One thing to keep in mind is that, for 90% of the cases, Articulate is just Powerpoint — but made much cooler.  If this is completely new to you, you can check out a couple of examples in the examples viewer on the home page.  Just click on home and select ‘e-learning’ from the black-border viewer.  Towards the end are several screen shots of an Articulate piece we did about 3 years ago.

That being so, most writing for e-learning consists of building a series of Powerpoint slides.  Often the client may think they have that ready for us; the thing they’re not thinking of is that a script is needed also.  The script consists of the instructional narration that accompanies each slide.

So, roll that up and you have this writing challenge:

1. Come up with a basic list of slides that will cover the subject; you’ll probably need about 2 for every minute of seat time you expect the course to entail
2. Start walking through the slide list, building the slides in Powerpoint, which should NOT consist of the standard Powerpoint list of bullets in text.  You need some creative way to illustrate the voice instruction. Give each slide a title that will ‘track’ as a kind of thumbnail of the course when seen in the Articulate ‘outline’ view (a list of the slide titles). 
3. Add animation to the visual elements in the slides….There are dozens of built-in effects such as fading in each line of text.  But novices tend to go over the top with these effects.  Use parsimoniously if at all.   Make sure the effect has an educational justification.
4. Write the narrative text, using the Notes panel in Powerpoint. 
5. Puncuate the sequence of informational/instructional slides with some sort of special activity or reinforcement/practice related to the content being offered.  Use some of the built-in Articulate ‘game’ or Engage templates for this. However, often if budget is available, we build custom Flash interactives. This of course goes beyond writing.  But the writing aspect of this is to develop a coherent activity that uses the concept of the lesson in some engaging manner.  See our discussion of the ‘e-learning transformation’ for more on this aspect.
6. Write the test questions.  Maybe you already have a test bank from the client.  If so, you must be sure that the lesson material and the test questions match up.  It’s considered very unfair to include a question on a graded e-learning test whose answer is not given, pretty straightforwardly, in a slide.
7. Finally, package up the whole course in a reviewable format for the client. 

The storyboard defines the structure, tone, level of detail and flow of your course. It’s your course’s blueprint, placing the multimedia aspect – audio, graphics, interactivity and animated effects – into a paper document that’s readily accessible. Once past the storyboard phase, the project can go into development with assurance that the final outcome will meet the expectations of everyone concerned.

MLMultimedia has developed a storyboard template that has been used for over 2000 slides worth of storyboard content. However, there are many ways to storyboard, ours being only one.

Here’s a link where you can pull up a PDF’d version of our template:

Download a storyboard template

If you would like a version of the template in Word – a version that you can actually type into – click on ‘Contact Us’ (far upper right) and send us a note.

Storyboarding a course involves the transformation step that we discuss in our post on ‘content transformation for e-learning.’ which involves making the content suitable for self-learning where there is no teacher in the classroom to motivate and interact.

• A functional specification of the course or module
  This consists of recommended details of presentation and interface. In this document we describe the presentation means (will it include an audio track, will video be used, will the student achievement in the subject matter be assessed and recorded and the like)
• A content specification for the course or module
  The content specification is something that we have come to rely on to give a quick start to a project. Often, everyone has agreed to get started. But where do we actually start? We write the content spec based on whatever the current state of your material is – whether an older, existing CBT, notes from a live, classroom course, product documentation, etc.  If necessary we will do the research ourselves to make sure there is substantive material in the proposed course.   With this in hand, we then do our work and, in about a week, it’s done. When it is, it gives the reader a clear idea of what the course will look and ‘feel’ like. We organize your material into a series of logical modules, units and lessons and lay that out in the content spec. The spec also gives a sense of the pace and style of the course — will it be extremely technical, conversational, interactive, game-like and so forth.

  If you would like to see an example of one of these specs, leave a reply at the bottom of this page. We’ll be in touch.

• A prototype of your course
  Here we would include the interface design we recommend (based on your input) plus a small amount (one lesson or screen’s worth)

We would then go through a review and approval process and proceed to complete your course.

Before the course is complete, however, there are several steps to be sure your course works as intended:

• Test
  We organize a group review, checking and validating each detail in a live demo, or we send copies out to a select few principals. Any changes needed are made.
• Beta release
  We put an ‘as complete as possible’ version on a beta server (either yours or ours) and solicit users to take it and provide comments
• Final release
  The course is placed on the production server.

What are the signs that your technical content needs preliminary work on consistency, order and structure before we can try transformation?

• Inconsistent or out-of-date procedures turn up on associates’ or techs’ desktops
• No one can find the original or latest version of a document
• No central location exists for procedures
• No standard nomenclature exists for titles of manuals or for standards and practices
• A general sense of disorder pervades the publications used

If you are interested in persuing e-learning but are not sure of your content’s level of readiness, we can help with the following:

• Review and assessment of your existing documentation
• Research within and around your existing documents for the hidden structure that’s waiting to be brought out
• Revision of your hard copy documentation

We have experience in the following types of manuals for
computer software:

• Software user guides
• Software system administration
• Software system requirements
• API documentation
• Software marketing collateral
• System administration guides
• Design specifications
• Technical network or IT

Additionally, we have experience and expertise to prepare the following types of manuals for computer hardware:

• Electronics and device repair
• Troubleshooting and theory of operation
• Board and chip specifications
• System description and design

Online Course Development Technical writing Content ‘transformation for e-learning Storyboard development Graphics design Instructional Design Flash programming Learning management/server systems Media consulting, troubleshooting

View Work Examples

The viewer below displays screen shots of our projects. To use it, first select a category from the bottom of the panel, then click the arrows to see the projects. There’s an explanation available if you click on ‘Click Here For an Explanation.’
]]> http://new.mlmultimedia.com/?feed=rss2&p=60 0 http://new.mlmultimedia.com/?p=10 http://new.mlmultimedia.com/?p=10#comments Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:43:01 +0000 Marc Lee http://new.mlmultimedia.com/?p=10 ‘It’s an animation tool,’ ‘It’s a graphics program,’ ‘It’s a movie player,’ ‘It’s a plug-in to a browser.’ ‘It’s a multimedia tool,’ ‘It’s a timeline program,’ ‘It makes movies for the web,’ ‘It’s an advanced programming language.’ ‘It’s a SWF file,’ ‘It’s an entire eco-system for web development,’ ‘It’s the most popular programming language for e-learning.’ ‘It is what Captivate and Camtasia put out.’

Like the story of the blind men and the elephant, it depends on what part you’re involved with. It’s all of these things and a lot more.

The story of how Flash became nearly a household word is an interesting one; why it happened is a great model of Darwinianism as it exists on the Internet. The Internet is a very fast-evolving communal organism and barely existed 20 years ago. About half way in it’s evolution (say 10 years ago) a little animation program called Flash emerged and was bought by Macromedia. At the time it was purely an animation program for the Internet. That last part is key because, though a strange little organism in itself, it was wholly adapted to the new world by its use of vector graphics. Vector graphics – as you might know – is far more efficient for Internet use than technology mostly available to Flash’s competitors (animated GIFs, anyone??). Flash was quickly adopted by people whose only interest was placing a quacking duck on their website. This – such were the conditions in those days – it was thought would attract more eyeballs than the competing sites that were all gray text with still images. From there, Flash as a successful niche-dweller, was poised to take off. It’s owners began adding power for the animator to use (remember tellTarget()??) and over time (remember this is all over 10 years)….we ended up with this platypus of an animation program with also an advanced object oriented programming language called ActionScript tacked on.

Flash has become a very widely-used e-learning development tool for a lot of reasons. Mainly, its flexibility. This is both a strength and a weakness. As a strength, it allows the developer to think freely about what the user or learner needs to have presented in order to get the content into his or her mind. As a weakness, it means that there’s a lot of complexity in the programming needed to create great content in Flash.

The example below shows a simple demo Captivate illustrating a task in MS Word. You can use the control bar below to replay or pause the demo.

Over and above simple software demos,  Captivate provides a full range of e-learning capabilities, including:

• Conversion of MS Office PowerPoint files to Adobe Flash (SWF) format
• SCORM compliant tests and assessment capabilities
• Show-ne and try-it-myself modes
• Add video to project
• Table of contents side-bar panel for easy review of content
• Manageable file size for acceptable download speed

E-learning has a lot of definitions but, to me, it is not really e-learning if you simply put text on a website or CDROM course and ask someone to read it. This passive style of learning will not work. It’s transferring the material from one medium where it is appropriate for learning (a book) to another (an e-learning interface on a website) where it’s not. Why not? I don’t think adults will read just to learn what you want them to learn. The difference is motivation. If the motivation is there, then any form will do including text. In e-learning theory, which is based on adult learning theory, we assume low motivation, or rather we assume it’s our job as course designer/developer to motivate them.

So take a look at the panel below. I’ve shown three steps in the transformation of material on ‘AP42′ which is a complex technical regulation about factory emissions that’s been evolving for over 40 years! Talk about hard to motivate about. What the three panels show is how we transformed material on AP42 to a little factory that was spewing smoke.

The transformation is about how the material in book form becomes a learning experience. In the physical world, it’s easy enough to see. If you’re teaching someone how to repair a washing machine, you can easily imagine turning the e-learning experience from a series of procedures in a a book to a ‘virtual washing machine.’ This machine might have all the moving parts and a series of alarms or hot spots that will help guide the student.
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