Category: E-learning

Easygenerator is growing and that reflects in the Jane Hart Top 200 of this year. Not only are we listed for the third time in a row. We went up 39 places from number 87 to number 52. This years list is a bit different. It went from a top100 to a top200 and has now three categories. Easygenerator is on position 55 for educational tools and on position 43 for workplace learning. We are on position 52 overall. You can see the complete list on Jane Harts website.

I want to thank all the users that voted for Easygenerator, and I want to thank you for the great feedback that our users/voters left with Jane Hart.

Some quotes on Easygenerator:

• “this is the most user-friendly e-learning tool I have tried, and as a busy professor, I can’t afford to spend a lot of time on online course development.” Chris Wildermuth, University/College teacher, USA
• “Easy to use, flexible pricing, and many users supported Powerful training can now done over the internet and for a very reasonable cost.” Steven Guzelimian, USA
• “We use Easygenerator to produce attractive, effective learning material. Our eLearning developers like its ease of use, while our subject matter experts like the ability to leave feedback as they review a course. It allows for a very collaborative process.” Stephen Naso, L&D Manager, USA
• “This has a bit more of a cookie-cutter feel out of the box, but the ways that pretests and post tests can tie in directly to topic areas in the training make it a great tool for selectively/dynamically marking mastered content in the course as complete based on the user’s pretest results.” Kimball Larsen, e-learning developer, USA
• “very easy to use, responsive eLearning authoring tool. We’ve deployed it across our entire organization so anyone can create effective learning!” L&D Manager, USA

We will definitely be in the top 50 next year.

Kasper Spiro

Energy shortage forces Ukrainian schools to close during winter period, Easygenerator provides its software for free!

Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 8 January 2015. – The Ukraine is going through tumultuous times; economic setbacks, war in the east and political instability. Schools and universities will be closed in the winter for a period of three months to save gas and money. Teachers are trying to teach from home, a challenging task given the lack of resources.

Easygenerator, a provider of eLearning authoring software, decided to make its software available free of charge to everybody in the Ukraine as of today. Easygenerator is closely connected to the Ukraine, it’s software development team of 17 developers is based in Zhytomyr (Ukraine). The software is available free of charge for a period of 3 months till the 1^st of April. Easygenerator wants to make a contribution to the Ukraine and hopes to facilitate online learning for all Ukrainian teachers and students. “We strongly believe in supporting online learning globally. Given our special relationship with the Ukraine it is our pleasure to make a small contribution to the country in these challenging times”, says Kasper Spiro (CEO Easygenerator).

How does it work?

It’s easy, go to www.easygenerator.com and sign up. Your account will be automatically upgraded to a premium account if you are from the Ukraine till the 1^st of April. The premium account allows users to create, design and publish courses. All accounts will be transferred into free accounts by April first, and all courses will remain available for the students!

About Easygenerator

Easygenerator provides cloud-based eLearning authoring software. Easygenerator enables instructional designers and subject matter experts to rapidly create the most engaging courses that have the highest learning impact. Easygenerator is affordable, easy to use, and future proof. Simply create, design, publish courses, and track your learner’s results with Easygenerator. Used and loved by 8000+ users in more than 150 countries. Easygenerator’s headquarter is located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

There are more than 6000 easygenerator users in 144 countries.  As a result, we’ve had frequent requests in the last few months to enable the translation of the default text in easygenerator.

I’m pleased to announce this functionality is now developed.

Now, in the Simple Course template, you can translate all default text elements from English to any language. This is how it works:

1. Open the course in easygenerator.
2. Go to the design tab
3. Choose the template “Simple course’. (For now, the Simple Course template is the only one enabled with the translation option, the other templates will follow.)
4. Scroll down and on the right side of the design tab you will find a table (interface language):
5. Click on a pencil in the column value and you can change the text.
6. Go to the top of the page and press the ‘apply’ button.

A short example

The default language is English. If, for example, I want to change it to Dutch, I just type in the Dutch translation. The second entry is ‘Start Course’. It will be shown in the introduction page of the course.

I type in the Dutch translation (Start cursus), press the apply button and run the course. The button is translated to Dutch. This means you can now translate the course template to any language..

Help us with translation and earn a free one-month subscription! 

We are looking for easygenerator users who want to help us create default translations. If you translate the Simple template to your language, we will give you a free subscription to the Plus Edition. Since we only need each language once, we will award this to the first person who responds for each language. We already have English, Dutch, Ukrainian and Chinese (mandarin). All other languages are welcome!

The next step is to make this feature available for the other templates. Then, we will add several default languages from which you’ll be able to choose the language you want, and you won’t need to complete the translation.

DevLearn 2014 is fast approaching; in just less than three weeks it will start. our CEO Kasper Spiro will present two sessions at DevLearn. One concurrent session titled “Trends Leading to the End of the LMS” and one morning buzz session called “The Death of WYSIWYG Authoring?”

These titles make it seem that he is projecting doom for eLearning. But that’s not the case.  What it means is that we, in elearning, are in a period of fundamental change. All changes offer new opportunities but also create a downside with victims.  Kasper believes the LMS and WYSIWYG authoring will be the victims of some of these changes. Read more »

Introduction

Every 8 weeks, easygenerator updates its cloud based authoring tool with new functionality. This blog series will provide a short introduction of each of the functionalities with a video of the feature.

Content Items

In easygenerator you can add stand-alone content and information, but this should be done with caution. It is important to add only the necessary information to a course. However, in most cases, it’s better to add content directly to a question which ties to learning objectives.

As a teacher, trainer, or subject matter expert, you want to transfer your knowledge or share your skills with other individuals. Easygenerator can help you! We offer a simple and affordable online authoring solution. Our goal is to help you create instructional sound e-Learning by creating e-Learning based on learning objectives. This video explains the didactical principles behind easygenerator and shows you how you can apply them creating courses. Enjoy the video. We hope it helps you reach your goals in building eLearning courses.

Easygenerator: the next 12 months

Last week, after months of intense development  and user testing we  launched our new Plus Plan . The Plus Plan makes it very easy for teachers and subject matter experts to create engaging learning material quickly,  without a learning curve. . The Plus Plan includes  5 new Question Types: (Drag and Drop Text, Drag and Drop Images, Single Select, Multiple Select and Fill in the blanks), Co-Authoring and an Adaptive Learning Template.

But there’s much more in the pipeline for the coming 12 months: easygenerator  will roll out a new release every 8 weeks and add:

• 10 more question types
• Collaboration options
• More templates
• Content pages
• Scenario based eLearning
• Custom Templates

So what can you expect from easygenerator over the next 12 months?

August – Starter Plan

The goal of this release is to complete our Starter Plan. In August you’ll be able to  easily import PowerPoint presentations and quickly add pop quizzes and curated content to  immediately asses if students understand the learning material.

Easygenerator will have:

• Two new question types:
  • Multiple Choice Images
  • Text Matching
  • Two improved Question types:
    • Fill in the blanks
    • Drag and Drop Questions
    • Content Pages: Curate and Create context for your students

October – Growing the Plus Plan

In October the Plus Plan will get an update! Teachers and subject matter experts will be able to create instructionally sound eLearning with two new question types, a new type of course and extended media options:

• Two new question types:
  • Hotspot question
  • Statement
  • Glossary
  • Scenario based courses
  • Video & Sound upload.

December – Plus Plan finalized

In December, teachers and subject matter experts will benefit the full potential of the Plus Plan. Co-authoring will be extremely easy and clear with, to do lists, checklists and email notifications for every author involved.

Expect the following features in December:

• To Do and Checklists for Co-Authors
• Email Notifications for Co-Authors
• Question Type: Match images
• Question Type: Drag and Drop image
• Question Pool: Draw questions
• Voice Over: Add Voiceovers to all content and questions
• Point and Click Graphical Interface for Creating Scenario Based Courses

2015 – The year of Pro

The current pro version is for Windows only, but we are bringing easygenerator Pro to the Web as well. Instructional Designers will have all easygenerator features available:

• 14 question types
• Create your own publishing templates,
• Advanced content management features
• EPub and CMI5 publication
• Set languages for publication

Subscribe to our newsletter to be t notified when new features are added!

Two weeks ago, Easygenerator’s CEO, Kasper Spiro, made his second appearance on eLearning chat, the show led by eLearning expert Rick Zanotti. Since Kasper’s appearance last year, a lot has changed for easygenerator. Easygenerator has developed and rolled out a web version of its tool, and introduced the new Starter Plan, which allows non-eLearning experts to create engaging courses and quizzes.

Rick asked Kasper to share what he sees as trends in elearning and where the industry is headed. Kasper responded that change is key – businesses are responding to multiple changes and elearning must keep up. This is one reason why it’s important for elearning to work in an agile development environment of short development cycles or sprints, as they’re called. Easygenerator has succeeded in adapting its product to be closer to business’ needs in less than a year since Kasper was on eLearning Chat, because of how its development team works.

Zanotti commented on how a small company such as easygenerator, has achieved so much and how the eLearning development community can learn from easygenerator and Kasper’s achievements.

Last but not least Rick and Co-host Dawn J. Mahoney asked Kasper to demo the new Starter Plan, asking questions of Kasper and putting easygenerator under the microscope!

Watch Kasper on eLearning Chat:

eLearnChat 127: @KasperSprio on #EasyGenerator from RELATECASTS on Vimeo.

Four of our renounced thought leaders (Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, Clark Quinn and Will Thalheimer) launched the serious eLearning manifesto on March 13^th.  They believe  we should do a better job  in creating learning experiences that are effective,  improve performance and  live up to the expectations we all (should) have of eLearning. They identified and wrote down 22 principles of elearning, that if you use and apply correctly, your eLearning will be up to standard.  

This initiative is well received. However, when I talk with people about it, I get two questions: “Great, but how do I use these principles” and “How do I convince my boss or client that we should apply them.” This sparked the idea to write a post on each of the principles, with my answer to these two questions outlined on each principle. I have so far written 4 posts on my personal blog (www.kasperspiro.com). 

I hope to get support from you. Please send your ideas, comments, best practices and whatever you can think of to [email protected] or put a comment on this page next to the article (or at one of the original articles). If it adds value I will include them in the posts. If you’ve sent something on a topic already covered, I will update that post. 

Here is a summary of the first four posts:

 1 Do Not Assume that Learning is the Solution
I worked in the online help industry (EPSS) for many years. What I found however was that I was creating fixes for bad software when I thought the solution was ‘better software’ instead of more online help. There is a similar problem with learning. When there is something wrong with the organization or product: learning is not the solution; improving the organization or product is.

 2 Do Not Assume that eLearning is the Answer
In this post, I wrote about the approach of Bob Mosher and Conrad Gottfredson. They have an impressive and clear model for learning. They have defined the 5 moments of learning need which can help you determine what learners’ need and when they need it. The five moments of need are:

1. Learning for the first time
2. Learning More
3. Applying what you’ve learned
4. When things go wrong
5. When things change

In this post, I also included Clark Quinn’s story about learning needs.

3. Tie Learning to Performance Goals
In this post I wrote about two eLearning champions; Cathy More and her action mapping approach, and Jay Cross and the internet time alliance. It’s all about integrating learning into the business and using learning to achieve company goals.

4. Target Improved Performance
This post refers to the most recent post, but adds the importance of, and role of middle management (based on a presentation at ASTD by Charles Jennings).

So these are my first 4 posts on the principles — 18 more to go. I do want to hear from you, so please share your ideas, best practices and any insights you may have, with me! You can follow the progress on www.KasperSpiro.com.

We all know  the world of learning is changing rapidly and with that new tasks and roles will emerge. One of the most important  roles  is Curator. You will see more and more subject matter experts taking on this role and I believe  all eLearning developers should also develop curation skills.  In this post I will look at the curation  role in more detail and  show you how easygenerator will facilitate the curation process.

Curation and the role of a curator

There are a lot of definitions and interpretations of curation and  curator. So let’s first define what we mean by it, which  I can best explain  with an example.

An art museum typically collects  paintings. Since the museum is  not able to show all its  paintings,  someone is needed who can make a selection of the paintings  that will be part of an exhibition. That selection is often based on a theme (a period, a style, or a person). It is the role of the curator to determine  a theme that supports the   selected paintings. A  good curator however, will do more, by  adding context.. For example, showing the artistic development of a  painter by exhibiting  paintings chronologically from him from every year of his live. Also content will be added to this exhibition. Info on the painter, his live, info on the paintings, relations with other painters, related art movements et cetera.

Example of curation: a Gaugain exhibition in the MOMA.

In short a curator:

1. collects (or uses an existing collection)
2. selects (a part of the collection)
3. adds context (or a story)

Curation will play an increasingly important role in eLearning and ePerformance.  One of the main challenges today is to find the correct information. Everything is available through the web but it is a hell of a job to find that piece of information that is what you need, is accurate and true.  So you need a middleman to help you find that information. There is software who does this in a way, it is called aggregation software. It can collect information on the web en order it based on keywords. The website elearninglearning.com is a great example of a very good aggregator. But that is only step one (collecting). The selection and context need to be added by a human. Someone you can trust and someone with knowledge on a specific topic. This role can be fulfilled by an subject matter expert with specific domain knowledge, or an eLearning developer.

On my personal blog I wrote some posts on curation, you can read them for more background:

• A presentation at ASTD2014: 4 ways to use curation in learning
• A presentation by David Kelly on Curation at ASTD 2013

Curation solution
Creating the “exhibition” is one step but then you have to display it. Easygenerator will provide a solution for that. Our curation publication will be added to our tool this summer. It will help the curator to organize, publish and share his curated collection.

I have included a mock-up, it is a sketch of the possible solution in pdf. It will give you an idea of our plans. Feel free to check it out and if you have any remarks, comments or ideas, you can leave them at this post or email me at [email protected].