Illumen Group is proud to have been mentioned in the three volume book: Gaming and Simulations: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications.

From Amazon.com:

To provide a bit more space and a more creative environment for the Illumen team, we have moved. The view of downtown Chicago from Evanston is quite nice in our new space and all the computers still work after the move. We can’t ask for anything better than that! Our phone system has been upgraded along with the address, so keep in mind the change.

Our new Address:
Illumen Group
820 Davis Street, Suite 520

Evanston, IL 60201

Our new office number:
847-440-2222

I don’t know about you, but when I need to take an online course I cross my fingers and hope it’s short and interesting. Being presented content is just that… a presentation of information. So how do we better focus information on screen? Here are two tips:

Use Relating Images

We have all been there, we take a course on, for instance, loading a stapler with new staples. We might learn that we need to open the magazine, pull back on the follow block and follow spring, place new staples, and so on (I will spare you all the details). We take the assessment that asks what we pull back on before adding staples (Answer: follow block and follow spring of course!), and we pass with flying colors. We feel like we know quite well how to add staples and we are all set to add new staples to a real stapler… quite exciting. We get to our new offices and realize that we have no clue what a stapler looks like. We don’t know what a follow block or magazine looks like. We don’t even know what staples look like. We thought we were prepared but we never had the ability to visualize ourselves actually performing the tasks. For the record, the item to the right is a stapler with some quick labels thrown on for good measure. Of course this is an example. Most of us know what a stapler is, but our learning module might be about filling out a specific form, driving a reach truck, using a 5mm surgical cut guide, or punching in F5 on a IR scanner.  I certainly can’t picture any […]

Illumen is thrilled to see the Maker Faire get the thumbs up in Evanston, IL. This event, the first in the Chicago area, will be an exciting expression of technology meets art.

From the site:

Evanston Mini Maker Faire will be a day of Awesome, where Art, Technology, education and a little bit of theater meet.  A celebration of technology and the making of things.

Everyone is a maker, whether you like to cook, or use power tools. sew, program computers, use 3D printers and laser Cutters, or just like to work with your hands.

This is an opportunity to show and tell what you have been making in your garage, basement or dining room table and see what others have been making.

 
 
 

 
The Maker Faire will be Saturday Evening, August 4th, 2012 and Sunday all day, August 5th, 2012. Details at www.makerfaireevanston.com.

In eLearning, an Instructional Designer, or an ID, is the person who gathers the necessary information for the course, understands that information, and develops content that is educational, well structured, engaging, and meets the learner’s objectives. An Instructional Designer needs to be a good writer, understand the learner’s abilities and limitations, be good at developing learning plans, working with Subject Matter Experts, or SMEs (pronounced as”Smee”), and be flat out awesome at understanding what makes content educational to meet the needs of  both the learner and the course provider.

As you can see, an Instructional Designer wears a lot of hats and bridges of lot of gaps. A team of developers, often work from an Instructional Designer’s storyboards to produce the final module or interactive learning tool. A storyboard is a document that details out each chapter of information, what the audio needs to say, what text and images need to show up on screen, and what knowledge checks and interactive components can best benefit the user. An Instructional Designer will work with a Creative Director to define a look and feel and brainstorm all the ways to make the course content engaging.

Many of our clients currently use, and will continue to rely on Flash. Many companies already have a vast library of projects developed in Flash. Flash is still one of the top choices for developing more engaging and entertaining user experiences. With mobile devices becoming mainstream, some of the people we work with ask what they can do to continue or repurpose their educational content on Android and iOS, such as the iPad or iPhone based devices. With Android supporting Flash fairly well, we will focus this article on the iPad and the iPhone.

It is well known that an iPad or iPhone does not support Flash within the web browser and this raises a lot of questions relating to how mobile users can view this content. This is where Adobe AIR comes in. AIR can be used to output Flash content into an app that can be downloaded or purchased through the Apple App store or an Enterprise account. Some conversion may be needed if your course was created using an older version of Flash, or if the navigation or interaction points were better suited for a mouse then a user’s touch, but once this is complete, many Flash-based projects can be turned into iPad apps. This means that you may be able to take some of your Flash-based applications, even those that might need to connect to the Internet or database, and convert them into something a learner or sales representative can download to their device, just as they would download any other app. AIR can also output Android apps, although most Flash content will display on an Android device. Although Flash is here to stay […]

Lectora is an eLearning authoring tool that produces courses in web, SCORM, and AICC formats. Lectora, like its Articulate and Captivate counterparts, does a great job giving you a blank canvas to populate with your content. While there is a slight learning curve to development, anyone who is familiar with PowerPoint would feel comfortable creating pages (or Titles as they are called in Lectora), and publishing to SCORM, or AICC compliant formats.

Lectora Creates Websites
eLearning does not require SCORM/AICC compliancy to work with an LMS or help educate. Sometimes you need to present your content as a simple website. Lectora is different than Articulate and Captivate in that it creates what most people would consider a standard website, in that it is HTML based, rather than Flash based. In fact, you can use Lectora as a website creator to create a website with a menu, pages, and even some form capabilities. When you publish a Lectora file in a simple web format, it creates all the HTML, CSS, and Javascript – all the goodies that make a website work under the hood. While this can be helpful bringing your course to your website, be aware that editing the code […]

Whenever we find ourselves headed to a live event, we are subconsciously prepared to see teachers, training facilitators, and/or presenters expressing information. When we go online to learn, we are subconsciously prepared for far less human interaction; usually none at all. The evolution of eLearning is only now providing easier ways of bringing what we expect at live events, online. This evolution brings an enrichment of video, motion, imagery, and engaging content delivery tools, making the human touch no longer a thing out on the horizon. Providing the human touch to our projects can be easy (and fairly inexpensive) to implement. The human touch provides:

[…]

When your project requires a touch screen, getting what you need is kind of a big deal. To do this you need to understand your application, the environment the screen will be placed into, and the audience. With the the apple iOS for iphones and iPads, Android from Google, and Microsoft’s new Windows 7 Phone based devices, the media is all a stir about multi-touch based screens. Multi-touch is the ability to touch the screen in more than one place and have both points recognized as an interaction at the same time. This sure does come in handy if you are going to resize a photo by putting two fingers on screen and bringing them towards or away from each other, but, to be honest, not always needed for most kiosk based applications. As prices for all devices are dropping, you still shouldn’t pay for something you don’t need. If your application requires a simple touch of a button or sliding of a scroll bar, single-touch might be right up your alley.

Is your device going to be used in an industry, such as medical, that might require latex gloves to be worn? Perhaps cleaning fluids like water and soap are going to be making an appearance on the hand? You might need to check out a resistive touchscreen over a capacitive touchscreen. Capacitive touchscreens are seen with your iPhone or iPad. Notice that you can’t touch the device with any object and hope for recognition. Resistive touchscreens recognize a press between two plates and therefor recognize any object that can put force on the screen. This is ideal for glove wearers or if you need to […]

1. Be Your Student
Try viewing your course as your student would. Look at the user interface (design and navigation). Do you know what section you are in? Do you know how many sections there are? Do you know how to review previous content? Here is a big one — Does your student know their goals and objectives for the course or the section they are in? Do they know why they are even there? Look at the content. Is it too high level? Where are the basics? What questions does the content raise? Let the questions flow and try and answer them all.
[…]