In our most recent post, we looked at the pros and cons of outsourcing your e-learning development. In this post, we take a look at the pros and cons of keeping your development in-house...

Internal development: Pros

Total control over development

Unlike an outsourced team, you will have complete control over an in-house team and can manage the development process to a much greater degree, if you desire.

Organisational culture, content and processes

Members of an in-house team (assuming time served in the organisation) will have a much deeper understanding of all aspects of the organisation's culture, content and processes.

Less need for SME involvement 

Building on the previous point, you may not need to involve SMEs at all.

Internal development: Cons

Hiring and training team members

If you are creating a team from scratch or building on a small existing team, the time and costs involved in hiring new people, getting them trained and ready to go can be huge.

Team members leave 

Even with a good team in place, people can leave, go sick or otherwise leave you in the lurch just at a critical moment in the development process. You might find yourself repeating some of the activities and spending just outlined in the previous point.

Buying development software

As well as the cost of hiring and training, new software will have to be assessed, selected and bought. More time and money.

Speed of development

It may be that a small team simply can't go as fast as you would like, whereas an external supplier can scale a development team up or down according to need.

Keeping team members fully occupied

On a similar point, if you are spending money to create a new team, will there be a sufficient supply of work to keep them occupied and to justify the cost of hiring and training?

If you are just getting started with e-learning or thinking about using e-learning for the first time, check out our E-Learning Getting Started Guide.

There is never a one-size-fits-all solution to the question of whether to develop e-learning content in-house or to outsource to a third party.

If you are looking at moving over to a predominantly e-learning delivery model or you have experimented with e-learning delivery and now wish to ramp up development levels significantly, it's likely that investing time and money in getting the right software and creating your own in-house development time would be well worth your while.

However, for scenarios where you are just starting out with e-learning or you know you will only need limited amounts of content created on an ad hoc basis, you may well be better off outsourcing your production.

Either way, here are some of the pros and cons of outsourcing vs internal development:

Outsourcing development: Pros

Easy getting started

Although you will have to spend some time up front preparing a brief and communicating this to your chosen supplier, once this has been done and a timescale for development agreed, the project pretty much gets started without much fuss and bother

Minimal time and involvement 

Although you will clearly need to be involved and available, the project will effectively be run by one of the supplier's project managers. Your main involvement will be to review and request changes and liaise regularly to make sure all is going to plan.

Rapid development time

If you are in need of a speedy turn around, an external supplier can usually scale up their development team to meet a tighter deadline.

Scalable expert teams

Instructional designers, content writers, developers and designers are all involved at some point in the development of a piece of e-learning. An external supplier will have all these skilled resources readily available. 

Last minute changes

Although good planning should minimise the need for last-minute changes to content and interactivity, if they are necessary, an external supplier is likely to be better equipped to provide any additional skills or software that might be required.

Outsourcing development: Cons

Development costs

Under a supplier arrangement, you might ultimately reach a point where you had spent more money paying the supplier than if you had done the work in-house.

Potential for disappointing results

At the point you give a contract to a supplier, you will be confident in their ability to do the job. There is, however, always potential for disappointment. Perhaps things don't quite work out as expected or the quality  of the work is not quite up to standard.

Less control over development team

While a clear advantage of outsourcing is that you don't have to be so involved, if you are the kind of person who likes to micro-manage down to the last detail, this will undoubtedly  cause you frustration because you won't be able to do this to the same degree with an outsourced team.

Preparing a project brief

You will need to spend some time in the early stages creating a clear brief that is easily communicated to your supplier. However, it is likely you would need to do this with your in-house team, too.

Subject Matter Experts availability

Depending on the the kind of content being developed, your supplier may need frequent access to Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in your organisation to understand or clarify specific aspects of that content.

If you are thinking about outsourcing your e-learning, why not take a look at our Effective E-Learning Project Pack to get a clearer idea of what might be involved when working with a supplier like Pacific Blue.

Now, here's an interesting point that came up on one of our instructional design programmes recently. Is using animation in e-learning really effective? 

A good question. It's time-consuming to produce and depending on the length and sophistication of said animation, it may not come cheap. So should you bother? 

While I’d always counsel caution when it comes to looking at research, there are a couple of interesting studies done on this. One by Narayanan and Hegarty and the other by Mayer, Mathias and Werzell. 

In each study, two sets of learners were given identical lessons explaining a process - with one difference. One lesson showed the process using an animation and one showed the process using a sequence of still diagrams. At the end of the lesson each set of learners took the same test. 

What is so very interesting about this is the test results in both studies: no significant difference between the two sets of learners. In other words, the use of an animation didn't have any major impact on the effectiveness of the learning. 

Can we extrapolate out from that and say animations make no significant difference whatever the subject matter? That's probably a bit of a stretch. 

What we can say with some certainty, however, is that if your aim is to teach someone a process, spending a lot of money on creating an animated version of that process certainly doesn’t guarantee a significantly better learning outcome. 

However, what I find most interesting is that there was no significant difference between using still and animated visuals. This is not a case of saying, ‘don’t bother with well-designed and integrated graphical presentation’. 

What it does seem to be saying is that super-charging that graphical presentation, by animating it, won’t actually make a significant difference. 

When we talk about e-learning we can all get carried away with talk of making it engaging; and animations are one way we might choose to achieve that engagement. 

It’s always worth remembering that spending big on additional multimedia bells and whistles won’t necessarily have the positive impact on learning outcomes that we might wish for.

If you are looking for help with designing and/or developing a piece of e-learning, check out our service options.

This Articulate Storyline training blog post, fouses on Storyline’s freeform interactions.

But you may not know that totally flexible versions of these interactions are also available – and only a mouse click away.

These flexible freeform interactions completely transform your ability to create really authentic, context sensitive activities that are a world away from their pre-formatted siblings.

And knowing about these freeform interactions is crucial if you want to produce more authentic, task-based e-learning. Why? Because, by definition, the pre-formatted variety can only ever be about an abstract style of practice activity.

By contrast, freeform interactions are only about the functionality. It’s entirely up to you how you apply that functionality. In other words, you have complete freedom in how your interaction looks and what skills or knowledge it gets your learners to practice.

Suddenly (provided you are prepared to think a bit differently about your e-learning) you can use the interactions’ functionality to make your practice activity seem authentic and meaningful to your learners.

And by the way, if you need some help in thinking differently about your e-learning, check out a free 12 page boredom-busting e-learning guide here.

Freeform interaction benefits

So what about other benefits of using freeform interactions? Crucially, they allow you start with the instructional idea.

What is it you ideally want to create to help your learners get authentic practice in the skills you are teaching?

You can sketch the idea out, share it with others, get their feedback and then refine it a bit. Only then do you need to think about which of the interaction type will best help you to achieve your goal.

This is in complete contrast to the pre-formatted variety of interaction, where you are simply having to fit your content into a pre-existing approach, format and layout. Little or no creativity, authenticity or context. Highly abstract for the learners. Very dry. Extremely predictable.

Using freeform interactions: in summary

Just to recap, you start with your idea. Sketch it out and (where possible) share this with your colleagues and some candidate learners to get feedback and refine the idea.

Create the idea either as a standard Storyline slide or in an external tool such as PowerPoint and then import the content into Storyline.

With your slide all ready to go, choose the Freeform Interactions button in the XX menu. From the list that of interactions available, choose the one suitable for your needs.

Set the interaction’s functionality as required for your activity. Remember you van toggle between the slide view and the interaction’s back end form view as much as you need.

Once all the settings are complete, test your interaction.

So in summary, freeform interactions give you all the kind of e-learning interactions you know and love already – they simply provide you with a powerful, new way to apply them to your learning

This article first appeared on the Training Zone website.

In the previous Articulate Storylline training blog post, I explained what Storyline variables are and why they are so important. I also wrote about the three types of variables available for you to use.

In this blog post, there's a video which takes a look at an example of creating one of these three types of variables – a text variable: 

In summary, then, variables give you the power and flexibility to start thinking about how you can link you design across an entire course and break free of the restrictions of just designing on a slide-by-slide basis.

This video was first published as part of an article on the Training Zone website.

In some ways, this is not surprising. They are invisible to the learners (so don’t make for very glossy website visuals). They are a little bit abstract (not an easy thing for light and fluffy marketing types to get their heads around). And learning to use them takes a bit of concentration and effort (not exactly a great sell if you’re trying to persuade prospective clients that creating e-learning is quick and easy).

Which is a pity. Because one of Storyline’s greatest assets barely gets a mention most of the time.

Why variables are so important

So what are these things called variables? Before I explain that it’s worth mentioning why they might be so spectacularly useful and important.

 Most of what people focus on when they are creating e-learning with Storyline happens at slide level.

 In other words, you are using tools and features to control elements on a specific, individual slide. Of course, this is really important. The more functionality and control you have over what happens on an individual slide (or one of its layers) the better.

But imagine if you want to control what happens between slides. What about if your instructional design thinking is moving beyond a slide-by-slide focus. What about if you want to design your course in such a way that what a learner does on slide 5 has an impact on what they can do or what they can see on slide 25, for example?

This is where variables come into their own. Because variables operate at a global level within your Storyline course. They are available to you at any point in your course from any slide. 

Variables explained

So what are they exactly? Well, first of all, there are three types: text; number and true/ false. Think of the first two as containers and the third as a switch you can flick on and off.

As the name suggests, text variables allow you to store and retrieve a piece of text the learners type into it. Number variables allow you to store and retrieve a number or changing numbers that are relevant to your course. True/False variables can be set to equal one of two different values. It will come as no great shock to discover that the values you can switch between are (you guessed it) true and false!

If this is all still a bit, too conceptual for you, let’s take a look at a simple example of how you might use each one. 

Text variables in action

Let’s start with text variables. We all love it when something is “all about us”. Making something about us – personalisation – always goes down well. This is just as true for a piece of learning as for anything.

So a text variable is a great way to personalise your piece of learning. First you create your text variable and give it a name. At the start of a course, you can ask learners to type their name into a special text field. This automatically stores whatever name they type in the field inside the text variable you created.

While the course is running, this piece of text (in this example, the learners’ name) is available to you at any time on any slide – you just need to retrieve it.

So, for example, instead of an instruction on a screen saying, “Please select the best response”, it could say “Debbie, please select the best response” (assuming Debbie was the learner’s name).

When you create the text box with this instruction in it, you would just make sure you insert the name of your text variable at the start of the sentence. This way, you are telling Storyline to retrieve what’s stored in that variable and display it at the start of the sentence. 

This means you could pepper your course with personalised references to the learner using the learner name stored in the variable. Note that once the course is finished, the name stored in the variable is lost, so if the learner returned to the course a second time, they would have to type their name again at the very beginning. 

Number variables in action

Similarly, number variables can store a number, retrieve it and display it at any point. You can also add, subtract, divide and multiply any numbers stored in your number variable.

So you might, for example, want to keep track of the number of times a learner clicks on a particular button on a slide and when they reach a pre-defined number of clicks either show them a specific piece of content on that slide or take them to another slide. 

True/false variables in action

Finally, as previously mentioned, true/false variables act as a kind of switch. You can choose to start the ‘switch’ at either true or false. When the learner does something (like click on a button) you could set their action to flick the ‘switch’ to the opposite of its starting point (i.e. from false to true or from true to false).

When the learner reaches a slide later in the course, you might decide to show one piece of content on the slide if the variable ‘switch’ is set to false and a different piece of content if the variable ‘switch’ has been flicked to true.

In conclusion

In summary, then, variables give you the power and flexibility to start thinking about how you can link you design across an entire course and break free of the restrictions of just designing on a slide-by-slide basis.

This article was first published on the Training Zone website.

In the previous post on this blog about Articulate Storyline training, I wrote about Storyline masters and layouts, their uses and how they are different from templates.

There's also a short video to help explain the concept.

Below you can watch another short video showing masters and layouts in action:

If you'd like to watch more short videos providing training on Articulate's Storyline application, go to our YouTube channel.

This video first appeared as part of an article on the Training Zone  website.

Many people are familiar with the idea of a software template. This is a great way of providing some pre-existing structure for the creation of documents, PowerPoint presentations or pieces of e-learning.

And like many authoring tools, Storyline has template functionality, allowing you to create a high degree of consistency in how your courses look and function. In short, templates get plenty of attention – for very good reasons. 

However, software features that get lots of attention aren’t necessarily the only (or the best) way to achieve your goals. Many people using templates might be better off using a Storyline feature which tends to be overshadowed by templates: namely masters and layouts. 

Spot the difference

So what’s the difference between the two features and why would you bother with masters and layouts when you’ve already got templates to help you.

The key thing to remember about a Storyline template? It’s a way to save and share ALL elements of a Storyline project. When you decide to save a project (large or small) as a template, absolutely every element of that project is saved within the template – not only content, but also things like triggers, navigation, variables etc.

So you would use a template when you want to save the exact structure and functionality of your project. When you want to lock-down design and restrict flexibility. When you want to provide a complete course blueprint that others can work from. In short, templates are an easy and robust way of sharing a complete project and all its elements.

But what about if you like the idea of being able to create some time-saving consistency, but still need a reasonable degree of flexibility in how you create and populate slides within your project.

If this sounds like your goal, then masters and layouts may well be a better option for you than a template.

Masters and layouts explained

You’ve probably heard of a master slide and may already be clear about it’s function. But its likely you’ll be less clear about layouts and their function. So before we go any further here’s a quick video for you to watch explaining exactly what masters and layouts are all about. 

As you will have gathered from the video above, a master slide and its associated layouts provide an easy way to consistently set the placement of slide content and then apply it to selected slides within your course.

Let’s just take a minute to review masters slides first, followed by layouts

All about master slides

Master slides are great for any global content that needs to appear on every slide in your course. A master slide can save you going through your course and manually putting the same pieces of content onto every slide. And because the content on a master slide is managed centrally, the placement of that content will be precise and consistent throughout your course.

So master slides are extremely useful, but a little bit limiting. The reason for this? There is probably not that much identical content that will need to appear on every single slide of your course.

However, it’s quite likely that you will have quite a bit of identical content that does need to appear on certain individual slides, say, or all the slides in a specific scene. 

All about layouts

That’s why you can add layouts below your master slide. The real power of the master slide comes with its associated layouts. Layouts give you targeted control over and flexibility with the content that needs to appear on a given individual slide or slides in a scene.

It should come as no surprise, then that planning is the key to success with both masters and layouts. To get their real benefit, you need to have your course well planned out in advance, so you are clear from the word go which pieces of content will consistently need to appear where.

Some extra points to remember

There are a couple of other important points to make here. The first is that masters and layouts are not just about the consistent placement of content. You can also add triggers to the content on your masters and layouts making this functionality available on selected slides as well.

The second point is about the flexibility I mentioned earlier. Even when you have applied a master or layout to a slide, you can still add more content, triggers or layers to that individual slide.

So you’ll often end up with individual slides which are a flexible combination of preformatted content and triggers drawn from a master and its layouts and content and triggers which are specific to just that individual slide.

In summary, if what you need is flexibility and creativity and not the locked-down, restrictive approach that templates are designed to achieve, then masters and layouts are likely to be for you.

This article first appeared on the Training Zone website.

Increasingly, if you are working in a learning and development role associated with designing and developing e-learning, you’ll probably be expected to have some ability in using an authoring tool.

This should be good a thing. It increases your overall skill set and more important, it enables you to create more effective learning for your learners.

But what about if this isn’t what is happening. What about if your e-learning authoring tool is actually holding you back?

This might seem like an odd question to ask. Surely an ability to use an authoring tool will mean you are creating really effective e-learning. Not necessarily.

First, it’s your instructional design skills that should determine the effectiveness and quality of the e-learning you create.

But what about if you are not going down the road your instructional design leads you because you find yourself thinking, “No point in doing that because I’ve no idea how to implement it in my authoring tool. Better stick with a less ambitious design because I know how to do that.”

Hey presto, before you know it, your authoring tool is most definitely holding you back. The good news? It doesn’t have to be this way.

The problem with legacy authoring tools

Going back 10 or 15 years, most easy-to-use authoring tools were so limited in their functionality, they really restricted truly creative instructional design thinking.

Only if you were lucky enough to work in an organisation with a massive budget for creating e-learning and unrestricted access to programmers could you really pull off much that was original or really effective.

This is one of the key reasons we have had years of deathly boring e-learning. Lots of slides with dense text and stock photos. A Back and Next button applied to each slide – and not much else.

The emerging new breed of tools

Fortunately, the world of authoring tools is changing. While there are still far too many rubbish ones out there, we are seeing a new breed emerge. Much more powerful. Fantastic functionality. Much fewer limits on what you can achieve with your e-learning.

So here’s the rub. Lots of people using one of these new style of authoring tools don’t really know about some of the more powerful features available to them. Instead they are still churning out e-learning, barely removed from the deathly dull variety just described above.

What a pity! This is like owning a Porsche and only ever driving it around your local neighbourhood at about 20 miles an hour.

Getting the most from your authoring tool

So what’s the solution? Well, it’s twofold. First, you really need to make sure your instructional design thinking is up-to-date and fit for creating e-learning that is more focused on delivering practice of skills, than delivering screens of knowledge.

And, by the way, if you need some help with this, you can download a free 12 page guide to creating boredom-busting e-learning here.

Second, it’s time to up your game and start learning about the more powerful features of your authoring tool.

To help you with this, I’ll be writing three more articles focused around one of the most popular of this new breed of authoring tool, Articulate’s Storyline.

Why focus on Storyline?

Why the focus on Storyline? It may not be absolutely the most sophisticated and capable of all the tools out there, but it does offer a great balance between being relatively easy to learn and achieving well above average functionality and interaction.

In each of the articles that follow this one, I’ll be focusing on a different Storyline feature. Features that you’ve quite possibly heard of or maybe even used a little.

But you may not be aware of their real power and how they can help you create much more effective e-learning. Features which can really help liberate your instructional design thinking and save your learners from the boredom of endless knowledge presentation.

The best bit of all this? Once you feel confident in your ability to get your authoring tool to implement your instructional design ideas, it really will be your instructional design thinking that drives your development and not your authoring tool.

This will almost certainly make your role as an instructional designer more interesting and satisfying. It will also turn you into an e-learning hero in the eyes of your learners. Don’t underestimate how much they will thank you for NOT making them sit through hours and hours of dull, sleep-inducing e-learning!

This article first appeared on the Training Zone website.