eLearning professionals often have questions surrounding design strategies for learning interfaces. Many find themselves guessing about graphics, media, text, and authoring style decisions. Yet better-designed eLearning courses yield stronger communication and focused learning. Following the basic principles of interface design helps to dictate communication to the audience.

Participants in this session will learn about interface design by seeing and discussing stylistic decisions magnified in examples. This will help folks gain a designer’s perspective so they can design better interfaces in their courses. This session will include image and text styles, multimedia interaction, and composition styles and how you can alter them with basic stylistic decisions. You’ll see interface design examples as well as learn about interface design principles.

In this session, you will learn:

• Basic design principles for better screen designs
• Simple strategies to use to evaluate and enhance your interface designs
• Interface style concepts
• How to better use type, images, and multimedia components in interfaces

Audience:
Novice-to-advanced professionals who want to improve the visual design of their interfaces.

Whiteboard videos are a great way to emphasize key points through video. By recording someone drawing on a whiteboard, or sliding around images that relate to your subject, you can enhance the learning experience by reinforcing your message visually. Whiteboard videos are hot right now because they’re engaging and enforce the message of any subject through the power of visual enhancement to the audio message. Plus, they’re just cool. This session will teach you some tips, tricks, and best practices for creating one of these videos on a low budget, with minimal artistic skill, and with the limited tools at your disposal.

 Session participants will learn how to set up the workstation, how to prepare your artwork and do fewer takes, and how to edit your videos in post-production to achieve the ultimate goal of enhancing the learning experience. You’ll cover camera selection, video editing, lighting-kit set up, and preparation of images.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to set up the whiteboard (sizes, etc.)
• How to set up the camera so it’s not in your way
• How to prepare your artwork beforehand so you’re not wasting takes
• What to pick out of the voiceover to focus on
• How to use post-production software to edit your video

Audience:
Novice-to-advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Large companies around the world face the challenge of creating training that engages and connects learners of all ages, tenure, and experience levels when they require training that takes little time to complete and can be done on the fly and on the job. How do you creatively use the design tools you have to meet these deadlines and still create impactful and engaging training?

Participants in this case-study session will see examples of how Toys“R”Us has used a blended learning approach of video, eLearning, and on-the-job activities that directly connect with the store-team-member level. You’ll see creative uses of available software, as well as how they incorporated fun and humor into training materials. You’ll learn how the use of video and eLearning characters directly connect the store team members to the training, and how the power of demonstration and role play in video, eLearning, and on-the-job materials make the training relatable and feel achievable at all levels.

In this session, you will learn:

• Techniques for engaging learners of all ages, tenure, and experience levels
• Strategies for rapidly developing training content for on-the-job learners
• The benefits of creating relatable training from the learner’s point of view
• Creative uses and approaches in developing training content for multiple delivery methods
• Sustainment strategies for continuous informal learning on the job by leveraging and repurposing existing content

Audience:
Novice designers and developers with basic knowledge in eLearning, instructional design, and implementation.

Everyone wants more complete learning experiences, and videos with graphics are a great way to achieve them. Now you can dive into the behind-the-scenes workflow of how Obsidian used graphics to enhance video and increase the learning experience for a drilling company.

In this session, participants will explore the process for shooting video, cutting the video, drawing graphics, importing the video to Flash, animating the graphics, and creating the finished product. You’ll learn cutting-edge applications of using video, voiceover, and graphics animations to enhance learning, and delve into why this is an effective way to reinforce learning.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to quickly edit videos using Premiere
• The correct encode settings for full-screen videos
• How to draw simple graphics in Flash
• Simple animation techniques

Audience:
Novice-to-advanced designers, developers, and managers.

Many eLearning designers would love to enhance their eLearning projects with great ambient sound design. However, knowing where to start, or how to effectively integrate the audio, can be hard.

In this session, participants will learn both how to curate sound assets and how to effectively integrate them into eLearning projects. In this interactive session you will learn how to create great soundscapes for your projects and how to curate both no- and low-cost sound resources.

In this session, you will learn:

• How sound can both support and mold your course material
• When to use sound and when to avoid it
• How to acquire low-cost sound assets
• How to create your own sound assets for free
• How to use sound to get your creative juices flowing

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Flying bullets were the height of fashion … in 1997. And yet still they persist in some corporate learning, both in the classroom and online. So why is this much-maligned presentation technique still so popular? Perhaps it’s because training designers and developers aren’t quite sure what else to do, since many training designers and developers don’t have a background in graphic or information design.

This session presents participants with a case study of how an American Red Cross Disaster Services course moved from slides and slides of bullets to useful, engaging instructional animations. You’ll look at before-and-after slides that illustrate the transformation from text bullets to instructional animations. But more importantly, you’ll learn about some of the specific design techniques used in that transformation—techniques you can use yourself, even if you aren’t a graphic artist. Come see this DemoFest 2012 award-winning course!

In this session, you will learn:

• What the research says about using text, graphics, and animations
• How to analyze text-based content and determine the best visual approach
• When and how to apply instructional animations
• Common design pitfalls to avoid

Audience:
Novice-to-advanced designers and developers.

In years past, like many companies, UPS addressed supervisor and manager leadership development primarily through classroom-based leadership schools. These centralized schools brought supervisors or managers together from around the world, trained them on a range of leadership competencies, and gave them opportunities to apply new skills through simulations, role-plays, and collaboration with others. Expansion has created a need for quicker training of leaders and with greater precision than the previous instructor-led model could support. To address this need, UPS reimagined leadership development training and designed 53 eLearning courses wrapped within a virtual UPS environment. Rather than being prescribed training, it is on demand and driven by a leader’s individual needs.

Participants in this case-study session will learn about this flexible curriculum model and unique interface. You’ll explore how performance plans are embedded within each course and how leaders are supported post-training through a web portal that serves as a resource repository and collaboration hub.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to create a flexible leadership curriculum
• How to improve eLearning engagement
• About unique features that increase learner feedback
• How to bring characters to life
• How to create more realistic and challenging simulations
• How to create a performance plan within a course
• How to support post-training learning

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers. You’ll gain the most value if you are interested in creating a curriculum model that is highly interactive and flexible, and that challenges learners to consider performance in terms of people and business results.

Google has over 30,000 employees in more than 100 offices around the world. It isn’t feasible to provide instructor-led classes in person for every one of the 30,000 Googlers, but the organization wanted to reach every Googler, everywhere. Companies with distributed employees face problems when it comes to designing and scaling effective learning experiences: How to provide instructor-led training for employees in any location; how to reduce travel, time, and cost for trainers to reach audiences around the world; and how to convert conventional webinars into interactive learning experiences that are as engaging as in-person classes.

This session will describe how a grass-roots effort brought all of Google’s learning and development programs to distributed employees using Google+ Hangouts. Session participants will explore the technological and attitudinal challenges faced in trying to offer classes using a format that mirrors the in-person experience and creating an equal platform for all participants regardless of location. You’ll get some of the lessons learned from upskilling hundreds of trainers to be comfortable and effective in a virtual classroom. You will also learn how in-person classes can be easily adapted to fit the Google+ Hangouts delivery format.

In this session, you will learn:

• The difference between a webinar and an interactive virtual classroom
• Practical tips and techniques for converting in-person trainings to the Google+ Hangouts classroom
• How to overcome some of the unique challenges faced when transitioning to virtual learning
• How one team changed Google’s thinking about virtual classroom instruction

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, project managers, and managers.

Most instructional designers develop formal cognitive learning objectives for every training project, but neglect to develop formal affective learning objectives. Neglecting to develop affective objectives reduces the likelihood of achieving the desired cognitive objectives.

Session participants will focus on improving instructional and media design strategies to better advance student learning achievement and performance improvement. You’ll review methods you can apply to surface affective learning objectives to inform, organize, and coordinate a highly correlated instructional and media design strategy to provide a more meaningful student experience. You will learn how to weave motivational themes through graphics, animations, interactions, videos, layouts, and text to address, reinforce, and ultimately achieve affective objectives.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why ignoring affective objectives reduces the likelihood of achieving cognitive objectives
• How to surface and identify affective objectives
• How the methods to used achieve affective objectives depend on target audience characteristics
• How to achieve affective objectives by embedding themes throughout graphics, animations, videos, layouts, and text
• How to abstract design strategies from sources both internal and external to the instructional design community

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced professionals with a thorough understanding of the cognitive learning objectives listed in Bloom’s Taxonomy and familiarity with the definition of affective objectives.

Video has a known power and the ability to engage and sustain interest. It’s the best available medium to capture passion and nuance, and therefore it can deliver vast amounts of information to its audience with phenomenal efficiency. The problem, however, is that video is a one-way medium. Learners remain passive and cannot participate in the rich interactions present in the traditional classroom, which are proven to increase both conceptual learning and learning transfer.

Participants in this session will learn seven techniques that convert their standard training video into an immersive, integrative learning experience. These techniques include virtual audiences, immersive interactions, embedded learning links, subject-sensitive branching, and community integration. You’ll see data showing how interactive video provides greater retention and transfer than either text or standard video technologies. You’ll leave with the skills and confidence to create training videos with high-quality interactive components that can increase learning and retention of the material.

In this session, you will learn:

• About seven techniques that can make traditional videos more effective through the use of interactive videos
• How you can retrofit these interactions into your existing videos
• How interactive video techniques produce the highest retention rates in both the short- and long-term
• How interactive video can produce the greatest transfer of learning

Audience:
Novice-to-advanced professionals. A background in video, teaching and education, or eLearning will be helpful.

We often don’t systematically make decisions about media used to deliver instruction—and that creates problems. We need a method to select media that is appropriate to instructional goals and the political realities of the client organization.

Participants in this session will learn a method for media selection that systematically considers the appropriate media for a given objective and then involves stakeholders in a collaborative process to select from appropriate media while referencing the practical and political needs of the client organization. You’ll take away a tool that consists of guidelines and a decision tree used to prepare a blueprint decision grid, an example decision grid, and a blank decision grid. You’ll also get hands-on practice in using the tool.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to describe the need for systematic, client-centered media selection
• Best practices from a case study where such selections were made
• How to complete an example blueprint grid
• How to conduct a blueprint meeting

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, and managers with experience in basic instructional design and an awareness of available learning technology options.

What would you do if someone dropped a budget in your lap to update your multimedia hardware and software? Some companies are doing exactly that, because doing projects in-house is much cheaper than outsourcing locally. So you’ve got a challenge—you’ve got to set up a studio.

In this session, participants will learn how to outfit a multimedia studio: you’ll learn what to buy and what to build, when to buy and when to wait, and what hardware you should avoid and why. You’ll discover the IT ripples that a multimedia studio for Internet broadcasting causes in a company, the big-ticket items that are actually worth the money, and the little-ticket items you can’t live without. This is a discussion-oriented session, so bring your questions and your answers and share what you know with the other participants.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to make choices on multimedia equipment and software
• The safety issues to be aware of
• How to avoid common mistakes
• The unavoidable process and procedure issues
• About templates, processes, and project management tips

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.