No Big Words Please!

Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you that I'm an advocate of simplicity. I like the stuff I read to be easy to understand and the things I look at to be easy on the eyes. In other words I despise the overuse of big words and I hate e-learning screens that are a cluttered busy mess. In this post we will focus our attention on the use of big words in elearning, and save the cluttered screen topic for a future post.

Now I happen to work for Corporate America, who in my humble opinion is enemy #1 when it comes to using big words, so I'm constantly saturated with this written vomit. Check out this example which was pulled from an actual corporate email sent to employees.

"As we execute on our 2010 key deliverables, current stakeholder analysis reveals that opportunity exists in the realm of key performance indicators. Company Core Values are cornerstone to executing on our competencies and methodologies, with a focus on business acumen and key company deliverables".

Reading something like this makes me want to (for a lack of a better word) puke! And that's putting it nicely. Why people insist on writing like this will stump me until the day I die! Did they get a new dictionary or thesaurus and thought it appropriate to load their writing with as many big impressive words as possible? Is the 'big word' fairy holding their family hostage demanding they use these words or else? I just don't get it.

I implore you as a developer NOT to write like this, and I used bold caps on NOT with great purpose and intent. Nothing will turn off your viewer quicker than verbosity (or big words). Don't want to take my word for it? Consider the following from perhaps more credible sources:

• "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." ~ Leonardo DaVinci
• "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." ~ Confucius
• "Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” ~ Albert Einstein

Let's backtrack now and explore how we might better write that monstrosity of paragraph we looked at earlier. Here's my attempt at it:

"Becoming more familiar with our overall business and continuing to follow the policies and practices we have in place will help us meet our 2010 goals".

Notice the exclusion of all the big unnecessary words. All of the following were left out: execute, key deliverables, stakeholder analysis, key performance indicators, competencies, methodologies, business acumen, etc.

In closing, those big fancy words may impress at the staff meeting, but they won't in an e-Learning course. Consider writing your courses so a 6th or 7th grader can read it (That's an 11 or 12 year old). Make your course an 'easy-read' and don't force your reader to pull out a dictionary to figure out what you're saying. Your anal retentive, corporate big-word using SME might not appreciate it, but your audience sure will.

Free Articulate iPad Course..Come And Get It!

I know what you're thinking out there my Articulate peeps! You're short on time and ideas and not only could use some inspiration, but also something pre-built to give you a head-start on your development efforts. Well, look no further, I have your solution.

With this post I offer you (FREE of charge) a pre-built Articulate iPad course for your development pleasure. It includes graphics, animations and syncing all built in, Now all you have to do is open it up, add your content, tinker with your additions then kick back and take all the credit as your peers, manager and stake-holders marvel at your accomplishments.

The iPad was built completely using the shape tools available right in PowerPoint, and the people graphics are standard clipart so if you use them rest-easy when it comes to any copyright worries.

If you use this course leave a comment below or shoot me an email and let me know how it worked for you. ENJOY!

Rules Are Made To Be Broken!

I'm currently in a debate with a colleague at work about the appropriateness of audio narrative in e-learning courses. My colleague stumbled across an online article where research and studies have shown that adding narrative in e-learning is wrong and actually hinders learning. (Here's the article he was referencing). This comes from Cathy Moore's 'Making Change' e-learning blog, which I do subscribe to, so this post in no way is meant to disparage that blog or the information it contains. In fact I really enjoy this blog and the information it provides. With that said....

I'm not like my colleague who tends to be a rule follower and when he reads something like this he automatically takes it as the gospel and starts adhering to it. I tend to challenge and question studies like this, hence our current debate. I've taken many narrated courses in my time and many of them I enjoyed and found very effective, so how can these courses be wrong? How can I be wrong? I'm never wrong!

I happen to think that if the user can hear the narrative articulated it can squelch much of the misinterpretation that occurs when you leave the reading to the user. Tone and manner, inflection, phrasing, emphasis and more can all be achieved through narration so I tend to disagree somewhat with this article and claim.

The only aspect of this article I do completely agree with is that it's better to have images and short succint text accompany narration, rather than having the word-for-word narrative appear on the screen while it's also being spoken.

Here's an article on how narration in e-Learning can be a good thing. So who's right here? The post that opposes it, or the post that promotes it? Perhaps there is no clear right or wrong answer? Which is exactly my point.

I'm writing this post to encourage you to not always follow the rules. Studies are great and all that, but sometimes they just get in the way of creativity. If everyone followed the rules then we'd all be a bunch of robots building nothing but cookie-cutter courses and what fun would that be? Take a risk people, buck the trend, question studies and don't be affraid to break the rules. Compliance is over-rated!

Now if I could just get my colleage to buy what I'm selling I could win our ongoing debate. What do you think? Click the 'Comment' link at the bottom of this post and let me know.

Free e-Learning PowerPoint

Hello e-Learning peeps! In my random browsing I've run across a few sites that offer free e-learning PowerPoint templates for those that use a product like Articulate Presenter to develop e-Learning. Many of the sites charge for these and in some cases it's upward of $100.

I decided to take a crack at this and would like to offer this PowerPoint for FREE. I had Articulate users in mind when I developed it, but it should work with any PowerPoint to e-Learning tool you utilize. Please note that it is void of animation and navigation, so you'll have to insert that yourself. This PowerPoint is designed to kick-start the layout design of your e-Learning course. Included in the PowerPoint are various text effects, call-out boxes and more.

You can easily change the layout, color or any aspect of the template in the slide master or on the individual slides. I used an orange & gray theme in this template but you can easily change the colors to match your organizations brand.

As an added convenience, all images in this PowerPoint are pulled from Clip Art (Some I slightly modified) but they are royalty free and can be used at will.

CLICK HERE to download the PowerPoint, and please leave a comment or shoot me an email and let me know if this was useful, or a complete waste of time.  ENJOY!