4 Challenges my Current Course Authoring Tools Don’t Address (and Oustart Evolution might)

Over the past four years, I have developed e-learning courses for 5 different international development organizations.  During that time, my learning “toolbox” has been large, including over 8 course authoring applications:  Authorware, Flash, Captivate, Camtasia Studio, Qarbon Builder, Outstart Trainer, Articulate Presenter, Articulate Engage, and more.

Each of these applications has its relative strengths, and the goal of this post is not to compare them to each other.  Instead, I will outline four challenges that none of these tools has addressed satisfactorily.

Challenge 1:  Easily collaborating among a distributed course development team: Increasingly, I find that LINGOs agency learning teams are no longer working in the same physical location.  Some agencies have telecommuters dispersed across the region (or the world), others engage volunteers, and others contract consultants.   In each of these scenarios, the course authoring applications in my toolkit have failed to adequately address the challenge of managing team collaboration/communication and streamlining file management.  Since my traditional course authoring applications are physically resident on my hard drive, complex procedures have been established to manage version histories, share files and update document repositories.

Challenge 2:  Efficiently re-branding materials created by another agency.  Several LINGOs agencies have developed courses which they have generously agreed to allow other agencies to re-brand and/or contextualize.  Presently, the effort required to share the course source code is onerous and any time one of the 35 LINGOs agencies decides to repurpose a course, the file sharing and file changes must be done on a case by case basis.

Challenge 3:  Easily converting course formats from one medium to another.  Presently, I am developing a series of learning materials that employ the same source materials to generate face to face curricula, on-line course curricula, asynchronous e-leaning content and all the support materials for each of these formats.  With the tools I am using today, there is no easy way to convert a single source of content into multiple delivery formats.

Challenge 4:  Expanding the community of course developers to include field-based subject matter experts.  While each of the applications in my current toolbox is strong, the reality is that very few individuals in any given agency have access to a license for these tools.  As a result, the asynchronous course development community for any one NGO tends to be small – with only a handful of people in any agency actively engaging in course authoring.  Given that the vast majority of agency knowledge resides in field based SMEs, how do we ensure that the community of course developers includes these people?

One approach to addressing these challenges is to expand the course development toolkit to include a server-based course authoring tool.  Fortunately, one of the industry leaders, Outstart, has indicated that it would be willing to provide LINGOs member agencies access to the Outstart Evolution LCMS tool.  Our preliminary exploring indicates that Evolution has the potential to address all of the challenges listed above.

If you find that any of the challenges listed above resonate with your experience, I encourage you to join a LINGOs webinar on Thursday, July 31 2008 at 11:00AM EDT for an introduction to the Outstart Evolution LCMS.  The webinar will be led by Rose Jorgensen of OutStart and additional information is available at the following link.

Top 100 Learning Tools for 2008

The Centre for Learning & Performance recently published its yearly list of the Top 100 Tools for Learning.  The list is a fun and informative read that I enjoyed on a number of levels.   As I reflect on the rankings of the list I realize there are three principle observations that come to mind:

First, I was happy to see that a number of the  tools on the list are being employed extensively by LINGOs and its member agencies -  including Articulate Rapid e-Learning Suite (#22), Jing (#28), Elluminate (#53), and more.  It is exciting to see that we are actively adopting and deploying many of the leading learning tools and that our approaches and strategies are aligned with others in the field.

Second, there were some surprising results on the list.  One in particular, but definitely not the only, was  the number one ranking for del.icio.us - a bookmarking tool I use daily, but would not have included on the my top twenty list.  The prominence of del.icio.us and other surprising entries like  like YouTube (#18), iTunes (#27), Google Maps (#42), etc.) have prompted be to reassess the way I considered applications as learning tools.

Finally, there is a treasure trove of additional software applications that I previously was unaware of and I now realize can be extremely useful.  For example, I have already downloaded the Cute PDF Writer (#70) and Audacity ( #11) to help me convert PDF files and record sound files.  Like many of the applications on the list, the two listed above are free and are ideally suited to address some of the most common challenges I have as a learning professional.  Other tools on the list are exciting new approaches to learning, collaboration and community building that I look forward to further expoloring over the coming year.  More specifically, some of the most intriguing products include Ning, GIMP and VoiceThread.

What do you think about the Top 100 Learning Tools List?  Share your experience/thoughts regarding the list by  contributing to the comments section of this blog post.

Playing Video in Elluminate Live!

I have been long aware of a feature in Elluminate Live that allows the facilitator to play video clips during on-line synchronous events.  While the feature intrigued me, I hadn’t found the time to experiment with the feature functionality until today.  While I do not have definitive results from my testing, I will share some of my observations from today’s experience.

During today’s event, I wanted to push out a video clip of debriefing interviews with iNGO staff who attended a recent project manager training in Uganda.  The video clip was large (27MB) and was published in an .mp4 format (one of several file formats supported by Elluminate, including *.swf, *.mpg, *.mpe, *.mpeg, *.qt, *.mov, *.m4v, *.mp4.)

 

I signed into the Elluminate event about a half hour early and uploaded the video file into the Elluminate room.  As I began to upload the file, I received the multimedia warning message displayed in the image below.  While I was quick to close the window, I later realized the importance of the message (more to come on this later.)

 

The 27MB video took about 5 minutes for me to upload to the room (I would recommend that you try to compress your video clips into a smaller file size if possible.)  What I didn’t realize when I first started the process, however, was that each participant entering the room, would need to buffer that content on their machine.  The buffering process started automatically when each participant entered the room and worked without any problems.  However, I recommend that you NOT plan to share a video as the first activity you conduct when facilitating an event, as the video files need a few minutes to buffer (in this case about 3 minutes.) As a moderator, I could monitor the progress status of the video buffering process on participants’ machines via an LED indicator that switched from red to green when everyone’s video clips were loaded. 

So, how did the experiment turn out?  Regrettably, the results were mixed.  The video displayed successfully on three computers, and failed to launch on three others.  Why?  I can’t be absolutely certain, but I am almost positive that the inconsistent performance is related to the warning message I received when initially loading my content – “Participants must have appropriate media players installed to view these files.”

Each of the workstations that successfully launched the video had QuickTime Version 7.4.5 or higher.  Conversely, at least one of the computers that failed to launch the video had an older version of QuickTime Player (version 6.5.) 

On the workstations that launched the video successfully, the functionality was strong (admittedly they had good internet connections.)  The quality of video was excellent, sound was clear as a bell, and there were no latency effects.  The successful examples made me excited about the potential for using video as a facilitation element of Elluminate events.  The caveat, however, is that moderators need to ensure that meeting participants have updated versions of QuickTime Player before they begin the session.

Which leads to the next logical question, “how do I ensure that participants have updated media players?”   Do not assume that passing the Three Step Set Up process found at www.elluminate.com/support/ will ensure that Elluminate event participants have the required media players to access video.  That Set Up process does NOT check the version of QuickTime Player.  Instead, I recommend that moderators share the LINGOs Plug-in test link instead – which will provide a comprehensive snapshot of the workstations Quick Time player plug in.  For more information about playing video files in Elluminate Live, see Elluminate’s Multimedia Playback documentation at:  http://www.elluminate.com/support/docs/Multimedia-Configuration.pdf

Testing Custom Made Courses in the LMS

During the last month, LINGOs staff have worked with a dozen agencies as they begin to develop courses using rapid e-learning development tools.   As agencies increasingly adopt these tools, there will be challenges getting courses to work seamlessly within the agency LMS.  Some of these challenges include problems with course completion tracking, questions about video compatability in courses, and problems with SCORM code passing through pop-up windows.  These challenges are to be expected, and as more and more agencies begin to develop e-learning content, LINGOs will be available to support agencies as they work through these challenges.

To facilitate this support process, the first step LINGOs follows is to collect as much data as possible regarding the details of the problem and attempt to replicate it on one of the LINGOs workstations.   For example, if the problem is related to a course that fails to load in the LMS, What is the precise name of the course?  What is the user’s computer configuration?  What exactly is happening on the screen when the course fails to load? 

To collect this information, LINGOs has developed a Course Testing Report Form to document the results of course testing (when opening this link, click cancel if you are requested for a password when opening this document.)   As your agency begins to develop custom-made e-learning content and loading them within in the LMS, LINGOs will provide support to help you through this process.  To ensure that we have the information to provide the best support possible, please use this form to communicate with LINGOs whenever there is a technical support issue where we can help.

Tips for Developing Courses in a Virtual Team Environment

One of the challenges when working with Rapid e-Learning Development Tools is collaborating with team members who are not physically co-located with you.  While virtual collaboration is difficult in any situation, it can be especially difficult when developing an e-learning course.  For example, it is not unusual for source filesto exceed 20MB in size - far exceeding the maximum allowable file size of most e-mail servers and are too large to share via intranets.  This posts identifies two ways virtual teams can address this challenge.

  

1.        YOU SEND IT  allows users to share files up to 100MB between members of a virtual team.  This free service places files (which must be zipped before loading) on their FTP server for two weeks, during which time you can send links to team members that will allow them to access the files via a download (rather than as e-mail attachments.)  When I collaborate with a co-developer on the look and feel of a course, or troubleshoot with an expert on the SCORM code in a course, the YouSendIt service allows me to share the files quickly and easily.

2.       On-line course development software programs like OutStart Evolution and Udutu allow course developers to share files, work on the same application, and publish courses regardless of where they are located in the world.  The Nature Conservancy has adopted this approach to course development over the past two years – largely reflecting the fact that their course developers are seldom located in the same office.  LINGOs is just starting to experiment with this approach and I will blog further on this topic over  the coming month.  If this is an area of particularly interest to your learning team, consider attending the July 31 webinar by Rose Jorgensen which will explore the features and functionality of OutStart Evolution.  More information on that webinar is available through this link.