MM3312 Computer-based Training


Course Description:
This course provides an exploration of authoring techniques for interactive training and education. Students gain experience in the process of design, development, and evaluation of effective computer-based training systems.

Required Text: Rapid Development with Adobe Captivate 5 for Windows (or Mac version) by Daniel Novak, M.A. with Mary Burkart, M.S. CreateSpace; 1 edition (August 1, 2010). ISBN-10: 1453745904.

Suggested Reading: e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning by Ruth Colvin Clark (Pfeiffer). October 2002. ISBN: 0787960519

Course Competencies:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student should be able to:

  • Understand and identify a variety of methods of computer-based training (CBT).
  • Analyze audience and instructional needs for effective CBT design.
  • Apply the basic principles of instructional design to the organization of content.
  • Develop a concept for an instructional project.
  • Support instructional needs effectively with multimedia elements including sound, video, and animation.
  • Design and produce an interactive instructional project.

Grade Information: As I receive emails from students that they have uploaded their homework to their homework sites, I update points. Login to this link to Gradekeeper and enter your First and Last name (case sensitive, capitalize the first letter of each) and your student id number to see your points to date. Your name is exactly like I have it below. It is case (and space) sensitive.

 

open book icon for lecture informationList of lectures and labs

 

Students are responsible to check this at least one day prior to class. Email me at sharon@casabasa.com if you have any questions. Tutoring is available on Mondays at noon, rm. 309.


Student information - Winter 2012

Student Web

Week 1:

Complete the student survey. Review of the school’s emergency evacuation procedures. Review of course and requirements. Contact is skaitner{at}aii.edu or sharon{at}casabasa.com.

Library database access for your research.

Lecture:

Introduction (Course objectives, requirements). The e-learning development process.

How People Learn: Design principles for effective eLearning: Minimize cognitive load, Minimalism, Personalized, Modularized Lessons, and Focus Learner Attention. Designing for accessibility: Perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Captivate and Section 508 Standards.

Classifying content as to type of learning:

  • Memorizing - does your content require rote recall that doesn't change? The behavior change would be the ability to recognize or recall (such as a list, associations, an ordered list). Instructional strategies: Presentation of information, practice, feedback. These are routine for all lessons. A higher level tactic would be the use of chunking of information, mnemonics and repetition.
  • Applying skills - performance changes under various conditions. Requires classifying and identifying behaviors. Produce and perform, or predict and solve. It is an application of skills. Instructional strategies: There are 3 distinct types of skills: classifying concepts (ability to classify an idea by stating the criteria necessary to to belong to a category, common characteristics), using procedures (an ordered set of actions to achieve a goal), and using principles (application of a cause and effect relationship). Routine tactics are presentations, practice and feedback. Relational tactics involve examples and practice items, and easy-to-difficult sequencing of cases. Enrichment tactics would be attention focusing exercises (tell the learner what they should know and focus them on important tasks or ideas), representation (making the learner exercise as real to possible) and automaticity (making a skill automatic.)
  • Using complex domain-specific knowledge to solve or predict. Understanding relationships. Use of reason, ability to analyze, compare and contrast. Relating new ideas to prior knowledge. Instructional strategies: there are two types of understanding: conceptual and causal. Conceptual understanding is linking new information to previously learned material. Causal understanding happens when you develop the ability to make predictions or draw implications, give explanations or make inferences, or to solve problems. Instructional strategies would include paraphrasing information and elaborations. These are when you ask the learner to compare/contrast, analyze an idea, present a case study, or describe similarities and differences with an analogy.
  • Higher-level skills or thinking. These are skills that can be used for learning, remembering, and thinking across the subject matter. The ability to analyze a previously unencountered situation and to develop an hypothesis. It is problem solving, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, learning strategies and metacognition. Problem solving involves mental organization of skills, and then creating a mental representation based on analysis. Learning strategies involves requiring the learner to come up with ways to present the information. Meta-cognition is the ability to monitor one's own learning and thinking processes.

Lab:

Conducting a needs analysis. As a group, do a needs analysis for the following scenario:

After a recent trip, you have decided to help to undertake the development of a water system for the natives of a mountain tribe in South America. The indigenous people have been using primitive irrigation means for their crops but in an effort to improve their standard of living, you want to construct and implement an irrigation system. You have recruited a team to meet with the people and assess their needs. What steps would be necessary to fully understand the problem? What would be your plan?

Methods for delivering online content. Introduction to educational software, Adobe Captivate 5. Installation, workspaces, settings. Starting a software simulation.

Homework:

  • Research how best to teach the benefits of using multimedia in learning applications. Bring the result of your research to class next week (one citation written with a hyperlink to the source). Be prepared to discuss the relevancy of your research.
  • To begin your project, you will write down everything you expect that needs to be included in your project. This should include your objective(s), task analysis, target audience, types of training needed, how you will consider different learning abilities, and how you will test for understanding.
  • Email me your url.
  • Read Chapter 1 The Rapid Development Process in text
  • Review (we will do in class next week) Chapter 2 Installation, Workspaces, and Settings

 

Week 2:

Lecture: CBT Design Considerations: interactivity and engaging the user

    How e-lessons affect human learning

    Applying e-learning principles. Dual mode principle, plus research to learning disorders.

    Multimedia principle - using words and relevant graphics rather than words alone.

    Contiguity principle - place corresponding words and graphics near each other.

    Modality principle - present words as audio narration rather than onscreen text.

    Redundancy principle - presenting words in both text and audio narration can hurt learning (avoid overloading the visual channel of working memory.) Exceptions are when there is limited language ability or if other visuals onscreen are limited.

    Coherence principle - adding interesting material can hurt learning.

    Personalization principle - use conversational style and virtual coaches.

    Determine appropriate technology and installation issues.

Lab:

  • Introduction to educational software, Adobe Captivate 5. Installation, workspaces, settings. Starting a software simulation.
  • In-class assignment: Create a presentation storyboard of your final project idea, with 3 interactions required of the user. Frame the presenttion with a beginning, middle and end, with an objective and purpose, testing measures and feedback to the user.

    • One of the ways to teach a process or activity is by scaffolding. Scaffolding is the process of a mentor/instructor demonstrating a process or technique, then the student repeating the steps, back and forth with decreasing instructor feedback, as the student masters the process. You might think how you can have the user interact and do, rather than you just telling them.

Homework:

  • Take the presentation created in class and complete. A multimedia elearning application would include an opening page that introduces the exercise and its goal(s), a help section, and an acknowledgement of success page. Without being too elaborate, set today's interactions into some kind of context with a beginning, middle and an end. Goal is for your target audience to perform at least 3 interactions with your activity. Bring to class next week to discuss and continue work. And don't forget to blog!

  • Read Chapter 3 Screen Recording in Captivate 5 and Chapter 4 Objects and Properties

Week 3:

Lecture: Determining Instructional Needs and Strategies

  • Instructional Design Components
  • Planning the Design
  • Troubleshooting
    •  Level Event
      I Gaining Attention (reception) http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
      II Informing learnings of the objective (expectancy)
      III Stimulating recall of prior knowledge (retrieval)
      IV Presenting stimulus (selective perception)
      V Providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)
      VI Eliciting performance (responding)
      VII Providing feedback (reinforcement)
      VIII Assessing performance (retrieval)
      IX Enhancing retention and transfer (generalization)
  • Gagne's The Nine Events of Instruction (from Penn State U.)
  • Examine distance learning lessons learned and failure factors.
  • Analyzing costs and benefits, advantages & disadvantages.
  • The importance of practice, practice, practice

Lab:

  • Interactions in Captivate 5. Demonstration and practice matching interactions to instructional exercise. How could we incorporate a scavenger hunt?
  • Discussion on applying the personalization principle.

http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm - an overview of 4 types of learning theory: the behaviourist orientation to learning, the cognitive orientation to learning, the humanistic orientation to learning, and the social/situational orientation to learning. Please note this does not encompass all learning theory. More will be discussed during the course of this class.

In-class exercise: Sketch/draw - paper and pencil - a storyboard on how to brush your teeth. Note where you would want to bring the viewer in closer to observe (the signaling principle), and when interactions will occur (like clicking a button or rolling over an object.) Note the steps are what you would do with a task analysis.

Homework:

  • Continue with your midterm project, by creating a support web page. Due week 5.
  • In Captivate, create a quiz. You must first demonstrate something, then break into smaller pieces and add a quiz. Make it appropriate to the demonstration, e.g. if it's teaching something, ask the steps, or if it's small children, perhaps try a drag and drop.
  • Read Chapter 5 Audio Recording and Editing

Week 4:

Lecture:

Video: Active Learning by Dr. Richard Felder, Tips on Cooperative Learning, How to Deliver Engaging Asynchronous learning

 

Sometimes learning is presented as a game, like the Reader Rabitt series currently in use in primary grades. What kind of learning game would appeal to you?

Lab:

  • Testing and tracking your results. Efficacy. What makes a pre- post- test valid?
  • Tracking and Reporting on User Performance: decision icons, pretests and posttests.
  • Discussion of CBT considerations. Do a search on multiple intelligences and Howard Gardner, and read this article on Multiple Intelligences. Discussion on various ways we can use multimedia to enhance learning, as well as achieve the goals of Gardner to reach all learning styles.
  • Discussion on how to add "checks for understanding".

 

Homework:
Continue work on midterm project. Try to include the 8 pathways to learning. Due next week. Your midterm project should include a beginning, middle and end (credits or congratulations page.) It needs to teach interactively, and actively engages different learning styles.

Please be sure that you check for understanding in at least 2 places within the module.

Don't forget the help and/or quit button. And pay attention to heuristics.

  • Read Chapter 6 Video

 

Week 5:

Promotional items: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/16/how-to-create-a-promotional-snail-mail-campaign/

Lecture: Corporations "Just in Time" training, midterm quiz

Lab: Open lab to discuss and begin final project. You may continue with Captivate 5, or you can choose another multimedia interactive medium. You will need to create a tutorial that will demonstrate both your skill with the software, and your ability to quickly train the masses via a computer-based training system. It can be software or skills. We will discuss possible final projects.

Homework:

  • Create a project description on your website of your final project. You should be able to clearly describe the complete project. List media you will include, flowchart of pages, and planned target audience. Pretend you're going to pitch this idea to vc for funding. You will pitch to class next week.
  • Read Chapter 7 Slide notes, Text-to-speech, and closed captions (Widget to help reposition captions in Captivate 5). Captivate help: Adobe help (closed captions), Captain Captivate, and Captivate Tips.
  • Continue with work on your final project.
  • Student work: captivate example

 

Week 6:

Lecture: Creating a web app from scratch: http://css-tricks.com/examples/WebAppFromScratch/

Review of sites that teach something:

Now consider this: http://www.whfoods.com/. It's a non-profit that teaches about good food. It gives to the community, yet can generate revenue via donations. Can you picture yourself doing something comparable?

Lab:

Homework:

  • Research your final project online and develop a case study to present to class. Include your target audience, main form of instructional strategies, and a sample "similar" site, if possible. Post on your website and email me when I can read it. This is part of your final project's design documentation.
    You must convince me your final project will be worth 15 points of your grade.
    Remember you should always validate your reasons for creating a project (that there is a need) and that you are taking into account who you're designing for, and how you can best achieve your goals via multimedia and your skills learned in this program. Cite any supporting research using MLA style.
  • Read chapter 8 Powerpoint, Templates, and Master Slides

Week 7:

Lecture:

  • Design Document discussed. Weather permitting, we will probably do a field trip to the Main Library and do some research. Then use rest of today as lab time.

    Lab: lab

Homework:

 

Week 8:

Lecture: Project Management and Related Issues. The successful instructional design: http://www.instructionaldesign.org/. If we learn through the interactons with others, how can we build this into our projects? Creating a rubric and sample plan for your project.

Lab: Presentation of project to date. Create study guide to fit target audience. Discussion of the educational aspects built into your training project. Lab time to work on final project. Final Project rubric (how your project is graded). Construct support website.

Homework: Read Chapter 10 Pre-publishing and Chapter 11 Publishing your project

  • Continue work on final project design and physical materials (any adjunctive material to your web site, such as a study guide. Here's a site that develops study guides: http://www.studygs.net/. Another example: study guide .

Add the rubric and sample learning plan to your online website.

Helpful links:

http://lessonplanbuilder.org/lessons/help.cfm

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=WhatIs

Final project examples:

Week 9:

 

Lecture: no school

Small-group discussion of symbols in our society. Go to this site: http://www.symbols.com/ and find examples of symbols that denote: love, friendship, closing a door, and anything of your choice. How can symbols be more effective than text? Write a sentence using symbols - in class assignment.

Lab: Final project lab time and assistance. Sample runthrough of your final project for classroom discussion.

Final Exam study material:

Besides reviewing earlier lectures, here's some notes that may help you next week. ;-)

Principles for including media elements in computer based projects:

  • Words and graphics are more effective than just words alone (Multimedia Principle)
  • Place text next to the graphic for greatest impact (Contiguity Principle)
  • Learning is most effective when words are presented as audio narration rather than onscreen text (Modality Principle)
  • Sometimes presenting both text and audio narration can hurt learning. (Redundacy Principle)
  • Sometimes adding interesting material can hurt learning. Avoid extraneous material that does not directly add to the project. (Coherence Principle)
  • Use conversational words (rather than formal) and when applicable, virtual coaches. (Personalization Principle)

Principles for creating online practice exercises:

  • The interactions you create (navigation, sliders, buttons, etc.) should mirror what you are teaching. For instance, if you want to teach how to react in a certain environment, create a simulation. If it is something that requires rote memory, create mnemonic devices for the audience to learn and repeat.
  • If what you are teaching has a task that is critical or crucial to the process, give more time to practice within the project.
  • Apply the principles above ;-)
  • Help your learners help themselves. Try to include reflective questions during online lessons.
  • Besides online lessons and problems, include worked examples - show them your thought processes and how you got from one point to the other, as is relevant.
  • If possible, include collaborative exercises. Interactions with others will keep them online and help them assimilate the information.

Multimedia Key Steps for Instructional Design:

  • Perform a needs analysis. Identify what is the problem and need, analyze the target audience, and perform a cost/benefit analysis.
  • Determine the instructional strategy. Presentation, real life simulation, demonstration, repetitive practice. Modules? And how many? Ultimate goal (what you want them to learn)
  • Take a good look at your content. Put like material with like (chunking). Make sure all content serves a purpose to your learners' needs.
  • Make your objectives measurable. Quizzes and tests should measure whether or not your main objective is being achieved (both software and learning.)
  • An information flow chart helps A LOT!
  • Determine the gui look and feel but don't build yet (this is after you do all the structural, foundation work first.)
  • Create a software/interaction flow chart
  • Rough sketch each screen. Create storyboard.
  • Program the work, testing functions as you create. Add multimedia and graphics production work. Integrate the interface.

Homework: Complete your design documentation to include not only your research on target audience, instructional activities, testing and design considerations, but any "extra" material that you may want to include within your project: FAQ, technical requirements, research (very important), instructions for use, copyright, hardware/software needs, instructions to parents, etc.

Read Section 508 Accessibility tips and review Professional Tips and Tricks

Relevant Links:

 

Week 10:

Lecture:

  • Final project requirements reviewed. [final exam]

Lab:

 

Homework:

  • Continue work on final project. Due next week is the complete package: cd cover or advertisement, supporting materials (study guide) and the actual final project with pre- and post- questionnaires.

Link to grades: as of September 18, 2011

Week 11:

Lecture: Course closure and evaluation. Discussion of usability testing as applies to individual projects.

Lab: Presentation of final project design documents and evaluations (rubric) and critiques (evaluation).

Homework: None

Computer-based Training Winter 2012:

 

Roman Diaz: Final Project Proposal

Cynthia Kong: Homework | Final Project Proposal

Ian Sayre: Homework | Final Project Proposal

Oscar : Homework | Final Project Proposal

Melissa Picardo: Homework | Final Project Proposal

Ross Patton: Final Project Proposal

Ricky Navarro: Homework | Final Project Proposal

 
Past Student Projects:
Student Blog  
Mark Bugay  
Konstandinos Goumenidis  
Jenna Gerberding  
Max Harris  
Susan Lei  

Alfonse Surigao

Final project examples:

 

 

 

Interesting sites and readings

http://sizzlejs.com/

http://www.modernizr.com/

http://validator.nu/

http://tantek.com/favelets/

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/01/how-to-respond-effectively-to-design-criticism/

Statistics to keep in mind

Testing your site. https://browserlab.adobe.com/index.htm

  • ~ peace, polka and piwo

 

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