.

Here's the code/solution:

In your quizzes published folder look for quiz_content/report.html

This is the html page that gets loaded.

Now, we need to add this code:

"window.opener.parent.GetStudentName()"

Where do we add it? well that depends on where you want it to show up!

For now just search for:

document.write("<P><H1>" + strTitle + "</H1></P>");

and replace with:

document.write("<P><H1>" + strTitle +"<br>"+window.opener.parent.GetStudentName()+ "</H1></P>");

This will put it just below the header! Test it out, and then try out moving it to different locations or adding formatting!

Hope this helps!

Load an Articulate Quiz into your Flash Project

2010-03-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

I recently completed work on a new flash based course. Basically the course is made up of several captivate demos and a final articulate quiz that are all loaded and navigated through a main flash portal / shell. This main swf file loads all the other swfs including that quiz.swf file that Articulate Quizmaker produces.

I also used the SCORM HTML and javascript that Articulate publishes when you choose publish for LMS. In my case I just swapped out the body of the quiz.html and embedded my own swf portal. This way when I load the quiz it will still have access to all the JS it uses when it's by it self right?

well yes and no.

It seems that if the quiz.swf doesn't get the flashvars it needs when it first loads up, it shuts off all tracking calls, boo-urns!

Well the trick here seems to be in the actionscript, this works for IE I have not tested for other browsers:

function onLoadComplete(mc:MovieClip)
{
/*assuming mc is the quiz.swf, initiating these variables will turn on tracking*/
mc.vHtmlContainer=true;
mc.vCaptureRC=false;
mc.vIE=true;
}

Enjoy! and if you have a better way feel free to contact me!

One giant leap for serious games

2010-03-22T06:27:00.000-07:00

Can gaming be a serious contender for a form of education?

It seems a pretty big employer is working with a pretty big gaming company to prove so.

Certainly not everything is suited for learning via gaming, but McDonalds is recognizing that their employers need to learn some pretty specific tasks that can be easily replicated within a gaming simulation on a format that their employees will already be familiar with.

I'm amazed this has taken this long to figure out considering Burger Time was released in 1982.

A couple things

2010-03-18T18:37:00.000-07:00

1. Couple of comments on an old post about inserting a flash swf into an Articulate quiz to get the student name from SCORM. Given the interest in this technique I am looking into file hosting options to start to actually post sample files as opposed to just the code. So if you have suggestions for (free) file hosting I would love to hear them.

2. A very geekish article on using alternate grading to increase motivation, I think it's fantastic and could be applied without the heavy gaming overtones.

Should be posting regularly again, I'd give you my excuses, but it's my blog I can post if I want to.

Developing your own Captivate Playback Controller

2010-02-11T11:29:00.000-08:00

Been working on a course that relies heavily on integrating Captivate demos into a large Flash based course environment. Was getting very frustrated at the limitations of the swf that Captivate exports and started wondering if there was a way to access variables within that swf file to control it's playback.

Sure enough thanks to an article at pipwerks about using Javascript to control captivate, I was then directed to the Captivate Giant Manual, which eventually gave me this list of variables that you can use to control a captivate swf if you load it into your flash movie:

rdcmndPrevious
set to 1 to go previous slide

rdcmndNextSlide
set to 1 to go to next slide

rdcmndPause
set to 1 to pause the project

rdcmndResume
set to 1 to resume showing a paused project

rdcmndRewindAndStop
set to 1 to rewind and stop the project

rdcmndRewindAndPlay
rset to 1 to rewind and play the project

rdcmndGotoFrame
go to a specific frame

rdcmndExit
set to 1 to exit

rdcmndInfo
display the information window

rdinfoFrameCount

total number of swf frames in the project (this is not the number of frames in the main Timeline, but the sum of
all slide frames)

rdinfoSlidesInProject
number of slides in the project (including hidden slides)

rdinfoCurrentFrame
current frame (goes from 1 to rdinfoFrameCount when you play the project)

rdinfoCurrentSlide
slide currently playing (zero based)

rdinfoSlideCount
number of slides in the project (not including hidden slides)

rdIsMainMovie
can be used to identify whether the SWF corresponds to the main Adobe Captivate project

Note: To control the project through the skin file, add the prefix cpSkinLoader_mc to the variables.

Internal or Offline Learner Tracking for Articulate Quizmaker

2010-02-05T04:58:00.000-08:00

Based on a discussion at the eGuild, it seems there is a demand to setup Quizmaker for tracking users without using a LMS or any online solution.

The following is the beginning steps into creating your own custom tracking, this will show you how to extract users interactions from Quizmaker, from here you will need to use whatever technology (asp, php etc) to save the information.

I think that this solution is perfect for those who have no other option than to develop their own internal solution, and can not use third party web apps. For those who do not have this restriction, I highly recommend that you use Articulate Online. You can go swimming in JS and Server Side Languages all you want but you're not going to get as complete and detailed reports as Articulate Online can offer you.

Anyways, the solution:

1. Publish a Quiz for a LMS

2. In the main quiz folder remove everything except quiz.html, quiz.swf and the quiz_content folder.

3. Create a new javascript file named tracking.js

4. In that javascript write the following function:


function lms_DoFSCommand(command, args)
{
 alert("command" + command);
 alert("args" + args); 
}

5. In quiz.html add this to the header:


<script LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" SRC="tracking.js" TYPE="text/javascript"></script>

You should now get Popups while you use the quiz, this shows you all the quiz interactions. From here you can parse and send this information to a flat file.

Can't set the adlcp:scormtype in Reload Editor

2010-01-27T13:56:00.000-08:00

Reload Editor is a fantastic and free SCORM packaging tool. One problem I ran into with it however is that I can't seem to set the resource attribute 'adlcp:scormtype'. Since an undefined adlcp:scormtype will default to asset, my LMS won't show any Navigation!

So for now I have to manually add adlcp:scormtype="sco" to my resource nodes as a solution.

It looks as though this problem was addressed on the development site for Reload (see issue 873054), however the only compiled release is Version 1, so unless you're savvy enough to get the most recent source code and compile it yourself, you're likely to run into this problem as well.

Anyways hope this tidbit reaches someone wondering why their Reload package is not working in their LMS - your poor little adlcp:scormtype might just need setting!

Browser Focus Issue with Quizmaker

2010-01-25T07:48:00.000-08:00

Ran into an issue with Quizmaker in which the Quiz essentially removes focus from the browser (in this case IE 7) and makes it so users need to click twice on any link to get it to work - once to set focus back to the web page, and once to select the link.

I must admit, I don't have a lot of experience with setting Browser focus, and the reasons behind it, but I know that having users trying to click the LMS next button and it not working is a major usability issue!

There is two solutions to this problem, the first one is just to re-write quiz.html and do a standard flash object/embed, replacing the Articulate published script. Now, I don't actually know what all that Articulate script is there to handle, so there is another way to handle this problem without removing all the script.

1. Open quiz_content/quiz.js

2. Search for "player.focus();"

3. Delete that line of code, or comment it out.

I have yet to test this on a Quiz that uses LMS tracking, so I have no idea if the focus is important to the communication, but certainly on a simple knowledge check removing this line will fix the usability bug.

Append Webex presentations (FLV)

2010-01-22T07:09:00.000-08:00

Problem:

You have several different exported Webex presentations, and now you want to combine them all into one.

Solution:

A Webex export will give you 5 files for a presentation - index.html, presentation.swf, screen.flv, voip.flv and recording.xml.

The presentation.swf is actually just the 'controller', it's the two flv files that make up the actually video and audio content.

Lets say we want to combine 3 different exported presentations into one, here's how we do it:

1. Rename and Copy the flv files from the 2nd and 3rd presentations and put those files into the 1st presentations folder. You should have 6 flv files in there now.

2. Open the recording.xml file.

Look for this code


<video timestamp="1" name="screen.flv" width="1080" height="824" start="0" duration="7076" keyinterval="10"/>

Note: the timestamp and duration numbers are in seconds

All you need to do is cut and paste that line for each additional video you wish to append and edit the name, timestamp and duration fields. it would look something like this:


<video timestamp="1" name="screen1.flv" width="1080" height="824" start="0" duration="7076" keyinterval="10"/><video timestamp="7076" name="screen2.flv" width="1080" height="824" start="0" duration="5000" keyinterval="10"/><video timestamp="12076" name="screen3.flv" width="1080" height="824" start="0" duration="6000" keyinterval="10"/>

Notice how the timestamp value is the length of the previous videos?

Note: To know the duration of each flv you may want to open up the other presentations recording.xml files and make a note of that value.

So that handles the video, now we do the same for the audio! look for:


<video timestamp="1" name="voip.flv" duration="7076" />

Cut and paste that line just like before editing the name, timestamp, duration fields.

Ok almost done,

3. At the top of the xml file look for:


<recording topic="" number="" ... duration="7076">

You want to edit that duration so that it is the new total length of your demo.

Bingo Bango, an appended presentation without any video editing software necessary!

Improving the Quizmaker Matching Drag and Drop question type

2010-01-13T11:01:00.001-08:00

Problem:

Articulate's Quizmaker only allows for Right to Left drag drop question types. Meaning the user must drag the rightmost items onto the leftmost. I personally have always felt that users are more comfortable and inclined to go the opposite direction.

Solution:

Unfortunetly there is no magic option in Articulate to solve this for us. So we write our own Actionscript to insert into the question in the form of a SWF file, this SWF file goes into the Quizmaker code and sets things straight.

Directions: (I am not hosting the swf file as of yet so you're gonna need to create it, hopefully I can get it online soon)

1. Create a new SWF 550 by 400 pixels and using Actionscript 2.0

2. The Code: Put this on frame one layer one


ddswitchObjects();

function ddfindObject()
{
 
 var checkObj = this._parent._parent._parent;
 
 for(i in checkObj)
 {
  trace(i);
  if(checkObj[i]._x == 30)
   return checkObj[i];
 }
 return null;
}

function ddswitchObjects()
{
 var cur:MovieClip = ddfindObject(); 
 cur.mcScrollContentMask._width = 1000; 
 cur = cur.mcScrollContent;
 
 for(var i in cur)
 {
  trace(i + "    " + cur[i]._x);
  if(cur[i]._x == 16)
  {
   cur[i]._x = 212;    
  }
  else if(cur[i]._x >= 200)
  {
   cur[i]._x = 16;
   cur[i].startingY = cur[i]._y;
   cur[i].onEnterFrame = function()
   {
    if(this._x == 212){
     this._x = 16;
     this._y = this.startingY;
    }
   }
  }
 }
}

3. Publish your swf!

4. Create a new quiz and a new matching question type.

5. In form view (NOT slide view) select Media -> Flash Movie -> and insert your published swf.

6. Publish Quiz

NOTES:

Obviously there is a flicker problem, meaning when the question loads, first the options are all in their original Quizmaker position before being switched around by our code, this is because of how the Quiz loads the question before the external swf we make, still thinking of a way to fix this...

There is also limitations on the size of the text you can enter for now. My testing and developing has all been done with small words, and the location of the drag items are hardcoded in my code which means to hack the Quizmaker I look specifically for items in certain positions, meaning if the items were longer or bigger than Quizmaker's defaults this code would fail (although I'm working on improving this as well)

That's all, hope someone else uses this, cause i'm putting into a course today!

Understanding a learners motivation and percieved importance of the content in designing course navigation.

2010-01-07T08:17:00.000-08:00

A major discussion at the e-learning guild linkedin group has been around hiding a 'next' button with the intention of making the user complete some activity before being allowed to move on. The idea here is that users will be forced into focusing on the material rather than skipping through.

Lots of ideas for this have been brought up such as multiple choice questions, true / false, a timer, drag drop, and so on. Obviously whatever learning exercise that fits the content best will work in getting the user to stop for a second and take in the content. Do we need to do this? My opinion is that this technique should be used when we perceive our target learners motivation for the content to be low.

What situations fit this scenario:

Internal Training for new company policies.
Courses with no certification, or penalty for incompletion BUT the user is being forced to take.
Online courses with multiple attempts at assessments where a user is more likely to attempt trial and error to get the completion. (I call this the 'Mastermind Learner')
Courses with dry content that fail to engage the user

What situations do not fit:

Courses that the user has willingly enrolled in
Courses with a high cost/penalty to the user
Courses that have been written and developed to engage the user through audio, video, animation, and well written content.

Not all courses have exciting topics, not all courses will have users that wanted to take them, and not all courses will be full of multimedia. It is the development teams responsibility understand a learner's motivation and more importantly their "Perceived Importance of the Content", and then implement a navigation strategy that fits the users willingness to absorb the material.

iPhone for education case study

2009-12-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

Great Article discussing Abilene Christian University's implementation of the iPhone to enhance education.

In class the iPhone allows for anonymous student polling and quizzing. It also connects students with class notes or access to web resources so that students can look up anything they are not fulling understanding as they listen to the lecture.

Outside of class the iPhone has apps to "turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades".

It's ideas like this that really make me believe that the iPhone/iTouch is the next Personal Computer. What we have now is a smaller portable processor, with its own platform for application development, and constantly connected to the network. I would not be surprised that in five years, you'll walk into work or school, throw your iWhatever on your desk, turn on your wireless Monitors, start navigating using your wireless mouse and keyboard and when you're done pick up you iDevice and walk away.

Is your infrastructure planning for the future?

Games = Incentives for Learning

2009-11-24T06:07:00.000-08:00

Was forwarded to eLearning Brothers this morning. A quick browse around, and one can see that these guys are on the right path.

Knowledge checks are an essential part of reviewing material, and putting a game 'shell' around simple question types will help keep the learner engaged. The elearning brothers have come up with some really creative game types.

I think the next step for the brothers, and they are probably already going this way, is to change their target end user from a flash developer to a SME or ID. Once they have their templates ironed out, they should spend time developing an authorware environment (or maybe partner with someone already in this field) so that knowledge of flash development is not always necessary.

Adobe Presenter Embedded swf appears choppy or twitchy

2009-11-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

Problem:

When embedding a swf animation into adobe presenter, the final movie apears twitchy or 'stuttering'. This occurs because the "Control using presentation playbar" option is selected, and Presenter is doing odd playback control on your swf.

Basically, to keep the slide time synched with your swf time, it is either jumping ahead or backwards to keep them together, not ideal at all!

Solution:

1. Rob Rodes: http://www.connectusers.com/forums/cucbb/viewtopic.php?id=2523

I did not find this solution to work for me, but it might for you, it's pretty low effort to try and if it works great!

2. My Solution:

First I cut all of my main timeline and chucked it into a movieclip which then got thrown on frame 1 layer 1 of the main stage (make sure the main timeline is the same length as the new movieclip timeline), we'll name the new movieclip "allAnimations".

Now, the playback bar for presenter won't have access to this movieclip, so the stuttering effect is gone, but what if the user is jumping back and forward, how do we sync this animation up with the main timeline?

Here's the magic (Actionscript 2.0):

allAnimations.onEnterFrame = function()
{
if(this._currentFrame - this._parent._currentframe > 150)
allAnimations.gotoAndPlay(this._parent._currentframe)
else if(this._parent._currentframe - this._currentFrame > 150)
allAnimations.gotoAndPlay(this._parent._currentframe)
}

Basically if the animation's timeline differs from the main timeline by more than 5 seconds then sync them up!

This is a hack, i'm positive there is an unfound better solution, but for now this may work for you, if so enjoy!

Make photoshop run faster

2009-10-27T19:21:00.000-07:00

One would assume that Academic institutions provide their learning technology departments with the finest machines from which to develop on. However, for those not so fortunate, here is a fantastic article on speeding up that sometimes machine chugging Photoshop:

How to make photoshop faster on slower computers

Also as a bonus for those who don't have photoshop, or just can't get it running fast enough for simple tasks. picnik is a fantastic web based app for photo editing.

A little perspective

2009-09-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Articulate Quizmaker Fill in the Blank Correct Response Not Appearing Bug and Solution

2009-09-14T13:05:00.001-07:00

Ran into a situation with an test built in Articulate Quizmaker not showing some correct responses during "review".

The question with the problem was a fill in the blank type, and it's fill in the blank field was just about the size of one or two characters.

Well, apparently you have to be very careful when using small boxes in these questions, because if it's too small the correct answers just will not show up during a users review of the quiz.

I would recommend going with a four or 5 letter sized box, should do the trick until this is patched up one day ;)

Boring Long Technical Description (BLTD) to Follow:

For flash geeks, what I can only assume occurs is that Quizmaker determines the width of it's dynamically created correct answer text fields based on the initial input box, combine this with a kinda unstable text renderer in flash and you get the disappearing text....There's probably a width = width - 10 somewhere that needs to be removed ;)

Powerpoint image crops fail with Adobe Presenter

2009-08-31T07:56:00.000-07:00

Just ran into this issue today, basically any image crop you do in powerpoint will have a different look when published through presenter.

It's a shame, the option for image cropping is good for rapid development, but to ensure that your screenshots look the way you want them you should do all cropping in another program (photoshop, paint etc..) before bringing them into your ppt file.

Understanding the material is the key to developing quality eLearning

2009-08-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

All my favorite teachers were those who were passionate about what they were teaching.

When a teacher in a traditional class room setting is passionate about the material they are teaching, there is no obstacle between them and the student.

When a Subject Matter Expert for an eLearning course is passionate about the material being taught, they often have 3, 4 or more individuals/obstacles to go through before that material reaches a student.

For the material to maintain the passion/comprehension and vision of the SME by the time it becomes a fully formed course, it is essential for the Designers and Developers to actually learn the material before creating material to teach it.

Obviously given the deadlines of course development schedules, and also the complexity of many courses, this can not always be achieved, but the idea here is not to always make experts out of the development team, but to get them submerged in the material to help transfer the SME's passion for the material onto the student.

Online Learning vs Classroom

2009-08-20T04:36:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd share this awesome article:

Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom

Surprisingly, not mentioned in the article is what Students lose when their education is online. The amount of 'life' education that students learn from each other through interaction in and around the classroom is so important, and the question to us in this field is:

Will technology allow for online social networking to equal or surpass in person communication, or do we as a society even want to travel down this road?

How to import flash object with multiple swf's into Adobe Presenter

2009-08-19T10:25:00.001-07:00

I ran into this little problem when I noticed importing a flash file into presenter only takes the root swf, and does not handle any external resources that swf may need.

For instance if you have a captivate demo, some of those full motion recordings may not show when you import that demo into presenter!

Not very helpful is it!

Worry not, this is a simple copy and paste solution. First do your import into Adobe Presenter and publish. Then copy any other swf file that the imported flash object is going to need and paste it into the /data/resources folder found from your published presentation file.

If you want something done right, sometimes you gotta do it yourself I guess!

Adobe Presenter Won't Import Flash or Video

2009-08-17T08:44:00.001-07:00

Problem:

Adobe Presenter does nothing when you try and import a swf.

Solution:

Make sure you are editing the file from your local drive. Opening and editing the file from a network path will cause this bug/error.

Hope this helps someone out there avoid the same frustration I went through!

Keep on Truckin Neternauts.

Apple Tackle Education

2009-08-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

A very short article posted at gizmodo about a possible holiday release of a brand new Apple product: http://gizmodo.com/5335942/an-insider-on-the-apple-tablet

Obviously the key quote here:

But it will come in two editions, one with a webcam and one for educational use

Unfortunately, it looks like that's as far as that information goes, although a little trip down the rabbit hole of comments and we get this totally unreliable addition:

The educational version checks out. I got some insider info that said Apple recently started an Education division (without anyone really noticing) and poached a former honcho from Microsoft education to head it up.

My source also said that Apple employees have been told to be excited for something in September...

They're seriously looking into educational uses for their iPhone OS so it looks like the tablet is a-go.

Assuming that the actual product itself is real, I can completely see students roaming campuses with these tablets. The immediate use that comes to mind is to completely blow Kindle out of the water, but I'm sure Apple has something much more inventive in mind as always....

A fun little rumor, but don't be surprised if there's going to be a new demand in elearning for iTablet App Developers.

Layer a Capticate recording on top of a Recorded Captivate Slide

2009-08-13T07:37:00.000-07:00

Not to go all Fellini on you, but I've recently ran into a situation where I am creating a software demo, and on one of the slides recorded I want to have another recorded animation show during that slide. You follow?

For example, let's say we are demonstrating how to save a file in Word, now instead of a standard recording of the mouse clicking file -> save, we want the actual animation of that activity to occur in the center of the screen.

1. Record you slides, in this case, one snapshot of Word would do.

2. Open another instance of Captivate

3. Choose blank recording, custom size, and full motion.

4. Make that magical red captivate box just big enough to record the file menu drop down. And focus it on that area.

5. Record your action.

6. Last step, in the Slide editor click the animation you just recorded and Copy it, now in your main recording choose Paste.

Bingo Bango, a recording on top of a recording!

Note: I've seen some weird transparency issues so you may want to put a white highlight box behind your animation....

Advanced Note: You can even export your recording to flash to make advanced edits on it for some really funky stuff before reinserting it to your main recording as a swf...that's probably a story for another day though.

Staying Motivated

2009-08-10T12:23:00.000-07:00

How do you stay motivated as someone involved with eLearning?

Educators in a traditional setting get to face their students every day. It may be difficult to be teacher of the year all the time, but it must help to be able to see the direct and immediate impact of your job on the faces of your learners.

So how do we in the eLearning field get that kind of reward?

How about using Course forums, allow your students to have conversations by posing an interesting question. Watching your students interact should provide you with a positive view into how your work is impacting these learners.

If and when able, communicate to your students, be proactive and don't always wait for an email. Remember students can be shy on the Internet as well, reach out and get feedback from them through direct communication.

Integrate excellent student work back into the course. If your course has assignments, and a student has provided a terrific submission, with their permission you could post this for future students to see. Soon your course might even have it's own 'hall of fame' that students should strive for!

What methods do you use to stay interested and engaged with your users?

Use flash to develop an Avatar for Captivate

2009-08-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

Have been spending sometime looking into a good way to build an Avatar, or "Talking Head" for Captivate Simulations.

I came across a really good tutorial for building a talking head in flash and syncing it with Audio:

http://www.flashframer.com/create-a-realistic-flash-animation-lip-sync/

But how do we apply this to a Captivate Simulation?

Here is the strategy:

1. Build your Captivate Simulation

2. Using advanced audio, export the audio to mp3(s)

3. Using flash, import those mp3's to use as the sound, follow the above tutorial to build your talking head, synced with the audio.

4. Remove the audio from your Flash project and publish, now it should just be your talking head animation.

5. Return to captivate, on the first slide choose to import an Animation, select your talking head swf.

6. In the options panel for the swf select Show for rest of project, and select Synchronize with project.

This is just a basic strategy feel free to adjust it for your own project (maybe you just need a talking head for slide 2 and so on)...

Using Multiple Style Sheets to control the look and feel of your SCORM content without sacrificing Portability

2009-08-04T11:29:00.000-07:00

The problem i've been looking to solve is how can I develop course content that makes use of CSS so that I can maintain the look and feel of an institutions content, but also develop portable SCORM packages.

To start off with, let's assume that you have already figured a way to hack around with your LMS and the way it stores content so that you can implement a site wide style sheet. (This is easier if you have direct access to the server)

Now anytime you're creating a new course you just make sure your html pages are linked to that stylesheet so that you can have some long term control over the look and feel of those pages, however:

What happens if you want to share or move this content? Sure you may be developing nice little SCORM packages that upload into your system just fine, and link to that CSS file you've plopped on your server, but that's not going to work for another system is it!

So you now have 2 options, A) Find away to get your stylesheet onto this new LMS in a way that the initial path from the SCORM html content doesn't break, or B) Develop your SCORM packages with two CSS links. One for the CSS file on your server, and a duplicate that will be packaged with the SCORM object:

<link type="text/css" rel="alternate" href="portable_style.css"/>
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="../../whateverpath/default_style.css"/>

The duplicate should only be used if the browser fails to find the default. What's great about this, is it also doubles as having a 'safety' stylesheet in case your default ever gets moved/deleted from the server by accident.

A method for recording Captivate Simulations with Narration

2009-07-31T09:13:00.000-07:00

Depending on the size, and the number of people involved, recording a simulation in captivate with narration can be a little frustrating.

I've recently started using a new method which is working out really well. Since i'm not a huge fan of Captivate's audio editing tool, I try and record all the narration separately in something like Audacity (free) or Audition (not so free).

With some nice narration recorded, I then start recording a new simulation while listening to my recorded track. The trick here is to select "record narration" before you start recording, this way the slide timing will match the audio you are listening to.

Once you've created your simulation, all that is left to do is to go into Advanced Audio and delete all the audio tracks that were recorded (which would be blank or just a poor recording of what you were listening to). Then import your recorded narration to slide one and select retain current slide timing.

You may need some slight tweaks depending on how good your video timing was but most things should line up great for you. Hope this helps, and feel free to share any other practices you use that work!

Remove a Flash Movie Clip from the stage AS2

2009-07-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

Just some pure flash geekery:

Ok, so removeMovieClip() only works for dynamically created movieclips, but what if you have a bizarre scenario where you want to trash a clip that was created during development?

Easy as pie:

Assuming "myMovie" is what you want deleted:

myMovieClip.swapDepths(_root.getNextHighestDepth());
myMovieClip.removeMovieClip();

Dude, where's my elearning posts?

2009-07-28T06:07:00.001-07:00

Apologies for dissapearing, I know it's not been that long, but in the blog world not posting in a couple days likely means you're dead.

I've been rocking some awesome food poisoning, so I guess if I can offer any words of wisdom with this post it's don't eat breakfast sandwiches that don't look right, apparently it doesn't matter how much ketchup you throw on that thing, it will still make you sick.

Anyways, here's something remotely learning based, but more just for fun. As a huge "Lost" fan, I learned about a new viral marketing campaign they have for the final season. It's called Lost University and one of the coolest parts about it is they seem to have imagined and created a fake Portal/LMS which actually looks pretty cool....I just hope Blackboard doesn't sue them....or buy them....I guess it's 50/50

How web direction should influence a new generation of Learning Management Systems

2009-07-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

To me web pages/applications have been evolving as follows:

1. Initial web sites were static pages

2. A new wave of web sites allowed for users to customize the page/app (I think this is probably when 'widgets' showed up..)

3. The latest wave of web sites customize the page based on the actual use of that site.

The quickest example of this latest wave is when Amazon uses a permission based marketing strategy of suggesting items based on what you have been looking at on the site.

I think the next evolution of a Learning Management System, will be platform that doesn't simply house content, and record students grades, but will intelligently respond to users and help customize and improve their education experience.

What are some features that could easily be implemented using today's technology?

Course home pages will have a widget displaying a couple key topics that the user read last time they logged in.

Topics in the course index can be bolded and suggested for review if the user has been showing trouble with them in quizzes

The LMS can make suggestions about the users pace through the content based on there current pace and the deadline for completion - this could even become as smart as the LMS chunking content for the user and giving customized lessons - users that log in frequently would be given less content, and users that log in once a week would be given larger amounts at once, but both users would be pacing through the content so that they finish on time.

LMS can cross reference different courses and grades to help with time allocation, "Jim, I noticed your Chemistry mark has been dropping, would you like me to allocate you more time for those lessons?"

With or without the above ideas, the role that Learning Management Systems have in their interaction with the user is sure to increase.

or maybe I've just been playing too much wii fit....

Using regular expressions to pimp your find and replace skills in Dreamweaver

2009-07-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

I had a post planned for today, but while doing some research I came across exactly what I was going to write only way better, so props to Rob Christensen at Adobe for this article on regular expressions:

Introduction to Regular Expressions in Dreamweaver

This concept is especially important for those developers who DO use Dreamweaver for offline development, and are trying to maintain lots of content. If you ever find yourself opening page after page to make the same edit over and over again, stop and read this article.

Not only do regular expressions allow you to do some awesome find and replaces, but when you combine it with Dreamweaver's ability to search through every file in your site, you have a pretty powerful tool in your hands.

Fixing Captivate Slowdown

2009-07-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

Quick note on a problem i've encountered with Adobe Captivate.

It's seems that when working with some larger simulations with audio my captivate files become increasingly large in filesize and in turn cause the program to run very slowly.

I'm certain that this is because I was doing a lot of editing with the internal audio editor (cutting/pasting and moving slide cues around). Anyways there is a way to quickly solve the issue:

(Note: I suggest saving a backup of your file prior to this, not that anything could possibly go wrong....)

1. In the advanced audio options, choose to export your audio as one mp3.

2. In the advanced audio options, delete all the audio from your slides.

3. Run Captivate again so you have two windows, create a new blank project.

4. Copy all your slides from your project and paste into the blank project.

5. Import the exported mp3 on the first slide and choose to "Retain Current Slide Timing and distribute audio files over several slides"

6. Save your new smaller quicker project and get back to work!

Remove the 'finish' button from quizmaker quiz endpage

2009-07-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

*Updated*

There is a silly problem with Articulate quizzes in that they always have to have a finish button, and that button can ONLY close a window, or direct to another URL. Not very helpful if we want them to be in a linear course is it?

Anyways, I found a flash exploit to hack away the button, enjoy:

Solution Summary:

Because Articulate developers did not use "_lockroot" by inserting a custom swf on an end page, we can write custom code to turn the finish button invisible.

Solution:

1. Create a new flash movie
2. In the actions panel insert the following code:

_root.g_mcFrame.mcFinish.swapDepths(_root.getNextHighestDepth());
_root.g_mcFrame.mcFinish.removeMovieClip();

3. Publish

4. Using the slide view on your first slide in Quizmaker, choose to insert a swf, browse for your custom code and insert.

5. Publish your quiz.

Note: the object (_root.g_mcFrame.mcFinish._visible) was found by making a flash movie that simply loads a quizmaker quiz.swf to the root, then I used the flash debug options to list all objects.

Hope this helps, and also inspires some more exploration of the endless possibilities of this exploit!

Augmented Reality will soon replace Job Aids

2009-07-15T21:12:00.000-07:00

If this is where the technology is at Today. It's not that hard to see it's impact tomorrow.

Augmented Reality may sound (and now look) like something from a science fiction movie, but the truth is the technology is here and within the next 5 years will redefine what we consider 'Just In Time' learning.

Microsoft Plans Free Version of Office, or how I learned to stop caring about my desktop.

2009-07-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

Link: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/hosted/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218500034

Not surprising, given Google's announcement of the Chrome OS, Microsoft is finally seeing the light and creating free web applications of all their shiny products.

It's amazing what a little competition will do for technology, now that Microsoft has a little fear we might see some actual progress.

How do I think this will effect online learning? probably in some small (but positive) ways first. For one thing, online instructors can now put assignments requiring a word processor or spreadsheet without worrying that their students won't have access to one. Another impact is that collaboration will become much easier, no more emailing around word docs, just log in to the account and open the shared resource. Finally classroom learning may start to use more real time work with the instructor and students working of the same file at the same time.

Can you think of any immediate impact these web applications offer to elearning?

Google announces OS

2009-07-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

"[t]he operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be."

I doubt this is very surprising to people, but it is certainly noteworthy. In my previous post I talked about the movement of the users applications from their desktop to their browsers, which is essentially what the Google Chrome Operating System is designed to do.

"We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web."

What do I think the most important things learning professionals should be thinking about right now?

With a new wave of cheap Netbooks, and a focus on the web as a platform, in class educators should be thinking about ways to blend their lessons with real time online activity. For example, real time surveys in class, or the movement to online textbooks - "Students, turn to Video 7"

Along with being a backer of HTML 5, Google has been doing it's best to get the most out of our web browsers, check this video out if you haven't seen it yet:

Pretty nifty stuff!

TBQ : New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals

2009-07-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Big Question: New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals?

Specifically, when discussing this Web 2.0 'thing', how can a Learning Professional keep up to speed.

Well, what is Web 2.0 to me?

I have always thought of it as the movement of the user's applications from their desktop, to their web browser. The natural progression of this being an increase in the amount of collaborative use of common applications. Or, as the rest of the webernet would say 'Social Networking'.

Many technologies have become associated with Web 2.0, but it is important to realize that it is the application of a technology that can be defined as being Web 2.0, not the technology on it's own. Thus, when discussing what a learning professional should be following to leverage Web 2.0 for elearning, I believe it would not be useful to go out and start purchasing intro books for AJAX, FLASH, PHP, XML, .NET, PYTHON, CSS, HTML 5 etc.

Instead, learning professionals should be interested in the application of these technologies and leave the developing to the developer.

As a learning professional you should immerse yourself into sites like Twitter, Blogger, and Facebook, not only to understand the possible elearning applications of these sites but to also follow other professionals and to open yourself up to a wealth of resources so that you are aware of new sites or 'Web Applications' as they become available.

Aside from hanging out at the elearning guild, and reading various blogs, I try to check out aggregate web development sites such as
delicious.com and bestflashanimationsite.com to keep myself aware of what is going on in the web.

Common Problems with converting PPT to PPTX

2009-07-03T10:09:00.001-07:00

As posted earlier, I've been working with Adobe Presenter of late.

Ran into a couple of issues with Animations working in preview but not so much when published, seems the PPT to PPTX conversion causes this. Adobe has a great listing of all the not so great problems that can occur here:

Powerpoint conversion issues when using Adobe Presenter 7 and suggested workarounds

When dealing with text, the best fix I came upon was just to retype and recreate the text animations again once you save as PPTX. Obviously not an ideal solution, but it got the job done. Luckily it was only a dozen or so slides!

Keep it classy Webernet.

Although a 'good' tool, I think Adobe Presenter is getting stale...

2009-06-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

The first bullets on my slides have all decided not to show up until the second bullet animates in. In preview this all works, but obviously the gnomes in my computer are causing the error to occur when I ask them to publish the presentation.

The output of Presenter can be great, the idea of easy conversion from a slide deck to a web format - with the option to add audio and additional media - is a fantastic way for Subjects Matter Experts, Designers and Developers to work together. However, the UI is seriously hurting, a lot of the interactions and animations are seriously dated. There is major room improvement with this type of tool, and if Adobe or Articulate don't step up their games I wouldn't be surprised if some startup blew away the community with an impressive presenter tool.

What are you afraid of?

2009-06-25T06:14:00.000-07:00

This is probably a good thing:

German teacher loses court battle against rate-your-teacher website

I can understand both sides here, but I believe that a low ranking from a biased student who failed the course would be offset from a biased student who aced the course. Eventually - given a large enough number of reviewers - a true evaluation of that teacher will come out.

I can remember even as early as grade 6 having a teacher who loaded on the homework, was very strict, and even though all students despised him/her, most were quick to agree that he/she was a great teacher. Students recognize when a teacher is passionate about their job and when they care about pushing students to their potentials.

Anyways, I bring this case up as I feel that Online education (especially those attempting to market a product) should embrace rating systems as well, either through their own LMS or through third party sites. While most departments of eLearning products will create surveys for their own internal feedback, they should instead strive to create a recognized quality learning experience that is rated publicly by their users. The current and new generations expect to see user ratings, and when a learning product has a five star rating with "76 learners rated this product" it will have a stronger affect on their decision then having a stock photograph with a quote from 'Billy'...not that there's anything wrong with that.

Don't be afraid to show what users think of your products. Earn some gold stars. Plus user ranking is so web 2.0!

Text is fine.

2009-06-24T06:20:00.000-07:00

Text is fine, say that to yourself, like a mantra, hummmm, hummmmm.

90% of the time, Text is fine, it's ok. Don't feel pressured to come up with some creative way to display every piece of content. Most of the time, plain text is what the learner is looking for, easy accessible content.

Instead of trying to make everything an animation or interaction, locate a couple key concepts that really lend themselves to an interesting simulation, video or creative elearning method. Focus your web media development time on something that matters, that does improve the content, that will help the learner. In the end your course will be better for it, and the development team will likely feel they have built something worthwhile.

For the other stuff - Text is fine....ok...maybe...just a couple little pictures on the side ;)

Stay Classy 2.0'rs

Thoughts on Digital Textbooks

2009-06-23T06:05:00.001-07:00

Top ten reasons for Academic Publishers to move to Online Textbooks, from a student's point of view without any care for development costs:

Embedded audio and video.

Randomly generated practice quizzes/exams from a giant pool of questions that are constantly updated

Accessible from a Kindle, iPhone, Blackberry, laptop, Japan, a toaster...

A lower cost that is Semester Subscription based

A dynamically created Study Calender, where the student enters what topics they need to read and by when, and the web textbook will create a schedule, track progress, and email alerts if the student falls behind

Games and Simulations!

Teachers can build their own learning path from the books content. This way students don't have to worry if they are studying the right material or not

Fixes and Updates to the content are made on the fly so students always have the most up to date version

Chat room for online Study Groups, or Event Posting for live study groups

No more sore backs from lousy heavy books

Stay Classy Webernet.

likes / dislikes - SCORM edition

2009-06-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Things I like about SCORM:

Portability. The wonderful theory that I should be able to export a course package from one LMS and seamlessly import into another LMS. It's nice to have these kind of dreams....

The API. There is an abundance of examples and sample code and wrappers to help you make your first Learning Object communicate with an LMS, and being able to design Flash Objects that pull the user name and report scores is kinda cool and easy when you get the hang of it.

Authorware. Over the past five years, Course and Assessment creation software has made leaps and bounds in quality (Adobe, Articulate). I do believe this area has a lot of room for new companies to enter the compitition, which is great because we should see a steady improvement in solutions.

Branching. If properly supported by an LMS, it will allow course designers and developers to create a learning path that adapts to the user, which is the first step in emulating how a teacher adapts to a student.

Things I dislike about SCORM:

Out of date, clunky Dreamweaver extensions. Did developers just give up? it seems like there should be more options when it comes to compiling a SCORM package from a Dreamweaver site.

Inconsistency in LMS SCORM implementations. I've seen packages being imported to Course Level, Module Level and Asset Level depending on the LMS, I've seen numerous LMSs just ignore SCORM interactions.

2004 Sco to Sco navigation - I feel like this should be easier to implement than it sounds.

Limited use of CSS. Because SCORM packages are these 'self dependent' objects, it becomes impossible to properly maintain the look and feel of a facilities e-learning products using CSS. There are ways around this on an LMS by LMS basis by looking into the folder structure where courses are imported to, but this is simply a hack and not a solution. Obviously we can still have one CSS per SCORM object, but what happens when a facilities rebranding occours? each object's style sheet will have to be updated and then the package will need to be re-imported.

The fact that the people most interested in working with SCORM, are usually teachers, subject matter experts or instructional designers and not usually developers. This is not really anyone's fault since we are talking about a standard for web communication which understandably becomes a developers game, but it is a shame that the current state does not allow for enthusiastic educators to quickly turn their ideas into SCORM materials. I think as more and more Authorware becomes available this problem will eventually shrink, with Developers being moved from working directly with the educators to creating software for the educators.

That's all, Stay Classy Internet.

Converting vhs educational videos to a digital format

2009-06-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

A really good question down at the www.elearningguild.com about how to handle moving from an old video format to something a little modern.

I think when moving from VHS to digital formats you should definitely start to think about some of the technology available to you and how this technology can improve the users engagement.

How about converting the video to a flash interaction where the User watches a couple minutes, then a multiple choice question pops up and the video resumes until the next question?

If the old videos were made to cover a large range of topics to be applied to a generic audience, how about organizing all the lessons taught in the videos, editing out small chunks and creating learning plans that are specific to the person taking the course, thus a line worker would have a different path than a manager.

The conversion is a great time to become enthused about improving the quality of your materials. How about if the videos are becoming dated (80's clothes etc.) but the content is still good, you can add some 'pop up video' style humor to keep the learner amused while absorbing the material.

Use Flash and Scorm to show Student Name on Quizmaker endpages

2009-06-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

Just spent the day figuring this nifty trick out.

If you've found this page then you probably spent time in the Articulate forums and blogs reading about how the only way to get the user name is to have them answer a survery question at the beginning of the quiz.

Forget that! ha!

Here's what you do.

1. Using flash create a new movie clip and rock this code in your actions panel:

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
var username = ExternalInterface.call("parent.GetStudentName");
studentName.text = username;

2. On the stage add a dynamic text field and give it the name "studentName"

3. Publish the SWF

4. In your Quizmaker quiz edit the end page (for pass or fail) choose slide view, choose the insert tab, insert your wicked awesome SWF you just made.

5. Publish your Quiz into a SCORM package and import it into your LMS Wam. Pow. Bang.

6. Test it out, make sure it works, now edit the look and feel of your SWF and Endpage to perfection.

Stay Classy Internet.