An assignment for my "Tech for Teaching" class at SDSU requires us to follow Ed Tech related blogs on our reader than write up a summary of what we learned from reading these posts and how these lessons apply to our professional goals. This is the third of 3 Personal Learning Network reports on some lessons I have learned lately through blogs I follow in Google Reader.
Over the past year, I have been working on the major project of transitioning my organization from only instructor led training to a "Blended" training approach consisting of eLearning, Instructor Led Training(ILT), and Job Aids. The blog posts highlighted in this Personal Learning Network (PLN) report provide valuable information that will help improve the effectiveness of my organizations training solutions by transitioning to a "Blended" approach. The first article, "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom" tells the story of a school that is maximizing the potential of a "Blended" approach by banning power point from the classroom and the second post titled, "Best Moodle Modules and Plugins" provides information on useful ways to customize Moodle. Together, these posts provide ideas for improving the effectiveness of a Blended training approach and the tools to help make those ideas happen.
I believe that there is no one best way to deliver training, and that in most cases, a blended approach is the most effective. ILT, eLearning, and job aids have different advantages that when used in combination can result in a more effective training solution. The article "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom" featured on "The Chronicle of Higher Education" website describes what a Dean at Southern Methodist University is doing to push instructors towards a blended approach. I found this article intriguing because I think it hits the nail on the head of the best way to take advantage of ILT in combination with eLearning. By removing power point from the classroom and taking advantage of computer based resources, instructors are given the freedom to facilitate a more interactive session resulting in an improved learning experience.
A valuable tool in implementing a blended training approach is the learning management system, Moodle. As a Moodle administrator, I am always looking for customizations to help Moodle fit the needs of my organization. The post, "Best Moodle Modules and Plugins" describes tools that can improve the effectiveness of elearning. By using modules discussed in this post such as "Book" and "Questionnaire" we are improving the effectiveness of our ILT courses by making them more interactive. In the past, a portion of the ILT course would be reserved for lecture to introduce the topic. This type of information is now delivered via Moodle prior to the ILT course so that learners are familiar with the topic and ready to practice the skill they are learning when they arrive at the instructor led course.
Migrating to a "blended" training approach from nearly 100% ILT is a difficult battle and the posts highlighted in this PLN report are helping my organization's training dept reach it's goal. By taking advantage of tools such as the modules and plugins described in the blog post, "Best Moodle Modules and Plugins," while embracing the theories discussed in the article, "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom" we are improving the effectiveness of our "Blend" of training solutions. I can't wait to see how what I have recently learned from my PLN helps my organization get closer to our goal of a blended training approach.
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Monday, August 10, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Moodle 1.9 Multimedia
A new book just arrived on my doorstep that I am excited about reading. Much of the reading I do about Moodle has to do with administration tasks I am struggling with so I am looking forward to learning some content development tricks from "Moodle 1.9 Multimedia" by João Pedro Soares Fernandes.
As a Moodle administrator and eLearning content developer, I am always juggling the behind the scenes Moodle tasks while looking for more effective ways to present content. It looks like this book provides a little of both by covering how to make the most effective use of multimedia in Moodle. I mainly use eLearning tutorials developed in Adobe Captivate for my Moodle courses so I am curious to see what other tools are discussed in this book.
I am amazed at the amount of options and tools available for customizing Moodle content to your learners needs and am eager to dive into this book to learn more. I am also amazed at the variety of different methods Moodlers around the world are using. How about you? How are you presenting multimedia in Moodle. Please share by posting a comment.
If you would like to read more about Moodle 1.9 - Multimedia check out the Packt Publishing site. They also have some other good Moodle books
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Monday, July 27, 2009
Adobe Captivate: "Continue" or "Go to next Slide."
I have a confession to make. I was making a stupid mistake in Adobe Captivate 3 that was seriously affecting the performance of my eLearning tutorials. When I first started using Captivate I was under a tough deadline for my first project and did not have the time to take any classes or tutorials. I bought a book and dove right in. I was confident in my skills with Powerpoint and Captivate's not that much different, right? Wrong, Captivate has different options for advancing the tutorial with action buttons and thanks to the power of Twitter, I found out I was using the wrong option. Here's the story...
I was having a hard time figuring out how to reduce the bandwidth requirements for published flash files. My projects didn't have a lot of bells and whistles but when I used the "Bandwidth Analysis" option, I was finding that the KB/Sec were through the roof on every slide. In a few tweets about this with @JFDragon, he recommended to simply extend the length of my slides. The problem I had with that is that I didn't want to make the user sit around and wait for the timeline to finish out. @JFDragon pointed out that I don't need to make the user sit around if I have the slide advance using the "Go to next slide" option rather than "Continue." I was making the simple mistake of using the "Continue" option when I should have been using "Go to next slide."
The big difference is that the "Go to next slide" option advances to the next slide when clicked, no matter where the slide is at on the timeline. The "Continue" option will play out the rest of the timeline before advancing to the next slide. By using the "Go to next slide" option you can extend out the length of the slide but the user is still able to advance when they are ready. This allows more time for each slide to load in turn reducing the KB/Sec of each slide and the overall bandwidth requirements. Because I was using the "Continue" option, I had to make each slide only a few seconds long and pause at the end of each one so that the timeline would finish out before the user clicked on whatever they needed to click to continue. This means that each slide only had a few seconds to fully load which really ramped up the bandwidth requirements.
This small change has made my Adobe Captivate tutorials run much smoother and has dramatically reduced any kind of performance problems such as freezing. Now I am spending time going back and making this change to Captivate projects I have put together over the last 6 months. Hopefully this blog post will prevent another Captivate user from making the same mistake and having to waste time revising old projects. This problem was solved thanks to the power of Twitter! Follow me @joe_deegan so that we can learn from each other.
Related Posts:
I was having a hard time figuring out how to reduce the bandwidth requirements for published flash files. My projects didn't have a lot of bells and whistles but when I used the "Bandwidth Analysis" option, I was finding that the KB/Sec were through the roof on every slide. In a few tweets about this with @JFDragon, he recommended to simply extend the length of my slides. The problem I had with that is that I didn't want to make the user sit around and wait for the timeline to finish out. @JFDragon pointed out that I don't need to make the user sit around if I have the slide advance using the "Go to next slide" option rather than "Continue." I was making the simple mistake of using the "Continue" option when I should have been using "Go to next slide."
The big difference is that the "Go to next slide" option advances to the next slide when clicked, no matter where the slide is at on the timeline. The "Continue" option will play out the rest of the timeline before advancing to the next slide. By using the "Go to next slide" option you can extend out the length of the slide but the user is still able to advance when they are ready. This allows more time for each slide to load in turn reducing the KB/Sec of each slide and the overall bandwidth requirements. Because I was using the "Continue" option, I had to make each slide only a few seconds long and pause at the end of each one so that the timeline would finish out before the user clicked on whatever they needed to click to continue. This means that each slide only had a few seconds to fully load which really ramped up the bandwidth requirements.
This small change has made my Adobe Captivate tutorials run much smoother and has dramatically reduced any kind of performance problems such as freezing. Now I am spending time going back and making this change to Captivate projects I have put together over the last 6 months. Hopefully this blog post will prevent another Captivate user from making the same mistake and having to waste time revising old projects. This problem was solved thanks to the power of Twitter! Follow me @joe_deegan so that we can learn from each other.
Related Posts:
Friday, July 24, 2009
Email Subscription
Being a Google Reader junkie it never crossed my mind to set up an email subscription option for this blog. A couple of day's ago I received an email from a follower of this blog wishing to subscribe by email. That email made the light bulb go on! Classic case of not putting myself in the audiences shoes. Although feed readers are more popular than ever, there are still a lot of people who subscribe to blogs by email. If you are one of those people I highly recommend trying out a feed reader such as my favorite Google Reader. It really makes it much easier to follow many blogs without junking up your inbox.
But it's all personal preference so if you prefer email subscriptions than that is now possible on this blog. If you look at the side bar on the right you will see fields for email subscription along with the icon to subscribe with a feed reader. Hopefully you are already subscribing but if not, try it out. I dare you, click on the RSS button or subscribe by email : )
But it's all personal preference so if you prefer email subscriptions than that is now possible on this blog. If you look at the side bar on the right you will see fields for email subscription along with the icon to subscribe with a feed reader. Hopefully you are already subscribing but if not, try it out. I dare you, click on the RSS button or subscribe by email : )
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Personal Learning Network 2
An assignment for my "Tech for Teaching" class at SDSU requires us to follow Ed Tech related blogs on our reader than write up a summary of what we learned from reading these posts and how these lessons apply to our professional goals. This is the second of 4 Personal Learning Network reports on some lessons I have learned lately through blogs I follow in Google Reader.
This Personal Learning Network (PLN) report highlights two blog posts found through Google Reader covering different subjects that have been catching my interest recently. The first post titled "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" provides information on how to add interaction to eLearning based training solutions while the second post, "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" covers how to make yourself more marketable by building your personal brand. The lessons learned from these blog posts will help me improve the quality of my work and help me to do a better job of marketing the results of my work.
One of the most difficult aspects of eLearning development is creating a course that is interactive and engages the learner. A great way of doing this is to build game playing into eLearning courses. While I have dabbled with online "Jeopardy" and "Who wants to be a Millionaire" type games, I have been intimidated to create anything more advanced due to the time and technical knowledge I thought was needed. Upside Learning’s "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" has helped me to realize that I may be overcomplicating game development and that with the resources they have listed; it can be easy for someone like me to easily build game play into eLearning courses.
I am currently employed with a great company but have hopes to someday become self employed or take advantage of better opportunities in the corporate training industry. An important part of reaching this goal is marketing my skills through online services such as Twitter. With roughly 6 million users and a predicted 18 million by 2010, Twitter is plentiful with opportunities to network with other professionals which can potentially lead to career opportunities. Mashable's blog post "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" by Dan Schawbel provides great tips for showcasing your brand on Twitter in an effort to create career opportunities. As a relatively new "Tweeter," I had no idea there were so many apps available specifically designed to help you build your brand. One app in particular that I found interesting was the Twitter Grader which ranks your influence in the Twitter world using an algorithm. This post inspired me to dive deeper into Twitter not only to improve the effectiveness of my personal learning network, but also to create career opportunities by building my personal brand.
The blog posts described in this personal learning network report have inspired me to go out and build fun into my eLearning courses, and excited to create career opportunities on Twitter. I used to steer away from including games in my eLearning courses out of fear it was too complicated until Upside learning's post "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" gave me the courage to increase interaction in courses by building in game play. Mashable’s post "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" has convinced me that it is worth spending time on Twitter building my personal brand in an effort to create future opportunities. After learning these valuable lessons I am excited to jump back in to my PLN to learn more about each topic.
Related Posts:
This Personal Learning Network (PLN) report highlights two blog posts found through Google Reader covering different subjects that have been catching my interest recently. The first post titled "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" provides information on how to add interaction to eLearning based training solutions while the second post, "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" covers how to make yourself more marketable by building your personal brand. The lessons learned from these blog posts will help me improve the quality of my work and help me to do a better job of marketing the results of my work.
One of the most difficult aspects of eLearning development is creating a course that is interactive and engages the learner. A great way of doing this is to build game playing into eLearning courses. While I have dabbled with online "Jeopardy" and "Who wants to be a Millionaire" type games, I have been intimidated to create anything more advanced due to the time and technical knowledge I thought was needed. Upside Learning’s "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" has helped me to realize that I may be overcomplicating game development and that with the resources they have listed; it can be easy for someone like me to easily build game play into eLearning courses.
I am currently employed with a great company but have hopes to someday become self employed or take advantage of better opportunities in the corporate training industry. An important part of reaching this goal is marketing my skills through online services such as Twitter. With roughly 6 million users and a predicted 18 million by 2010, Twitter is plentiful with opportunities to network with other professionals which can potentially lead to career opportunities. Mashable's blog post "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" by Dan Schawbel provides great tips for showcasing your brand on Twitter in an effort to create career opportunities. As a relatively new "Tweeter," I had no idea there were so many apps available specifically designed to help you build your brand. One app in particular that I found interesting was the Twitter Grader which ranks your influence in the Twitter world using an algorithm. This post inspired me to dive deeper into Twitter not only to improve the effectiveness of my personal learning network, but also to create career opportunities by building my personal brand.
The blog posts described in this personal learning network report have inspired me to go out and build fun into my eLearning courses, and excited to create career opportunities on Twitter. I used to steer away from including games in my eLearning courses out of fear it was too complicated until Upside learning's post "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" gave me the courage to increase interaction in courses by building in game play. Mashable’s post "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" has convinced me that it is worth spending time on Twitter building my personal brand in an effort to create future opportunities. After learning these valuable lessons I am excited to jump back in to my PLN to learn more about each topic.
Related Posts:
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Moodle: Quiz Scores not Saving
Oops, where are the scores! I recently learned a valuable lesson after implementing an eLearning course on Moodle where quiz scores did not save. It's not a great feeling when someone put's out the effort to complete a course but you have no record of their completion. Here is the situation and solution, hopefully it will help another frantic Moodler with missing quiz scores.
The Situation:
The course consisted of multiple assignments and quizzes that needed to be completed by a large group of people. Because it was a large group and some of the assignments needed to be manually graded, I enrolled Supervisors as "Non Editing Teachers" so that they could grade their subordinates assignments. I was under the assumption that if I enrolled supervisors as "Non Editing Teachers," they would be able to both complete the quiz and grade their subordinates. I soon found out the hard way that if you need a users quiz score to save, then they can't be a "Teacher" of any kind. Unless, you override permissions like I describe below.
The Solution:
Turns out I am not the only Moodler to have come across this problem. A quick search in the Moodle Forums turned up several pages of answers to my problem. From my research in the Moodle Forums, I learned that "Teachers" and "Non Editing Teachers" have permissions to "Preview" quizzes instead of "Attempt." When a quiz is previewed in Moodle, the scores are not saved in the gradebook which is why my supervisors scores did not save. They were all "Previewing" the quiz instead of "Attempting" it. All, I needed to do is override the "Preview Quizzes" and "Attempt Quizzes" permissions and the "Non Editing Teachers" scores will save. Here are the steps of what you need to do if you come across this rare problem:
Related Posts:
The Situation:
The course consisted of multiple assignments and quizzes that needed to be completed by a large group of people. Because it was a large group and some of the assignments needed to be manually graded, I enrolled Supervisors as "Non Editing Teachers" so that they could grade their subordinates assignments. I was under the assumption that if I enrolled supervisors as "Non Editing Teachers," they would be able to both complete the quiz and grade their subordinates. I soon found out the hard way that if you need a users quiz score to save, then they can't be a "Teacher" of any kind. Unless, you override permissions like I describe below.
The Solution:
Turns out I am not the only Moodler to have come across this problem. A quick search in the Moodle Forums turned up several pages of answers to my problem. From my research in the Moodle Forums, I learned that "Teachers" and "Non Editing Teachers" have permissions to "Preview" quizzes instead of "Attempt." When a quiz is previewed in Moodle, the scores are not saved in the gradebook which is why my supervisors scores did not save. They were all "Previewing" the quiz instead of "Attempting" it. All, I needed to do is override the "Preview Quizzes" and "Attempt Quizzes" permissions and the "Non Editing Teachers" scores will save. Here are the steps of what you need to do if you come across this rare problem:
- Go to the course site.
- Click on "Assign Roles" in the Admin menu.
- Click on the "Override Permissions" tab located towards the top of the Assign Roles screen.
- Click on "Non Editing Teacher" or whatever other role you want to override from the Override Permissions tab.
- Scroll down to the Quiz section of the override permission screen and locate the "Preview Quizzes" and "Attempt Quizzes" permissions.
- Set the "Attempt Quizzes" permission to "Allow" and the "Preview Quizzes" permission to "Prevent."
Related Posts:
Monday, July 6, 2009
eLearning Learning Upgrades
Dr. Tony Karrer strikes again with more improvements to the eLearning Learning site. I've mentioned in previous posts how useful the eLearning Learning site is as a research tool and it just got better with a few nice upgrades.
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- Best of - I used to subscribe to the "Full" RSS feed for eLearning Learning but that can be difficult to keep up with. Now there is an RSS option for the "Best Of" feeds which according to to Tony, "consists of feeds that are limited in number and point to the content that is the best stuff based on social signals." Now, I subscribe to the "Best of" feed so that I can keep up with the hot posts and don't have to do as much skimming.
- eMail Subscription - If you follow RSS feeds through email, I highly reccomend you stop the madness now and switch to a reader like Google Reader. If you still want to stick with your emails then you can now subscribe to eLearning Learnings feeds through email.
- Wordpress - The site is also now integrated with Wordpress which opens the door to more improvements in the future.
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