You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Instructional Design' category.
So one of the things that I do often, and get to talk about a bit, is the idea of visual design.
For the record, I am not a very graphically enabled person. I can sketch a bit, I can get a point across, but I don’t make many visuals that anyone would call beautiful. How about you? Are you graphically minded?
Regardless, being visual, or thinking visually is important part of any learning professional.
For one of the presentations I did, I even put together a presentation that starts with some visual thinking – and the power of how visuals can communicate very powerful messages – both in terms of learning and emotion.
Check out this short screencast, as one example:
Also, check out VizThink – lots of interesting material for anyone interested in become more visual. Or looking to enhance your visual thinking. http://www.vizthink.com/blog/
I’ve been reading Wired.com for a few years, usually daily. For awhile now they’ve had a feature called the Wired How-To Wiki. (this one is about getting through airport security)
It’s an interesting experiment in presenting learning content on several different levels.
First off all they have lots of resources and professional writers to make it look good and read it really well.
Second, they understand that the graphics really make a piece. Sometimes the images are truly (which is the positive), 
sometimes they are just fun (at least they give us something). Check out How to survive and Avalanche
Third… it’s a wiki – meaning anyone can make changes, comment on the content, and even see the changes over time.
Although I haven’t dug in to see if readers of wired.com are adding much content or not, it is still an interesting concept. Allowing user generated content and corrections to create learning content.
Think of organizational possibilities – you create a quick procedural write-up on how to do a task, maybe as a job aid for yourself, or for a co-worker learning on the job. Rather than letting it rot on your hard drive, you share it out to the wiki. Perhaps a coworker sees an error or inconsistency, and takes a minute or two to make a change. A third co-worker disagrees, and changes the process. All is lost– no, from the wiki we can see who made what change and when- it can be restored back to its previous state, or changed again.
So not only does it create transparency, it creates an opportunity for each member of the organization to take ownership.
A potential downside might be if and when employees don’t feel like they have time to add anything. Then we’re no better off than we were before the wiki. Also, I’m not saying that this is the strategy for deploying every type and kind of training- I wouldn’t use it for highly regulated topics, or topics that are mission critical to the success of the organization. It can assist, but probably not the primary tool.
Now, can I get my screencasts to play in the wiki?
Okay one more post on the iPod Touch (at least for a little while, since this really isn’t a blog about the iPod touch – its about learning, especially e-learning.)
Today Toolbook announced it has and will be releasing tools to develop specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I am not a Toolbook user – but I think it seems pretty cool. Focused development on e-learning on a very cool tool.
They even made a screencast to preview it, check it out here: http://www.toolbook.com/demos/iphone_howto_demo/1/index.html
If anyone is working with ToolBook and is able to give this a try, I’d love to hear how it works… and even, if possible I’d be willing to test it out.
I was invited to speak at the local ASTD chapter here in Lansing Michigan. They asked me to introduce SnagIt, Camtasia Studio, and mention Jing. (Please remember I in no way represent TechSmith or their products on this blog, but am a happy employee – who gets the great opportunity to work with these awesome products everyday. These comments and insights are mine and mine alone, whether you think a little or a lot of them.)
While I did talk about those 3 in some detail (as much detail as one can get in about an hour and 15 minutes), I was really pleased with the first part of my presentation on visual communication, an am excited to expand it and refine it more. If I get the chance I will have to see if I can take it to a session or two (hmmm…. DevLearn, ASTD, ??????, any good instructional design conferences besides these that I should be aware of?)
I think one of the big things that has been and will continue to shift in e-learning is the amount and the necessity to becom ever more visual. One of the things that I see is the wide spread distribution of tools like the iPod touch or iPhone – and other similar technologies. These are inherently visual, and even if the specific device doesn’t take off and become the cool e-learning tool of the future – or make mobile learning kick some series butt, its coming and it will be very visual.
In the past one of the big obstacles in e-learning was bandwidth, storage, etc… but now I’m sitting in my kitchen, pulling a signal through a wireless aircard, and able to move quickly along on the internet. Now granted I’m not able to play network intense games, and it takes a little time to stream movies – but it’s faster than dial-up, and most of the time faster than my parent’s satellite internet connection. And it will get faster the next few years, especially as technologies like WiMax and others become more prevalent.
Rather than worrying about content being downloadable to computers – we need to focus more and more on information – the content, the presentation, the messaging, the scaffolding, chunking and many other factors – being able to handle the information that is presented. In other words will the learners have enough personal bandwidth (mentally and emotionally) to handle what is being presented? There are a lot of considerations that need to go into the decision making process – but actual file size will be less of an issue.
