Trainers Talk Tech

On July 11th, 2007 the term Crapid eLearning was introduced by Tom Kuhlmann from Articulate. He introduced the term in his blog post Myth 1: Rapid eLearning is Crapid eLearning. I love this article because it defends the tools and attacks the design. This is one my Thomas mantras - focus on the LEARNING part of eLearning. It also gave me a great new word I could use in casual conversations with my team!

For me, Crapid also means visually barren. Sure, you can have a great eLearning design doc, great objectives and some cool interactions and simulations, but if it looks unprofessional or amateurish, then you have some usability issues to overcome. Now, there are lots of folks who may disagree with me, but out of the box templates, buttons, ready made flash "interactions" all fall short of what a professional graphic designer can create. They may help you quickly put together a program, but the user may view the content in a bad light if the interface and visuals are shoddy. They may have a hard time seeing the diamond in the rough. Visuals must be stimulating and professional looking until they fade into the background and the content takes over. Think of it as a first impression - it takes a long time to get past a bad first impression, just like it may take a user a while to get past an ugly, awkward interface.

I've created Crapid eLearning. I've also created bad eLearning projects. Because clients want what they want and paid me to deliver it. I've worked hard to talk people out of design decisions or instructional choices that I didn't agree with, but because they are the client, I build it to match THEIR vision, not mine. I've also done Crapid work because the client just wanted to check a box and push the project off their to-do list.

In this blog, a little more than a year ago, I predicted an eLearning regression and others agreed with me. Now, a year later, using my own observations and interviews with participants at the ASTD TK 10, my clients and others in the industry, I believe it came to pass. eLearning software development companies are selling the heck out their software and upgrades are popping out like crazy. Instructional designers who don't know a thing about graphic design or coding are whipping out SCORM compliant programs with ease. Template sites and pre-coded sample bundles are popping up (yes...mine are coming too) on the web and people are buying them like beanie babies. It's now easier than ever before to develop eLearning and non-tech, non-graphic and non-programmers are doing it using these tools.

Now...here's my ethical dilemma. I've had it before in June of 09, but its back with a vengeance. At that time, I called it "Should I advertise the tools" and I was wondering if I should advertise that I develop in Lectora, Captivate and others. I received lots of interesting feedback on that one, and today I have the answer.

Yes. I should. And here's why: My clients now own them. My clients like them. It provides me with an edge. I can now offer high-end completely custom, partial custom or templated eLearning.

Just this week, I have two clients with real money who want me to develop within Captivate and within Unison.

My ethical dilemma: I don't want to develop Crapid eLearning because I will be using these tools. I have to convince my clients to create custom Flash elements they can drop into these tools. They have to allow me to take the time to create unique templates and interfaces and buttons and other elements to make it look custom even though its using an eLearning tool. In Captivate, I can be extremely creative with the tool. In Unison, I can, but I have to do some serious code cracking to bring it up to my level of what a "professional" eLearning program looks like. I need to take these tools to new levels. I need to push the envelope regarding software capabilities and be creative within the limitations of the tools so that I don't just quickly schlop the project together.

Or, I could just develop Crapid.

The opposite of professional eLearning is Crapid eLearning. However, as you read this, you or your company may have these tools installed. They may be installed on the very machines you are using to read this blog. My challenge to you is this: Follow my lead and don't create Crapid. Look at the work you admire and instead of saying "I could never do that with my tool" or "You have to be a good graphic person to do that" or "I can only do that with Flash" go out and LEARN to do those things. Take it to the next level. Don't settle on mediocre or Crapid. Maximize what you know about the tool. Call the software developers and get into the weeds to bend the software to YOUR will. Buy a good book on graphic design like The Non-Designer's Design Book or Graphic Design School so you can learn what makes graphics, fonts, colors and other elements look nice on the screen.

Even though I am now adding these tools to my professional designers toolbox (and kind of feel like a sell out), I am going to keep my head high and not lower my standards. I don't want to ever turn down business, but I don't want to damage my reputation as a designer by producing Crapid. I'll post samples to this blog as I develop so you can tell me if you think they are awesome or if I fell into the Crapid crack.

I'm having such a dilemma and its driving me crazy. Here is what I'm struggling with: lately, several of my customers have asked me to create or bid on projects where they expect to be able to go in and edit the content, images and layout of the project after the launch. They want to be able to tweak every aspect of the project once its complete. However, they have no technical background and are not interested in learning the tech. As a result, I'm being asked to over-complicate the programming for ease of use later.

First example - a local area church has asked me to develop a web site for them that they can edit themselves. They don't want a CMS (even the free ones), they want to be hand coded. No problemo - I build it in CSS at a fixed width and height per the design from their team. After its built out and they want to start adding content, their editor (who picked up Dreamweaver specifically for this purpose), can't get the WYSIWYG screen to work with my hand coded CSS. Sometimes Dreamweaver, especially older versions, have a hard time rendering the CSS correctly in the WYSIWYG view. The code is solid and displays wonderfully in all browsers, but the client hates it and hates me because it isn't easy to edit in Dreamweaver. After a week of no luck with tutorials and phone assistance, I rebuilt it from scratch using old table code and layout techniques from 2005. They love it. It stretches how they want, its easy to add the content they want and they are super excited about their site again.

I, however, hate it and will not be adding it to my portfolio. It's filled with nested table tags, bloated JavaScript and is "old school" code that I rarely write anymore. However, the client LOVES it and loves me for making their lives easier. I have overcomplicated the "behind the scenes" so the WYSIWYG view works. What!!?

Case number two: I'm bidding on an eLearning project where the client wants all images but the interface to load dynamically and be stored outside the project, all video and audio to load dynamically and be stored outside the project, and all text and headers to be in XML and load dynamically at run time. OK...this is not rocket science, but in an effort to make their lives easier (they won't have to learn Flash to make edits), they are making it much more complicated to develop. It's so much easier to just dump it all into flash, export to .swf and deliver an HTML file and a .swf file and be done with it.

In an effort to avoid learning code or learning Flash, customers seem to be asking for "do it yourself" solutions, when I'm thinking that they should pick up a copy of Dreamweaver or Flash and learn it. It's much more complicated to dynamically load XML text than it is to type the text in the Flash interface. Now, there are very good reasons for using XML for text (I have another client who is going to offer multiple languages and wants to use the same .swf but load the different language XML which is cool), but for simple projects, why make it so complicated?

Couple thoughts:

1) They don't want to pay me to edit the files
2) They don't want to take the chance of me going away and not being around in 3 years when the files have to be edited
3) They expect lots of changes to the files
4) They expect to have to make changes in a speedy, real time fashion

I'm all about teaching a man to fish, but this kind of falls into the "just cause we can, we will." I am all about the straight line - get what you need accomplished in the easiest way possible. Learn Flash. Learn ActionScript. Who says editing an XML file is easier than editing a Flash file? Is this "Do it yourself" idea good for eLearning? Shouldn't it be "Learn the tool."

Am I alone here? Is this something I should just deal with? Since when do customers care about the intricate guts of a project, rather than its functionality, look and feel? Should I just grow up and understand that customers are getting more technical and are asking to "peek under the hood"?

Thanks for listening. Anyone else experiencing this?

Just an FYI...I lost about four hours development time today because Flash CS4 continually crashed after a 2 second live time. Yep...open a file and then 2 seconds later it would close down.

Here were my steps to resolve it on my Mac with OS X:

1) Repair Disk Permissions
2) Reset preferences
3) Reset user settings
4) Uninstall and then reinstall

None of this worked.

5) 45 minutes on hold with tech support who directed me to a web page, FOUR TIMES, that resulted in a 404 error each time.

Finally, the solution that worked is to

6) Turn off all my fonts. Yep, turn all of them off in Font Book, and then turn them back on as the system calls for them, or as Flash needs them.

Turn off my fonts!!! Since when do fonts cause an expensive and complex program like Flash to crash. Whatever.

It's easy to turn off fonts in Font Book (right mouse click on Computer and choose Disable Fonts) and the Mac asks permission to turn them on as you need them, but here's the kicker.

It worked fine last night. Today, I didn't install any fonts, I just opened Flash files and wanted to work. What mystical creature got into my Mac last night and played with font settings?

I don't know, but man, I hope this saves you a call to Adobe tech support...Adobe, I love ya, but please get me a stable version of Flash.

I recently engaged in a debate with one of my colleagues regarding the virtues of building eLearning projects that take advantage of current technological bells and whistles vs. building your project to work on older technology. The point boiled down to the fact that the users are sophisticated enough to download and upgrade their browsers which will allow them to experience the cutting edge stuff, so there was no reason to not utilize bleeding edge.

I disagreed.

It's been my experience that the home and small business user adapts and upgrades their technology way before the typical business user. It is also my experience that web marketing folks, web design folks and eLearning programmers at large organizations usually have the best hardware and software. They are usually given lots of control when it comes to what's installed, and often given the ability to install whatever software they need.

Not so for the rest of the organization. The sales teams, engineering teams, financial teams and other folks in the firm are not so lucky. On their first day, IT usually goes back into the closet, blows off the dust and pulls out an older machine for them to use. After all, it doesn't take much computing power to run MS Office and a web browser.

That's generally where the problems occur. The designer creates a multimedia masterpiece that the user cannot experience as intended. Did you know that the cool and interactive Flash demo requires the processing power of the host computer to make it run? Yes, after the .swf is downloaded to the user's machine through the browser, it still requires the processing speed of the user's computer to run correctly. This means older, slower, computer :: clunky Flash presentation.

And, the first thing that gets sacrificed in the Flash presentation is animation frame rate. Flash prioritizes the audio track before the animation, especially if you stream rather than event program your audio. What this means is that the audio track plays perfectly, but the animation stutters and hacks between keyframes to keep up.

Also, don't forget bandwidth issues. At last count, as much at 63% of home users have high speed connections. Most businesses do as well. However, if you forget that almost 40% of the users don't have it, you are losing almost half your audience! If you rely exclusively on large video and swf files that take forever to download, your learners are not learning...they are watching the %loaded figure slowly creep up.

Even though users have the opportunity to upgrade their browsers, many IT groups refuse to give admin rights to their users and frequently lock down software installation. Some IT groups lock the computer to a certain operating system and browser version. User's don't have the option of installing new technology, even though its readily available.

In my book, Technology for Trainers, I talk about an instructional design methodology for the creation of eLearning. When building eLearning for an organization, either the one you work for or for a client, you need to perform a technology review. What computer systems do they use? Operating systems? Connection speed? Average user's processing speed? Do they have the ability to install plugins? What is the current Flash plug in version? What is the current browser version? Do they have speakers? Higher end video cards? Can they save files from the web to their computer? Do they have a LMS? These are all questions that have to be answered before you build.

If you have an eLearning requirement in place and your learner cannot meet that requirement because of their technology sitting on their desktop, you have lost and frustrated that user. Also, you have put them in the uncomfortable place of being non-compliant with the learning initiative. You must perform a technology review in order to ensure that every user has the capability to see and experience your eLearning.

Does this mean you may have to design your course around IE 6.0? Yes. Does this mean you cannot use the new CSS anonymous table elements for layout? Unfortunately, yes. If your client is standardized on IE 6.0, you may have to dump CSS all together! Does your client have remote locations still using dial up? If yes, then you have to dump multimedia.

In conclusion, I must quote Ian Malcom, the Chaos Theorist who said "...your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." Just because we can do a thing, doesn't mean we should. Stop and think about your learners and ensure that your chosen eLearning technology will run on their systems, and that it is a learning opportunity they can experience. Don't be afraid to use old technology or design methods as an added insurance policy that it will work on your end-user's machine. Don't be afraid to abandon a technology if it won't work well for your users. Use the right tool for the job, but be sure your learners can learn from it.

I wanted to announce that I just installed the Flash 10.0.2 update for Flash CS4 and my bugs are fixed! I have been crabbing about it for months, and after downloading the patch, all the slowdowns, errors, font issues and interface bugs are no longer there!

Thank you Adobe for letting me fall in love with Flash again. Maybe now I can uninstall Flash CS3...

Download the patch here: http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html

I've been on the road this year teaching for an amazing client. The content I'm teaching isn't eLearning related, but leadership and management related. I do quite a bit of work in the leadership arena and speak often on topics of performance, people management and change.

During class, I reference books and materials that augment the particular topic I'm working with, and during last week's class, several students asked to see that list. As I do get quite a bit of non-tech visitors here, I thought I would share the list with my eLearning audience as well.

Leadership Books I Recommend

The Leadership Pipeline
Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel
This book describes the phases of leadership and describes them as separate, interlocking “pipelines”. The author speaks about the varied responsibilities necessary at each “level” of management.

The Oz Principle
Roger Connnors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman
Primarily focusing on business ethics and personal responsibility, this book introduces the concept of “above the line/below the line” when taking personal responsibility in the workplace.

The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
Patrick Lencioni
This book tells a tale of a dysfunctional team and the steps the new president takes to unite her team. It’s a good business parable with some tools at the end of the chapter that can be directly applied to a dysfunctional team.

Leadership Gold
John Maxwell
John Maxwell is a leadership guru, and this book is a series of his most important leadership lessons. The concept of “ducks” and “eagles” comes from this book. I also recommend reading any of John Maxwell’s extensive library of leadership books. He is amazing.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior
Dan Millman
A parable about a student who’s life intersects with an interesting mentor. The concept of “No ordinary moments” comes from this book.

Emotional Intelligence
Primal Leadership
Daniel Goleman
These two books introduce the concepts of Emotional Intelligence and how they can impact job performance and leadership in the workplace.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
Marshall Goldsmith
Similar to the Leadership Pipeline, this books look at the specific skill sets necessary to move up the ladder, based on the premise that the behaviors that made you successful in one job, won’t help you be successful as you move up the ladder.

The Speed of Trust
Stephen M.R. Covey
This book identifies 13 specific behaviors that managers can use to improve trust on their teams.

The Tipping Point
Blink
Outliers
Malcom Gladwell
Three great books that make you think about “normal” things differently.

Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability)
David Marcum and Steven Smith
This book is a powerful examination of ego in the workplace – its positive and negative aspects as a manager.

As I've spoken about in the past, almost all of my eLearning is programmed by hand using the Adobe suite of products and creating interfaces, buttons and eLearning elements from scratch.

As I get ready to roll out my new business venture (Catapult Training Group...YAY), I'm debating about whether I should advertise on the new web site and in my promotional materials that I use/have used/can use the off the shelf eLearning development tools like Unison, Lectora, Articulate and Captivate. As an eLearning developer, I've always prided myself on the fact that I write from the source and do not use these tools when developing. Several of my clients have asked me to use these tools and help them to learn these tools, however should I be advertising that these tools are within my capability?

Does it diminish my reputation as a developer to talk about my company using these tools? Even though most of these tools are great, they have serious limitations when it comes to high degrees of complex interactivity. I feel that I shouldn't want it featured that I sometimes use them on behalf of clients...am I right to feel that way?

On the other side of the coin, some of my current clients are using them and I've been able to offer my assistance to those folks and make a little money to boot. In fact, one of my clients ONLY uses these tools and has required me to design within the confines of these applications. Is that a value to other companies? Should I advertise it?

I'm seriously interested in knowing your opinion! Please comment or shoot me an email to let me know your opinion. Thank you in advance!

While conducting the ASTD Essentials webinar this week, I encountered a bit of a shock. Well, perhaps shock is too strong a word, but I definitely got rattled a bit. Let me tell you what got under my skin.

Part of my first day of training is a big session on my idea of an eLearning development "Dream Team":

• Project Manager: The project manager is responsible for ensuring that benchmarks are hit and that everyone is working together to create a fantastic finished project. This person should create a project plan to make sure that time lines and responsibilities are visible to all and that everything runs smoothly.
• Instructional Designer: The ID is the person who is a training professional and has taken the time and energy to follow an instructional design process to come up with the training program. This person creates the templates, storyboards and diagrams necessary to facilitate training through the electronic medium.
• Graphic Designer: The graphic designer is the person who creates all the graphical elements of the eLearning program. This person makes the buttons, the background pictures, and anything else that isn’t explicitly textual.
• Multimedia Designer: Sometimes called the “New Media” designer, the multimedia designer is the person who is responsible for creating and editing digital movies, programming Flash movies, or working with 3-dimensional animation software to create simulations and other effects. Many times, the Graphic Designer and the Multimedia Designer are the same person.
• Developer: This person receives the information and training program information from the instructional designer, the graphics from the graphic designer and the multimedia from the multimedia designer and programs the training.

Read more »

In fairness to some other good vendors, and because I covered some big tools a couple days ago, I wanted to point out a few other good eLearning development tools that people are buzzing about. Again, I prefer to build everything from scratch using the Adobe tools, but I am aware that there are people who don't want to dive that deep into the development red tape. I completely respect that and, considering I talked about Lectora, Captivate and Articulate, I thought I would throw two more onto your radar.

Read more »

Let me just start by saying that I am a bit fearful for the next phase of eLearning. I'm fearful because I think we are facing what I will call a "design regression". I've been excited about integrating Web 2.0 technologies into my eLearning, and am excited that the tech bar is lower and more people can take advantage of it, however, I don't think that we are going to see the explosion of Web 2.0 in eLearning in 2009 or even 2010. In fact, I think that "page turners" may return with a passion.

Here is my logic...let me know if my thinking is sound.

Read more »

I found a tutorial online...I'm gonna follow it and see if I can get the Great Joomla Project off the ground.

http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/joomla15/index.htm

Wish me luck!

My first session of the day has started off with major technical glitches. If you are going to be presenting technology at a conference, you must know:

• You cannot rely on a good Internet connection: Supply your own wireless connection. I think that Verizon and other wireless carriers offer them
• Don't rely on the room's overhead projection : Get in 90 minutes early and test, test, test
• Don't rely on your computer to survive the trip : Back up your files onto CD or web disk or portable drive
• Don't rely on your CD or web disk or portable drive: Back up to all 3
• Don't rely on web demos or software working correctly in front of 1000 people:Have screen shots as a back up

Grr...very frustrating. Technology can make you look very, very good or make you look very, very bad.

NOTE: I was ATTENDING this session, not PRESENTING this session. These are my rules and I never, ever break them! The poor speaker was having a devil of a time...Vista gremlins...

If you haven't seen it yet, Adobe has created an eLearning Suite and bundled my favorite software together. It's a really sweet suite:

• Captivate - great for screen capture and for recording software demos. Really good tool and the current version is top notch
• Flash CS4 - great tool, but I'm still fighting with Flash CS4 on the Mac...long story, but nested movie symbols in ActionScript 3.0 movies are slowing down the function of the application...on both Macs...I'm not alone in this, but they are finally elevating my issue...see here, here and here. They are working on it which is encouraging - I trust Adobe will make it right!
• Dreamweaver CS4 - the best coding tool in the world!!!
• Photoshop CS4- the best photo editor in the world, hands down.
• Presenter 7 - Finally available at an affordable price (used to be $1500), this tool lets you use PowerPoint to create eLearning. I'm not a big fan of PowerPoint, so its great news for some, meh for me. However, it works really well Acrobat Connect Pro (formerly Breeze), so if you have that tool, you will love the way Presenter works with it. Note: It works in Office XP, 2003 or 2007. Great news!
• Soundbooth CS4 - create and edit audio...I really, really like this software. It's the first thing that has started pulling me away from Audacity which is an amazing piece of free audio software.

So...my only question...where is Fireworks in the suite? Photoshop rules, but for web distribution, Fireworks has tools that could help the eLearning developer rapidly develop interfaces, convert to PDF and perform lots of cool navigation and button effects. The price point is a little steep ($1799) but worth it if you want to do be able to do everything (no seriously...everything eLearning!) The upgrade price is great ($599) if you have purchased any other suite. I have to say that, overall, I like it quite a bit. There is a lot of software here that can create anything you, the eLearning developer, can think up. However, if you have an extra $299.00 laying around, I'd pick up Fireworks too!

Now...if I can just convince Adobe to fix the Mac bugs in Flash CS4 and give me a version of Captivate for the Mac, I would go back to raving non-stop about their software. I'll rave about everything but Flash CS4, but really, really want to! If Adobe fixes the Flash CS4 bugs, I'll be their biggest evangelist yet! I'll keep running Captivate in Parallels, but it's not the same.

I've noticed a trend on the social networking groups, and when I talk to people at the conferences I present at: trainers and instructional designers are freaking out again. I mean nervous, edgy, freak outs about eLearning. In 2000, training and development people were losing their minds because they believe that the sky was falling and eLearning was going to steal their jobs. They were convinced that they would be replaced by a screen and a mouse. Nothing was further from the truth, as eLearning has grown into a tool that is used as a part of an overall training strategy.

Most of the eLearning in 2000 was awful, text driven stuff created by tech people who didn't care about how people learn. They wanted to exploit this new technology and throw everything up against the wall and see what stuck. We have developed best practices we are using today because of all the crazy things developers tried early on, myself included.

But, that has changed. Good eLearning is hard to create, not always from a programming perspective, but from the design perspective. Tools have been created to rapidly develop, but the amazing, interactive custom stuff still takes lots of time to plan, design and build. Which brings me back to my first question : why are people freaking out?

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Ok...first rant.

Joomla is not making things easier for me. I'm a tweaker and things need to be perfect, and Joomla is offering me degrees of compromise. I'm sure its me, but the Great Joomla Project is not moving forward as planned. I seem to be moving in slow motion...

Of course, I'm sure its user error, but many of my associates advised me to "Jump In" so I did. Maybe my error was in starting with ready made user data...

Joomla: 1
Thomas: 0

I'll keep banging on it, but if you want to see my progress, visit www.myelearningguru.com. Its kind of pink now...

Before the year was up, I had the opportunity to host the training technology section of a one day conference hosted by our local ASTD chapter. I was given an opportunity to attend the entire day, and recently I had cause to dig up the materials from that day.

The first session of the day was called Brain Gym for Trainers, presented by Patti Templin. Patti was an enthusiastic speaker (for 8:30 am, she was better than a cup of coffee) who presented her topic on Educational Kinesiology - Brain Gym. I was skeptical at first, but then I started thinking about a problem we have as eLearning developers, and how something like a Brain Gym could be incorporated into an online program.

First, a Brain Gym is a series of body movements that enhance the learner's experience of "whole brained" learning. By performing these body movements, students are able to access those parts of the brain inaccessible to them, changing behavior and learning. To learn more, visit the Brain Gym web site. The research is amazing!

The motions are simple and rather fun. There are 26 distinct movements that help "jump-start" the brain. I know...it seemed a bit far fetched to me, and in the moment, I felt the same way. However, the more I thought about it, and yes, did it in the privacy of my office, I found myself more plugged in to my work.

Then, because I am hopelessly plugged in (I'd be a BORG if I could), I started thinking about how to incorporate these "brain gyms" into eLearning? Should there be a specific intro page with directions:"Now, before we begin, let's engage your brain. Stand up, spread out your arms, and..." Would the adult learner do it? "Welcome to Interviewing for Success. Before we begin, grab your ear lobes..."!

But what about creating learning for the K-12 group? This research has originally targeted that group, so why not incorporate the Brain Gym strategy into online learning dedicated for that group? We should be focusing on the transfer of knowledge, and if one or two brain gym activities kick off the eLearning project, what's the harm in that? I think it would be a kick if a computer lab full of students suddenly stood up and started stretching! Would it have an impact on the eLearning program they were about to take? I think so. If you develop for the K-12 audience, contact the Brain Gym people and see how you can incorporate it. I really think it could take your projects to the next level.

Unfortunately, I do very little work in the K-12 area...not because I don't want to, but because I don't have clients in that space. Am I willing to add Brain Gyms to my programs, targeting adults? Not yet. Is there a good reason NOT to? Not really...maybe I don't want to fly too far out of my programmers' comfort zone. Can I sit in front of a client and confidently pitch Brain Gym? No. I don't feel like I know enough about it. Could be a little more research time is in order...