September 16th, 2009 by Robin Green

Successful compliance and management training has the power to save organizations a significant amount of time and money. And when organizations adopt e-learning solutions through a pay-per-use LMS such as Coggno, the costs of training itself are significantly less than those of commercial LMS licenses and traditional training methods. For this reason and others, more organizations are finding online training solutions to meet compliance and management training needs.

Now, you may be thinking that a pay-per-use LMS sounds like a good idea, but you also wonder, how does it work?

If you are a first time courseware developer, you may be unfamiliar with the process of course creation, payment, and other nitty gritty. This blog entry will be devoted to those processes.

To create your training, compliance, or other content for placement on the Coggno Marketplace, first you’ll need to become a Coggno member. Doing so is easy; simply register as a Course Creator (Author) by logging onto the https://www.coggno.com/account/signup, review the terms of use, and voilà! You’re ready to begin migrating or creating content on Coggno.com.

As a content creator, how does payment work? You’ll be paid every time an organization or individual purchases a license to use the learning content you’ve authored. You’ll be paid for each license, or seat, that is purchased.

But how much? That depends on you. You can charge whatever you like, whatever price you deem appropriate. Prices range from $10 to $450 per license, according to what you decide to charge, and the standard in your field. Of course, it’s important to keep in mind your audience. Is the content geared toward an audience of individuals or corporations, which are inclined to purchase multiple licenses?

Another option is to consider creating course content of varying lengths, and charging accordingly. Learners may be interested in trying out a course at a lower price point before investing in a more substantial one at a higher price point. Using the volume discounting options available in the pricing interface, you are also able to syndicate any of your content, sharing a percentage of your revenue with the web publishers on whose website your content is advertised.

Payments arrive on time twice per month, in the form of a check. You can check your balance anytime, under the accounting tab on your account. Your personal information will be kept confidential, and will be used solely for the purpose of transferring your funds to you.

So what’s the catch? Coggno retains $5 or 10% (whichever is greater) of the sales you make on your content. And if you sequence a number of courses in a package of courses, the minimum is 10% or $10. However, using Coggno’s LMS tools and publishing your content is free. Until you make a sale, the small percentage of the sale that Coggno retains doesn’t exist. In other words, until you make money on your content, Coggno doesn’t either.

Do you need special technical skills? No. The Coggno creation format is easy to navigate and self-explanatory. However, if you do run into trouble along the way, Coggno’s customer service representatives are available online to help you out.

Check out the Coggno Marketplace, an open resource connecting organizations that need e-learning and assessment content with the authors of that content. With more organizations taking advantage of e-learning modules for compliance and other training needs, the time is right to try your hand at course content creation.

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Coggno.com offers high-quality online education world-wide.

August 26th, 2009 by Robin Green

Being asked to “please try again” is something that’s happened to most of us in the learning management system community. There’s no shame in it. Juggling all the different subscription, banking, social network, email, and other account passwords is overwhelming. And it seems like more and more websites are creating increasingly complicated password requirements.

Your old stand-by password is suddenly no good anymore. Some sites want a mix of numbers and letters in your password. Some require more than 5 or 6 characters. Others want a combination of lower-case and capital letters, others a mix of both plus numbers, while the most horrible sticklers require a more-than-six-character mix of both cases plus numbers.

Some very efficient, clever, and/or über-organized people have found tricks for remembering passwords. For example, I read about one trick where you take the first and last letters of the website name, and stick your usual password in the middle, adding perhaps a number or two that you always use. I read about another trick too, but I’ve forgotten it. Just as I’ve forgotten the passwords to oh-so-many subscriptions, networks, and other sites.

I know I’m not alone. And that’s why universal login, that magical feature that learning management systems and other e-learning platforms are beginning to adopt on a wider scale, is so smart.

For organizations and schools delivering e-learning content to large numbers of students, accessibility and ease are essential. And universal login provides this in a simple and logical way.

To aid organizations and all users in their virtual learning environment access, Coggno has recently integrated RPX with its learning management system. Accessing your training or other e-learning content is now simpler still.

Coggno no longer requires users to create a Coggno account, providing instead a smorgasbord of login options. Through the RPX app, users can now access Coggno using identities from major sites such as Google, AOL, Yahoo!, Twitter, WordPress, MySpace, and Facebook.

RPX helps solve a problem for many e-learning and other software providers: how to bring all the most popular login options into a single and intuitive login interface. Coggno’s LMS users can now avoid the frustrations of forgotten passwords and signing up/in with a separate Coggno user ID.

RPX allows users the option of signing up using identities from a range of sites, or to continue using an existing user ID. Additionally, learners who log on to Coggno using an ID from another site are able to bring over their contacts from that site.

The RPX application makes creating and deploying elearning content simpler for Coggno’s courseware authors, and most importantly, creates a better training experience for all learners. RPX uses a range of protocols to authenticate a website’s users, as well as automatic upgrading (no libraries necessary), simple testing, data synchronization for user profile updates, and no vendor lock-in. RPX prevents user frustration with forgotten passwords, and being asked to please try again until you’re ready to simply create a whole separate account.

The single-sign-on format allows Coggno’s learning management system users to skip the process of creating and recalling a Coggno login account, and get to the fun part–accessing, learning, creating, updating, and delivering multimedia e-learning content.

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Coggno.com provides high-quality e-learning education.

August 19th, 2009 by Robin Green

One great way for educators to leverage their knowledge and expertise on a subject is by creating short lessons or learning management system courses and putting them on the Coggno e-learning marketplace. Coggno’s intuitive UI (user interface) and simple-to-use tools provide easy course creation for all educators, with no need for IT help at any point.

Coggno’s online learning marketplace was created to facilitate the fast and effective transfer of knowledge. Learning material and online courses are increasingly simple to create–and are no longer simply fun additions to a traditional classroom. In fact, online course content is beginning to make the difference between a good class and an amazing one.

Recent studies have blown out of the water the antiquated notion that online education is simply “better than nothing,” or an on-the-side supplement to a traditional classroom. A recent report tells us just the opposite.

The 93-page study on online education, conducted by SRI International for the Department of Education, found that “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” Just a few years ago, e-learning wasn’t much more than a lesser, electronic version of traditional in-person courses. Now, online education is beginning to actually surpass the face-to-face versions.

We have to look at the tools that are available now on LMSs for educators and trainers. For example, using Coggno’s text tool, video tool, SCORM publisher, template tool, audio tool and assessment tools, educators are able to easily and quickly create dynamic e-learning material either for in-class use or for publishing on Coggno’s e-learning marketplace. And choosing from Coggno’s apps such as BB FlashBack, Rapid Unison, and the Apple Podcast Producer, educators can engage their audience in active, visually- and audibly-interesting learning content.

Podcasts are one exciting medium, offering a host of pedagogical possibilities. Podcasts are convenient and optimally portable, and appeal to many different kinds of learning styles. They can be used to both supplement and reinforce course learning material, or renew learning activities. They can also serve as announcements, reminders, and updates to be heard by everyone using the learning management system.

In addition, many educators and trainers find that responding to learners’ unique cultural backgrounds, interests, and world knowledge results in a more interactive and dynamic learning experience. An LMS can be an invaluable tool in not only tracking learners’ progress, but in providing an organizational and educational tool that caters to the needs of all learners.

Coggno’s suite of course development tools enables interactive learning that lends itself to differentiated instruction. Coggno is a growing LMS course platform that understands that all learners are distinct–and that this fact enriches, rather than detracts from, the quality of a learning system that caters to all learners.

Studies show that about 70% of students are strong visual learners. While listening to someone lecture for hours doesn’t suit many visual learners, watching a dynamic speaker demonstrate an idea will. Visual learners are sensitive to body language, and often have an advanced ability to “read” people. So in your content, include videos with demonstrations, simulations and screencasting.

The effectiveness of a course depends on the designer’s tapping into the right resources. These include not only the tools offered by the learning management system, but the students themselves. By understanding learners’ needs and learning styles, educators and subject matter experts are better equipped to create more helpful, engaging, and successful online courseware.

With more organizations and schools adopting their own learning management system, the traditional style of creating and distributing knowledge is being redefined. Whether it’s corporate training or classroom pedagogy, Web 2.0 technologies, LMSs and other online tools are seeing an end to the days in which one person dominated the floor and simply dispensed information to an all-ears audience. The classroom now involves the student, and holds their attention and interest, in ways it was never able to before.

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Coggno.com offers premier online education world-wide.

August 12th, 2009 by Robin Green

One universally important element of an effective learning management system course is early and detailed communication with students. What kind of information is essential to provide early on in a e-learning course?

Teach students about course navigation with the use of videos, taking advantage of the simple-to-use video creation tools that LMSs like Coggno offer. Video tours are an easy and fun way to reach students quickly and effectively with important information. And presenting this information in a visually interesting way will help ensure that this important information is delivered successfully.

Of course, the three basic tenets of human communication are gesture, speech, and visuals. So the online fusion of these three elements recreates the natural ways we humans communicate in face-to-face communication. Using these three aspects–especially the emotional signals of tone and voice–helps you to create a sense of trust in the virtual learning environment.

Another guideline to successful communication with students–and something that will help ensure their comfort and ease working with your e-learning course–is developing a clear course outline or syllabus. A syllabus provides a space for courseware developers and educators to break down into simple bites the course expectations and goals for learners. This information must be presented before any actual learning begins, to ensure best communication with students.

Especially for first-time e-learners, it’s best to understand what they can expect from a course as early as humanly possible. Your course outline should include some critical info about the online course. In the course outline, stress the importance of familiarizing oneself with the LMS and exploring all the different features. Students should understand where all the different content can be found in each section of the e-learning course. Advise learners to check the LMS on a regular basis for class updates, assignments, or announcements. Describe in minute detail what happens when students miss an assignment or a class (if there are classes,) as well as how exactly students will be graded, and any other bits of critical information.

One more useful function of the syllabus that will help avoid later problems is an outline of the plagiarism policy. Although most of us understand that plagiarism is prohibited, it’s not uncommon for people to be unsure what exactly qualifies as such. Though real and intentional plagiarizing is all-too-common common, unintended incidents of cheating also happen and cause a big mess for everyone involved. But with your help, such situations are preventable. The fact is that many people are just uninformed about how to cite sources properly.

The solution? Attach a citation guide like MLA or ATA style to your syllabus explaining the correct way to cite articles, books, websites, and other published works.

Helping learners feel at home in their virtual learning environment, confident in their navigation skills, and clear about expectations and course processes can be achieved using a few simple tools. These include a well developed syllabus, videos, and citation guides (which are easy to find online). Quick and clear establishment of the features, tone, and objectives of your e-learning course will help avoid any confusion or problems in the future. It will establish a harmonious and dynamic learning management system experience not only for your learners, but for administrators and course instructors as well.

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Coggno.com offers world-class online training.

August 5th, 2009 by Robin Green

Unfortunately, it still comes a surprise to many e-learning content developers–and often too late–that in writing material for a learning management system course, less is more. This general rule of thumb applies particularly to the writing voice and creating readable and engaging content through concise and simple language.

Of course, when creating e-learning material, there are many choices to be made. You’ll decide about everything from navigation to graphics, visual and audio media, to a tone of voice in your writing. Pay special attention to your writing style. A powerful or weak writing style can make or break an online course.

Good courseware is based on an author’s personal experience and subject matter expertise. And since there are an infinite number of subjects out there–not to mention the many kinds of learning styles and pedagogical methods–it follows that an appropriate writing style will vary depending on the content.

Regardless of this fact, many courseware developers still have not discovered their authorial power in regards to the writing voice. The trend in e-learning content writing has followed a “voiceless writing” model, in which students are provided with a formal tone and text without style or affect. The traditionally preferred writing style does away with any trace of an author’s voice or personality.

However, a burgeoning community of e-learning developers are creating content with more voiced writing. Particularly in an e-learning context, studies suggest that students respond with more interest to a voice with personality, in contrast to a formal and impersonal tone.

It’s true that in some cases, a bland tone is simply unavoidable–and that’s OK. But to create content with that blandness as the ideal isn’t wise. And too often, course creators fall into the trap of intentionally creating difficult-to-read content in order to impress learners, or so that students will have greater respect for the content. This is a bad idea.

What’s the best solution? Clear, concise, and relevant content.

Once you’ve prepared your course content and infused it with an interesting writing style and your own enthusiasm and passion for the subject, next comes the revision process. This is a major aspect of keeping your course writing concise and clear. Put your course through what writers call “deep revision.” Look over your course and ensure that no sections, paragraphs, graphics, etc. look clunky, out of place, dull, or extraneous. Just as you used your powerful writing voice, use your authorial power to scrap whole pieces that don’t seem to fit. Any unnecessary piece must go.

Especially in online training courses, learners require content to be to-the-point, engaging, and one hundred percent relevant to what learners will need to perform tasks later on. These may be new skills, company policies, or any other critical information.

Just remember: voiceless writing in an online course is worse than a live but bland and boring lecture. E-learning strives to be better than that. When developing content for a learning management system, keep your writing clear and concise, but most importantly, your own.

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Coggno.com is a leading provider of high-quality LMS platforms.

July 29th, 2009 by Robin Green

More learning management systems are focusing on making e-learning course creation more accessible for the ordinary person.

As company budgets take a hit from the recession, and finding reliable in-house IT support becomes less cost-effective, it’s critical that training and other e-learning objectives are possible to maintain without outside help.

Coggno is one e-learning solution that continues to show that although an LMS is a large and complicated tool, it does not need to be complicated to use.

Coggno has recently collected the responses from a customer satisfaction survey, whose purpose was to gauge customer sentiment, as well as the top issues expressed by users.

High marks for Coggno included ease of upload of curriculum, simple adding of new learners, and ease of reporting. According to the survey, Coggno’s LMS was reported to be very user-friendly and straightforward. Respondents noted fast uploading from spreadsheets, as well as fast reaction times.

Dynamic and simple course creation tools such as text and video, quiz, question bank, text and video tools, template, assessment, and SCORM publishing tools are some features that Coggno offers to make course creation simple, efficient, and even pleasurable.

Another positive response was regarding Coggno’s pay-per-use business model, which ensures that all e-learning courses and training programs stay fresh, and do not become outdated or irrelevant. Companies and schools are able to create and deploy content on an as-needed basis, providing convenient and cost-effective e-learning solutions.

Course creators and administrators maintain full control over their learning material. Coggno allows course creators to create and brand their own learning content, customizing it for in-house purposes and comfortable for deployment inside a user cluster.

Creating and incorporating videos using an LMS can transform lessons, activities and even entire courses. Coggno’s simple format allows video creation with just a few clicks, making it accessible for any user. And other relevant tools in Coggno’s toolkit offer a check-and-balance system. In other words, learning content featured in videos can be checked for understanding using other course features like quiz and assessments.

According to the survey, privacy was another important factor. Coggno’s system does not require administrators to send invitations, but rather allows access based on a secret code.

Coggno’s user-friendly, flexible, straightforward user interface is a breeze to navigate and users are walked through every step of the course creation. The whole idea of e-learning courses hosted on learning management systems is centered around convenience and usability for all users–including and especially the students themselves.

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Coggno.com offers high-quality online training courses.

July 22nd, 2009 by Robin Green

When I think about how e-learning and learning management systems need to respond to changing times, I think about Scrabble. Yes, Scrabble, the board game that tests your word knowledge and skill at arranging those words on a board in a way that gains you points, has undergone a dramatic transformation.

I used to consider myself rather adept at the game, reaching into the muddy backwaters of my brain for words that I’d probably used only once or twice in my lifetime. You only received seven numbers to work with, but I can usually make do and come up with something. Truth be told, I’ve always been rather proud of my healthy vocabulary.

With the internet, of course, everything has changed. In face-to-face Scrabble, if I’m not sure the word I want to use is a real word, I either refrain from playing it or play it and take my chances. If you aren’t familiar with the game, the chances were this: if a person wants to challenge my iffy word, they can do so–grab a standard dictionary and look for the word. If it isn’t there, I have to take my non-word off and forfeit my next turn as punishment. If the word does exist, the challenger has to forfeit their next turn. This part of the game was always, for me, quite essential–one could almost say it was at the heart of Scrabble.

But you couldn’t say it. Because in online Scrabble, this part of the game is no longer relevant. And yet people are still playing and loving cyber Scrabble. I don’t play it myself, but I asked a friend who does how it works, and why it’s still fun. “Can’t you just look up words?” I asked her. “Can’t people just cheat?” “Well, it’s not cheating to look up words on online Scrabble,” she replied. “So, of course you can.”

E-learning may run into the same conundrum. From online training and learning content to the use of discussion boards and other Web 2.0 tools for educational purposes, who’s to say a student isn’t simply looking up the answer, copying and pasting responses, learning nothing? This is possible in some settings, and depending on the content, it may have a profound impact on the course effectiveness.

But just as online Scrabble involved a shift in priorities, skills, strategy, and format, education in its online form must undergo the same growing pains. One of the most common complaints I hear from e-learning students is that courses are simply too easy. Peer originality becomes dubious. And for educators, student effort becomes harder to monitor. But does it have to be this way?

What we really need is smarter e-learning design and deployment. It’s not enough to create good content, get it out there, and expect students to be engaged. The effective use of Web 2.0 programs, learning management systems, and online courseware in an online learning context requires strategy.

This strategy can be built into the course, developed and maintained by a course administrator or educator, and/or enforced in a face-to-face learning environment if one exists. Tools like Coggno’s Activities feature allows LMS administrators to track student activity. Another strategy is to build exams that effectively test student knowledge, rather than asking them to solve problems and post them on a board.

If you’re choosing a learning management system for e-learning training or a virtual classroom, choose one based on its built-in solutions to an evolving, information-heavy world.

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Coggno.com provides high-quality e-learning education.

July 15th, 2009 by Robin Green

Back in the day, before we had simple e-learning tools like learning management systems and online courseware, it wasn’t so easy to create instructional material. Those who wanted to do so had to go through the necessary material writing, gathering, and organizing, and then transfer it to paper to be auditioned in publishing houses, or printed hundreds or thousands of times for employees. Video and audio supplements were often created and deployed willy-nilly. All that paper, all those old tapes.

Textbooks, of course, are still in circulation. And the concept of making (and/or saving) a dime off creating knowledge and instructional material is still compelling to a lot of people. Many of these people are experts in some area. Or they have training to take care of within an organization, and need the tools to do so.

But the life of a textbook writer is not and never has been smooth sailing, between the competitive industry, getting published, and being taken advantage of by publishing companies.

For many subject matter experts with a knack for explaining their field and with the desire to share their knowledge, learning management systems (LMSs) and other elearning tools are a great option. The tools LMSs like Coggno provide include video, simulations, demos, animations, screen recordings, audio recordings, podcast creators, and the integration of Web 2.0 tools for student collaboration. Nowadays learning content creators have a wealth of tools at hand to make their students’ learning experience a dynamic and effective one.

Unlike textbook writers, elearning content creators are also given full ownership and a great deal of power over their course material. For example, Coggno allows authors first to create and migrate content free of charge. The writer maintains ownership and copyright of their learning content. And once a course is migrated, it isn’t set in stone.

Authors have a number of options regarding their learning content, which can be chosen at any time they like: to modify it, delete it, keep it as it is for a while, modify or delete only parts, etc.

Another option is to syndicate your learning content. This means that other relevant web publishers can publish and sell your online courseware on their websites. But it’s your choice which sites you want to allow, how much revenue you’d like to share each time you sell your courseware, and how long you would like the website to publish it.

If you are able to, syndicating your courseware is a wise move. Why? A few reasons: first, syndicating your content gets it out there on the market. And second, it’s a great way to expand not only your audience, but your revenue.

Ultimately, elearning content creators have a much better deal than textbook authors. Both get to do what they love, but elearning authors have the power and freedom to do what they please with their material. And using all the tools that learning management systems offer, have fun while doing it.

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Coggno.com offers world-class e-learning courses.