... new fangled rapid e-learning tools that everyone's talking about (I know, I'm a little slow on the uptake!). Well anyway ... recommend this particular tool to develop long pieces of self-study learning, I don't believe there are many circumstances in which I would recommend anyone to do that anymore anyway. So call me a rapid e-learning convert. ... I'm in the middle of designing and developing a new blended learning course on the whole subject of embedded learning/performance support. The course will consist of some synchronous and asynchronous online activities and a ...

I'm enjoying Tom Kuhlman's new Rapid e-Learning Blog . Considering it's a sort-of-corporate-blog for Articulate, it's ... Insider's Guide to Becoming a Rapid e-Learning Pro . So useful, in fact, that some 6000 people had downloaded it within 24 ... professionals', a focus which continues to puzzle me. Surely the idea behind rapid e-learning was that SMEs would do the work ... , simulations, games, 3D worlds and imaginative blended solutions? Isn't the idea of rapid e-learning that we have rapid development, not just rapid tools? Here are two definitions I found which endorse this view: "Rapid e-learning is courseware ...

I attended the panel discussion on 'the future of rapid e-learning tools' at the eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering in Boston today with a misunderstanding. I thought I knew what 'rapid e-learning' meant. After all, LTI Magazine defined raid e-learning as "courseware (live or self-paced) developed in less than three weeks, where SMEs act as the primary ... all -it's e-learning people looking to knock up something quick and dirty (my words not their's). One member of the ... reflected badly on the training department. Whatever, it's clear that even the e-learning professionals aren't ...

Tom Kuhlmann's excellent Rapid e-Learning Blog attempts to capture What everybody ought to know about PowerPoint in one posting, and makes a good start. I agree fundamentally with Tom that PowerPoint is not an evil - it is a highly versatile tool that is more often than not used very poorly. Much as some of us like to blame all the world's ills on Microsoft, they are not responsible for all those mind-numbing presentations that we all have to endure. We all are - we accept ... rapid e-learning module can be integrated with collaborative tools such as polls, surveys, wikis, etc. Keep at it ...

... to try out last week was the formal debate. The event was a one-day conference run by the eLearning Network on rapid e-learning. The debate ran for one hour in the afternoon and worked like this: A motion was proposed, in this case 'that rapid e-learning represents as much a threat to the e-learning community as it does an opportunity'. Two ... . As for the result of the debate itself, well the audience voted pretty convincingly against the motion - rapid e-learning does pose some risks, but they  are easily outweighed by the opportunities.

... principles apply as much to e-learning as they do to automobiles, restaurants or plastic surgeons. How so? Well, while chairing a track at Learning Technologies 2008 last week, I found myself at odds with one of the speakers who, although a fervent supporter of the concept of rapid e-learning, would not countenance the idea that any Tom, Dick or Harry ... allowed to express their preference. Of course, if rapid e-learning content is simply made available through an LMS in the ... predictable and this could bring e-learning in general into disrepute? I disagreed. After all, variabilities in quality ...

On Wednesday, at the eLearning Guild's DevLearn conference in San Jose, I spoke about the progress that's been made with the 30-minute masters project . So much progress, in fact, that it's become the 60-minute masters. Rapid developers Kineo took the 30-minute masters scripts and built a rapid e-learning course out of it - the trouble is no-one ... minutes is still a modest amount of time for an SME to spend to learn the essentials of design for rapid e-learning ... participant at my session - sorry I didn't catch the name - suggested that we reflect on how it could be that, as e ...

... remind me of? Rapid photo albums, rapid home movies, rapid dance music, rapid print design, rapid e-learning. What's the ... my personal life (do you?) so let me bring this round to e-learning. For my present I collected a selection of photos ... professional and the enthusiastic amateur. But most tasks are not that difficult, much as we as professionals (e-learning in ... . But is that what most e-learning designers are doing - the really tricky jobs? I doubt it. ... . To qualify all you need is a cheap home PC and some cheap software. Millions are doing it. They don't expect e ...

... programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?" Well, there's an assumption underlying this and I'm questioning it. Who says e-learning materials that take a long time to produce are necessarily high quality, let alone relevant or effective? There isn't a member of the e-learning community who hasn't worked on projects that were over-engineered, over budget ... that the development of interactive e-learning materials, where these are clearly needed, should always be rapid. The ... . However, the occasions on which these are needed are not that frequent and, even then, the use of e-learning must ...

I presented yesterday in London at the conference of the Learning and Skills Group on the subject of rapid e-content creation. As part of my session I asked the group to rate their proficiency in each of these skills: Using a digital camera Editing photos Using a camcorder Editing movies Writing textual content Laying out textual content Creating graphics Building presentations Recording audio Editing audio The rating scale was as follows: Five stars - professional Four stars - enthusiast Three stars - ...

In my post last week, Whatever happened to inductive learning?, I complained how difficult it was with current rapid development tools to write more conversational inductive questions in which you as author are able to comment on each selection that the user makes. This facility is important because (1) with inductive questions, you are building on a user's past experience rather than assessing knowledge, so the idea that an answer is correct or incorrect is of no relevance, (2) even if you are assessing, in many cases there are no 'right' answers, just different perspectives, and (3) ...

I've got the new Adobe Presenter 7 on a month's trial and have spent the past hour giving it a thorough working over. I'm interested in this sort of PowerPoint-based tool both for myself, because I like to package up my presentations with audio for web delivery, but also because I meet so many trainers who want to produce some simple e-content for themselves and want the process to be as simple as possible. Presenter 7 installs as a PowerPoint add-on (including the 07 ... is what rapid development tools need to be like if teachers and trainers are going to do it for themselves.

Shackleton-Jones of the BBC. The pyramid shows how high-end e-content can integrate with rapid content and user-generated content within an overall strategy working from both the bottom up and the top down: At the eLearning Network 's ... to make the point: "It's not the fastest of the e-learning that survives, not the flashiest, but the most ... boundaries between the three tiers of the pyramid are all that distinct. Nicola's proposition was that, while rapid content ... strength, co-ordination, responsiveness, speed and balance - qualities that could be applied successfully to ...

... one stage designing) more sophisticated e-learning authoring tools - you know, the highly configurable ones with their own scripting languages - I now find myself turning more and more often to the so-called rapid development tools. These ... in the form of short learning objects which can be deployed in versatile ways for reference, in a classroom or, more likely, as ingredients in a blended learning course. When e-content is used in this way, you don't want it to come with a ... for the rest of us, as we approach 2009, we're looking for something different: a very modest learning ...

On January 3rd I laid out my e-learning predictions for 2008 . One of these was: "We'll see more online rapid e-learning authoring environments come on the market, perhaps even open source." I was either inspired or lucky (you choose) because since then a beta of RapideL-i was announced and then earlier this week I was treated to a sneak preview of a new tool called Unison from Rapid Intake , the makers of Flashform. Full details of this product ... some eyebrows. These products will provide further competition for two online rapid e-learning authoring tools ...

In Boston, Cammy Bean and I were discussing what SMEs (subject matter experts) would need to know if they were to try and produce effective rapid e-learning materials. Cammy suggested that we (the interested members of the blogging community) should co-operate in coming up with a curriculum, perhaps using a wiki. Well, I thought that was a great idea, and took away the action step of setting up the wiki and populating it with initial content. That I have done and you can ... for what may become a short course to train subject-matter experts in the design of rapid e-learning materials for ...

... tools have become synonymous with the very concept of rapid e-learning. And Articulate is the global leader in rapid e-learning. Ergo, Articulate is rapid e-learning. I don't fault Gabe for saying that "rapid development authoring tools" are synonymous with "rapid e-learning." Unforuntately, that's mostly what people are saying when they use the term ... this isn't just "Rapid eLearning" - a term that simultaneously is good and bad. First the good. Rapid eLearning is on the mark in terms of the demands on learning professionals - Learning Trends Point To and Shape eLearning 2.0 - ...

Back in April I initiated, with Cammy Bean , the 30-minute masters project (see original posting ), the purpose of which was to develop a curriculum to train subject-matter experts in the design of rapid e-learning materials for use in the workplace. To encourage the support of the wider community of learning bloggers, I set up a 30-minute masters wiki with the initial aim of developing a content outline for the curriculum. To my mind this aim has been achieved ... script based on the content outline. Hopefully this script can then, in turn, be developed into an exemplar rapid e-learning ...

... more online rapid e-learning authoring environments come onto the market and the reason I claimed that this prediction was ... , of course, services like those offered by Brandon-Hall or the eLearning Guild . Stephen Downes also rightly reminded me that an online rapid e-learning authoring environment was an idea that "... would have been revolutionary a ... products, Unison from Rapid Intake and RapideL-i . I suppose it was only to be expected that other tools were on the market ... if you look at the eLearning Guild's recent survey of authoring tools, but they're certainly not so novel an idea.

I don't know where this appeared from or why but it seems that Microsoft has a rapid e-learning development tool. It's available for free download and there don't seem to be any strings attached. I'm not completely convinced because there's very little information about this product and it certainly isn't being marketed heavily. My best guess is that this is a tool used by Microsoft itself or by one of its contracted developers, and someone suggested making it more widely ... builder, a selection of learning games and Flash import, and exports to SCORM 1.2 (although I couldn't get my ...

Two discussions this week, one with rapid e-learning specialist Kineo 's Steve Rayson and the other with virtual world developer Caspian 's Graeme Duncan, has crystallised for me how the bespoke/custom e-learning market in the UK is ... from a few hours to a few weeks, and the cost is likely to be well under $10K. The higher tier is e-learning that ... and attention of professionals, typically working as teams of specialists. You would expect e-learning content at this ... asynchronous e-learning to recover its rather tarnished image. The lower-tier will get the job done quickly and ...

... how it works! The trouble is, inductive learning doesn't seem to have been what the developers had in mind when they designed the latest generation of  rapid e-learning authoring tools. Over the past few days, I've been testing out ... another option.] Create a short e-learning module [I know, this is bound to be our favourite option - after all ... When it comes to writing interactive learning materials, I've always preferred a particular approach and have used ... simple, off-the-shelf authoring tool. If all we can achieve with rapid tools is tell and test, then I am going to go ...

I must confess to being more than a little baffled by the aversion of the e-learning community to the concept of a ... so many online learning materials, and the idea of progressing through these in sequence makes a lot of sense when there's a logical flow to the learning strategy and when exploration isn't a critical element, as it would be with a ... is this boring, no way is this a limited learning offering. What about the lack of interactivity? Now I'd be the first ... careful exposition and exploration, and when you need to be able to assess that learning is taking place. That leaves ...

Presentation: No Compromises Rapid eLearning Presenter: Tom Kuhlmann Rapid eLearning tools have democratized learning ... brand new person. Now you have first generation of rapid e-learning authors who want to do more.... - The form-based ... - Free-form - Can be very hard to use - high learning curve - Speed of delivery. May take (a lot) more time to develop. Rapid eLearning - because using a form, most think isn't interactive beyond the Next button. - Even though you are still ... have to look at it from an eLearning perspective. - Templating also nice - can provide form element. Pros - ...

Corporate eLearning eLearning Design Authoring Tools Rapid e-Learning Tools eLearning (e-Learning) e-Learning Software Blended e-Learning e-Learning Tools Open Source eLearning e-Learning ROI and Metrics ... ; Tom Kuhlmann said... Hello Anonymous, I have a lot of examples on The Rapid E-Learning ... said... Thanks, good information on rapid e-learning tools Who ever controls technology ... ... Learning Design in a Nut Shell Rapid eLearning - More ...

... debate around the purpose of these tools. Clive Shepherd tells us - Rapid e-learning is swimming in too small a pond His main point is that Rapid eLearning Tools should be aiming at the SMEs, but according to Clive, at the panel session ... are here trying to learning about Rapid eLearning Tools, then this is definitely poor quality. But, the intent of small ... agree with Clive that this is part of the intent of rapid eLearning - pushing the tools to SMEs to allow them to easily ... (like that really works). Jay Cross also discusses this session in - Rapid eLearning Panel and he does a good ...

... quickly understanding topics, but that's different than giving Rapid eLearning tools to SMEs. rapid e-learning's ... I ran across a link to an article on Learning Circuits - Rapid E-Learning Grows Up and I apologize, because I can't ... of format because of my own learning style. So, let's be honest that much of what Rapid eLearning provides is the ... "learning" experience. Rapid e-learning pioneer Jennifer DeVries has an apt analogy: "I see rapid e-learning like the ... software. I think rapid e-learning tools are going to transform the e-learning industry in much the same way, so that e ...

I've been taking a look at an early version of RapideL's new online e-learning authoring tool, which they are calling RapideL-i . I've previously experimented with their desktop tool, RapideL Enhance, which works with Microsoft Word to generate Flash-based courses, but this is a big step forward. There's no doubt that desktop tools such as Articulate and Captivate have their advantages, not least in terms of performance, the ease with which large files can be manipulated, and the freedom they allow for authors to work offline. I would have no hesitation for reaching for one of ...

Jane Hart's e-Learning Pick of the Day drew my attention to Articulate Online , a hosted online service offered by Articulate for users who want a low-cost (from $199/month) means to deploy and track their e-learning content. This service is obviously going to appeal to smaller organisations who don't have an LMS, but it might also tempt some larger ... : "With Articulate Online you'll never need an expensive corporate learning management system, and you'll never worry ... the fact that content is often only a starting point in the learning process. In particular there are no facilities ...

Rapid development tools are by definition going to adopt a position towards the 'easy-to-use' end of the scale, even though this usually means compromising on functionality. One feature that I find I really miss is the ability to include drag and drop activities. Here's why: Drag and drop is great for testing whether learners can identify the parts of something, e.g. the bones in the body, the parts of a machine, an area on a map. It's also great for having learners put objects into a sequence. Not to forget matching up pairs. It has a game-like feel. It's fun. When I bumped ...