Soft Skills in eLearning: Using Multiple Perspectives

When you think of sales training, leadership training, customer support training, and other kinds of critical thinking skills that have no quantitative skill measurement, you may think it is impossible to effectively train through the use of e-learning. The reason we are hesitant to believe soft skills can be trained via e-learning is because as a general rule, most people believe that 'people skills' cannot be taught effectively by an impersonal computer.

Peter Chan and Carl Harris, two university professors here in Utah, have been experimenting with the use of video ethnography for this purpose for more than fifteen years. Peter has spoken a couple of times at eLearning DevCon, which is where I first heard him discuss their unique approach to soft skills training.

Most instructional designers assume that to teach soft skills effectively using e-learning you create scenarios. If the scenario is interactive, even better. So course developers spend dozens of hours analyzing, writing, and sometimes filming models for a 'live' demonstration. This is an attempt to re-create the live classroom scenario-based approach to teaching soft skills.

Dr Chan and Dr Harris take a completely different approach. Instead of filming scenarios, they film the successful phenomenon in its native habitat (hence the use of 'ethnographer'). In other words, if they are trying to teach new teachers effective teaching or classroom management skills, they find a teacher that is already demonstrating these skills naturally, and film that. This leads to credible footage, but that isn't enough. Anyone can go and film a successful experience, but watching a successful skill demonstration in a real environment is only a small part of the puzzle.

Last year I attended a local TedX conference in Salt Lake City where Dr. Chan presented the video ethnography concept. I recommend viewing his presentation to get a high level view of why his techniques have won him awards and recognition in several continents.

Recently, Dr. Chan has built an extension to Rapid Intake's collaborative course authoring software, eLearning Studio (formerly called Unison), that allows anyone to quickly benefit from of his years of expertise and research in this area. If you'd like to learn more about using Video Ethnography to solve the soft skills training puzzle at your organization, please contact Garin Hess and he can arrange a meeting with Dr. Chan.

What do you think? Can soft skills be effectively taught using technology?

You may also want to see this related article: Instructional Patterns in eLearning: Using Branching Scenario Simulations to Move From Information to Application

Rapid Intake Recognized in Top Authoring Tools Companies by TrainingIndustry.com

TrainingIndustry.com released their list of the Top Ten Authoring Tools Companies and we're excited to announce that Rapid Intake made the list!


According to TrainingIndustry.com, reasons mentioned include: 

• Leadership and innovation
• Features and capabilities of the Authoring Tools
• Company size and growth potential
• Company focus on the authoring platforms
• Strength and number of clients/users 
• Geographic reach

Some of the accomplishments that we believe led to receiving the recognition are:

• Innovative development in the area of mobile learning, including mLearning Studio
• Leadership in the collaborative course authoring space
• Our merger with Callidus Software (NASDAQ CALD) that gives us greater resources and backing for growth, expansion, and global reach
• Our strong list of customers
• Our award winning customer support

Convert PowerPoint to Mobile Learning - How To

In this entry, I'm going to show you how to do a fundamental PowerPoint conversion for mobile learning that includes audio narration. For the authoring tool, we'll use Rapid Intake's mLearning Studio. This tutorial assumes that you have a PowerPoint that includes audio narration.

There are three main steps. We'll review those, then get into the details of each main step.

1. Export your PowerPoint audio into individual WAV files and your slides into individual JPEG image files.
2. Upload those files into mLearning Studio.
3. Using the Image and Audio HTML5 template designed for mobile deployment, create a page for each slide, select the slide image and corresponding audio for each slide.

That's it in a nutshell. Now, we're going to break it down into detailed steps as well as provide some tips for making the process faster.

>>View a Sample Converted PowerPoint for Mobile Learning (click this link from your mobile browser)

Export Your PowerPoint Into Separate Audio (WAV) and Image (JPEG) Files
We're going to use the 'Image and Audio' rapid development template in mLearning Studio, so we need each slide as an image and then we need the audio for that slide to go along with it.

NOTE: For the purposes of this tutorial, I'm using PowerPoint 2007.

1. To export the narration audio, click the PowerPoint menu, then click Save As.
2. From the drop down list choose Web Page, select the location you want to save it, then click Save. This will save your presentation as a web page with a collection of assets in a separate folder.
3. Locate the saved files and you'll see a folder with the name of your PowerPoint and the suffix "_files". Inside you'll find your audio files. That's all we need from that conversion, so you may want to move those files to another location to make them easier to work with.
4. To export the slides as images, click the PowerPoint menu, then click Save As.
5. From the drop down list choose JPEG. Select a location and click Save.
6. Locate the saved files and you'll see images titled Slide1, Slide2, ... etc.

TIP: You may want to name your image and audio files with a prefix so that they are easy to work with in the Media Manager. If you're using Windows, and you've put them all in the same folder, you can rename them all at the same time by selecting them all, then right clicking the first one and choosing Rename.

Now we're ready to pull these together in mLearning Studio so we can publish to HTML5 in mobile format.

Upload Your Files Into mLearning Studio

NOTE: If you want to try this out, but you don't have a Rapid Intake account, you can start a free trial of mLearning Studio.

1. Once you've logged in, click the Media Manager button (if you have a brand new account, you may need to first create a project before you'll see the Media Manager budget).
   
   NOTE: The Media Manager is a centralized collaborative media library that anyone on your account can get access to.
2. Inside the Media Manager, click Audio in the category list.
3. Click Upload New Audio, then click Browse for Media. Find the audio files, select them all, and click Open, then click Upload Files. mLearning Studio uploads them into the media manager, then automatically converts them to MP3 format (needed for streaming on mobile devices).
4. Repeat this process in the Images category with all of the slide images that you exported from PowerPoint.

TIP: If you have a lot of other media in the Media Manager, use the Search field to find the files that you uploaded by searching for the prefix that you gave all of your files earlier (assuming you followed my earlier tip! :)

Create a Project and Build Your Mobile Learning Pages

1. To add your images and audio to a course, you need to create a new project in mLearning Studio. I'm not going to take you through the whole process. On the Authoring Tab, click Add a Project, then follow the steps to create a mobile-only project starting from an empty course (don't use a course template).
2. Once you've created your project, click Build/Modify to open the authoring tool.
3. With the authoring tool open, click Add Page and choose 'Image and Audio' from the Mobile Compatible category. Click Add Selected Page.
4. mLearning Studio shows you the form associated with the template. Now we just need to fill out the form. Enter a title (this will show up in the Table of Contents of your course) for the first slide in the Title field.
5. For the image field, click the Browse button (folder icon) to open the Media Manager. Find the image of your first slide by searching on the prefix that you gave the filenames earlier. Select the image. In the Preview pane, you'll see a dropdown list beneath the image. Click it and choose to use the Original image (this makes it larger to view more nicely on tablets, like the iPad).
   
   TIP: On the Image tab, select "Center" for the Image Position and between 80-100% for the Image Width (this makes the image take up a certain amount of the presentation area on the mobile device).
6. For the Audio field, click the Browse button to open the Media Manager. Search for the audio corresponding with your slide, and select it.
7. Repeat these steps for each slide.

>>View a Sample Converted PowerPoint for Mobile Learning (click this link from your mobile browser)

Mobile Learning: Online or Offline Access?

Some mobile learning course developers are perfectly happy with the requirement that the mobile user needs online access to take the course. But what if your learners are in the field, such as one conservancy group I spoke to that has over 1500 biologists out in the bush? Or what if your learners work in an area where online access is spotty and unreliable? In these kinds of cases, offline access can be a godsend, allowing the learner to download the course into a native app when they do have Internet access, then they can take the course offline, then sync back up to the learning management system when they are back online.

Since we launched our rapid mobile learning authoring tool, mLearning Studio™, we have been working on an offline delivery platform called mLearning Sync™, soon to go to beta (stay tuned).

How about you? Do you need offline access for your mobile learning deliver? Share your situation and why it makes offline delivery necessary.

Best of Best Authoring Tools - Rapid Intake Listed at #1

The eLearning 24/7 blog just posted a Best of the Best: Content Authoring Tools, and we are excited to see Rapid Intake's mLearning Studio, our rapid mobile learning content authoring software, listed at the #1 spot!

Just wanted to say thanks for the recognition and thanks to our team for an intense and great year of innovation and progress.

Garin Hess | CEO

Adobe Drops Flash for Mobile - What Does it Mean for mLearning and eLearning?

This morning Adobe stated that it will no longer develop the Flash player for mobile devices in favor of throwing their support behind HTML5 development. This will likely be a blow to Android device manufacturers who have counted on the Flash player support as one of the main differentiations from Apple devices, but what does it mean for e-learning and m-learning developers?

For mobile learning it won't have much of an impact. Because of the need for cross-platform compatibility (i.e. Apple and Android), most mobile learning authoring solutions (such as Rapid Intake's rapid authoring for mobile learning software, mLearning Studio) publish to HTML5 rather than Flash. So this decision will only bolster HTML5 as the platform of choice for mobile learning solutions.

For desktop-based e-learning, it won't have much of an impact either, since Adobe is going to continue to support the Flash player for desktop browsers and almost all e-learning authoring tools publish to Flash already (such as Rapid Intake's collaborative course authoring solution Unison).

Flash is still the best choice as a deployment method for e-learning for three main reasons:

1. Flash output is much more secure than HTML5. A learner can simply right-click on any desktop browser running HTML5 and view the source. This means that savvy learners could find answers to quizzes and assessments. Moreover, proprietary content, such as video, is much easier to download and distribute via HTML5. Simply right-click any HTML5 video and download it as easily as if it were an image. Content in the Flash player, on the other hand, is much more safe.
2. Flash solves the cross-browser compatibility problem. Every browser interprets HTML in its own way making it a challenge to make sure any HTML-based content displays the same way across all browsers. eLearning content in the Flash player plays the same in any browser because it is all housed and played within the same environment.
3. Flash is light-years ahead in gaming and simulation power. For advanced e-learning solutions such as gaming and simulations, HTML5 will be woefully behind for years. Not to say HTML5 can't do quite a lot, but its capabilities are similar to where Flash was about eight or nine years ago.

In summary, this move consolidates HTML5's position as the delivery mechanism of choice for mobile but still leaves Flash as king in desktop browsers, at least for the foreseeable future.

How do you think this impacts e-learning and mobile learning? How about in your world specifically?

mLearning Best Practices: How Much Content is Too Much for Mobile Learning?

Since we released mLearning Studio, (our rapid mobile learning development toolset) and whenever I present at conferences, I'm asked the question, "What kinds of content and how much content is appropriate for mobile learning?" Underlying this question is an assumption that we should approach learning content consumption via mobile devices differently. Sometimes I hear people continue, "...because you wouldn't want to put an entire e-learning course on the mobile device" as if that is a given.

I have also heard other presenters at conferences recommend using mobile devices only for performance support content, such as job aids or diagnostic apps; again, the assumption that there should be a difference in the way that we approach content; that there is 'no way people are going to be taking an entire course on a mobile device.'

I would like to challenge that assumption.

First of all, I think this assumption is partially based on another older assumption: that content for mobile devices is somehow less engaging than on a desktop PC. And it is true, if we encounter a website, for example, designed for the desktop, and we are trying to access it with our smartphone, it can be frustrating. So, I agree, that if we design our content poorly--not designed for the modern smartphone or tablet experience--then yes, the learner will have a low tolerance for spending time with our content.

On the other hand, if we design content specifically for the mobile devices, I suggest learners can and will be happy to take entire courses on mobile devices. Let's look at ebook consumption, for example. Mobile device users have demonstrated that they are more than willing to consume huge quantities of content--entire books-- on their mobile devices. In fact, many not only are willing, but prefer the experience over paper.

Think about your own experience with web surfing. If you come across a website designed for the mobile experience, aren't you just as willing to spend time on that site? Isn't it only the sites that are designed for the desktop that we have to muddle our way through that we tire of?

In the end, our learning design and development should be designed and produced for whatever device (be it a PC, Mac, smartphone or tablet) that the learner wants to use to access the learning.  That is why with mLearning Studio, we designed a collaborative rapid mobile learning authoring tool that makes it easy to have a learning experience designed for whatever  the learner brings to the table. Flash for desktop computers and HTML5 for mobile devices--designed for the modern mobile device experience. Build it once and then publish it to desktop and mobile.

Ultimately, we believe that there is growing evidence that learners will happily consume entire courses on mobile devices, assuming the courses are designed appropriately so you don't have a downgraded experience with the content.

Try some examples of mobile learning with content designed for both desktop and mobile.

What do you think? Should we be modifying the amount or type of learning content that we deliver through mobile devices?