If I had to guess, you’ve been doing A LOT more video and virtual content recently! Here are a few tips that you can apply immediately to get the most out of your audio-visuals, from recording course content to publishing YouTube videos, or just putting your best face (and voice) forward on your next Zoom meeting. Tip#1 Camera setup If you could see behind the scenes of some of my first video setups, I bet you’d get a kick out of it! I’ve had my equipment propped on some questionably precarious household items to get the right angle for a shot. For most “people” shots (interviews, meetings, webinars, etc.), you’ll want the camera positioned slightly above the face, shooting down. Have you ever noticed the Instagram Models taking their best selfies? They’re always holding the camera at about a 45° angle above their face. Channel the IG Model. Upgrade: a tripod for your phone or camera. I purchased a slick one from Amazon. Cost: $23.49. Now, I’m getting much better shots without … [Read more...] about 5 Tips To Produce High-Quality ELearning Videos
Instructional Design and ELearning
5 Ways the Pandemic is Changing Learning
With the world rapidly shifting to distance learning, our views on education have also significantly changed. Educators the world over have been forced to reconsider their approach to teaching and students are finding that some approaches work better than others. Here’s how the pandemic is changing learning: Creativity Abounds Student engagement has always been a struggle for teachers, whether in-classroom or on-screen. However, to offset the admittedly dry nature of online lectures, educators have started to get more creative. Chemistry students at Calvin Coolidge High School in Washington, D.C. are enjoying efforts by teacher Jonte Lee to liven up their lessons by doing chemistry experiments from his kitchen and answering questions in real-time via Instagram. That’s just one example of how teachers are getting creative in their online classes. Less Lecturing, More Discussing It’s a proven fact that students learn better when they ask questions, but decades of traditional learning … [Read more...] about 5 Ways the Pandemic is Changing Learning
Using Mind Maps to Develop Your Curriculum
eLearning course curriculum development is the most important step in creating highly informative, engaging courses for a given audience. If you get the curriculum wrong, it’s likely your course, once developed, will not meet its targeted learning objectives. Thankfully, there’s a very useful tool to help eLearning course developers put visual perspective to their curriculum development efforts. It’s called Mind Maps. CURRICULUMS AND CONCEPTS An early example of the use of the mapping technique, to link related concepts, and developing a teaching curriculum from there, is by educationist and researcher Katherine M. Edmondson in 1993[i]. Back then, educators used “concept mapping” as a tool for integrated curriculum development. Experts endorsed its use as: “a valuable tool for curriculum development of any scope or discipline…particularly helpful for creating interdisciplinary courses and case‐based exercises” Today, that simple tool has morphed into a highly visual, interactive, … [Read more...] about Using Mind Maps to Develop Your Curriculum
10 Most Common Mistakes Rookie L&D Professionals Make…And How To Avoid Them
Newcomers to any field often have the world in front of them, and newbies to the Learning & Development (L&D) and Instructional Design (ID) profession are no different. The tendency is to put everything they’ve learned to practice, in the hope that they’ll produce more effective eLearning solutions. In the process, they often make some rookie mistakes. How To Avoid Common Errors That Rookie L&D Professionals Make Here are 10 common rookie errors to avoid. 1. Assuming That When The Client Asks For A Learning Solution, It's The Right Solution For Whatever Problem The Client Is Trying To Solve Or Objective They're Trying To Achieve Training won’t always solve an issue. And one of the most important questions novice L&D professionals must learn to ask is: Is training the solution to a problem? An established factory (in business for 30 years) owner might be concerned about falling quality and productivity and increasing safety incidents. Their answer: Train the … [Read more...] about 10 Most Common Mistakes Rookie L&D Professionals Make…And How To Avoid Them
Using Video Animations in eLearning
As I worked on a recent eLearning project, using animated video (I use Vyond as my primary video creation tool), I realized how invaluable the use of this medium (video animations) is to instructional designers. With that realization, and seeing how the use of specialized animated video creation software made all the difference to the outcome, I thought I’d share some of my experiences on using animated video with readers of this post. So, here goes! Why animated video is important in eLearning? Because of the time constraints, they are under, eLearners today want things compressed, simplified, and presented to them in an easy-to-digest format. Animated videos do just that. They empower learning content developers with the ability to push the limits of expression in ways that traditional video production won’t allow. Instructional designers can take complex concepts, wrap them into an array of animated environments, build a host of primary and supporting characters (serious, … [Read more...] about Using Video Animations in eLearning
How to Structure Your Online Course in 3 Easy Steps
If you’re to the putting-it-all-together stage of the online course creation process, I’m going to assume you have the following: Learning Objectives – clearly stated and measurable. Assessments - based on the learning objectives you’ve defined above. Content – this is the big one that will provide the backbone to your learners successfully reaching those learning outcomes. While you don’t need every last detail of content created before proceeding with structuring your course, you will need to define and categorize where that content would fall in the big picture. IF you have these things nailed down, let's get started with structuring your online course! Step #1 Categorize - Think in broad terms of how your course topics could be grouped. These groups should be one or two-word phrases that each of your content pieces could logically be placed under. For example, let's imagine you're creating a short course on How to Run Your First Marathon. Here are a few of the … [Read more...] about How to Structure Your Online Course in 3 Easy Steps