Many e-learning designers are understandably focused on creating more engaging courses these days. In fact, “How can I build better e-learning?” is one of the most popular questions we hear in the community.

The good news is there are many ways to design more interactivity and engagement in your courses. But sometimes, the best way to make a course better, is to take the learning out of the course.

This week’s examples highlight some creative e-learning projects based on attachments and teacher guides. The courses alone are excellent e-learning examples. But they’re even better with the supporting resources and activities.

Jamestown Exhibit

The Jamestown Exhibit contains interactive maps, animations and video interviews to tell the story of Jamestown.

The Teacher’s Guide contains expanded information along with student discussion questions, learning activities and debate questions.

I thought the debate questions were a nice touch:

Van Valen’s Gold Rush Journey

In Van Valen’s Gold Rush Journey, students play the roll of historians as they follow along Van Valen’s gold rush journey. Student activities are available as PDF documents and embedded in the actual e-learning project.

Hints and resources are also included throughout the course, making this one of the best examples of blended e-learning.

Resources include:

• Teacher’s Guide
• Student Worksheet
• Gold Rush Rubric
• Journal Entry Transcript

The Drill on the Spill: Learning About the Gulf Oil Leak in the Lab

The NYT flips things around by beginning with a web page and referring students to various oil spill interactive graphics, infographics and videos for analysis.

The web site provides teaching and learning materials around the oil spill disaster. Resources such as articles, discussion questions and lab activities help students learn about the spill and cleanup efforts.

What do you think?

• Were you surprised all three examples were designed for K-12 students?
• What did you think about the debate topics? Have you designed something similar in your e-learning? Seems like SharePoint forums or discussion boards could be a good corporate option.
• What kinds of topics would work best for student guides?
• Do you think it takes more or less time to design supporting resources?

I’m already thinking of ways to include something similar with my Screenr videos:-)

As many of you know, the Academy Awards of E-learning, aka Articulate 2010 Guru Awards, is coming up. The Guru Awards are a great opportunity for e-learning designers to showcase their best Articulate work while competing for fame and prizes.

One of the biggest challenges for many e-learning designers is coming up with a visual theme for a course. Designers know the value of the learning voice in their course designs, but often struggle with creating the visual voice and theme for their courses.

Sometimes it’s important to look outside our industry to learn how other design professionals go about the creative design process. And what better industry to learn from than Hollywood movie poster design.

Creative Process Slideshow

Here’s a slideshow on the creative process used for designing the Burn After Reading movie poster. The presentation includes preliminary and revised design comps along with designer commentary on the creation process.

It was refreshing to learn advertising designers have similar challenges as e-learning designers:

• vague client direction;
• few upfront materials; and,
• external project SMEs with final approval (in the form of MPAA).

I was surprised to learn that movie poster designers rarely get to see the actual film before they design the posters.

Because we often start so early on, one of the ironies of what we do is that we rarely get to see the actual film. The visual style and tonality of the film is often a bit of a mystery to us, so more often that not we’re making educated guesses based on the script, the filmmaker, the actors and the pedigrees of everyone involved.

Hasn’t anyone in Hollywood heard of ADDIE? Must be a union thing.

The presentation also shares examples of 1960s movie posters that influenced the final poster design.

Check out the presentation. I also think you’ll enjoy the final two slides that detail the designers’ interactions with the MPAA. Should be familiar to a lot of instructional designers.

Resources

Here are a few screencasts and web sites on the visual design process for e-learning. If you have any favorites you use, please share in the comments below.

• E-learning design makeovers: Applying visual design analysis for custom e-learning design and development
• Reducing on-screen text in e-learning: Part 1 & Part 2
• Rapid E-learning Blog: Visual & Graphic Design

Guru Awards

Are you working on your next e-learning blockbuster? If you’re looking for ideas and inspiration, please consider posting in the Articulate community forums. The community’s there to support you. The best part is, you won’t have to burn the threads after reading! <rim shot>

Let’s face it, no one takes compliance e-learning seriously. Slide by slide, learners glaze over the rules and regulations while unconsciously clicking the next button.

The problem is that most compliance courses use the same visual and narrative voice across all their courses. That’s like using the stop sign for all roadside communication.

The reality is we use different voices every day.

For example, I use one voice when my 2-year old is about to spill her water: “Ellie, remember both hands with the water” and she usually adjusts. I use another, more direct voice when she spontaneously beelines into the street during our walks: “ELLIE STOP!“ It’s all about the context and the message.

That’s why I’m proposing a more direct, in-your-face approach to compliance training. Something more uncomfortable than what’s currently found in most of today’s sanitized, polite and generic compliance e-learning.

Consider this:

Select the fictional compliance officer for whom you’re least likely to pad expense reports.

• Rick Astley
• Dee Snider

Without knowing either Rick or Dee, I’m inclined to perceive Rick as more lenient and forgiving. As e-learning designers, we can play off these perceptions to create  e-learning worthy of a parental advisory label.

01: Umlauts (aka “röcker döts”)

Metalheads have long recognized the sense of power and toughness umlauts create. Some of the most feared rockers use the dots:  Mötley Crüe, Motörhead and Spın̈al Tap are just a few examples.

David St. Hubbins, Spın̈al Tap’s front man says:

“It’s like a pair of eyes. You’re looking at the umlaut, and the umlaut is looking back at you.”

But umlauts aren’t just for rockers. Umlauts are also an effective way to get your learners to pay attention. Because they’re unexpected, they force your learners to take a second look.

Use umlauts for titles, headings and strategically emphasized body text.  It doesn’t matter that the umlaut lacks phonetical value.

When a learner comes across an umlaut, their perspective immediately shifts. It’s a type of shorthand for:

“This course just got real!”

Let’s look at a few before and after examples of umlauts applied to common e-learning fonts:

Before:

Here’s a typical slide, appropriately styled with Heading 1, 2 and bullet rules. The design is balanced, but it feels like I’m reading my company’s ethics manual.

After:

Already something’s different. Learners remain on the slide longer than before. The umlauts in the Heading 1 act like tractor beams that won’t release until the slide is committed to long-term memory. Most learners are so focused they fail to notice the next button.

Bonus:

Push your learners over the edge by applying umlauts to consonants!

Caution: Umlautization should be used sparingly to achieve the greatest effect.

02: Gothic and Blackletter Fonts

When you consider that most e-learning courses use the same fonts for every type of course, it’s no wonder learners don’t take compliance seriously.

Every font has a unique voice and personality. The better you align your visual voice with your learning voice, the better the return on your courses.

If you’re going Metal on your compliance e-learning, there’s no better type voice than gothic and blackletter fonts.

Applied:

What a difference a font makes! Here we used Blackwood Castle for our Heading 1 and Squealer for emphasis in the unordered lists.

Note:

Blackletter fonts are designed for titles, headings and emphasis words or short phrases. Your content should be set for readability, so find complementary body text.

I like Franklin Gothic and Bell Gothic for example. Fonts such as Futura, Century Gothic should be avoided unless you’re going for more emo designs. And even then it probably doesn’t work.

03: Replace  Thumbs Up with Sign of the Horns

I’m sorry but thumbs up doesn’t cut it any more. I give my 20-month old the thumbs when she puts her sunglasses on by herself. It’s not the message you want when your learners earn 90% or higher on their annual ethics certification assessment. Not even close.

When you truly want to validate your learners’ performance, give them something meaningful like Sign of the Horns.

Variation:

First, let me say the suit jacket-Horns combo above totally works. But there will be times when you’ll need even more metal with your Horns.

One way to achieve greater metal is by taking a sleeveless Horns in the Air photo and layering a suit jacket over the arm, just low enough to view the accessories.

Another look:

The following example should remove any lingering doubt about which method sends the strongest message.

Fist Bump:

Be honest with yourself here. Could you pull off a fist bump? I’ve seen very few stock photos demonstrate authentic fist bumps.

It’s possible to effectively use a fist bump, but it’s going to take creativity and composition skills. Here’s one way to make the previous image work:

Exceptions:

I might have been a little hard on the thumbs up images. The truth is, there are times when they can work, although I’d still recommend you go with some of the other techniques I’ve described. We haven’t looked at accessorizing stock photos yet, but here’s one example of an acceptable thumbs up:

Note:

For those of you wondering, the middle finger is the opposite of Horns in the Air. While the finger can be effective in ILT and blended programs, it’s unproven in e-learning. Best to avoid for many other reasons.

Substitutions:

Horns mean different things to different people. They could be too edgy for some learning audiences.

It’s perfectly acceptable to substitute Horns in the Air with the Shaka sign.  The ultimate goal here is to get away from overused stock photography.

On your own: Growl, Grunt and Squeal

Horns in the Air go best with the rocker growl. Not an easy technique and certainly beyond the scope of this article. But once mastered, the growl adds the perfect vocal emphasis in your compliance courses.

04: Ditch the Post-Its for Tattooed Knuckles

Post-its, index cards and other office elements are the foundation to every designer’s toolkit. They’re essential because they’re familiar and versatile.

Because note cards and similar items are so common, they’re not the best choice for serious compliance training. One sure-fire way to send strong compliance messages is to ditch the flimsy notecard and use tattooed knuckles to communicate chapter and heading intros.

Before:

What’s wrong with this slide? For starters, the manicured nails and high-quality business card don’t communicate, “Fatality – Up Next!” like an OSHA course needs to.

In fact, the message here is less about workplace safety than it is personal grooming!

After:

In this example, we retained the original photo composition, but our message is clearer and stronger:

“Workplace injuries hurt, but you’ll hurt worse if you don’t complete this course with 80% or higher.”

Talking points:

Did you notice how the first image pulled you closer to your monitor while the second image pushed you back? This is by design.  Size and composition affect how each image communicates.

In the first example, everything is in focus and the text is safely set with generous whitespace in the business card.

In the second image, the fist is nearly filling the height of the image and it’s the only object that’s in focus. The man and his arm are blurred giving this a strong portrait effect. There’s also less whitespace around the letters which contributes to the tension.

If we wanted to update the first image, we’d enlarge it or crop it closer around the business card, increase the font size and use a heavier font and blur everything behind the business card.

05: Accessorize Existing Stock Photography

This last example is really about expanding and modifying existing stock photos. The reality is we don’t always have the option to buy new photos to get the compliance edge we’re after.

Let’s look at some essential metal design elements and how they can be used to toughen up existing photos.

The elements:

By no means is this a complete list of objects, but it’s a great start for modifying existing photos.

Example character makeover:

Using a few of the elements, we’re quickly able to convert the Before character into someone learners will obey!

What do you think?

Most images aren’t effectively communicating what the designer intends them to communicate. Stock photos are essential, but they’re most effective when used as a starting point rather than one-size fits all.

So, do you have what it takes to start rocking your compliance e-learning?

If you’re an e-learning designer looking for examples of engaging scenarios, visual storytelling and learner control all in one asynchronous course, you’re in for a real treat with this Macbeth motion comic.

“Macbeth? As in Shakespeare Macbeth?”

Yes, that Macbeth. Admittedly, Shakespeare knew a thing or two about writing and storytelling. But before you say, “I’m no Shakespeare” or dismiss this project as too custom or high-end, keep reading. There are some creative ideas and storytelling techniques any designer can use in their next e-learning project.

What makes this motion comic so special?

Let’s look at some of the features that make this such an engaging model.

Two playback modes: Movie and Panel

Learners can choose to watch the course in movie mode or slide mode.

In movie mode the course plays through the slides and learners can take everything in as a movie. Think entertainment mode where learners experience the course as a movie.

For more control, learners can view the course in panel mode. Panel mode is more of a typical slide, click next, approach where learners advance through the slides on their own.

Most rapid authoring tools offer designers an option for controlling course playback. The idea is to look for ways to balance the course’s storytelling mode and learning mode by using a combination of playback options.

Multiple script versions:

Want to talk learner control in e-learning? How about offering your learners multiple versions of the e-learning script?

Take a look at the three options for viewing the course.

• Original text - The entire Shakespeare script with short context notes (think SME, legal or compliance jargon)
• Plain text – A plain English translation (think the co-worker next door)
• Quick text – With reduced language for younger and reluctant readers (think salesperson; everyone else)

What’s also cool is the options are available anytime during the course. You can switch versions as often as you like.

When would this model be effective?

Legal and compliance e-learning are a couple ideas. Just think about it. How many times have we re-written our courses based on requests demands from our SMEs who insisted we retain the legal wording in the course?

Rather than using Macbeth’s “Original Text” and “Plain Text” I’m thinking something like this would work:

How will this motion comic make me a better e-learning designer?

Narration and scenario recording

First, I recognize this course was performed by voice actors and not some unlucky cube mates who got pulled into a recording session. But that’s precisely why this is such a great example. Most of us don’t work with professional voice actors. This is a good example to study how the pros read the lines.

The dialog is quick and the sentences are shorter. There’s emotion in the dialog. The voice actors are living the scenes. Next time you nominate some folks to read your e-learning scenarios, play a few scenes from this course for inspiration.

Animation and video techniques

It’s amazing how well animation and zooming work when used appropriately. When I first viewed the course, it seemed considerably more animated and full-featured that it actually was. But after re-watching some scenes, I noticed the designers used a lot of creative cropping techniques more than anything.

Close ups, long shots, pans. Often scenes begin with a long shot and then zoom into a character. These are great techniques to get the most from your course stock photos.

Offer multiple channels for learning

The interactive comic is also available as a read-only, graphic novel. It contains the panels used for the motion comic. Illustrators probably created the still, panel-based graphic novel and then went back and animated individual panels.

Here’s an example Darla Wigginton created showing you how to use PowerPoint animations for similar effects:

So what’s your take? Could anything like this work in your organization?

Would your legal team agree to using two scripts in a course?

How do you use animation, pans and zooms in your e-learning scenarios?

Like ‘em or hate ‘em, bullet points are a big part of  e-learning. And when used appropriately,  they’re an effective way to chunk content.

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.  Years of misuse have altered  learners’ DNA in such a way they skip right past them (unproven claim).

So what’s an e-learning designer to do? One way is by viewing bullets as design elements.

We know visuals are noticed before text.  So let’s use this to our advantage by designing bullets as the focal point to hook learners back into the content. After all, it’s the content that matters, right?

Here are three ways you can begin creating more visually engaging bullet points in your e-learning courses.

1. Use Your Client’s Logo as the Bullet

It doesn’t matter if your client is Fortune 500 or a two-person consulting firm, everyone likes seeing their courses branded.

Bullets are an easy way to customize a course. Just swap out the default bullets with your client’s logo or other branding elements.

Keep in mind many logos don’t scale well at bullet-sized dimensions. In those cases, it’s a good idea to extract the essential design elements from the logo to create a derivative.

For example, let’s look at the Starbucks logo. Try scaling the logo down to 22×22 pixels. It doesn’t look so hot and we’re probably doing more harm than good at this point.

By examining the logo and isolating design elements we can create new designs that still align with the branding.

And now we have one possibility for incorporating branding into our bullets:

But what about companies with specific policies against using their logos in such ways? No problem! Look to the content to influence the design elements.

Consider a driver safety course. A chapter might be on road distractions with a sub-topic on bicycle distractions.

Yellow caution sign + bicycle illustration = custom bullet opportunity!

So, a pretty simple design tip that usually goes over big with clients.

2. Create Custom Objective Screens

One thing I see a lot of new designers do is treat all content screens the same. They’ll use the same slide template for chapter intros, objectives, activities, scenarios and so on.

If you wanted to make a single design enhancement to your courses, take a look at creating custom objectives screens.

Celebrate your bullets by placing them on a content-inspired slide using a different typeface from the other slides. Handwriting fonts are a great choice for objectives. Why? Objectives are the openers, the icebreakers. They should be friendly, approachable and most of all creative.

Here are a few examples of ways you can mix up your presentation style for course and module objectives.

Extra credit: Create your text using uneven paths for even greater authenticity.

3. Animate Bullets with Style!

Flash-based bullets are another way to add more cowbell to your bullets. They’re fun to create and I’ve seen design teams compete for the most creative animated bullets.

Here are a couple examples. Feel free to download the Flash CS3 files to use as you like.

Example 1

Example 2

Source Files

Final Thoughts

I know there are some active conversations around animation and learning. I follow those conversations and agree e-learning designers should understand the research. But I also feel designers should break the rules once in a while and try new approaches.

How many times have you heard compliance training is too boring to be taught in an entertaining or meaningful way? Most designers would agree that compliance training is the least glamorous of corporate training. But Yehuda Berlinger just made it a little harder for designers to justify such comments.

Yehuda rewrote US and Canadian copyright laws as verse. Not only is the poetry fun to read but it’s also memorable.

Why would he take the time to rewrite intellectual laws as poetry?

“Because I want to read the actual codes, but can’t do it unless I’m entertaining myself in the process. Also writing summations of each section helps me to remember.” There are so many lessons for all of us right there.

Yehuda links each verse to the actual copyright law. It’s a brilliant exercise in creative summation and would make great learning activities – ILT or WBT.

For example, here’s a line from US law § 114. Scope of exclusive rights in sound recordings:

(a) The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording are limited to the rights specified by clauses (1), (2), (3) and (6) of section 106, and do not include any right of performance under section 106(4).

And Yehuda’s verse:

Sound recordings, but not music
Can be re-performed
As long as it’s attributed
And not grossly malformed

He’s rewritten US Copyright Law, US Patent Code, US Trademark Code, Canadian Copyright Code and UK Copyright Law.

Via TechDirt

Design mapping is a structured process for identifying the right elements—fonts, objects, people, textures, sounds and colors—for your multimedia projects. The process helps instructional designers move past the “blank page” by streamlining the visual analysis process.

Check out the overview:

Remember the good old days of e-learning development when your courseware would remain fresh and current for at least six months, maybe longer? It seemed even compliance courseware only needed updates a couple times a year.

Not so much anymore. Content complexity, dynamic industry regulations and an increasing need for user input has made courseware design more, not less, challenging than it used to be. Or should I say, more challenging using traditional development models.

Assuming e-learning courseware is your primary training product, what would it look like to offer an alternative, rapid course model based on O’reilly Rough Cuts?

Have you seen these? They’ve been out now for a couple years. From a recent search on both oreilly.com and peachpit.com, it appears they’re gaining momentum.

What are they? Rough Cuts are essentially book unpublished drafts that you can purchase (yes, real money) to access the books while they’re being written. You can even interact with the author to provide feedback and corrections

From their FAQs:

Rough Cuts content usually becomes available anywhere from two to six months prior to a book’s publication. It’s updated as the author and technical reviewers progress, so you’ll have access to new versions as they’re created. Chapters won’t necessarily be written and posted in the order in which they’ll appear in the published version. Rough Cuts titles live up to their name – they haven’t been fully edited, subjected to final technical review, or formatted for print. In other words, they’ll be very current, but they won’t be pretty.

You’re getting the content up to six months prior to release! In addition, you’re able to interact and provide feedback to the authors during this process. And this is from the publishing industry who, historically, hasn’t been the most amenable to digital publishing.

And if you think Rough Cuts are the lighter, “fluffier” titles, think again. They’re covering it all:

Developer:

• Rails
• PHP
• Joomla
• Goolge App Engine

Designer:

• Final Cut Pro
• Photoshop
• InDesign
• CSS

Educator:

• Algebra

Trusting Our Users & Learners

True, you could argue this is just another business model designed to “rapidly” separate readers from their money, but the e-learning 2.0 in me sees this as a creative way to get “something” in front of my learners quickly, while enabling a greater number of learners to participate, and contribute, in the course design process. For this to work, there has to be an element of trust between consumer and publisher.

O’reilly obviously trusts its consumers to understand the tradeoffs of having access to unfinished products. O’reilly clearly states what it is you’re buying in Rough Cuts and trusts consumers to use the information with the understanding the content hasn’t been finalized.

Combined with input from actual readers, this model has to make the product that much better. The larger question is how many corporate training departments could trust their learners to buy into such a model? Would they throw out words like “risk” and “liability” before trying to understand how such a model could be applied? How could you initiate a grassroots initiative with individual lines of business?

Still an Enterprise, Not a Democracy

This will no doubt be scary for some organizations. To be clear, this model does not mean the process has to be democratized to the point that no clear owner exists. Your SMEs, legal and business owners still own the final, published version. What you’re offering learners is more immediate access to content while capturing learner feedback during your normal course development cycle. Your audience is now participating in part of that design.

I’d be interested to see, either from O’reilly or its authors, how the model (+/-) impacted development times, quality and errata.

The Need for Alternative Development Models

Rough Cuts clearly aren’t for all readers and neither is a similar courseware model. They’re designed for those long tail readers/learners who have a sincere, professional and passionate interest in having immediate access to content today, rather than tomorrow.

Thinking about your organization, its lines of business and the types of e-learning you currently create, could such a model be incorporated into your e-learning offerings?

Who would you need to work with to initiate such a model? Which groups and types of training content would be best suited for such a model?

Predictions for training departments in 2009 are anything but optimistic. Check out a recent Jay Cross post on the state of the industry and forthcoming “cataclysm”. Clive Shepherd also comments on our industry and offers now is the time for change and taking action.

If you’ve been trying to advocate for more e-learning 2.0 and informal learning, this could be the opportunity you’ve been looking for.

Mobile phone companies continue to raise the bar for the most creative compliance public service announcement (PSA).

It continues to amaze me (read: annoy) how groups *outside* the training department regularly design more creative and engaging training than those in the training department.

Consider the most recent Sprint PSA reminding moviegoers to turn off their cell phones before the show:

Awesome! Talk about creative compliance training. Can you imagine something similar in your next compliance, ethics or Code of Conduct e-learning course?

Look, this is nothing new for the film industry. AT&T has Martin Scorsese doing a similar PSA. Just as you’re getting into the clip, Whammo, you’re reminded to turn off your cell phone.

Presentation of Content Matters

Understand that this is not unique content that lends itself to creative interpretation. Rather, this is a straightforward compliance message “reminding” you to turn off your cell phones. What is different, is the presentation of the message.

The compliance message could have been:

• Don’t launder money
• Don’t steal from the company
• Don’t commit insider trading
• Don’t <Anything!>

Using the same approach from Happy the Hedgehog, we could have created intros showing people from various departments in the company. Maybe each person introduces themselves and says what they do in the company. Then, after six or seven people, the final person comes up, introduces himself and what he does: “I’m Bob. I’ve been here fifteen years, I work in Finance and I use the data from these reports to steal from the company.” And the final onscreen text could read, “It takes many people to make a company. It takes one to ruin it.” Find a connect and use it.

In a recent post by Karl Kapp, we’re reminded how “Southwest Airlines takes the boring compliance requirements of airline safety and makes it fun..” If you can make airline safety fun, you can make your e-learning content fun.

One of my favorite quotes around content design comes from Michael Allen: “There’s no such thing as boring content, only boring treatment of content.” I heard that at one of his e-learning workshops over five years ago and I’ve used it with my teams ever since.

With that, do you think the average e-learning compliance course would write a Cell Phone Awareness course?

Most elearning is predictable. Sure, you can upgrade your image subscription from Photos.com to Getty.com, add some Flash widgets, BigShot clips, and so on. Those are all ways to enhance the design. But when we talk about truly engaging content, we’re not only talking about the content, but also the way the content is presented.

Low-tech Works!

For those who think video, multimedia and high-budget production development is required to present engaging content, consider this creative non-smoking PSA from the 1970s:

Can you believe that audio? This is obviously low production value by any standards.

The Bic example could easily have been created with two static images animated as Gifs or Flash. The scenario is what matters most. Granted, the Bic example might be too risque for most corporate audiences, but the concept of two products interacting to deliver a compliance message is spot on. This would make a great opener to a module on appropriate and inappropriate smoking places.

Bookend Modules with “Happy” Intros

There’s no need to re-develop your existing courseware.

Instead, consider enhancing what’s already developed by including engaging, “Happy” intros at the beginning of each module.

You can get a lot of mileage from creative openers that set the stage for a chapter.

Seek Outside Perspectives

If you’re struggling with trying to create more engaging openers, consider reaching out to someone from marketing, sales, IT or any other department. Take them to lunch or coffee. Share your project with them.

You’re not trying to offload the training on others, but rather you’re looking for a non-training perspective on communicating the message.

One idea that worked well was to take the entire team to lunch and hold script read-throughs. We’d read through each module and throw out crazy ideas for communicating each slide. This took a few hours but the end product was always better than what we started with.

The advertising industry is a great place to look for inspiration. One site I’ve used for years is AdCritic. AdCritic hosts the best agency-created TV commercials. Most of these are commercials trying to sell products, but isn’t that what training is also trying to do?

One of my favorite magazines is Communication Arts. This magazine celebrates the best in visual communication. Each year they offer the best in each area with an Interactive, Advertising, Illustration and Photography Annual. If you skip the subscription, at least pick up those four issues.

It’s all about creativity, having fun and most of all, not taking ourselves too seriously.

Finding Creative Motivation

The cell companies obviously take pride in creating the most talked about, most engaging PSAs. In other words, the more they pull you in with their PSAs, the more you talk about it. The more you talk about it, the more you remember it.

Folks, this is TRAINING we’re talking about. Why can’t this be your training? What would it look like for instructional designers to compete internally for the most creative course opener, module or course? Could creative, good-spirited competition among designers help bring fresh ideas to your courseware?

The media industry realized they have to make commercials more engaging and unpredictable to connect with consumers. How much longer before e-learning begins connecting with its learners?

Anyone who’s ever designed an elearning course, corporate brochure or any form of graphic design, has at one time or another been asked to replace one or more images that could be perceived to be offensive or biased.

In corporate elearning, this can be particularly challenging since so much of our courseware calls for images of people engaged in interpersonal scenarios. Sometimes courses include disproportionate examples of a group (group = gender, ethnicity, class, etc) in one role or another.

Common examples of image bias in courseware can include:

• Images where one group is disproportionately portrayed as the “offender” in case studies or examples;
• Images where one group is disproportionately a manager or authority figure and another group is consistently depicted in subordinate roles;
• Images where a group is depicted as part of a particular social class while other groups are mostly depicted in another class.

Of course elearning scripts never direct media designers towards such bias. Media designers, in pursuit of the “perfect image” may not always keep track of which groups have been used in which ways. They simply look for what they feel is the best image available to depict a particular piece of content.

Instructional and media designers need to take into account the “who” and the, “who’s doing what” as well as the “who’s doing what to whom” in their course designs and image selections to ensure objective and non-biased representation in their courseware.

Here are 10 suggestions for ways to manage image neutrality in your elearning course designs.

1. iPod – Silhouette Effect

This popular photo technique can be used for neutralizing your people photos and drawing focus into the on-screen text and content rather than on the people.

For variety, you can mask out any objects they’re holding for a combined illustration-photo effect.

Solid colors as well as gradients work well.

Variation – Pixel People

This is another effect I’ve been playing with lately and it involves incorporating gaming design elements such as pixel-drawn people, objects and sounds into designs.

A unique contrast emerges when pixel art is juxtaposed with realistic objects and backgrounds. It gives the course design a modern and clean look while removing some emphasis on the people.

What do you think? Does it work?

2. Cartoons or Illustrated Characters

Before you say, “He’s crazy, we can’t use cartoons in our corporate elearning” consider for a moment how professionally illustrated animals or non-human characters could be used as recurring “actors” in your courseware.

Think Schoolhouse Rock meets Pixar.

Somewhat on-topic example: My wife doesn’t enjoy going to Pixar-type movies. “I don’t like cartoons” she always says. But every time I’ve brought (read: dragged) her with me, she was totally engaged, laughed, cried and empathized with the main characters. She was drawn into the story because the characters and story were believable and compelling.

The same can be true for corporate cartoon characters/animals.

3. Hire or contract a 3D designer

Expand your image/concept library by contracting a professional 3D artist to design object metaphors for your particular industry or business. This can be especially beneficial for industries such as healthcare or financial services where specific products and processes aren’t often found in royalty-free libraries.

When I started with my current company, I asked my team to provide a list of common terms and concepts frequently used in their courseware. We then worked with a 3D designer to create objects for each of the concepts. The library proved invaluable in developing our courses and we often relied on the custom objects more than our extensive image library for business-specific instances.

Great solution if you have the budget for it.

4. Review existing elearning courseware prior to designing

If you’re new to an organization or doing consulting work, ask to review their elearning courseware before you start your project.

This is a great way to understand established image use and standards in the organization. Also, ask if they have internally and vendor/externally developed courses and make note of any differences in styles and images used.

5. Define your cast early in your storyboard design

Consider including a cast sheet in your eleanring storyboard that includes all roles, characters and scenarios where you want people represented.

Try pulling all people images at the beginning of the project for review rather than having media designers pull images as they go along.

6. Hold a script read-through before sending to development

Time may not always permit for this but there’s nothing like bringing 4-5 people together for a couple hours and going through the script, slide by slide, to brainstorm concepts and visual metaphors for each slide.

Ask 5 people to describe how they’d visually communicate an idea and you’ll be amazed at the options you’ll have to work with.

7. Don’t use people

Because so much of our corporate elearning courseware is designed to change or improve human behavior, it only seems logical that courseware designs include photos of real people. “You can’t design a compliance course without people, can you?” Of course you can.

As my colleague Adam frequently reminds me, “Nobody’s been offended by lines, boxes and arrows.”

Challenge yourself and your team to consider how shapes, symbols, icons and other graphical metaphors could be used for representing data and instruction.

You could hold a team-building game of Pictionary for starters:-)

8. Allow your learners to select their own avatar or pedagogical agent

OK, this option requires a greater level of programming but it’s a powerful way to allow your learners to customize their own elearning experience.

9. Randomize your people images

Using JavaScript or Flash, you can randomly load images in your slides.

Sure there’s a little more upfront design and development work but this is definitely an option when you’re having challenges with photo agreement.

10. Know your audience

And of course our golden rule of design: Know your audience. By audience, I mean both your learner population as well as your course owners and stakeholders.

The challenge is these two groups are not always the same so it’s essential to understand both groups.

Lately I’ve been working on identifying some alternative and cost-effective ways for delivering training. It’s an important area of focus for my group right now.

So tonight, while reading through some white papers, elearning blogs, books and forums, I received a joke via email. As someone who loves (and welcomes) interruptions, I opened and read it. The joke wasn’t the least bit funny, but that’s not the point. The point is, the joke was creatively designed.

The joke was text-based but to get the punch line, you needed to click-drag your cursor between two asterisks. The space between the two asterisks was filled with a white-colored font that, once selected, revealed the answer.

NICE!

I wonder how such a technique could be used as part of a follow-up to an ILT or elearning course? Could such a format be effective simply because it’s different and unexpected? Could it have adverse effects if perceived as a gimmick?

Here’s a quick example I put together:

———-

Three Sources of Leadership Power
To be a successful leader, you must understand where power comes from and how best to develop it. There are three sources of power for becoming an effect leader.

The three sources are:
(For the answer, click-drag your cursor from star to star)

* 1. Role power 2. Relationship power; 3. Knowledge power *

———-

OK, so it won’t be part of any formal learning program and you could only get away with it a couple times a quarter, but what a fun and creative way to deliver short, targeted questions for learning.

One of the more meaningful books I read last year was Made To Stick. If you’re a learning professional, you need to read this book. There are many great examples on how to make ideas (read: training) “sticky”.

In particular, the Beyond War scenario:

Statistics are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. They will, and should, almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. It’s more important for people to remember the relationship than the number.

When the anti-nuclear missile group, Beyond War, described the out-of-control arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1980s, no one realized the scale of the growth. Even though a single warhead was enough to decimate a city, the number worldwide had grown to 5,000.

To demonstrate the scale, a Beyond War speaker would pour 5,000 BBs into a metal bucket. BBs are weapons, and the sound of the BBs hitting the bucket was threatening. It was irrelevant whether there were 4,135 nuclear warheads or 9,437. The point was to hit people in the gut with the realization that this was a problem that was out of control.

I love it!

How many elearning designers do you think would have taken the time to create or find a sound effect that simulates 5000 BBs hitting a bucket?

OK, admittedly I Googled for five minutes and couldn’t find any, either. I did, however, have some popcorn and a sauce pan.

A 30-second audio recording of popcorn hitting the pan and one hour of Photoshop/Flash development yielded the following example:

The rest of your course slides could be static and text-based, but what a great way to gain attention for a new chapter or module.

This was just a quick example but hopefully enough of one to demonstrate how a little creativity, combined with intrinsic motivation, can deliver engaging results.

Just listened to last week’s podcast of Science Friday. Ira interviewed a guest who specializes in “big numbers” and who talked about how one goes about communicating such indescribable values. Just as I was about to shout “Eames video” at my iTunes, a caller referenced the famous Powers of Ten short film.

The Powers of Ten is the classic video demonstrating how powerful “adding another zero” to numbers can be. While the video quality is clearly dated, it still stands as an excellent example of how to use multimedia to communicate complex concepts. (You’ll need to submit your name/email to view but it’s worth it)

Did you notice how little text was used to support the content? It’s an eight-minute narrative that contains LESS text than most one-minute elearning slides while effectively communicating distance and relationships from 1 meter (10⁰) to 100 million light years (10²⁴) and then down to .0000001 angstroms (10^-16 meters).

The narration is supported by:

• zooming images;
• graphic overlays; and,
• animations.

Text is only used to communicate the current distance from the Earth. Overall, it’s a very simple production. How simple?

This effect can be created with simple animations and motion tweens, however, we’ll take an even faster approach.

The zooming in and out of an image reminded me of the Sofake web site. Knowing that they released a Flash component/tutorial in the Flash MX Most Wanted book a few years ago, I downloaded the source files from the Friends of Ed web site (Jordan Stone’s examples).

Next I launched Google Earth and took six screenshots of my house in Phoenix at different view levels.

Finally, I dropped each of those images into Jordan’s source file and now have an interactive version of the Powers of Ten film.

This was a very quick example and for more customization, most designers would want to work with the development team. But in less than 30 minutes, we had a rapid prototype of the effect.

So, if using a minimal amount of text can be used to communicate incremental distances from 1 meter to 24 light years, why do we rely so heavily on text for so much of our courseware design?

Answer: It’s easy!

It’s considerably easier to Cntrl-C/Ctrl-V a block of text from our scripts than it is to create something. But if we don’t do it, who will?

Even if you’re currently stuck with page-turning elearning, what would two extra hours of development look like to drive home a key point or two? At the very least, it might wake up your audience:-)

Every course, regardless of how banal the content might seem, has opportunities for greatness. One of our roles as elearning designers is to identify those opportunities and creatively communicate them.