 experience. Based on your requests regarding information on purpose of e-learning, strategies in e-learning and processes in e-learning from industry perspective. Today we are having a session which is called Voices from the Field where we have Dr. Anura Kankare who is a PhD from Educational Technology IIT Bombay and she is currently working in the Debold mixed Dorf and in the LND division and here she is today to share her experience on e-learning from industry perspective. So before we get started with the session I would request Anura to briefly introduce them. Hi everyone myself I am Anura and I have nine years of work experience in the e-learning industry. Previously I have worked in Accenture and currently I work at Debold mixed Dorf as a senior instruction and designer so today I will be helping you get an idea about different products in the e-learning industry how to design them and different processes involved as well as finally how do you conclude like what are do's what are don'ts to make an effective learning product yeah so let's get started. So Anura can you tell us the different types of e-learning content design in the industry? Sure. So basically depending upon your client or your client requirement that is better it depends what kind of product you will be making. So if you have a facilitator in field like along with you then you would mostly be creating an instructor led training which is referred to as an ILT but if that is not there or they are available for a brief period of time then you can go in for a blended learning wherein your learners have an online training for a brief period of time and then you have the facilitator on field or with them for a different period of time and they have assignments or certain work products which they have to finish. Apart from this there are complete online trainings. Now within that there is a big paradigm of products which learners have to engage with. So let me just run you through them. There is web-based training which is called WBT in that it is completely interactive learners have to engage with it and complete the entire thing in a self-paced mode. Second is videos when you can sit back and simply watch it at your own speed your own time. Third is gamification that is wherein your learners have to have some motivation right why would they even take your web-based training. So basically throughout taking your modules they are given leaderboards or they are given certain ranks or they are given something wherein you gamify it you have a competition between your learners and so that they try and complete the entire session. They try and win it so you gamify it it's not a serious game but you add elements of games to it that is referred to as gamification. Third thing is a illustration so if you have seen a illustration you will simply see your hand and in the hand it's continuously drawing and there is audio in the background. So the audio will be speaking and whatever graphics you need are there on screen and a hand will be continuously sketching it. Okay then after that now there are some simpler versions wherein your participants can read it at a later span of time they are called as guides or interactive PDFs or simply case studies that is wherein your relevant audience that is suppose if you're an onboarding then previous onboarding case studies you are given that to read they could simply be interactive PDFs as simple as that other than that for information sake you can have a subject matter expert SME led videos or you can have webinars or simple podcasts and lastly I guess other than all of these you can simply have pages to read as extended learning that is you simply read at your pace and time later on when your course is over for more information. So this is a glimpse into what all stuff we develop. I have a question about illustration so where exactly a illustration is used in what is the target audience. So your audience will remain the same so suppose you get a requirement of creating a product for content that is what content could be a process or it could be simply information so in that if you have to create a video you'll be capturing something but instead of that it is a contrast to a video your final product will be an mp4 file but simply the way you see it the presentation style differs instead of capturing the entire screen and showing an animation over there or just screen capture instead of that you see your hands catching everything the presentation style differs. Okay so I will tell you based on your experience you have said you have nine years of experience in e-learning can you clearly give a difference or examples of e-learning designs that you think are effective and those e-learning designs that you think are ineffective. Sure so let's get into that you can just see a very good example of good e-learning now what do I mean by good e-learning in this basically you do not force the learner to do anything so wherever you see throughout this entire session a thumbs up it means good when you see a thumbs down it will mean not so cool and also later on when I refer to thumbs up again it will mean a good way to proceed and a thumbs down would mean a challenge that you may face right so let's move ahead in these screenshots that you are seeing these are examples of good e-learning now in that what all do I mean by good what does that term mean so basically you allow the users to go in and navigate as per they wish you do not force them that you see ABCD in this order itself they can watch whatever they want at their convenience okay and you start by simply taking their idea how much do they know because if your learners are at a very basic level as opposed to your learners who are at a very advanced level you cannot possibly start at the same place right so you give them a certain scenario a simple question and when they answer that you proceed based upon what are they answering right other than that you can also have multiple activities in between to gauge where your learners are are they even understanding what you're saying so this is what you must have heard as formative assessment right so there you can have multiple things like drag and drop you can ask them to enter text and then judge it later you can do multiple such things MCQs are very basic but other than that you can like increase the interactivity level to a false all of these are very simple they are MCQs so do that in between have formative assessment most importantly don't force navigation have an exit button if they don't want to see it let them close it it's okay they can come back and see it later so forced navigation is a completely no no so other than that have in between like wherever you can see on the screen like when people click on any area then you allow them to see information regarding that area don't clutter the screen with too much it's not cool because people don't read if there is so much of text on screen nobody's gonna read that and also font size if you have like 40 font size here and 10 here I won't read it so nobody's going to read that right and if you fill the entire screen with too much that is there is text on screen which is too much there's audio playing in the background and a video is also playing somewhere down where do I look your multimedia principles tell you this that never have all three together audio video and text right you must have heard this and lastly personalization because it's a person who is dealing with the entire thing if a machine is going to speak to them you know you can't have that connect so always in your audio have a human voice your personalization principle tells you this that always have a human voice as opposed to a machine generated voice text to speech is cool but that is if your budget is seriously on the lower side if you cannot do anything then only text to speech but other than that preferably you know preferably just go for a human voice that is better and also give them real-life scenarios when you give them an example don't give an orbit general thing which they can't even understand because for example if your audience comes from a finance background and you tell them about farming how will they ever you know relate to it they won't understand so better give them a finance background so see to it that mostly your scenarios can be something that they can relate to okay quick we've already covered that minimal text on screen and also color scheme you know you may feel that colors what is the big deal with that but I will show you an example of a very unpleasant e-learning example in which the colors are in your eye you will not look at the screen forget reading the text okay we go to that and also be very consistent like if you're using a certain font like you're using Calibri or you're using Ariel as the font later don't change to something else your screen looks inconsistent throughout the entire course and believe me your audience picks it they don't like it you know it's in your eye it's not cool let me show you examples so these were examples of good e-learning now let's just see bad this is a terrible and I saw the screen itself has too many colors on it and it is such that you know you can even see blurring to some extent you will not read this and another thing is that there is no way to exit you see the entire screen you cannot exit this page until and unless you finish the entire course so you have to forcefully complete the entire thing and also as you move ahead you'll understand that the previous and next shift somewhere and your audio is just playing in the background your audio has to be in sync with what the user is doing if your audio is not synced again it is meaningless okay so confusing navigation is just not cool spelling mistakes are there all creed this in e-learning you may feel that you know it's not such a big deal why are we even talking about it but attention to detail ATD issues are something in which you will be caught big time and all your money is getting spent on this so if in quality analysis your e-learning product gets into ATD issues and you get you know caught for that you'll be in a very big mess so it is better that you make sure there are no spelling errors your consistency is taken care of and also whatever graphics you want on screen one this is fixed nothing is going to change now if you see the example of the lady on screen it's a posed example she's looking at the screen and also it's not a very pleasant example so if you freeze this graphic later on it won't change because many times we take licensed graphics so you pay for it if you already purchased it then you again can't give it back you have to purchase more so your budget is getting hampered yeah so a random dated clip art just don't pick that up because it's free don't do that another thing is that meaningless pictures like what do you see in that lady over there nothing it's a meaningless thing what does that got to do with the topics so this is an example of a very badly madey learning is what I would say and lastly monotonous voice now here when we are speaking to each other at least you can hear a different punctuation can you hear a different toll but when a machine speaks it will be monotone one tone continues throughout for a maybe half an hour one hour session if the content is that long that is not cool for a learner to hear yeah secondly let's go to the next example here you will see the examples of what I was saying till now split attention there is too much of text on screen your audio is playing I can see the audio down I can't even shut that your audio is playing the text is so big on screen on one side the text is in a lower font one side it's on a higher font everything is playing together so I cannot relate to it that is a no no force navigation again big no no and background there are so many layers I can see all shades of green so when you are designing and e-learning make sure you don't do these things you know your color scheme talk to your graphic designers talk to an expert in that and finalize and freeze that don't change it later okay another thing is characters if you are you going into characters that is somebody who will be talking to you either to show you to lead you to do anything have a conversation on screen like a dialogue they cannot pause why because they're speaking right who stands like this and just talks no nobody does that so your characters cannot be posing have real life examples like people who are speaking to each other or doing something that is much more relatable and also overlapping images here you can see clearly the background is there somewhere behind and the characters are one on top of the other a layer you I can see it so these things are something which you should seriously avoid while creating a new learning product so basically to summarize I just said a few pointers I'll just repeat it once more for you for quick recollection effective is just have spaced out modules don't have something going on for half an hour or one hour it's too much of you know memory you're not going to listen for that long have something very short script crisp like five minutes 15 minutes maximum you know have small chunk modules and also more visual less text you can have audio which is in sync with the video but as far as possible keep the text minimal then visuals please select them carefully and based upon what content are you trying to show base based upon that you select your graphics and have it self-contained don't keep too many URLs which are going to point to 10 different places the learner is going to get confused big time are they supposed to see your module or are they supposed to go and read 10 different pages so try and avoid that intuitive navigation we've already spoken about that graphics we've spoken about it text and also navigation don't have forced navigation so similarly in even effective you see the opposite of this what you should not be doing all of this which I just said if you do anything against it it's ineffective so at one point you discussed about navigation as one of the point that we have to consider when we are designing our e-learning and you spoke about forced navigation and confusing navigation can you explain more so forced navigation is when you have pre-decided how the learner should proceed so there are different people who would interact with your screen or with your module in their own way every learner is unique so if you have pre-decided something and suppose I'm your learner and I can understand it like if I see module a after module B and I just want to see module E first I don't want to see module D in middle it's my choice I wish to read that or I want to go to your additional reading and then read that and come back but if you force me that you can't go anywhere just go to see after this I may not even relate to that because they're not understood I want to go and read your additional reading first but you forced everything it's freeze stop so then for your learner it becomes a pain somebody might just shut your course but you're not even allowing to exit so nobody will you know value take take away from your course and I'm sure that was not the goal okay thank you so much