Using Media to Engage the Learner: Blatant Plug

Today's the day for my eLearning Guild Online Forum debut presentation. At 10:15am Pacific Time I'll be hosting an online session (via Adobe Connect) called Integrating Audio in to E-Learning Courseware.
As a teaser, here my session outline:

This session will cover:

• Why use audio in e-learning?
• Using non-linear editing tools
• How to record audio
• How to produce audio
• How to integrate audio into commonly-used rapid e-learning applications

Here's the agenda for the full two days of the Lights, Camera, Action: Using Media to Engage the Learner event.

Opening General Session
Thursday, June 4 — 8:30a to 9:45a

• Selecting Media for Learning: Thinking Inside and Outside the Box
  • Patti Shank, Learning Peaks LLC

Concurrent Session Block 2
Thursday, June 4 — 10:15a to 11:30a

• 201 | Integrating Audio into E-Learning Courseware
  • Michael Hanley, Cúram Software, Ltd.
• 202 | Rich Media on a Poor Budget
  • Jeff Tillett, T-Mobile

Concurrent Session Block 3
Thursday, June 4 — 12:00n to 1:15p

• 301 | Finding, Hiring, and Directing e-Learning Voices
  • Harlan Hogan, E-learningvoices.com
• 302 | Rapid Video and User Generated Video
  • Mark Chrisman, T-Mobile

Concurrent Session Block 4
Friday, June 5 — 8:30a to 9:45a

401 | Creating Interactive Learning Experiences With Video in Flash

John Crider, Intuit, Inc

402 | Storytorials: An Instructional Strategy for e-Learning

Kevin Cassel, James Kinnamon & Pete Safran, SAI Global

Concurrent Session Block 5
Friday, June 5 — 10:15a to 11:30a

• 501 | Sometimes a Video Isn't Just a Video
  • Stephen Haskin, S Media
• 502 | Immersive Simulations that use Voice Technologies
  • Paul Howe, Allen Interactions

Closing General Session
Friday, June 5 — 12:00n to 1:15p

• Cool Tools: Spice Up Your Training with Web 2.0 – Legally
  • Michelle Lentz, Write Technology

If you're participating, I hope to see you there (metaphorically speaking), and best of luck to all presenters as well as the backroom team of organizers and moderators who have worked so hard to make this event happen.

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Integrating Audio into E-Learning Courseware: eLearning Guild Online Forum

The eLearning Guild's next Online Forum taking place on June 4th & 5th is called Lights, Camera, Action: Using Media to Engage the Learner.

Here's what the Forum will cover:

It wasn’t long ago that e-Learning developers thought that putting a simple Flash animation and a small sound file into their e-Learning offerings was really leading-edge stuff. But today much more advanced technology, like higher bandwidth, gaming, and immersive learning techniques, is easily available. And, ever-more-sophisticated learners, who are demanding more effective and absorbing e-Learning programs, are pushing for adoption of advanced media techniques.

This Online Forum will show you how to use audio, video, animation, and other technologies to enhance the engagement and “stickyness” of your e-Learning offerings. You’ll see real-life examples, and learn various design approaches for effectively using media. This Online Forum is your best chance to focus on improving the e-Learning you create for your organization, and to...

• EXPLORE how using different media tools and processes can enhance your e-Learning offerings,
• DISCOVER how better use of media enhances a wide variety of topics and formats,
• EXAMINE the design and development of media-use techniques to achieve specific goals,
• LEARN how other organizations are using media to build engagement into their e-Learning programs, and
• ENSURE that your e-Learning meets both your learners’ and your organizations’ goals.

I'm pleased to announce that I will be presenting the Forum session on using audio in e-learning. Called Integrating Audio into E-Learning Courseware, session participants will learn the audio production lifecycle, see examples and demonstrations, and get hints, tips, and tricks-of-the-trade to enable you to produce high-quality audio for your courseware. You’ll learn how recording subject matter experts as they describe a process, task, or activity, when well-recorded and produced can, in most cases, be integrated into courseware without taking the extra steps of hiring a professional voice-over artist to re-record the narration. This can lead to considerable savings in time and money, as well as reduce the time-to-market of courseware.

In this session, you will learn:

• Why use audio in e-Learning?
• The uses of non-linear editing tools
• How to record audio
• How to produce audio
• How to integrate audio into commonly-used rapid e-Learning applications and podcasts

When learning with multimedia, research shows that visual imagery is better retained when accompanied by verbal information; that learners are better able to integrate information via multi-modal instruction. Called the Six Principles of Learning, it describes how information encoded and transmitted using both visual and auditory channels reduces the cognitive load on the learner, so their working memory can process information more effectively.

However, most e-learning professionals perceive that creating and integrating high-quality audio is a highly-specialized activity outside of their expertise. But now more than ever, e-learning technology and content production skills are a key requirement for learning professionals who wish to interact with their audience.

So join me on Thursday by clicking here to register for the event. if you haven't already registered, I'll be delighted to see you there.

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Connect Pro 7 - Notes from a seminar

As I said previously, I attended a seminar in Dublin about (deep breath) Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro 7, and just in case anyone is interested in attending a seminar themselves, or even considering using Connect, I've published my notes from the event here.

Content Creation

• Enhanced content creation features via Microsoft PowerPoint
• Supports animations, transitions, better support for importing on-screen text from PPT notes (no longer requires text to be html formatted)
• Import and edit video in any format and export as SWF
• Enhanced A/V tools: Better audio recording and editing features (ported from Adobe Captivate) new video recording / editing / rendering functionality.
• Enhanced question creation tools: adds drag-and-drop / "fill in the blanks" question types.
• New WYSIWIG question editing / formatting UI (previously done via PowerPoint's UI)

Question Development

• Enables question pooling, answer shuffling (i.e. in multiple-choice questions, correct answer(s) will be shuffled randomly and re-assigned to a new position in the answer narrative so that a user can't memorise if answer(s) = a], b], c], d] etc)
• Better integration with other content authoring tools (i.e. Captivate, Articulate, Camtasia)
• Publish content as a PDF file, preserving animations
• Better conformance to SCORM and AICC e-learning specifications for learner tracking
• Support for Question-Test Interaction (QTI) standard and enterprise Learning Management System (LMS) integration
• Better survey- and poll-creation tools

Connect new features -

Training:

• New, more intuitive UI for users
• Reporting now exposed as a series of 6 APIs for easier customisation
• Enhanced, more granular reporting features
• Enhanced report filtering including custom fields
• Better LDAP integration

Output Options

• Publish to Server
• Publish to CD / DVD
• Publish to PDF
• Publish to mobile device format

Enterprise-level integration

• Adobe are explicitly targeting the Enterprise Unified Communications space
• Integrates with MS Office Communication Server 2007 (and LCS), as well as a range of other enterprise solutions (Cisco, SAP etc)

LMS Integration:

• Better (if not perfect) integration with a range of LMSs - more to come on this in v7.5 and v8
• Individual learning paths ("Service Planning") now supported

Meetings:

• Support of breakout rooms under Meetings / Seminars
• Meetings and seminars can now be tracked under Reporting
• Ability to download and edit meetings for offline / asynchronous use

Acrobat 9

New features:

• Enhanced Start Connect Meeting functionality direct from an Acrobat PDF document
• Enables PDF document workflow & reviewing via Connect server document sharing functionality
• Form creation via wizard
• New Form tracker
• Enables users to complete, save, and submit forms via Adobe Reader
• File redaction (find / remove sensitive info from PDFs)

I still have to get my hands on an actual hosted implementation of Connect and I'm looking forward to seeing the enhancements "under the hood," as well as the new APIs, and trying out the new features. Equally importantly, I'll be looking at stress-testing the new server, just to see how it performs under actual production environment conditions in an organization.

Interesting...

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Adobe Connect 7: Finding out more

Well, the Adobe roadshow is coming to Ireland this week and I'll be attending the seminar to find out all about Adobe Connect 7.

The organization I work for already uses v6, and I'm really looking forward to seeing if all the v6 deficiencies (Flash 9 support, lousy API, some of the Admin reporting etc, etc) are addressed in this release.

It appears that now Macromedia and Adobe have fully integrated their development teams, they seem to be taking advantage of the best both have to offer. So what I'm expecting is the stable delivery platform we've come to expect from Macromedia, combined with the highly usable Adobe UI (as well as better integration with products from other stables).

From what I've seen so far (there's an interesting demo here), they have rebuilt the UI in Flex - and so far it looks quite promising. Other new features are recorded content offline editing & download, a beefed up version of Presenter, discrete breakout rooms, integration with MS LCS & OCS, better user homepage, and so on.

I guess I'll see for myself on Wednesday; I'll be posting my impressions of the app here, so stay tuned...

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Links:

Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro 7 Homepage