Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Judy Powills, Society of Actuaries

Most of us are familiar with the closed-ended assessments in online learning of multiple choice tests, sometimes with randomized test question pools. The Society of Actuaries has spent the last three years building and administering open-ended assessments for e-Learning courses: case-study-driven assessments requiring completion of multiple tasks that reflect common on the job performances. How do you build, grade, and track open-ended assessment forms in e-Learning? What factors are critical in implementing these assessment forms and maintaining the integrity of professional credentials?

Participants in this case-study session will learn how to go from initial planning through design, development, and implementation of these case-study-driven examinations. You’ll explore management factors, including securing and training graders, running assessment processes within a customized LMS, maintaining the integrity of the assessment by detouring and catching plagiarism, as well as cycling revisions into new assessment forms. You’ll get a checklist of factors to consider when implementing open-ended assessments for e-Learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• The instructional design factors for building case-study driven, open-ended assessment forms
• The processes to include in a LMS
• The processes and factors involved in securing graders
• The considerations for grading these assessment types
• The legal issues surrounding delivering credentials using these types of assessments
• Steps for detouring plagiarism and other forms of cheating
• How to use a checklist to start using open-ended assessments in your organization

Audience: Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, and others with an instructional design, evaluation/inquiry methodology, or a project management background with e-Learning technologies.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Mark Jenkins , Hologic

Adding multimedia in Acrobat Pro is not always well documented so not many people have implemented it for training. Additionally, not all the advance features of Acrobat are implemented with the simple “Print to PDF” method. Knowing how to use these advance features can enhance a PDF with more interactions and more training impact.

Session participants will learn which techniques work best and which ones to avoid for training development. Since all techniques are supported by multimedia tutorials available for download from the presenter's blog, we’ll have time for a discussion of what other methods people in the session are using and techniques they wish to share.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to add a pop-up window to Acrobat Pro


• How to create a roll-over effect in Acrobat Pro


• How to embed a resizeable media player in Acrobat Pro


• How to modify the start-up parameters for different user experiences


• How to create a custom setup.exe for installing, using the open source Nullsoft Scriptable Install System

Audience: Novice and intermediate designers and developers with basic experience with Windows and Office programs.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Timothy Cecere, GroupM
Karen Flaherty, Knowledge Anywhere, Inc. 

Rolling out a new course, especially when e-Learning is new to the organization, can be challenging. This session describes the internal marketing plan that GroupM used to roll out its first online training course to all 3,500 employees in North America. They created a marketing plan, engaging over 50 people from across the organization, charging them with being “stakeholders” in the rollout, and requesting their help. With all the creativity and the marketing expertise expected in a huge advertising firm, the HR Department worked to create a viral buzz within the firm

This case-study session will illustrate and describe the multitude of marketing tactics that were used before, during, and after the launch of Mspace. A partial list includes e-mails from CEOs; PC headphones with company logo delivered to each employee’s desk on launch day; avatar business cards, including site URL, that invite employees to meet the digital experts at Mspace; a countdown clock as a widget on all employees’ computers that then becomes the link to Mspace; a text message from “Avatar Bianca” to all employees’ cell phones, and hallway posters with pictures of avatars.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to develop a creative approach to course implementation
• Some of the impactful marketing tactics employed by GroupM in their rollout initiative
• Which metrics can and should be tracked when certification is involved
• How working closely as a project team and engaging both internal “stakeholders” and management enhances the end result

Audience: Intermediate designers and developers.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Annee Bayeaux , Alstom
Oliver Black, Skill-Pill M-Learning, Ltd.

Much like the difficulties surrounding e-Learning in the '90s, m-Learning is now suffering the same fate: inadequate infrastructure, lack of suitable standards, corporate culture resistance, and the lack of experienced professionals with proven track records to design robust and meaningful training. With so many obstacles, and alternate delivery methods that are not only mature but available and less costly, why are so many experts still foreseeing m-Learning as the next big wave in distance learning? Is the corporate world ready for m-Learning as a viable means for training? What are the conditions for success? What best practices can be drawn from a study of collective corporate experiences?

This case-study session will detail the m-Learning proof-of-concept experience at Alstom University. It will outline the m-Learning project, the business case to fund the project, corporate buy-in, the content design phase, finding the technical tools solution, and implementing a POC. Participants will take away the richness of Alstom’s experience without the pain of getting there. Focus will be on the lessons learned. Anyone thinking about launching m-Learning on their corporate smartphone will greatly benefit from this session.

In this session, you will learn:

• The necessary conditions for launching a successful m-Learning program in a corporate setting
• The best-practice techniques from design to implementation
• The lessons learned (the hard way) in m-Learning deployment
• The best techniques to deal with corporate culture

Audience: Novice and intermediate designers, developers, and others with some knowledge of the various distance learning delivery methods, technical standards, and notions of instructional design (objective-based learning).

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Cammy Bean, Kineo
Karen-Ann Broe, United Educators

Converting dynamic professional development workshop sessions to e-Learning can be a challenge. How do you maintain the quality of a panel discussion, the expertise of the speakers, and audience participation? How do you deliver high quality, high-impact e-Learning using low-cost tools like Articulate and Moodle?

In this case-study session, participants will learn about United Educators’ successful risk management course. Participants will learn how the original five-hour professional development workshop, which included speaker presentations, Flash video case studies, tabletop exercises, and expert panel discussions, was transformed into a two-hour Articulate course, delivered in small chunks through a Moodle LMS. Instead of creating an information dump, the interactive format ensures plenty of opportunity for participant reflection and application. You’ll learn the challenges of converting a professional development workshop to an online format, the analysis that went into the choice of Articulate and Moodle, see detailed examples, and discuss the lessons learned through our pilot program.

In this session, you will learn:

• Strategies for maintaining the give and take of live instruction in an online format
• Best practices for blended learning and online design
• How to maximize online tools like Articulate for high-impact e-Learning
• How to integrate Moodle and Articulate

Audience: Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers and others looking for new ideas.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Lee Maxey, MINDMAX, Inc.

Corporations spend millions on learning content and delivery platforms, yet they often deliver a fragmented user experience because the learning usually takes place outside of the learner’s work environment. By providing an embedded application that integrates key business information and learning content with a structured social network, you can use a Performance Center approach internally, for channel support, and with customers. Not only will this let you impact performance, instead of just providing a great learning experience, but you can discover how your learners apply what they have just learned.

Participants in this case-demonstration session will see examples of how a structured learning community solution can amplify and extend group knowledge and best practices throughout organizations that count on the performance of dispersed groups of people. You’ll learn how this Performance Center application combines learning management, social networking tools, knowledge management, and administration in ways that boost individual and organizational performance. You’ll really understand how you can apply the social networking phenomena in a work environment to address a learning community.

In this session, you will learn:

• The components of a successful Performance Center
• Why an integrated solution is more likely to yield higher work performance
• Several obstacles to building a virtual learning community inside an organization
• The different obstacles to rolling out a virtual learning community for the extended enterprise
• Aspects of standalone programs that could be enhanced if ongoing communities were present

Audience: Designers, developers, and others who want to integrate social networking into the organization.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Stephanie Morris, Intuit

Many training organizations are faced with a conundrum around social media and education. They know they should use Web 2.0, but they don't know where or how to start. As our workforces continue to become more global and as new generations come on board, using Web 2.0 platforms for education is becoming more imperative for training organizations. Equally important, training departments are being challenged to innovate in order to drive performance changes. This session will provide a very pragmatic review of how to accomplish these goals.

Participants in this case-study session will get a primer on three social-media platforms Intuit has used this year to train their accountant customers: podcasts, virtual conferences, and viral videos. Participants will learn what they are, how Intuit used them, and the results so far, and you will get ideas for how to incorporate them into other training programs.

In this session, you will learn:

• Characteristics of three social-media platforms
• Real-life examples of how these work
• How learners engage with social media
• How to measure outcomes

Audience: Intermediate designers, developers, and others with an interest in using social media. No technological skills needed!

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Paula Jones , Eastern Kentucky University

Presentation software is here to stay, and many educators use it daily to create information and instructional information for their learners for Web-supported courses. When faculty sees what it can do, they want to use it. However, try to upload a presentation file, along with narrations, animations, and videos to a course management system and problems just begin. File size alone can make the presentation file “unfriendly” to the user, and if you want to make the presentation ADA compliant, there are even more problems. So how can educators continue to use their presentation files for online courses, and make the products easier to access for students? 

In this session, participants will review three software conversion tools that are available specifically for presentation files: Impactica, Lec Share, and iSpring Pro. You’ll see them demonstrated and get a summary of what each of the software programs will do (and a list of what they will not do) to help make the PowerPoint more engaging for learners.

In this session, you will learn:

• Methods of improving presentations for instructional purposes
• About available software that will convert presentation files to Flash-based products
• How these programs are helpful in creating ADA-compliant instructional presentations
• About free online resources to access similar software

Audience: Novice and intermediate designers, developers, instructors, and others familiar with PowerPoint.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Bill Heacock , Heacock, Perez, and Associates, LLC

Many synchronous online training sessions are created by simply uploading an existing slide deck from a traditional instructor-led presentation. Then they are “enhanced” by doing a bit of annotation, embedding the occasional poll, and inviting hand-raising and questions. This is not nearly enough. To get significant results from any online training session, slides must be fundamentally redesigned with that medium in mind. Interactivity and visual interest should be built into the slide rather than overlaid on top of it.

Participants in this session will learn a step-by-step approach to re-purposing existing PowerPoint slides for online delivery. You will see before and after examples, and you’ll be given a chance to practice redesigning several hypothetical existing slides. You’ll learn a slide transformation process that will make future online presentations more effective, fun, motivating, and retentive. You'll also ”build in” interactivity so that even the most inexperienced, unskilled presenter will be able to maintain the attention and interest of an audience.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why existing PowerPoint slides are usually unsuited for online delivery
• How to build interactivity into an online slide (as opposed to supplementing the slide with interactivity)
• How to make online slides “instructor proof” so even the most unskilled online presenter can achieve good learning results
• How to make slides interesting enough to compete with other potential multitasking distractions
• How to use online slides to achieve 65% and higher retention levels

Audience: Novice and intermediate online presenters who want to be more effective.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

David Anderson, Articulate

Trainers, SMEs, and even instructional designers have spent time learning to write courseware, but very little time on the second half of the development process: design. Ineffective design results in e-Learning courses that are boring or non-engaging. More non-designers are being asked to develop content, and, in many organizations, are now responsible for developing the course. Just as instructional designers learned to design effective learning based on science and research, they can learn the same principles for design. It's not enough to conduct proper analysis, align content with learning objectives, or follow ADDIE to create award-winning courses. Visual communication, graphic design, and multimedia design principles are the missing link for most courses.

Participants in this session will learn to deconstruct the core elements of a course: layout, type, image, color, and mood, seeing real-world examples of before and after. You’ll learn the actionable steps you can apply to your own courses. 

In this session, you will learn:

• Layout techniques for designing around content, rather than forcing content into restrictive layouts
• Image effects, treatments, and techniques for enhancing designs and aligning visual voice to learning voice
• Typography basics for creating emphasis, contrast, and focus using visual style guides
• Color tools used by professional designers, and how to interpret and apply the schemes
• Creative exercises for identifying custom course elements to design content-specific design themes

Audience: Novice and intermediate designers and developers, SMEs, or anyone responsible for developing e-Learning.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Don Pierson, Flypaper Studio
Michael Rothschild, Inner Harbor Partners
Wesley McMahon, Inner Harbor Partners

Kill the storyboard – long live the prototype! You can build true Flash prototypes that are fully functional, and have most if not all of the user-interface in place. Your prototype doesn’t have to be “throw away” because it can take you a long way toward your final result, saving you tons of time, review cycles, and money. Rapid prototyping is an alternative to storyboarding that allows everyone involved in the design process to see the course, instead of reading about it and trying to guess what the result will be. Developers often misunderstand navigation and animation sequences because written storyboards can lead to numerous changes that increase costs and create potential client dissatisfaction.

In this workshop, participants will identify the challenges posed by text-based storyboards, and participate in a design process that results in a fully functional, Flash-based rapid prototype that can result in improved communication, fewer changes, faster development, and more satisfied clients.

In this session, you will learn:

• The unintended impact of written storyboards on project cost, schedule, creativity, and quality of the final product
• How to save time and money by eliminating paper storyboards while improving overall project quality and customer satisfaction
• How to create a prototype in one day that validates the output of the initial design process
• The process of iterative prototyping – the fastest, easiest, and most accurate way to keep clients engaged and produce courses that exceed their expectations

Audience: Intermediate designers, developers, managers, and others who want to improve their prototyping practice.

Thursday, March 25, 2010 02:30 PM

Adam Eling, JTI, Inc

Organizations that wish to train globally, and still maintain high learning retention, need to provide their courseware in the native language of their learners. There are many issues involved in translating and localizing e-Learning content for the global marketplace.

Participants in this session will learn the common obstacles and complications that arise during e Learning translation and localization, and will get a checklist approach to avoiding them. You’ll learn how to break down the translation/localization process, and the pitfalls to avoid that can result in costly mistakes in development and production. In this session, you will learn:

• A tangible checklist for future global training initiatives
• The “do’s and don’ts” in both the development and production process of localization
• The cost-saving knowledge to help implement global training
• The key mistakes made using common e-Learning development tools

Audience: Novice and intermediate managers and others who must prepare for and execute their company’s plans for global traing.