How do eLearning developers ensure that trainings are well designed graphically? There are many resources out there for web design standards, such as the Nielsen Norman Group and the World Wide Web Consortium, but what about eLearning design? Sure, there are plenty of resources for free templates and character packs, but that doesn’t really help developers learn how to properly design online training.

Good news! You can apply many interaction design principles for interface design and web design best practices to your eLearning content. In this session, you will learn the benefits of implementing graphic design techniques and the key usability standards that directly apply to eLearning design by exploring realistic “do and don’t” examples for each. What you gain from this session, you can take back and immediately apply to support and enhance your content.

In this session, you will learn:

• About key usability standards
• How to directly apply standards to eLearning design
• Graphic design techniques and principles
• How to use graphic design techniques to support and enhance eLearning content

Audience:
Novice, intermediate, and advanced designers, developers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and various web application sites and resources.

It’s relatively common to use features like forums, chats, and blogs to help learners interact with (and learn from) their peers. But only a handful of people in L&D go even deeper with this approach and leverage the API of well-established social media platforms to combine all those components and create a unique user interface. This approach saves extensive hours of implementation and provides a better user experience.

In this session, you’ll find out how the Twitter API can help your organization build a custom user interface where features like sharing, instant messaging, blogging, and search can be combined in a single environment. You’ll learn how to use the Twitter API to generate a user leaderboard, help your audience curate content with hashtags, and access features from Twitter without having to go to the platform itself. And through this customized use of the Twitter API, you’ll be able to create a collaborative and structured knowledge base among your learners.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use social media platforms as an alternative to posting in a forum, networking in a chatroom, exchanging ideas on a wiki, and more
• How you can use the Twitter API to bring features from Twitter into a course
• How to run .NET web services to bypass Twitter API limitations
• How to pick the right settings to make the content secure and private
• How to use web services, data visualization, and analytics to integrate social tools

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Twitter API, MySQL database, and the Threejs.org library.

More advanced, nonlinear projects often call for more advanced solutions. In cases such as these, Storyline’s built-in triggers and logic system often lead to an unwieldy and difficult-to-manage course. Using JavaScript in conjunction with Storyline’s built-in triggers and variables, you can greatly expand Storyline’s capabilities while reducing the overall effort.

In this session, you will learn how to set up Storyline to handle external files such as JavaScript, JSON and jQuery. You will learn how to use JSON as the data source for your course and how to use JavaScript and jQuery to get the maximum value of a Storyline variable. You will be able to perform multistep advanced calculations based on variable values or any of Storyline 2’s built-in triggers. Finally, you will learn how to use web objects to simulate dynamic information from your Storyline 2 course.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to integrate jQuery and JavaScript into your project
• How to use JavaScript to expand the logic capabilities in Storyline triggers
• Techniques to make your Storyline courses more dynamic
• How to get and set Storyline variables with JavaScript
• How to maintain an application state outside of Storyline

Audience:
Intermediate and advanced designers, developers, and project managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Storyline 2, JavaScript, jQuery, and JSON.

Instructional designers tend to define what is possible by the limitations of their chosen authoring tools, and common modern web practices don’t always transfer over to those tools until it is too late. Because of this, IDs sometimes remove ideas like responsive courses from consideration because their authoring tools don’t automatically support the capability. But why not take control over what you can do in your eLearning authoring by building it yourself?

In this hands-on session, you will explore how jQuery Mobile allows you to build responsive custom mobile applications that not only take advantage of modern web technology, but also simplify development without requiring heavy amounts of coding. You will learn how jQuery removes many of the constraints placed by authoring tools; how you can build custom, mobile-first HTML5 quickly and easily; and how to publish what you build as a native mobile app. You will also examine how to integrate the xAPI into HTML5 to track progress within your LMS or LRS.

In this session, you will learn:

• HTML5 basics
• jQuery Mobile basics
• Skeleton CSS for responsive layouts
• How to create simple page layouts and navigation
• How to use jQuery Mobile UI components to build custom learning interactions

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers; some knowledge of HTML5 is helpful but not necessary.

Technology discussed in this session:
HTML5, jQuery Mobile, and the xAPI.

Technology Required:
Sublime Text editor, jQuery Mobile, HTML, and CSS.

It has been said that Flash is dead, yet there exists an army of Flash content in the world of eLearning today. Seemingly alive and well, these Flash zombies must be eliminated in order to answer the increasing demand for mobile-compatible content. Is there a way to save any of the good work that was done—or is a double tap to the timeline the only way?

This session will explore the challenges a team encountered and the solutions they created when removing every single Flash element from a catalog of over 1,600 lessons. You will learn how the team handled a variety of cases from simple linear Flash animations to custom Flash playback engines that use XML to configure rich, interactive content, including the steps they took in reintroducing the converted content into existing lessons. Finally, learn about the team’s various skill sets and how each contributed to the conversion process.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to convert existing Flash content into HTML5 using Adobe Flash CC (or Adobe Animate)
• How the HTML and JavaScript files from conversion relate to the Flash source file
• About factors that influence the blend of skill sets needed
• How to decompile SWF files you don’t have source files for
• Strategies for converting large numbers of files

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Adobe Flash CC, Flash Animate, HTML5, JavaScript, CreateJS, and Trillix Decompiler.

Online videos are extremely popular these days, particularly for quickly learning new skills and just-in-time content. While short videos can be an effective way to learn soft skills and system processes, many instructional designers and developers believe they have neither the tools nor the skills to create these training videos themselves. But they’re wrong, because most people have a surprisingly useful animation tool already: PowerPoint.

That’s right. PowerPoint can be a powerful yet easy-to-use tool to create videos with sound and animation, and nearly everyone has it. By learning just a few simple techniques, you’ll be able to create short, entertaining videos that will engage and educate your audiences, and this session will teach you the first steps you’ll need to use PowerPoint in this unexpected way. You’ll find out how to use motion paths, enter and exit animations, and sound syncing to create visual effects; how to bring in voice-overs and soundtracks to add to your content; and how to get all these aspects in sync so your final video looks polished and professional.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use PowerPoint to create and publish videos
• How to add animations such as motion paths
• How to add audio to your animations and set audio timing
• How to use the PowerPoint animation and selection panels to adjust movement and layers for smooth animated techniques

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers and developers.

Technology discussed in this session:
PowerPoint, picture editing software (Photoshop, GIMP, Snagit), audio editing software (Audition, Audacity), and online image libraries.

Click here for the session trailer

Many organizations are still using paper-based guides, manuals, and job aids. This requires planning for additional printing costs throughout the year to accommodate frequent content changes. Reliability is questionable, as older documents may not all be replaced with an updated version. Some organizations have gone paperless, yet the electronic versions of the documents are still basic text, which doesn’t make use of the full potential of a virtual format.

In this hands-on session, you will gain the skills and practice needed to create interactive eBooks. You will learn how to format a document for multiple devices, integrate various types of media, and learn about alternative free and paid tools that can be used to develop and edit interactive eBooks. You will walk through a basic workflow to convert a simple document with a variety of media types to an EPUB file format that can later be made available for download directly to mobile devices with an eReader app installed.

In this session, you will learn:

• To convert print materials to an interactive, mobile-friendly format using Sigil
• To improve the quality of performance support materials by adding appropriate media
• To quickly deploy simple, effective, multiscreen mobile learning solutions in your organization
• To create native mobile content to support users who may not have consistent access to an Internet connection

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers and developers who are familiar with common mobile media formats (PNG, MP3, MP4) and comfortable working with authoring and editing tools similar to Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.

Technology discussed in this session:
Mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), HTML5, eReader applications (iBooks, Kobo), Sigil, and media conversion software (Adobe media encoder, Handbrake).

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop with Sigil installed; mobile device with an eReader application installed (such as iBooks or Kobo).