Day 1 was a huge hit with me (and hopefully everyone else!), and now we’re rolling into Day 2! Today’s the day when I’ll be speaking about all of my top tips for Articulate Storyline 360, but before that, I’ll be attending a bunch more sessions!
Keynote: Lori Silverman – Make Your Message Stick: Say It With a Story
Lori and I had a helpful discussion about presentation skills earlier in the week. That discussion left me excited to hear her keynote today because I know she’ll have a ton of actionable tips for us. She reached out to a ton of other folks, and she’ll be spending her keynote answering everyone’s questions!
When should we use stories? Lori says not when there’s a fire in your building! Stories in business are to move people to action. Today we have research to support the fact that story is a whole body and whole brain process. Lori wrote a book, Wake Me Up When the Data is Over, and when the book was finished, she had an ah-ha moment – there was no definition of story. She quickly met with industry experts to rectify that.
Good stories set the context, introduce the main character, resonates with everyone, and has a call to action. Different types of stories have different structures, depending on the message you want to get across.
The interesting thing about Lori’s session is that she answered all of her questions with a story.
Lori explains that we need to “free the story from the data”. The story is most impactful. In an example about donations where there are three groups, the group that only had the story, and none of the other stuff (e.g., data), had the most amount of donations. The story was what mattered most to those donating.
Hot take: Data visualizations are not insights. They are just data. Insights are meaning – the story.
Overall, Lori is clearly an expert in the world of story. When I spoke with her earlier in the week, one of the best pieces of advice she had for me was to take my stories on a walk. This is sage advice, though admittedly, I still struggle with this. After a baseball accident that left me with post-concussion syndrome, no matter how much I practice a presentation, or take my stories on a walk, I still have difficulty in being the storyteller/presenter I’ve always aspired to me. My brain still needs to lean on assistive technology. It’s extremely frustrating, and it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, but it’s still a struggle. Though according to Lori, a well-constructed story can carry a poor teller – so there may still be hope for me yet!
David Glow – LearnHacks: Slick Tricks and Wicked Moved for Learning Professionals
I will always remember one thing about David: At the very first conference I presented at, David made it a point to come to my room, introduce himself, and wish me luck – even though he couldn’t stay to attend the session. It meant a lot to me. When I saw that he was speaking at The Alchemy Lab, I had to grab a seat in his session!
On quick review of his slide deck, David has a ton of great tips he’s going to be sharing – one of which I too will be sharing in my session!
Congratulations, Glow Girls! It’s not a presentation from David without a kid shoutout! Also – I’m shocked to say I’ve seen your wife’s foot before!
Trick 1: Double-Click Format Painter
Double-clicking format painter allows you you to streamline your development in Storyline and Microsoft Office by letting you format paint multiple objects until you de-select the format painter. So many people don’t realize you can do this, and it saves so much time!
Trick 2: Coordinate Class Materials
In this next tip, David is sharing how to link Word and PowerPoint. This used to be called ‘send to Word’, but now when you go File > Export > Create Handouts > Select Paste link. This feature has been around for nearly 20 years! When you create the paste link, it creates a relationship between documents.
Trick 2.5: Go Boss Level
Now that you know how to link between PowerPoint and Word, David shows us how to go ‘boss level’ by selecting, in PowerPoint, “Notes Master”, move the notes area off the screen. Then, go View > Notes Page, the instructor notes appears on the side (off the page). Add a textbook for ‘Participant Notes’. Now, when you go to Print > Notes Page, you can print participant materials without showing the Instructor Notes. Very handy tip.
Trick 3: Show Impact
- ROI: Make it about Return, or they will focus on the Investment.
- Make Friends with Finance: Be a great partner to have great partnership – if you have that partnership, the finance folks will likely help you defend the ROI argument.
- Quiz First: A common opportunity for strong ROI. If we quiz first, we can identify deficiencies more clearly, which allows you to prioritize.
Trick 4: Slide Master Layers
David discusses how slide masters are under-utilized, and more specifically, slide master layers. He illustrates this by adding a chat button on every slide. To do this, the chat button is placed on a layer in the slide masters. The button is on one layer and the dialog box it brings up is on another layer. Anything put on a layer on the master slide will appear on all slides universally (if called upon to do so).
Trick 5: Sound Advice
I missed this one responding to someone’s question – whoops!
Trick 6: SCORM Cloud
If something isn’t working properly on someone’s LMS, the first order of business is to test it on SCORM Cloud as this will help you identify whether it’s environmental (the user’s environment), or the SCORM file. This is also a great place o host portfolio pieces.
Overall, David had some great tips, resources, and tricks, and I’m sure folks left with at least 1 new tip that they action right away!
Sam Rogers: Creating eLearning Videos That Don’t Suck
As someone who works very heavily in video-based courses, I’m intrigued by this topic. As someone who records a ton of screencasts, I’m hoping to take a tip or two from this session to help improve upon what I’m already doing with my screencasts. This will also be the last session of the day for me – mine follows, and then I have to duck out to finish supper and celebrate my husband’s birthday.
Sam begins by discussing his experience creating YouTube Certified videos, and he’s going to share some of his tips from the trenches with us. With e-learning, we’re helping people get from where they are to where they need to go. We want the content to make sense, but video really helps create emotional engagement which can increase attention and retention.
Creating quality e-learning videos is not about the tools. No matter how much you spend on video production, you can’t guarantee the quality of the video. Focus on the script. Focus on the learning objectives. Focus on the content that needs to be conveyed.
For e-learning videos, smartphones and tablets are usually sufficient. We want to create the smallest ‘effective dose’ when it comes to training videos, and I could not agree more. It’s the old nice to know vs. need to know argument. Giving people more than they need will only make them want to click off or skip ahead, and there’s very little learning in that!
Video Capture Tips:
- Turn your device – landscape mode
- Turn on Airplane Mode – just be a camera
- Click and hold screen with camera app open – AE/AF mode is accessible
- Don’t zoom in/out – this is just cropping things out; zoom by moving your body toward what you want to shoot
- Ensure your microphone is close enough to what it is recording – purchasing an external mic would be useful
- Position the mic accordingly – Use the Cindy Crawford mole position as a job aid
- Never shoot with effects – Filters are fun, but they have no place in training videos, and if you insist on them, apply the filters afterward – not while shooting
- Keep the light at your back
- Hold still – and avoid looking like a space shuttle that’s been hit
- If you don’t have a tripod, use the t-rex position (stand low, get stable, press record)
- Start, stop, move, repeat – Start recording, stop recording, move, start recording, etc.
- Play it back – watch the clip you recorded before moving on
- What to wear? Solid colour, not all black, not all white, no glasses, no flashy jewelry
- Where to look? Depends, but once you decide, commit – don’t change
Overall, Sam was fantastic – he delivered so many great tips that people can use with the devices they have on hand – we are all one step closer to being able to create high-quality e-learning videos!
Thank you again to the eLearning Alchemy team for putting this conference together (please do it again!)
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