Comments on: How to design elearning that’s memorable and budget-friendly

By: Memorable eLearning on Budget | Upside Learning Blog

Memorable eLearning on Budget | Upside Learning Blog — Wed, 11 May 2011 09:39:31 +0000

[...] through my feeds yesterday, I came across this great post by Cathy Moore titled – “How to design eLearning thats memorable and budget friendly”. In this, she has included a 5-part video series from her presentation at the UK eLearning [...]

By: Tiffany Sumpter

Tiffany Sumpter — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:24:22 +0000

Cathy,
Thank you so much for your compact-but-chock full of ideas approach to Instructional design! As a new student in an ID program, I felt a bit overwhelmed at how to even brainstorm ideas let alone design an instructional program. In particular, Part 5 you mention the ways to save time by sticking to these main points:

1.Don’t create a course unless it’s really necessary and useful.
2.Write activities in which a character faces a realistic challenge.
3.Put the information outside the course.
4.Use the course to show how to use the job aids.
5.Let the activities, not the content, drive the design

The way you laid these main points out, I feel very confidant that I can draw from them and come up with a clear and concise program (one day) that is useful, relateable and loaded with activities to drive home the point of the material. Thanks again.

By: Felipe Brasil

Felipe Brasil — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 18:19:48 +0000

Hello Cathy!

I recently found you blog and is really changing my way to see ID.

Is a great approach for most of the courses, but do you think that is suitable in all cases?

For example to explain how works a complex machine (not how to use) or simply a wine course made by a winery? That the objective is gibe some information in a nice way …

Thanks for all the information! Congratulations for your blog.

Felipe

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:16:50 +0000

Ethan, thanks for your question. I’d suggest that the way the learner interacts with the scenario should depend on what you want the learner to practice.

For example, if you want the learners to practice creating elevator pitches, then you would probably want the learner to choose what Jane should say. You could then show the results of the learner’s choice (for example, lack of interest from the listener) and use feedback to diagnose the problem.

However, if the learner’s real-world job really is to tell people what was wrong with what they just said, then you would probably want learners to listen to Jane and then identify what was wrong with what she just said.

Obviously, all sorts of variations on these approaches are useful, depending on your instructional goals and what you want learners to do in the real world. For example, you could start out by having the learner diagnose a weak elevator speech from Jane and then progress to creating one for her.

Cathy

By: Ethan

Ethan — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:44:34 +0000

Hi Cathy,

Thanks for the great videos. In segment 5, I’m a little confused about how the learner in your course interacts with the character Jane. Does the learner get to click something to actually “interrupt” her speech? Or is it more like- The learner listens to Jane delivering speech and then tries to identify what’s wrong with it?

Thanks again for this great learning resource!

Ethan

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:06:41 +0000

A concern was raised earlier about my use of three cropped, reduced screenshots to give examples of virtual worlds in the original presentation. If you're worried about your own use of screenshots as examples in presentations, according to the Nolo Press Patent, Copyright, and Trademark blog, such informational use of screenshots is very probably fair use under US copyright law.

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:31:35 +0000

Anna, Julie, and Anne, thanks for your comments. Thanks for the ideas for future videos, and for the heads-up about the low audio. I’ll boost the volume on future videos. I’ll also look into using another video host.

By: Anne

Anne — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:45:40 +0000

Excellent series!! Thank you for making this available. We’ve been successfully using your model for our e-learning and are making progress in helping our internal customers start to make a change in their thinking. I’m pushing for Action Mapping to become the design model for our classroom training as well.

By: Julie

Julie — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:22:00 +0000

Cathy,

I enjoy reading your blog and thought this post was particularly interesting. However, I am frustrated by the inclusion of YouTube videos since I am unable to view these at work. Our internet security policy prevents it. Also, I found the volume on your videos to be very low – even at the maximum volume, it was often difficult to understand.

Julie

By: Anna Sabramowicz

Anna Sabramowicz — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:05:52 +0000

Hello Cathy,
I read this and watched all the videos on youtube. I have been a follower of yours for a while now and like others have said, you have changed the way I look at design and elearning. I also find your video narration style quirky and fun… just as they should be coming from you. Good work.
I was led to another video you did about effective prototyping. I would love to see you dissect more courses and discuss how you would improve them to be more learner-centric and activity based.
You are an inspiration to me and I look forward to more. Please don’t stop.

Anna