E-Learning Heroes - Advice and ideas from the Articulate Community

3 Ideas for Grabbing Attention Posted Sunday, April 01, 2012 at 9:55 PM

While there are some great examples around using emphasis text, white space and reality TV to design engaging e-learning, the reality is even the best-designed courses become predictable at some point. That's why I'm such a big fan of Dr. Oppelbaumer.

A misguided reading of Oppelbaumer's recent work has led me to discover dozens of obscure techniques for gaining attention during e-learning courses. Here are three I can share today.

1. Trick banners

Nothing disrupts a learning experience like a system warning. In much the same way "no toon can resist the old 'shave and a haircut' trick," no user can resist clicking an alert button.

Let's use that to our advantage.

Example:

Case study:

Sneak in some compliance updates, upcoming course announcements or even a pop quiz.

Variations

Consider mixing up your system messages with more positive banners. The "Congratulations, you're a winner" will be a familiar ad to most corporate learners.

2. Pop-up Banners

Loathed by e-learners yet critical to marketers, banners work at grabbing attention. Course banners aren't something most learners have seen, so click-through rates are guaranteed to be higher for early adopters.

Example:

Case study:

Our course begins with a simple yawner on mortgage banking. Everything appears to be normal when, out of nowhere, our banner loads:

3. Emergency Lights

What's the first thing you do when you see flashing lights? You stop what you're doing and pull over. Here we can take a cue from Drudge Report.

Like him or not, nothing signals "breaking news" like the Drudge siren. And that's just what we need to wake a sleeping learner.

Example:

Case study:

Here we apply the siren to simple bullet points. Notice how the third bullet grabs your attention? You know there's something important there.

Take things up a notch by designing emergency response pages based on the site:

Final thoughts

These are just a few ideas I've picked up from reading Dr. Oppelbaulmer. While no two e-learning courses are alike, I'm confident these techniques can disrupt any course you build.

Please share your own ideas and insights in the comments below.

Job Aids as Spoilers in E-learning Courses Posted Friday, October 14, 2011 at 2:32 PM

As elearning designers, we don’t always have the final say on what goes into the courses we build. That level of decision-making is usually left up to our clients or stakeholders. This can result in information-heavy courses, making it more important we provide learners with supporting resources outside the course.

Spoilers are good for learners

A recent study by UC San Diego suggests that knowing the ending of a story may actually help us enjoy the story more—not less—than if we didn’t know the ending.

Evidently, knowing the story ahead of time creates a greater comfort level that enables us to better enjoy the process and actions leading up to the ending.

If you include the course menu or slide titles, then you’re already creating a kind of course spoiler. Headings and titles help reassure learners where they are in the course, and where the course is headed. That visual reassurance can also be repurposed into a job aid.

The only thing missing is a concise, actionable summary of those headings. Let's look at an example.

Job aids as course spoilers

One of my favorite job aid spoilers comes from Mackie. Mackie makes pro audio equipment. That means their user manuals are designed for musicians—the only group with shorter attention spans than sales people.

If you’re Mackie and you’re selling expensive audio equipment, you have an interest in making sure your customers get the most from their purchase.

Mackie gets it, and most of all, they understand their audience. How?

The second page of every manual includes a big, bold heading that reads “Read This Page!”

Talk about knowing your audience. There it is, in simple, bold type with one critical message: “Skip everything else except this page!”

The next paragraph tells you why it’s so important:

The user manual then drills down into audio settings, options, tutorials and troubleshooting.

Question: Does this one-page job aid spoil the rest of the manual? Does it invalidate the instructional and technical design efforts that went into creating the other 99% of the manual?

No way! The manual’s even more valuable because users now have a working context for how those details apply to their specific needs.

And that’s exactly why this model can help us design better courses.

Here’s how Studio ‘09 can help

Seems so simple, right? But how many e-learning courses provide handouts or job aids that summarize just what the learner needed to know to begin working? The good news is Studio '09 makes creating these resources really easy.

Presenter:

Using Presenter 09’s Attachments feature, you can easily insert one or more spoiler job aids into your course.

The attachments can be .pdf, .doc or .txt files and can be accessed at any time during the course. Attachments can be anything you like: lists, how-tos, dos and don'ts or just a chapter or course summary learners can print and take with them after the course.

Engage:

Engage makes it easy to condense course slides into concise interactions. Using any of the 10 interactions, you can quickly highlight the most relevant points in your course.

What’s cool is how you can publish Engage as a standalone interaction.This means you can share the files across your corporate intranet, company web site or learning portals.

Examples of Engage job aids:

• Blooms Taxonomy job aid
• CPR course - click "How to Navigate" in the upper-right corner of the published course
• ATLAS example - skip to slide 8 for the navigation instructions
• Creative Ways to Enrich E-learning with Toolbar Tabs
• Navigating an Online Course
• Hand hygiene overview (includes stop motion video)
• Pre-class FAQ for students and navigation tips

What do you think?

Is this something that could work with your courses? Would your stakeholders support giving learners a spoiler-type job aid at the beginning of the course? At the end?

Is there a difference to receiving job aids at the beginning of a course versus receiving them at the end of a course?

And if you’re already doing something like this, how about sharing some examples with the community? Post your links in the comments section below, or in the forums.

3 More Ways E-learning Designers Can Use Snapshots to Design Better Courses Posted Friday, October 07, 2011 at 2:21 PM

In a recent post, we looked at some ways Snapshots can help us design the right look and feel for our courses. Because Snapshots are polls, they also offer some valuable instructional design ideas for building elearning courses. How?

For one thing, their content is familiar. Snapshots cover a wide range of topics—financial, health, safety, legal — similar to those you’re already bulding in corporate and higher-ed training departments. The same data you’re using to justify training can also be used to create interest in the training.

So grab your Snapshots playbook, and let’s get started!

Introduce a topic or module

Tried and true bullet points no longer grabbing your learners’ attention like they used to should have? Then try opening with a Snapshot to concisely gain your learners’ attention and communicate relevance.

Here’s how:

Let’s say you’re designing your company’s eCompliance training. In most cases, these courses are your everyday compliance courses that spell out why and how to use company email and internet responsibly. 

You could begin with a typical objectives slide…

Or, you could references pages 298-299 in your Snapshots guide:

This is great!  It's more personal and focused on the learner's behavior than the corporate Internet policy. Using this example as a guide, we can reframe our course introduction slide into something more meaningful for our learner:

Challenge perceptions

Snapshots are engaging because they capture our opinions on provocative topics. As elearning designers, we don’t want to sensationalize our content, but we can use similar techniques to engage our learners by challenging their perceptions.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re designing a module around ethics and workplace theft. Again, this isn’t a life or death topic, and most corporate employees will likely feel the course has little to offer them. But, you have a hunch there’s a Snapshot opportunity here, so you consult the business section and find inspiration on page 301:

This is a great example because the results could surprise many learners. Using a similar example, we could open our module with a quiz or poll. This is also a great use for Quizmaker’s Blank Slide to provide customized feedback to our learners. Here's an example:

Click here to view the Quizmaker example

Spaced learning events

Snapshots are too much fun to only use in courses. Pull them out of the course and use as spaced learning interactions. Create a series of Snapshots and send them to employees both before, and after, training events.  Then, use the polling results to design follow-up coaching activities. Also try posting Snapshots around your corporate intranet site and setting up a way for employees to send them to one another.

They’re like digital learning greeting cards—only better!

What do you think?

Using polls for learning isn't new. What I like about the Snapshots is the visual and provocative way they frame the poll questions.

So, what do you think? Could you use a Snapshots-style polls in your elearning? Is there too much emphasis on the visuals? Or, are the visuals essential when placing greater emphasis on elearning polls?

Here's How Snapshots Can Help You Design Better Courses Posted Friday, September 30, 2011 at 2:40 PM

Are you looking for some fresh ways to present data and charts in your course? What about designing the right look and feel for custom courses? Well, USA Today's Snapshots might be just the inspiration you're looking for.

"What are Snapshots?"

Snapshots are these really fun, graphical polls that appear daily on each of the paper's four main sections. They're simple, visual and easy-to-read public opinion "snapshots" on current trends and topics.

In addition to visual inspirations, Snapshots offer two specific benefits that make them relevant for e-learning designers.

1. Content: Snapshots are designed around a wide range of topics similar to what you're already designing. The content drives the visual design choices.
2. Design: Snapshots are visually aligned to the topics they're presenting. Their visual voice supports the data and topics of the polls.

Let's look at some ideas for just how Snapshots can help course designers.

Better graphs and charts

The majority of Snapshots include percentages and most of those are represented as bar graphs. This makes Snapshots a great resource for designing more visually engaging graphs.

Keep in mind that getting too creative could mislead or misrepresent the data, but that's the case anytime you're working with numbers and graphs. The important thing here is to evaluate how you're currently working with charts and look for more visual ways to present them.

Branding and style guide workarounds

In design mapping, we work to identify the common course elements—fonts, colors, objects, characters—and how to go about selecting the appropriate elements based on the content.

The challenge for many e-learning designers is that corporate branding prohibits tampering with, or disabling, the existing style guide. That's okay. We can work with that.

Snapshots work with similar constraints—they use the same font style and colors and slide design for each graphic.

This constraint emphasizes the importance of visually aligned elements over player templates and corporate branding.

Reduce on-screen text and bullet points

If you're looking for another way to present course objectives, consider leveraging the graphical solutions from Snapshots.

Rewrite the objectives as statements or stick with your measurable approach. Either way, the visual presentation emphasizes the importance of each objective giving learners an immediate sense of relevance.

Visual quiz designs

Snapshots are poll results and present mostly percentages and bar graphs. But their format and visual elements also work for designing more graphical quizzes.

Additional resources

Here are some sources for Snapshots. 

• Daily Snapshots
• Archives
• USA Today's Tumblr
  

I also found a book on Amazon that highlights several hundred of the most popular Snapshots.

What do you think?

Hopefully this gives you some idea for ways to approach your course designs.

What do you think of Snapshots? Would something like Snapshots work with the courses you're currently building? What are the risks with using graphics and images to present data?

(Special thanks to Kelly Smith who inspired this post after a recent Skype conversation)

How ADDY, Not ADDIE, Can Help You Build Better Courses Posted Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:05 PM

One of the more frequent questions we hear goes something like this:

"I've done all the right things: I did my analysis, designed appropriate learning activities, and developed my course using valid instructional design principles. Yet I'm not getting great feedback on my courses. What am I doing wrong?"

The short answer: You're probably not doing anything wrong.

You didn't say which process or methodology you're using but the fact that you have standards in place leads me to believe you're doing the right things.

Most designers use ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) as a process for building courses. Sure, there are variations, but almost all instructional design models incorporate similar elements, in one form or another.

And while ADDIE provides a helpful and systematic approach for crafting learning experiences, it's not a tool to stimulate creative thinking.

Lookin' forward to the e-learning

Remember how much air time the Friday music video got when it first came out? After a few weeks, what happened? I'll bet each subsequent time you heard or watched the video, you liked it less.

E-learning courses are a lot like the Friday video.

A course that seems great today probably won't seem nearly as great next year or the year after. Building better courses is less about doing things "right" and more about finding ways to manage and meet your learners' shifting expectations.

The advertising industry understands this. The most successful ads are usually those that don't look like ads. There's even an annual contest to celebrate the best and most creative ads each year.

The ADDYs

The ADDY Awards are the world's largest advertising competition. Its sponsor, the American Advertising Federation, describes the awards like this:

"The ADDY Awards program is designed to reward creative excellence in advertising. It is, therefore, a creative competition. Of course, there are no absolute measures for creative excellence, no devices that can be laid beside a piece of work to determine its worth. The judging of good or effective advertising, versus bad or ineffective advertising, is a difficult task, at best. Like other selective processes, which call for opinions, it is extremely subjective."

In other words, you can do everything right and still not win.

Let's be clear. No one's suggesting you skip over doing the basics—that's your foundation. You still have to conduct analysis, design appropriate practice activities, and structure everything in a way that makes sense.

But there's also an x-factor. Like successful advertising, great elearning courses also have an "it." And that "it," is your ADDY.

Click here to learn more about "it"

Does This Course Have ADDY?

ADDY doesn't mean you have to redesign your course model or change how you're delivering courses. Instead, it's about incrementally trying new techniques and approaches.

Here are a few ways—with examples—you can design more ADDY into your courses.

Storytelling devices

Stories are ideal for communicating how something works in the real world. Emphasize or exaggerate the conflict or consequences over the information.  Want an easy place to begin? Try reproducing a popular reality show format like Mike did in Psyched in 10:

Another idea is to let the dialog drive the course using a layered-storytelling approach similar to Bruce's Machine Principles.

Humor and parodies

What are some common analogies or clichés that apply to your topic? If you're designing a course on lawn care, what could you compare it to?

If you think of weeds as your enemy then you might also see it as your mission to eradicate them to protect the residential lawn. That could give you a Home Improvement meets Stripes meets Caddyshack design theme.

Point of view and perspective

When you want learners to see your courses differently, you have to disrupt their expectations. Reversing or changing viewpoints is a classic ADDY technique for contrasting the expected with the unexpected.

If you're training sales people to educate consumers about bed bugs, for example, you could present things as if you were:

• The salesman looking to generate new business
• The consumer looking for common signs of infestation
• A bed bug looking for room and board

Check out this inspiring thread for even more creative angles you could use.

Shock tactics and drama

If your training is about solving a problem, try emphasizing the problem with drama or provocative graphics.

Say you're designing training on diabetes, how would you begin the course? Bullet points? Graphs and charts? Statistics? If you're going for ADDY, you might open with the sound of a heart pump and a time bomb strapped around someone's waist.

What do you think?

What are some of your favorite courses? What made them stand out from others you've seen? What are some marginal changes you can make to give your courses more ADDY?

When Is It Okay to Use Comic Designs? Posted Wednesday, May 04, 2011 at 2:42 PM

Big news stories mean we suddenly see lots of interactive graphics and multimedia objects popping up everywhere — informational tools that help people explore, process, and distill the details about the events. This week’s Osama bin Laden news was no different.

Within 24 hours of the raid on bin Laden’s compound, dozens of interactive packages—illustrations, maps, graphic, video and timelines — were designed and published.

It’s always a great learning experience to pull together and review multiple projects covering a single event or story. Overall, the examples are similar in tone and style. Well, almost all of them.

For me, one stood out from the rest.

Check out this comic book, napkin sketch design that details the sequence of events.

View the interactive graphic project

We’ve had some great discussions on using comic themes for course designs. And Tom also  blogged about designing the right look and feel for your courses earlier this week.

So what do you think?  Was this comic design the right look and feel for the topic?

Compare it with Cathy Moore’s graphic novel theme in Connect with Haji Kamal. Both projects are similar in their use of sketchy, hand-drawn elements. In the forums, Cathy described her course design as “edgy,” and notes that “it makes clear that the topic is serious.” Is the UOL interactive equally edgy and serious? 

Here are a few more questions I’m toying with as I view the project.

Design considerations

Is this an appropriate design for the seriousness of the story? It’s reported the attack was planned and rehearsed for months. Does the comic style emphasize the precision of the attack or the chaos of the moment? Both?

Timeliness

Does it matter when the project was produced? If the project were sketched hours after the event, would it be any more or less appropriate than if it were produced two days later? 

Finally, what types of guidelines or standards do you use when designing new or custom course designs? How do you know when a design theme is too much? Add your comments below or start a new forum discussion.

Interactive Layouts Using Video and Web Objects Posted Friday, April 08, 2011 at 6:11 AM

We've all been in that situation: you're mid-way through building a course when your client sends over new content---a scenario, activity, or interaction—that doesn't fit the company-mandated template you were asked to build from.

Are you worried? Do you plead for more development time? Nope. You roll with it, because it'll take less than an hour to build a custom layout for the new content.

That's what makes working in Presenter '09 so great. Because of the design flexibility in PowerPoint, it's easy to try new layout ideas—even during production.

Expanding your template library

But the best time to try out ideas isn't during live production. That's why I try and create quick prototypes or mockups of anything creative or interesting I find. Elearning designers can never have too many templates and in this project I'll show you a creative layout that will surely help you move past a slide full of bullet points.

13 Seconds in August

View the original project

This is a great multimedia project from the Star Tribune. It's a non-linear, read-only interactive that opens with a dramatic audio slideshow before transitioning into an interactive graphic that features video interviews and text-based stories.

Did your Articulate Guru sensors just go off?

This project combines several essential Guru Techniques:

• User-controlled navigation
• Branching
• Hidden slides
• Video
• Web Objects (HTML, text-based articles)
• Audio slideshows (audio, syncing, animations)

What works

I like this project for many reasons. First, the aerial photo of the bridge provides the big-picture graphic of the event. Next, each car has a labeled graphic that links to individual stories presented in video and HTML formats. Finally, the navigation is open so I can move about and explore the stories that interest me.

While 13 seconds in August wasn't created in Presenter '09, it wouldn't take long to build out a working model. In fact, that's just what we did! Let's have a look.

View the final project

Tutorial: Building the Interactive Layout

We can build this project in four steps:

• Creating Slide Master and navigation elements
• Add the videos and Web Objects
• Building the intro animations
• Syncing animations and modifying Slide Properties

Overview of the project:

Step 1: Creating the Slide Masters and button navigation

The layout for this project is simple: there's an interactive map on the left, and one or two content pods on the right. In some cases there's only the graphic and web page—the video panel doesn't appear.

Step 2: Adding the video and Web Objects to the slides

With the slide framework now in place, we can begin adding our content. I found some comp videos from iStockPhoto which are good enough for concept design.
I also created some simple HTML pages to use for the Web Objects. Feel free to use these links or your own.

• Web Object link 1
• Web Object link 2
• Web Object link 3
• Web Object link 4

Keep in mind that many web sites will display both horizontal and vertical scrollbars when resized below specific sizes. To avoid that, you may need to create your own or use text files.

Step 3: Animating the introduction slide

Here's where you can have some fun! While the original project used simple fades, there's nothing stopping you from trying some Emphasis Effects—Grow/Shrink, Basic Zoom and Motion Paths are appropriate in this project.

Animating the intro slide continued:

Step 4: Syncing the animations and modifying Slide Properties

Now that our main content slides are in place, we can wrap things up by syncing the animations and setting up our Slide Properties.

What do you think?

Would this layout work? What types of content would you use with this layout?

Download the template and let us know what you think!

Heartland E-learning Conference - Resources Posted Tuesday, March 08, 2011 at 12:42 PM

Heartland E-learning Conference - Resources

I'm in Oklahoma this week for the Heartland E-learning Conference. So far, it's been an amazing conference and a great opportunity to talk shop with current — and future — Articulate users.

I thought it could be useful to share some resources from yesterday's conversations for the benefit of others who might be interested in those topics. The topics centered around three common themes:

1. Quizzing feedback
2. Social Media in courses
3. Academic elearning examples

Can I incorporate social media into my elearning courses?

It was no surprise that social media was one of the biggest topics at the conference. There were a lot of questions around integrating social media activities into online lectures, presentations and courses. The good news? Presenter '09's Web Objects makes that possible.

Here are some ways to combine social media with your elearning courses.

Social Media:

• Google Docs/Spreadsheet
• Using Mantis bug catcher for course review
• Tom's Course review demo
• Prezi
• You Tube
• Google Maps
• Google Maps and YouTube mashup
• Twitter
• Using Diigo’s Webslides in Articulate as a Web Object
• Wiffiti
• Crocodoc
• Qwiki
• TimeRime | Part 2 | Part 3  

How can I provide feedback in Quizmaker?

Feedback is an essential component to the learning process, so it makes sense that it would be such a popular topic at this event. With Quizmaker, you can provide learners feedback based on their questions or answers. You can further customize the feedback with supporting graphics, audio recordings and even video.

Providing feedback in Quizmaker:
The following tutorials are part of our Articulate Products tutorials.

• How to enable answer-level feedback & branching
• How to customize the feedback pop-ups
• Customizing the Result Slides
• Choosing What Happens When Learners Finish a Standalone Quiz
• Choosing What Happens When Learners Finish a Quiz within Your Course

Screencast tutorials on Quizmaker feedback:

• Here are two ways to provide feedback on ungraded review questions
• Change feedback from None to By Question or Answer
• How to provide different feedback and score for each answer choice
• Creating Customized Feedback with Blank Slides and Branching

Creative feedback examples:

• How I built the custom feedback for the recycle-shredder question
• Art Gallery Quizmaker - Designing and setting up the question & feedback slides
• Creating a custom feedback slide
• How to animate a feedback box

Audio feedback:

• How to add audio to your quiz questions, feedback, or results slides
• Reapply the same audio feedback across different answers

How are schools using Articulate? Do you have any academic examples I can share with my department?

Yes! In fact, just a couple weeks ago, users shared academic examples of courses created in Articulate. Here are some highlights from the discussion.

• Northcentral Technical College (Mike Enders)
• University of Leeds
• Miami University (Janet Hurn)
• University of Houston ( Dr. Brian McFarlin)
• Jefferson County Public Schools (Kentucky)

Conference resources and session presentation page: view and download

View the Heartland E-learning Conference page

"Did You Know" Template and Design Assets Posted Friday, February 25, 2011 at 5:20 PM

"Did You Know" Template and Design Assets

I've found that including data in courses — numbers, statistics or percentages —  usually goes two ways. Either too much data is placed on the screen or there's no connection between the data and what it means to the learner.

Fortunately, there are creative projects like Xplane's Did You Know 4.0.  Using hand-drawn elements combined with upbeat transitions, it's a good example of how you can present numbers in your courses. And with over 2 million views, it proves that data-rich courses can be fun.

For those who are interested in building something similar, here's a free template and design elements to get you started:

• PowerPoint template (includes emphasis graphics and textured layouts)
• Emphasis graphics
• Callout graphics

Click to view the template

Here's what you need to know about working with the template.

Colors

The colors were created using PowerPoint’s custom Theme Colors. You can change the colors by going to Design > Colors and selecting another theme. You can also create your own custom color themes.

Emphasis graphics

The emphasis graphics were all created using PowerPoint’s Freeform and Scribble tools. The drop shadows don’t need that kind of detail so I used a regular rectangle to create the shape, used Edit Points to modify the curve and added some transparency.

A subtle gradient was added to the graphics. It’s not necessary, but since the graphic was peeling up off the slide, I thought the gradient worked. To see the settings I used, select the shape and go to Fill > Gradients > More Gradients.

You might notice that some drop shadows include Soft Edges while others don’t. I can’t decide which I like best here. My instinct is to add the soft shadow for realism, but there’s something appealing about leaving the hard edges and only using transparency. Anyway, both are included. Do you like one over the other?

Slide Masters

Open the template's Slide Masters and you'll see the some pre-defined layouts. Each layout includes a colored shape and texture-filled shape.

There are three textured shapes:

• Crumpled Paper – made using PowerPoint’s default texture
• Custom1 – simple texture I created in Photoshop and saved out as transparent .png file
• Custom2- another texture I created and saved as a transparent .png

To modify, simply change the color of the colored shape.

Additional resources

For a bunch of hand-drawn icons, check out the following resources in the downloads gallery:

• 132 White Hand-drawn Objects
• 54 Miscellaneous Hand-drawn Objects
• 28 Hand-drawn Boxes
• 57 Hand-drawn Black Arrows

Have fun and please feel free to share your examples in the comments.

Microphone Demos from the User Community Posted Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 10:07 PM

What microphone do you use?

Whether you record in Presenter or an external program like Audacity, you already know recording is the easy part. For most elearning designers, the real challenge is in choosing the best microphone.

And it makes sense considering there really isn't a way to demo microphones. Maybe someday there will be Microphone Stores where you can walk in and try out a dozen or more mics before buying.  But until that day, we'll have to trust our ears and our community.

Knowing microphones are such a hot topic, we asked you to tell us which microphones you used and to include a sample recording.  The  response was great and below you can hear the shared examples.

Want to share your own?

If you'd like to share your own examples, use the comment below to include your microphone model and a link to a recording sample. We'll update the microphone demos to include your contribution.

Click to view the microphone demo example

You can also download the PowerPoint template from the PowerPoint Templates gallery.

Page Curl Stickers: Arrow Icons Posted Friday, February 11, 2011 at 2:55 PM

Page Curl Stickers: Arrow Icons

Here’s a fun and easy way to freshen up your clip art and icon. Using PowerPoint 2010’s new shape tools and the Edit Points feature, you can quickly give depth and perspective to basic shapes and icons.

Fully editable

The icon is comprised of three objects: arrow shape, outline and shadow. You can edit the icon by first ungrouping it and then modifying one or more of the objects.

The graphics use PowerPoint’s Office design color theme. To modify the colors, you can either select one of the pre-built color themes or create your own color theme.

Download the source files

You can find the source files in the Graphics Gallery.

Here's how I built the graphics

Here are a few screencasts that walk you through building the icons. The first three steps are basic shape techniques. In the final step, we bring it all together using Edit Points to create the peeling effect.

The more I look at the icons, the more I see things I'd like to change. But that's how everything goes, right? If you have any ideas or suggestions for making the effect better, please share them in the comments below.

01: Creating the initial arrow graphic

02: Creating the arrow outline

03: Creating the drop shadow

04: Creating the pealing effect using Edit Points

Essential PowerPoint Features Posted Monday, February 07, 2011 at 4:52 PM

No matter how good a PowerPointer you are and no matter how often you work in PowerPoint, you're bound to miss a feature that other users consider essential. 

Last week we asked you to share your favorite PowerPoint features – and you did! From picture styles, shape effects and animations to customizing and production efficiencies – you definitely covered the "must know" features!

Below is a summary of your favorite features along with links to their screencasts. If you have additional features or know of screencasts that support this list, please add them to the comments and we'll update the list.

Click to view Essential PowerPoint Features

Design Effects

Photo Effects:

• PowerPoint 2010: overview of the new image effects features

Drop Shadows:

• How to create custom shape-based drop shadows in PowerPoint

Remove Backgrounds:

• Try this tool for removing image backgrounds in #PowerPoint 2010 (good for #Articulate projects)
• PowerPoint Tip: How to remove the background of an image
• Learn to remove the background from images in #PowerPoint 2007
• Removing backgrounds from images using shapes and clipboard fills in PowerPoint

Combining shapes:

• Sculpt Your Own Clip Art Using PowerPoint 2010
• PowerPoint 2010: How to create custom shapes

Animations

Transitions:

• PowerPoint 2010: preview of new slide transitions
• How to apply slide transitions in PowerPoint 2010

Animation Painter

• PowerPoint 2010: Use the animation painter to apply animations from one object to another
• Here's how to save time using the animation painter in PowerPoint 2010

Video and multimedia

Saving Presentations as movies:

• How to save your PowerPoint 2010 presentation as a video.

PowerPoint 2010 Video:

• Utilizing PowerPoint to create video/flash Articulate sidebar effects inspired by David Fair
• Replace the sidebar in Articulate Presenter with video content,such as a talking person

Production Efficiencies

Screenshots:

• PowerPoint 2010: insert screenshots & captures into your presentations

Change Pictures:

• Quickly replace images using PowerPoint's "Change Picture" feature

Selection Pane:

• Use the selection pane in PowerPoint 2007 to manage the layered objects on your slide.
• Use selection pane to manage object layers and names for improved efficiency when building elearning courses

Mathematical Equations:

• PowerPoint 2010: insert math equations & save as a picture file

Customizing

Slide Masters:

• The difference between #PowerPoint slide masters & slide layouts in PPT 2007/2010
• Using Slide Masters to automate picture effects and styles

Customize menu bar:

• How to customize PowerPoint 2007 Quick Access Toolbar with your most frequent PPT and Articulate tasks

Image and Text Placeholders:

• Inserting Text and Image Placeholders

Resources

• PowerPoint MVPs

Production Techniques: Icon Navigation Posted Monday, January 24, 2011 at 2:57 AM

A lot of times the most efficient development techniques are discovered only after the project's completed. And that makes sense, considering how many courses are built under tight deadlines.

That's where rapid prototyping can help designers keep projects moving, while providing the space to try out ideas. The Technology Overview section in the LINGOS course is a great example of prototyping during development.

Early in the project, we decided to insert Engage as a Flash movie. This created a slick way to present the Tabs Interactions, but it didn't leave much room for the icon buttons. We were also waiting on additional content topics from the client. This meant we wouldn't have a final topic count until close to launch.

After the project was developed, we could revisit some of our decisions and re-work the areas that would make future updates easier.

Check out the following screencasts and source files to see the multiple ways the icon structure could be built. Keep in mind there's no right way to build it. Try each method and work with the one that fits your workflow.

Icon Navigation Techniques

• View the project demo

Screencasts and source files

Version 1: Hyperlinked icons copied to each slide

• Screencast
• Source files

Version 2: Hyperlinked icons placed on Slide Master w/active slide icon copied on single slides

• Screencast
• Source files

Version 3: Hyperlinked icons and active slide icon placed on Slide Master using single graphic

• Screencast
• Source files

How to Create Custom Drop Shadows in PowerPoint Posted Monday, January 10, 2011 at 12:24 AM

Drop shadows are an easy way to add depth and texture to your course designs. PowerPoint’s Picture Effects offers a quick and easy option for  creating the most common types of shadows.

But when you’re looking to take your drop shadows up a notch, consider spending a few extra minutes to create custom shadows that subtly resemble the object casting the shadow.

Borrowing techniques from graphic design, you can create even more realistic drop shadows by using the shape of an object to create the shadow. Best part? It only takes an extra minute to achieve the effect.