Webucate Us eLearning and Flash blog

Creating a Drag and Drop Interaction to Sort Items into Categories

webucateus@gmail.com — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 22:19:33 GMT

I have a current project in which I want to include some interactions that ask the learner to sort some information into different categories. The Articulate Community Forum contained a couple of interesting ideas. One from Jeanette Brooks to use the Quizmaker multiple response question and another from James Kingsley, who has developed a Flash interaction that you can purchase.

Here's another idea for sorting a list of information into categories that does not require any Flash programming. Use the Articulate Quizmaker Sequence Drag and Drop Interaction. In the question form view, you need to enter your items such that the two categories are already sorted: for example, 4 items in category A are the first four answer and 4 items in category B are the last four answers. You then need to edit the question in slide view to set up the screen so that the top four items line up within a rectangle for category A and the bottom four items are in the category B rectangle. You will need to look at this screen recording to fully understand my instructions.

Unfortunately, you cannot use the grading feature of Quizmaker in this case. Quizmaker expects the items to be sorted in exactly the order in which you entered them in form view to score the question correctly. So you will need to create a blank slide that gives feedback for the answers whether they are right or wrong. Even with this limitation, this technique offers an easy way to use a different type of interaction to get your learners to think a bit about the material you are presenting.

Articulate Quizmaker supports foreign character sets in published output

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:24:12 GMT

I have noticed quite a few discussion threads in the Articulate community forums asking about how to include non-Roman character sets in courses. You can insert text that uses many different character sets in PowerPoint; however, when the presentation is published with Articulate, the text does not publish correctly.

I noticed a recent forum post in which the instructional designer pointed out that Quizmaker allowed him to create a course in Chinese, so I thought I would test other languages to see how Quizmaker works. Very well, as it turns out. I recorded a demonstration using Screenr to show what it looks like.

So if you are creating courses in languages that use different character sets, Quizmaker may be an option--at least until Articulate adds support for other character sets right in Presenter.

Large Flash file creates interesting effect with Articulate Presenter

webucateus@gmail.com — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 13:52:54 GMT

Try inserting a Flash file with the dimensions of 980 x 640 pixels into your PowerPoint to see what the effect is when you publish it with Articulate Presenter. I did just that and discovered an interesting way to fill up the Articulate player screen with a movie that covers the player completely. It's a different way to get a special effect for a splash screen or perhaps include a video demonstration at some point during a presentation. Note that I used the slide only view for my published presentation.

Be sure to include a way to navigate away from the slide containing the Flash movie. I had enabled keyboard control and could use the pagedown key to advance to the next slide. You could also have the player advance to the next slide automatically when the movie is done, or include a buttom in the movie that uses the Articulate API to go to another slide.

This is just a fun discovery that was inspired by another Screenr posting from Jeannette Brooks of Articulate. Check out my demonstration on Screenr.

Articulate Community Skin--Covers Player Borders for Seamless Integration into Web Page

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:45:32 GMT

I created a new Articulate community skin that improves the functionality in my first effort to cover up the Articulate player borders.

With this new community skin you can cover the standard Articulate player borders with a frame that is the same color as your HTML page and PowerPoint slide background allowing seamless integration of your content into your web page. The skin is setup for slide-only view and does not include any type of navigation, tabs, or other controls. You must provide all navigation control through your PowerPoint slides. The slides display at 118% of their usual size in Articulate.

To customize this skin for your project, you need to edit the colors of the slide background and HTML background in the Articulate player template and you must edit the slide background in the PowerPoint slide master. If the same color value is set for these three variables, your Articulate publication will blend seamlessly into your web page.

The player border is covered with rectangles that take on the color you set for the slide background in the Articulate player template. So you could try out some other effects by choosing different colors for the HTML background and the PowerPoint slide background. Here is a demonstration presentation in which the Articulate slide background and HTML background and the PowerPoint background are all set to the same color.

You can purchase this skin along with the complete documentation from the Shop page on this website.

Last Slide Viewed (Call and Return Buttons) for Articulate Presenter

webucateus@gmail.com — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:26:33 GMT

Last Slide Viewed (Call and Return Buttons) for Articulate Presenter

Although Articulate Presenter supports many of the hyperlink features that are included in PowerPoint, it does not support linking to the Last Slide Viewed, a feature that would be very useful in many circumstances.

I created a pair of Flash SWF files that can be used to give the Last Slide Viewed functionality to PowerPoint courses that are published using Articulate Presenter. The files are:

callButton.swf: Embed this file in the calling slide that has a hyperlink to a target slide. callButton.swf sets a global variable to remember the number of the calling slide.
returnButton.swf: Embed this file on the target slide that is called. Place the movie over a return icon on your slide. The return icon should just be an appropriate picture or symbol; it doesn’t directly do anything. Place the returnButton.swf movie on top of the return icon. When users click the return icon, they will be causing the Flash returnButton.swf to get the presentation to jump back to the calling slide.

Take a look at a demonstration of the buttons. You can also take a look at a helpful screencast that demonstrates and explains the use of the SWF files.

To purchase a copy of these Flash movies for use in your projects, visit the Shop page on my website.

Webucate Us Big Slides White Background - Free Articulate Skin

webucateus@gmail.com — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:46:11 GMT

I took up the challenge of creating an Articulate community skin that covers the usual gray/black border that appears around the standard Articulate player. My skin is designed to be used in the slide-only view mode and enlarges the slides to 118% of the standard size to fill as much of the player as possible. No navigation features are included, so you have to create your own navigation buttons in PowerPoint, if you use this skin.

I recorded a short screencast to explain how the skin works. I also have a demonstration presentation that you can take a look at yourself.

Complete and submit the download form here for a link to download the community skin.

Image containing pixel-based grid helps align and size images in PowerPoint

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:52:27 GMT

If you are using PowerPoint to create presentations that you plan to publish for the Internet, you may have already noticed its lack of support for measurements using pixels. This is because the image size in pixels will render to different sizes on different output devices depending on the resolution.

Since I am using PowerPoint to create presentations to be published using Articulate Presenter, I know that the output resolution I want is 72 dpi and the default PowerPoint slide will end up being 720 x 540 pixels in Articulate. So I used Photoshop to create a PNG file with those dimensions and a grid as explained in this screencast to import into my PowerPoint file. If you would like to use my PNG file in your development process, just right-click on the image below and save it to your computer.

Grid in custom Articulate Presenter skin aids sizing & positioning

webucateus@gmail.com — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:54:12 GMT

A recent discussion in the Articulate forums prompted me to make the SWF files for a custom skin available to other Articulate users. All this custom skin does is place a grid over the standard Articulate player. It is very useful for determing the size and position of objects in your presentation. Take a look at this screencast for more information.

Click here, if you would like to download a copy of the two SWF files to use in testing and developing your presentations.

How to Convert an Animated GIF to a SWF Using Fireworks CS4

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:15:20 GMT

Converting an animated GIF to a SWF file is as easy as clicking on Save As and saving the file.

Open your GIF in Fireworks CS4 and take a look at the states in the States panel. You will see that there is one state for every bitmap image that composes the GIF. There should be some player controls at the bottom of your Fireworks window that will allow you to play the animation right in Fireworks.

To convert this to a SWF simple choose File|Save As and select the SWF as the type of file to save. Name your file and save it. That's it. Try playing your SWF in a Flash player to see how the animation looks.

You can also change the frame rate using the options button on the Save As menu. Doing that will change how fast the animation appears to play, so you might need to go back into Fireworks and duplicate the states to make the animation appear to be slower.

Here's a little screencast that demonstrates the basic process.

Linking to Videos from a List in Articulate Presenter

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:13:33 GMT

A recent question on the Articulate community forum asked:

I want to have several hyperlinks on one slide that open different 
videos while coming back to that same slide. I also want a slide 
in which the learner can read, choose to watch a video clip or 
simply move onto the next slide.

Here is one approach to this design. Create a slide with a list of the videos and make each item in the list a hyperlink to the slide containing the appropriate video.

Embed each video as an mp4 or flv file into its own slide using the insert Flash choice in the Articulate menu. Use the default settings of advance automatically and synchronize with presentation.

In the slide properties menu, hide the slide containing the videos, set their branching to go back to the slide with the list of hyperlinks, set their view as slide only and lock it, and make sure they are set to advance automatically.

Use a similar approach for the slide on which the learner can read and go to a video if desired. The following screencast illustrates this process.

How to Include a Camtasia Production in an Articulate Presenter Project

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:12:25 GMT

There are essentially two methods to include a Camtasia movie in an Articulate Presenter presentation.

First, produce the Camtasia project for the web. In the example that I created, I used the default settings for a size of 640 x 480 px. You might want to make yours a bit smaller to be sure that it will fit on your slide in Articulate.

Once the Camtasia project has been published you have a choice of how to insert it into your Articulate project. Using the Articulate menu in PowerPoint, you can either:

Insert the mp4 file that Camtasia created into a slide, or
Embed the html file as a web object.

To insert the mp4 file, simply click on the insert Flash icon in the Articulate/PowerPoint menu and navigate to the mp4 to select it. You can use the default Articulate settings so that the seek bar will control playback of the mp4 file. One disadvantage to this method is that any closed captioning that you created in Camtasia will be lost. You have to include the captioning in the PowerPoint notes so that it will be published in the Articulate Presenter notes.

To insert the html file, you must first rename the html file created by Camtasia to index.html. Then in the Articulate/PowerPoint menu, select insert web object. Navigate to the folder containing the Camtasia production and select the folder. Articulate will look for the index.html file to display in your slide. You can use the default settings so that both the Articulate seek bar and the Camtasia controls will control playback. Using this method, the closed captioning from Camtasia is preserved. The disadvantage to this method is that there is less control over the size of the Camtasia recording that is displayed in your slide. You need to make sure the original recording is not too large to fit into your slide when it's played back.

The following screencast summarizes and illustrates the steps describe above. You can also take a look at the demonstration presentation that I prepared.

How to Easily Convert an Animated GIF to a SWF

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:11:13 GMT

Have you got some old animated GIFs that you wish you could incorporate into your Flash or Articulate projects? The conversion may be easier than you think. Take a look at this short screencast to see just how quick and simple it is with Flash CS4.

How to Use Articulate Templates to Control Creation of Launch Button File

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:09:27 GMT

One of the many things that you can control in the template for your Articulate Presenter player is whether or not Articulate creates a file containing a launch button to open your course in a new window. The selection comes under the "Other" menu in the Player Template part of the Articulate ribbon in PowerPoint. If you have the Launch in New Window selection checked, Articulate will create a file called launcher.html when your presentation is published, along with the player.html file. Laucher.html contains a button that opens play.html in a new window.

Often times your LMS will also have a feature that controls whether or not the player.html opens in a new window, so you may not need the launch.html file. In the following screencast I have addressed in more detail how to control whether or not launch.html is created.

Why Did the Gridlines in Excel Worksheet Disappear?

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 23:08:16 GMT

Sometimes you may hide the gridlines in an an Excel worksheet inadvertently by creating a background fill for some of the cells. Or, perhaps you have received a worksheet or template from someone else and can't figure out to to show the gridlines. You verified that gridlines were checked in the show menu, but you still can't see them. Take a look at the short screen cast below to see how to solve this problem.

Trying Out PowerPoint 2010 with Articulate Presenter Update 6

webucateus@gmail.com — Sun, 23 May 2010 18:10:00 GMT

Articulate just released its most recent update to Studio 09, which is now compatible with PowerPoint 2010. Since I recently purchased Office 2010 and was waiting for this update to install it, I was anxious to test it out as soon as possible.

In this, my first trial, I was most interested in seeing how to create an different style of presentation rather than trying out every feature of PowerPoint 2010 and the updated Articulate Presenter. My inspiration came from an online gallery clip from the Sackler Gallery web site. Take a look at my demonstration project here.

There seem to be even more picture editing features in PowerPoint 2010, so I was able to edit out parts of the backgrounds of images in addition to cropping and resizing them. PowerPoint makes exporting the edited image into a graphics file easy, with just a right-click and drop-down menu selection.

I saved isolated portions of the images as png files so that the background is transparent when the image is re-inserted into PowerPoint. That's how I created the animated images on the opening screen. I cropped and resized portions of images and exported those to png files also. They became the menu buttons in the picture display area. The menu buttons simply have hyperlinks created in PowerPoint to other slides within the presentation. There are also some hyperlinks to external HTML files, all of which worked with no problems.

For the animation on the opening screen, I used motion paths and fades for the entrances and exits. In the picture viewing area, I used fades and wipes to animate the text and decorative line respectively.

Articulate continues to support all of these features and did not give me any hiccups at all while working on the PowerPoint file. Since this demonstration does not includes audio, I have not tested that feature yet. It will also be important to see how well the insertion of Flash and web objects works. That will be next on the agenda.

Articulate, Flash & PowerPoint Combine to Create Fun

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 12 May 2010 01:04:52 GMT

I just wanted to share a fun little promotional piece that I completed recently for the National Recreation and Park Association. You can find a link to it at http://www.nrpa.org/fishing/. Just click on the photo link to a video on the target page.

Please take a quick look and let me know what you think. It will only take about 6 minutes to go through whole promo.

This shows a little bit of the power of Articulate, Flash and PowerPoint combined. I will share a few details of the production process and techniques in future blog postings.

Useful Grid for Articulate Presenter Skin Development

webucateus@gmail.com — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:41:36 GMT

In a recent project I created a custom skin for Articulate Presenter that included menu buttons and a "puzzle" picture that appeared as parts of the interaction were completed. One of the challenges in creating this piece was to correctly size and position the custom skin elements to fit over my slides and some Articulate controls that I left active in the final player.

After completing the project, I realized that a grid template in my Flash file would be useful for future development work. So I created a Flash file with dimensions of 980 x 640 px that contains a MovieClip that is simply a grid to put onto the stage. The MovieClip is a grid with lines every 20 px. The lines every 100 px are a bit wider. In future, I can copy this MovieClip into any skin that I am developing and more easily determine how to position my custom elements.

Here is a sample presentation that uses the grid. I have also put the skinGrid.fla in a ZIP file that you can download. (Just right click on the link to download and save as a file on your system.) The skinGrid.fla was created in Adobe Flash CS4.

My First Custom Skin for Articulate Presenter

webucateus@gmail.com — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 02:33:48 GMT

Custom Skin for Articulate Presenter

This is my first attempt at a custom skin for Articulate Presenter. I followed the instructions given by Dave Mozealous in his blog posting. In addition to the excellent instructions he gave, I would like to add the following steps that should preceed his process.

Plan ahead. Create a comp design for your interface that illustrates all of the buttons and other elements that will be in your skin.
Create an Articulate template for publishing your PowerPoint file that publishes the slides in either "no sidebar" or "slide only" view, depending on your desires and the look of your comp. Set all of the features of your template and save it to a file for use in Dave's process.
Create the buttons and other graphical elements that will be used in your skin. This might include graphics that you create in Photoshop or some other program to import into Flash, as well as graphics that you create in Flash. use your design comp to guide you in what is needed.

Once you have followed these steps, you should be ready to follow Dave's process. Please click here to open a sample of my first custom skin in a new window. If you have a problem opening it, you may need to disable your pop-up blockers temporarily.

Creating Interactive Buttons

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:38:13 GMT

Creating Interactive Buttons

Regardless of the computer application in order to create buttons that have a three-dimensional feel, you need to create images to represent three different "states": the appearance of the button in the up position, the appearance with the mouse hovering over the button, and the appearance of the depressed position when you click on the mouse. These states are typically referred to as the up, over, and down states.

The images that you use are completely your choice; however, it is usually a good idea to create images whose appearance simluates the depression of a physical button object. (You could choose completely unrelated images, but it would probably confuse the users of your application. You could also choose other kinds of objects, such as animals or plants or abstract forms, for more creative effects.)

In this article I have included a Flash file that was prepared using Adobe Captivate. It illustrates a custom navigation interface that I created using buttons drawn in Photoshop. I prepared the original Photoshop images at 300 x 300 pixels and then saved the images for each button state in PNG files at 50 x 50 pixels. The PNG format allows for the background to remain transparent.

For Captivate to recognize the three states for each button, you must use a particular naming convention: myfile_up.png, myfile_over.png, and myfile_down.png, where myfile is the unique filename and png is the appropriate extension. Other file formats, such as JPG and GIF, are also supported by Captivate.

Here are the three images that I used for one of the buttons:

Take a look at this example and let me know what you think. (Note: The Flash file is scaled down to fit into the blog post. The original was 720 x 540 pixels.)

Relevant Graphics--An Essential Tool for eLearning Developers

webucateus@gmail.com — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:10:41 GMT

Relevant graphics are essential to effective elearning courses. Remember the saying, "One picture is worth a thousand words." It turns out that educational psychology studies have provided scientific support of this statement.

According to the "multimedia principle" stated by Richard Mayer and Ruth Clark (eLearning and the Science of Instruction, Pfeiffer, San Francisco: 2005), eLearning courses should include both words and graphics rather than words alone. Mayer and Clark reviewed studies by other researchers who compared learning results for students who received multimedia lessons using words and graphics or using words alone. In all of the studies reviewed, students who received instruction using graphics and words performed better on exit tests than the students whose instruction consisted of words alone.

Mayer and Clark go further in their recommendations, suggesting that adding pictures just to decorate the page is not helpful. The pictures should help the learner understand the material, what they call "explanative illustrations".

There are many sources of relevant graphics, from screen shots of software to hand-drawn digital illustrations and original or stock photos that are digitally manipulated for a desired effect. In the short presentation that accompanies this article, I have created a review of and some ideas for using a variety of digital graphics in elearning. Clicking on the "Launch" button below will open the presentation in a new window. (Note: If the window does not open, you may need to temporarily disable your pop-up blocker.)

These examples were created with Adobe Photoshop and other programs in the Adobe Master Suite CS4. The presentation, which was created using PowerPoint and Articulate Presenter Studio '09, also offers an illustration of a very basic use of Articulate for online instruction.

Please take a look and let me know what you think. This is just a small glimpse at what is possible.

Iterative Design and Development in eLearning

webucateus@gmail.com — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:39:51 GMT

A few years ago when I was completing a Masters degree in Information Technology, I learned about the spiral model of software development (first described in detail by Barry Boehm). According to this model, an effective software development process follows these iterative steps:

The new system requirements are defined in as much detail as possible.
A preliminary design is created for the new system.
A first prototype of the system is constructed and tested.
A second prototype is evolved from changes to the first prototype and tested.

The process continues in an iterative fashion until the end product is reached as shown in this illustration. In the original model each cycle could take a year or more.

Since the inception of the concept of iterative development, newer models have been created that advocate shorter time frames for each iteration—in essence a tighter spiral.

Two books that I read recently, and recommend, describe versions of the spiral model that have direct applications to eLearning development, Creating Successful E-Learning by Michael Allen and Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton.

In both of these books, the authors suggest developing and refining prototypes from the earliest stages of your project. In fact, the sooner you develop and test prototypes, the better. The idea is to work out any design, content, and conceptual problems in the early stages of development of your project to avoid costly changes cropping up just when you think you are ready to release the final product.

Fullerton recommends using paper-based prototypes, while Allen uses computer-based prototypes. They both suggest getting a team of reviewers or testers together in-person to perform the testing.

In-person testing is a good suggestion; however, I have found it impractical to implement on the small projects I have developed. The clients have not had the time or financial resources to bring a team that is geographically dispersed together in one place.

I have used computer-based prototypes with online collaboration software to demonstrate the prototypes to be a reasonable method for getting reviewers to try out and comment on eLearning projects as they develop. The comments can sometimes reveal surprising deficiencies and strengths in the project both of which help to refine the development.

I won’t go into more detail about the application of the iterative approach to eLearning here as the two books mentioned above provide instructions and examples. If you think about it, this approach would be appropriate for any kind of creative design/development project.

You may already be using an iterative approach and not have thought about your process in that way. The books Creating Successful E-Learning and Game Design Workshop may help you to formulate a more concrete framework for your process, which in turn will help to insure that you don’t miss any crucial steps in your next project.

Embedding an Articulate Presenter Sequence into an AP Course

webucateus@gmail.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:49:46 GMT

In a recent course, I wanted to use the SWF files from another Articulate Presenter publication as the content in a mini-slide series within my course. The problem is that AP SWF have a size of 720 x 540 px, which fill up the entire slide when published. I wanted the effect of a little movie playing within my slide. In addition, I wanted to be able to load a series of SWFs in sequence and allow the learner to have some control over playback of the little movie.

My solution was to create a custom Flash player that could be embedded in a PowerPoint slide in my course, using Articulate Presenter. I sized the Flash player at 492 x 384 px so that it would be small enough to fit on the slide and still allow room for other text, graphics, or both. This meant that the SWF files loaded into my custom player needed to be 432 x 324 px or 60% of the size of the SWFs published by Articulate. To scale the SWFs, I applied the _xscale and _yscale properties of the MovieClip class in Flash to the MovieClip that holds the loaded SWFs.

I discussed the problem of loading and playing a series of SWFs in a previous post. In the code example below, I have added a few lines to to take care of positioning and scaling the SWFs within the custom player. If you want to develop your own custom player, keep in mind that you must use Actionscript 2.0 and publish your SWF for the Flash Player 6 in order for your custom SWF to work in Articulate.

Take a look at an example. In this example only one SWF is loaded into the mini-player; however, you could easily have a series of SWFs to load, as I did in the course for which I originally created this Flash mini-player.

Here's the Actionscript code.

var a:Number, b:Number;
   var j:Number = 1;
   var max:Number = 1;
   var rsize:Number=60;
   playButton["playTxt"] = "Pause";
   var isPlaying:Boolean = true;

this.createEmptyMovieClip("container",10);
   this.container.loadMovie("slide"+j+".swf");
   container._x = 30;
   container._y = 30;
   container._xscale=rsize;
   container._yscale=rsize;

this.onEnterFrame = function() {
   a = this.container._currentframe;
   b = this.container._totalframes;
   if (a>1 && a == b-1 && j
playButton.onRelease = function() {
   if (isPlaying == true) {
   if (a>1) {
   this._parent.playButton["playTxt"] = "Play";
   this._parent.container.stop();
   isPlaying = false;
   }
   } else if (isPlaying == false) {
   if (a>1) {
   this._parent.playButton["playTxt"] = "Pause";
   this._parent.container.play();
   isPlaying = true;
   }
   }
   };
next1.onRelease = function() {
   if (j
prev1.onRelease = function() {
   if (j>1) {
   j--;
   this._parent.container.unloadMovie();
   this._parent.container.loadMovie("slide"+j+".swf");
   this._parent.playButton["playTxt"] = "Pause";
   }
   };

Quick Tip on Working with Reviewers of the First Draft

webucateus@gmail.com — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:40:40 GMT

Here is a quick tip on working with the reviewers of the first draft of your elearning course. If you want the reviewers to take a good look at the first working online version of your course, do NOT give them access to a printed or printable copy of the storyboard or written script.

During the course of a recent project, I gave the reviewers access to a PDF file of the images and script for the first online draft of the course. Perhaps the issue was the choice of the reviewers, who were more accustomed to reading printed material rather than using online mutimedia; however, I found that all of them carefully read the printed copies that they made of the PDF files. And, I think that that none of them completely reviewed the actual course online.

This was a problem, because they missed some of the content and methods of presenting the information that could only be experienced by viewing and interacting with the online course. In future, when asking for an online review, I will only give access to the actual online course. I wonder if others have had similar experiences.

From Classroom to Elearning in 5 Steps

webucateus@gmail.com — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:04:02 GMT

From Classroom to Elearning in 5 Steps

A common challenge for elearning developers is to take the materials from an in-person, instructor-led course and develop them into a self-paced online course. Here are two suggestions that you might have heard from your management or clients:

"Let's videotape the class and convert the videos into a format we can put online"

"Why don't we just take the PowerPoint files, record the narration, and convert them to Flash files? There are tools that can do that conversion very fast."

Underlying both of these statements is the suggestion that developing the online course should be very quick, easy, and require little investment of time, money, or other resources. I contend that neither of these approaches leads to an effective and interesting online course. I suggest following a five-step approach that I will illustrate with a project that I recently completed.

The Steps

Re-design
Develop
Peer Review
Pilot Test
Publish

The Details

1. Re-design. Review all of the materials and discussion from the classroom course and re-design it to work online. Conduct a review by your client, subject matter expert (SME), and instructional designer (ID) for the classroom course, if any.

For the project that I recently completed, the original classroom course was:

Developed by a SME working with an instructional designer
Very well conceived and well organized
A workshop in which participants were led through a series of workbook exercises that allowed them to develop a concrete action plan to implement a project after taking the course.

The instructor's role was to present background information and lead discussion about the workshop activities after each was completed.

The original materials included :

Participant's manual and instructor's manual each about 80 pages long in Word files
PowerPoint file containing 84 slides
Printed textbook
About 12 hours of a video recording of one of the course sessions
Several PDF files containing articles on the subject matter.

These screen shots are representative of the nature of the materials. The PowerPoint file and instructor's manual contained some notes to suggest discussion points for the instructor; however, the vast majority of the instructor's part was unscripted, because his primary role was to use his expertise to guide the discussion and participation of the learners.

The challenge included the following:

Divide the course into four modules and further subdivide the modules into short lessons to guide learner's through the worksheets.
Adapt the worksheets for online distribution and completion.
Develop a way to give learner's feedback on their worksheets.
Present the background information in an interesting format.
Develop a final quiz for each module to verify completion of the module.

How I accomplished the re-design:

Used Inspiration (mind-mapping software) to create outline and visual "map" of the modules and lessons.
Identified series of pages or slides of related material.
Determined where interactions, animations, narration, and other types of content were needed.
Designed graphics and selected stock images and music (from istockphoto.com).

Using Inspiration allowed me to see both an outline view of the details of the course as well as visual maps of every page of every lesson. The visual maps included graphics as well as the text contents of each page and the narration, where included. I exported the outline and map views of the design to PDF files so that the ID and client could review the design.

2. Develop a first draft of the course that includes all graphics, animations, interactions, and scripts of narration and videos. You could include a scratch track of any narration at this point. Conduct review by client, SME, and instructional designer for the classroom course, if any.

After the design was reviewed, revised, and approved, I developed the first draft of the online course. To develop the course, I used a combination of

Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 2007
Articulate Studio '09
Adobe CS4 including Acrobat, Fireworks, Flash, and Soundbooth

Although the classroom course included a PowerPoint presentation, I had to start from scratch for the online version as the "slides" were completely redesigned.

The material was presented in much more detail, included animations, some cartoon-like presentations, and Articulate Engage and Quizmaker interactions and a few Flash animations.
I revised the original worksheets and converted them into PDF forms that could be downloaded to the learner's computer and completed and saved locally using Adobe Reader version 8 or higher.
To make up for the loss of personal guidance from the instructor, I used the contents of the workshop recordings to develop generic feedback for each of the worksheets.

Instead of rehashing the learning objectives at the beginning and ending of each module, I created a character who recounted her story about a project that was relevant to the course. As she tells her story, the learner hears about the learning objectives and how they have been applied in each module. And hopefully, they are hooked into finding out how her story turns out, especially compared to theirs.

The first draft contained all of the content for the course including:

Graphics
Animation
Interactive elements
Script for narration
Scratch track of narration recorded by me
Online PDF workbook
Questions for the final quizzes for each module

There were a few gaps in the content that needed to be filled in by the SME. This version was reviewed on my Moodle site by the client, ID, and SME.

3. Revise the online course and conduct a peer review with several SMEs or members of the audience for the course.

The review of the first draft identified some changes that were needed; however, the course still retained basically the original design that was approved in step one. At this point:

It was just a matter of cleaning up the content and copy editing for style.
We had Kineo design a custom skin for the Articulate player.
We asked several other SMEs to act as peer reviewers of the course before developing the pilot test. The review was conducted on my Moodle site.

4. Further revise the online course, have narration recorded, and produce any video segments. Conduct a small pilot test of the course.

After making the few revisions identified in step three, I had the narration professionally recorded by amazingvoice.com.

Once all of the changes were assembled into a packaged piece, we were ready for a pilot test. The course was published in the client's learning management system (LMS) and several people who were representative of the audience for the course were invited to review it. We developed a custom feedback for them to submit through formsite.com.

5. Make final revisions to the course as needed from the pilot test and publish.

Discussion

My primary point in recounting this development story is that adapting a classroom course for elearning generally involves more than simply recording a video or converting a PowerPoint presentation to Flash. Those techniques may have a place in preserving a particular lecture or presentation, but truly developing an online course involves design and development regardless of the origins of the content.

In this project, we started with a two-day classroom workshop that included about 12 hours of contact time. We created an online course that consisted of four modules, each containing about 60 screens of information, and four online workbooks to complement the presentations. The online course requires about eight hours to complete. It's a bit shorter than the classroom course, because there are no breaks or extraneous discussions. However, the learner goes through the same content and learning activities in both versions of the course.

So, I leave you with these questions:

How many hours were required for the elearning developer to prepare this course?
Do you consider your estimate to be representative of rapid elearning development?
Do you agree with the concept of a multi-step approach to adapting a classroom course to elearning?

How to Export Grouped Records from a Single Access Report into Multiple Files

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:26:31 GMT

How to Export Grouped Records from a Single Access Report into Multiple Files

A client recently asked me to create one button that would allow them to save groups of records in a report in separate files. They could accomplish this task “manually” by opening the report (which contains more than 900 pages), selecting several pages, and exporting these to a file; however, this process was time consuming and tedious.

I searched the Microsoft developers’ website and the Internet in general and came up with several ideas. The resulting combination may help you, if you want to use Visual Basic for Access to export groups of selected records from a report to one or more files. The script that I wrote makes use of several VBA features (Note: using Access 2003):

OpenReport method of DoCmd
OutputTo method of DoCmd
FileDialog object

Summary

In VBA, when you use the DoCmd.OpenReport method to view or print an Access report, you can also include a criteria string (the Where Condition argument) that limits which records the printout displays.

To convert a report to RTF format, you use the OutputTo command, which does not have a criteria argument like OpenReport does. You don’t have to export all of the records in a report when you export a report to RTF. To get only the output you need, use the OpenReport command, along with the appropriate criteria, to open the report in Preview mode first. Then, use the OutputTo method to create the desired file.

The OutputTo method requires that you specify a filename and complete path if you are saving the file to a different directory from the location of your database. The FileDialog object is used to locate your desired directory.

The Form and Code with Explanations
I created a form from which to run the output process. Here you can see the form view and the design view.
The textbox called “selectedFolder” is used to hold the path name of the directory where the files will be stored.
The “Select Folder to Store Files” button opens a FileDialog object that displays a dialog box for selecting the folder where files will be stored.
The “Export Files” button runs the script to output the records to separate files. And “Close Form” closes this form window.

If you look at the design view of the form, you can see that the textbox and buttons are actually located in the form header section. The detail section does not show in the form view. It is a datasheet view created from a query that includes the fields that are used for selection criteria. I wanted to create a recordset that would allow me to loop through all of the records in the complete report that we are outputting into multiple files. Creating a recordset on the form was the simplest way to do this.

Select Folder to Store Files Button
This is an excerpt of the code for the “Select Folder to Store Files” button. It is basically copied from the Microsoft Office developers’ website and modified slightly for this application. Note that a reference to the Microsoft Office 11.0 Object Library is required. The dialog box allows you to select a folder and puts the complete path of the folder into the “selectedFolder” textbox on the form.

'This requires a reference to the Microsoft Office 11.0 Object Library.
   Dim fDialog As FileDialog
   Dim varFile As Variant
   'Set up the File  dialog box.
   Set fDialog =  Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker)
   With fDialog
      'Do not allow  the user to make multiple selections 
      'in the dialog box.
      .AllowMultiSelect = False
            
      'Set the title  of the dialog box.
      .Title = "Select a Folder"
      'Clear out the  current filters, and then add your own.
      .Filters.Clear
      'Show the  dialog box. If the .Show method returns True, the
         'user picked at least  one file. If the .Show method returns
         'False, the user clicked Cancel.
      If .Show = True Then
         'Add file to the text box.
         Me.selectedFolder.Value = varFile 'selectedFolder is the name of the text box
      Else
         MsgBox "You clicked cancel in the  file dialog box."
      End If
   End With

Export Files button
This is an excerpt of the code for the “Export Files” button. The recordset for the form is used to loop through the report based on the field “Code”. Records in the report are grouped on “Code”, so using this technique allows each grouped section to be selected and output to a separate file. This process takes only a few seconds to run through more than 900 files.

    Dim msg As String
       Dim rst As DAO.Recordset, intI As Integer
       Dim mboxResult As Boolean
       ‘The recordset is the  result of a query on which this form 
       'is based.
       ‘The table that results  from the query can be seen in the 
       'dataset view of this form.
       ‘However, only the form  view is shown to users of the database, 
       'keeping the recordset
       ‘in the background.
    Set rst = Me.Recordset
    ‘Check to be sure that a  folder has been chosen in which to 
    'store the files.
    If (IsNull(Me.selectedFolder.Value) Or  Me.selectedFolder.Value = "") Then
        MsgBox "You need to select a  folder to store the files."
        GoTo Exit_cmd_ExportFiles_Click
    End If
        
   'Output files
      ‘Give the user a chance  to abort the process before outputting 
      'the files.
    mboxResults = MsgBox("Do you want to proceed to output all" & _
    " reports to individual files?", vbYesNo, "Save  Reports")
    If mboxResults = vbYes Then
       intI = 1
       ‘We loop through the  recordset for the form, 
       'beginning at record 1. The records in the
       ‘report are grouped  on the field “Code”, so that 
       'variable is used in OpenReport
       ‘to select which  records to include in each file.
       With rst
        .Move intI
          Do While intI < .RecordCount
            ‘The report is  opened in preview mode including only 
            'the records where the “Code”
            ‘equals the “Code”  in the current record.
            DoCmd.OpenReport  "rptStudentsPerLocalSection", _
                 acViewPreview, , "[Code] = '"  & _
                 .Fields("Code") &  "'", acWindowNormal
            ‘The report is  output to a file in the selected folder 
            'and named based on the
            ‘Desc field in  the recordset.
            DoCmd.OutputTo acOutputReport,  _
                  "rptStudentsPerLocalSection", acFormatRTF, _
                  Me.selectedFolder.Value &  "\" & .Fields("Desc") & _
                  "SAChapters.rtf"
            ‘The preview is  closed before the loop continues 
            'to the next record in the recordset.
            DoCmd.Close acReport,  "rptStudentsPerLocalSection"
            intI = intI + 1
            .MoveNext
          Loop
       .MoveFirst
       End With
     ElseIf mboxResults = vbNo Then
            GoTo Exit_cmd_ExportFiles_Click
     End If

Conclusion
This example provides one approach to automatically exporting grouped records from a report into separate files. The clients were delighted with the results as it has saved them several hours each month in preparing reports to be distributed separately to groups within their organization.

eLearning Decision Tree

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:52:38 GMT

eLearning Decision Tree

Creating online courses doesn't mean that you have to spend a bundle on course development and hosting.

Many people seem to think that developing eLearning or online learning means that you need to create a fully programmed, self-contained course that is delivered on the Internet. This concept implies lots of instructional design, subject matter consultation, writing, and programming.

However, there are many tools available to deliver courses using Internet technology, including live interaction with experts, that don't require a lot of up front development.

If you are just starting out in eLearning, use the decision tree shown here to help you determine if you should jump directly into producing self-contained, self-paced programs or start out with "live" courses that are cheaper to develop.

Most of the time the answer will be to stick with live, instructor-led programs -- at least in the beginning.

Welcome and Introduction

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:20:58 GMT

Welcome to Webucate Us Views and Reviews

This discussion is for you if you want to present educational programs online, whether you are new to the field or an experienced online educator. My primary experience has been working with non-profit professional associations; therefore, much of the information and lessons are for associations. However, the principles that apply and the tools that are available are the same for everyone. If you need help developing online courses and educational content in Flash, please take a look at my website www.webucateus.com for information on freelance online course development and freelance Flash development.

Starting Your eLearning Program with Instructor-Led Courses

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:20:20 GMT

Starting Your eLearning Program with Instructor-Led Courses

Why is it faster and less expensive to start your eLearning program with instructor-led courses? Click on the question to listen to my recorded answer.

Load and Play Multiple External SWFs Sequentially in a Flash File

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:31:10 GMT

Load and Play Multiple External SWFs Sequentially in a Flash File

Introduction

In this post I discuss how to create a master SWF file that will sequentially load several short, external SWFs that were created previously, play each one, and then unload each before loading and playing the next SWF.

My constraints in creating my master SWF were that I had to make it compatible with the Flash Player 6 and use Actionscript 2. In this example, there is no control over playback once the master SWF starts running.

Procedure

Create several SWF files that are all the same frame rate and size. You can use Flash to create these files or some other program (such as Articulate Presenter). To simplify your Actionscript, name the files with sequential numbers in the order in which you want them to play back, such as "myfile1.swf", "myfile2.swf", etc.

Create a "master" file using Adobe Flash. I used Flash CS4; however, I set my publish settings to Actionscript 2.0 and Flash Player 6. Make sure the frame rate in your "master" file is the same as the frame rate in the external SWFs. Make the master file the same dimensions as the SWFs so that each SWF will completely fill the frame once loaded.

(Note: These were the constraints, because I wanted to insert the finished SWF into an Articulate Presenter elearning program. If you are able to publish for a higher version of Flash Player, a different method for loading and tracking the external SWFs might be used.)

The following commented code explains the logic that I used in the script. This script is placed in the first (and only) frame of the "master" SWF, the root of the main SWF file.

Begin Code

End Code

Notes

The onEnterFrame event handler is a loop process that is built into Actionscript. It is invoked repeatedly at the frame rate of the SWF file. The function that you assign to the onEnterFrame event handler is processed before any other ActionScript code that is attached to the affected frames.
In reviewing this code, I can see that the logic is not optimal; however, it does work for loading a sequence of short SWFs that are relatively small file size. If you have been trying to figure out how to load and play mutiple SWF sequentially, this should give you a starting point to build on.
I am using Articulate Presenter '09 to create a Flash-based elearning program from animated slides developed with PowerPoint 2007. I wanted to create a movie within a movie for one of the slides in the main program. That is, the slide contains a Flash object that loads and plays multiple external SWFs in a small rectangle on the slide.
I used Articulate to publish and produce the SWFs for the movie within a movie.

Load and Play Multiple External SWFs Sequentially in a Flash File-Part 2

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:30:34 GMT

In my first post on this subject, I demonstrated how you can load multiple external SWFs into your "parent" SWF and play them sequentially. In this post, I display code that has much simpler logic and works effectively. I have to caution again that this method does not include any buffering feature. If the external SWFs are large files, you might see a blank screen for some time while the file loads. Also, there are no controls over the playback once the SWF has started playing. It has also been pointed out to me that this approach will only work if the external SWFs are animated linearly along their timelines, which is the case for the SWFs that I have used this technique for.

How to Move a DotNetNuke Site to GoDaddy from Another Hosting Service

webucateus@gmail.com — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:46:29 GMT

How to Move a DotNetNuke Site to GoDaddy from Another Hosting Service

Although I am not a .Net developer or an expert on DotNetNuke, I recently was successful in moving a DNN site from Network Solutions to GoDaddy. Finding instructions on how to accomplish this required looking in several places, so I thought it might be helpful to compile it all in one resource.

(Note: If you have questions after reading this post, please don't send them to me, as I probably will not know the answers. If you find that some steps are missing, feel free to add them in the comments.)

Moving the Site

After searching the DotNetNuke website, I found very helpful instructions on Mitchel Sellers' blog at www.mitchsellers.com (http://www.mitchelsellers.com/blogs/articletype/articleview/articleid/204.aspx). You need to read his post titled "Migrating DotNetNuke from Development to Remote Production" before proceeding. The information in this post supplements what he wrote. Some of his instructions are specific to a hosting service that he prefers, and I found that there are few differences when moving to GoDaddy.

What is needed on GoDaddy

Windows Deluxe Hosting account (or higher version)
A domain name for your site

In the GoDaddy Hosting Control Center:

Add On Languages section set the .Net Runtime Version set to ASP 2.0/3.0/3.5.
Databases SQL Server Section create a SQL Server 2005 database. When you set up the database, do NOT install any schema. The GoDaddy wizard gives you a choice of a DNS or an ASP schema. Do NOT select either one of these.

Also, according to Mitchel's instructions the username for your new database should be different from the username for the database in your old site. Make a note of the database name, username, and password.

You should be able to follow the on-screen instructions in the Hosting Control Center for the languages and database setup to finish these two steps.

DotNetNuke preparation

Mitchel's instructions for preparing DNN apply to this transfer also. Specifically, you should add a new Portal Alias for your new domain name to your DNN site. To do this, login as the host user to your DNN site. Navigate to the "Admin -> Site Settings" page. Scroll to the bottom of the page and the Portal Aliases section.

Click on "Add HTTP Alias" link. Enter the new URL in the textbox and click "Add New Alias". Only enter the domain name, not the "http://" preface. On GoDaddy, your DNN site will need to be in a subdirectory off of the root directory. For a URL that is "www.mydomain.com" and subdirectory "/dnn", you would enter "www.mydomain.com/dnn".

Create a subdirectory for DNN and validate ASP.NET permissions

GoDaddy requires that you put your DNN site in a subdirectory of the root directory. This was not a problem for me, as my site on Network Solutions was in a subdirectory of the root. Create a subdirectory in your GoDaddy account that has the same name as the directory on your old host. This is important so that any relative file references stay the same.

In the GoDaddy Hosting Control Center go to "Content -> IIS Settings" and edit the settings for your subdirectory by checking "Set Application Root".

You can modify permissions for the subdirectories of your DNN site after it is installed in the "Content -> File Manager" section.

Backup your old DNN site and copy the files to your new GoDaddy subdirectory

Backup your DNN site on your old hosting service and download it to your computer. I used the automated backup feature offered by Network Solutions that created a backup of my complete site and put it in a .zip file that I downloaded. I unzipped the file on my computer and then used an FTP program to upload the entire DNN subdirectory to GoDaddy. For example, if my DNN site was in the /dnn subdirectory, I would upload the entire /dnn subdirectory and overwrite the subdirectory that I had previously created on GoDaddy.

(Note: I tried simply downloading the entire old site and then uploading the files to GoDaddy, but I received an error message when I tried to view the site after completing all of the steps. I assume that some of the files or folders did not get copied, but using the zipped backup worked.)

Transfer your database to the database that you created on GoDaddy

Copying your database from another hosting service to your blank database on GoDaddy is done quite differently from the procedure described in Mitchel Sellers' blog.

You use the Database Publishing Wizard. To get more information on this process, in the GoDaddy Help Center search for Database Publishing Service. You will find a useful help article titled "What are the Database Publishing Service and Database Publishing Wizard?" and a link to complete instructions on using the Database Publishing Wizard and a link on how to download and install the DPW desktop client, which is a Microsoft product.

After installing the DPW client you will need to gather the following information to use the wizard:

Old server information:

Server IP address
Username
Password
Database name

GoDaddy information:

web service address--URL for the publishing service
FTP account username
ftp password
server name (full path to database server)
database name (name of the hosted database)
database username
database password

The GoDaddy information can be found in Hosting Control Central under "Databases -> SQL Server". Click on the edit button next to your database and then click on the configuration button. You will then see all of the information that you need on the screen. While you are copying the information, copy the SQLConnection as you will need that in the next step.

When you run the DPW you can choose to script all objects or to be able to choose object types. I first tried scripting all objects and kept coming up with an error for one of the objects--a stored procedure that was trying to write to a non-existent field.

I started over and did not choose "publish all objects". As I went through the wizard, I selected all of the object types, and when I got to the object that threw the error, I deselected the one bad procedure so that it did not get copied. The wizard then completed without error and transferred the entire old database into my new database on GoDaddy.

Downloading and installing the DPW and associated Microsoft software, running the DPW, and transferring the files took around two or three hours. Most of that was spent figuring out how to get everything to work. The actual file transfer required about 30 minutes.

Modify the web.config settings

You need to change the database connection strings in the web.config file for your new DNN site. To do this, keep a copy of the web.config file that you included in your upload to GoDaddy or download the web.config file and open it in Visual Studio or another plain text editor. You can follow the instructions in Mitchel Sellers' blog post, which contains a bit more information on this subject. The SQLConnection code that you copied in the previous step is the new database connection string.

Testing the site

Enter the full URL in your favorite browser to test your installation. If your subdirectory is /dnn, it would be www.mydomain.com/dnn. Again, Mitchel's post gives you additional suggestions about troubleshooting in case you have any errors.

Make sure that you review every page of your site I found that some links to images and files did not transfer correctly, and I had login to my DNN site and edit a few Text/HTML module contents.

Conclusion

I hope that this information (as a supplement to Mitchel Sellers' blog) will help you in migrating your DNN site to GoDaddy.

First Pure CSS Website

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:25:47 GMT

First Pure CSS Website

I recently created my first demonstration of a website formatted completely using CSS. The demo can be found at http://www.webucateus.comhttp://www.webucateus.com/samples/globalDemo/.

Several resources were helpful in creating the site:

Using the Adobe article and following the directions in it precisely will give you a quick and effective introduction to formatting and coding your first page. Enhancing your site with other modifications will probably require some trial and error, but this is a relatively quick way to get started with a CSS-formatted site.

Decision Trees Help to Determine eLearning Strategy - A Case Study

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:47:46 GMT

Identifying an e-Learning strategy that matches an appropriate delivery method to the learners can be a very large challenge. Not only does the strategy have to take hardware, infrastructure, and operating systems into account, it must also consider the goals of the learners, the size of the learner group, and their availability. Read my article in the eLearning Guild's "Learning Solutions" magazine to learn about a simple decision process that you can use!

Moodle--A Low Cost Learning Management System

webucateus@gmail.com — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 16:55:27 GMT

Moodle--A Low Cost Learning Management System

As an independent, free lance elearning developer I need a very low-cost learning management system (LMS) to host projects that are in development for clients and to provide demonstration courses. The ideal solution for my LMS needs has turned out to be Moodle. Moodle was originally created by Martin Dougiamas as part of the research for his Ph. D. thesis at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia.

As he says in his own website, Moodle became popular beyond his wildest dreams. Moodle has tens of thousands of users worldwide ranging from small sites like mine to large university implementations. Just based on the sources of questions in the Moodle discussion forums, I think that most users are in academic institutions, although I have not seen any actual data on this statistic.

Moodle is an open-source system that is based on particular pedagogical principles that were incorporated into the research that led to its development. You can find detailed information about the principles, the development team, and use of Moodle at the Moodle website linked above.

From my perspective, there are several advantages to using Moodle.

1. It is included in Fantastico Deluxe, software that is included in many low-cost, Linux-based web hosting services. If you use this type of hosting service, you can easily install your own Moodle site and start using your LMS right away.

2. It can be downloaded and installed on your own personal computer or web server. Moodle is written in PHP and is usually found on Linux hosts; however, you can run it under a Windows system as long as you have a PHP interpreter running.

3. Moodle.org provides a very active user community that can help answer your technical questions if you run into problems.

4. The learning content management system that is incorporated into Moodle include modules that support SCORM compliant learning objects, as well as a wide variety of Moodle tools for tests, surveys, quizzes, discussion forums, and more.

5. The LMS features of Moodle include self-registration or administrator-controlled registration in Moodle site and in individual courses. You can charge for enrollment in courses using PayPal or require users to supply an enrollment key to enter a course. I like the latter feature for allowing clients to have multiple reviewers self-enroll in my site and restrict access to their specific course by using an enrollment key that I supply to them.

Using a free, open-source system also has its downsides.

1. If you go with a low-cost host, your hosting service will not provide specific technical support for Moodle. There are hosting services that include technical support, which I would use if I had a large user community and the revenue stream to support it.

2. Moodle is open source and, therefore, may include bugs and security problems that take awhile to be resolved. A more expensive proprietary system can also have problems, but usually there is a sofware company standing behind such a system that works on resolving technical issues quickly.

3. Moodle may not currently include modules that provide you with the metrics that you want. However, since it is open-source, you might find PHP developers who can do this for you for relatively low cost. Of course, adding customized features means that you would no longer have a standard Moodle implementation, which poses a different set of challenges.

In conclusion, I recommend that you consider Moodle if you are in a situation that dictates a low-cost learning management system and you are comfortable providing your own technical support. If you need outside support, consider using a Moodle host that offers these features. One really great feature of Moodle is that it is inexpensive to experiment with and will give you some ideas about what an LMS can do with little risk or up-front investment.

Great Communities for Learning Flash Actionscript

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:55:39 GMT

Great Communities for Learning Flash Actionscript

If you are just starting out with Flash Actionscript programming or already have lots of experience, there are a couple of terrfic online communities where many experienced Actionscript developers share their expertise. Best of all, both of these are free.

Flash Tiger is a Yahoo Group that is moderated by several Flash programmers. To subscribe, send an email to Flash_tiger-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Figleaf Software runs two email lists: one for new Actionscript programmers http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/options/flashnewbie/ and one for experienced developers http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/options/flashcoders/.

Sharing PowerPoint Files via the Internet

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 14:00:00 GMT

Sharing PowerPoint Files via the Internet

Do you want to use the Internet to distribute PowerPoint presentations to your learners? By distribute, I mean allow your audience to download your PowerPoint presentation and use it locally on their own computers.

If your PowerPoint files contain movies and animation that are located across multiple directories, there is an easy way to prepare your files for Internet distribution without having to edit the PowerPoint file and start over inserting the movies, as explained in the following steps.

Step 1: Open the original PowerPoint file. On the File menu, click on Package for CD. In the Name the CD line of the dialog box, type in a name that you will easily remember.

Step 2: Click on the Copy to Folder button. The name that you previously entered will appear in the Folder Name field. Use the Browse button to select a directoty in which to save your files. Click OK when you are done. The process takes a few seconds to minutes (depending on the size and number of files involved). Click the Close button when it has finished.

Step 3: Open Windows Explorer to look at the directory where you saved the files. You will see that a subdirectory has been created with the name that you created for the Folder Name. If you look in that folder, you will find a copy of your PowerPoint ppt file and all of the movie files that are linked to it. In addition, a PowerPoint viewer exe file, several dll files, a batch file, and autorun file are also included.

If you wanted to distribute the presentation on a CD, you would copy all of these files onto the CD. However, to distribute via the Internet you have a couple of choices mentioned in the next step.

Step 4: You will need to create a compressed zip file that contains all of the files that your user needs to download to run the presentation. If you want to include only those needed to open the presentation in PowerPoint, add the ppt file and all of the movie files to your zip file.

If you want to include the PowerPoint viewer, so that users can see the presentation using the viewer, add the ppt file, all of the movie files, the pptview.exe file, and all of the dll files to your zip archive. I would also include pvreadme.htm in the zip file.

Step 5: Place the zip file and a link to it on your website. Instruct visitors to download and save the file locally. When they unzip the file, the ppt and all associated files will end up in the same directory. They should be able to open and view the PowerPoint presentation with all of its movies included.

Watch a demonstration of the process.

Converting Slides and Notes to Web-Deliverable Formats

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Converting Slides and Notes to Web-Deliverable Formats

No matter what methods and techniques you choose to schedule and deliver your online courses, you will probably want to deliver some kind of slides or notes to your learners at some time during your eLearning program. In this program I discuss several easy methods to convert your course slides and printed materials into web-deliverable formats. For more information and ideas, please visit my website at www.webucateus.com.

Overview of Software to Create Web-Ready Multimedia Presentations

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Overview of Software to Create Web-Ready Multimedia Presentations

Part of the asynchronous communications in your eLearning program will probably include previously recorded lectures or multimedia presentations. In this recording I discuss several software programs that simplify audio recording and developing web-deliverable multimedia presentations. The programs mentioned include:

Screen Capture Software
- Camtasia Studio
- Adobe Captivate
- CamStudio
Software to Convert PowerPoint Files to Web Formats
- Adobe Breeze
- Articulate Presenter
- Wondershare PPT2Flash
- PointeCast Presenter

If you want more information on this and other eLearning topics or you wish to leave a comment, please visit news.webucateus.com. For other information and ideas, please visit my website at www.webucateus.com.

Pricing Your eLearning Programs

webucateus@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Pricing Your eLearning Programs

Pricing is one of the most challenging aspects of managing any business. In this recording, I offer several questions that you can answer to help you start to develop a pricing model for your eLearning program. For more information on this and other eLearning topics or to leave a comment, please visit news.webucateus.com. For other information and ideas, please visit my website at www.webucateus.com.

What Constitutes an eLearning Program?

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 14:00:00 GMT

What Constitutes an eLearning Program?

As I look at the material that I have posted thus far in this blog, I realize that my suggestions show a strong bias based on my professional experience producing a particular kind of program for a professional scientific society. I’d like to take a step back for a moment to consider in broader terms what constitutes an eLearning or online course. Please visit my website at www.webucateus.com for some eLearning samples.

Options for Creating Webpages for Your Courses

webucateus@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Options for Creating Webpages for Your Courses

There are many ways to create web pages and web sites to distribute your course material, from creating the HTML files from scratch and uploading them to your web server to filling in a form in a blogging, wiki, or collaboration service. This presentation reviews and describes some of the options you have. For more information and ideas, please visit my website at www.webucateus.com.

What If Learners Miss the Web Conference

webucateus@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

What If Learners Miss the Web Conference

If your analysis of the characteristics of your eLearners leads you to develop synchronous, interactive training be sure that you have a way to archive and store your web conference, teleconference, or chat. Then make the recording or file accessible to learners who miss the live session. If the vast majority of your learners choose to access the archive, instead of participating in the live event, it's time to reconsider your decision to use synchronous meetings for your eLearning programs.

Why a Password-Protected Site for Your eLearning Course?

webucateus@gmail.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Why a Password-Protected Site for Your eLearning Course?

You need a password-protected site for course materials so that you can make your materials accessible only to learners who have registered for the course. In particular, most associations charge a registration fee for courses, because it is an important source of revenue for the association.
Even if you are giving your course material away to the public, you will still need a place on the Internet to store archives and distribute other materials. Watch this video presentation to learn more.

Synchronous or Asynchronous Communications

webucateus@gmail.com — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 14:00:00 GMT

Synchronous or Asynchronous Communications

Once you have decided to offer instructor-led (live) eLearning courses, there are still many methods and technologies to choose from to deliver the courses. The decision tree presented here will help you to narrow your choices based on the characteristics of the learners you plan to teach.

Tools to Develop and Deliver Instructor-Led Courses

webucateus@gmail.com — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Tools to Develop and Deliver Instructor-Led Courses

Here is an overview list of the kinds of tools that you could use to develop and deliver instructor-led courses. Want to tell us about your favorite tools? Post a comment.

Tools to put content into a web-deliverable format
- Create web pages from text files
- Create PDF files from text and slide files, such as Word and Powerpoint
- Record mp3 files or narrated Powerpoint presentations of lectures and convert to a video or Flash file
Password-protected location for course content
- Website
- Group or collaboration site, such as a Yahoo Group or a Sharepoint site
- Discussion forum site
- Blog
- Learning Management System
Method of "live" communication
- Asynchronous
  - Email
  - Group listserv or collaboration postings
  - Discussion forum
  - Response to blog postings
- Syncrhonous
  - Chat rooms
  - Instant messaging
  - Audio conferences (telephone or Internet technology)
  - Web conferences