• Interface
• Media
• Interactions
• Screen Capture and Simulations
• Delivering to Mobile Devices
• Quizzing
• Other Features
• Logistics

The post Choosing an Authoring Tool: A Checklist appeared first on Learning Guild.

iSpring Space, included in iSpring Max

This is a new offering from iSpring, which replaces iSpring Cloud. It gives you a simple online authoring tool, 20 GB Space, and iSpring’s new Review tool, to be released soon. It is all about team collaboration with other designers and you can send out a link to stakeholders and others evaluating your course.

iSpring also offers an open JavaScript API at no additional charge for those who want to create their own custom course players and receive more information on student progress.

Getting started

After installing iSpring Suite Max, you can open its features two different ways:

• From within PowerPoint. You’ll see a new tab and ribbon in PowerPoint, iSpring Suite 10. This gives you access to almost all of iSpring’s features in one convenient place as you build PowerPoint slides. See Figure 1.
• Stand alone applications. You can also run many of the applications you see in the ribbon, plus a couple of others, directly in Windows without opening PowerPoint. See Figure 2.

Figure 1: The iSpring Suite 10 Ribbon

Figure 2: The iSpring Suite 10 applications

The iSpring Ribbon

The iSpring ribbon is divided into the panels you saw in Figure 1.

1. The Narration panel lets you record, edit, and manage audio and video narration.
2. The Insert panel gives you several substantial options you can insert into your lesson.
3. The Content Library delivers to you access to more than 68,000 Templates, Characters, Backgrounds, Objects (Images), and Icons.
4. The Presentation panel offers many options for setting up your slides, your presentation, and your player.
5. The Publish panel is for previewing and publishing your lesson. Several options are available, including to your local computer, your LMS, as a video to YouTube, or on iSpring Learn (iSpring’s LMS) or on iSpring Space.
6. The About panel is useful for accessing your audio and video settings, checking for Updates and Help.

Inserting content

The goal of using iSpring within PowerPoint is to combine the best of PowerPoint with the best features of iSpring and publish the results in various ways, for example, so that it runs properly in your learning management system. You’ll want to preview your lesson from time to time as you build it, especially when adding a PowerPoint feature that you haven’t used before. Not everything may translate into the final file as expected. For instance, if you have an animated 3-D model, you’ll find that it becomes a still image when published in iSpring. This is true of every authoring tool that I have tried that imports or acts as extensions to PowerPoint. (If you found one that supports everything in PowerPoint, please comment below.)

With that caveat, here are the most important content features that iSpring brings to the table.

• QuizMaker – Create quizzes with graded and survey questions of the type you see in Figure 3, in which you can also see the ribbon for iSpring quizzes.
  
  You can create multiple quizzes in one PowerPoint file. For example, if you have several learning sections in your PowerPoint, you may want to insert a quiz at the end of each section. No matter how many questions you include in each quiz, each quiz resides on one slide.
  
  You can shuffle the answers for many of the question types. You can also randomize questions in each question group. A feature I find unique and really useful in iSpring is that within a group I can tie two or more questions together so that even when shuffled, those questions I’ve tied together will still be shown in the original order. This solves the problem of wanting to shuffle questions but also having questions that must be shown in order because they build on each other.
  • You can insert Information slides throughout a quiz and three types of Introduction slides: Intro, User Info, and Instruction.
  • Finally, it’s important for me to note that you can import questions from other quizzes you’ve created or from an Excel spreadsheet. A template for the Excel file is available on iSpring’s site. You can also publish your quiz to a Word document for quality assurance checks.

Figure 3: The Quiz Ribbon and Question Types

• Interactions – iSpring provides 14 wizard-based interactions. See Figure 4.

Figure 4: Wizard-based interactions

• Dialog Simulator
  This is a nice feature that lets you create branched conversations with multiple outcomes. This means learners decide on the path to take and can see the consequences of their actions. See Figure 5.

Figure 5: The Dialog Simulator

• Screen Recorder
  The Screen Recorder does a very good job of faithfully capturing screen content while you demonstrate the steps to accomplish a task. You can optionally record yourself on your webcam and microphone while you capture the screen actions. See Figure 6.

Figure 6: The Screen Recorder

Other included applications

Besides what you find in the PowerPoint ribbon, there are a few other useful applications that are included.

• iSpring Suite 10 Desktop – As noted, you can run iSpring Desktop from Windows directly (Figure 2). Launching it, you’ll see Figure 7. Here you have access to many of iSpring’s features.

Figure 7: The separate iSpring Suite Applications

• iSpring Flip – This lets you take any Word, PowerPoint, or PDF file and create a nice flipbook from it. It will publish the flipbook to HTML5 so you can post it online. Your flipbooks can be accessible and SCORM-compliant. You can also run this from the Standalone application above, where it is labeled as Books.
• iSpring Custom Character Tool – This is a free, separate application you can download from https://www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-suite/character-wizard. This lets you create new photo and illustrated characters to add to your Content Library for use without your courses.

Wondering what’s changed with each update?

iSpring does something that I am not sure I’ve seen other tool vendors do, at least not as clearly. At https://www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-suite/whats-new, there is a detailed, image-rich breakdown of every update since April 2018. It also offers a summary at the top in a timeline format.

Try iSpring and see for yourself

No authoring tool can serve everyone’s needs so it’s important that you evaluate iSpring for yourself and see how useful it might be for the learning needs of your organization. iSpring offers a 14-day trial at https://www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-suite/trial.

The iSpring Suite Max costs $970 per author per year. This includes:

• The full iSpring Suite
• iSpring’s Content Library (with more than 68,000 templates, images, icons, and characters)
• iSpring Space, with its Online Authoring tool, 20 GB of space, and their soon-to-be-released Review tool.
• 24-hours-a-day technical support via phone, email, and chat.

Finally, let me say that rarely have I seen a company be so attentive to its customers and to help them succeed. If you haven’t looked at iSpring before, try it and see if it doesn’t help you with its many features.

The post Tool Kit: iSpring 10 Suite Max Reviewed: Lots of New Features appeared first on Learning Guild.

Timed with news of the acquisition came the announcements that both Lectora and CenarioVR have been updated to new versions. I’ve reviewed both products before (here and here). This month I’m writing about the latest enhancements and additions, but first let me note that the price for both have been reduced. eLB is offering a Gold Suite that includes both the Desktop and Online versions of Lectora plus ReviewLink and full access to the eLB Asset Library for $1,299 a year. For only $300 more per year, move up to the Platinum Suite that includes CenarioVR, that wunderbar tool to create virtual reality experiences. That is a huge savings for CenarioVR over its previous cost of $1,068 for the Starter Plan and $1,596 for Pro Plan.

This month I’m discussing the major new features of Lectora 19. I’ll discuss the updates to CenarioVR in a separate review.

Lectora 19 – What’s new?

Long-time Lectora developers will appreciate the new features in Lectora:

1. Lectora now has a timeline!
2. You can now use a built-in screen recorder and editor.
3. Lots of new templates have been added.
4. Many more welcome additions.

Lectora’s new timeline

The timeline is a visual representation of any timed actions that you add to it. Here’s a simple example on how to use the timeline. Let’s say you have placed four characters, all initially hidden, on the screen and you want to reveal one at a time in turn. You can see the timeline at the bottom of the screen (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Four character positions

You could always use the action option in the properties ribbon for each character one by one, but the timeline simplifies this process and lets you create this exercise faster.

Click the little red icon at the left of the timeline to add an action. A timed event dialog will appear. In this case, I’ve set up the first character (Man 1) to show after five seconds. I’ve placed the dialog below the timeline so you can see how the timeline shows the event (Figure 2).

Figure 2: A new timed action

I’ve added three more timed events to the timeline to finish the effect on each character, one to occur every five seconds. Note that for the second, third, and fourth characters there are two actions; one to hide the previous character and another to show the new character. You can add as many actions as you like at any point in the timeline. Note the helpful tabs at the top of the timeline to show when these events will occur and how the events are named for the time stamps (5, 10, 15, 20). See Figure 3.

Figure 3: Four timed actions

To create timed events even faster, you can move the scrubber in the timeline to any position. When you click to add an action, it will already include the time stamp where you placed the scrubber.

Lectora’s new screen recorder and editor

In the past, Lectora was packaged with a version of Camtasia and Snagit, both great tools. If you are upgrading from Lectora 18 you’ll still have access to those two tools but won’t get any updates. Instead, there is a new recorder built directly into Lectora that is pretty awesome.

The tools ribbon now boasts a screen recording button. When you click it, a popup will appear that will give you many options (see Figure 4). You can:

1. Record the screen (full or partial), the webcam, or both.
2. If you want to use the webcam, you will be prompted to choose which one to use.
3. If you want to record your voice and you have more than one microphone, you will be asked which one to use.
4. You can record audio generated on the computer also.
5. Several preferences can be set (Figure 5).

Figure 4: The recording window

Figure 5: Recording preferences

1. Note the pencil icon at the bottom of the recording dialog. It is called draw & zoom and I really like this feature. It allows me to draw shapes, add text, and zoom in on the cursor. You can pause the video to draw and type text or do it on the fly.
2. A handy guide is included. See Figure 6, which also shows the various dialogs that appear when you click the options. When you’re done, you can save the results as an MP4 in the background while you continue to work in Lectora.
3. Of course, you can spruce up your video with images and text and apply transitions and animations. You can also edit narration, sound effects, music, and other audio.

Figure 6: Recording options and dialogs

Lots of new templates

Many developers love templates because they can save them so much time and result in fewer bugs in the final product. Lectora 19 offers up hundreds of new templates that take care of multiple layouts, interactions, quizzes, and more. They are accessibility-compliant and already set up for xAPI and SCORM, so there is less for designers and developers to worry about. See Figure 7.

Figure 7: New templates

But wait, there’s more!

There are several other notable changes and additions:

• You can now create custom button states. A new set state action lets you change a button’s state when needed, such as when the user performs.
• There are now over 89,000 icons you can use in your lessons. They look really well-designed.
• The character object now gives you access to the eLB’s over 100,000 cutout characters. You can filter the characters by category, emotion, gender, and other attributes to find the ones you need.
• There are some nice new page background images to explore and use.
• You can now choose from a new library of button fill textures.
• The translation tool now supports the XLIFF format when importing or exporting translation files.
• When you publish a CenarioVR scenario to HTML5, you now import it into Lectora and track a number of actions in the scenario. This makes CenarioVR integration much tighter.
• Accessibility improvements: Lectora has for years provided the means to make your lessons accessible. This version continues to improve on this ability:
  • Lightboxes now support Section 508 and WCAG so they can be read by screen readers and more.
  • Form elements, including radio buttons and checkboxes that you create, now support WCAG and Section 508.
• Choose from various sampling rates for text-to-speech to set the quality level and optimize bandwidth.
• Set sizing options for desktop and mobile more easily with more options when publishing.

My take

I really like the new features I’ve discussed in this review and I look forward to implementing them in future designs. With the lower price to boot, you should seriously consider Lectora for your eLearning projects. What do you think? Add your comments below.

The post Toolkit: The Lectora 19 Update appeared first on Learning Guild.

This review is based on the pro version and it contains so many features that it would be impossible to cover them all in one review. There’s no need, though, because ActivePresenter comes with a full 387-page user manual PDF that you can open from its help menu. The product is updated often with new features enhancements and the manual is updated each time the product is.

Get started

Last month I compared ActivePresenter’s software simulation features with those of Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline. In fact, in many ways, ActivePresenter resembles both Captivate and Storyline and to some degree Trivantis Lectora. As these are popular tools, I will sometimes use them as a means of comparison to illustrate ActivePresenter’s feature set. Let’s start with the most obvious similar features. Look at Figure 1, which shows the opening dialog options.

Figure 1: The opening dialog

As with Captivate, Storyline, and Lectora, you can:

• Start with a blank project
• Choose from one of the templates offered
• Import a PowerPoint

Just as in Captivate and Storyline, you can also:

• Record a video demo, or
• Record a software simulation

Finally, as you can in Captivate and Lectora, you can also create a:

• Responsive project

There are also several samples, some of which are responsive, that you can watch and download to build upon.

At the bottom of the dialog, you also have ready access to lots of ActivePresenter tutorials on YouTube, a link to the support center, and a wealth of preferences, seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The preference dialogs

Major features

Let’s touch on some of the major features in ActivePresenter. Many you’ll recognize some if you’re already a Captivate, Storyline, or Lectora user. Others are unique to ActivePresenter.

The Timeline

ActivePresenter has a timeline (Figure 3) that you can use to have objects appear and disappear from the stage or canvas. However, you can create as many timelines as you wish on any slide, and name them as well. The additional timelines do not activate automatically: you use events and actions to make them work. They are used mainly for animating objects but are not limited to such.

Figure 3: The ActivePresenter timeline

The timeline also includes several other options not seen on Captivate and Storyline’s timelines:

• Change the audio volume for portions of the timeline
• Normalize the audio volume for the slide
• Change the playback speed
• Split or join audio and video
• Insert closed captions
• Insert keyframes
• Apply transitions
• Split the timeline where indicated into two slides

However, whereas the Timeline does show the z-order of objects, with objects higher on the timeline displaying over those below them, it does not allow you to drag objects up and down to change their z-order. You need to right-click or use other options to change the layer order. Also, unlike Captivate, ActivePresenter doesn’t allow you to attach an object to the end of a timeline so that it remains there no matter any changes you make to the slide timing.

The Filmstrip

ActivePresenter’s filmstrip (Figure 4) is similar to that in Captivate and Storyline. It also:

• Lets you show slide thumbnails in a column or in a grid, or just slide titles
• Shows you the time for each slide in the column or grid, but not when showing slide titles

However, it doesn’t:

• Show titles under the slides in a column or a grid
• Have a duplicate option (though you can copy and paste)

Figure 4: Filmstrip as titles

Dialog boxes

The dialogs in ActivePresenter are intuitive and similar those you find in Storyline, Lectora, and Captivate with panels that can stay up or be dismissed. See Figure 5.

Figure 5: ActivePresenter dialogs and panels

Other features of note

Object states. Notice in Figure 6 that you can have object states in ActivePresenter, as you can in Captivate and Storyline (and to some degree in Lectora). However, you cannot delete or add other objects, and in most cases you can’t replace the object in one state. You can change the look of an object in a state and you can replace one image for another. You can also change the text in one state with other text in another state.

Figure 6: Object states

Containers. Containers are primarily used for responsively-designed projects and they come in two forms: flex boxes and grid boxes. However, you can also use them in projects that are not responsively designed. Figure 7 shows the two options for flex and grid boxes along with several predefined slide layouts.

Figure 7: Flex and grid boxes

Interactions. The types of interactions (Figure 8) you can include on any slide can be seen in Figure 8. Note that Storyline’s levers and dials are not part of the included interactions in ActivePresenter. You can also make most objects interactive by adding an event to them.

Figure 8: Interaction types

Media and annotations. Included is a good number of options for media and annotations, as you can see in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Media and annotations

Questions. All standard question types are included in ActivePresenter, including choosing randomly from question pools. Note that you can also import questions from GIFT-formatted text files, as you can in Captivate, or from comma-delimited CSV files, as you can from both Captivate and Storyline. (Figure 10)

Figure 10: Question types

Transitions and animations. Included are most of the standard transitions and animations that you will find in PowerPoint and other authoring tools. There is also a Zoom-n-Pan option.

Variables and advanced actions. Create your own variables or use system variables that are included in ActivePresenter. Add events to screen objects, based on On Click, On Rollover, On Rollout, On Swipe Left, On Swipe Right, On Swipe Up, and On Swipe Down. As a result of an event, choose from a number of actions, as seen in Figure 11. You can also create advanced actions, with or without conditions, using the same actions. Finally, you can also include JavaScript in ActionPresenter, and its manual includes a lot of methods you can include to communicate directly with your project file.

Figure 11: Action options

Equations. If you need to include mathematical equations in your projects, there are many preset choices along with all standard notations for you to build your own equations. See Figure 12.

Figure 12: Equation symbols and structures

Export options. There are several options for exporting your projects, as you can see in Figure 13.

Figure 13: Export options

Final thoughts

As I noted at the start of my review, there are many features in ActivePresenter, so I’ve had to cover most at the surface level. It’s an impressive set of options for a product that costs less than most. It may not have virtual reality options as Adobe Captivate does, or slide layers as Articulate Storyline does. I didn’t find any sets of character photographs or drawings of people, and I didn’t see a library of imported media either. These and other options that exist in other tools may dissuade you from looking at ActivePresenter. On the other hand, there are some features in ActivePresenter you may find attractive that don’t exist yet in the other tools discussed. As there is an unlimited trial version available (with watermark), I encourage you to try ActivePresenter. Even if you purchase a license, you have a lot of features packed into this authoring tool.

The post Toolkit: ActivePresenter appeared first on Learning Guild.

This hinges, of course, on whether or not we use the software wisely. If you are told to start using the new CRM’s BIMS to ensure GMP, your first instinct might be to run. However, you breathe a sigh of relief when you find out the company offers training on the subject. If then you find that the training does little more than explain that this means you need to know the Customer Relationship Manager’s Business Information Management Suite to ensure Good Manufacturing Practices, you would probably feel just slightly more enlightened.

Approaches to creating software simulations

Software training, systems learning, and desktop simulations are all synonymous. Every software application requires that users learn enough to employ its features and avoid frustration. There is no software that does everything for everybody and so there is always something more to learn, especially because new updates and releases occur; sometimes sporadically, sometimes frequently.

In many instances, it may be enough to show users how to perform a task when it is simple and intuitive. When the task requires multiple steps, however, users will usually need to practice those steps in a safe environment. I’m reminded of a large project I oversaw to develop interactive for the POS (Point of Sales) systems in post offices. At the time, the USPS had implemented a new system that comprised 12 different devices and the learning had to run on those same devices without interference. As an example, we needed to let the postal clerks practice printing shipping labels that normally include the cost of shipping. In so doing, we had to ensure that those labels generated by the learning all calculated $0.00, otherwise it would have affected the accounting system’s revenue statements! This took an extra effort on our part to have our software simulations reach out and communicate with different devices. Most software simulations, though, don’t need this level of sophistication. However, learners can always benefit by practicing the software tasks they need to perform rather than just watch a demo.

A range of choices

Today, there are many ways to create software simulations that demonstrate a series of steps. However, few of them allow you to easily let learners practice those steps. Many are free; others are included as part of an authoring tool; and some dedicated software simulation applications are powerful and more expensive. Which do you choose? It all depends on what your learners need to use the software that is required they know. You need to find the balance between not giving them enough and going overboard.

A simple online search will show that there are many available tools that will record your screen while you go through the steps you need to show learners. However, almost all of them don’t create simulations that test learners on which steps to take; they just record the screen and produce a linear video. That can be very helpful but may not be enough.

Here are three true authoring tools for which software simulations are just one feature among many. I have listed them in alphabetical order. Two of these will be familiar to many readers; one will likely not be as familiar. All three allow for:

• The creation of software simulations in more than one mode, including at least:
  • Demonstration, which may also be called View
  • Training, also called Practice or Try
  • Test, also called Assessment
• The ability to add interactions, shapes, images, and more to the simulation
• Publishing to HTML5
• Communication with a learning management system or learning record store

Be sure to note, however, how each of these takes a different approach to publishing to different modes. Each of these tools provides a free trial version so you can try it before you buy it.

Adobe Captivate 2019

Adobe Captivate is available for both Windows and Macintosh. Before starting the simulation, you can tell Captivate to create one-to-four separate slide files: Demonstration, Training, Assessment, and Custom. You can turn individual settings on or off for each slide file. Once you finish recording, Captivate will open each of the files you’ve chosen (you can have many files open in Captivate at the same time). If you wish, you can then copy the slides from one file and paste them in another. For instance, you can copy the slides form the Training slides and add them to the bottom of the Demonstration slides. Grouping the slides makes this easier.

Captivate lets you create responsive projects, those that readjust the output to fit the learner’s screen size and orientation with no wasted space. When you record a software simulation from within a responsive project and you play it back on a smart phone, it intelligently switches between showing a zoomed out full screen version when necessary and zooming in to show what is being clicked or typed. You can adjust each slide as needed.

You can license Captivate at $33.99/month; this entitles you to every new version as long as you keep your subscription. This is the least expensive option. You can also purchase a perpetual license for $1,299 (or $399 for students and teachers). Other options are available. See more at https://www.adobe.com/products/captivate.

Articulate Storyline 360

Storyline is available for Windows only, though you should be able to run it on a fast Macintosh with a Windows emulator. Once you have recorded the steps, you choose to create slides as View, Try, or Test, and a scene will be created that contains the slides. You can take advantage of the already recorded screencast and insert them again into a second scene, then to a third (or add them to the first scene). In this fashion, you can choose to have a scene for View, another for Try, and another for Test. You can adjust each slide as needed.

Storyline does not produce responsive lessons, though its player will adjust responsively. This means the table of contents, comments area, and any other items you wish to include as part of the player will adjust but the content you create does not adjust to the screen size. With software simulations, this can be especially problematic because on small devices the simulation may be too small to see clearly. If you need to deliver software simulations on mobile devices, take care to create them so that you’re not squeezing too much content on small screens.

Storyline’s pricing is $999 per year for individuals or $1,299 per year for team members. This gives you access to all the tools in the Articulate 360 Suite. Team members receive extra services and discounts are available. See more at https://articulate.com/360.

Atomi ActivePresenter 8

In this tool, available for both Windows and Mac platforms, you go through the sequence of steps and it creates the slides for you. You can then publish separately to Demonstration, Tutorial, Practice, and Test lessons. This is convenient but doesn’t allow you to easily combine modes in one lesson, such as first showing a Demonstration and then allowing the learner to Practice within one lesson.

ActivePresenter also lets you create responsive projects and, like Captivate, also intelligently chooses how to show each slide when published. If this is not to your liking, you can make changes to the approach in the player settings. Another nice feature is the ability to fine-tune output for each object in a slide. You can open its properties and select in which modes it should show, from one to all four modes.

ActivePresenter pricing is reasonable. For the standard version, it’s $199 for a perpetual license and $399 for a pro license, each with one year of free upgrades. Volume and educational pricing are available. After the first year, upgrades cost 40% of the original price. See more at https://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/.

Other choices

Consider the very popular Techsmith Camtasia if you need to create screencasts that you intend to publish to video. It contains some great video editing features. It does not allow for all kinds of interactions but it does allow quiz questions to be inserted. A Camtasia perpetual license is $249. See more at https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html.

WalkMe is a high-end tool for enterprises. It places an invisible overlay on top of running software to record the steps users take and create training as a result. Your IT department works with WalkMe to allow it to operate correctly. Consult WalkMe to receive a price quote at https://www.walkme.com/.

Know of another tool comparable to those above? Let me know about it in the comments section below.

From the editor: Want more?

The 2020 Realities360 Conference & Expo and the Learning Solutions Conference & Exposition 2020, March 31-April 2, 2020 in Orlando, Florida, will both deliver multiple sessions covering critical topics that will help you develop new skills, strategies, and expertise.

See the details here on the registration page.

The post Toolkit: Tools for Creating Software Simulations appeared first on Learning Guild.

Fun: They use a logo that is a green octopus called Albert (as in Einstein). The company often hands out plush versions of Albert and encourages people to post photos of themselves with Albert from different parts of the world.

I have met and spoken with several of the folks at Knowbly and can vouch for the fact that they are both serious and fun.

Creating a course

Now let’s look at Knowbly. Figure 1 shows the first dialog you will see.

Figure 1: A simple start to course creation

Building a lesson

After providing the initial course information above, we proceed to create our first lesson by adding blocks, as you can see in Figure 2. You can add additional pages to your course by clicking on the course structure edit button.

Figure 2: Block types

Choosing block layouts

You can also choose from predetermined block layouts, which makes development faster. See Figure 3.

Figure 3: Two column block options

Combining elements in a block

However, it’s important that I note that these block layouts don’t limit you into just choosing one item for each. Text fields allow for the insertion of links, images, video, tables, and more. Knowbly just added a code editor so you can switch to Code View and enhance your text further with HTML. See Figure 4.

Figure 4: Text field options

Each block can also be configured to have its own background color, image, or border and to have other factors set, as you can see in Figure 5.

Setting block configuration

Figure 5: Block options

For instance, you can add a background image to a text block (or any other block), as in Figure 6.

Figure 6: A background image in a text block

Choosing and editing images

When you add an image to your course, you can upload your own, choose from many royalty-free stock assets provided by Knowbly, or go to your content manager where you can reuse any media you have already uploaded in the past (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Image options

Knowbly also includes options for editing your images further. You can see the options in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Image editing options

Accessibility

You can add accessibility options, such as alt text, to any image, as seen in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Insert alt text for images

Using widgets to add interactivity

All of the above are great for making your course look good, but you may have noted that I didn’t mention options for interactions. Anyone who knows me also knows that I’m all about interactivity! That’s where widgets come in with Knowbly.

There are currently 20 widgets in Knowbly, and more will be added in the future. You can recognize the function of each by their names in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Interactive widgets in Knowbly

After choosing a widget, it’s a straightforward process to provide the necessary elements to make it work. There is no coding involved.

Of the widgets available, the one that is certainly the most powerful is Mixed Assessment, which lets you create a quiz of five types of questions, as seen in Figure 11.

Figure 11: Mixed assessment question types

In Figure 12 you’ll see I chose the last widget, Video Assessment, and we’re given tongue-in-cheek instructions (remember what I wrote about fun?) for the next step.

Figure 12: Widget instructions

Clicking the instruction, we’re told to add a video (naturally). When we do, we then have options for adding annotations (text and media), bookmarks (to notate where certain sections begin in the video), and quiz assessments.

Previewing and publishing your file

One click lets you preview your project at any time. I have found this to be a quick option, which is crucial when you want to use an iterative approach to designing your course.

All the work you do is responsive, so it will automatically fill up the device screen in the best way possible. When previewing, you can see each device type and orientation with one click. See Figure 13.

Figure 13: Previewing on different device sizes

One feature I like very much in Knowbly is the ability to publish your content in several ways. You can download your courses and upload them where you wish, such as your learning management system or learning record store. See Figure 14.

You can also use Knowbly just for widget authoring and embed your widgets inside your LMS course or add them to a web page.

Figure 14: Publish options

More about the content manager

• You can always upload media files to the content manager even when you’re not creating a lesson. I recommend uploading all existing media files first so that there is no delay in waiting to upload large files each time you need to insert an image, audio or video.
• You can also record your own audio in the content manager.
• You can upload many types of files to Knowbly to use in your courses, including JPG, JPGE, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, MP3, OGG, AAC, MPG, MP2, MPEF, MPE, MPV, MP4, M4P, M4P, M4V, WEBM, AVI, MOV, MPEG, ODT, TXT, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, and PDF.

More to know

• Knowbly’s latest release has added three new block types:
  • An embed block (where you can add web-based content like games, charts, etc.)
  • A navigation block so you can direct learners to different areas of the course for review or extra learning.
  • A progress block to ensure that learners complete specific content before they can progress through the rest of the course.
• You can place comments on any block in Knowbly. This is important to keep tabs on progress and for team collaboration.
• Knowbly offers several themes from which to choose, and you can also create your own so that you can customize the colors and fonts in your course.
• Remember what I wrote about Knowbly being a bit of fun? It’s reflected in the messages you see. When you insert a text block, you’re told to Write something brilliant.
• The interactions in Knowbly are quite nice and useful. However, I asked the engineers at Knowbly whether there was an option for creating more custom interactions. They answered that if there is enough demand for an interaction, they will build it into the tool. If, however, your needs are more unique, they will guide you in how to edit the resulting published code to include your own interactions. This does require knowledge of HTML5 and JavaScript, of course.
• Pricing for individuals is $41 a month. Knowbly also offers enterprise pricing.

As Knowbly is a newer product, it doesn’t necessarily contain every feature you’d like. For instance, there are no options for drag and drop. You have the opportunity to influence the future of the tool by reporting your needs to the Knowbly team. They are very receptive to your ideas.

There is a lot more to Knowbly than I could fit here. Go to https://www.knowbly.com/ to learn more.

The post Toolkit: The Knowbly eLearning Tool appeared first on Learning Guild.

1. In 2019 virtual reality for learning became easy for instructional designers to develop without needing any programming skills. While higher-end VR tools can still require some coding expertise, products like Trivantis CenarioVR, a stand-alone tool, and the addition of VR features to Adobe Captivate 2019, now allow just about anyone to create VR experiences for learners, delivered both through VR goggles and on desktops.
   
   In 2020 we anticipate (as has been true of every new technology that we have adopted in the learning field) that VR will be fantastic for some types of learning but unnecessary for most. In any learning endeavor we should always strive to acclimate the learner to the actual environment in which they work. For instance, if we are creating learning for hospital nursing staff, VR may be the best solution to assist learners in assessing a situation through both verbal and nonverbal cues. On the other hand, accounting principles would probably not benefit from a VR solution. The most effective VR solutions I have seen this past year have been those that deal with human interactions in the fields of medicine, security, and law enforcement.
   
   What to expect: As more VR learning applications are built, the most effective ones will demonstrate which fields benefit most from their use. Other fields and topics where VR may prove to be overkill will likely not pursue more VR learning.
   
   While CenarioVR, Adobe Captivate, and similar tools allow you to introduce VR experiences to your learners, when you start to feel the need for much more flexibility and realism, you may want to look at tools like Modest3D (reviewed a second time here), or even invest in hiring experts or learning to program in VR engines like Unreal, Unity , CryEngine, or Amazon Lumberyard (see the overview of each of these and others here). There is also a growing library of VR experiences you can purchase in areas like safety and security, just as you can find libraries of eLearning topics in those same areas. Consider joining the Steam VR community. While it is mainly geared towards VR gaming development, much can be applied to learning applications too.
    
2. In 2019, Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline continued to be the most popular authoring tools for eLearning, with Trivantis Lectora continuing to capture a sizeable number of developers, and dozens of other tools—such as DominKnow, TechSmith, and Axonify—continuing to grow their own fanbases. Both Adobe and Articulate seem to be planning big things for the new year.
   
   At DevLearn 2019 I spoke with one of the representatives of Rise.com. While part of Articulate, it is being offered as a separate tool under a different hat. The representative joked that they made sure that the Rise.com booth was as far away from the Articulate booth as possible. In short, think of Rise.com as a combination of the Rise tool from Articulate Studio 360 and Articulate Online. However, it was made clear to me that as its own entity, Rise.com will have features added that may not be added to Rise 360, so it’s best to think of them as twins that now are taking divergent paths. All learning created in Rise.com resides on the site, though every organization can have its own subdomain. For instance, if my company were to set up an account with Rise.com, my site would be elearningJoe.rise.com.
   
   Rise.com will be in beta until February, after which plans will start at $399 annually for up to 100 people, to $1,999 for up to 1,000 people.
   
   At the Adobe Learning Summit, which was held in Las Vegas in October three weeks before DevLearn, during its always popular Sneak Peeks session, Adobe revealed a new online authoring tool it plans to release in 2020. It will likely carry a version of the Captivate name, though it won’t replace Captivate, at least in the short term. The features shown during the Sneak Peeks caused a lot of people to applaud, though I will wait until it’s released to put it through its paces and perform a thorough review. For now, I will hope that it will prove to be another viable alternative.
    
3. Chatbots are becoming more and more popular as a means to help learners role play, ask information, and be quizzed. Chatbot engines are becoming more standardized and they are easy enough to include in most eLearning lessons created in other tools. The coming year should prove to be the tipping point for chatbots as they make their way into more topics taught online. (Margie Meacham and I will teach an online class on chatbots January 13.)
    
4. xAPI for record keeping is becoming more popular with organizations that are ready to move on from SCORM. In 2020 I hope to see much more adoption of xAPI as the de facto standard for tracking learner data and generating much more meaningful reports.

As is true every year, we likely will be surprised by something new and unexpected entering the field, while lamenting that despite all the changes that are occurring, most of us still seem to be creating learning that is more passive than challenging. Let’s pledge to make 2020 the year in which we change our eLearning instructional design tactics to those that truly will make a difference.

The post The eLearning Development Tool Landscape: Hello 2020! appeared first on Learning Guild.

For this reason, most designers still tend to use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint to create their storyboards. Storyboards include detailed instructions to the developer, artist, and media developers for each slide, page, or portion of an eLearning project—along with narration scripts, descriptions of interactivity, and possibly a branching diagram and more. The basic idea is that once the key stakeholders review and sign off on the storyboards after any required changes have been included, each eLearning team member now has a clear and complete understanding of what they need to create.

Enter Xunto. To call this a storyboarding tool does not do Xunto justice because it does much more than create a storyboard document. I think of it more as an eLearning project management tool, with storyboarding as its central focus. The tool’s launch was at the eLearning Guild’s DevLearn 2019 conference, so it’s very new.

How Xunto works

Once you create an account, you’ll see the basic steps in order in the tool menu (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: The Xunto toolbar with its three steps

The first step involves setting up a Space (short for Workspace). I’ve named mine Joe in Figure 1. You can also invite other team members to your Space for collaboration purposes. Each member of a Space will have one of the following roles: Administrator, Manager, Teammate, Consultant, or Guest. As is common in these cases, what each team member can do depends on their assigned role. The Guest role is reserved for Customer and SME project roles (see below), and are free in the system.

The second step is to set up your Project, which I called Creating Your Brand in Figure 1. This area gives you access to:

1. My Dashboard, in which you can see what Tasks are assigned to you, any Conversations you are having with other team members, and see a list of what Activities you’ve performed.
2. Project Settings, where you can:
   • Archive your finished Project, after which you can retrieve it at any future time, or delete it if you see fit.
   • Add Collaborators to your project. Each collaborator on a Project can be assigned one of these roles: Project Manager, ISD, Content Developer, SME, or Customer. As in Spaces, what each Collaborator can do will depend on their role.
   • Edit the project Name, Description, and representative Image.
3. Project Overview, where you can access a Status Board of any storyboards you are tracking, an Activity Stream that shows what has occurred thus far on the current project, and the other members of your team, who are called Collaborators.

The third step is Storyboards, with the Design Curriculum options. Here is where you put some thought into how your project will be organized, what learning objectives it will include, and outline the order of your courses, lessons and storyboards. Figure 2 shows the start of a Curriculum. You can choose to add any or all of the levels in your Curriculum to a list of storyboards to create.

Figure 2: A Design Curriculum

To be clear, one storyboard here would be equivalent to one contiguous area of content, the same as one launchable option in an LMS. Most typically call this a Lesson, with multiple lessons making up a Module, and multiple modules making up a Course. A Lesson can have multiple Pages (or Slides). Any of the titles you listed in your Design Curriculum that you then assigned to be storyboarded will be listed here. See Figure 3.

Figure 3: Working with storyboards

For each storyboard, you can set the status, add any pertinent files, write comments, and also export the full storyboard or audio scripts as PDF files.

Page Templates. You can now design as many page templates as you wish to be used in the lesson. Each template can be created by dragging blocks onto the page area. See Figure 4. Based on what you include, Xunto will also help you create a screen mockup to help further guide team members. This is a rough prototype or the layout of the page and any content you may want to include.

Figure 4: Page content blocks

Most of the options above offer an empty text box in which you can type or paste as much as you wish. Several formatting options, including hyperlinks, are available and each title (See Figure 5), such as Guideline, can be changed to your own term. This is as it should be, because storyboarding tools in the past that had fixed fields for these options would always fall short of expectations. However, each block also has some unique features. For instance, the Narration block lets you leave voice talent notes and pronunciation guides, you can limit the number of characters in the Onscreen block text, and in Media blocks you can provide reference material and host the final assets that will be required in production.

The blocks shown in Figure 4 above are the most essential. Xunto has declared that if other blocks are needed, they are happy to consider including those. However, as you now know, you can rename each block to whatever you wish, so I don’t consider not having more blocks available to be a big limitation. Xunto is planning on adding more blocks soon, specific to specific kinds of interactivity and question types, such as multiple-choice questions with all feedback fields, drag & drop exercises, and more.

One nice feature: every block can be assigned as a task to one or more team members.

Figure 5: Text Editing options

The only one of these blocks that has more structure to it is Navigation, and this also makes sense. See Figure 6.

Figure 6: The Navigation block options

Example storyboard

Click here to see one example of a storyboard produced in Xunto.

More about Xunto

I’ve described most of Xunto’s functionality above, but it’s important to note a few more points:

1. Everything you do can lead to reusable templates, storyboards, and more.
2. All of the history of your project will also be available to you to analyze and improve on each new project. You can even see what a storyboard included at any point in history.
3. Xunto includes a Preview feature that in my research seems pretty popular.
4. As of the time of this writing, Xunto is FREE. Use it and learn it now while it’s free, and you’ll know if you want to continue to use it when pricing kicks in. My guess is that you will. Xunto’s pricing structure, which I expect will come into play at the start of 2020, seems very reasonable for the number of members, active projects, and storage space included. See Figure 7.
   
   

Figure 7: Xunto’s future pricing

My final thoughts

Xunto is new. It’s obvious to me that the creators of Xunto know instructional design and put a lot of thought into the product. I’m looking forward to using it on client projects and having my eLearning projects run more smoothly and efficiently. I’m happy to finally have a storyboarding tool that doesn’t feel as if it has any of the restrictions I have seen in past tools, but it also covers many eLearning project management needs to boot! I hope to provide an update on my experience with Xunto in the coming months.

The post Toolkit: Xunto—eLearning Storyboards and Project Management appeared first on Learning Guild.

Lectora comes in two flavors: Lectora Inspire, which includes SnagIt, Camtasia, an audio editor and a video editor, and Lectora Online. The two used to differ quite a bit but have been mostly in sync for the last few years. However, a few days or weeks may pass between when one tool receives a new feature and the other includes it. In addition, Lectora Online boasts collaboration tools so it’s useful for large organizations with several developers.

Here are my favorite new improvements that have been added to Lectora Inspire and Lectora Online since version 16.

New Action: Set Time

In Figure 1 you can see that a new action called Set Time has been added to the Media Actions list.

Figure 1: The New Set Time Action

You can use this action to jump to any point in a running audio or video clip. In Figure 2, you can see where I added two buttons labeled Jump to 0:30 and Jump to 0:50, which of course jump to the 30 and the 50 second marks of the video on the screen.

Of course, the action can be applied in other ways, for instance as feedback to a question. When the learner responds incorrectly, you can set the video to jump back to the point at which the answer is found.

Figure 2: Buttons to jump to specific times in video

Improvements to Closed Caption

In previous versions of Lectora, you could bring in closed captions from an XML file. Now, you can import captions in three different formats: WebVTT, SRT, and XML. See Figure 3.

Figure 3: Importing Closed Captions

When you import closed captions, Lectora will now automatically show the learner a CC button on the audio or video playbar. For closed captions to work, you must launch your published file from a webserver, not locally on your hard drive.

New Feature: Text to Speech

Lectora has added a robust text to speech engine. In Figure 4, you can see that you have a choice of languages and voices. In addition, you can generate closed captions automatically as a VTT file for the audio that you generate as well.

Figure 4: Lectora’s Text to Speech

For an audio track, the output will look like Figure 5.

Figure 5: Audio Captions

In Figure 6, note the number of languages and voices available. Each language listed includes one or more voices. Most include at least two.

Figure 6: Text to Speech Languages and Voices

Able to view audio waveform when synchronizing events

When you want to have screen objects appear or disappear at various points during audio playback, it can be useful to view the audio waveform. A new option lets you see the waveform by bringing up the audio editor, though it is in a separate window and the scrubber does not move in the waveform while you play back the audio. Still, it can be helpful to see where there are pauses coming up in the audio. See Figure 7, in which I’ve highlighted the button to bring up the waveform.

Figure 7: See the waveform while synchronizing events to audio

A New Style Painter

The Style Painter option lets you choose a text block and then apply its font, size, color, etc. to another text block. Shadows, margins, and other enhancements can also be applied to other objects the same way. Besides text, you can use the Style Painter on buttons, images (including characters), and shapes. Just as in Microsoft Office products, double-clicking the Style Painter lets you apply the same style to multiple objects.

More notable updates and features

1. Lectora has always published to HTML and traditionally has included support for playing media in older browsers by including Flash-based fallbacks. Now it has an HTML5-only publish option. When this option is selected, HTML5-only publishes exclude any Flash fallback elements so there are no issues importing into your LMS.
2. Trivantis has updated and added more stock buttons, giving them a more modern look.
3. All shapes and buttons are now rendered as Scalable Vector Graphics, allowing them to remain crisp at any zoom level. You can now also configure their backgrounds, shapes, and styles.
4. Lectora has included in the last several versions the ability to customize each of five views for responsively designed output: Desktop, Phone Portrait, Phone Landscape, Tablet Portrait and Tablet Landscape. You can now disable any of the portrait or landscape views, in which case the parent view will be shown.
5. Accessibility options have been further enhanced, so that screen readers can access text blocks that are initially hidden and later shown through an action.
6. Several more templates have been included with different learning styles and approaches.

The post Toolkit: Trivantis Lectora Inspire 18.2.1 & Lectora Online 4.3 appeared first on Learning Guild.

To start, these are my five favorite ones because they let me work faster and more efficiently.

1. Hot Swap Images

Up until now, if you wanted to replace an image on the stage, there were several methods but each one took several clicks of the mouse. Captivate now has a new method that requires a simple click and drag, and I love it.

Find the new image in File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Macintosh), or in Captivate’s file library, then drag it on top of the image you wish to replace. They don’t even need to be the same format: I’ve tested this with JPG, PNG, BMP, and still GIF images. When you replace the image, the new image will maintain its own aspect ratio but stay within the constraints of the dimensions of the old image. When moving the new image to the old image, you’ll see a blue line appear around the old image so that you can see which is being replaced. This is helpful if you have several overlapping images. You can even replace the image in a smart shape with another image using the same method.

See Figure 1 below. The first image has a width of 442 and a height of 295. Though the new image (dragged from File Explorer) has a width of 3024 and a height of 4032, I dropped it on top of the first image. You can see that it has been reduced to a width of 221 and a height of 295. Warning: As I stress in all the classes I teach, the fact still remains that any image you import into Captivate should already be sized externally to the right dimensions because the image will still be saved in your Captivate source file at its original size (as it should). I see this method really speeding up the process of replacing older images with updated ones I get from my artists.

Figure 1: At left, dragging a new image on top of old. At right, the new image takes on the same height as the old.

2. Images and Scalable Vector Graphics as Buttons

In the early days of Captivate, I would have to cover an image with a click box or transparent button to make it possible for a learner to perform an action by clicking on the image. Later, smart shapes were added and I could fill the smart shape with an image and of course make the smart shape a button. Now images have the same friendly Use as Button checkbox in the Properties that smart shapes have had. The rollover and down states will be the same image. Of course, you can change those states and add others, just as you can with smart shape buttons. This will also speed up your work in Captivate because it saves you several steps just to create clickable images.

The same is now true of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) files. I suspect that most Captivate users haven’t used SVG much, but I certainly have. In fact, in my last three projects I used SVG files for illustrations almost exclusively because my clients wanted to be able to zoom in and out of the screen and not see any pixelation of images; they wanted them to be sharp at any size. That’s what SVG files do.

Now that they also include the Use as Button option, it makes my workflow simple. In the past, I couldn’t make SVGs into buttons so the only way I could use an SVG as a button was to use the older idea of covering it with a click box or transparent button. SVG files are usually smaller than raster images (JPG, PNG, etc.) and of course are highly scalable, but they also have another benefit: I can choose to make the whole bounding box around the SVG clickable or just the parts of the SVG within the box. See Figure 2.

Figure 2: Images and SVGs now have the Use as Button checkbox property

3. Edit SVG Colors Directly in Captivate

Another welcome new feature is that I can now edit the colors in an SVG that is on the stage. Double-click the SVG, then choose the part whose color you wish to change. This is great because I can duplicate a button SVG several times and change the color in each to differentiate them without having to do so in another tool. In Figure 3, you can see how I duplicated the SVG from Figure 2 and changed the color in each.

Figure 3: Edit SVG colors directly

4. Copy and Paste Appearance

I’ve long wanted an option in Captivate like that of the Format Painter tool in Microsoft Office products, which makes it easy to copy the appearance of one element to another. For instance, in MS Word, I can point to some text that is 12-point bold Arial and then use the Format Painter tool to change one or more other portions of the text to the same.

Now I can use a similar method in Captivate to make text and smart shapes consistent. Right-click a smart shape or text caption and choose Copy Appearance, then right-click a different smart shape or text caption and choose Paste Appearance. The second text or object will instantly take on the attributes of the first. See Figure 4.

Figure 4: Copy and Paste Appearance

5. Virtual Reality Improvements

Captivate 2019 introduced Virtual Reality in its feature set, playable on headsets and on desktops and mobile devices. While I haven’t had a client who has taken advantage of this feature yet, I’ve played with this quite a bit. A year ago, I bought myself a Samsung 360 Camera for $90 (new) and have used it to take 360° pictures and videos and then import them into Captivate. After inserting the photo or video on a slide, I then place hot spots over it that I can set to show an image or a text field, play audio, navigate to other slides, or ask a quiz question. This update improves the VR features in several ways that make me happy:

• I can now play a video when the learner chooses a hot spot.
• Images, text, and video popups now include a close option so the learner chooses when to close it rather than having the popup disappear after a number of seconds.
• I can now see text elements on the stage when I choose its hot spot and I can edit the font, color, and other aspects of it (as a whole).
• Hot spots can now be reported as quiz items, just as I can with my own interactions in other Captivate files.
• I can now resize hot spots and also add rollover and down states to them. Just as I can edit SVG files on a desktop, I can also edit the colors of SVG hot spots.

Other new features

My top five new features above are not alone. Here are other new features:

• Themes: Several enhancements have been made to Themes in Captivate. For instance, I can now use more than one theme in the same Captivate file! While I wouldn’t overdo this feature, it’s very nice that I can apply a different theme to quiz slides, for instance, to make them stand out. Themes have been useful to me as each client needs their own look and feel, usually to match their organization’s style guide. I’ll see how often I use more than one theme in a file, as I can’t think of too many instances right now when I have wanted this.
• Assets: I like the big change and additions to Assets. The Assets button is now more prominent and clicking it brings up a new interface that now includes both whole projects and slides, along with many new media assets, including SVG icons. It is now easier and faster to download new assets too. For instance, I can download new characters and positions without having to open the dialog each time. This has been frustrating in the past, so I like this option very much.
• Quick Start Slides and Projects: Assets also include this major new category. These brand-new choices include six full sets of projects with all of the standard types of slides many would like, and many that may have not occurred to you and that may inspire you. All of the coding is done for you. You can use the easy image replace option I described above to swap out all the images with your own. I haven’t used too many templates from others in the past, but I always like new design ideas and these include some good ones.
• Multi-Branched Courses and Automated Multi-State Object Interactions. You can now accomplish these types of interactions without having to use variables and advanced actions as in the past. You do this by following some naming conventions for the slides or object states. This makes it easier for those Captivate users who are not comfortable with using variables and actions. However, I will likely continue to use advanced actions and my own variables because they give me added flexibility. I will also continue to encourage others to learn to use these slightly more advanced techniques for that reason.

Convinced?

I think you’ll agree that for a dot release, this update includes a lot of great new features. Of course, it’s a free update to anyone with a subscription to Captivate (go to dropdown menu Help > Check for Updates) so don’t hesitate to update today.

From the editor

Learn more about how to use Adobe Captivate, and provide your learners with much better learning experiences! Joe Ganci will present a day-long, pre-conference session “BYOD Advance Your Adobe Captivate Skills” on October 22 at The eLearning Guild’s DevLearn Conference & Exposition in Las Vegas. Register for DevLearn and for Joe’s workshop today!

The post Toolkit: Adobe Captivate 2019 Dot Release Is Full of New Features appeared first on Learning Guild.