E-Learning Authoring Tools Characterized

E-Learning authoring tools are part of a larger organizational infrastructure and learning ecosystem which typically includes hardware, software, content delivery mechanisms, and processes that support the delivery and management of learning programs. This includes everything from hardware such as servers and workers’ desktop computers, software such as learning management systems (LMSs) and authoring applications, delivery mechanisms such as routers and network wiring, and services and processes such as systems administration and the help desk.

Broadly speaking, an authoring tool is a software package which developers use to create and package content for delivery to end users.

More specifically, e-learning authoring tools enable trainers to integrate an array of media to create professional, engaging, interactive training content, and make use of digitized media assets, as well as learning objects from an existing course for reuse in a new one.

Typically, e-learning content developers integrate digital media including:

• Text
• Images
• Animations
• Audio
• Video

…to create e-learning content and courseware.

Since the term 'authoring tool' is somewhat non-specific, many programs can be considered authoring tools, including web editors like Dreamweaver, Flash, PowerPoint and even content platforms like Adobe Connect provide the facility to create learning content.

In 2003 Bill and Katherine Horton (E-learning Tools and Technologies, p.278) further refined this description and categorized the different types of tools into five domains of application (see Table 1) based upon the output that the tools are used to generate.

Table 1 Categories of Authoring Tools

Category	Description
Course Authoring Tools	Expressly designed for creating e-learning. Such tools simplify the process of implementing instructional strategies, creating menus and navigation schemes, and authoring pages—without extensive technical knowledge.
Web Site Authoring Tools	Used in creating mark-up language (i.e. HTML, XML) for web pages, and linking them to produce entire websites. Such sites include courses, or material associated with courses. By including scripting, dynamic display effects, and connections to databases, these tools can create interactive e-learning content.
Testing and Assessment Tools	Used to create and manage assessments. These tools create true-false, multiple-choice, short-answer, text-entry, matching-lists, and other kinds of computer-scored tests. Some facilitate performance tracking and the ability to generate learner-related metrics and related reports.
Media Editors	Used for creating, editing, and "Web-readying" digital images, icons, photographs, animations, sounds, video, and other digital media used in e-learning
Content Conversion Tools	Used for transforming documents, presentations, graphics, audio, video, and other content to formats that can be used in e-learning and on the Web.
Web 2.0 Tools*	Used to facilitate communication, information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the Web. It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and web applications. Includes social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups and folksonomies.

Looking at Table 1, you'll see that I’ve asterisked the bottom category; it's a testament to the evolution of web technologies over the six short years since Horton & Horton’s text was published, a whole new category of authoring tools has emerged, so in my view it's justified to add this Read/Write Web (or Web 2.0) tools category to their list.

Significantly, the lines between applications specialized for learning, and applications intended for other uses have blurred. In addition to using traditional e-learning packages, learning professionals and organizations are engaging with the concept of using using more generally available communication media such as synchronous web conferencing, instant messaging, mobile devices, video conferencing,online documents (and document collaboration), application sharing, knowledge management tools, and e-mail for training.

These technologies can be used as stand-alone substitutes for traditional e-learning software, or to complement other learning channels and modalities. The advantage of using these types of tools is that support the ways the people in every organization and in every training situation already share knowledge: they have conversations, make presentations, perform demonstrations, make conference calls, and give lectures.

More...

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References:

Horton, W., and Horton, K. (2003). E-learning Tools and Technologies: A consumer's guide for trainers, teachers, educators, and instructional designers, Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.

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Adding Audio to Adobe Captivate

Today's post covers importing and synchronizing audio with markers into Adobe Captivate. This is the third and final part of a short series inspired a question submitted by a subscriber to the E-Learning Curve Blog.

I’m pleased to see that this series about integrating sound and narration into rapid e-learning authoring environments is being so positively viewed, and hopefully my suggestions are being folded in to your workflows as you create e-learning content for your audience. But firstly, why use audio at all?

The Science Bit

According to Colvin Clark & Mayer (2002) there are six different "broadly applicable" media element guidelines to follow when undertaking e-learning instruction. These guidelines are:

1. The Multimedia Principle: Use words and graphics rather than words alone.
2. The Contiguity Principle: Place corresponding words and graphics near each other
3. The Modality Principle: Present words as audio narration rather than onscreen text.
4. The Redundancy Principle: Presenting words in both text and audio narration can hurt learning.
5. The Coherence Principle: Adding interesting material can hurt learning
6. The Personalization Principle: Use conversational style and virtual coaches.

The Modality principle

When learning with multimedia the brain must simultaneously encode two different types of information, an auditory stimulus and a visual stimulus. These two sources of information do not overwhelm or cognitively overload the learner's capacity to acquire information. Rather, psychological research has shown that verbal information is in fact better remembered when accompanied by a visual image.

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) proposed a theory of working memory which hypothesized two largely independent subcomponents that tend to work in parallel - one visual and one verbal/acoustic. As we know from everyday life, we can simultaneously process information from our eyes and ears; replicating this phenomenon in an educational context can be beneficial for learners.

This dual-coding theory, first proposed by Paivio (1971) was applied to multimedia and e-learning by Richard E. Mayer and his associates. Mayer has demonstrated (2002, 2004) that learners are better able to integrate information via multimodal instruction. In a number of studies, Mayer and his colleagues tested Paivio’s dual-coding theory using multiple media channels. They found that students learning via multimedia (animation and narration) consistently did better on transfer questions than those who learned from animation and text-based materials. That is, they (the learners) were significantly better when it came to applying what they had learned via multiple media channels, rather than unimedia (visual only) instruction.

While instructional content using multimedia learning was initially limited to logical and scientific processes that centered on cause-and-effect systems, over time it was found that the modality effect could be extended to other educational domains.

Information can and (should even) be encoded and transmitted using both visual and auditory (narration) channels. If verbal information is encoded auditorily it reduces the cognitive load of the learner. Consequently their working memory can process information more effectively. Mayer has calls this the the Modality Principle.

Adding audio to Adobe Captivate projects
Adobe Captivate, like a range of e-learning authoring environments enables you to leverage the Modality Principle by adding narration, music, wildtrack sound, and almost any other sound to learning content to enhance learning. For example, you can:

• Add a background track that plays for the duration of the project.
• Add sound to an individual slide.
• Add sound to a specific object, such as a caption, click box, highlight box, or button

Getting Started
For a refresher on creating markers in an audio editor click here. In sound editing, an audio file REGION specifies a segment of audio data which (in the context of e-learning) can be narration - a word, a phrase, a sentence, or some other meaningful unit of information. Regions are of variable length and usually align to the duration of the instructional event they are associated with. Audio editors like Sound Forge enable you to divide a sound file into different regions with specific start and end points (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Regions in Sound Forge

Unlike Presenter, Captivate cannot read markers, so to import audio into the application, you must first process the audio file so that it can be readily added to each component of your e-learning content by extracting smaller sound files from the master file (see Figure 2).

Figure 2 Extracted Regions

Once extracted, the files are ready to be imported into Captivate. At this point in the process, I expected to be able to add the folder containing my extracted files to Captivate 4. However, this happened:

... so the rest of this process was completed in Captivate 2.

Note: I attempted a range of activities to work around the error message - I won't bore you with the details here - but I had no success in circumventing the issue. Not good. For Adobe Captivate.

Without the facility to import the files via the library feature in Captivate 4, I reverted to the process of manually importing each audio file as prescribed in Captivate 2 (see demo, below). While this is a tedious process, it is still much faster than recording and editing content directly into Captivate, for the simple reason that Captivate is a content authoring tool, not a dedicated audio editor.

I read somewhere recently that if you walk around with a hammer, pretty soon everything looks like a nail; when creating e-learning content it's very much a case of using the right tool for the right job to save yourself time and effort.

You Try:

To create and extract regions in Sound Forge:

Open Sound Forge. From the File menu, select Open… -> [yourFile.wav]

Ensure the file’s audio markers are preserved as intended from last time.

Now, from the Special menu, choose Regions List -> Markers to Regions.

All existing markers will be converted to regions using the data between each consecutive marker as the region boundary. For example, if your file contains three markers, this command will create two regions; the first region will span the area between the first and second markers, and the second region will span the area between the second and third markers.

Next, from the Tools menu, choose Extract Regions to create new files from regions in the Regions List.

The regions will be extracted to a directory on your computer.

E-Learning Curve Blog Demonstration: Adding Audio to Adobe Captivate

Next time: Back to mobile learning. Delivering e-learning via a range of instructional modalities using m-learning.

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References:

Baddeley, A.D.; G.J. Hitch (1974), "Working Memory", in Bower, G.A., The psychology of learning and motivation: advances in research and theory, 8, New York: Academic Press, pp. 47-89

Colvin Clark, R. Mayer, R. E. (2002). e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning. Pfieffer.

Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge University Press

Paivio, A. (1971). Imagery and verbal processes. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

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