A Simple Pricing Strategy for Online Courses
This article outlines a process for setting a price for selling online courses, and then evaluating and adjusting based on the data.
AnswerThePublic
Answer the Public describes itself as a "Search listening tool for market, customer & content research." It's a way to see what search terms people enter about a particular topic or brand. If you're wondering what questions people have about a subject, this would give you data about what they search for online. You can only do one search per day for free; otherwise it's $99/month for unlimited searches (which only makes sense if you're doing a LOT of market research).
Watch "Creating a Branching Scenario Quiz with Camtasia" on YouTube
Matt Pierce shows how to create an interactive video with custom feedback. Matt notes this is challenging to troubleshoot and needs to be planned in advance, but this is an interesting possibility.
19 Great Resources for Diverse Stock Photos - DreamHost
I have shared some of these sites before, but several of these resources for diverse stock photos are new to me. Some of these are collections within larger stock sites or agencies that contribute to stock sites.
Branching Scenarios: Yes, No, Maybe? – The H5P PB Kitchen
This is another post about Alan Levine's branching scenario built in H5P and Pressbooks. At the bottom of the post, Alan provides links to several other examples of branching scenarios built in H5P.
An H5P Branching Scenario That Might Break the Boat – CogDogBlog
Alan Levine built this very complex branching scenario in H5P and Pressbooks. This includes some scenario images and descriptions, plus a separate tracker where you have to fill out forms with info and keep track of finances and other notes. Alan's blog post explains how he built the random events (which were originally a card draw in the physical version).
Avatar Maker - Create Your Own Avatar Online
Free tool for creating avatars. I don't see licensing info, so it appears to be free to use. This only creates head shots, and the choices are limited. The SVG version of the download has editable layers, so you potentially could edit it for other expressions.
Rewordify.com | Understand what you read
Paste difficult to understand text into the yellow text box, and this website will give you a simplified version. While this is intended for people learning English vocabulary (or teachers helping students), it might be helpful as an instructional designer. It doesn't do anything for absurdly long sentences (in fact, sometimes the simplified version is longer), but you could use this to take a first pass edit on complex SME language.
Descript | Create podcasts, videos, and transcripts
This tool is geared mostly for podcast producers, but it might have some applications for elearning. When you record audio, it generates a transcript. If you want to edit out some text, you can edit it via the transcript rather than editing the wave forms.
The other interesting feature is "Overdub," which uses an AI generated synthetic voice based on the real voice to fill in changes. If you need to make minor edits in wording, you can use the synthetic voice rather than re-recording the sentence and replacing the audio. You can certainly hear the difference, even in their demo, but i bet for quick edits it would be good enough.
Arist: the text message learning platform
Create courses via text message
Klixel8
Company that creates "High-Res eLearning": virtual environments with very high resolution photos that you can zoom in and explore. Click hot spots to move around or select objects. You can add multiple choice questions or link to other resources and activities. Currently all custom development, but this is good inspiration for creating similar projects in other tools (maybe without the high res zooming).
How to Write Natural Dialogue in 11 Steps, With Examples!
Tips for writing dialogue, with examples from novels
And one of the best ways to cut out that boring fluff is to enter the conversation as late as possible.
When writing dialogue, it’s also good to bounce quickly back and forth between speakers, like a tennis match.
19 Ways to Write Better Dialogue — Well-Storied.
Tips for writing better dialogue like "every line of dialogue should serve a purpose." While this is aimed at general fiction writing and not learning, most of this applies to writing scenarios for learning too.
<p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Before writing a conversation, take the time to ask yourself what key purpose(s) the conversation will serve. Most often, conversations work to resolve or create tension, establish context, or reveal new information that moves the story forward.</p><p class="" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">With an established purpose in mind, you can begin writing dialogue with the confidence that you're adding value to your story rather than setting readers up for boredom. </p>
One easy way to identify dialogue missteps, however, is to read your story's conversations aloud. If the dialogue doesn't flow when spoken, you'll know exactly where to revise your work.
How to Train Your Teams Remotely in an Era of Distraction | Training Magazine
Additional publication of an article I contributed to for TalentLMS about how to engage learners. Stella Collins, Tim Slade, Ashley Chiasson, and Connie Malamed are also quoted.
Web Captioner
Free real-time captions in a browser based tool. I haven't tried this yet, but I'd like to see if it's possible to use with Zoom for live training.
Open Broadcaster Software®️ | OBS
Open source tool for live mixing video streaming. You can put a text overlay on top of a video, for example. You can also set up different scenes in advance so you can transition between different combos. This also has an audio mixer so you can adjust the volume between a shared video and your own microphone (or other inputs). It's compatible with other platforms, so you can use it with Zoom or whatever you're currently using for video conferencing or streaming.
Zoom breakout workaround
Want to let people choose their own breakout rooms in Zoom? Check out this solution. This would probably work best with an audience with at least some prior experience with Zoom (so they don't do anything as co-hosts accidentally), but it wouldn't take too much training to give people enough skill to manage it.
How much to make a video?
Calculator for how much it costs to make a video (live, animated, etc.). Enter your variables and get an estimate. This looks like a useful tool for getting benchmarks.
Trianglify.io · Low Poly Pattern Generator
Free tool for creating triangle patterns. Vary the colors, size, variability of the triangles, etc. These make good backgrounds; I have used similar patterns for blog posts. Low res downloads are free, but high res downloads must be purchased
Illustrations of Black People for Your Next Digital Project | Black Illustrations
Free illustrations of Black people in various home and work settings. Licensed for commercial and personal use.
Designing Scenario-Based Learning for Skill Development | Learning Solutions Magazine
This article from Bill Brandon gives an overview of the development sequence for scenario-based learning, plus a preview of my session on Streamlining Branching Scenario Planning and Design.
<a href="https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1108/how-to-engage-learners-with-scenario-based-learning-/?utm_campaign=lspub&utm_medium=link&utm_source=link">Scenario-based learning</a> (SBL) and the inclusion of practice with feedback are much more effective approaches to the development of skill and competence.
General Principles for Reducing Bias
APA Style guide principles for reducing bias in writing. This would be a good resource for elearning style guides too.
Making people aware of their implicit biases doesn’t usually change minds. But here’s what does work | PBS NewsHour
"Discretion elimination" means changing systems to make choices more objective and less subject to the effects of implicit bias. First, you need data to know where the problems are so you know how to change the systems.
And once you know what’s happening, the next step is what I call discretion elimination. This can be applied when people are making decisions that involve subjective judgment about a person. This could be police officers, employers making hiring or promotion decisions, doctors deciding on a patient’s treatment, or teachers making decisions about students’ performance. When those decisions are made with discretion, they are likely to result in unintended disparities. But when those decisions are made based on predetermined, objective criteria that are rigorously applied, they are much less likely to produce disparities.
Learnexus
Learnexus is a platform for freelancers to find projects and clients to find freelancers. It's focused on instructional designers and elearning developers, rather than being a general freelancer site like UpWork. They also screen freelancers, so they are hopefully filtering out some of the folks at the low end of the market. The site is new though, so the pool of people and projects is small currently.
ID—LXD: Moving from Instructional Design to Learning Experience Design
Celestory - Create your customized training
Tool for creating branching scenario training or interactive games. I haven't tried this yet, but there's a free version that would be enough to test it out. The tool collects data on user behavior. The website says it's using AI to analyze behavior, but it's not quite clear exactly what that AI is doing.
Twiddla
Online whiteboard tool. This looks like it might be worth investigating for those running into limitations with their existing tools. No plugins or downloads needed.
How to give delayed FEEDBACK in a Google Form -
Branching scenarios can be built in Google Forms. It may not be my first choice as a tool, but plenty of teachers in schools are restricted to Google tools. This post goes step by step to show how to provide either immediate or delayed feedback and how to create branching with the "Go to Section" option.
Guide to Finding an LMS/LXP (Learning Management Systems)
Craig Weiss now offers a free service for searching and comparing LMSs. Complete the form to enter the features you need and find options. His commentary and observations are included (and he has more breadth of knowledge across LMSs than anyone else in the field).
How long does it take to develop an online course? | UT Dallas eLearning Team
While a few studies exist about development time for workplace elearning, not as much seems to be readily available for higher education. This post has some breakdowns for development time for developing a syllabus, recording lectures, assignments, etc. The estimate for discussion board questions seems a little low to me (a good discussion question often takes more than 5 minutes to write and refine), but this is a good starting point. This is about 130 hours of work for a single online course.