Clever Hamster

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    Winifred Gallagher: Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

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    Chip Heath: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

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    Thomas Limoncelli: Time Management for System Administrators

  • Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

    Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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    Timothy Ferris: The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

  • Seth Godin: Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas

    Seth Godin: Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas

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    Thomas L. Friedman: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

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    Eric Abrahamson: A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place

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WritersUA Central takeaways

For my own benefit, I'm writing this quick list of goodies and action items from the notes that I jotted down from the Software User Assistance conference this week:

  • Remember "pave the cowpaths" — let users develop footpaths and use those to decide where to put pavers.
  • Seek out books from the Visual Quick Start and Missing Manual series.
  • Study CSS3 selector syntax for controlling subordinate elements:
    • td p { } = styles only paragraphs within table cells
    • ol > li { } = styles only items within numbered lists
    • h1 +h2 { } = styles only Heading 2s that immediately follow Heading 1
  • Study CSS3 for methods to add @content, without JavaScript.
  • Breaking news of MadCap buying Doc-To-Help = evidence of client-side tool shakeout.
  • Visit Neospeech to hear surprisingly natural text-to-speech, available in Adobe Captivate.
  • Remember elearning rule-of-thumb: accessibility compliance adds 30% to dev costs; use Captivate with all accessibility options enabled.
  • Research says: Yes, use narration, but make sure that it doesn't read the slides! Distracts.
  • Simplify demo recording by doing voice over existing visual or visual with existing voice. Stand and smile, for best results.
  • Use variables to swap out generic verbs (select, scroll, move) with device-relevant ones (tap...).
  • Use onfocus events to drive dynamic embedded help: onfocus="readxml('objectname')".
  • Use 1-per-topic unique elements, such as DITA's short description, as a handy place to source and extract embedded help text.
  • Consider putting embedded help strings in minimal XML files, but be sure to convert any HTML tags.
  • Look up CanIUse to quickly find out what CSS3 is supported, where.
  • Use Dave Gash's webfonts page for samples, links.
  • Take the easy path to @font-face when possible by using Google fonts with big families.
  • For non-Google web fonts, let FontSquirrel generate the needed CSS3.
  • Turn to HTML5rocks for terrific tutorials.
  • Follow Don Day's progress with the ExpeDITA Framework, for making DITA web-CMS-friendly.

January 08, 2015 in eLearning, Professional, Technical Writing, User Experience, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

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e-Learning interaction that pays off

Following are my notes from the June 20, 2012 webinar: "Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference"

#customelearning, 400 attendees

CCAF = Context + Challenge + Activity + Feedback

instructional interactivity is common, but much is poor quality

  • success = fast, accessible, cheap, current (short-term focus on delivery)
  • success = performance change, lasting benefit (long-term focus on effect)

challenges:

  • majority of online text is not read by learners! yet that makes up most of deliverables
  • learners seek to finish, not to learn
  • test questions are good for testing, but not teaching
  • meaningless action = numbing

fixes:

  • motivate learner to read
  • design in consequences for not learning
  • design the correct path to be the fastest path through
  • pose challenges that invite exploration, mistakes
  • tie actions to real-world significance (helps with transfer)

instructional interactivity (the effective kind)

  • design mental action that improves ability + readiness to perform
  • NOT: Jeopardy game to ask trivia; it's a lousy game solo
  • NOT: Teaching rote knowledge: knowing <> doing
  • Solution: offer a simulation to force choice under pressure
  • Flash example: "Railroad safety for professional drivers"

development tools

  • Articulate ("productivity" tool for quick output)
  • recommended: avoid live-action video, which is expensive and hard to update
  • Lectora
  • Captivate
  • [Authorware]
  • New tool: ZebraZapps (cloud-based authoring/publishing of rich, interactive content)

How to improve interactions across CCAF:

  • context
    • Specific to task
    • Very visual
    • Relevant to app/skill
    • Tap into emotions
  • challenge
    • Purpose
    • progressive difficulty
    • real-life
    • multi-step
  • activity
    • Require effort; let them struggle
    • direct manipulation
    • elicit meaningful behavior
    • scenario-driven
  • feedback
    • Intrinsic
    • delayed judgment
    • content-rich
    • honest

Links:

  • alleninteractions.com = online demos, blogs
  • astd.org = e-learning instructional design training
  • Michael Allen books on e-Learning

June 20, 2012 in eLearning, Technical Writing, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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