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.
Imported from Diigo
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
Arist: the text message learning platform
Create courses via text message
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
6 PowerPoint productivity boosters from BrightSlide | BrightCarbon
The free BrightSlide tool from BrightCarbon offers a number of useful features for working in PowerPoint
LearningDojo | Learning Development Training
Video xAPI trackers and wrappers. Free templates from Jeff Batt at Learning Dojo
Interactive Video Generator
Create JSON files for interactive video with questions at cue points. These interactions can be reported with xAPI
Interleaving: How Mixed Practice Can Boost Your Learning – Effectiviology
A non-technical explanation of interleaving, with an overview of the research and theory supporting it and ideas on how to implement it to improve learning.
Best Laptops for Instructional Designers in 2020
Devlin Peck walks through the important factors for picking a laptop for instructional design and elearning professionals. His top 3 recommendations are a Dell XPS 15, MacBook Pro, or Surface Pro, but he lists the recommended specs so you can find other brands that meet the requirements.
3 Best Laptops for Instructional Design – 7 Things to Know
Scott Winstead's recommendations for laptops for instructional designers. The Acer Aspire is #3 on his list. That's what my last 2 laptops have been, and both have lasted 5 years. I probably will switch brands for my next laptop, but they have been solid options for me in the past (although I did not have lower end options like Scott reviews).
How to Find Your Next 20 Clients Online in 63 Days
Specific tactics for finding new clients as a freelancer or consultant. This is broken into three phases: an initial phase to get your first 5 clients and learn what you like the best, a second phase of defining your ideal client, and a third phase of scaling by partnering with others and teaching new audiences. eLearning and instructional design freelancers may not even need the third phase (which includes a lot of building a large audience), but I like the targeted alternatives to cold emails here.
<p>If you don’t know who your ideal client is, answer these three questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Who is doing work you respect?</li>
<li>Who would be fun to work with?</li>
<li>Who could give you additional exposure if you worked for them?</li></ol>
CALC / Contract-Awarded Labor Category
See how much the GSA has paid in past awarded contracts for the US federal government. You can use the filters to see hourly rate comparisons by education, experience, role, keywords, etc. You can also export the data in CSV for further analysis.