Taking Advantage of Social Media

Hi folks, I wanted to chime in for you on this social media thing to see if I can help some of you small business owners take advantage of a great free opportunity. I think most of us are aware that Blogspot, Facebook and Twitter are currently the most popular three social media connection points at the moment and it can only help your business to take advantage them.

Why would you want to do this? Because it's free and it gives your business a second outlet to get your message out. Lets say you set up a blog with Google's Blogspot to offer free advice about your products. Instantly what happens is the webs mighty search engines are now crawling your blog and thereby making more connections to your business. At the same time your offering free advice about your product and adding value for your customers.

Just remember that because these are social media outlets where people talk about everything from the best cup of coffee they've ever had to last nights date you need to be subtle with your message. Heavy handed sales pitches won't work here. Create your presence and offer free advice about your products and leave it at that.

If you would like to get involved with social media but need some support, please don't hesitate to contact us. We can help you setup your blog and teach you how to use and take advantage of it.

You can check out our YouTube channel at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/PATHTECHDESIGN

Once again, I hope this helps.

Paul Phillips

Founder/ Path-Tech Design Inc.

info@pathtechdesign.com

PATH-TECH takes the plunge on YouTube!

Well we finally did it. Path-Tech is now officially on YouTube! You will find our first three video offerings geared towards helping you get started building your first elearning course and there will be more to follow shortly. Like our blog the theme for our YouTube channel will be to offer free advice relating to the construction of elearning courses or their testing, tracking and reporting. Here's what is currently available:

Video #1 - eLearning Storyboard Sequencing

Video #2 - Software Choice for Storyboards

Video #3 - Content Basics

You can find us on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/PATHTECHDESIGN

Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to comment on the posts or fire us your questions if you having any course construction issues.

Best Regards,

Paul Phillips

Founder-PATH-TECH DESIGN INC.

e-Commerce for Your Website

More and more folks are adding e-Commerce to their small business websites these days and why not. It's an easy cost effective way to sell that offers customers the ultimate in convenience. If you're planning to add e-commerce to your site here's a tip you should be aware of. At least 60% of all e-commerce transactions are never completed. In many cases it's because your customers don't have confidence in your site due to poor design or questions about security or they simply aren't clear about some aspect of the purchase. Make sure your products are clearly displayed and your e-commerce engine is intuitive, reliable and 100% trust worthy. Making customers jump through numerous hoops to get to check out will only frustrate them and erode any confidence that brought them to your site in the first place.

PayPal is one the better engines to use because it's well established, intuitive and very secure.

If you need more advice for an upcoming project we're happy help out.

Best Regards,

Paul Phillips

Founder-PATH-TECH DESIGN INC.

New Years Resolutions 2010

On behalf of all of us at Path-Tech Design we wish to thank all of our clients for your confidence with us in 2009 and rest assured that we will be continuing and strengthening our efforts in 2010 to deliver top quality products and genuine value for your money in the elearning arena.

We are fully aware that you have many choices when it comes to choosing an elearning service provider and we are truly thankful to those of you that gave us your vote of confidence last year. If your resolution is to take on an elearning initiative in 2010 we would be happy to assist you in any way possible.

Happy New Year

Paul Phillips/Founder of Path-Tech Design Inc.

To Scorm or Not to Scorm, that is the Question?

Hey folks, lets talk about SCORM for a minute.

The question of SCORM seems to be rearing its ugly head more and more these days so I thought I would give my 2 cents worth on this subject based on our elearning experiences over the last 10 years.

Firstly, Scorm is basically a technical specification that governs how online training is created and delivered to learners. A lot of agency types will tell you that if you are getting into elearning you have to have SCORM. Frankly, I think this is mostly because they would like to sell you their SCORM compliant Learning Management System (LMS). You might also hear statements like "if you have a SCORM system then you can take any SCORM compliant course off the shelf and use it on your system." This statement would beg the question, how many SCORM courses do you currently have? My experience has been that for whatever reason no two SCORM systems are alike--combine this with the fact that there are currently four versions of SCORM and, well, you get the idea. As a result of all of this I've seen many companies get bogged down trying to get their SCORM systems to integrate and function properly when they should have been channeling their resources into content development.

If you're getting into eLearning it's likely because you have staff that require training or you're trying to reduce training costs. Spend your money developing good elearning courses and content to meet your immediate needs and take the time to look at the best way to archive and serve up your growing library of courses when you have time to do a proper analysis of what's available that will properly meet your needs.

Flash-based elearning courses can be run from your company's servers or a vendors without the use of SCORM. A simple database can be used for that matter that will offer the same encryption the banks use.

For more info on testing tracking and reporting your elearning, check out our entry from Feb 28, 2009 or go to www.quizzpoint.com.

Thanks for stopping by.

Paul

eLearning Implementation Planning

If elearning is so good, then why are so many companies not seeing the results they had hoped for with their elearning programs? The answer to this question in most cases is poor planning, “people don’t plan to fail--they fail to plan” I believe is the famous quote. What is the end goal that you wish to achieve with elearning and what is your plan to accomplish that goal? 

A great number of companies these days seem to think that having access to a myriad of information will somehow transport students to a higher level of performance. People haven't changed the ways that they learn something new. They still have to practice new concepts to get comfortable with them and get feedback to ensure they're on the right track. If companies don't adopt sound learning principles to base their elearning efforts on then they will not realize the performance improvements they hoped for. 

To have success with elearning it has to be understood that elearning itself is nothing more than a delivery tool. You have to have a plan to put an elearning infrastructure in place that will grow both the elearning program and the people driving the program. Further, and this is crucial, you must have something in place to measure the effectiveness of your elearning’s implementation. This comes usually in the form of simple testing initially but further on will require a tracking or management system. I could talk at length on this topic but just wanted to share a few key pointers. 

Good Luck!

Paul

Print Functionality in eLearning

Time and time again the question of printing in elearning comes up and my answer to this question is always the same. Whether you are using print functionality or blending instructor led training with elearning these combinations will only work to your advantage when it comes to helping your students. Lets take a look at what can typically be done with printing in elearning courses. You may think it’s ironic that we’re even mentioning printing in elearning but make no mistake printing can be a tremendous help if it’s used wisely. 

First off, lets deal with the issue of printing an elearning screen or section of a course. This may be especially helpful in situations where your course is addressing the operation of a piece of equipment. Your student may remember this section of the course but would like to have a diagram or reference in front of him as he is servicing this equipment.

What exactly is going to be printed and how. Typically, the most widely used document for printing is an Acrobat pdf document. This means that, that document has to get assembled some where which means for you the designer or flash course builder, you have more work to do. But hey, we’ll just transfer that cost to the client and make some money this week! The good news is that you will likely already have all your course assests assembled in your powerpoint or keynote file so extracting them to make a pdf isn’t that tough. Your best bet when it comes to making pdfs is to dump your course assets into a program like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXpress. The main reason for doing this is that both Keynote and Powerpoint will not allow you to export all three sections of their normal view as one document or one page and Quark and InDesign perform this task exceptionally well. 

What you will have to do is take your photos and script from your story board and lay it out in InDesign in a one page layout that can be as simple as graphic on top and text on the bottom. Slap a title on it and you're ready to export to a pdf. By doing this you’ll be able to call up the pdf for printout in your Flash course. 

One of the best examples of using printing to benefit your students that I could think of, is a course that I built some years ago for a car company. I set up the service version of the course so technicians were able to access pdf instructions to assemble accessory components while the sales side of the company needed to see pdfs that showed the look and cost of those same accessories. The benefit for both was a cost savings overall as I built one course for two departments but moreover, technicians were able to print installation instructions that they could have in their hand at the time of installation as a reference. On the other side of the coin, the sales staff were able to use their pdfs to learn about the components and then show potential customers how their vehicle might look with a particular accessory installed. This is one technique that I use to this day and I’m glad to be able to share it with you.

All the best,

Paul