E-Learning Technology

I’ve recently been working with Sameer Bhatia the CEO of ProProfs as I was going through an evaluation of various online tools that support easy, fast, low-cost testing and quiz tools. He helped me pull together the following evaluation of a few different solutions:

• ClassMarker
• Quia
• ProProfs
• Google Docs Forms Creator, and
• Quibblo.

Evaluation Criteria

For the specific need I was looking at, I was looking for the following out of a solution:

• Cost: Is the tool free or very-low cost to use? Trial periods wouldn’t count.
• Question Types/Methods: Does the tool offer the ability to create a rich testing experience by offering various question types?
• Multimedia: Does the tool offer the ability to include audio and/or visuals for questions?
• Data Collection: Does the tool provide detailed statistics on individual and/or group performance?
• Grading: Does the tool allow for several methods of grading responses? (i.e. immediate feedback, final results with or without which questions were missed, etc.)
• Download Test Results? : Can the test data be retrieved for analysis or backup?
• Layout/Accessibility: Can the layout of the quiz output be changed and does it handle accessibility issues?
• Security: Are there security methods in place to catch/prevent cheating, hacking, or other similar problems?
• Ease of Use: Is the tool well supported and easy to learn?

ProProfs

ProProfs Quiz Maker is an easy to use quiz program with a good variety of question types and options. It’s pretty amazing that it has 1 million users, over 100,000 quizzes in its public library, and over a million quiz takers. A nice feature is the end of quiz certificates for completed quizzes that can be customized. Also, test results can be downloaded in several formats. It is good at supporting accessibility with its one question per page to make the use of a screen reader more effective. It has a free and a low-cost version. To access unlimited grade reports, a paid subscription is required.

Best Features

• Very easy to use – I created a quiz in minutes.
• Good variety of question types.
• Good option for users with accessibility issues.
• Customizable quiz completion certificates.
• Relatively new to corporate quizzes and tests, but has some nice features for this kind of need.

Weaknesses

• Free version comes with Ten free grading reports - paid versions can have unlimited reports.

To see a side-by-side comparison, please see the table below.

ClassMarker

ClassMarker allows you to create simple tests/quizzes for free and seems well suited to classroom use. Instructors are able to modify score reports to provide feedback. For some of the more useful features, such as viewing score reports, an active paid account is required.

Best Features

• The program allows users to set up a ‘class’ so there is a unique login and password to track users.
• Final score reports can be modified to be shown as the instructor wishes.
• Tests can be paused, saved, and continued at the learner’s convenience.
• Variety of question types can make for a dynamic quiz.

Weaknesses

• All of the more useful features require a paid account, and even score reports cannot be viewed without one.
• No image/video support for questions.
• Not as easy to use as ProProfs.

To see a side-by-side comparison, please see the table below.

Quia

Quia allows all users to create many types of quizzes with a large variety of question types that can also include audio and video features. The instructor can set up various security settings for each class to provide more secure grading and decrease the risk of cheating. However, I found it a bit harder to use that the other tools.

Best Features

• Large variety of question types available.
• All quiz results are available in the free version.
• Security features designed to prevent cheating.

Weaknesses

• If students are not registered for a ‘class’, then the instructor cannot view the data from the quizzes.
• There is no way to choose how score reports are shown to students.
• Not as easy to use as some of the other tools.

To see a side-by-side comparison, please see the table below.

Google Docs Forms

Google Docs has a built-in Form document type that allows the creation of a set of questions. This can be an interesting quiz / test tool especially if you already use Google docs. There are a fair number of question types available and it’s very easy to use. However, users are anonymous while they are taking the test/quiz and thus need to self-report who they are (through a form field). This means that cheating would be quite easy. The reality is that this is more for creating surveys than creating quizzes and tests, but definitely worth considering in some situations.

Best Features

• Free and easy to use
• Data can be sent right to a Google docs spreadsheet or basic summary page
• Good variety of question types

Weaknesses

• No ‘grading’ can be done on quizzes
• No cheating deterrents
• Not designed for quizzes

Google docs is not included in table below since it is not designed for quizzes

Quibblo

Quibblo is a quiz and survey system that is a bit limited in terms of question types which makes it a bit harder to create a typical quiz or test. Instead users can create the type of question they require by manipulating the instructions and fields within Quibblo.

Best Features

• Free quiz designer

Weaknesses

• Site geared more for social settings than academic or corporate
• Lots of advertisements along the sides of quizzes- distracting

Quibblo is not included in comparison table as its not an academic or corporate quiz site.

Classmarker

Quia

ProProfs

Cost

Free (some features require purchase) $24.95 - $49.95 per year

Basic is Free. $49 per year for Educators, $199 per year for Corporations

Personal use version is free. Educator version is $2.97 per month, Business version is $16.67 per month

Question Types/Methods

Multiple choice
Punctuation
Essay
Multiple response
True/ False
Free text

Multiple choice
True/False
Pop-up
Multiple correct
Fill-in
Initial answer
Short answer
Essay
Matching
Ordering

Multiple Choice
Multiple response
True/False
Fill-in
Essay
Short answer

Multimedia

No image/video support for questions. Does allow for specialized characters.

Yes. Can add an image or audio URL to a question.

Yes. Supports image/video for questions.

Data Collection

Can only see score results with a paid account.

You can see the results of students in your class.

10 free reports are displayed. Premium version comes with unlimited reports.

Grading

Yes. Final score reports can be modified to be shown as the instructor wishes. Students can also save and finish the test later.

No, students will know their scores at the end of the quiz, but the instructor cannot choose how the reports are shown to students.

Yes. Several scoring options exist along with end of quiz certificate customization.

Download Test Results?

No, however, everything is backed up on the server. It cannot be downloaded.

Yes. If students are registered to the ‘class’, then the instructor can view the grades. If there is not a ‘class’ created, then there is no way to retrieve the data.

Yes, data is downloadable in several formats.

Layout

Accessibility

This cannot be changed. Overall the layout can get a little hard to follow and can take some time to get used to.

This cannot be changed. The layout is easy to understand, and someone with visual difficulties should not have problems.

This cannot be changed (though it supports one question per page or all on one page option). Someone with visual difficulties should not have problems.

Security

Each user has a unique login and password, so the information is kept secure.

Access can be restricted to the ‘class’ only, and reduces the risk of cheating.

Users all receive a unique login and password to ensure security. Quizzes can also be protected by common password.

Ease of Use

Not as easy to use as some programs.

Not as easy to use as some programs. More time was spent viewing the tutorials than creating a quiz, and even then it was still somewhat confusing.

Very easy to use. Clear and concise instructions.

Overall

Lack of reporting in the free version is not great, but it’s low-cost for the version with score reports.

The variety of questions is great, as is the ability to add multimedia to a question. However, the ‘create a class’ function is potentially daunting, and it is not as easy to use as a whole as some programs.

Nice program with good features, and very easy to use. Low cost.

eLearning Technology
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I was asked about approaches for eLearning for Sales People.  I’ve had quite a bit of experience with this and actually one of my very first projects was creating a pretty incredible eLearning solutions for Lexus sales people.  Of course, it’s such a big topic that I decided to cheat and quickly point the person to eLearning Learning and particular to eLearning Sales, eLearning Sales Metrics, Sales eLearning Case Studies, and Sales Performance Support.

Instructional and Performance Strategies for Sales eLearning

1. Learning Theory 101 for Sales and Marketing Professionals (Part 1)- Business Casual, October 13, 2008

   When consulting with sales and marketing professionals who work for companies that create training products and programs, I try not to be a "training purist" when discussion goes to "positioning" their product for the market. Specifically, the web. In Part 2, I'll list some of the levels within one of the learning types.

2. Learning Theory 101 for Sales and Marketing Professionals (Part 2)- Business Casual, October 18, 2008

3. Learning Theory 101 For Sales and Marketing Professionals (Part 3-Last)- Business Casual, October 24, 2008

4. eLearning Development: Instructional Design Lessons from a Sales Trainer- Upside Learning Blog, July 11, 2009

   That’s because I’ve been in training this week; and would you believe it was Retail Sales training. What’s an instructional designer doing attending sales training? We’ve been tasked with converting their Retail Sales Training seminar into an eLearning package. Yes, I know haven’t posted anything interesting last few days.

5. Data Driven- eLearning Technology, December 10, 2008

   Will the retail sales training change behavior in ways that improve customer satisfaction? Understanding this model is important in order to be able to apply it within different situations in order to help drive behavior change that ultimately leads to improvement in metrics. Most action plans last four to six weeks.

6. A Formula for Storytelling in eLearning- Integrated Learnings, April 6, 2010

   When a client asked our team to develop a sales skills enhancement course, we opted to base the training on the methods of the most successful sales person in the department. By Shelley A. Gable. One of the things I love about instructional design is that it engages me both analytically and creatively. Illustrate a concept.

7. Learning Performance Business Talent Focus- eLearning Technology, July 15, 2009

   Performance – Responsible for ensuring that behavior change occurs in a way that improves performance. All things being equal (which they never are), I'm guessing my focus is more a business and performance focus. Certainly Work Literacy has a learning and performance focus and is a passion of mine. Does this ring true?

8. Work Context: The New Classroom- Living in Learning, March 22, 2010

   Fifteen of those years were spent living out of a suitcase as a roving sale trainer and then as a manager. It was shocking to me because I had convinced myself – after more frequent flyer miles and Marriott points than a human could use – that I had the sales training gig figured out. And I did. As oddly as it may sound.I

9. Harvesting Learning’s Fruit: A Downstream Training Investment- Living in Learning, September 4, 2009

   Learners, managers, training staff, and SMEs all have a vested interest in what happens after training with respect to reinforcing learning through coaching, knowledge sharing, and in the case of sales people – boasting and bragging. Yes, I was in sales for many years and know what to expect. Refer to Figure 3.0 Figure 3.0.

10. The Business Case for Social Learning- Daretoshare, April 13, 2009

    Job losses, combined with cutbacks in workforce development investments, mean that many companies are less able to serve customers, make sales or generate innovations than they were just a few months ago. The Business Case for Social Learning. In effect, their capabilities are in recession.

11. Creating scenarios for learning - a four-step guide- Bottom-Line Performance, May 27, 2009

    If you are creating a sales training course, for example, your challenge might be the need to increase sales in a territory. The first course was designed to teach new sales reps basic electrical terminology. Tom Kuhler and his “Rapid e-learning&# blog once again bats 1000 by sharing tips for creating e-learning scenarios.

Technical Approaches and Case Studies for Sales eLearning

1. Sales Team Portal for Content and Expert Access- eLearning Technology, October 12, 2009

   I wanted to share some discussions I've recently had around an interesting project where the company provided the sales team a collaboration, content distribution and expert access portal. Their large sales team sells a diverse and complex set of products and services to multiple markets. Do you have a case study for me? learning.

2. Shift in eLearning from Pure Courseware towards Reference Hybrids- eLearning Technology, May 25, 2006

   sales. Most of the content is presented as static web pages that tell how to perform particular tasks, but some of the pages contain embedded Captivate movies to demonstrate or simulate use of the system. Just when you've made the transition from the prior generation of CBT authoring tools (e.g., It is asynchronous.

3. Using the iPad in Sales Training: Case Study by Lora Davis- Learning Solutions Magazine, July 19, 2010

   instruction, one sales training team has already been successful in using Apple’s new device in blended. While many e-Learning producers are struggling to understand how the iPad may be useful in online. instruction in the classroom. Here’s their story.

4. Case studies of corporate (social) learning- March 12, 2010

   The Business Case for Social Learning , Accenture, Point of View, April 2009 Sun Learning eXchange " When the company�s sales division reduced training hours and budget, Sun Learning Services (SLS) needed to get strategic. Here are some examples of social learning in organisations. Im looking for the Why? and How?]

5. 10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 1)- Gram Consulting, June 15, 2009

   The goal of learning in the workplace is performance–individual and organizational.  If we’ve learned nothing else in recent years, we’ve learned that improving performance through learning is more effective the more it is integrated with real work.  Build a performance support system. Understand the job.

6. The Future of the Training Department- Learning and Working on the Web, October 21, 2009

   NCR delivered the first sales training. You’re going to shift the focus to creativity, innovation, and helping people perform better, faster, cheaper. Tags: Informal Learning Performance Improvement The latter 20th Century was the golden era of the training department. People had vocations, not jobs. The U.S. ASTD is born.

7. Bridging the Performance Gap: Training is Just Part of the Solution- Performance Punctuated, July 1, 2010

   If, on the other hand, you are changing your sales model, a pretty important and difficult change, you need a change management strategy and plan. Therefore, there always has to be some reinforcement and feedback to truly affect performance. Tags: Performance Improvement Talent Management Organizational Learning by Reni Gorman.

8. Social Learning at Sun- Learning in a Sandbox, June 5, 2009

   As a result of that they couldn’t provide the training hours needed to meet the training needs of the sales people. Secondly, sales people needed to have access to the right tools and information needed to close their deals in the field. informal learning??).

9. A Pharmaceutical Leveraging Web 2.0 --In a Big Way- Kapp Notes, November 17, 2008

   site containing information on mechanisms of action, employee and project profiles and Pfizer products and other information useful to researchers and sales personnel within Pfizer. If you think Web 2.0 can't be used in your company because of legal or regulatory concerns, think about this. Pfizerpedia is resource-sharing Web 2.0 tags: web_2.0

10. Sun Microsystems Uses Open Source and Enterprise Social Software to Build YouTube-Like Portal for Social Learning- Learning on the Leading Edge, March 19, 2009

eLearning Technology
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This is stupid but struck me funny.  I did a search for rapid eLearning and the following is a screen shot showing the results with arrows added for one that I really don’t understand.

There have to be all sorts of great jokes about what this implies about Rapid eLearning, Articulate, etc.  By the way, I had logged out at the time.  It’s NOT because of personalized search.

eLearning Technology
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I wanted to follow-up 19 Tips for Effective Online Conferences with some additional resources that relate to this topic.  I primarily used the eLearning Learning and Communities and Networks sites and used Conference, Online Facilitation of Conferences, Online Interaction in Conferences, Moderating Online Interaction, and others.

 

1. 28 Web Conference Training Tips- eLearning Weekly, July 10, 2009

   Learning to use web conferencing technology is pretty easy, but there is a lot more to training via web conference than just putting on a headset, dialing up an audio-conferencing bridge, and logging onto the application. When developing PowerPoint slides to use in web conference training follow these guidelines: Simplify content.

2. How to plan and run a good web conference- Influence, May 7, 2009

   While the technology is getting better and better ( here's a good list of options ), putting on a good web conference still requires some preparation and practice. Encourage people to participate during the conference and identify the ways in which you want your meeting participants to engage with you. Below are some helpful tips.

3. Community Roles: Manager, Moderator, and Administrator, January 8, 2008

   was asked an interesting question last week about the best ways to divide the community manager role into separate manager, moderator, and administrator roles. In most cases, and in my case, the community manager also performs the moderation functions. Moderation would be a small part of several people’s jobs.

4. Moderation types- Made by Many, February 4, 2009

   Whenever companies want to publish user generated content (UGC) they need to look into moderation, which usually consists of the following three types: Pre-moderation: Some sites operate on the principle that every piece of UGC should be moderated before it’s displayed on the website.

5. Community Roles: Manager, Moderator, and Administrator, January 8, 2008

   was asked an interesting question last week about the best ways to divide the community manager role into separate manager, moderator, and administrator roles. In most cases, and in my case, the community manager also performs the moderation functions. Moderation would be a small part of several people’s jobs.

6. Moderating for development- I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate, July 15, 2008

   It’s a process of several months which started in May and includes two live conferences (in a cinema, close to Ede), papers written by specialists on development issues and an online discussion via the website [link]. The names of these people came from the participants list of the conferences. It’s a guess why.

7. Ed Mitchell: What are facilitation and moderation, February 17, 2008

   What are facilitation and moderation February 15, 2008 – 1:55 pm A quick addendum about facilitation and moderation on online spaces before a longer post about strategy. Are they facilitating, moderating, re-purposing, or nothing at all? Moderation: Is the coalface end end of the model.

8. Gilbane Group Blog: More on "engage and collaborate" vs. "command and control"-  April 1, 2007

   Gilbane Group Blog Gilbane Group analysts, consultants and contributors on Content and Web technologies & trends Open to the community and moderated Home Archives XML Blog Search Blog Globalization Blog News Conferences gilbane.com Sign In Search More on "engage and collaborate" vs. research last week, Niall Cook comments: You ask: ".what

9. Backchannel Resources- Full Circle, September 11, 2009

   back channel facilitation in online groups where you make a decision to address issues privately and not “in front&# of the whole group. Conference Back Channel. Raising the bar at online events. Clay Shirkey on back channels at conferences. Jon Garfunkle on the backchannel at conferences (from a blog post comment).

10. Raising the Bar on Online Event Practices- Full Circle, August 11, 2009

    Alan Levine wrote a deliciously provocative post on last month that I’ve been meaning to comment upon, Five Ways to Run a Deadly Online Seminar. It has been a while since I wrote about synchronous online facilitation is a focused way.  inside the online meeting room). World Cafe’s online ? Spot on, CogDog!

11. Improving Conferences - Ideas & the Year Round Conference- Engaged Learning, February 6, 2009

    WH Says: “…Open up the pool of presenters beyond the same 10-20 names I see at every e-learning conference… More voices would be a good thing and shows strength (and depth) in our industry.&#. Maybe Brent Schlenker, Heidi Fisk, someone at ASTD or other conferences can tell us the # of RFPs vs. into the conference. 

12. Liveblogging an Online Conference- Experiencing eLearning, April 17, 2008

    Wendy Wickham asked a good question in the comments on TCC08: Second Life: Teaching Tips from the Virtual Frontier: Christy - are you using 2 computers (one for blogging, one for the conference), or just one? How are you finding the experience of liveblogging an online conference? am using two computers. It does feel a little intense.

13. How to Run a Conference That Makes Us Say “WOW!”- Engaged Learning, June 22, 2010

    Attending conferences is always a mixed bag.  conference , my favorite part was talking to others about each others’ issues, concerns, questions.  conference Barcamp e2.0 conference keynote session  .  . Photo on Flickr by Lars Plougmann. We LOVE the other attendees and the idea we get from each other.  More of you.

14. Online Facilitation, Twitter, Backchannel and Keynotes- Full Circle, February 24, 2010

    The topic was “Online Facilitation: 14 years on. My topic was about my past experience with online facilitation and where I thought it was headed. The conference started with an amazing “Light Night Learning Live&# biting and sharp comedy set up by Jared Stein and Marc Hugentobler. First: Reflection. Perfect timing.

15. You do whaaat? A glimpse behind the scenes of technical moderation- eModeration, June 10, 2010

    For anyone who believes that a moderator spends his or her time deleting rude words from forums and hitting 'reject' on naughty video submissions (although we do this also), I wanted to give a quick glimpse into the nitty-gritty involved in eModeration's most complex project for a mobile phone provider client. Warning: this gets technical.

16. How to Develop Robust Moderation Methodology- Community Guy, March 23, 2010

    Moderation, at its core is about ensuring that published content on a particular site, typically submitted by the site’s users themselves, meets the terms of the site’s Terms of Service (ToS). The problem with approaching the moderation task as an analog, queue-clearing activity is that it simply doesn’t scale.

17. 4. Moderation and safety- FreshNetworks, June 6, 2009

    Why moderate? 8220;Why moderate?&# Moderators] help and assist new members by welcoming them into the community.&#. Moderation is essential to a clean, healthy, vibrant community. good moderator has a light touch, barely noticeable, and a well-moderated community is spam-free, troll-resilient and buzzing.

18. How to Moderate Teens and Tweens- eModeration, June 26, 2009

    We're really pleased to anounce that we've published a new whitepaper; the second in our series on Teens and Tweens, called 'How to Moderate Teens and Tweens'. Moderation has a role in helping to guide them as well as keeping them safe.”. Tags: teens child safety moderation In this latest publication.

19. References on Lurking | Full Circle Associates- Full Circle, March 28, 2010

    First, is an old discussion summary from the Online Facilitation list from 2003, compiled by Chris Lang which still has value to me. I’ve written about it here on the blog quite often over the years!) It is more generalized reciprocity. Download file. Finally, some fine blog posts on lurking by friends and colleagues. link]

20. Is your event worth the price of the ticket?- Social Reporter, March 15, 2009

    The other day I was discussing social reporting and other online activities for a £300-ticket, two-day event with the organiser, and he said: “Next year we are going to have to make it free&#. And in future they’ll have to blend online and offline activities. Limited interaction conference. Problems if not!

21. Conference Balance- eLearning Technology, June 6, 2008

    Just read a great post by Clive Shepherd - Cutting the Pie - where he discusses what the appropriate balance is at conferences. As you know creating Better Conferences is something that very much interests me. Check out that post, the poll results and the discussion for lots of ideas on how to make conferences better.

22. Rethinking the Conference Structure - Time to Step it UP- Engaged Learning, February 3, 2009

    Mark Oehlert attended TechKnowledge ‘09 and his thoughts were very similarly to mine: Conferences need to be updated. 8220;Social media should be the default and should kick in as soon as I register and continue past the conference.&#. I will be MUCH less likely to come to your conference.  Ohhhhhh yes.  Yes, Mark, it is.

23. Online Conference Formats- eLearning Technology, April 23, 2009

    Also, if you are interested in future conferences, please go sign up on the Learn Trends Ning Group. We've just seen an interesting experience with Jay Cross having pulled together a 24 hour, worldwide discussion on the future of learning at Learn Trends. You can find some of the recordings here. On Tuesday morning, we had 125 listening in.

24. Rethinking conferences- Informal Learning, February 17, 2009

    When I signed up for Spaces for Interaction: An Online Conversation about Improving the Traditional Conference , I didn’t appreciate how timely the topic would become. Conferences have traditionally provided foundation knowledge for instructional designers, trainers, CLOs, and others in the field. Is it a Conference?

25. Twitter Conference Ideas- eLearning Technology, January 30, 2009

    Twitter has become a pretty great tool to help with socializing at conferences. There is also an interesting effect that people who are not attending still hear quite a bit about the conference and have some level of tangential participation. We also encouraged everyone to put in the hashtag. What do I need to cover by what point.

26. Better Conferences- eLearning Technology, June 18, 2007

    believe we can build better conferences. And, I need you to help by doing one or more of the following: provide a response to the poll below (won't show in an RSS feed - sorry) provide suggestions for what you'd like to see in future conferences (add comment). because most conferences have these same problems. distributed.

27. Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences- eLearning Technology, October 28, 2008

    Lisa Neal asked a great question in a comment on Learn Trends 2008 - Free Online Conference : What do you see as the main differences between in person and online conferences? Now, don't get me wrong, I still very much like to do in-person conferences. It's hard to get all the way to an in-person conference.

28. Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results- eLearning Technology, April 23, 2008

    I saw a post by David Warlick - Reaching Out With Your Conference where he suggests that conference organizers should: Consider a social network for your conference. Although I remain skeptical about social networks, social networking is essential, and a few conferences have made brilliant use of them. It's rare.

29. What Exactly IS a Conference?- aLearning, March 2, 2010

    What’s the intention of having the conference? Jeff Hurt, over at Midcourse Corrections, has a great post about opening and keynote speakers, and it made me think about conferences in general… …and about my own situation. So what’s the purpose of the conference? Is it an educational event? Meeting?

30. I Have Seen the Future of Conferences...and it is 3D!- Kapp Notes, March 15, 2010

    Terrence Linden discussing the new Second Life browser at VWBPE conference. If you missed the Virtual Worlds' Best Practices in Education Conference , you missed not only a great conference with really good content and presentations, you missed a glimpse into the future of conferences. Check out her entire presentation.

31. Conference Networking Tools - Do They Work?- eLearning Technology, May 18, 2007

    You may have seen them before and will likely remember their scatter plot: There are other applications aimed at helping you to network at conferences: CMC Central - Tradeshow Appointments , Eveni Meeting Matching ExpoMATCH , eXtreme Networking , Introplus , Leverage Software , NetworkingMatch , and PowerMingle.com. Or maybe it's me.

32. Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee - eLearning Technology, September 14, 2006

    As way of introduction to this topic, let me start with a typical scenario that you will recognize if you've ever attended a professional conference. The conference organizer has put signs in the middle of each table with a topic. What are other activities at the conference where I can talk to people? So what LMS are you using?

33. Conference Preparation- eLearning Technology, March 14, 2007

    As I'm thinking about going to the eLearningGuild Annual Gathering in Boston next month and ASTD in Atlanta in June, I went back to look at some notes I had created before around getting ready for conferences. link] I also ran across this good post: Conference Survival Guide for the Web Worker with some good suggestions

34. Conference Wiki Examples- eLearning Technology, November 25, 2008

    Someone asked me for an example of a conference using a Wiki both for organizers during planning, evaluating proposed sessions, etc. can say that this made pulling things together for the conference significantly easier. and for attendees with session pages, participant lists, that kind of stuff. It was more aimed at the attendee side.

35. Conference Session Breakout- eLearning Technology, December 18, 2007

    Uh oh, I just saw a post by Donald Clark slamming the use of small group breakouts during conference sessions. Update: 12/19/2007. There has been great discussion in the comments. wanted to provide a bit more context for this. The session will be workforce learning professionals (an ASTD audience). Original post. Uh oh. Now I'm worried.

36. Prepare for a Conference- eLearning Technology, January 12, 2009

    Heading into ASTD TechKnowledge , there's a particularly timely podcast that I just did for Tom Crawford of VizThink on the topic of: How to be an Insanely Great Conference Attendee If you follow the link you can get to the podcast. There will be more information coming around the use of Twitter at the conference.

37. The Rise of Webinars, Virtual Conferences, and Twitter Chats- Element K Blog, May 8, 2009

    Conferences are still being held in the Learning and Development industry as in past years, and generally they have the same level of quality presentations, hallway discussions, vendor demos, and much more. An example of the latter would be the “online forums” that the eLearning Guild does each month.

38. Online Communites are Changing my World- Daretoshare, June 26, 2010

    Here are four examples of how online communities have changed my world: I was organizing a conference in London UK for a client.  The first time we met in person was at the conference.  Should online communities have a better reputation?  Should Should you join and participate in one more online community? 

39. Twittering at Conferences- Learning with e's, May 7, 2009

    I really missed the Edumedia Conference in Salzburg this year. have pleasant memories of last year's conference and the beautiful city of Salzburg. Here's the conclusion in full: Microblogging at conferences seems to be an additional way of discussing presented topics and exchanging additional information. Ebner, M., Beham, G.

40. How to Get the Most Out of a Conference- eLearning Weekly, May 7, 2009

    Conferences have been on my mind quite a bit lately. So you can see why I was pleasantly surprised today when I ran across an excellent blog post on how to get the most out of a conference. Here’s a summary of his suggestions: Choose your conference wisely. Conference Survival Guide for the Web Worker.

41. Layered communications will change online communities- FreshNetworks, April 14, 2009

    Time for a prediction: layered communications - a mixing of text, speech and video - will become a key issue for online communities in 2010 and beyond. . Two things this week got me thinking about the place for layered communications in online communities and social networks. 

eLearning Technology
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I was recently asked me about my recommendations for conducting effective online conferences (virtual conference).  They had attended the LearnTrends free online conference.  This conference has been run for a few years now and is tentatively scheduled for November 15-17 this year.

This is my attempt to collect some of what we’ve learned over the years doing those conferences.  There’s some good information back in Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences, Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee, Online Conference Formats, and Conference Preparation.

1. Assign people into roles.  For us we have someone who is an overall producer (actually there are three of us, but we split it well), session moderator, recording engineer, speaker prep person. 
2. Technical Issues.  Prepare for technical issues and decide what you will do about them.  We’ve used Elluminate as our webinar system.  It has issues with firewalls.  So, we ask everyone to test until they find a location where they can connect.  This means that some people need to attend from home. 
3. Communicate all of the details in great detail.  No matter how much you feel its obvious what to do, there will be confusion.  This is especially true with information like testing the virtual meeting software, getting into sessions, protocols during sessions, time zones, etc.
4. Closely related to the above, make sure you have a well known way/place to submit questions and some assigned to answer these.
5. Make it obvious where to access to resources from speakers.  For us, we create a discussion topic associate with the session and attach files or content into that.
6. Session timing and design is difficult online.  Most presenters are not used to designing for online, so it’s important to help them plan their sessions to be effective.  You definitely need interaction and time for Q&A.  Some of the best sessions have very effective means of capturing the wisdom of the attendees.  Even the length of sessions is challenging.  Long sessions can try to get too much content in and often lose steam before Q&A.  Short sessions often means really superficial.  This is where a good prep person along with a good moderator can really help.
7. Open discussions have worked, but they are risky.  I often find they meander too much for me.  Of course, I generally am more comfortable with directed Learning Goals.  Certainly, if you are going to try it have a great moderator and interesting audience.
8. Getting participation outside of the sessions is challenging.  People don’t read things, or enter discussions ahead of the sessions.  No matter how hard we’ve tried, it’s VERY difficult to get an audience to do anything ahead of when the sessions start.  And it’s even difficult to get them to engage through discussion forums outside of the sessions.  It’s best to design things where the discussion forums are an added bonus and have some set questions to spark discussion.  But don’t count on that much participation.
9. Make sure you have breaks between blocks of sessions.  The conference staff needs it, but so do the attendees, even if you think they will pick and choose sessions.
10. For us, defining the times for sessions is difficult.  There’s no way to choose time slots where it’s not an ungodly hour in some part of the world.  Not sure we’ve ever figured out an answer.
11. Text Chat works great during sessions as a Back Channel.  Encourage it and make sure the moderator and/or presenter weave it into the session – see Presentation Backchannel Multitasking.  Also, make sure that the presenter is not distracted by chat.  I always encourage speakers to ignore it and I’ll (as the moderator) let them know when there’s something I’d like them to discuss.  And I’m not a big fan of using multiple back channel tools that effectively split the discussion.  Just keep it in the webinar tool.
12. Inject fun into the event. Nancy White jumped in to lead a round of Pecha Kucha using slides she had never seen before. The spontaneity and spirit of fun raised energy levels. Need fun stuff sprinkled throughout.  Moderators can help this greatly.
13. Speakers on a common topic should get to know one another and swap ideas on their approach in advance of the session.
14. Pictures of speakers make the event more real. Have pictures on session descriptions and on the first slide of each speaker.
15. Thanks to Scott Skibell, we recorded the sessions directly off the web, i.e., outside of Elluminate and he produced great recordings.  This helps a lot.
16. We’ve tried a few different ice breakers.  Interaction to learn the webinar tool is always a good idea.  Sometimes a kind of introduction to break the ice with audio can be good.  Especially if you want audio input.  Many people freely text chat, but don’t like to speak online.
17. Be careful with screen sharing and video.  They require so much bandwidth that they often make the presentation not work for lots of attendees.  Much better to use screen shots.
18. Some people take online commitments lightly. Several presenters never showed up. Some volunteer moderators disappeared when we tried to pin down times for them to cover.
19. Online conferences have the advantage of being able to have introductory and truly advanced topics that will appeal to a narrow audience.

eLearning Technology
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I’ve discussed before about how it’s Hard to Evaluate the Performance of Knowledge Workers and now some additional backup from Dilbert:

Which goes along with:

But let’s be careful here because:

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This is third post in a series on Text-to-Speech for eLearning written by Dr. Joel Harband and edited by me (which turns out to be a great way to learn).  In the first two posts, Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality and Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech, we introduced the text to speech voice and discussed issues of quality related to its components: the natural language processor (NLP) and the digital signal processor (DSP). In this post we will begin to address the practical side of the subject: How can e-learning developers use Text-to-Speech (TTS) voices to narrate their courses? What tools are immediately available?

Text-to-Speech (TTS) Tools for eLearning Applications

There are a number of possibilities available today for using TTS for eLearning; they fall into two categories or approaches:

1. TTS Stand-Alone. A general approach in which developers use any standard authoring tool such as Articulate or Lectora and use stand-alone TTS on-demand services/products to create audio files that are then linked or embedded in the presentation.
2. TTS Integrated. Products/services that have TTS voices bundled and integrated with an authoring solution, including Adobe Captivate and Tuval Software Industries’ Speech-Over Professional.

In this article, we are going to concentrate only on using TTS Stand-Alone tools to create audio files that are embedded into a course.

TTS Stand-Alone Web Services

TTS stand-alone products can be used by eLearning developers irrespective of the authoring tool they are used. Several of the voice vendors offer on-demand TTS voice web services which accept text and produce sound files.  Here are a few of the top web services for TTS:

Company

Web Service

Loquendo

Pronuncia

NeoSpeech

On Demand

Acapela-Group

Acapela-Box

These web services have the advantages:

• Choose any voice among a set of vendors voices
• Set pitch, speed volume of voice for the entire file
• Select type of sound file output (wav, mp3, etc)
• Preview function
• Pronunciation dictionary
• Pay as you go

Disadvantages

• Because they are web services, there’s no automatic connection with the desktop file system.  Most of the time you are creating audio files locally and thus having access to the file system means it will keep files up-to-date.  In some cases, this also applies to things like storing scripts and default settings.

This can be a major disadvantage and cause significant extra steps.  Because of this, we are going to concentrate on a particular desktop stand-alone product to illustrate the eLearning production workflow.

Acapela Virtual Speaker – a Desktop Stand-Alone TTS Product

Acapela-Group offers a desktop stand-alone product, Acapela Virtual Speaker, that is better suited to eLearning production than most of the web services solutions listed above. 

As an example, let’s see how to work with Acapela Virtual Speaker. Virtual Speaker works with input text files (the narration scripts) and output sound files organized into directories.  Narration scripts (text files) are stored for easy updates and the system makes it easy to generate the associated sound files based on updates.  The sound files are generally easy to find and access from any authoring tool.

To create a sound file from narration text for an authoring tool using Virtual Speaker, you perform the following:

1. Define a file naming system to identify the text and sound files for the authoring tool
2. Set working folders for input text files and output sound files
3. Enter new narration scripts or open a stored narration script file from the text files working folder
4. Select the language and voice for this sound file
5. Select the volume, pitch, speed of the voice
6. Press the Play button to preview the voice reading the text
7. Make changes in text and voice settings as required
8. Name the text file according to the naming system (for new text) and save it in the working folder
9. Select the output format: wav, mp3, etc
10. Press the Record button, a sound file is created with the same name as the text file and stored in the working folder

To import the sounds files into the authoring tool use the File Import function of the tool to import the file from the working folder as required.

It sounds really easy and it is.  Stand-alone TTS tools are used to create sound files just as you would if you had a human recording audio for the course. These sound files then need to be associated with the content using the authoring tool.  In later posts, we’ll get into more specific comparisons of TTS vs. human narration.  In terms of taking the resulting audio files and using them via an authoring tool, the level of effort is similar.

Of course, both human narration and TTS tools that produce audio files means that it takes some work to get the audio files embedded in the authored course, including importing the files and in some cases synchronizing them with a time-line editor.  Tools that have embedded TTS, like Adobe Captivate, make this significantly easier. And if you make changes to the script, you will need to create new audio files and import them again. This is much easier than having to go through another round of narration. But it still takes work.

Personal TTS Readers Not Licensed for eLearning

Some readers may be wondering why we haven’t mentioned the TTS “personal reader” products such as: Natural Reader , TextAloud, Read the Words,  and Spoken Text as possibilities for eLearning tools. The reason is that sound files produced by personal readers are for personal use only and are not allowed, by license, to be distributed. This restriction means that these products cannot be used for eLearning, where sound files are distributed to learners. We’ll talk more about this important subject in a future post.

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A colleague just asked me if I knew anyone who was using Augmented Reality for learning.  I’m not and I gave him the standard advice about looking through LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers, LinkedIn for Finding Expertise, and Searching for Expertise - LinkedIn Answers.  He did that, but didn’t find particular people.  Probably I need to update my posts because there have to be lots of people who would be involved in training and augmented reality found via LinkedIn.  I just tried a search for “augmented reality” as a keyword along with either title contains “training” or “learning” and found some interesting folks.

My next suggestion was to use eLearning Learning to search.  This gave rise to the additional of a new keyword Augmented Reality on eLearning Learning.  You may have wondered where the keywords come from. :)

Actually, this leads to quite a treasure trove of great posts:

1. Tools for Developing Augmented Reality Applications- Upside Learning Blog, April 30, 2010
2. Fighting Phobia's with Augmented Reality- Kapp Notes, July 6, 2010
3. Augmented Reality, Future for eLearning?- Designing Impact, June 8, 2010
4. Augmented Reality: does it have a place/future in education?- Dont Waste Your Time, February 23, 2010
5. More Augmented Reality Videos- Dont Waste Your Time, March 26, 2010
6. Mobile Augmented Reality Training, April 30, 2010
7. Augmented Reality To Help Military Mechanics Fix Vehicles, January 25, 2010
8. Augmented Reality and the Future of Learning & Work, September 22, 2009
9. Google Goggles will rock m-learning., December 7, 2009
10. Augmented Reality and The Coming Tsunami of Location Learning Apps- Electronic Papyrus, October 26, 2009
11. Layar the first mobile augmented reality application- Ignatia Webs, June 23, 2009
12. The two types of augmented reality- E-learning in the Corporate Sector, July 20, 2010
13. Advantages and Drawbacks of using Augmented Reality #AugmentedReality- Dont Waste Your Time, March 30, 2010
14. In 2015 augmented learning in a ubiquitous learning environment will be fact- Ignatia Webs, May 11, 2010
15. Augmented Reality in Learning- Upside Learning Blog, April 15, 2009
16. Learning - augmented- Lars is Learning, September 9, 2009
17. Augmented Reality – Now A Reality at Upside- Upside Learning Blog, March 2, 2010
18. Augmented Reality on campus- Dont Waste Your Time, July 7, 2010

And this naturally leads to both the people/companies in the various case studies as well as suggests some folks to contact such as Judy Brown, Karl Kapp, Lars Hyland, David Hopkins and more.  At least they’ll likely have a bit more clue as to who to talk to.

If you have suggestions for my colleague, we are all ears.

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I received a question this week related to Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank:

I successfully launched a discussion forum for a small group of lending assistants within my bank. That forum is still up and running. Since that time, I have attempted to introduce the discussion forum tool to two other work groups within the bank but I have not been very successful. I’ve used examples from the lending assistants as well as other benefits of the tool to demonstrate how its use would benefit the bank and these work groups. They see the benefit of the tool in a strict learning environment, but have difficulty seeing its use in an expanded role.

One of the things that this group has identified as one of their “problems” is that they receive too many emails. I presented the discussion forum as a solution to this problem, in that it would reduce the number of emails they receive because the information would not be in their in-box, and more importantly would allow discussion between the all the members (one to many) rather than one to one or one to a few. They pushed back because they felt that this was just one more place to go and one more thing to do. They were also concerned about the accuracy of the information that was published on the forum. I pointed out the benefit of correction of inaccurate information on a discussion forum is that it is visible and correctable - unlike information that is sent through email or other back channels of communication.  I could go on… but I’m sure you get the picture. 

I’m just having trouble getting traction and wondering what I can/should do better/different.

The one thing they were interested in finding out, is whether other financial institutions are using discussion forums and if so how. I was wondering you could help me find out if there are others, who they are and if they’d be willing to talk with me.

Great question.  Of course, there’s no easy answers here, but lots we can discuss and learn around this.

In terms of finding people with experience on this, my first suggestion was using LinkedIn and particularly looking through LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers, LinkedIn for Finding Expertise, and Searching for Expertise - LinkedIn Answers.  This is in process.  I’ll also reach out via twitter.  If you have other ideas or if you are at a financial institution and are willing to have a discussion with this person, please drop me a comment/email.

Of course, there’s a lot of great information out there on this via eLearning Learning under terms like Discussion Forum, Collaboration in Discussion Forums, Discussion Forum Adoption, Benefits of Discussion Forums, Discussion Forum Case Studies.  I also checked out Nancy White’s Communities and Networks site under Discussion Forums, Case Studies of Discussion Forums, and Community Building and Discussion Forums.

I found a lot of great stuff.  Let me start with some of the ones that are probably more relevant to this particular inquiry:

1. Examples of online communities in the financial services industry- FreshNetworks, March 17, 2009
2. 7 Creative Ways to Introduce Social Media to Your Team- Learning Putty, October 22, 2009
3. Using Online Forums in Social Learning- Learning Putty, October 19, 2009
4. Change agents, group forums and the one percent rule.- Business Casual, October 29, 2008
5. Making Intranet Discussion Groups Effective- eLearning Technology, June 15, 2006
6. Requirement to Social Learning Adoption #2 - Compatibility- Engaged Learning, February 24, 2009
7. The Holy Trinity: Leadership Framework, Learning 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0- trainingwreck, May 8, 2010
8. Ten tips for choosing & using social software- Learning Conversations, February 23, 2009
9. Promoting Social Learning- eLearning Blender, May 23, 2009
10. Get involved and make the most of your online community- FreshNetworks, June 3, 2009
11. Examples of online communities in healthcare- FreshNetworks, April 8, 2009
12. Blogger in Middle-earth: Working With Online Learning Communities- Blogger in Middle-earth, April 14, 2009
13. How To Kill A Community, February 12, 2009
14. Online Success - a recipe for learners and facilitators- Designed for Learning, February 14, 2010
15. eLearn: Best Practices - Discussion Management Tips for Online Educators, September 30, 2009
16. Franchisees Benefit from Learning 2.0 at Zaxby's - 1/15/2009 8:54:00 AM - Chain Leader, January 17, 2009
17. Facilitating online communities - WikiEducator, June 11, 2009
18. HOW TO Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics & Luddites - Tips, Resources & Advice - UPDATED, June 2, 2009
19. Intel Communities: IT@Intel Blog: Why Intel is investing in Social Computing, February 15, 2009
20. Community of Practice for Facilitators : pilot, adoption and participation- Library Clips, September 13, 2009
21. Team-based communities : Transparency and Crowdsourcing for a more cohesive workplace- Library Clips, March 9, 2009
22. BT Web 2.0 adoption case study " Inside out, February 20, 2009 
23. How to kick start a Community | Connie Bensen, May 20, 2008
24. Cisco on Collaboration: Know Your Enthusiasts & Laggards | Future Changes, October 2, 2009
25. Essential reading for online community managers- FreshNetworks, January 5, 2010
26. Insight from online communities: 2. Focused discussions- FreshNetworks, January 19, 2009
27. Is this the Future of Forums?- eModeration, May 4, 2009
28. The top-down and bottom-up creation of enterprise communities, and wikis- Library Clips, December 18, 2008
29. More thoughts on community structure and creation- Library Clips, January 11, 2009
30. Forums Are Everywhere and Here to Stay, So Skip the Tools Discussion and Focus on Your Objectives, March 25, 2010
31. Discussions Are Not Warfare; Forums Are Not a Battlefield, December 9, 2009
32. 5 Easy Ways to Find Stories, Topics and Discussions to Post on Your Online Community, February 24, 2009
33. Understanding the difference between Forums, Blogs, and Social Networks, February 10, 2008
34. How to Develop Robust Moderation Methodology- Community Guy, March 23, 2010
35. Back to Basics: Want to Know What Your Community Members Need? Just Ask., January 19, 2010
36. Creating Passionate Users: How to Build a User Community, Part 1, June 17, 2007
37. Why so many community initiatives fail to take flight…, January 17, 2009
38. Social Media and the insurance industry- FreshNetworks, February 18, 2010
39. Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen: The Series- Portals and KM, January 20, 2010

More Resources on Discussion Forums, Communities:

1. Forums vs. Social Networks?- eLearning Technology, September 15, 2008
2. 5 Easy Tips for Teaching Online Courses- Learning Putty, January 18, 2010
3. Forums – Day 1 – What is it?- Engaged Learning, November 23, 2009
4. Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank- eLearning Technology, September 15, 2009
5. The new look Captivate forum- Adobe Captivate Blog, April 8, 2009
6. I want to facilitate online discussions but how do I choose the right platform?- Joitske Hulsebosch eLearning, November 14, 2009
7. Top 10 Ways Social Media Will Impact Employee Development and Training in 2010- Learning Putty, October 29, 2009
8. 22 Social Learning Strategy Questions to Answer Before Your Next Lesson- Learning Putty, July 1, 2010
9. From formal courses to social learning- Learning Conversations, November 26, 2009
10. Tips for facilitators in Ning- Joitske Hulsebosch eLearning, March 13, 2009
11. Making the case for social media- Good Practice, November 2, 2009
12. Social learning: all talk and no action?- Spicy Learning, February 5, 2010
13. Communities of practice- Learnforever, May 31, 2010
14. Make way for virtual learning communities- Electronic Papyrus, March 25, 2009
15. An Introduction to blogs, wikis, and RSS - New Technologies for e-Learning, September 20, 2007
16. ONLINE FORUM: Lights, Camera, Action - Using Media to Engage the Learner, June 2, 2009
17. Online social networks, learning and viral expansion loops- Sticky Learning, December 14, 2009
18. Community of Practice for Facilitators : pilot, adoption and participation, September 13, 2009
19. Distributed Network Learning FAQ - WikiEducator, December 20, 2008
20. Seed, feed, & weed- Learnlets, September 17, 2009
21. Online communication is not second best- Clive on Learning, October 11, 2007
22. The Power of Community | workforce.com, May 28, 2009
23. conversation matters: What Do We Get From Conversation That We Can't Get Any Other Way?, April 14, 2009
24. Case Study: Comics in Community Communication- Community Guy, August 10, 2009
25. Designing an online and face-to-face learning trajectory- Joitske Hulsebosch, July 15, 2009
26. Employee social networking case study : Sabre's cubeless product, September 1, 2008
27. Understanding the difference between Forums, Blogs, and Social Networks, February 10, 2008
28. I want to facilitate online discussions but how do I choose the right platform?- Joitske Hulsebosch, November 14, 2009
29. Should anonymous comments be allowed in an online community?- FreshNetworks, March 7, 2010
30. Oldie but goodie: "CompuServe's Intranet Forum"- Endless Knots, February 23, 2009
31. What’s the biggest mistake a community manager can make?- FreshNetworks, December 24, 2009
32. Are your community's lurkers healthy lurkers?- Joitske Hulsebosch, June 15, 2009
33. Preparing for community release- Library Clips, April 11, 2009
34. Community Netiquette: How to Avoid Stepping on Virtual Toes- Community Guy, August 4, 2009
35. Facilitating an online discussion to foster cooperation between two development organisations, December 27, 2006
36. Full Circle Online Interaction Blog: Updating my basic article on online facilitation, April 29, 2007

What other resources or case studies would you point to around this topic?

Any thoughts or advice?

Help would be sincerely appreciated!

eLearning Technology
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I’m involved in several discussions around how to use Wikis as part of learning solutions.  I wanted to collect a few resources around this topic for use in these discussions.  So, of course, I went to eLearning Learning and I looked at Wiki, Collaborative Learning with Wikis, Wikis and eLearning 2.0, Wikis Corporate eLearning, Social Learning with Wikis, Wiki Security and a few others.  Here’s some of what I found:

1. Why a Wiki?- Experiencing eLearning, July 27, 2009
2. Wikis at Work- eLearning Technology, February 25, 2007
3. Control and Community: A Case Study of Enterprise Wiki Usage, May 4, 2009
4. Blog or Wiki?- Kapp Notes, January 20, 2009
5. Wiki activities 5 stage model, April 7, 2008
6. Control and Community: A Case Study of Enterprise Wiki Usage, May 4, 2009
7. Really Cool "3-Minute e-Learning" on Social Networking - Wiki, Social Networking, Social Bookmarking, RSS, October 10, 2007
8. Wiki working, June 19, 2009
9. Wiki: Intro to Emerging Tech, July 18, 2009
10. Could A Wiki Be Your Next Talent Management System?, October 23, 2008
11. Using Toolkits to Aggregate Learning Resources, February 6, 2009
12. Enterprise Wiki as Intranet - a success story, September 20, 2007
13. Lurking and loafing, March 9, 2010
14. Activities, Workflows and Structured Wikis (Augmented Social Cognition), February 9, 2009
15. Wikis for Improving Productivity- Experiencing eLearning, June 10, 2008
16. Wiki's For Professional Development- Learnadoodledastic, September 26, 2007
17. One more time: what's the difference between a blog and a wiki?- Clive on Learning, April 13, 2007
18. Wikis: Ways to use them for a more Collaboration and Interaction- Dont Waste Your Time, August 28, 2009
19. Do wikis work for any topic? How about math?- eLearning Acupuncture, March 25, 2009
20. eLearning Tools - Wikis, Blogs and More- eLearning Technology, April 2, 2007
21. Wiki – Day 2 – How Wikis are Used- Engaged Learning, December 1, 2009
22. Wikis – Day 3 – Privacy & Adoption- Engaged Learning, December 2, 2009
23. Wikis – Day 4 – Overcoming Bad Stigmas- Engaged Learning, December 3, 2009
24. Top 10 Ways Social Media Will Impact Employee Development and Training in 2010- Learning Putty, October 29, 2009
25. Conference Wiki Examples- eLearning Technology, November 25, 2008
26. Use of Wikis as Compared to Other Tools- eLearning Technology, February 23, 2007
27. 22 Social Learning Strategy Questions to Answer Before Your Next Lesson- Learning Putty, July 1, 2010
28. TCC09: Wikis that Work: Effective Wiki Practices for Virtual Learning Communities- Experiencing eLearning, April 15, 2009
29. Wiki as repository for a virtual community- Joitske Hulsebosch eLearning, January 21, 2009
30. How Wikipedia Works and Wikis in the Enterprise - HBS- eLearning Technology, July 23, 2007
31. Wikis - Public vs. Controlled - Why There's No eLearning Wiki- eLearning Technology, September 14, 2006
32. 10 Social Media Tools For Learning- The eLearning Coach, November 16, 2009
33. Collaborative Learning Using Web 2.0 Tools - A Summary- eLearning Technology, May 16, 2006
34. Benefits of Collaborative Learning- Dont Waste Your Time, July 8, 2010
35. Enterprise 2.0 - Community Spaces can lead to Walled Gardens- Free as in Freedom, March 27, 2010
36. Examples of eLearning 2.0- eLearning Technology, September 22, 2008
37. Collaborative Learning « Social Enterprise Blog, June 3, 2009
38. A Learning Paradigm Shift: Cybergogy, April 9, 2010
39. Learning space mashups, July 13, 2009
40. Case studies of corporate (social) learning, March 12, 2010
41. Using SharePoint- eLearning Technology, December 16, 2008
42. SharePoint 2010: The New Employee Gateway?- trainingwreck, January 23, 2010
43. Social Learning Strategies Checklist- Social Enterprise Blog, January 11, 2010
44. Extending elearning?- Learnlets, November 30, 2008
45. SharePoint Social Learning Experience- eLearning Technology, February 1, 2010
46. Time for “new” training approaches- Daretoshare, February 28, 2009
47. Checklist of Social Learning Strategies- Engaged Learning, January 12, 2010
48. The Future Of Learning Design- The eLearning Coach, November 23, 2009
49. Wiki Owner- eLearning Technology, March 19, 2009
50. Social Learning Tools Should Not be Separate from Enterprise 2.0- eLearning Technology, April 7, 2010
51. SharePoint 2007: Gateway Drug to Enterprise Social Tools :: Personal InfoCloud, March 16, 2009
52. Driving the Informal with the Formal, February 10, 2010
53. groundswell - confirming my e-Learning 2.0 ideas, August 27, 2008
54. TELUS Case Study - Using Sharepoint to embrace social computing and streamline formal learning , May 15, 2010
55. Driving Change: Selling SharePoint and Social Media Inside the Enterprise, January 30, 2009
56. How to Find the Right Wiki for Your Project or Organization, February 15, 2009
57. From formal courses to social learning- Learning Conversations, November 26, 2009
58. Requirement to Social Learning Adoption #1 - Relative Advantage- Engaged Learning, February 23, 2009
59. Characteristics of Emergent Communities- Social Enterprise Blog, April 14, 2009
60. Promoting Social Learning- eLearning Blender, May 23, 2009

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This is the second post in a series on Text-to-Speech for eLearning written by Dr. Joel Harband and edited by me (which turns out to be a great way to learn).  The first post, Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality, introduced the text to speech voice and discussed issues of quality related to its first component – the natural language processor (NLP). In this post we’ll look at the second component of a text to speech voice: the digital signal processor (DSP) and its measures of quality.

Digital Signal Processor (DSP)

The digital signal processor translates the phonetic language specification of the text produced by the NLP into spoken speech. The main challenge of the DSP is to produce a voice that is both intelligible and natural.  Two methods are used:

• Formant Synthesis.  Formant Synthesis seeks to model the human voice by computer-generated sounds, using an acoustic model. Typically, this method produces intelligible, but not very natural, speech. These are the robotic voices, like MS Mike, that people often associate with text to speech. Although not acceptable for eLearning, these voices have the advantages of being small and fast programs and so they find application in embedded systems and in applications where naturalness is not required as in toys and in assistive technology.
  
• Concatenative Synthesis. To achieve the remarkable naturalness of Paul and Heather, concatenative synthesis is used. A recording of a real human voice is broken down into acoustic units: phonemes, syllables, words, phrases and sentences and stored in a database. The processor retrieves acoustic units from the database in real time and connects (concatenates) them together to best match the input text.

Concatenative Synthesis and Quality

When you think about how concatenative synthesis works – joining together a lot of smaller sounds to form the voice, it suggests where there can be glitches.  Glitches will occur either because there’s not a recorded version of exactly what the sound should be or will occur where the segments are joined when it doesn’t come together quite right. The main strategy is to try to choose database segments that are as long as possible– phrases and even sentences – to minimize the number of connection glitches.

Here is an example of a glitch in Paul when joining the two words “bright” and “eyes”. (It wasn’t easy to find a glitch in Paul – finally found one in a Shakespeare sonnet!)

• Mike - bright eyes
• Heather - bright eyes
• Paul - bright eyes

The output from the best concatenative systems is often indistinguishable from real human voices. Maximum naturalness typically requires speech databases to be very large so the larger the database the higher the quality. Typical TTS voice databases that will be acceptable in eLearning, will be on the order of 100-200 Mb. For lower fidelity applications like telephony, the acoustic unit files can be made smaller by using a lower sampling rate without sacrificing intelligibility and naturalness, making a smaller database (smaller footprint).

By the way, the database is only used to generate the sounds which are then stored as .wav, .mp3, etc.  It is not brought along with the eLearning piece itself.  So a large database is generally a good thing.

Here is a list of the TTS voices offered by NeoSpeech, Acapela and Nuance with their file sizes and sampling rates.

Voice

Vendor

Sampling rate (kHz)

File Size (Mb)

Applications

Paul

NeoSpeech

8

270  (Max DB)

Telephone

Paul

NeoSpeech

16

64

Multi-media

Paul

NeoSpeech

16

490  (Max DB)

Multi-media

Kate

NeoSpeech

8

340  (Max DB)

Telephone

Kate

NeoSpeech

16

64

Multi-media

Kate

NeoSpeech

16

610  (Max DB)

Multi-media

Heather

Acapela

22

110

Multi-media

Ryan

Acapela

22

132

Multi-media

Samantha

Nuance

22

48

Multi-media

Jill

Nuance

22

39

Multi-media

The file size is a combination of the sampling rate and the database size, where the database size is related to the number of acoustics units stored. For example, voices 2 and 3 have the same sampling rate, 16, but voice 3 has a much bigger file size because of the larger database size. In general, the higher sampling rates are used for multimedia applications and the lower sampling rates for telecommunications.  Often larger sizes also indicate a higher price point.

The DSP voice quality is then a combination of the two factors: the sampling rate, which determines the voice fidelity and the database size which determines the quality of concatenation and frequency of glitches – the more acoustic units stored in the database, the better the chances of achieving a perfect concatenation without glitches.

And don’t forget to factor in Text-to-Speech NLP Quality.  Together with DSP quality you get the overall quality of different Text-to-Speech solutions.

eLearning Technology
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My posts around the Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash and my post from a CTO perspective that I Cannot Bet on Flash for new development stirred up quite a bit of response.  A lot of it said quite correctly that HTML5 is not there yet.  And that Flash provides things that you can’t do in HTML/JavaScript.  However, there are some pretty amazing things you can do without Flash.

The bottom line is that none of the feedback I’ve received has convinced me that choosing Flash as a delivery option for a new product or project would be a good idea today, especially if I want it to play on mobile and live for 5 years.

But then I received a great question via a comment:

I am a Masters student enrolled in an Instructional Design course with Walden University. I am somewhat new to the field and this article intrigues me. Should I hold off on learning Flash... and focus more on learning HTML5? Or would it be best to learn both? I know a very little about Flash and made it a goal to learn more, but now I wonder. You input is greatly appreciated.

What a great question and kudos to this student for being so on top of things to ask it!

And it was somewhat the inspiration for this month’s Big Question - Tools to Learn.  If you’ve not done so already, you should go read each of the posts there.  They have different perspectives and taken together they provide a pretty good roadmap of how to think about what tools you should learn.

Jeff Goldman in Development Tools I Would Learn If I Were You - Jeff's response to June’s Big Question tells us:

Flash: Yes, Flash is still very much alive and well in e-learning and because it is so embedded in our industry and there is nothing at this time that can provide the rich interactive elements that it provides, I do not see it being “dead” in our field anytime soon. The fact is HTML5 is not there yet and if it ever does get there it will probably be more than 5 years before it is at the level of quality and ease of development that Flash currently provides. However, see my comments under HTML/HTML5.

To me the question is more about where you choose to spend your time.  The list of tools that Harold and Holly provide are pretty lengthy.  And Jeff suggests both Flash and HTML 5.  If you have so much time that you can afford to learn all of these tools, then go ahead.

However, if you have to prioritize Flash vs. HTML 5 vs. ??? … then I would put learning Flash (especially scripting in Flash) way down on priority list at this point.  Remember End of an Era – Authorware – another Macromedia/Adobe product.  These things do eventually die out.  How valuable are your Authorware scripting skills at this point?

Learning Flash today is like learning Authorware in 1997.

So, yes, hold off on learning Flash and focus more on learning HTML 5.

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Inc. Magazine published an article The Best Industries for Starting a Business In 2010.  Not sure what to make of most of the article, but they did include Exam Preparation and Tutoring as one of the top ten.

Parents always want their kids to do better on tests. A large number of adults returning to school are also looking for an edge. Given the low barrier to entry, this field is competitive. But if you carve out the right niche, it could be lucrative.

The industry, which includes tutoring in such fields such as special education, language, and music, grew about 7 percent last year.

And it seems like there are lots of eLearning Startups that are taking aim at different aspects of the Business of Learning.  My 12 eLearning Predictions for 2009 included

Increase in Consumer/Education Social Learning Solutions

2008 was an interesting year that saw a myriad of new start-ups offering content through interesting new avenues. Social learning solutions like social homework help provided by Cramster; CampusBug, Grockit, TutorVista, EduFire, English Cafe, and the list goes on and on.

And it seems like Inc. is maybe just a little bit late as there are a bunch of startups going after online exam preparation and online tutoring.  Some eLearning startups rouhgly in this space:

• Knewton focuses on test preparation online using test experts to help students study.
• TutorJam offers online tutoring programs for students in K-12, AP classes, and college.
• Brightstorm focuses on helping students prepare for AP tests, as well as standardized tests.
• Sums Online provides a wide range of math activities to help at home learners.
• DreamBox Learning is an education start-up that provides math games for kids. This was recently acquired by Netflix founder Reed Hastings.
• ProProfs – SAT and certification quizzes.
• PrepMe – personalized prep for SAT, ACT, PSAT.
• Tutor.com – online tutoring.

And there are a bunch more out there.  As Inc. tells us – low barrier to entry.  So we should expect lots more.

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As you probably know, eLearning Learning has been steadily growing and is now one of the top eLearning sites on the web.  I wanted to let you know about an exciting development for eLearning Learning that’s being announced this morning in the eLearning DevCon Keynote.

Garin Hess and the team from Rapid Intake has stepped in to help me keep the site going both from an effort and financial standpoint. 

I'm very happy to have Garin involved because I've known him for years and he's always done a good job of helping to build the larger eLearning community through conferences that you probably already know about:

• eLearning DevCon
• Bring Your Own Laptop

Garin was really excited to support this broad community of bloggers.  We both believe that while this is a loose network, it provides an important and really valuable voice.  It's somewhat the whole reason I started eLearning Learning - many people in the world of eLearning miss the great stuff that is going on in blogs.  Of course, if you are reading this, that’s probably not you.  That said – I still believe that everyone should be Subscribed to Best of eLearning Learning.

Otherwise you’ve been missing things like:

• Top 75 eLearning Posts - May 2010
• Top 68 eLearning Posts from April - Hot Topics iPad Google Buzz
• Top 125 Workplace eLearning Posts of 2009
• Hot Topics in eLearning for 2009

And even though I subscribe to most of the blogs that are part of eLearning Learning, I still use the Best Of to make sure I’ve not been missing really good content.

By the way, if you want to know more about the site and/or see ways you could be involved, take a look at: Curator Editor Research Opportunities on eLearning Learning.

Garin - thanks for stepping up to help!

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This post is a new kind of thing for me. Dr. Joel Harband wrote most of this post and I worked with him on the focus, the content and a little bit of editing - actually I couldn't help myself and I edited this a lot. So this is really a combined effort at this point.

As you know, Text-to-Speech is something that's very interesting to me and Joel knows a lot about it as CEO of Tuval Software Industries maker of Speech-Over Professional. This software adds text-to-speech voice narration to PowerPoint presentations and is used for training and eLearning at major corporations.

Joel was nice enough to jump in and share his knowledge of applying text-to-speech technology to eLearning.

Please let me know if this kind of things makes sense and maybe I'll do more of it. It certainly makes sense given all that's going on in my personal life.

Text-to-Speech Poised for Rapid Growth in eLearning

Text-to-speech (TTS) is now at the point where virtual classrooms were about 4 years ago when they reached a technological maturity where they were mainstream. It took a couple more years for me to say (in 2009) that virtual classrooms reached a tipping point.

Text-to-speech has reached the point of technical maturity. As such, we are standing at the threshold of a technology shift in our industry: text-to-speech voices are set to replace professional voice talents for adding voice narration in e-learning presentations. Text-to-speech can create professional voice narration without any recording which provides significant advantages:

• keeps narrated presentations continuously up to date (it's too time consuming/expensive to rerecord human narration)
• faster development - streamlined workflow
• lower costs.

It's being adopted today in major corporations, but it's still early in the adoption cycle. That said, at a developer’s conference in 2004, Bill Gates made the statement that that although speech technology was one of the most difficult areas, even partial advances can spawn successful applications. This is now the case for text-to-speech: it’s not yet perfect, but it is good enough for a whole class of applications, especially eLearning and training. The reason is that most people learn out of necessity and will accept a marginal reduction in naturalness as long as the speech is clear and intelligible.

There's a lot going on behind the scenes to make text-to-speech work in eLearning. Like most major innovations it needs to be accompanied by a slew of minor supporting innovations that make it practical, easy to use and effective: modulating the voice with speed, pitch and emphasis, adding silent delays, adding subtitles, pronouncing difficult words and coordinating voice with visuals.

Over the course of a few posts, we will attempt to bring readers up to speed on different aspects of this interesting and important subject. The focus of this post is around the quality of Text-to-Speech based on Natural Language processing.

Text-to-speech Basics

To understand how to think about text-to-speech voices and how they compare, it's important to have some background about what they are. Text-to-speech (TTS) is the automatic production of spoken speech from any text input.

The quality criteria for Text-to-Speech Voices are pretty simple. They are:

• Naturalness
• Intelligibility

Due to recent improvements in processing speed, speech recognition and synthesis, and the availability of large text and speech databases for modeling, text-to-speech systems now exist that meet both criteria to an amazing degree.

A TTS voice is a computer program that has two major parts:

1. a natural language processor (NLP) which reads the input text and translates it into a phonetic language and
2. a digital signal processor (DSP) that converts the phonetic language into spoken speech.

Each of these parts has a specific role and by understanding a bit more about what they do, you can better evaluate quality of the result.

Natural Language Processor (NLP) and Quality

The natural language processor is what knows the rules of English grammar and word formation (morphology). The natural language processor is able to determine the part of speech of each word in the text and thus to determine its pronunciation. More precisely, here's what the natural language processor does:

1. Expands the abbreviations, etc to full text according to a dictionary.
2. Determines all possible parts of speech for each word, according to its spelling (morphological analysis).
3. Considers the words in context, which allows it to narrow down and determine the most probable part of speech of a word (contextual analysis).
4. Translates the incoming text into a phonetic language, which specifies exactly how each word is to be pronounced (Letter-To-Sound (LTS) module).
5. Assigns a “neutral” prosody based on division of the sentence into phrases.

This will make more sense by going through examples. And this also provides a roadmap to test quality.

We’ll compare the quality of three TTS voices:

• Mike - a voice provided by Microsoft in Windows XP (old style).
• Paul a voice by NeoSpeech - the voice used in Adobe Captivate.
• Heather a voice by Acapela Group.

Actually, let me have them introduce themselves. Click on the link below to hear them:

• I'm Mike, an old style robotic voice provided by Microsoft in Windows XP.
• I'm Paul, a state of the art voice provided by NeoSpeech.
• I'm Heather, a state of the art voice provided by Acapela-Group.

So, let's put these voices through their paces to see how they do. Actually, in this section, we are going to be testing the natural language processor and its ability to resolve ambiguities of parts of speech in the text.

1. Ambiguity in noun and verb

“Present” can be a noun or a verb, depending on the context. Let’s see how the voices do with the sentence:

“No time like the present to present this present to you.”

• Mike
• Paul
• Heather

Paul and Heather resolve this ambiguity with ease.

Another example: “record” can be a noun or a verb:

“Record the record in record time.”

• Mike
• Paul
• Heather

Again, Paul and Heather resolve this ambiguity with ease

2. Ambiguity in verb and adjective

The word “separate” can be a verb or an adjective.

“Separate the cards into separate piles”

• Mike
• Paul
• Heather

Only Paul gets it right.

3. Word Emphasis (Prosody)

Another type of ambiguity is word emphasis in a sentence: The intended meaning of a spoken sentence often depends on the word that is emphasized, as: “He reads well”, “He reads well”, He reads well”. This is called prosody and is impossible to determine from plain text only. The voices try to achieve a “neutral” prosody that tries to cover all possible meanings. A better way is to use modulation tags to directly emphasize a word. We’ll discuss that in a later post.

4. Abbreviations

Most voices are equipped to translate common abbreviations.

The temperature was 30F, which is -1C.

It weighed 2 kg, which is about 4.5 lb.

Let's meet at 12:00

• Mike
• Paul
• Heather

Heather does the best job.

5. Technical Words

Unless they are equipped with specialized dictionaries, TTS voices will occasionally fail to read technical words correctly. However they can be always be taught to say them correctly by using a phonetic language. Here are some examples. Each voice says the word twice: first by itself (incorrectly) and second after being taught (correctly).

Deoxyribonuclease (dee-ok-si-rahy-boh-noo-klee-ace)

• Mike
• Paul

Chymotrypsinogen (kahy-moh-trip-sin-uh-juh

• Mike
• Paul

More Information

• http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/introtts_old.html
• http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/

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I was asked what the biggest traffic sites are in eLearning that were not vendor specific sites.  This was from a marketer trying to reach eLearning professionals.

My quick answer was that Jane Hart’s site, eLearning Learning and The eLearning Guild would be among the top.  But I really didn’t/don’t know the answer.  I did promise I’d do some research and post what I found.

I used Compete.com.  It’s definitely not accurate as it way under reports traffic for eLearning Learning.  However, after reading various sources that compared different traffic estimation tools, I was convinced that it was generally a decent indicator. 

Thanks to Harold Jarche and Susan Lewis (via twitter) and Cathy Moore and Dennis Wilen (via Facebook) with help on this.  Cathy pointed me to questions about Alexa (Wikipedia article). Susan pointed out that none of this accounts for RSS subscription.  Of course, it also doesn’t count email subscribers or twitter.  So, yes … This is only rough estimating.

Top Sites

Using it, I plugged a whole bunch of different sites into it and produced the following graph of some of what I perceive to be the top sites.

After doing this, I realized that eLearn Magazine don’t seem to have that much web traffic.  In fact, according to Compete, eLearning Technology (this blog) and Stephen Downes’ Site come in higher that eLearn Magazine.  Here’s a chart with those sources included:

Of course, Stephen covers more than eLearning. And there are sites like ASTD that go well outside the world of eLearning.

So to be clear, things I excluded:

• Vendor specific sites, e.g., Skillsoft
• Sites focused on broader topics like HR, Talent Management, Training, etc., e.g., ASTD (which has good traffic), CLO Media (which doesn’t seem to have good traffic volume)
• Sites that I can’t get accurate numbers separate from the base site. Learning Circuits is part of ASTD.

Other Sites I tried but came out lower:

• Brandon Hall
• Learning Solutions Magazine
• Training Magazine Network
• TrainingIndustry.com
• ELearning! Magazine
• Masie.com

It’s a little bit of a surprise to me some of the traffic numbers.

Is this a surprise to you?

What sites did I miss here?

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