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The 2011 Non-Official Global eLearning Guild Salary & Compensation Calculator — Travis’s Thoughts
Calculator based on the data from the eLearning Guild salary survey report. Choose your variables and see the average salary.
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Overview of several sites for creating color palettes. I’ve used the Color Scheme Designer and Kuler before, but the others were new to me.
Archive for May, 2011
Weekly Bookmarks (5/29/2011)
May 29, 2011Weekly Bookmarks (5/22/2011)
May 22, 2011-
Nine Shift : How much more productive are teleworkers?
Summary of findings from a number of studies showing increases in productivity due to telecommuting. Increases in productivity range from 15% to 50%.
Weekly Bookmarks (5/9/2011)
May 9, 2011-
Resources on Section 508 and WCAG accessibility, including a tutorial on 508 and a comparison of 508 vs. WCAG
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Learning Solutions Magazine article on online education programs for instructional designers. Compares certificates to masters degrees and PhDs. Includes ideas on how to pick a program that is the right fit for you. The table at the end with a list of schools, programs, and costs is very helpful.
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Icon Search Engine | Iconfinder
Hundreds of icon sets. Check licenses; some are Creative Commons, some are free for commercial use, some are personal use only
Integrating Game Design Principles into Instructional Design for e-Learning
May 4, 2011These are my live blogged notes from the webinar. Any typos, awkward phrasing, or errors are mine, not the presenter’s. My side commentary in italics.
Integrating Game Design Principles into Instructional Design for e-Learning
Webinar presented by Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactions (Allen Interactions blog)
Learning Objectives
-Identify the characteristics of games that create motivation and engagement.
-Integrate game structures into instructional designs for standard e-learning content.
What is the appeal of gaming principles for learning?
- Most people said “engaging” in the poll
- Active and challenging were 2nd and 3rd choices
Non-examples:
- Jeopardy example
- Snakes and Ladders–typical board game adaptation with quiz questions Sheesh, the dice rolling animation takes forever. That would get old really fast.
- Game show variations
The non-examples were fun, active, familiar, but not really engaging, focused, or task-oriented. They are just tests hidden behind a game skin.
Example of a real game: Diner Dash: manage customers at a restaurant, juggle multiple tasks at once, work fast enough to keep customers happy
If we want to engage people like they are engaged in real games, we need to look at how games really work, not just putting the superficial elements on top.
As you play a game, you get better: you learn. There’s no real way to get better at Jeopardy other than studying; studying isn’t a game activity. Jeopardy is a glorified assessment/test, not really teaching anything.
Realistically, most of us don’t have the kind of resources to do full game development. Most of the real games like Diner Dash just consume time, don’t teach us something useful.
What can we take from gaming?
- Engaging
- Focused
- Task-oriented
Forget about making it fun & colorful, focus on making it engaging
Example: Locating an earthquake’s epicenter. Not actually a game, but interactive and focused and you get feedback. It makes you want to do it again and make challenges for yourself.
What design element is most important? (audience poll)
- Increased risk: #1 choice in the poll
- Expanded choices & alternative reality choices 2 & 3
Risk
- Sense of consequence. Failure must matter
- Failure must be possible (at first, likely)
- Failure should not be the final result
- Minimize randomness (no spinners or dice). People take responsibility for risk and move to minimize it, but if it’s really random, people don’t take control of consequences themselves.
Meaningful Choices
- Clear & accessible
- Promote thought, not guessing
- Risk commensurate with choices
In the non-examples, risk is the same regardless of the choice
Compelling Frame
- Rules add up to create a rational universe. The game world/frame should make sense within itself, even if it isn’t completely realistic
- Create formal links to the real world
- Makes intrinsic feedback possible. Good games don’t tell you if you’re succeeding or failing, you see it by the consequences of choices
Example: supervisor effectiveness training where you talk to people in cubicles about employee security/workplace violence. You assess risks based on employee behavior, prioritize threats. This example is in one of the Michael Allen books; I remember reading about it but not which book. The initial feedback in this example is not really intrinsic; it’s more of the “No, find the more pressing concern” or “Yes, that’s right by the guidelines.” However, when you actually get to question an employee, the feedback is more intrinsic, with more realistic human-sounding responses to questions rather than simply telling. The feedback is a mix of intrinsic and extrinsic, which maybe is necessary but does feel like it breaks the “flow” of the game.
This game has more realistic choices and consequences, with some risk for poor choices.
Example: Stock room organizing training for a shoe store. Need employees to master this task to the point where it becomes automatic.
Three different levels like a real game
- No timing
- More pressure because new shoe boxes are arriving on a conveyor. You have to get the box in the right place before it scrolls off the screen.
- Includes time pressure, plus the shelves are more full so you have to plan ahead to make gaps before boxes are visible
Gives them real choices, actions which are close to those they really need to do
Example: Police training on gang symbols. Lots of content embedded in the resources of the game, but you don’t have to go through it in a linear order. World is compelling because of risk. Starts as you are patrolling a street and you have to identify what to pay attention to (graffiti etc.) If you want to go look up info, the resource is available to support.
Q&A
Q: How does competition impact effectiveness?
A: It can improve it; a Hall of Fame with a group of employees who work together can be effective. We had “Grammar Games” at a previous company to work on improving everyone’s writing and citation skills. It was a lot of fun, and the competition of having
Q: Speed challenges work well for procedures that require automaticity. What other designs match cognitive needs?
A: Create an environment where they make the same choices in the game that they need to make in the real world. What is the flaw in reasoning that will commonly happen? How do you create an environment that makes that flaw in reasoning determine success/failure? If you emphasize speed over accuracy, you may lose thoughtfulness.
Q: Where the games developed in Flash? With a dedicated programmer?
A: Yes, they are Flash, and you need a real programmer. (With a side note that Zebra will address that issue, but right now it’s all Flash)
Image Credit:
Weekly Bookmarks (5/1/11)
May 1, 2011-
Two IDs look at the use of audio narration–how much, quality of speakers, quality of equipment. Includes guidelines based on their survey of employees. I wish they had some more info about the survey they conducted though (i.e., how many responses they received, how many total employees at the company, etc.)
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We wanted to know the preferences of our employees so we conducted a survey. They almost unanimously said that 1) they do not want the entire course to be narrated, 2) they do not want text on the screen read to them word for word, and 3) about two-thirds of the employees want to be able to turn the narration on or off.
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Only 12% said they prefer professional voice talent. A full 85% said the voice only needs to sound good enough to get the point across without having to strain to understand it. Nearly 60% of our employees said “no preference”as long as the voice isn’t irritating to listen to. 40% prefer that the narrator be someone they recognize (i.e., a well-known manager, process owner, or SME). A surprising 9% said the narration could be computer-generated as long as it didn’t sound too robot-like.
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Here are the guidelines we have adopted as a result of this study:
- [How much?] We will use audio only when instructionally necessary.
- [Control] We will make sure students have the ability to turn the sound on and off, and that they know how to do so.
- [Who?] We will continue to use in-house talent, but other than credits at the end, we will not identify the narrator unless his or her name or title is pertinent for the instruction, e.g., having the Compliance Officer introduce a compliance course. This will prevent having to re-narrate when someone changes position or leaves the company. We may audition to get more suitable voices.
- [Quality] We only need slightly a higher quality microphone along with a pop filter to raise our technical quality to the practical limit. We also identified a storage room that will double as our sound studio with the use of inexpensive draperies. This location should improve our ability to splice in updates without sounding noticeably different from the original.
- We will continue to have learners evaluate the use and quality of our narration and make adjustments accordingly.
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