Interactive Course By Storyline At Harvard - Post Conference

Nov 25, 2015

I have attended and presented at many conferences during nine years of my professional careers. However, the conference that I recently attended have changed my views like 360 degrees. This year was full of initiatives of attending and presenting at conferences.

I believe that there are two types of people who are interested in participating at conferences.

1) People who wants to know
2) People who let others know

Previously, I attended many conferences as being a 'want to know' guy and always wondered how that person who is standing on the stage feels. In my experience, I found out that it needs a lot of courage to speak out in front of large groups and being the focus of attention. You need to develop an attitude when you are speaking out and trying to deliver your message in public. I don’t blame them because that's what they are here for, to learn and understand something new, and if we don't fulfill their needs then they'll leave disappointed.

21st Academic Forum Conference at HARVARD
 

At the 21st academic forum, I got a chance to get under the category of 'People who let others know'. Yes, I was presenting there, and my audience were teachers, students and staff. My topic was about instructional design named 'Interactive course by storyline'. Since, this was not my first workshop that's why I had no fear to deliver the workshop. However, I knew that my audience was coming from different countries that's why I was cautious to use simple language (easy words and sentences) to make them understand the concept of e-learning and instructional designer.

 

My session was on the first day of the conference but late in the morning. As you know that after attending keynote presentation and concurrent sessions. People feel that they are overwhelmed with the information. However, it was a first day so, I still have a chance to show them what I have and convince them how easy it is to design an e-learning course.

I started my workshop with a short introduction and reframed my experiences. After that, I spoke about “Pros or Cons of e-learning course and How to get rid of Cons”. During the session, I highlighted some facts that most of the teachers use in their classes.

 

It’s been observed that most of the teachers use powerpoint slides in their classes. Let’s assume,  If you compiled these slides altogether, it would become more than 200+ powerpoint slides for each course. Can we design an e-learning course of 200+ powerpoint slides? Yes, we can. But it doesn't mean to copy the entire content from powerpoint slides and put it into e-learning course because like this that course will no longer be an e-learning course. It will become a stress to your students. Your e-learning course should be build on following factors.

 Concise content
Engaging
Interactivity
Scenarios
Evaluation


If you think that you have covered all of the above in your e-learning course. It means that your basic e-learning course is ready to roll.

Authoring Tool, I suggested during my workshop

 

 

Obviously, there are many tools available in the market. Therefore, I believe, it’s better to know about the audience first and then come up with the suggestions, doesn’t matter how many features or templates it has. If you think that your people can digest the technicalities of the software then you should go for any software you like. Nevertheless, the audiences I was dealing with were teachers and instructional designers with an academic background. It is impossible for me to re-direct them to an entirely new software that has a whole new interface.

Like you, I love my audience too, so, I suggested Articulate Storyline 2.

Why?
In starters, you don't need training to learn about AS2. You can start your work right at the moment. It is just like you are working with powerpoint with value added features. Therefore, if you want to make your course interactive and add up some formulas then yes, you need some training or use Articulate Community for support. People there, are very helpful and happy to share their work with you.

P.S. I am suggesting this tool because I think it will be much easier for beginners then any other tools.

 I showed some samples and demonstrated how easy it is to develop e-learning course.

 

Last but not the least, I also shared some free templates so, they can start designing e-learning course right away.

The overall workshop was 20 minutes long. Time was short and I covered most of my topic and got an excellent feedback from them.

 

-MH

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