Right from the start, I will say the challenge is on the eye of the programmer (kind of like the idiom that says “Beauty is in the eye of he beholder”). But, why is that? Let’s explore a few different factors that may let us easily decide whether to use stock photos on our eLearning module. Client requirements First and foremost, it is very important to clarify at the beginning of the project, before programming the eLearning module, if the client is okay with us using stock

When you are starting a new eLearning project in Storyline, it is always best practice to first take care of several elements that you know won’t change easily or at all. These elements could be: Player style Player buttons Master slides (for content, quizzes and feedback) Slide size Font style Working on setting the ground for all these at the beginning of an eLearning project will make your life easier and will certainly speed up your process and ensure consistency througho

When programming an exciting, eLearning module audio is always a key component. Without audio eLearning modules often feel very bland and have that dreaded PowerPoint type of feel. To make our modules more dynamic we use several audio files in various areas to create a unique and interactive feel to our eLearning modules. Types of audio usage in eLearning modules: Voice over Narration Instruction Character Activities Background music Sound effects Interactive object feedback

Customer service is incredibly important to me. Frankly, it’s more important to me than the product or service itself. It is actually possible for those two sentences, to be my blog’s beginning, middle and end. But that wouldn’t be very much fun would it? Every time I “enjoy” a poor customer service experience, I recoil and remember, just how important it really is. I have made more decisions than I care to admit, exclusively because the service was so poor, I could not conti

Reflecting on the majority of eLearning modules, in most cases the use of Sound Effects (SFX) weren’t utilized. SFX can be a great and underused tool, presenting information and emphasising it via an audio cue, that will alert the user and garner their attention. Some clients have expressed that SFX take away attention from the Voice Over, however, I feel as though this is not true if the SFX are used to enhance and emphasis the key points within your eLearning modules. Below

As we welcome 2019, here at Pathways Training and eLearning, here is a message from our Managing Partner, Kurt Tiltack: #trainingandeLearning #eLearningfortablets #innovation #videobasedlearning #learningtechnology #mobiledesign #traininganddevelopment #Corporateeducation #TrainingandeLearning #eLearningOntario #topTorontoeLearningcompany #Torontotrainingvendor #elearningmodules #NorthAmericaneLearningvendor #CanadianeLeaningcompany #elearningmodule #Torontoelearningvendor #P

Whenever you are setting up development on any software that requires functionality to be developed it is critical to outline what those functions are. This is particularly important when you are defining requirements for an eLearning, gamification or mLearning project. Typically, this is done in a list called the Functionality Requirements or Systems Requirements depending on the context of what is being developed. The reason it is critical is because it outlines everything

My family doesn’t understand it – but in my spare time and on vacation I love reading business books; I suppose it is an odd way to unwind from… well… business. This year over the holiday season, I read two books, the first by Chip Wilson entitled, 'Stretchy Little Black Pants'. This is a great read by the founder of Lululemon as he talks about his trials and tribulations as a Canadian entrepreneur and his lessons learned (including how careful you have to be, when talking t

One of the things that I have always found challenging, ever since I started working in the eLearning field, is to gather feedback for an eLearning module. I have seen different ways in which this feedback is provided to the programmers by the client, like an Excel spreadsheet, Word documents, even long emails detailing all the changes. Ultimately, what’s important for the programmer is to receive clear instructions as to what the issue is and how it needs to be solved, or ho

While not the most popular tool available in Articulate Storyline 360, one of my favourites is using the slider, when developing an eLearning course. My preferred use of this little widget is using it as way to dynamically deliver information, (usually manifesting as steps or a process flow). To find this tool, look under the Insert tab from the Ribbon > then choose Controls > then select the slider of your preference. With your slider selected you can begin to setup your sli

Lately we have had a lot of clients who are new to eLearning. For many of us who have been in the training industry for the last 5-10 years, we have been accustomed to most people using eLearning as the predominant method of training and it always comes as a bit of a surprise to us to encounter an organization that has not used eLearning at all (due to various reasons such as not having an internal Learning Management System (LMS) or for other reasons such as employees prefe

As an eLearning developer who does work for a wide variety of clients, you can imagine that I am often forced to use a variety of authoring tools, despite Storyline 360 being the industry standard. While I definitely use Storyline 360 the most authoring tools such as Adobe Captivate and Lectora are a close 2nd and 3rd. Transitioning to a new elearning authoring tool for the first time is never a smooth process but here are a 3 simple tips that have allowed me to effectively j

All eLearning modules have several different factors that make them successful and appealing to the eye of the learners. From instructional design, to graphic design and programming, there are a lot of different little things that contribute to a very “sexy” eLearning module. One of the things, in graphic design, that can make an eLearning module less static and more dynamic, or easy on the eyes, is the font. You may encounter in your work as an eLearning developer, that you

Yesterday Pathways Training and eLearning and Canadian Management Centre (CMC), hosted a 1 hour webinar entitled “Raising Your Learning and Development Game: Making the Quantum Leap into the Future of Learning Solutions”. The theme of the webinar was on how organizations can make a quantum leap and use digital mediums such as: virtual reality eLearning, micro-learning, training videos and eLearning to take an organizations’ learning strategy to the next level. Here are some s

More often than not, I have been tasked to convert eLearning modules to newer versions of different authoring tools. In fact, if you have repeat clients (like in our case at Pathways), you may find yourself in this situation very often, in which clients ask you to update modules to newer versions of the eLearning software in order to gain the functionality of the new software. But what happens when, for some reason, you must downgrade an eLearning module to an older version o

Lately, it’s becoming a trend in my job, that interactions designed for eLearning modules are becoming more and more challenging each day, especially, since it was announced that browsers will stop supporting Flash altogether, which means that all those cool interactions or animations, that were originally developed in Flash, will have to be developed either directly in Storyline or in HTML5. I admit that jumping into HTML5 development can be even more challenging an time con

There are different ways to bring knowledge to users, like interactive modules, videos, infographics, etc., and they should be used in conjunction and not as isolated products, to improve the learning experience on the users. Let’s say you have to put together a product for a client, a video, an interactive module or an infographic. After days, nights and weeks of graphic design, architecture, programming, testing and fixing, you have the final files to deliver to your client

Let’s continue from where we left off on the previous post, but first let’s do a quick recap on things we have already discussed regarding translation of eLearning modules: Account for space, meaning that always keep in mind what languages the eLearning module is going to be translated into, when designing the layout - For example, when creating a French eLearning module, and the original eLearning module is English, you need to account for 30% more screen text as the French

It could get difficult to coordinate efforts on large teams of programmers, especially when it comes to version in a project that involves several eLearning modules. Let’s suppose you have a team of five programmers and 3 of them are working in the same project, while the others are assigned to a different project or act as a backup, in case any issues come up for any of the main 3 programmers of the project, or in a better scenario, the client decides to add more eLearning m

I always thought that translating eLearning modules into different languages was a big deal, and it seemed to be a more complicated task than actually programming a module from scratch. But that was before I got to work with Storyline 360. From my experience, I would say that Storyline 360 reduces the time spent on translating the eLearning modules by at least 50%. I could be exaggerating, but I was blown away when I learned how to do it with this software. That being said,