I have developed many types of elearning but am wondering what is the best way to teach a long, tedious data entry process or online financials systems process? Just creating MP4 videos is not sufficient and can be so boring for the learner. I have created several online simulations which are good and I think a blended approach using Storyline and Rise is also a good approach, with modules as short as possible but are there better suggestions out there?
I feel your pain !! Trying to make tedious, repetitive and lengthy processes engaging can be a big problem. You are absolutely right in firstly not wanting to do it all in video and secondly in wanting to split it up into short modules. If you manage to put your users to sleep, they will learn nothing, but if you can keep them engaged, then half the battle is won.
Practising some data entry is a good way to engage your users and the attached example may give you a couple of ideas of how you could do this. What I have done is to put a very basic form on the base layer, along with a menu at the top of the page.
Selecting the notepad in the menu will bring up a new layer that contains an image of a notepad with the text you wish them to enter on the form. This is meant to represent what they may have scribbled down whilst talking to a customer on the phone.
Alternatively, if they select the character on the headset in the menu, this will activate another layer that contains text-to-speech and represents the customer providing the same information over the phone.
When the user fills out the form, they will be entering the text into data entry text boxes, which means that you then have the ability to check if the correct data was entered by comparing the text variable output with the required text.
Hope this helps and will provide a bit of inspiration for your courses.
I came across this (Simulation: Articulate 360) yesterday. It's on how to create a trigger in SL but you could use it as a model and have the learner actually simulate the data entry.
5 Replies
Hi Jeannette,
I feel your pain !! Trying to make tedious, repetitive and lengthy processes engaging can be a big problem. You are absolutely right in firstly not wanting to do it all in video and secondly in wanting to split it up into short modules. If you manage to put your users to sleep, they will learn nothing, but if you can keep them engaged, then half the battle is won.
Practising some data entry is a good way to engage your users and the attached example may give you a couple of ideas of how you could do this. What I have done is to put a very basic form on the base layer, along with a menu at the top of the page.
Selecting the notepad in the menu will bring up a new layer that contains an image of a notepad with the text you wish them to enter on the form. This is meant to represent what they may have scribbled down whilst talking to a customer on the phone.
Alternatively, if they select the character on the headset in the menu, this will activate another layer that contains text-to-speech and represents the customer providing the same information over the phone.
When the user fills out the form, they will be entering the text into data entry text boxes, which means that you then have the ability to check if the correct data was entered by comparing the text variable output with the required text.
Hope this helps and will provide a bit of inspiration for your courses.
Thank you Ned! I love your example and will definitely create something similar as one of my many blended approaches to learning.
I came across this (Simulation: Articulate 360) yesterday. It's on how to create a trigger in SL but you could use it as a model and have the learner actually simulate the data entry.
https://bridgehillls.com/wp-content/uploads/articulate_uploads/Storyline-Samples-Bridgehillv1/story_html5.html
Mike
This is a great simulation and gives lots of examples of great ideas!! Thank you!!
I wish I had seen this earlier...it would have made my courses so much more interesting. Thanks for sharing!
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