Visual Language Lab | The website of Neil Cohn and the Visual Language Lab
Theory of visual language (h/t Kevin Thorn). "Visual language research can hopefully provide insights into how we understand, teach, and use drawing and visual narratives..."
Blog posts
Chatterpast
A lovely chat simulation built in Twine with the Trialogue story format where students can "chat" with characters about their lives in Iron Age and Roman era Scotland, England, and Wales. There's a teacher's guide as a supplement for classroom use.
eLearning Magic Toolkit – The Must-Have WordPress Plugin For Storyline Developers!
WordPress plugin for hosting Storyline files on a WordPress site (including using LearnDash) that makes it easier to pass variables between Storyline and WordPress and allows ChatGPT use within Storyline.
GitHub - doughahn/chat-souffle: A learning guild xAPI project helping learning designers practice prompt engineering.
Twine project that reports to xAPI. This is way more technical than the projects I have done, but they definitely got Twine reporting to an LRS. The files are all available openly, and there's a wiki explaining the process. The scenario itself is about using ChatGPT for writing multiple choice assessments.
Usability Testing 101
Introduction to usability testing. I've used this basic process (especially the "discount usability testing version"), or some adapted version of it, in several organizations. Mostly, I have used this with testing LMSs, but it works well for testing elearning too.
ChatGPT integration with Storyline for eLearning -Infinite Scenarios - YouTube
Garima Gupta shows an example of a scenario with an open-ended question rather than multiple choice. She uses Storyline for the front end and Javascript to call ChatGPT for the responses. This is more like an AI chatbot rather than a programmatic chatbot. This is done through a paid subscription service through her company, Artha Learning.
AI Image Enlarger | Enlarge Image Without Losing Quality!
This tool uses AI to clean up low resolution images and make high resolution versions of them. You can do a limited number of images each month for free or more with a paid plan.
Quantify Your Impact for Your Resume — Day Learning Design
This is a list of specific "before and after" examples of resume improvements for teachers who are transitioning to instructional design.
Playground AI
Edit and combine images using AI. Rather than starting from scratch like other AI image tools, with this tool you start with one or more existing images and enhance them with AI. There's a free account with a large daily image limit, but it says the quality will be limited after the first 50 images. Still, that's enough to try how it works.
Respeecher Voice Marketplace
AI voice generation is an area where new tools keep being released. This is a voice cloning tool where you can copy an existing voice. This would be useful for making revisions if the original voice isn't available (or just to make changes quickly). You can also change the accent or pitch. Their stated use cases are around prototyping and revisions, not full narration for finished products.
Talent Stacking For An Instructional Design Career
Connie Malamed explains the concept of talent stacking, or building competence in multiple skills that work well together. She provides some lists of competences for L&D roles as examples of the kinds of talent stacking that might work.
Humaaans: Mix-&-Match illustration library
Customizable 2D illustrations of people. These images are licensed CC0, so they're free to use.
Free to Use Clip Art Images & Vector Illustrations | ManyPixels
Free illustrations. This isn't a huge library, but you can download them as SVGs and customize the images. There are some images of people that could potentially be used for characters in a scenario with some customization.
unDraw - Open source illustrations for any idea
Image library that you can easily customize. These characters might work in some scenarios, but they don't have facial expressions. Available in SVG and PNG.
Elearning Examples - Scenarios & Branching | SmartBuilder
Example scenarios using the Smartbuilder tool. Even if you don't use this tool (I haven't tried it myself), reviewing other scenarios can be helpful for inspiration.
Twine to SCORM with Udutu
Udutu can package a zipped HTML file into a SCORM file. Jennifer Foster explains how to publish a Twine branching scenario into a SCORM file that works in an LMS.
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is literally a Twine game | PCGamesN
I just learned that the interactive film Bandersnatch on Netflix was written in Twine. While the basics of the tool can be learned quickly, it has the power to handle more complex stories than almost anything we create for L&D.
DiBL - Dilemma Based Learning
An interesting tool designed for interactive questions and scenarios in live training or vILT environments, where learners respond via their devices. The founder says, "You can think of it as a collaborative choose your own adventure - or Twine meets Kahoot :-)." This would be worth reviewing if you had a specific use case in an organization, but the tool is too expensive for freelancers and consultants.
Change facial expressions - AILab Tools
AI image editing tool for changing facial expressions
11 AI Image Editing Tricks to Elevate Your Visuals
Suggestions on how to use AI image editing tools plus links to resources and tools for each tip
scena.ai | Revolutionary interactive video and AI avatars
Interesting concept for creating interactive video based on text prompts. I wonder if you could use this for creating conversation simulations for training like branching scenarios.
WIIFM: Beyond Traditional Learning Objectives — Arboth
I appreciate how this post includes examples of how to grab learner's attention with stories and other tactics rather than just listing the full formal learning objectives. This article cites my blog post on learning objectives.
Next example: a training on "Cryogenic nitrogen and associated dangers". We started this training with an impactful image: An industry hall, exit door in the back and some materials obstructing the exit. All of a sudden, a cryogenic fog sets up, making it impossible to see the floor. Question to the learner was: Find your way out, without stumbling (and thus suffocating). Remember the materials? Remember you are dealing with nitrogen? Without explicitly listing learning objectives in the beginning of the e-Learning, we captured learners' attention, making them eager to learn more about other characteristics of nitrogen and the safety measures in such environments.
What I Learned Creating AI Images for E-Learning | The Rapid E-Learning Blog
Tom Kuhlmann describes his experiences using AI tools to create images for elearning. Right now, I agree with Tom about the challenges in time spent and lack of consistency; that's what I'm finding in my own experiments. Tom's tips on how to get what you want are a good place to start though.
App
Artflow has tools for creating character images and videos with automated voices. The free version is for noncommercial use only, but the paid plans can be used for commercial uses. The samples have some AI weirdness as is seen in a lot of the image to video conversions, but this looks like a fun tool to explore.
Why I ditched hourly rates as an ID Freelancer... and you should too.
Anna Sabramowicz explains the value of project-based pricing rather than hourly pricing. I'm quoting her two examples of pricing packages as a comparison point. (Also, it's so weird that her husband Ryan is the first comment and pretends that they haven't discussed this before, so ignore how they publicly fawn over each other.)
- Interactive Story: $15,000 <br>Includes needs analysis, scripting for one 7 question interactive story, custom graphics and feedback documentation. <br><br>- Instructional Design Sprint: $7,500<br>One week intensive ID sprint - analysis, design, dev, revisions. For quick turnaround projects.
Ideogram: Helping people become more creative.
AI Image generation tool. Unlike Midjourney and many other tools, this tool can generate text accurate. For example, include in the prompt "a sign that says "Elearning Development," and that exact text will appear in your image.
Learning Development Pricing Calculator - LXD Central
I appreciate the detailed breakdowns of time estimates per task in this article. This would be a very helpful way to create a project plan, even if you've never created an ILT or elearning course before.
However, note the caveat about the hourly rate at the bottom. The calculator uses $60 or $65/hour for pricing, but that's what a vendor would pay its own employees. If you're buying from a vendor, the cost is likely much higher. (Although apparently I'm not taking nearly enough profit for myself if vendors are typically pricing at 2.5 times their cost.)
<span style="font-size: 1rem;">How much should you pay for a learning solution? Why does one vendor quote $5,000 and another $20,000? At its core, the price of a learning solution is a very simple equation – </span><strong style="font-size: 1rem;">Rate x Effort = Price.</strong>
For those organizations that buy learning from third-party vendors these prices may seem quite low, and they are. The $65 rate is commensurate with what one of those companies would pay an employee but does not include all of the overheads, cost of sale, and profit that company would typically account for in the price. As a rule of thumb, a custom learning company will price at about 60% gross margin, which in short-hand means you multiple direct costs by 2.5.
guidde・Magically create video documentation with AI
This might not be as exciting of an AI tool as all the fun image generators, but it looks very practical. Create a screen capture video, then use the AI tools to generate the text explaining each step and add voice over. The tool also creates documentation at the same time. The text looks more accurate than some other tools I have tried, at least in the demo, but I assume in practice it would still require editing. For quick software training and performance support, this looks useful.
Must-See eLearning Portfolio Examples | The eLearning Designer's Academy by Tim Slade
Tim Slade has collected some of his favorite elearning portfolios. This is a good place to look for inspiration (but new IDs, know that these folks are experienced, and your portfolio probably won't quite look like this yet).
25 Free Illustrated Characters - Downloads - E-Learning Heroes
Tom Kuhlmann created illustrated characters in different poses using Midjourney and then cleaned them up afterwards. He's sharing these results for free. Note that some images may still have some weird artifacts, even after the cleanup. These would be a great resource for people looking for a free character set for a portfolio sample.