If there was a prize for an Elearning concept, it would probably be intuitive learning using gamification. Consequently, it is like the proverbial set of blind men feeling different parts of an elephant. Then arriving at their own vision of what the animal looked like. Similarly, gamification means many different things to many different people.

We present below some of the common ways to visualise intuitive learning in Gamification, in the context of E-learning.

Animation and Interaction

The most basic E-learning intervention we can visualise is as some sort of a Powerpoint Plus or Video intervention. Similarly here also a series of screens with relevant text with a voiceover handles the subject through the screen.

The most common understanding of Gamification is that of an E-learning interventions. It will go beyond this basic format of Powerpoint Plus or Video. There are primarily two vectors on which this happens:

1. Animation – The onscreen text (OST) of the basic intervention replaces or embellishes static examples, figures, infographics. It illustrates the subject in a manner. Hence it becomes more appealing to the learner. As the quality of the intervention is enhanced, static examples and figures can give way to animated examples, figures and infographics. It seeks to hold the learner’s attention
2. Interaction – Even today, it is the most common format of delivering E-learning, even by established names in the E-learning business. It is through one-sided Videos and Powerpoint Plus files, with or without examples, figures and infographics, static or animated. There is high risk in such interventions. The learner can lose interest as he is merely a spectator. To overcome this limitation, creators of E-learning interventions are increasingly designing them in a different manner. The learner necessarily has to interact with it for it to keep progressing. These interactions often take the shape of solving a problem. We approach it through a quiz, or a drag-and-drop exercise, or role-play or typing in a free format response or even recording a video. For the learner, it becomes a bit like participating in a “game”, hence the reference to gamification in this context.

Gamified Environment

Many organisations make an effort to harness the inherent desire of humans to participate in challenges and excel and outshine others.They are looking for achieving superior learning outcomes as well as business goals. This normally manifests itself in the form of a scorecard, or leaderboard. They access it to motivate participating employees to move up on it.

Organisations are required to identify and reward desirable behaviour and actions while penalising undesirable behaviour and actions that are detrimental to the business. The scope of this gamification varies from organisation to organisation and its ability to recognise desirable and undesirable behaviour and actions and ability to track them in a reasonably transparent manner. Outcomes are tied to the financial rewards the company offers to employees or could be run as a parallel process leading to non-financial rewards and recognition in the form of stars and badges, etc.

Though often larger than E-learning, it constitutes an integral part of the effort with the organisational Learning Management System (LMS) the backbone which monitors, tracks and publishes scorecards and performance.

Gamified, glorious “skin”

This form of gamification can also be referred to as a gamified “skin” of an E-learning intervention. Here, some E-learning creators try to go high on the creative quotient in order to impart the feeling of a “game” to an intervention. For example, an intervention could be created in the form of raiding a castle, or climbing a mountain, or travelling to outer space, or anything else they believe will appeal to learners.

This format will deliver key learning messages. In a regular E-learning intervention, with or without figures, examples and infographics, it is either static or animated. The concept is to move towards the stated goal. It could be summiting a peak or landing on Mars. Periodically the learner will be asked to answer questions based on the learning provided so far. Once he answers correctly he will move forward. The learner, many a time may be engaged in the glorious activity of rescuing the princess. Basically, he is constantly brought back to reality with the business questions he needs to keep answering.

Learning with preset Goals

We should note that moving forward with intuitive learning using gamification on the mission neither requires the learner to demonstrate any skill or learning relevant to that task, either climbing or space travelling, nor does it bear any connection to the learning goal or subject or industry or function. The learner might be made to climb a mountain, or travel to outer space or dive down to the depths of the ocean or anything else, for the same learning. He will be delivered the same learning messages and will need to solve the same problems for moving from one place or level to the next.

In this format, the “skin” of the intervention becomes both key and irrelevant. Since it is key that needs to be attractive so that it can engage learners. Similarly, it is also immaterial because it mostly bears no relevance to the subject at hand.

Gamification – Pure Game, Incidental Learning

This perhaps remains the Holy Grail of gamified E-learning.

According to some, this is the highest, and most desirable, form of gamification. The intervention designs it as a “pure” game. Without artificial props like answering business questions to move to the next level. It delivers an enjoyable experience to the learner. It is like a game which he wilfully participates in, while subliminally delivering the learning messages. For example, in the game of Monopoly, we try to achieve the goals set out in the game. The process of doing so delivers messages like value of property, strategy, consolidation, etc. to participants. And we believe that because these are not learning goals, but merely byproducts of an enjoyable activity, they become ingrained in the participant.

Gamification – Designing of the concept

Intuitive learning using gamification designing is an important element. And again, we design a wide range of games. Contrary to perception, these games don’t necessarily need to be complex. Some simple examples:

• A “Memory and Matching” game requires participants to match cards in two decks kept face downwards. When children play this game, there could be a matching of an animal on one side with its young on the other. They pick a card from each deck. If they match they take it out and pick again, else they keep the cards back in place. The cues are suitably modified to reflect the business catered to in the E-learning situation.
• A “Crossword” quiz with cues and answers relevant to the business and learning

There is a challenge with this form of gamification. It might seem too much like fun. While we believe fun is good, we don’t want to permit it on our watch. Although, it leads to better outcomes. Only mature, confident organisations, who are not under constant pressure to prove outcomes, might be in a position to deploy these.

Gamification – Conclusion

Whichever format of gamified E-learning your organisation chooses, it is upto us to utilise the concepts. Industries and learning organisations use this on an extensive basis. Salesforce is the most important business process that can utilise gamification to reap the most profit out of it. As gamification takes very little time for interaction, salesforce can access it on the go.

Learn More

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Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. 

                                                                                                                         – Benjamin Franklin

Features

Nowadays e-learning management has become like a charming toy that everyone wants to play with. It is not only easy but attractive and has a lot of benefits in its basket. E-Learning which is learning through the use of web, mobile, tablet or any other digital device is making headlines in the newly found digital world because of the following benefits-

1. Self Paced

   One of the most convenient characteristics of LMS is that it’s self-paced and asynchronous. This means there is no set time for the learning to take place. Unlike traditional learning, where students must learn at a set time and pace of the instructor’s choosing, e-learning can happen at any time, at any speed.

2. Interactive

   Typically, the most engaging e-learning is interactive. Rather than being a passive experience, interactive e-learning requires learners to be intimately involved.

3. Reach learners everywhere

   No computers where your organization’s learners are? No Problem. Since these courses are digital-platform dependent and almost all of the digital devices are portable, these courses can be accessed from anywhere around the world.

4. Adapt to the Speed of Business

   Need to get your sales team up to speed on a new product quickly? with e-learning, you create a course once, often in a matter of hours, and share it instantly with thousands of users. 

5. Empower People

   E-Learning supports healthy global interaction with students participating from all over the world.

6. Cut Costs and Scale

   One of the biggest advantages of e-learning is that it costs less and is scalable, in fact, corporations save up to 50-70% when they replace instructor-led training with e-learning.

7. Media Rich

   The most effective e-learning captures a learner’s interest and attention, engaging them in a real way so that they actually digest the material. E-Learning is replete with rich media content like images, animation, video/audio and graphic motion,balenciaga verkauf creating a multi-modal, immersive, and effective learning experience.

8. Go Green

   E-Learning can provide an eco-friendly alternative to classroom training. Cutting travel from the training equation not only lower costs, but it also helps reduce carbon emissions. E-Learning lets you analyze your level of understanding through ready-made digital tests, reducing theneed for tests in pen-paper mode.

Benefits

An e-learning system based on Cloud computing infrastructure is feasible and it can greatly improve the efficiency of investment and the power of management. This can make E-learning system achieve a win-win situation for suppliers as well as customers.

But wait did you hear Cloud Computing? I am sure you would be using social media, watching videos online, or listening to your favourite music. Ever thought from where such large amount of data comes? It is stored on a cloud. No, not the actual cloud, but a virtual space online that lets us access network services over the internet.

Improvements

Because of the robust and complicated architecture used in cloud computing, many industries have shifted their focus from investing in a cloud to renting of processing power(cloud) to a specialized vendor.  

In 2012, the worldwide Mobile Learning market reached a market value of $5.3 billion. It is estimated that it will reach $12.2 billion by 2017 where the compound annual growth rate would be 18.2%. US, Japan, South Korea, China, and India were the top buyers of mobile learning products and services in 2012. By 2017, the top buyers of mobile learning products and services will be China, US, Indonesia, India, and Brazil.

Application

There is a whole gamut of tools available in the market that let us create e-learning. For e-learning, you need an authoring tool, a hosting platform, and occasionally some other specialized applications to develop, publish and share your course.

An authoring tool is just what it sounds like: a tool you used to author or create your course. Authoring tools make it possible to develop rich multimedia interactions with text, images, animation, audio and video.

For more information visit: http://blog.stratbeans.com/

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Imagine how awesome it would be to create a course which looks really amazing and super cool. You will be able to do that with Storyline 360 without much hands-on experience. Storyline 360 helps even beginners to create pro-looking courses. The Content library plays a major role in providing all the beautiful templates and contextual characters within Articulate 360.

If you can imagine limitlessly then Storyline 360 helps you convert your imaginations into user-friendly interactive courses. Add drop buttons, dials, sliders, markers, hotspots on your slide to add interactivity in seconds within just a few clicks.

You can show your creativity by adding videos, making simulations. As a part of videos, you can add screen recordings, add voice-overs to explain the on-screen activity.

Benefits

If you are considering Storyline 360 as an effortless authoring tool only for creating engaging learning content, you must be wrong. Along with training the learners or cheap ugg Classic boots employees in organizations, assessments are a big deal which helps the managers determine how engaging is the learning content as well as the performers within different teams. Moreover, Storyline 360 helps you add contextual quizzes with 25 different question formats. You can always import existing questions and randomize them, categorize them. Combine results of multiple quizzes from different lessons to get an overall score.

Once the course is created on Storyline 360, get quick and valuable feedbacks from the stakeholders and collaborators by uploading into the Articulate 360. Now Articulate Review can provide you with access to all the works created add comments and thoughts.

Hence, Storyline 360 can be called an intra-platform in Articulate 360 where courses can be authored by assembling all the content bits made with the help of other tools.

Start using Storyline 360 by downloading the free trial.

Join us in the FREE Webinar to get started with articulate 360 suite.

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Presenter 360

This tool can help you create powerpoint-based courses. All one has to know is how to use a powerpoint. This is the only and useful addition in the “Articulate” tab which helps users make awesome courses. This is similar to as if articulate presenter 360 is added as a plugin into the PowerPoint. It has the possibility to add character set, slide templates, from the ever-growing content library, engaging content from Engage 360, assessments and quizzes created through Quizmaker 360, web objects, Flash formats, audio, video.

Slide-Level Controls helps you set properties for all your course slides in one easy-to-use window, including navigation, branching, presenters, playlists, player tabs, and more. Few other features like animations, transitions, annotations which are common in powerpoint can be observed in presenter 360. Create courses with slideshows and check out the responsiveness for multiple devices without leaving the presenter 360 window. Also, you can restrict the orientation in which course is designed according to the suitability of course content.

Quizmaker 360

With Quizmaker, assessments can be made handy by adding three major question types. For example, Graded questions, Survey questions, Freeform questions. Additionally, within this categorization, there are 25 types of questions which helps the learner or test-taker to be active while taking the assessment. In addition to this, content library integration with Quizmaker 360 helps in creating assessments which are ideal for evaluation of learner’s grasp. Moreover, after creating the quiz, you can publish it directly to presenter 360, LMS, web, CD, Word. Consequently, this helps to use the quiz or assessment in different output formats.

Engage 360

Engage 360 is all about adding interactivity for making the end-user’s experience engaging. A content author always would need an easy-to-use interface to start with. Twenty (20) different type of interactions within Engage 360 makes course authoring much easier. Along with the possibility to create custom size interactions is an advantage. For instance, endless customization can be done with the help of Eyedropper tool and also choosing beautiful color themes. Record or import audio or video files, upload videos, crop, trim and change sound levels, add watermarks. Flash objects can be added as well. In particular, one special feature is you will not lose your work to create beautiful interactions if the application closes unexpectedly. You can continue from you left off.

Ordinarily, the possibility to publish into Articulate 360 from all the three tools makes it easier to be reviewed by all the team and clients involved. This is because of Articulate Review where you can see the created course, quiz or interaction. In conclusion, now you are good to insert your feedback as a comment.

To get your hands dirty on Studio 360, download your free trial. Once you download, master your skill with the help of free webinars.

The post Articulate Studio 360 – The trident within Articulate 360  appeared first on Stratbeans.

Benefits:

The main advantage of Rise is it being a web application helps users to access virtually from anywhere with an internet connection. Usually, with the help of Articulate Review within the tool suite, a team of content authors can finish the projects with ease. Naturally, team members who have the articulate ID and stakeholders/clients who doesn’t have an articulate ID are free to comment on the created work. Hence the content authors will be able to make changes and finish up projects very fast.

For instance, media files like high-resolution images, text, videos can be uploaded into the course to make the courses engaging and elegant.

Features within Rise

The below-listed features can be used to create interactive lessons within a course

Interactive lessons with markers

• 

  Slideshows

  

  Quiz types

1. 1. Card drag quiz for a quick check of whatever is learned in the lesson.

1. 1. Quiz with multiple choices – which immediately prompts whether a correct or incorrect answer is marked with proper explanation

• • Timeline – for showcasing a series of happenings

• • Flashcards

• • Content dropdowns

In short, all these features help in chunking the knowledge into easily digestive nuggets. Therefore, different types of lessons in rise helps you create contextual lessons which can teach the desired knowledge.

Generally, the output of course on rise can be obtained as in the form of HTML, can be uploaded into LMS choosing the compliancy standards – SCORM 2004, TINCAN

In conclusion, you can see for yourself a sample course created on Rise authoring tool which helps you experience the interactivity within a course created in an hour.

To try Rise for yourself, get a free trial of articulate 360 and a free webinar to quickly get started.

The post What are the benefits and features of Articulate 360 Rise? appeared first on Stratbeans.

The increase in usage of devices such as tablets, smartphones makes it challenging to fulfill growing needs for smart digital content. Training, research reports, magazines, books, and financial data and marketing content contain the information. It needs to be delivered via print or simpler digital files. They must now be created, edited, enriched, and packaged for new devices.

In today’s technology-savvy business environment, it is virtually impossible to gain a competitive advantage. Especially, without a strong digital content development strategy. Irrespective of the industry you’re in, getting in front of target audiences now means, first and foremost, getting online. But there are many factors to take into consideration. They are mainly related to developing, creating and distributing content.

While creating digital content, one of the most common questions business leaders have to deal with its length. It’s no news that, in general, the attention span of humans is shrinking. This is why eLearning courses have been dominated by microlearning modules. Media outlets deliver bite-sized headlines that can be summed up in 40 characters or less. The best example nowadays is Inshorts which delivers news in 60 words for a particular news item.

Important questions to answered

Before setting up the digital content development plan, an instructional design team is assigned who looks after the content management system. They develop training content or content marketing team who develop promotional content must answer the questions below:

1. 1. Who is the target audience for the content they are about to create?

1. 1. What are the issues they are trying to resolve?

1. How is this content going to help them do that?

Narrowing out one’s answers is going to help a lot to create digital content. It also helps to implement development strategies according to the target audience. The outcomes of doing this would be beneficial for target audience. It helps them solve their exact purpose make the content apt. The best option is to at least have available to you a blend of content delivery options and formats. Incorporating a wide range of multimedia and tools allows you to manifest digital content materials. They are generally based on the audience and the specific needs.

Digital Content Tailoring for Corporate Training

For example, if we consider the corporate training scenario the content that has to be tailored. It couldn’t be so short as an entire course has to be designed. So the course contains modules with a significant number of interactive eLearning videos. It is used to engage the end-user. An entire course means it will consist a significant amount of subject matter.Although these lengthy web-based courses are nowadays being replaced by nugget-based learning suitable for smaller screens. So as to ensure that the training and assessment is possible on the move.There is also the question of content format. It all boils down to what will make for the most enriching end-user experience. Compliance standards complement the content types supporting them to run on multiple different devices and most importantly different learning management solutions (LMS).

Conclusion:

As far as content development is concerned, it is a must to devise a plan, strategize the plan and execute it to satisfy the needs of end-user. In order to make sure the above three things happen it is mandatory to answer the questions of who is the target audience, whether their purpose is being solved, detailing about how is the purpose being solved.

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Multi-device responsiveness of Articulate 360 gives the stakeholders the most needed chance to post in-context reviews from a smartphone, tablet, and desktop with a web browser as the medium.

What all you can do with Articulate Review?

One can just publish to Articulate 360 from right in Storyline 360, Studio 360, Peek, Preso, and Replay 360, and then you can share your content with SMEs via Articulate Review. Articulate Review content items include everything you publish to Articulate 360 from Storyline, Studio, Replay, Peek, and Preso as well as video files you manually upload. An extra feature that you have is the option to let reviewers post comments without an Articulate ID. Although if you require the reviewer to sign in you could prompt them to create an articulate ID and then post the reviews.

The streamlined review process helps cut out any unnecessary back and forth. So you’ll create courses faster and, as an added bonus, have happier team workers as well as clientele! Any reviewer comment can be up to 1,500 characters in length which are apt to convey the changes to be made.

See for yourself how change management got a whole lot easier with the perfect collaborator Articulate Review.

Comment your thoughts below.

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Getting bored and wanna play games? You can easily get a host of options to choose from on your mobile.

Commuting to work and couldn’t find time to read the morning newspaper? Catch all the latest news on the mobile phone which it serves you on a digital platter!

Have some bank transactions to make but don’t have the time to actually visit the bank – you are just a few clicks away from that otherwise cumbersome task.

Conceptualization

In a nutshell, the idea being insinuated at is also the one that you have rightly inferred by now. Mobile phones have invaded nearly every existing realm of our everyday lives. Their utility spans across the entire spectrum of our requirements. Right from something as trivial as killing time when bored, to something as prime as making secure bank transactions. Mobiles are being employed at every other juncture.

In this light, the invasion of mobiles in the e-learning sphere is no longer imminent, but has already transpired and is here to stay and evolve. Mobile learning is rapidly emerging as the best bet available in terms of platforms existing in the e-learning sphere. It can also take the shape of an LMS and assist the learners to perform even better.

Mobile learning offers manifold advantages as compared to its contemporary traditional alternatives.

The advantages of mobile learning are aplenty and have been enlisted and discussed point wise.

• Content in Micro-Chunks:

  Mobile learning amalgamated with microlearning is undoubtedly the best concoction, which if deployed to completion can revolutionize the e-learning cosmos. Its preliminary praxis in the L&D industry can restructure, refine and redefine the contemporary digital training pedagogy.

  With training happening in compact, well-aligned snippets – the training process becomes well structured, better trackable and interesting, all at the same time.Also, it enables the learner/employee to have hands-on in-service training on the knowledge gained before it gets lost in the process of going through that entire never-ending course material.

• Ease of Access:

Mobile phones clearly have a ubiquitous presence – and have permeated even the remotest parts of the globe. With almost every employee possessing a mobile, employers can leverage that availability for a double-ended advantage benefiting both them and the employees.

Uploading, assigning and accessing the assigned content can all be managed through the Cloud platform.

With the availability of Cloud we obtain a two-fold advantage:

• Enormous Storage Space:

Storage space can never be an impediment in terms of storing content data for both the giving and receiving end users as cloud storage provides you an enormous space to be availed.

• Versatile accessibility across all supported devices:

Accessing content becomes inordinately versatile in the sense that the content can be accessed on any mobile phone provided it falls under the software frameworks that support the content.

The familiarity with functioning on mobiles and the comprehensive interface makes the accessibility even simpler.

• Learn while on the move:

  Going by the literal interpretation of mobile learning, we can draw the inference that it is a learning that can be achieved on the move because it is available while on the move.

  Employees can train themselves when free or even while traveling, where they just have to log in to attempt a bite-sized course module and test themselves on the same. Thus training becomes easier, faster, convenient and more interesting.The trainee can train himself/herself in his/her spare time and apply the earned knowledge capital when at the workplace. The training content can be easily assimilated and applied if provided and received in that fashion.Also, the maintenance of uniformity with respect to the entire course structure available to all trainees is ensured – courtesy – the uniformly doled out training content.

• Engaging interfaces and smart reports for performance tracking:

  Assessments can be created in an engaging interface. Gamified assessment engines are employed to achieve that. This renders the assessment modules more interesting and gives it a touch of interactivity.Another advantageous feature to be exploited is the smart performance tracker functionality.

  Employing this feature allows generation of performance reports and the training system itself can discern the weak zones of the trainee wherein he/she needs further improvement. Thus it generates target zones with a scope of improvement by mapping their performance with specific and apposite competencies.

  Conclusion

  Training can thus be assigned and managed based on such reports thereby enabling and assuring efficiency and optimal growth with minimal efforts.Thus mobile learning has ushered in a metamorphosis in the bedrock of Learning & Development.We, Stratbeans, are the providers of such mobile learning tools apart from a wide range of e-learning solutions.

  Jump on the bandwagon and we’ll ensure you have the best experience!

  Register with us for e-learning solutions, free webinars, and product demos.

  The times they are a changing – come be a part of the revolution!!

  

The post Mobile Learning: The Next Dimension in the L&D Cosmos appeared first on Stratbeans.

Trainees and Learners prefer e-learning over classroom learning. It is to avoid the commute to reach the place of classroom training. Also, there is no restriction on the time at which they could start or end a course. The level of personalization in e-Learning is quite greater than that of classroom learning. Attributes like Cost effectiveness, Rich media (audio-visuals), Time saving, Test and assessment, Accessibility are effective. They make e-Learning system most effective to pursue courses ranging from technology to art of living.

Why do we need e-Learning?

We contemplate about the technology used, because of the robust architecture used in cloud computing. Many industries move their focus from investing into processing power to renting processing power from a specialized vendor. And education field is no different. E-learning systems usually require many hardware and software resources. Cloud computing technologies have changed the way applications are developed and accessed. They are aimed at running applications as services over the Internet on a scalable infrastructure. Cloud computing introduces efficient scale mechanism. It can lead to the construction of E-learning system, entrusting it to suppliers. Hence, an E-learning system based on Cloud computing infrastructure is feasible and it can greatly improve the efficiency of investment and the power of management. In conclusion.this can make E-learning system development achieve a win-win situation for suppliers and customers.

Current Trends

In 2012, the worldwide Mobile Learning market has reached a market value of $5.3 billion. It is estimated that the it will reach $12.2 billion by 2017 where the compound annual growth rate would be 18.2% till 2017. One can note that the top buyers of mobile learning products and services in 2012 were US, Japan, South Korea, China, and India. By 2017, it is projected that the top buyers of mobile learning products and services will be China, US, Indonesia, India, and Brazil.

The post How e-Learning tools are changing the way learning takes place ? appeared first on Stratbeans.

The video tutorial will help you understand the following:

1. Use storyline shuffle to randomise all the answer choices in a question slide in Slide View?
2. Shuffle all the answer choices in a question slide in Form View?
3. Shuffle few answer choices and leave a few in the same question slide in Slide View?
4. Alternate few answer choices and leave a few in the same question slide in Form View?

Hope this video tutorial was helpful in understanding how to reshuffle answer choices and work with them!

The post How To Shuffle Answer Choices in Question Editor in Articulate Storyline? appeared first on Stratbeans.