Easygenerator is an eLearning authoring tool with a big plus. We will host your courses for you (if you want) and we can even track and trace your results. We have various options:

• Track and trace results inside Easygenerator
• Track and trace results in your own Learning record store
• Track and trace results in your LMS

In this post I would like to go over all three options.

Track and trace results in Easygenerator

For this option you do not have to do anything, it works by default. We will track and trace all the results of the learners. You will see them on the result tab of your course. You can even download these results. We created a video with some extra details.

Track and trace results in your LRS

If you have an LRS of your own, you can use that. Just add your credentials to the course settings and that is it. This video shows you how it is done.

Track and trace results in your LMS

Of course we are also able to report results to your LMS. Just use the publish option ‘To your LMS’ and upload the course in your LMS. That is all. The results will be reported automatically. If you do not disable result trackling in your setting the results will be stored in your LMS and in Easygenerator or your custom LRS at the same time.

 

Any questions left? Please checkout the help page or contact us via support@easygenerator.com

At easygenerator we add features and improvements every week. This week I want to draw your attention to a cool new feature: The HotSpot

What is a hotspot?

A hotspot is basically a hyperlink on an image. A hotspot can link to a text with explanation, another image, a web page or a document. In our first implementation we only have a text option.

Why should I want to use a hotspot?

With the text hotspot that we implemented you can add text or explanations to an image. The advantage is that the user will only see the image, and will get the extra info in the context (if he or she hovers over the hotspot with the mouse).

How do I add a hotspot in easygenerator?

I will show you in a few simple steps. I also recorded a video showing the process in which I added some nice easygenerator tips as a bonus!

You can add hotspots to all content and question items in easygenerator. If you want to add content in a topic or question just click button:

 

After that you will see two buttons. Press ‘Add hotspot on an image’.

 

A dialog will be show where you can select the image to place the hotspots on:

Drag the hotspot, fill in the text you want to appear and press save.

The learner will see this hotspot on hover over:

 

To see this in action check out the video, including some extra tips.

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.

Are you ready to develop an e-Learning course? Watch out!  It can get complicated very quickly because you need to:

• Buy and install an authoring environment and be trained on it.
• Buy, install and customize a LMS.
• Provide course hosting and access for learners.
• Have knowledge of SCORM and XAPI (TinCan).
• Have instructional design knowledge.
• Design course look and feel.

All that has changed now! Easygenerator offers all this and more with unique pricing that includes a free monthly plan, $19 (starter Plan) and $39 (Plus Plan). This post reviews all this information and explains how easygenerator revolutionizes the world of e-Learning, making it accessible to everyone.

Buy and install an authoring environment and be trained on it

Easygenerator is designed with you in mind – someone with little or no experience in e-Learning. Easygenerator is so easy you can start developing courses without any training! Also, you don’t need to install anything, just go to www.easygenerator.com and sign up. Everything is in the cloud. You will be up and running in seconds.

You can buy easygenerator but you can also use it for free and still use all of its features. And you can switch between Plans every month, based on your needs.

Buy and install a LMS

Don’t bother. Do you need an authoring tool that provides course accessibility to learners and lets you check their learning results? Easygenerator offers all that.

Provide course hosting and access for learners

No need for any of that. Use easygenerator servers at no additional cost and with a single click you can host your courses. Hosting is included in the price for an unlimited number of learners.

Must have knowledge of SCORM and XAPI (TinCan)

What do all these strange abbreviations mean? Don’t worry – you don’t need to try and figure it out. With easygenerator, all you need is included in a simple and intuitive interface. SCORM and XAPI are integrated in easygenerator software giving you the flexibility for easy authoring, easy publishing and the ability to track results.

Design a course look and feel

Easygenerator is template based. Choose your template, choose your theme, upload your logo and you’ve just customized the course look and feel.

Need to have instructional design knowledge

Our goal is to help you create instructionally sound and effective e-Learning courses. Easygenerator is more than a tool, because it supports course development with a didactical approach built into it, ready for you to use. Easygenerator offers support through additional free tools (such as the learning objective maker, blogs, courses, webinars and Q&A sessions) in order to enable you to reach your goal.

 

Is Easy is too simple?

You may think if we want to keep it that easy there can’t be a lot of options. Think again.  We offer, for example, 8 different question types that provide unique interactions for learners, all of them are easy to use. All this and more (such as PowerPoint import) is available for you to discover. Go to www.easygenerator.com right now, signup and test it out. All functionality is free for 14 days.

 

 

 

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!

In easygenerator you can create eLearning courses based on learning objectives. This approach has many advantages because of the importance of learning objectives in elearning. Now, easygenerator has added another advantage –  you can create a smart course that provides the learner with the personalized advice. This new feature  works on all your existing courses.  All you have to do is select a new ‘Personalized’ learning’ template in the design tab and publish the course. You can check out a live example of this course type. In this post I will walk  you through the main steps of using the Personalized Learning Template, to give you an overview of how to do it.

Step 1. Apply template
You can use this template for all your existing courses or new ones.

1. Just go to the ‘Design’ tab in easygenerator
2. Select the ‘Personalized learning’ template

That is all! After this you can publish it in your preferred way to the easygenerator server, to your own web server or to any learning management system.

The Learner

From the learner’s perspective it works like this, after starting the course (on the web or LMS) the introduction page will show:

The learner clicks Start pre assessment and  all the questions from the course will be presented in a long list:

 

All the learner has to do is go through the list of questions, answer them and click  the ‘Submit’ button. After this a page is presented with a list of all learning objectives.

 

For each objective the result is shown. In this case there are 5 objectives. One of them is completed, it is shown at the bottom. The learner already proved  he mastered this objective, so he can skip it. For the other objectives a ‘recommended’ reading list is available. When the learner clicks Recommended Reading, a screen is  displayed with only the remaining incorrectly answered questions of that objective.

In this case there are 2 questions left. The reader can go to the question by clicking Start. The question isn’t shown direct, but   the learning content associated with that question is. The learner  can read the information  and then can answer the question correctly, found at the bottom of the page.  After answering all questions for this objective, the learner returns automatically to the ‘Study advice screen’. When all the questions are answered correctly, the learning objective will show a score of 100% and will be added to the list of  completed objectives.

 

 

The learner can repeat this process for the other objectives. When he is done he clicks  ‘Finish course’ and the final result page is shown, with the overall score and the score per objective. These scores can be reported to an LRS (XAPI) or any LMS (SCORM).

If you have an easygenerator  account try it out. If you don’t have an account sign up and experience the advantages  smart learning!