Testing, Tracking and Reporting elearning

I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a tip or two for elearning testing and reporting so here's our advice. Don't get fooled into thinking you have to pay huge money to manage your content, courses and testing--it's simply not the case.

Here' our alternative to high priced testing Learning Management Systems that's as inexpensive as $20 per student-per year. Due to our frustration with the lack lustre performance of existing testing programs for elearning, my company developed a program called QuizzPoint. QuizzPoint was written specifically to test, track and report on elearning but it does so much more and all in a user friendly format and can reside on your servers or ours.

You can identify your students with a user name and password, categorize them until you're blue in the face, write your tests inside our program and add graphics to those tests, connect to your course for review, set a multitude of parameters for your test like the number of attempts, min/max score, time allowed to take the test, send messages to your students at the beginning and end of the testing process and much more! You can even send emails for scheduling events and it's all done from within one, easy to use program.

You can get full details and arrange a free demo at: http://www.quizzpoint.com

Thanks for stopping by!

Master Templates

So now that you know you should compile your storyboard in Powerpoint or Apple's Keynote, what is your course going to look like to students or viewers? One of the things you'll have to design is a template for the look and functionality of your course. Here's one example for your reference. You could let a vendor do this for you but either way you should at least gather up any logos or corporate protocol materials that will have to be incorporated into your template. Remember, when working with a vendor, if you don't tell them what you want, it is likely you will get back their version of what they think you want. Personally, I prefer to decide what elements will go into the template myself and rely as little as possible on a third party. Generally, your template should comprise four parts; the header, navigation/buttons, content and your footer or bottom bar. Just remember to keep things clean and simple. The majority of web browsers these days expect navigation to be horizontal and oriented in the top third of your page so by giving people what they expect, the student can concentrate on the learning content of your course.

We hope this helps and don't hesitate to email us if you have a question!

Storyboard Software Choice

All that talk about sequencing your storyboard and we forgot to discuss storyboard basics. So here's the scoop. You could likely use any of the more popular desktop publishing programs you like but a couple of things to think about are; is the program you will use familiar to everyone contributing to the build process, and does this software accommodate text, graphics, an outline and have a provision for an audio script? If not, here's my advice. As much as I hate Microsoft software, Powerpoint is a good choice for storyboarding because it allows you to sequence your slides to match your Flash screens with it's outline view. At the same time you can see your actual slide and related master template graphics and additionally, the notes view provides the perfect place for audio scripts and vendor notes. So there you are, two tips and we just started this blog.

Good luck.

eLearning Production Tip!

Ok, we promised a tip or two so here goes nothing. For those of you getting ready to build your first elearning course you may or may not realize it all starts with the storyboard. That's where your original concept/topic gets organized into something either presentable to a vendor for Flash production or simply serves as a platform for others to participate in the storyboard building process. Whatever the case may be and here's the tip part - make sure to use some type of screen numbering system so that when you are migrating from the storyboard program to a web program like Flash you will have a way to quickly reference which screen/slide your working on. This is crucial if your course is being built by a vendor. Just imagine calling your vendor and saying something like, "you know that paragraph in the electronics section"  I think we need to tweak it. You want to be able to say, I want to make a change on screen 2-04, second paragraph and the change is...  believe me, this will save you countless hours especially if your course is of any length or complexity.

Welcome to PATH-TECH DESIGN

Path-Tech Design is a technical elearning production and website design company based in the greater Toronto area. Our content is primarily Flash-based which allows the integration of animation, video and photography to produce captivating training courses. We started this blog to give you an introduction to Path-Tech and try and keep you up to date with what's new with us.

Our crew is a group of talented individuals that come together to build innovative solutions for our partners. It's amazing to think how the elearning industry has changed since first getting involved in 1999. At that time elearning was a buzz word and seemingly every one was racing to get involved. Speed ahead ten years and we see elearning has clearly become the defacto standard for the majority of corporate training.  

As integrated to main stream training as elearning has become, it's still not the be all - end all -for training. That is, elearning should not be thought of as a replacement for instructor led training but rather an adjunct that when used wisely, can greatly improve the training experience and the bottom line.