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

So, I'm working on converting this powerpoint to e-learning and it is full of things an individual can and cannot say.  I'm running out of ideas for delivering this information in an interesting way.  Short of filming some people actually saying these things in a scenario situation (which I could do, but am trying to avoid), what are some ways you all deal with handling a situation like this?

Thanks!

I am assuming that you have Storyline; have you tried this approach?

http://screenr.com/z6o8

A lot cheaper than filming! 

Bruce

Ashley,

Something thats on the top of my mind after reading your post - How about creating a short story where you can introduce two character - the good guy and the bad guy. Give a small character background of the two and then tell the learner that by the end of the course the learner needs to make sure he gains all the attributes necessary to be the good guy (or bad guy depending on your course objectives :P). Next put the learner into different scenarios and ask what he/she would say in such circumstances. Provide feedback as monologues by the two characters.

This way you save the cost of video shooting and make it cohesive and interesting. Does this work for you?

Regards,

Sonia

Thanks to you both for the ideas!

Bruce, I like what you did there (wish you'd shown a preview of the slide though .  That could very easily be an option.

Sonia, I'm liking this as well, need to map this out in my mind, but I think this is what I'll end up doing, maybe a combination of both ideas, there is a lot of room for creativity here.

Hi Ashley! Great discussion topic!

I love Bruces and Sonia's ideas.

Another idea might be to do this: along with short vignettes that depict real-life scenarios where learners have to decide how best to respond, provide learners with a simple job-aid type of interaction that they can consult if they get stuck. You could make it available as a player tab, so that they can get to it any time. A grid that displays "say this, not that" type of info might work - something like this is super easy to build in Storyline with markers. 

Another idea would be to present learners with the most common challenges and sequence your course as an RSI (rapid situational interactive), like David describes in this series of tutorials. I would think you could do this pretty easily with just characters and audio, and probably avoid having to shoot video.

This is great, all of this.  Now I have too many ideas.

Hi Ashley,

I would recomend using a scenario/character driven Q&A based approach and gamify it. You need to carefully draft out the questions so as to include the learner in the situation. For example:  ..., what would you do in a similar situation? or ..., what according to you is the best approach in this situation?

Use negative scoring to make this more interesting.

All the best.

Hormuzd

Be careful with the whole "gameification" concept.

Some clients/industries love it.

Some clients/industries hate it.

All too often, as it is the "buzzword" of eLearning at the moment, it is used to cover up badly designed courses. One client of mine recently described a "gameified" courses as "..a lot of fun but I learned bugger all..." 

Bruce

I really have to be careful with this one anyways, as it is very legal-based, and has to have the content delivered directly as it appeared on the original powerpoint.

Hi Ashley,

Have you considered trying a product such as Real Illusion's Crazy Talk?

We've just purchased the software and are starting to explore the ways we can employ it, so I can't offer a full-fledged endorsement just yet. But one of the reasons we purchased was the scenario you are describing and some heroes here on the forum turned us onto the company. 

Basically... the software allows you take a photo or illustration, and automatically create a talking avatar out of it. I stress automatically as the heart of the program is an auto-lipsync feature that works wonderfully. Simply provide it with TTS or recorded voice clips and let it create your talking head for you! No video shoots, no puppeteering needed... super fast, super super cheap.

Hope this helps,

Bob

Crazy Talk for the legal industry........?

There's a novel concept

Bruce

HA! 

That's interesting, I'll have to look more into it.  Thanks for the heads up.

Ashley:

Because you have a lot of potential dialogue, it seems using a hover to reveal what can and what cannot be said would allow for a cleaner look--a la Jeanette's interaction.

Perhaps you could have a change in facial expressions that also trigger when a learner hovers over what can and cannot be said.

Hi Daniel, this is an interesting thought. Could you guide me how I can do that in quizmaker? I want to have a different facial reaction of a charater when the user hovers over a particular answer choice.

Thanks.