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Wondering if serious games can make eLearning Exciting? Free Webinar on "ELearning: Where do serious games make most sense?" scheduled on Friday, September 12, 2013 at 10 AM PDT with Ross Smith. http://elearningindustry.com/wondering-if-serious-games-can-make-elearning-exciting

Interactive training videos are a form of media that eLearning can borrow from marketing. Interactive videos gained popularity in sales and marketing when Flash was a popular multimedia software platform to create digital media solutions. 

In this blog, we will explore how interactive videos can make your training more engaging.

What Is Interactive Training Video?
An Interactive training video is a multimedia recording that can support user interactions. Users can interact with the content, navigate the storyline, reveal their choices, etc. 

Interactive Training Video Vs. Linear Video
Linear video is the traditional form and most of us are familiar with it. The user can select play, pause, rewind, and fast forward the content in this type of video. On the other hand, an interactive training video allows the user to click, drag, scroll, swipe, and hover over the content revealing more details with each interaction. 

Functionalities Of Interactive Videos 
The most commonly used functionalities in interactive videos are:

Branching: It allows user control and personalizes the learning by allowing different paths and skipping irrelevant content. 
Click and reveal: It refers to clickable content which reveals more details as the learner progresses.
Hotspots: These are clickable areas within a video, which reveal a separate web page or content within the video. 
360-degree view: It allows the learners to get a 360-degree view of the object on the screen.
Forms: You can insert forms within the video, which allow the collection of user data.
Quizzes: Quizzes can be built into the video to deliver assessments and personalized results to the learner.  
These interactivities make viewing the videos an engaging experience. However, a great interactive video must be designed with the end-user in mind, and interactivity should be used only to enhance the user experience

Making SlideShare presentations accessible and immersive While being a blessing for many, SlideShare proves to be a difficult media for the share of population suffering from visual impairments, dyslexia, cognitive impairments, or analphabetism, due to its lack of audio feedback for the largest majority of the presentations. http://elearningindustry.com/making-slideshare-presentations-accessible-and-immersive

Effective Instructional Design Makes All the Difference: Free eLearning Book The success of any eLearning project rests primarily on effective instructional design, not just on a mix of technologies. Only eLearning that addresses the needs of learners and stakeholders and does it in ways that facilitate learning transfer, knowledge retention, and skills development has any significant value. http://elearningindustry.com/effective-instructional-design-makes-all-the-difference-free-elearning-book

Have you heard of Opus Pro? At this post I will reveal the secret that was well kept since 1995! elearning Brothers - eLearning games, challenges, flash templates, and development Well Kept Secret since 1995 Opus Pro is a multi-faceted development tool which has been around for over 15 years and yet you've probably never heard of it as it has only recently focussed on the elearning market. It has a wide range of uses from interactive presentations to database applications but throughout its history it has been used regularly for training materials - especially simulations of everything from rig management software to artillery gunnery. It seems that the developers of Digital Workshop have worked closely with customers to understand their actual requirements and base the new features on making those easier to achieve. The result is a set of unusual features to provide everyday requirements automatically and yet offer the flexibility to make even sophisticated functions easy.

Must Learning Be Boring? Why Not Ask, How Can We Make Classrooms and Homework Fun? How many of you adults, when you were growing up, were forced by your parents to turn off the tube, and get back to your homework? Is that because television is often more stimulating? Sure, but must that remain so, forevermore? Can't we extract the useful aspects of multimedia, and leave the rest? Of course we can. Learning should be ignited by passion for learning and mastery, combined with equal measures of healthy competition and playfulness. Dopamine, and the power of habit, are powerful drivers of both individual and group achievement.

Elearning makes sense economically and logistically It is the cheapest way to get a clear, consistent message to the most people in the least amount of time. For those of us working with clients in IT or healthcare, what better way to educate workers on the use of technology than to use technology to do the job? We've been using elearning to train workers across all industries in some skills, particularly manufacturing line workers in processes or transactional workers in soft skills. But this trend is accelerating and spreading beyond line workers and manufacturing workers on the floor, and now reaches to the upper echelons of the corporate hierarchy. Today, we are using many elearning modalities to educate, inform and transform at all levels of the organization - webinars, online courses, videos, e-modules, pdfs, list servs - the list goes on and on and on. Any type of computer-based learning from your laptop, your iPad or your smart phone, anything you can grab from the web, download, participate in virtually, log onto or phone into, is elearning. As one particular case in point, healthcare workers in all phases of the industry from surgeons to receptionists are being asked to change their work processes to seamlessly incorporate the use of information technology to provide better patient care. It only makes sense that one of the ways to migrate these workers to the effective use of technology is to also educate them using those same tools.

Teach Students How to Be Their Own Teachers! As I write these words, hundreds of non-profits and entrepreneurs are busy in their studies or garages, developing new educational resources designed to reach large numbers of students across the global village. Those resources-- and their accessibility, will make it possible for kids to teach themselves. Whether is design married to technology, or brilliant teachers reaching the minds and souls of their students, those things gain power when they are made accessible through cloud technology. Now a Multitude of Educators Can Reach Millions of Students The cloud brings students to the teachers, but it also brings teachers to the students. More teachers can reach out to students than ever before. And the students can now learn from a multitude of teachers and mentors, not only in the classroom, but everywhere that they go. For the first time in history, cloud technology makes learning truly accessible to students--not only in the classroom, but also just about everywhere else on the planet.

Some useful tools for making infographics.

"This is the sixth and final post in a series of six that covers Deeper eLearning. The goal of this series is to build upon good implementations of instructional design, and go deeper into the nuances of what makes learning really work. It is particularly focused on eLearning, but much of what has been mentioned also applies to face-to-face or virtual instruction. We've covered objectives, practice, concepts, examples, and the emotional component. Here we're talking about putting it all together."

This is the sixth and final post in a series of six that covers Deeper eLearning. The goal of this series is to build upon good implementations of instructional design, and go deeper into the nuances of what makes learning really work. It is particularly focused on eLearning, but much of what has been mentioned also applies to face-to-face or virtual instruction.

"Maybe you're new to the e-Learning industry, and all of this online training development language is unfamiliar to you-or maybe you've been in the industry for years, and you're always discovering new trends and techniques to make your e-Learning development even better. Either way, if you've thought "Hmm, that's a new term!" recently, then this post is for you! "

The newest version of eLearning protocol is upon us - are you ready to take the the plunge? For those of you who don't know yet, the eLearning protocol SCORM is going through a massive make-over, specifically from SCORM v1.2/2004 to what is currently being labeled as Tin-Can API. The overhaul is so significant that it will likely reshape the way we record, track, and administer eLearning for years to come. Admittedly, this change will take some time to gain momentum, but with early adopters such as Articulate (and the less vocal Adobe Captivate) jumping on board, all the pieces are in place for this new standard to flourish. So what's so different about Tin-Can compared to the previous standards?

It wasn't a surprise that Google decided to launched an open source authoring tool after the explosion of available Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Google knows better than all how to make a tone of money by providing its services for free. They question is will be successful at the billion dollar plus eLearning Industry?

How important is employee training to your company's success? Is it seen as a strategic enabler of the company's business goals, or as a costly endeavor that offers little bottom-line return? Studies have shown this one perception to have an enormous impact on the success of an organization. It appears that there is a direct correlation between how a company's executives view employee training and the overall success of the company.

Extending eLearning to Partners, Vendors, Clients and Beyond Make no mistake; we are well-ensconced in the age of electronic instruction and digital learning. And we can thank advances in technology and high-speed data networks for much of the training that is now at our fingertips. http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/general/item/386-extending-elearning-to-partners,-vendors,-clients-and-beyond

A Learning Strategy: Reaching Organizational Goals This article presents ideas meant to be shared with others in the organization. It provides you with an opportunity to make the time to think about what the organization's learning needs are, and how each department offers opportunities for learning to staff. Finally it will help you to evaluate your organization's learning strategy, and philosophy toward learning. http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/concepts/item/455-a-learning-strategy-reaching-organizational-goals

eLearning Authoring Tools Check List of Features Are you looking for a new tool for authoring eLearning? Such tools vary widely in their capabilities. Many are specialists - converting PowerPoint presentations, capturing screens, preparing quizzes and assessments, developing mobile modules, etc. Some are desktop programs for individual use and others are web-based for collaborative authoring. A few are fairly comprehensive. This is a check list of possible features that you might look for when making a decision about an eLearning authoring program. Very few offer all of these. Those that are essential, nice to have, or not important will be a function of your particular needs. This is a work-in-progress that can be discussed at this post What are the most important features in an eLearning Authoring Tool? http://elearningindustry.com/elearning-authoring-tools-check-list-of-features

A New Way to Enable Today's Experts and Learners Typical learning systems tend to focus on the development of traditional training, deployment of learning content, and logistics of learning events. However, they do little to capture and retain valuable business knowledge. For many of today's businesses, this knowledge is not just about how to conduct transactions but how, when, and why to utilize these transactions within their business process. It's also about employees being able to make the best decisions and being able to apply operational talents and expertise to the ultimate practice of the business - satisfying and delighting customers and constituents. http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/companies/item/419-new-way-experts-learners-learning-training

Are you still wondering what HTML5 is? Trying to figure out if Flash or HTML5 is better for you? Will your organization be able to make the transition?

LearnDash Bringing Tin-Can API to WordPress By now you have undoubtedly heard about Tin-Can API, the new protocol set to replace SCORM. There are many benefits for Tin-Can, the biggest being its ability to record learning outside the restrictions of a browser window. This "light weight" factor of Tin-Can makes it very versatile, so it was only a matter of time until we started seeing it incorporated in many different ways. http://elearningindustry.com/learndash-bringing-tin-can-api-to-wordpress