Course Checklist: Interaction and Assessment (pdf)
Checklist from SUNY for interaction and assessment for online courses.
Online Faculty Development Process - Online Course Development at a glance
Process to guide faculty in converting courses to online, with readings, checklists, examples, and other resources from SUNY
Keeping Participants' Attention In Global Virtual Classrooms - Learning Circuits - ASTD
Activity ideas for virtual instructor-led training
The eLearning Guild Publishes 2012 Global eLearning Salary & Compensation by Bill Brandon : Learning Solutions Magazine
Summary of the salary report (salaries declined slightly) and a calculator where you can enter variables and see a baseline salary.
Infosemantics.com.au | Guide to Learning Management System (LMS) Compatibility with Adobe Captivate
Notes on compatibility with Captivate and a number of different LMSs (Blackboard, Moodle, Saba, SharePoint, SumTotal, etc.)
Accessibility of Authoring Tools (PDF)
Table comparing the accessibility features of Captivate, Lectora, and Articulate Storyline
E-learning Examples - Interactive Graphics, Visual Journalism and Multimedia Storytelling
Examples of e-learning, html5, interactive graphics
The problem with virtual training: instructional design, not distance — Online Collaboration
Interview with Janet Clarey responding to an article claiming you shouldn't even bother trying to do new hire orientation training virtually. As expected, Janet provides a thoughtful rebuttal, explaining that the problem with bad virtual training is that it's poorly designed, not that the technology is failing.
Rubrics for Assessment
Rubrics for assessing assignments, including wiki, blog, twitter, online discussions, and more. From UW-Stout by Karen Franker and others
The Lab | ORI - The Office of Research Integrity
Example of e-learning with a branching video scenarios, where you can play four different roles to avoid a serious incident of research misconduct. The stage is set with the "worst case scenario" where everything has gone wrong to draw you in, but you can travel back in time to prevent the problem.
Course Companion for Adobe Captivate « Rapid eLearning | Adobe Captivate Blog
Captivate widget that provides learner analytics--course completion, quiz completion, time to complete, slide navigation, time per slide, etc.
Case Study: Engaging Learners in the Synchronous Distance Environment by Kim Bahr & Rebecca Bodrero : Learning Solutions Magazine
Case study in how a F2F training program was adapted for online with Adobe Connect. This includes how they prepared the participants, adapted activities, engaged learners, supported with producers, and blended synchronous with asynchronous.
The Cost of Online Learning? It Depends… | Getting Smart
Review of a paper estimating cost savings for online and blended learning, pointing out that the real numbers are much more complicated than what the report implies.
Building a new learning environment around social tools: Technology forecast: PwC
Tony O'Driscoll explains how he uses social media with an MBA course. He also talks about social technology in the broader context of the enterprise.
In this new context, by comparison, anybody who writes anything, whether it’s an individual or a team, is now exposed in the commons. Everybody is required to review three deliverables other than their own and rank and review them. That’s a little foreign, and there’s a fair amount of pushback on that. People say, “What do you mean, other people can see my stuff?” And I say, “Well, that’s how peer learning works.”
<p>The motive in this kind of social context is altruism. It’s to help others. By contrast, the motive in a business context is all about profit.</p>
<p>Enterprise behavior is different. You can’t take the same social technologies and plop them into a profit-making context and expect that people will immediately engage. The question is, once the underlying motivation shifts from purpose to profit, will the motivation to engage persist?</p>
Top eLearning Learning Mobile Learning Content for 2011
eLearning Learning's calculated top blog posts for 2011
Open source software for elearning – matbury.com
List of open source applications for creating e-learning. Most of these aren't specifically designed for creating online learning, but can be used that way. The list is divided into desktop software like Audacity and CamStudio and server software like Moodle and MediaWiki.
Setting the Mood — Top Tips for Adding Stock Music to Your E-Learning | E-Learning Uncovered
Practical ideas for adding a little stock music to e-learning. It's probably not a good idea to add it behind narration, but a little bit of music might be beneficial in some situations. It can reinforce or shape the emotional feel of a moment in learning.
Curatr - Motivate your learners to truly engage with online learning
Tool for curating existing resources in a gamified learning experience. Lets learners explore resources at their own pace but with some structure from levels, badges, etc. Learners can comment on resources and discuss with each other. The free edition doesn't allow uploads, but you can link to content elsewhere online. The teacher edition has limited uploading but is still free for teachers. The corporate version is has more features but is costly.
Questions Asked & Answered: Analysis and e-Learning Design
Ethan Edwards recaps a webinar he gave on "The 5 Most Important Analysis Questions You'll Ever Ask." Suggestions on how to get what you need from SMEs
<p><b>Questions:</b></p>
<ol>
<li>What do you expect learners to be able to DO after completing the course that they can’t do now?</li>
<li>What are the consequences TO THE LEARNER if the learner fails to master the intended outcomes?</li>
<li>Can you show me an active demonstration, a detailed simulation, or provide an opportunity to directly observe the desired performance?</li>
<li>What specific performance mistakes do new learners regularly make?</li>
<li>What tools, resources, job aids, or help do successful performers (or even experts) use to do these tasks?</li></ol>
Choosing the Right Character Names for Your Training Scenario | E-Learning Uncovered
Multiple sites for generating names for scenarios
Animated vs. Static Learning Agents - My M.Ed. Capstone Research | onehundredfortywords
Judy Unrein researched animated and static learning agents and found no difference in animation. Learning agents have value, but this research points to no extra value for more expensive and time-consuming animation.
Design Comics :: Characters and Scenes for Storyboarding & Design
Free characters and office scenes that can be used for e-learning. Different expressions and poses for conversations. The license information is conflicting; it's labeled CC-public domain, but requests attribution so it should really be CC-By.
LMS Q and A | E-Learning 24/7 Blog
Responses to common misconceptions about LMSs from LinkedIn groups etc., focused on the process of working with vendors. These are questions the author wishes people asked more often.
A Guide to K-12 Open Source LMS Options -- THE Journal
Overview of open source LMS options with examples of districts currently using them. This article covers Moodle, Sakai, Canvas, OLAT, ATutor, and Google CloudCourse. I thought CloudCourse was owned by Google, but it appears the code has an Apache license. CloudCourse seems to be mostly scheduling rather than a full-fledged LMS.
Teaching Online: Choosing the Right Platform | Getting Smart
Questions to ask when choosing an LMS. Although these are geared towards K-12, the concepts adapt to other areas well. You can't cover everything in 10 questions, but this is a good place to start.
Making Learning Technologies Accessible
Accessibility guidelines and support documents from Pearson. The guidelines are based on Section 508 and WCAG 2.0. The training and training materials aren't openly available, but the guidelines and templates for accessibility reviews are.
The Human Factor: How Gender Differences Matter in Software Training by Mary Arnold : Learning Solutions Magazine
If your software training includes time to explore or "tinker," men and women will have different rates of success. A strategic approach may be better than going through individual features. This research focused on adding new features with an audience who was already familiar with the software; I'm not sure the same training technique would work with beginners with an application.
Tinkering with the spreadsheets
seems to be a reasonable approach to working with a new problem, in line with
generating and testing alternative strategies to find a solution. In other words, learning. Women who tinkered with the spreadsheets
seemed to be doing just that, and, for them, tinkering predicted more effective
problem solving. Counter-intuitively,
though, when men tinkered with the spreadsheet, they were <i>less</i> effective in correcting the errors. The opposite results seem attributable to the
fact that women paused before trying something else, long enough to process the
information.
In the final experiment,
researchers provided a different kind of tutorial — one that emphasized a
strategic, rather than a feature-by-feature approach to the problem.
Women who participated in this
condition were almost as likely to use the new features as the men in the same
study, and were able to solve more problems more quickly than women who didn’t
use the new features. Men in this
condition were not significantly helped or hindered, which means that it’s
possible to prevent a bias against women without introducing a bias against men.
The impact of instructional elements in computer-based instruction_July2007.pdf
Study examining what happens when you remove common elements of instruction. Practice with feedback was critical; information, objectives, examples, and review made little difference.
"This study investigated the effects of several elements of instruction (objectives, information, practice, examples and review) when they were combined in a systematic manner." "Results indicated participants who used one of the four versions of the computer program that included practice performed significantly better on the posttest and had consistently more positive attitudes than those who did not receive practice."
Writing Assistance Freelance Rate Chart (PDF)
Estimated freelance rates for writers and designers, including instructional designers, from one staffing company. ID work is listed at $63-90+/hour, average $80
Updated URL: http://www.writingassist.com/pdfs/freelanceratechartv2_1_2013.pdf
22 Books For Beginner Instructional Designers | Upside Learning Blog
Book list for new instructional designers. No descriptions or rationale to help you prioritize, but some good reads here.