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

Michelle you mentioned a topic that is near and dear to my heart, discussion boards.  I would love to hear what everyone thinks about them and whether or not they feel that they still have a place in online learning.  It's been my experience that in most cases, they aren't used in the manner intended, and I'd love to see instructors use social media in lieu of the boards.  I actually plan to write an article on this topic.  What do the rest of you think?  Have discussion boards become passé?

Great lists! Thanks Donna!

You're welcome

Donna, we've found that discussion boards are still very useful IF they're used properly. Sometimes there's a very fine line between a discussion and an assignment. We make sure that discussions are things that are slightly controversial or that have no definitely black or white answer. It could be things like:

- Orientation Intro Discussion: Are you a dog person or a cat person? Why?

- Health care Discussion: What types of technology are used in your workplace, and what would you like to see used?

- Computer skills Discussion: Post your PowerPoint presentation and give constructive feedback on two of your classmates' presentations. Be sure to respond to feedback given on your own presentation.

It can also be used to build a sense of community amongst virtual classmates:

- Intro Discussion: How do you feel about math? When was the last time you took a math course and how did you do? If not well, what approach to learning and studying will you implement this course? If you did do well, what tips do you have for your classmates?

Once again, discussions are very powerful with the right topic and depending on what you're trying to achieve.

Yes, I really dislike it when the boards are used for an assignment.  Are your students required to respond to a certain number of posts?

Frederick,

Are you at a for profit institution?  I can't imagine that most faculty at your typical 2 year or 4 year institutions would be willing to give up their academic freedom in exchange for a templated course.  I know this tends be a battle in many institutions (including mine).  While the institution would love to have a standard look and feel (we've made some progress), anything beyond a basic template is met with

pretty stiff resistance.

Mike

Non-Profit, state Run. They do have SOME freedom but not concerning how the weekly lectures are written or the quizzes. They can guide the discussion questions and other areas but the courses from term to term are exactly the same otherwise. Unless they were revised of course.

We have that system in place as well. If they don't post, they lose points. But we're a strictly online institution, so that system is in place to encourage participation and not just take the quizzes, complete the assignments and try to pass the course.

I think if we are asking our students to be more flexible with learning, we as lecturers/developers need to be more flexible and provide that support. Maybe we need to have more flexible hours so we can answer questions at weekends etc.

We have developed a 40 credit module that students access whilst on placement. Throughout the module we get the students to record their development/thoughts and share learning through PebblePad which is an e-portfolio system. This enables the student to keep all records in one place and the lecturers can login and see how they are progressing..

Good Morning:

Although I do not specifically work in higher education I am the Instructional Designer for the North Coast Beginning Teacher Program in California.  We are a consortium of eight county offices of education directed to oversee the beginning teacher program.  We work with 1,500 beginning teachers, 1,000 support providers and numerous facilitators, trainers, and county coordinators.

Our directive is to provide teacher training beyond the university credential programs.  I develop courses for Year 1 and Year 2 Beginning Teachers, Interns, Paraprofessionals, Career Technical Educators, and Special Ed. Teachers.  As such I face some of the same concerns that I see in this forum.

I have been using Articulate for over 5 years, and have also been a beta tester for StoryLine.  I use Articulate modules within our Moodle site.  I am also the Moodle administrator and the webmaster for our program.  One person with many hats.

Each of our programs contain 4 overarching inquires and 9 monthly seminars.  Basically, I create approximately 50-70 Moodle courses per year.  Each course might have 5-10 Articulate modules.

Looking forward to being able to discuss issues and ideas with others who are working with similar students.

Hi Nickola and welcome!  You have a lot going on in many different areas, and I'm sure that you will be a valuable contributor to our group.  I look forward to your contribution to our discussions.

Just wanted to check and see if anyone plans to attend the Learning Solutions Conference next week?

Hi folks!

WOW! I've stumbled upon gold here. So glad to have found this thread! I'm an ID in higher ed (non-profit, state run) working in a distance ed program. I am very new to Articulate - I've only had it a couple of weeks! For the most part our instructors develop their own content, and we use Articulate to add interactivity where we can, mostly Engage and QuizMaker. I hope to attend the 2 day Articulate training in Los Angeles next month so I can see more of what the program is capable of and improve my own work.

Donna and Mike: If I can help in any way with facilitating a monthly thread I would be happy to!

Showemimo and Mike: I wonder about the contact hour translation, too. The contact hours required in a classroom coupled with the amount of time expected to be spent on work outside of class gets fuzzy in an online setting where both of these forms occur in the same place. 

Marti: It seems like we use Articulate for the same purpose. We are often stuck with adding elements from Articulate to PPT as course loads are high, 20-25 new courses per term. I would love to lower the load and have the time to increase the quality of the courses, but for now I do what I can. I have one other ID on my team with a similar course load and other responsibilities (faculty trainings, Quality Matters, etc.)

Brian and Elizabeth: We are slowly implementing Quality Matters here. There are 6 of us who have taken the Applying the Rubric training, 3 of those have done the peer reviewer training, and one of them is a master reviewer. We are gearing up to use the rubric in all of our online courses and will being training faculty soon. 

Michelle: I think your Nine Phyla presentation is GREAT! Sure puts anything I've done to shame, though it gives me lots of good ideas! It wasn't slow to process on my end. Thank you for sharing! I agree with your assessment of PPT being adequate for when there is an actual presenter around, but in an online course where there isn't, it's certainly not the best tool to use. It seems to be the "go to" tool for most of our faculty, though.

I share your frustrations with faculty who are resistant to technology and prefer to use PPT for everything. It's a tough mindset to change, but very worth the effort.

Thanks for the fabulous conference link, Donna! 

Discussion boards: the idea here is that they are the heart of an online course. My experience when I was a student is that I said what I needed to say to get the grade and no critical thinking was really required to complete my postings. That said, here some form of student-to-student interaction is required in our online courses and this fits the bill, though some instructors opt for the blog tool in Blackboard. I mostly see instructors require an original response to a post and then a response to two other classmates. I'd love to see how others are using the discussion board. I think there are much better options out there to meet the student-to-student interaction requirement. 

Donna: I did go to Learning Solution and DevLearn last year, but I won't be going this year. While they were great conferences and I learned a lot, something more focused on higher ed would better meet my needs at this time.

Looking forward to continued conversation!

Thanks for all your detailed feedback, Laura! I'm trying to get to the AACE E-learn conference that I just found out about. It's for corporate, government, healthcare and higher ed--the latter two which apply to me. I did go to DevLearn and the ASTD conference and I, too, am looking for something that applies to healthcare and higher ed. Hopefully I can go to the AACE E-learn in Montreal this year. We shall see!

Donna,

I'll be there looking for you!

Mike

I am so glad that you've joined us.  Most universities don't have a dedicated ID team like yours and mine, and just like you, we primarily add the interactive elements to the courses.  We are definitely kindred spirits in this regard, and I look forward to sharing experiences.  I've been using Articulate for 2 years now, so if I can be of any help whatsoever, please let me know.

I'm curious: I don't create the content, but I format it for online use in Blackboard. We have in our process a Content Expert and Instructional Designer who do all the research and content creation. This is passed on to me who creates any quizzes, presentations, finds images, adds or links to video and formats it all into HTML. We run 8 week courses.

How long are you normally given to do something like this at your institution (assuming you can compare your process to mine)?

This is a great forum for discussion and I've enjoyed reading the posts so far. One of the things that strikes me is the range of roles and experience and level of support that academics receive within this group. 

Hi Karen,

I work at an Irish University and am in a similar position to you (and in a similar Centre as it turns out!), other than the fact that my Department is not progressive and we don't have a learning technologist! I've been completing a certificate of educational technology through my institution, which has introduced me to Articulate and I've spent the last two weeks (mid-semester break) going through any and every tutorial I can find online. I'm in the process of applying for a grant to develop some learning packages to support some of our introductory modules (including in sports science), which will give me the funds to hire a research assistant to help develop content, but more importantly, someone with more creativity to design the actual look of the modules. At the moment I'm focussing on just developing lecture review packages, which can be done reasonably easily and at little cost. I do want to look at developing more blended learning options, particularly at the MSc level.  It might be worth having a chat at some time to think about ideas and perhaps some collaboration?

Unfortunately, many of the ideas/tutorials I've been finding online work well for training courses, but I struggle to see how they can easily be applied to higher ed learning, so I would be keen to see examples of college level courses etc to get some inspiration on how to move away from bullet points and create interactive online modules that inspire critical thinking.

Wow, I am so glad to have found this thread! Thanks so much for starting it. As noted by others, the vast majority of material is aimed at corporate situations rather than higher ed so it's great to find some people in similar institutions to mine.

I'm a veterinarian originally and spent some time writing case-based learning objects in Dreamweaver and Director for undergraduate veterinary science students about 8 years ago before going on extended maternity leave. I've just started feeling my way back into the field, which has changed enormously (for the better!) in that time.

As my first  project I have been asked to design a number of small learning activities as an adjunct to traditional lectures. They will be fairly simple - a couple of labelling activities and some questions applying the new knowledge in clinical situations.

 I was hoping to use Dragster to create the labelling activities and rapid elearning software, most likely either Articulate or Captivate, for the other questions. However, about 10% of students are currently using iPads and it is likely that percentage will increase in the very near future, which makes Flash-based outputs a problem. HTML5 would be visible on iPads but doesn't work well in all browsers, which may disadvantage a significant number of students. Captivate 5.5 has an HTML converter but will only convert Flash files made in Captivate and not objects made using other software.  Storyline should be out soon, which will have HTML5 output but the same caveat.

How can I keep everyone happy and ensure that what we create can be used into the future?

Also, I was interested to see that others here have had problems with Quizmaker and Blackboard. We have BB so that's potentially a problem for me. I'm very new in the job but so far can't find any policies on use of software etc

Hi Frederick

That's a very hard question.  I've found that there are usually too many variables to say that it takes "x" amount of time to create "y" content.  What does everyone else think?

Karen

The absolute best thing about the Articulate forums is the support that is available from users world-wide, as well as the numerous tutorials, free downloads etc.  If you are new to Articulate, I highly recommend starting with the Artculate demos available from the support pages and after that, if you still have questions, do a search in the community forums.  You are almost guaranteed to find an answer.  Finally, in the unlikely event that you are unable to find the answers that you are looking for, post your question in the forums, and you are almost guaranteed to get a response.  Good luck, and make sure to let us know if we can help.

Can we talk about a certain topic on a monthly basis? Since we are working in higher education environment, how about accessibility in e-learning for the next month? Just a thought.

Karen and Tara,

I'm in Australia and have very similar issues. We don't have a specific learning technologist and when I proposed using Articulate no-one had heard of it. People either use the LMS or small software packages which are not well supported and often a bit clunky. I'm hoping to get some funding to buy the software and build some more engaging, interactive and professional eLearning. At the moment I'm using ppt, which definitely has its strengths but also frustrations.

Rebekah - even if your Department/School doesn't know about Articulate or elearning, contact your Centre for Teaching and Learning (or similar). It could be that there are elearning specialists there who can support you or even that they have access to an Articulate license that you can use on campus. I've found that I have the ideas for content, but I struggle with design, as I'm not very artistic, and that this is where a specialist would be great. Having said that, there are a lot of ideas online that have perked up my presentations. I had really found powerpoint dull and boring until I learned about Articulate, and then I learned so much more just about powerpoint buy using the tutorials here and all over the web. There really are so many different ways to use powerpoint, so whilst you're waiting to acquire Articulate, there are ways to make powerpoint more interesting for students.

Sami

You are reading my mind.  I planned to start a new thread for April over the weekend.  Accessibility is a great idea for our April thread.  Thanks for the suggestion!!