Creating lessons using Flash

 Learning Flash was a revelation to me. New learning elements such as keyframes, layers, motion tweens and the various intricacies of the Flash timeline did not stump me. I had watched www.lynda.com's lessons on Flash and it was literally a case of cognitive overload, given the hundreds of features of Flash CS5. Full Sail university's Flash lessons on i-tune were far better. It helped me create a 80 second lesson with 6 images, audio narration and a moving pedagogical coach. The size of the flash creation was impressive. The entire lesson was 655kb. I'm comparing this with other lessons I have created using the same images, audio narration and 3D animation and the size was 39 MB. 3D animation adds to the attractiveness without doubt. However, I'm not entirely sure if using 3D animation meets learning objectives better than a Flash animation sequence.

The learning objectives of my short lesson was to provide a alternative way of doing multiplication. Here's a breakdown of various eLearning design principles and how my lesson adheres to them.

Graphics - I’m using transformational graphics 

that illustrate changes in time. The images used

illustrate a sequence of steps that students need 

to follow in order to perform multiplication using 

Yeda’s method. The purpose of the lesson is to 

demonstrate Yeda’s method of solving 98 times 

93 and the graphics supports the instructional 

content very specifically.

Contiguity - The graphic images being used were pre-coordinated with the audio being played in the background. Pre-designing audio clips for specific images, helped in ensuring contiguity remains between the images and audio.

Modality & Redundancy - Audio narration has been used instead of text to explain the graphics. This has been done to avoid overloading the visual channel with graphics and text. By using audio narration to explain the graphic images depicting a way of doing multiplication, the lesson effectively engages both auditory and visual channel. Redundancy has been avoided by not having any written text explanation of the images except where absolutely necessary (e.g. why 100 is being used as a base for solving the problem).

Coherence - In the background of the audio narration, I have included sounds of a rural background to match with the landscape depicted on the lesson. One might argue this violates the coherence principle by being extraneous music. However, my thoughts were that for students, who are my target audience, this would serve to lighten the seriousness of a math lesson. Also, the volume of the background noise does not interfere with the audio narration.

Personalization strategy – The pedagogical coach Yeda is being used to provide audio narration to the lesson. The underlying thought is that Yeda is a sage and he lives in a rural area and he is telling the students how to do multiplication his way.

I would love to know your thoughts on the lesson, graphics and audio narration.

http://www.blogdash.com/full_profile/?claim_code=d0f431cb40a30b8e7c428b9940301d40

Contiguity, Modality and Redundancy principles - Instructional Media Critique 2

The Earthguide: Investigating Groundwater 
media example stands out immediately as 
missing an audio component. It uses Flash 
animation and written words at the bottom of the graphic to convey its content.

As I was going through the screens, it was somewhat of a burden to read the 4-5 lines of text below each graphic, comprehend it and then look at the graphic above to try and correlate it. It should have adhered to the  Contiguity principle by placing the text closer to the process or object on the screen, the text is describing. It would have reduced the cognitive resources used to correlate text at the bottom to the graphic on top. Towards the end of the course on Groundwater, some text is placed on screen to point to certain elements in the graphic, however a majority of the text is still at the bottom of the screen.

By separating the text from the graphics, the learner will experience heavier load on their working memory, leaving lesser capacity to absorb and integrate all the material. What would have been a really good idea would be to replace the text at the bottom with an audio narration.

The course prompts the leaner to click on "Next" to proceed through each screen. When the media example has two processes it needs to teach about, it presents two "Play" buttons on one screen. This is confusing since the user might want to know about both processes and will have first choose one "Play" option and then remember to click the other one. This design causes unnecessary load on the learner's mind.

Learn Genetics - Tour of the Basics has more media components and sophistication to it than the Groundwater Media example. 

It uses a combination of text, narration and animation graphics to teach the learner about genetics.

This example fulfills the Contiguity principle partially by using arrow pointers alongside text to point our certain elements on the graphic. It also uses small pop up windows to describe some key terms. The narration by itself is high quality and compliments well with the graphics in keeping with the Modality principle. However there are instances where the graphic animation does not have any narration and animation keeps going on deeper into the image to explain different elements. The explanation is done through text at the bottom of the screen instead of on the screen by the image, and the animation goes too fast to be able to make sense of what it being shown. 

The screen text which is duplicate of the narration, violates the Redundancy principle. By displaying the text on screen, it removes focus from the graphic as the learner is trying to do three things at the same time - listen to the narration, read the text on screen and look at the graphics. It also overloads the visual channel with screen text and graphics, causing extraneous cognitive processing.

The genetics course uses "next" and "previous" prompts to guide the user through the course. With regard to the course flow, after viewing all the screens in one tab such as "DNA", the user is supposed to intuitively select "Genes" to learn about Genes. I believe proper instructions should be provided to the learner on how to navigate to the next lesson.

Instructional Media Critique - 1

I've enjoyed reading eLearning and the Science of Instruction by Clark and Mayer. The text book adheres to sound instructional design principles in how the content within each chapter is presented with text and graphics. It makes for a good read and also commitment to long term memory. I'll use the principles in the first three chapters to assess two eLearning courses.

What is print? Interactive by Museum of Modern Art, New York. -


After opening up the course, my first thought was my audio must be switched off. It turned out that the course did not have any audio. I've been so used to at an audio narrative or music that having neither made it look like it was missing an important component.

Content Type - The course provides facts about the different types of print such as Woodcut, Etching, Lithography and Screenprint. It also demonstrates the process followed to create each type of print through an interactive Flash animation.

Instructional Goal - The course aims to inform about  different types of print and describe to the audience the procedure used to create that print. The primary goal is to inform the audience about print and also explain how print is created. No expectations are made that audience will gain print making skills through the course

Learning Architecture -  The course architecture is that of a Guided Discovery. The course though informative in nature, uses user driven actions to navigate through animations that describe the procedure used to create different types of print. There is a option for the animation to work automatically to show the next step in the process. I tried both manual and automatic options to progress from one step to the other and found it interactive.

Graphics usage -  Since the course teaches about procedure, it very correctly uses transformational graphics to demonstrate a series of steps through animation in order to create each print type. The animations are very relevant to procedure and the interactivity option helps the user understand the process better. If only graphics were used, instead of animations, I believe it would not commit to the learners long term memory.

Office Ergonomics - Interactive lesson created by Prometheus Training Corporation - My first impression on opening this course was it was dynamic and well designed. There was a pleasant introduction music as a lead into the narration.

Content Type - The course content is strategic principles about office ergonomics.



Instructional Goal - The course's goal adheres to the "Perform principle". It teaches the learner strategic skills so that they can asses themselves, recognize common risks and set up their workstations correctly. It has inform learning objectives also, however the primary goal is for learners to be able to transfer their knowledge and apply it to their own office environment.


Learning Architecture -  The course architecture is that of a Guided Discovery. The course asks the learners to perform real activities such as positioning wrists above the keyboard and to select the chose on screen that is most similar. This is a interactive and involves actual non-computer action on users part. The architecture aims to help the learner construct knowledge.


Graphics usage -  The graphics are very relevant and well designed. It goes very well with the narrative and the on screen text.  The course uses "representational" type of graphics to convey its point.

I'm looking forward to learn about other measures to assess eLearning and analyze eLearning courses in a much broader context.

BP13_Flash_on_Lynda.com

After going through my first course on Flash I was curious to see what other courses Lynda.com offers on Flash.

Video based learning is completely new to me. Accustomed to learning by doing and learning from text/teacher, video was a pleasant change. Especially since the videos are just a couple minutes long.  I must mention, going over video after video can get tiring after some time - there is a definite lack of interactivity. However compared to learning all the zillion features on a Flash document through your own trial and error, videos are far better.

I was surprised to see Lynda.com also offering object oriented programming through Video tutorials - I'm interested in learning this and learning a new programming language through video will be a new one for me again.

Overall my first experience with Lynda.com was good and I'm looking to learn as much as I can. I've always been an advocate of continuous learning. If I'm able to learn successfully through video, I would not mind signing up on a monthly subscription with Lynda.com.

BP14_Flash_Graphics

It was a good decision to start with "Getting Started with Flash CS4". After getting an overview of what Flash could do, I'm now into "Flash CS4 Professional Essential Training". I'm already comfortable with most of the terminology thanks to the "Getting Started" course. 

One of my key learnings in the first lesson, was to learn the difference between Vector and Bitmap graphics. On zooming into a bitmap image you see pixels. On zooming into  Vector image you will not see pixels, because the image was made using Maths to connect two points with a curve. Of the two types of graphics, Bitmaps are great for pictures and Vectors are great for shapes. 

I had to verify, that my photo was made up of pixels, by zooming into a photoshop image of mine. If you look closely, you should be able to see the pixels.

I googled for vector images to see if I could spot the difference. I came across this interesting photo like illustration of a shoe - it really is a vector image.

I'm planning to be more watchful for vector and bitmap images, while looking at pics on the web. Looking forward to more on Flash.

Reading_AR_Week4_ETC

My mindmap to capture my readings for my Action Research Project is growing. The main purpose of a mindmap is to facilitate brainstorming. However, I am using Mindomo's mindmap to capture notes from my readings and to build a visual image of how my readings are connected to each other.

My readings on Week 4 were:

Baker, S., Wentz, R., & Woods, M. (2009). Using Virtual Worlds in Education: Second Life® as an Educational Tool. Teaching of Psychology, 36(1), 59-64. doi:10.1080/00986280802529079.

Eschenbrenner, B., Fui-Hoon Nah, F., & Keng, S. (2008). 3-D Virtual Worlds in Education: Applications, Benefits, Issues, and Opportunities. Journal of Database Management, 19(4), 91-110. Retrieved from Business Source Premier database.

Hew, K., & Cheung, W. (2010). Use of Three-Dimensional (3-D) Immersive Virtual Worlds in K-12 And Higher Education Settings: A Review of the Research. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(1), 33-55. Retrieved Aug 20, 2010, from EBSCOhost : ERIC database.

BP12_Learning_Flash

            It was finally time for me to check what Adobe Flash was all about. Over the last couple months, I have been in the process of switching career tracks to the learning or to be more specific eLearning industry.  I kept running into Flash at various occasions. I serve as the Director of Products at Keelworks, a non profit that creates eLearning programs for potential school dropouts and the founder of this organization is an expert on Flash. While researching the eLearning industry, I've across the terms "Flash designer", "Flash animator", "Flash Developer" and "Action Script" more times than I can remember. Recently Full Sail's online student portal displayed a link to Steve Jobs's thoughts-on-flash.  He did not extoll its virtues, but laid out as plainly as he could why Apple iPhones and iPads did not support Flash. His piece was excellent because it was easy to read due to good structure, logical and used very simple language to convey the point. All the above, including the fact that next month I will be studying Flash in my Digital Assets in Education(DAE) course, were signs that I needed to get started with Flash.
           
 Lynda.com was my chosen means to learn Flash. This was my first experience with a video based course. It was recommended that I start with "Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Essential Training". However, given my complete lack of experience with Flash and my innate curiosity, I chose to start with "Getting Started with Flash CS4", which is a pre-requisite to "Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Essential Training . If you just watch the videos, the entire training runs for 49 minutes. The training is broken up into 18 small videos, from 1 minute to 7 minutes long, which makes it easier on the mind, eyes and ears. I decided on a strategy to go over all the videos first as a passive learner and go over them again as an active learner, performing the same actions on my Adobe Flash CS5 software, as was shown on the video. Though this took more time, I was more satisfied with this approach and the fact that Lynda.com allows you to re-visit the videos as many times as you like.


           The "Getting Started with Flash CS4" training covers Flash File types, Art (drawing, symbols), Multimedia(graphics, music and video), Animations (shape tweens, motion tweens, bones and motion presets), a bit of Action Scripting and publishing on the web. I must mention, the lesson on Animation was the one that needed the most attention. There were new terms such as layers, keyframes and motion presets that took time to understand.  The training's overall purpose was to expose the student to how Flash can be used to create animations, morphing and multimedia. 


           As I go ahead with my Flash study plan, two thoughts come to my mind. One of Steve Job's comments on thoughts-on-flash was that Flash was a number one reason for Mac crashes. Being a new convert to Mac, hearing this does not make me very happy. The other is that the  most popular hand held devices such as the iphone and other smart phone, do not use Flash. It makes me wonder about the longevity of Flash.