In this post, I would like to mention a third party example of 'amazing e-learning.' Point your browser to 'Udutu.com', and on the home page, click on the 'How to build effective online courses' organge box. This will open a small sample course on how to create a course. The first page is a bit of advertising.What makes this course special?
- I find the course look and feel and interaction just average, so that is not what makes it special. This is your typical pageturner+ kind of course.
- But I like the content: it has some nice sections on instructional design such as the often used Bloom taxonomy and definitions for constructivism and behaviorism and other popular instructional design theories. It also has a nice video based example of scenario based learning. I think everyone in the e-learning production chain benefits from a high level understanding of these principles. (Take the test: aks an instructional designer what social constructivism is, if they can't answer you can have their job :-) ).
- And above all, this is a sample course created on a new kind of platform: a completely online authoring tool with templates for the most common types of screens, customisable layout, SCORM export, etc. It is called Udubu.com and they have an interesting business model. The use of the authoring environment is free. They just charge 1$ per screen per month if you want to host the course with them. If you export if for your own LMS, it doesn't cost a thing. Obviously, this tool does not have all features that something as rich and complex as IBM Content Producer or Lectora have. But mark my words: these tools will become the 'powerpoint' of e-learning, taking down the barrier to create simple pageturner courses that enlightened SMEs can use for themselves.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating...
So I took the test myself and gave me one hour to make a little course with the udutu.com tool. I will let you judge for yourself, but here is a preview link to the course 'Hello E-learning World':
http://publish.myudutu.com/published/launcheval/4795/Course7598/Launch.html
Actually, it took me more like 1h30 hours because on two occastions, the tool frooze and I had to log in again (but without loosing any work). So in 1h30 I made 17 screens with some audio/pics etc. And no, this is not 'amazing e-learning' :-) It is just an example of what can be done by simple, dumb, thirteen in a dozen SMEs in a very near (or now?) future...
1 comment:
although you point out that many courses end up as page turners, (plus a course map), there are lots of ways to avoid that. One unique feature of myUdutu is that it enables easy conditional branching to modules or "hidden" resources that can alter the way you progress through the course. For example a choice made, or an incorrect answer can branch the flow of the course to something that other users wouldn't necessarily see. There's a lot of versatility to the tool if the author chooses to be imaginative, and no matter how complex a "scenario" or branching structure gets, all the logic is easy to manage and requires no programming or technical skill.
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