The eLearning Network (eLN) is a community of people involved in e-learning, from suppliers to users and key figures in the field. Kineo took part in a recent event which brought together members of the community and key speakers to give insight on the topic of ‘Creating Engaging Learning Content’. Find out what we took from (and, of course, brought to) the session.

Insights from a Creative Odyssey – Patrick Dunn

Learning creative and Kineo collaborator Patrick Dunn gave a great, motivational lecture on his views of what makes for an engaging e-learning experience. Drawing from his own wealth of experience and from the lessons to be learned from the field of product design Patrick shared the following conclusions:

Engaging e-learning is:

• about methods and media (attention grabbing, manageable chunks, interactive, the right use of media)
• built on effective learning strategies (learner focused, pedagogic, objective orientated)
• built using fluid, iterative, user-focussed processes (engineering versus art, prototypes versus specifications, working with the end user)
• built by organisations with appropriate cultural values, by people with a design orientation (cross disciplined, creative and enthusiastic).

It’s good to take stock and reflect on why we do things the way we do. What we really liked about Patrick’s lecture was that it distilled a lot of our own thinking and was reflective of what we practice at Kineo and the kind of team we employ. Good to have a fellow traveller in Patrick.

The resulting buzz amongst the ELN audience was positive and reflected that a lot of people are in this to create great learning, not just to churn out a classroom alternative and cut costs.

Balsamiq Mockups Demo – Barry Simpson

Balsamiq Mockups is a cheap tool you can use to quickly sketch out wireframe layouts for your e-learning programmes. Whilst not as flexible as tools such as Visio or Axure (or pen and paper) it’s certainly a simple and quick tool for interactive designers to use to discuss concepts with internal teams and clients prior to the art direction and development phase of a bespoke e-learning project.

The Search for Weapons of Mass Instruction – Kineo, Atlantic Link, Edvantage and Caspian

This session gave attendees the chance to find out more and get hands on with a range of rapid e-learning authoring tools. With Atlantic Link, Edvantages’s Coursebuilder, Articulate and Caspian’s Thinking Worlds on show there was a good range of different tools to check out.

Though we’ve used all of these tools, today Kineo were flying the Articulate flag, which captured a high amount of interest, just slightly less that the wow factor generated by Thinking World’s 3D environments.

Our design and development team at Kineo like Articulate because it’s easy to use, can employ the use of a range of media and interactive elements and can be re-skinned to produce a bespoke look and feel. It’s also relatively cheap and easy to learn. Here are some key features:

• Desktop PowerPoint plug-in – so you use PowerPoint as a basis and then add interactivity and questions on top using the Articulate tools
• Easy to use – at Kineo we offer 1 day training courses which is enough to get you using all the key features
• Cost effective – about $1,800 per user license
• Pre-built interactions – can be added using the Engage component
• Media rich – anything you can add to PowerPoint can be added to Articulate built courses, so graphics, animations, Flash components, audio and video are all possible
• Good assessment engine – the QuizMaker component facilitates everything from one off knowledge checking questions through to full assessments with a range of question types, question banks, randomisation, different score weightings and time limits
• Can be skinned to your brand – you can be creative with PowerPont to create visually rich courses and at Kineo we also re-skin the interface for our clients, creating a bespoke look and feel
• Multiple output formats – Articulate can output courses to web, CD, Word, Podcasts and LMS (it creates SCORM or AICC compliant packages), or if you don’t have your own LMS you can publish to Articulate Online for user access and tracking purposes.

Some examples of Articulate courses include:

A quick summary of the other tools on offer:

• CourseBuilder – Online course creation software, enabling you to collaboratively create a range of customisable, interactive, media rich e-learning courses. Courses can be hosted and tracked by CourseBuilder so you don’t need your own LMS.
• Atlantic Link – A complete e-learning course creation tool, covering a variety of e-learning styles including systems training via the Capture Point tool. As with Articulate, Atlantic Link uses PowerPoint as a start point but has the advantages of enabling you to being work collaboratively and to produce accessible versions of your courses.
• Thinking Worlds – Is different to the other tools in that it creates 3D immersive worlds, which you can tailor to learning scenarios. It is a unique and powerful tool for those looking to create environment based learning solutions cost effectively. Read our review of Thinking Worlds.

At Kineo we’ve used all of the above and more. Our conclusion is simply that different tools are suited to different uses, as driven by a combination of your way of working, available resources, required end result and accessibility requirements. For more on the different e-learning authoring tools out there check out our authoring tool section.

Learning for People by People – Saffron Interactive

Following a hearty lunch Saffron Interactive, who create bespoke e-learning solutions, gave a good overview of the process they employ to design and develop effective courses. Saffron concentrated on what make’s great e-learning from their perspective, which included getting under the skin of a client’s requirements through to learner centred design and the effective use of media.

Creating Engaging and Effective Content – What Really Works – Rob Hubbard

Rob hosted a great interactive session which explored a variety of themes pertinent to what makes engaging and effective e-learning. We all had the chance to have our say and get hands on this time as we worked in groups to explore a variety of pertinent questions.

We used the online collaborative mind mapping tool, Mind Meister to add the responses from our table to a group mind map, which was a great way of capturing feedback for all of the various topics in a limited amount of time. With all those e-learning heads in the room we weren’t short of ideas and generated a sizeable map. Pity anyone trying to build a course from it…

Our table explored the topic ‘What place does gaming and social networking have in e-learning’. An invigorating discussion of this hot topic followed, in which we covered themes from the need to follow social trends to help us evolve how we design learning experiences, through to just how visually realistic a game based learning experience needs to be.

Exceeding Expectations by Delivering Quality – NCALT

The National Centre for Applied Learning Technologies (NCALT) is a collaboration between the National Policing Improvement Agency and the Metropolitan Police service. NCALT design deliver e-learning for the UK police force and walked away with awards for outstanding achievement and excellence in production from the 2008 eLearning Age Awards.

Mark Osborne and Jon Aveling gave a compelling presentation, covering the end product (visually rich, immersive and hard hitting scenario based learning), the journey along the way and the results.

What we enjoyed about this presentation was hearing about the positive impact the e-learning has had on the police. In general there is less follow up of the effectiveness of e-learning than we would like so it was great to see a case where this had been done well and showed measurable effects. Some impressive cost savings were made too. See, even the police understand the credit crunch. For us this worked well as a last presentation as it reinforced the key messages of the day, being what great e-learning is all about:

• Client and supplier working collaboratively to achieve their goals
• Designing for and with the learner to create engaging and effective content
• Creating a solution that is fit for purpose, using the right learning strategy and media
• Measuring the success, reflecting on what we are doing and striving to improve both the method and end result.

Summing Up

Overall it was an informative, engaging and worthwhile day, and an event we would recommend to those who produce, use or want to investigate e-learning. Suppliers, clients and experts all seemed enthused and engaged throughout the day and it certainly left us wanting to get our teeth into the next opportunity. It was good to see that amongst the use of rich media, social networking and a need to do it all faster and cheaper people are still striving to produce good content and great learning experiences. That’s certainly what we’re all about at Kineo and we felt in good company.

You can find out more about the good stuff that the eLearning Network do from their site. Our thanks go to the organisers for inviting us along. We hope to see you at a future event.