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Presentations

I’m Speaking at DevLearn on Accessibility Techniques for Elearning

Come see me speak at DevLearn 2023 on accessibility strategies for elearning! My session is #407 – Accessibility for eLearning: Quick and Easy Techniques to Apply Right Away. Meet me Thursday, October 26, at 10:45 am at The Mirage in Las Vegas! Watch my session trailer: Session Description Accessibility is possible in your eLearning. With […]

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10 Mistakes in Elearning Design

10 Mistakes in Elearning Design: Obvious or Confusing Quiz Answers

Last time we talked about the horror of dead-end quiz questions. When left to the default setting “infinite tries,” quiz questions can be a trap with no escape. Drag and drops, in particular, are a nightmare when attempts are not limited. But any poorly-written quiz question is a problem, and quizzes are too often left […]

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10 Mistakes in Elearning Design

10 Mistakes in Elearning Design: Dead-End Quiz Questions

Navigation design, visual design, auditory design – these are all important! But I think my biggest frustrations as a learner have come from poorly designed quizzes. There’s nothing like encountering an overly difficult quiz question and then getting stuck there, so close to the end, and yet so far! So let’s chat today about quiz […]

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10 Mistakes in Elearning Design

10 Mistakes in Elearning Design: Robot As Narrator

Last time we started talking about voiceover. Voiceover is a solid feature that can elevate a learning experience. Problems come when the narrator is reading a slide aloud and boring the learner, or when the voiceover narration is outsourced to…a robot! This is the eighth post in my series, 10 Mistakes in Elearning Design. Here’s […]

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10 Mistakes in Elearning Design

10 Mistakes in Elearning Design: Slides Are Read Aloud

Today we are moving on to frequent mistakes I see in Auditory Design! Let’s talk about voiceover. Voiceover can add a human element to elearning, making it more engaging for the learner. Voiceover can be a wonderful strategy to better deliver content to a learner. Combined with simple visuals, it’s a great way to explain […]

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10 Mistakes in Elearning Design

10 Mistakes in Elearning Design: Objects Are Unaligned

Alignment! Alignment is often the sole difference between amateur and professional. Tiny misalignments quickly lend a feel of something being…off…about a design. Even if it’s only a pixel or two! But no worries, it’s an easy fix. PowerPoint, Storyline, and Captivate all have built-in tools to fix alignment of your objects. This is the sixth […]

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Captivate

Create a Drag and Drop in Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate’s Drag and Drop Wizard is intimidating! But I’ll walk you through creating a fun, color-coded drag and drop. I’ll also let you in on a secret: there are tons of backend settings to make your Drag and Drop super customized!

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Instructional Design Librarian Professional Development

Recommended Websites, Conferences, Podcasts, Professional Organizations, & Social Media Groups for Instructional Design and Elearning

Occasionally I get asked by new instructional designers what websites they should check out, what podcasts I like, what conferences are good to attend. Here’s my official list of recommendations for instructional design and elearning websites, conferences, podcasts, professional organizations, and social media groups. Websites Experiencing E-Learning by Christy Tucker Christy is a freelance ID pro. […]

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"How To" Guides H5Pessentials

H5P Essentials 2: Create Your First Project

In my first H5P Essentials post, I gave you an introduction and overview of H5P. In this post, we’re going to get our feet wet by diving into developing a Course Presentation using H5P. As I mentioned in Get Started with H5P, the Course Presentation format is my personal favorite because it allows creation of […]

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"How To" Guides

Online Learning in Academic Libraries: Showcase of Library Tutorials

When I was a new Instructional Design Librarian in 2014 I sought out examples of great online tutorials from other academic libraries to get ideas for what our own library should have. Our library at the time was seriously lacking in online learning. When I joined the library, the newest YouTube videos were four years […]

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eLearning Show Your Work Virtual Reality

Two Virtual Reality Projects Built With Adobe Captivate 2019

I’ve written previously about how intrigued I was by the newest version of Adobe Captivate, which now supports 360 images and facilitates creation of interactive virtual reality learning experiences, if they’re a bit limited yet in functionality. I’ve also written about my goal of “Showing My Work” in creating a wilderness survival virtual reality game […]

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"How To" Guides Blog H5Pessentials

H5P Essentials 1: Get Started with H5P

H5P is an elearning game-changer. Previously, interactive lessons were only possible with expensive and proprietary software, “freemium” online platforms that come and go like the wind, or advanced HTML and Javascript programming knowledge. Now, H5P allows anyone to create advanced and instructionally sound interactive online lessons from within the web browser. Lessons can be downloaded, […]

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Explainer

Hosting your Captivate or Storyline courses for free

So you’ve developed a fabulous course using Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline. Now, you want to show it off. Maybe you want to feature it in your elearning portfolio, or send it to your subject matter expert for review. It’s clunky, to say the least, to send over the zipped version of your published course. […]

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"How To" Guides Accessibility Open Education Video

Videos for Learning in H5P

If you know anything about me, you know that I love H5P! This is a free and open software for easily crafting interactive tutorials and learning objects. Create an account instantly over at H5P.org. You can incorporate both standard and interactive videos into your learning content using H5P. Either format may be made fully accessible.* […]

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eLearning Instructional Design Librarian My Work

Creating a Leaderboard with Storyline AND Google Sheets Web App

In my last post, I talked about how I created a single-session leaderboard from scratch in Storyline. I just couldn’t help myself and I decided to keep working on it. The single-session version of the leaderboard was pre-populated with names to give the sense of competition, but scores were only stored in that browser during […]

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Explainer

Publishing and Viewing Courses: What’s the deal with Flash and HTML5?

If you’re new to elearning development, or using Storyline or Captivate for the first time, you may have struggled to learn the software only to experience new issues when trying to view your first published course. Viewing your courses locally (i.e. viewing local files in your browser) is more challenging than ever as browsers continue to […]

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Blog

Free Downloads are Here!

I’ve added a Free Downloads page to my website – previously visitors had to hunt for my free templates in my Portfolio. Use and reuse these files for free under the terms of the Creative Commons license assigned to each. I will continually be adding templates to this section, so come back often. Please cite […]

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"How To" Guides Blog eLearning

Get Started With Camtasia

New to eLearning Development? Read this first! I love Camtasia! I use it regularly for anything from simple screen recordings to long informational videos. All of the videos on my YouTube Channel were created with Camtasia. Camtasia is a video editing program, but you can create surprisingly robust interactive mini-courses using its hotspots feature. Whether […]

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"How To" Guides Blog Instructional Design Librarian

Get Started With Captivate

New to eLearning Development? Read this first! Adobe Captivate 9 is very powerful authoring software. It’s also very challenging to learn. Sure, you can easily pick up how to do screen recordings, but to create interactive tutorials you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves! Captivate is similar to Storyline, but it does not […]

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"How To" Guides Blog eLearning

Get Started With Storyline

New to eLearning Development? Read this first! I love Storyline! It’s the authoring software I use most often. I used it for creating the Spark Tutorials and for several of the items in my Portfolio. Storyline is fairly easy to learn. Because it’s similar to PowerPoint, you can use Storyline to make something as simple […]

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"How To" Guides Blog eLearning Graphic Design Instructional Design

So You Want to Get Started With eLearning Development

I love developing eLearning! It’s one of my favorite parts of my job. I developed my first Camtasia video as a library intern, and then dove deep into Camtasia, Storyline, and Adobe Captivate as a student in my master of educational technology program. Now, I use Camtasia and Storyline regularly to design info lit and […]