Jackie Van Nice

E-Learning Goodness by Jackie Van Nice

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Sell Like Your Surfboard Depends On It!

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Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s Articulate challenge is to use a template to create a game. It’s actually a free template I created from a German drinking game I made for another challenge – so we know each other pretty well by now.

My Goals

I challenged myself to:

  1. Make it potentially usable for a client.
  2. Stay true to the template.

I’m working on an outside sales training project for a client right now, so a traveling salesperson moving across a game board and working his way towards a big prize (they’ve been known to send their top people to Hawaii) seemed spot-on.

Mai Tai Progress Meter

Mai Tai Progress Meter

Waiter, there’s some freight in my drink

The biggest challenge was figuring out when to use company design elements versus game design elements. For example, in the mai tai progress meter the ice cubes were originally little cardboard packages themed for the company.

They still made clinking sounds like ice cubes, which entertained me, plus it was a great blend of company and game elements. But in the end it was a lot more refreshing and rewarding to see ice cubes amassing in my glass rather than pieces of freight. (Who knew?)

Challenge Screen

Challenge Screen

Realistic Challenges

For the challenges I used background images and realistic situations to add more context and meaning.

See it in action!

You can see my sales game right here, and if you’d like to see what others are coming up with this week, keep an eye on the comments section of David Anderson’s blog right here.

(You can play along too, you know!)

Before & After

By the way, here are some side-by-side comparisons of the template screens versus my finished game screens. Click on any of them for a larger view.

Introduction

Introduction

Game Start

Game Start

Game Board

Game Board

Challenge Question

Challenge Question

Feedback When Incorrect

Feedback When Incorrect

Feedback When Correct

Feedback When Correct

Progress Meter

Progress Meter

Success Screen

Success Screen

Can You Crowdsource Your Mentors?

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Crowdsourced Mentoring

I’ve always loved nudging people to figure out their goals and dreams; encouraging them to make it all happen. I’m sure you’ve done the same. There’s nothing more exhilarating than seeing someone connect with that spark that ignites their work and life. So when I recently started getting requests to mentor people who have seen my work here, you can imagine how excited and humbled I was that they would ask.

What Makes A Good Mentor?

The good news for me is that this has been a fantastic year. By looking up from my desk long enough to reach out to share and connect with others, all sorts of career possibilities suddenly exploded for me. But all of that good stuff also means my free time has sort of evaporated. Given that, I’m trying to figure out what sort of help I’d be able to offer, and it got me thinking about what and how I learned from my own mentor.

My Mentor

When I started as a freelance instructional designer my first client ended up becoming a fantastic mentor just by being who she is. There was no official mentoring relationship – I just took it all in. This is how she helped me:

  • Reviews & Critiques: Every time she reviewed my work and made it clear that, for example, the placement of every element was important down to the very last pixel – I took it in and that became my standard.
  • Observation: From project management to design work to professional involvement, just by observing how she operated, I learned.
  • Encouragement & Support: She thought I was talented, but more than that she told me I was and always made sure I was paid as much as possible. She didn’t have to do either of those things, but her generosity and support made me work even harder to do the best work I possibly could.

Individual vs. Crowdsourced Mentoring

A lot of the things I got from her individually can be obtained in professional communities online now. It’s not identical, but I’ve grown enormously in the past few years by taking advantage of the knowledge, advice, and opportunities for growth provided by the generous members of the Articulate community. Need a review or critique? Want to observe how others work and what they do? Need encouragement, suggestions, or advice? Want quick and effective ways to build your skills and portfolio? It’s all there in the community, and those are the same things I got from my own mentor.

Can you really crowdsource something like mentoring? Check out the thoughts of Danielle Russell. Her “crowd” is her network of connections – and she’s doing what we’re all doing: Getting involved, gathering information, making decisions, and taking action to build her career.

What Are You Looking For In A Mentor?

If you were looking for an individual e-learning mentor, what would be most helpful and what would that relationship look like? Could turning to an involved professional community for support meet any of those same needs? What do you think?

Video: How to Customize This Sobered-Up Drinking Game

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I’ve just taken my original German drinking game created in Articulate Storyline and made it into a free template that I talked about recently.  Now I’ve recorded two videos to help you use the template. You can download the free Storyline template here, and I also made a PowerPoint version you can download here.

Video #1: Original vs. the Template

In this video I walk you through the features of the original game, then compare them to the template. Kind of a nice overview. If you’d prefer to see captures of the screens compared, they’re at the end of this post. I created this for the Storyline version, but PowerPoint users can get some useful information from it, too.

Video Player

 Video #2: How to Customize the Storyline Template

In this video I show you the customizable features you can make your own. Again, I created it for the Storyline version, but PowerPoint users can get some useful information from it, too.

Video Player

Have Fun!

I hope these walk-throughs help as you go forth to create your own games. Enjoy!

A Non-Regulation Spelling Bee

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Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s Articulate challenge, with a nod to the latest National Spelling Bee, is to build an interactive vocabulary quiz. It’s a great challenge because you can take it in so many directions.

Inspiration

Intro Screen

Intro Screen

I looked at a lot of interaction types, but when nothing struck me I thought I could at least start by choosing characters to work with. That’s when I remembered I’ve got good stock images of children. When I started looking at extremes (who’s the youngest?) then thought about an opponent (who’s the most unlikely?) I suddenly had my theme.

Content

Going for ridiculous words and context sentences was the only way to do it, and the greater the contrast between the participant prompts, the better. Unfortunately, I have far more knowledge of goofball cop humor than little girl references, so I just had to wing it on the kid side.

Quiz Slide in Action

Quiz Slide in Action

Design

I focused on designing a quick, clean interaction because it’s funnier. I’m pretty happy with it, given the time frame.

Building It

I always have to go back to refresh my memory about how to engineer these things:

  • Each question slide is actually a fill-in-the-blank graded quiz slide.
  • To capture the running game scores I created variables for KidTotal and CopTotal.
  • To add points to their scores, on the “correct” feedback layer I added a trigger that adds a value of 1 to the appropriate KidTotal or CopTotal variable at the beginning of the timeline.
  • To display their scores, I inserted reference fields on the scoreboards to show the current value of KidTotal and CopTotal.
  • I also created variables to take you to one of three possible endings based on the final score.
  • I couldn’t get the text entry screens to refresh after hitting Replay. Those kept holding on to whatever was entered in the prior round. I ended up adding a hidden results slide to create the needed variables so I could add a “reset results” trigger to the Replay button. That worked.

The Result

Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo

I think it’s funny. My clue is when I can’t stop laughing long enough to record audio, but it was pretty late at night, so maybe I was just punchy.

I hope you enjoy it – you can see it right here!

Step Graphics to Success as an E-Learning Designer

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Select Image to Launch Demo

This week’s challenge was to create a step graphic to tell a story or explain a process. It came at the end of a week where I kept hearing concerns from e-learning designers who felt stuck due to lack of skills, experience, usable portfolio pieces, visibility in the field, and/or confidence. So when the challenge hit, that was my topic.

Step Graphic Main Screen

Step Graphic Main Screen

Design

I wanted it to be fresh, direct, and maybe a bit inspiring – so I chose the character, the approach, and the background based on that.

The layout bothered me for a full week. Still does, but I have to let it go. I tried countless ideas with different graphics, colors, fonts, animations, and audio. It started out with more depth (links to resources, etc.) but it was taking too long, so I stripped it down and kept it simple. My concern was keeping the user’s attention focused on an already-busy screen. It seems to work, based on the little bit of user testing I did, so I’m going with it.

The step navigation is simple. I chose buttons with a full set of states, including a clear selected state so it’s easy to see where you are.

Content

I added the intro screen to make it clear that you should probably be (a) an e-learning designer who (b) has these goals, if the content is going to apply to you.

After that, it’s what I do each week for the challenges combined with a little bit of advice based on personal experience.

The Result

Ready to give it a try? Take a look! And if you’re an e-learning designer who feels stuck or wants to learn more and improve your skills, you might want to give the challenges a try. They’ve worked for me!

Select Image to Launch Demo

Select Image to Launch Demo