Discounts on Moodle Books from Packt Publishing

Packt Publishing is celebrating the recent publication of thire Moodle 2 Administration book, with discounts on all of their Moodle books.

• Buy any Moodle print book and get 20% off.
• Buy any Moodle eBook and get 30% off.

Good only until the end of December. See more at http://www.packtpub.com/news/moodle-festive-month.

Articulate versus Captivate

If you do a web search on "articulate versus captivate," you will find a lot of opinions about how the two programs compare. One of my clients asked me about the merits of Articulate versus Captivate. The answer that I gave him is copied below. I hope it offers a different perspective for you when deciding between Articulate and Captivate.

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Ah yes, the great Articulate versus Captivate debate. Ford versus Chevy, Coke versus Pepsi, Yankees versus Mets...I'm kidding about that last one. The Yankees are, after all, a professional sports team.

First, I would recommend they get the 30-day trial before purchasing. It's fully functional and free.

Both Articulate and Captivate will read in a PowerPoint and then enable you to add interactions, audio, and quizzes to the presentation. Then, they enable you to export the resulting activity as a Flash file.

Articulate makes it a little easier to start with PowerPoint. I think it brings in more of PowerPoint's advanced features, such as custom animations. However, the other things that you can do in Articulate are a little more limited. That's because Articulate's raison d'etre is to take a Powerpoint slide deck from a subject matter expert and enable the e-learning specialist to turn it into an online activity.

Captivate lets you add more features. It also enables you to take screen shots and full motion video of your screen and add it. Captivate just does more. And, it's more popular among e-learning specialists.

If your client is starting with a subject matter expert who knows just basic Powerpoint, then either tool will do. If the SME knows advanced PowerPoint, and will supply them with a slide deck that has advanced features like custom animations and timing and embedded files, then go with Articulate because it interfaces better with PowerPoint's advanced features. If your client wants to be able to create e-learning without PowerPoint, and start right from within the tool, then try Captivate.

Answered Question on Linkedin.com: Instructional Design standards for online learning? Ideally specific and measurable that can be used in contracts with vendors.?

This question was posted to theInstructional Design & E-Learning Professionals' Group:

Does anyone out there have any useful resources to share around ID standards for online learning? Ideally specific and measurable that can be used in contracts with vendors.

I have used the standards posted by the Open ECBCheck. Open ECBCheck is "a new accreditation and quality improvement scheme for E-Learning programmes and institutions in international Capacity Building." Their members focus on a specific subject (international capacity building), however, their e-learning standards can be applied to any e-learning program.

I download the standards from http://www.ecb-check.org/2011-06-15-07-04-37/guidelines. They publish them as a pdf and Excel file. In the Excel file, I find the most useful section to be the tab labeled "Quality Toolkit." That tab has a list of specific, measurable criteria that you can use to judge the quality of your e-learning program. For example: "Does the navigation allow learners to always understand their position within the programme?"





Not all the standards in the Quality Toolkit will apply to all online learning programs. I copy and paste the standards that apply to the job into the contract for that job. This is a section of the contract that I label "Course Standards."


The Course Standards section also includes subsections for things like: the file formats of the material developed for the course, voice and tense of the speaker, the skin to be used when generating files from Articulate of Captivate, and the source(s) of the graphics used in the course.

The quality standards supplied by Open ECBCheck have made a good starting point for the course standards in my projects. Post your favorite resources for quality standards in the comments below. Or,

Answered Question on Linkedin.com: What successful techniques have you used to improve learner's retention?

I recently answered a question on the Instructional Design & E-Learning Professionals' Group of LinkedIn, and wanted to share that answer here on my blog. The question posed was:

What successful techniques have you used to improve learner's retention? Based on my experience, there's only so much information you can stuff into people's heads.
What's the best single tip you would give to help improve the quality and quantity of information that people retain after experiencing the training you've developed?

My single most important tip is this: Instead of training your students to perform the task from memory, teach them why and when to perform the task, and how to use support materials to succeed at the task.

If you are training your students to perform a life-and-death skill under strict time constraints, then of course they need to be able to perform the task from memory, on demand. An emergency room medical procedure would be one example. In that kind of situation, you want them to leave class knowing exactly how to perform the task without any kind of support materials. But that is a rare situation.

In most situations, your students will have time to perform the task. That is, they will have time to find and use reference materials to help them with the task.

Instead of overloading your students with the detailed steps of how to perform a task, perhaps you should consider teaching them how to use the reference and support materials to perform the task. Then, you can focus your training on:

1. Why they need to learn to perform the task (motivation).
   
2. Who needs to be involved in the task (roles and responsibilities).
   
3. When they need to perform the task; where it fits into their workflow (context).
   
4. Which steps are critical or especially difficult (roadblocks and "gotchas").
   
5. Where to get supporting materials for the task (reference materials and job aids).
   

Of course you will still take your students through the detailed steps of performing the task. But instead of focusing on memorizing the how-to information, you'll focus on the information above. While demonstrating, you can reassure them that the "clicks, keystrokes, and actions" are all included in the support materials. After the student performs the task on-the-job a few times, with the help of the support materials, then it becomes committed to memory.

In my experience, this approach avoids information overload during class while enabling students to learn complex, long tasks. Does this agree or disagree with your experience? We want to hear from you in the comments!

The Fastest Way to Create a Course Review in Moodle

Students who read a passage, then took  a test asking them to recall what they read, retain about 50 percent more of the information a week later than students who used two other methods to study the material. That research was published in the journal Science.

Fortunately, Moodle makes it easy to create a quiz that you can use for review purposes. A Review Quiz in Moodle will enable you to re-use a log of the work that you do while creating the course, and, increase your students’ retention of the material. The keys to successfully creating a Review Quiz in Moodle are:

• using feedback in your quiz questions.


• creating a separate category of questions for each topic in your course.


• creating one-page review for each topic in your course.

First, let’s look at the feedback for Moodle questions.

Feedback in Moodle Quiz Questions

In a previous post, I wrote about the various kinds of feedback that you can create in a Moodle quiz. I wrote about how to use feedback that is display when:

• the student selects a specific answer.


• the question is completed, no matter what the student’s answer.


• the student achieves a specific score on the quiz.


• the quiz is completed, no matter what the student’s score.

These four types of feedback give you the ability to make a Moodle quiz into a teaching tool. Instead of using a quiz to just test the student, you can use it to teach.

If you create quiz questions for every topic in your course then you can use a fast, easy method to create a course review. This method assumes that each question in your course includes feedback to teach the student why (s)he is right or wrong, and to help the student remember the correct answer.

Creating a Review Quiz in Moodle

With this method, you will use four phases to create a review quiz:

• Create a category of quiz questions for each topic.


• Create a quiz for each topic.


• Create a one-page review for each topic.


• Assemble the one-page reviews and questions into a review quiz.

Let’s step through each phase below.

First: Create a category of quiz questions for each topic

Here’s how to prepare your questions for a review quiz:

• For each topic, create a category of quiz questions.


• For each of the categories that you just created, create several quiz questions. Now, you have several quiz questions for each topic.


• For every answer in each question, create feedback that teaches them why that answer is right or wrong. Now, every answer of every question is a teaching tool.


• For every question, create general feedback that explains why that question is relevant. Now, no matter which answer the student selected, (s)he will learn where that question fits into the bug picture.


• Make sure that each quiz question can stand alone. Do not refer to or depend upon any other questions.

Now your question bank for the course looks like this:

Topic 1 Questions

Question 1

Question 2

General Question Feedback: “This question relates to the concept of…”

Answer A

Answer Feedback: “This answer is correct because…”

Answer B

Answer Feedback: “This answer is incorrect because... The correct answer is…”

Answer C

Answer Feedback: “This answer is incorrect because... The correct answer is…

Question 3

Topic 2 Questions

Topic 3 Questions

Now every answer, and every question, is a teaching tool. And, every question can stand on its own. You are ready to create a quiz for each topic.

Second: Create a quiz for each topic

For each topic, create a quiz. You can make the quiz appear in the gradebook, or, make a practice quiz that doesn’t affect the student’s final grade.

Third: Create a one-page review for each topic

For each topic in the course, create a one-page review. This can be a simple bulleted list of key points, an infogram, a video, or any other technique. Keep the review short enough so that it can be read, viewed, or listened to in a few minutes.

Fourth: Assemble the one-page reviews and questions into a review quiz

Finally, you are ready to create the review quiz. In the review quiz, you will assemble the one-page reviews and teaching questions.        Â

• Create a quiz, and add instructions that look like this:

This quiz is practice for the final quiz. Your grade for this quiz will not be used to calculate your final grade.

This quiz will present one page of bullet points for each topic that we covered. These bullet points are reminders of what you studied in the topic.

Then, the quiz will present some random questions from that topic's quiz. Do your best on these questions. Feel free to refer back to the topic's presentation while attempting the questions. As before, the questions will give you feedback if you answer incorrectly.

The reminders before the questions, and feedback after the questions, are designed to help you learn the material.

You can attempt this practice quiz as many times as you like. When you're ready, proceed to the final quiz.

There are two things that make creating a review quiz in Moodle easy. Moodle enables you to add Descriptions to a quiz, and to add manual page breaks.

In a Moodle quiz, a Description is just a question that consists of nothing but a Web page. You can put anything into a Description that you can put on a normal Web page. The student doesn’t need to answer anything, and the Description doesn’t get scored. Usually, you use a Description to explain a section of the quiz. In this case, you will use the Description to display the one-page summary of the topic.

• Add a Description to the quiz, and name it something like “Topic 1 Review Page.” Then add the one-page review for the topic to the Description.


• After the Review Page, add a page break.


• After the page break, add several random questions from the topic. To do this, you will select the topic’s question category, and then instruct Moodle to add a certain number of random questions from that category.


• After the random questions, add a page break.


• Repeat steps 2 through 5 until you have a Review Page and random questions for each topic in your course.

Congratulations! You’ve created a review test for your course. Because you re-used questions from your previous quizzes, you made efficient use of your work. Because you alternated a brief review of a topic with questions about that topic, you used the learning principle of Immediate Feedback to improve retention.

Guest Post: Free Online Classes to help Freelance Tech Writers become Effective Bosses and Business Owners

While some technical writers are employed by large corporations, some on the other hand choose to freelance and start their own tech writing businesses. Going the entrepreneurial route is more or less ideal for those who like to make their own working hours and for those who wish to create a versatile portfolio by working for a variety of clients and projects. Unfortunately however, most technical writing degree programs don't adequately teach students how to be their own bosses or how to even oversee a team of subordinates.
While formal education in business applications can in fact teach students how to tackle the complications that arise with establishing a start-up business, this option is expensive and time consuming. Thankfully there are free online classes provide by distinguished brick-and-mortar institutions that can provide freelance tech writers with the knowledge they seek to become effective leaders when owning and operating their own business. While these classes are in fact free and typically include free old class materials such as course readings, syllabi and lecture notes and slides, note that some may require the purchase of specific textbooks or software. With that said, to learn the best classes that can help you become a more effective leader in the tech writing industry, continue reading below.
Finance and Accounting Online Classes. Because most tech entrepreneurs are strapped for cash and struggle coming up with enough capital for operating costs of their small business, all too often tech freelancers cannot afford to pay a professional to take care of the bookkeeping and other finances. So they opt to do it themselves. But handling your own finances is extremely risky, especially if you do not know anything about cash flows, how to acquire monetary income, or how to meet budgets—you don't want to over spend (or skimp) on buying necessary equipment such as authoring and editing software, style guide books, reference manuals, insurance, or proper licenses. In fact, any small mistake can result in your business quickly plummeting to the ground. So to make sure that your business doesn't fail due to your lack of knowledge in finance or accounting, check out a few of these classes that can teach you how to properly evaluate your blooming business' financial needs:

• Introduction to Economics [Utah State]
• Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning [UC Irvine]
• Business Skills for Success [Kutztown University of Pennsylvania]

Content Management and Software Documentation Online Courses. In this new day and age most freelance teach writers are required to do far more than just write—they have to be editors, content modelers and even graphic designer at some moments. With that said freelancers who deal with a high volume of clientele needs to diligently work to stay organized and keep proper documentation of all of their various works—no telling when you may be able to reuse particular information. An easy way to do this is to use programs such as XML and SGML. These programs will not only keep all of the content consistent throughout your business, but will also aid in easy retrieval of those important documents from databases.

• Software Engineering For Web Applications [MIT]
• Learn and Apply HTML [Utah State]

Business Negotiations Online Courses. Typically a freelance tech writer is given the option to bid on projects individually or delve into a long-term contract with a publisher. Either way, freelance tech writers need to know how to market their business to find clients as well as how to make contract negotiations once they find a client. Not only will these classes do just that, but they will also teach students how to make deadlines, create a project plan, stay within budgets, and ensure client satisfaction.

• Introduction to Project Management [UC Irvine]
• The Art and Science of Negotiation [MIT]

• Entrepreneruial Marketing [MIT]

• E-Marketing [UC Irvine]

Leadership Online Classes. Lastly, if you work individually and do not have subordinates or business partners, the following classes may not necessarily pertain to you. However if you choose to hire help, these classes will teach you how to listen to your employees' complaints (happy employees equal a happy workplace environment) and how and why it's important to take the lead during writer's meetings etc.

• Listening to Employees [Stanford]

• The Influence of Leadership on a Company [Stanford]
• The Difference Between Management and Leadership [Stanford]

By-line:
This guest contribution was submitted by Lenore Holditch, who specializes in writing about top online colleges. Questions and comments can be sent to: holditch.lenore @ gmail.com.

Moodle 2.0 E-Learning Book Just Published!

Packt Publishing has just released my latest book, Moodle 2.0 E-Learning Development. I hope you find it as much fun to use as I did to write.