Illumen and the Chicago eLearning & Technology Showcase

Illumen Group is proud to announce our sponsorship of the Chicago eLearning & Technology Showcase this year. This event, with more than 30 contributing speakers is setting the bar for eLearning based events.

This year, the Showcase celebrates the evolution of adult learning and performance, with an emphasis on the role of new media and interactive methods in business and institutional training. The Showcase provides a full day of educational sessions for all levels of experience. More than 30 speakers will explore all aspects of elearning—instructional design, development tools, media resources, virtual classrooms, social and interactive applications, mobile learning, rapid elearning, and more. Attendees will have an opportunity to create their own schedules from a variety of topics or follow one of four Showcase Tracks, including Simulations & Social Media, eLearning Tools & LMS, Online Design, and Management of eLearning.

More information about the event and registration can be found at the Chicago eLearning & Technology Website.

Illumen will be at the event showcasing our eLearning applications and offering information on the process and development of technology and learning based solutions. We hope to see you all there.

Register Now for Learning 2009

Illumen had a great time at Learning 2008 last year. Registration is now open for Learning 2009. Keynoters include Capt. Sullenberger, Laura Fitton - On Enterprise Twitter and Malcolm Gladwell.

Learn, Benchmark, Collaborate, Compare and Plan at Learning 2009!  - Elliott Masie

Learning 2009 (www.learning2009.com)  ::  November 8 - 11, 2009  ::  Orlando, Florida

6 Ways to Extend User Experiences Through Mobile Devices

More people are using mobile devices to handle their everyday computer tasks. Given three minutes and my iPhone, I can check my work and personal emails, my schedule, the news, the weather, and sometimes even get in a game of Tetris. It, like so many mobile devices, is usable, engaging, efficient, informative, and scalable. This mobile convenience should carry through training and marketing solutions as well. Unfortunately, often due to certain limitations of each mobile device and their short shelf life, there is often not a credible mobile counterpart to most training applications. To bridge the gaps, here are 6 ways to extend the user experience of your web or CD-ROM based app through mobile devices.

1. Limit Your Limitations
   It is often said that the difficulty in developing mobile experiences is that there are too many custom devices, all with unique technologies that need unique solutions, and therefore too many limitations to justify the development price. In reality, you can often find that two or three devices, or types of devices, make up a majority of what your audience uses. This may not always be the case, but survey your audience, you may find out that that most use iPhones and Blackberries, or maybe they tend to use more generalized cell phones. There is nothing wrong with developing towards a couple specific types of devices if it makes sense. By understanding what devices are typically used by your audience, you can limit the limitations, save time and money.
   


Read more

20 Common Terms and Definitions Found in E-Learning - Part I

When dealing with training, education, and marketing solutions, it doesn’t take long before we start hearing words we may not know. Below is a list of 20 common terms and definitions.

1. Analytics
   Refers to the analysis and derivation of data into usable information or statistics. Analytics are often presented visually or numerically and are used to understand your audience, where they are succeeding, where they are failing, your site’s use, and any other number of variables.
   
2. Animation
   Animation can be broken into two areas. First, it can be presented as 2d or 3d, and in a realistic or stylized representation of objects, people, and places. They take place over time and are often used to visually describe a story, a theory, an idea, a process, a feature, or a benefit. Second, animation can be used within a user interface to lead the user’s eye to focus on something specific or guide them to the next section within a course. The iPhone is a good example of this.
   
3. Avatar
   A virtual representation of a user. Avatars take on many styles such as cartoons, real photos, and even an image of a favorite sport, hobby, pet, or event. Avatars can help users customize their experience and interact with others.
   


Read more

A Look at Personas

When defining the best solution to any project, one step within the discovery process is the creation and use of personas. User personas are fictitious characters who represent unique groups of users. We use personas to understand how different groups of users will use a website and application. By focusing on how a persona interacts with a website, navigates to content and through content, understands and retains the content, we can begin to understand the different user experiences that occur. These user experiences must fulfill the goals, objectives, and needs. This step can also help determine new goals, objectives, and needs as well as limitations users may have.

It is a good practice to find two or three user personas and one or two administrative personas. But each opportunity is unique and can derive any number of unique persona. First we must understand the different user personas. To do this we must understand the audience(s). This can be done by talking with our clients, their audiences, defining surveys, focus groups, looking at demographics, and general research. A lot of specific information can arise such as (to name a few):

Read more

Analytics is Hard!

It’s an interesting conundrum. Never has our economy been more competitive. Never have companies been under more pressure to make every aspect of their operations ultimately efficient. Never has there been a more tangible link between learning and productivity . . . and yet, the number of organizations that can effectively measure and assess the performance of their learning programs or can accurately analyze visitor interaction with their web-based learning initiatives is less than 12%.

The reasons are easy to explain, but difficult to change.

Read more

Higher Education turns to Interactive

Purdue University continually explores the future of interactive learning in an effort to find effective and engaging content delivery methods for it’s faculty and students. On August 28th Purdue’s Vet School invited Illumen Group along with Dr. James “Butch” Rosser of The Stealth Learning Company to present the topic of Experiential Learning and how it’s shaping both academic and corporate learning environments. Over three sessions, the trio provided insight on Experiential Learning’s past, present, and future. Audience members consisted of faculty from Purdue’s Vet Sciences, Nursing, Engineering and Agriculture Departments.

Read more