Jackie Van Nice

E-Learning Goodness by Jackie Van Nice

Working for Yourself

“Please Refresh Us!” Love, Your Online E-Learning Demos

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The Heartbreak of Demo Neglect

I began participating in Articulate’s delightfully addictive E-Learning Challenges more than 8 years ago, and I’ve designed and developed 130+ entries and written posts about each one.

Some entries took the form of images, podcasts, videos, interviews, or Rise interactions – but 100+ of them were in Storyline, and I published and uploaded those demos to my site so you could take them for a spin. Because fun!

Fickle, Fickle Technology

But development tools, online security protocols, web browsers, and mobile devices are constantly changing and unless you’re regularly republishing your e-learning examples, users are probably staring at blank or spinning screens of nothingness where all the good stuff used to be. (Sorry ’bout that.)

My ELH Challenge Entry This Week: No Progress Yet

You Don’t Have Time for This Nonsense

I don’t have to tell you why few (if any) of us regularly republish our examples. It’s a task that gets back-burnered as you get swept into exhilarating new interests and projects.

Why would I voluntarily halt all of that life-giving exhilaration to dig up 100+ dusty source files, upgrade each one to the latest version of Storyline, apply the most current mobile-friendly player, test them, make a variety of adjustments, publish them, and try to figure out how to re-upload the published files in a by-now-completely-altered back-end environment? Wouldn’t it make more sense to see what’s happening on Catfish UK?

The Turning Point: Love Triumphs Over Shadiness

What finally got my attention was a hosting company that had thoroughly lost the plot. It was not looking good, and as the weeks dragged on I prepared for a full salvage operation by going through every post and page on my site to document details in case I needed to reconstruct it from scratch.

The completely unexpected result was that I fell in love with the work all over again. In the initial rush of creating it I never stopped to fully appreciate it. Now I couldn’t be prouder of it or happier that I did it. Even the old cringey stuff. It was time to show it some love.

This Week’s ELH Challenge

This week’s challenge is to design a progress indicator to show learner status. I used this experience to create my entry, using lots of blank demo screens as my progress indicator starting point. You can check it out right here.

Select Image to See My ELH Challenge Entry

More to Come, DON*

I’ve learned a few things while revisiting and updating 100+ samples of my work in Storyline. I’ll be sharing more of that new-found wisdom soon, unless Netflix suddenly puts out a new season of Murderville.

*Depending on Netflix

The Top 5 Reasons I’m Grateful for More than 2 Years of #ELHChallenges

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Click for the Full List of Challenges (Image Credit: Articulate)

Click for the Full List of Challenges (Image Credit: Articulate)

When I first heard about Articulate’s ELH Challenges (which may well have been in this post from Tom Kuhlmann) it was clear they’d be a fantastic way to sharpen my skills and get involved in the community – but it still took me until #8 to put in an entry, and until #20 to get hooked.

To date I’ve completed 108 challenges, and although it’s taken a lot of time and effort to stick with them, it’s been life changing. I’m grateful for them every day, and thought I’d pause for a moment to share my top 5 reasons why.

1. Connection with a Vibrant Community

Whether you’re talking about Fearless Challenge Leader David Anderson, who always comes up with unique, creative challenges and sets the enthusiastic, inclusive, and ever-encouraging tone – or the extraordinary range of participants who never fail to share remarkable solutions and ideas along with a great deal of kindness and wisdom – the value of that energy and those connections can’t be overstated.

2. The Chance to Hone My Design Skills

I already had a good sense of my design sensibilities before coming into the challenges, but having the chance to stretch and practice and grow outside of the constraints of client projects was an absolute gift. If not for the challenges, I’d never have had the impetus to create a silly little paper doll slider, a romantic approach to filling out a passport form, an homage to health workers in West Africa, or a way to try different shades of lipstick on George Washington. It would have been unthinkable.

3. The Chance to Push My Software Skills

I think we all have a tendency to go with what we already know when it comes to software – especially when we’re on deadline and need to knock something out. So being challenged to grow and figure out how to do a whole lot more with Storyline (and other software) each week – either because David presented a new technical challenge or because my design ideas were forcing me to do more complex things – was another leap forward.

4. A Pretty Swingin’ Portfolio

No one ever asks to see my portfolio. By the time they contact me they’ve already had the chance to wander through over 100 pieces of my work (most of which are challenge entries), along with written explanations about each one. Once on the phone they can’t wait to tell me how much they loved things like the German drinking game, Big History timeline, or tic-tac-toe game and want to use those ideas in their company’s own courses.

5. A Whole Lot of Work

When other designers ask me where to find work, what companies look for in their ads, or what to put on their résumés – I’m useless. I have no idea. I spend my time designing e-learning projects for clients, working on new Articulate challenge entries, and keeping those entries visible. Because of that, wonderful people at creative companies who need someone to design custom e-learning find me. Many peers will tell you the same, and I wrote about how to get work like this – but only if you want work to come to you in a painless and enormously fun way.

So there you have it! The top 5 reasons I’m incredibly grateful for more than 2 years of Articulate challenges. To be honest, any one of those 5 reasons would have been enough to make participation worthwhile, but together they’ve enhanced my work life beyond measure.

Thank you, Articulate.

How Long Does It Take To Create E-Learning?

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Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s challenge is to share an instructional design cheat sheet, job aid, or reference you use in your work.

The Idea

The Chapman Alliance Study

The Chapman Alliance Study

I alllllllllways refer to this Chapman study on how long it takes to create e-learning every time someone approaches me about a project. Since that makes it my most-used reference piece by far, I thought I’d translate it into a zippy little interaction that might even be a tad easier to follow than the original.

The Design

Since the study is focusing on hours, I thought it would be smart to build it around the image of a clock.

Once I found a flat design clock I liked, I added Chapman’s three primary levels of e-learning design to the main slide and used layers to animate the hour estimates for each level onto the clock face itself.

After that I used lots of triggers to make the interaction as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, both visually and functionally, and added a lightboxed slide to provide more detail about the study that also links back to the original.

The Result

As much as I love the original info from Chapman, I’ll no doubt point to this one more. If you’d like to see it in action, you can start estimating your e-learning project hours right here!

4 (More) Free E-Learning Tools I Use

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I shared 4  Free E-Learning* Tools I Use exactly one year ago as part of an Articulate challenge, but the world has moved on and so have I. What happened? Redbooth got rid of their free option, Microsoft Clipart took a powder, Pinterest I rarely have time for, and I don’t use free fonts anymore, so here are my current (free!) fab four:

1. Trello: Task & Project Management

Trello

I resisted Trello for the longest time, but the sheer simplicity of it won me over. At the moment it’s my primary project management tool. There’s nothing better than seeing every project at a glance and being able to quickly and easily share with others. I’m quite happy with the free version for both personal and work projects. I use it daily in my desktop browser, iPad, iPhone, and AppleWatch and it syncs beautifully. Love.

2. Toggl: Time Tracking

Toggl

Speaking of love and seamless syncing, Toggl for time tracking may have won even more real estate in my heart than Trello has. When I want to start or stop the clock I grab my iPhone and tap the app or do the same in a desktop browser. I control the same running task on either. The reports are perfect for my needs, it’s free for teams up to 5, and includes unlimited clients and projects. Wish I’d been using this for yeeeeeeeears.

3. Coolors: Color Scheme Generator

Coolors

This one is brand new to me, but the moment I saw David Anderson’s tweet about it I checked it out and was sold. (In a free kind of way.) With Coolors I love that you can quickly pull down existing palettes or generate your own in a way that even non-adept color scheme generators like me can handle. I’m also crazy about the fact that I can instantly export my found or generated palettes to PNG, PDF, or URL. It’s my new go-to for colors. (There’s a cool-looking iPhone/iPad app for 99 cents but I haven’t played with it yet.)

4. Greenshot: Screen Captures

Greenshot

For many years I used Snag-It for screen captures. A year or so ago it decided it didn’t want to play nicely with others and was continually crashing and not responding to fixes. I had to quickly find a substitute, which led me to free, open-source Greenshot. I’ve never had it crash, it’s not a resource hog, and it works reliably, quietly, and beautifully every time.

So those are my latest go-to tools that cost nothing at all. If any of them sound good to you, they might be worth a try!

*I use them for e-learning but they’re clearly great for project management, design, or general organization.

Working Together to Create E-Learning

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Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s challenge is to show how you create online training. The process of how I work with clients is something I’m always having to explain, so it’s about time I added a quick explanation to my site.

Who Does What?

David Anderson suggested we could use the helpful post How to Create an Online Course in 7 Simple Steps as a launching point if we’d like. That process is quite similar to mine, but mine reflects exactly how I work and shows which steps I perform and which ones my clients perform.

My Steps

These are the steps. You’ll find more details in the demo – and you can see them written out on this page. It’s an abbreviated list since it’s only meant to be a quick (yet useful) overview. Each step can be an entire world unto itself:

  1. Set Goals

  2. Set Content

  3. Design It

  4. Storyboard It

  5. Build It

  6. Deliver It

  7. Evaluate It

See it in Action!

Here’s my e-learning process succinctly explained.

Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo