When I first started in elearning, I was an absolute sponge. I went to conferences, attended events, hired a mentor and bought several books. But those books aren't cheap and they aren't always available in our local libraries. It's also hard to know which are the best ones to buy on a limited budget.

I'd like to encourage organisations like NZATD to set up lending libraries as an added value to members.

Let's make a list of all the great books for people who are getting into learning and development, or elearning.

I'll start and you add yours in the comments box below.

Design for how people learn - Julie Dirksen
The Accidental Instructional Designer - Cammy Bean
​Map it - Cathy Moore

As part of my presentation to iDesignx, I will be sharing how we did the javascript for one of our clients. I have attached the file below for you to view, and download if you like.

We used javascript to do the following:

• Lock entry to a storyline module on a web page using distributed codes
• Report results to a google spreadsheet for tracking
• Email results to both supervisors and learners

This was a way to solve the problem of having no LMS, having tens of thousands of possible learners, and certainly no budget to buy one that size.

For now I will simple add the javascript file, but I will come back soon and talk about this in more detail. 

Due to a flyer not turning up on time, I may also add here the IDEA Academy flyer that was meant to be in the iDesignx bags.

About five years ago, I started saying to anyone who would listen that there aren't enough courses on Instructional Design. I myself was taking the Open Polytechnic course on Elearning and i was going through the frustration of having to take everything they taught me about using elearning in a tertiary setting and trying to apply it to corporate rapid elearning. For someone who still felt new and inexperienced, that was a challenge.

Then, as the owner of a small business, I needed to hire or subcontract other instructional designers. The applications and even results I got were varied. I was shocked at the powerpoint styles, the inconsistent text formats, the heavy content - some of which we had to totally redo before the client saw it. On the other hand I hired others who could create a thing of beauty but needed me to deal with the client to get out the essential information. I found out that it was a common problem for the elearning to be content based - actually literally, the policy content put online. (Please note even I have done this in the past - mea culpa). And this was putting managers off - elearning content was boring, compliance based and often ineffective - elearning was getting a bad name.

I realised that my background in IT sales had actually given me a head start - I already knew how to elicit the information I needed to figure out the solution they needed. What I found natural at this point was actually a learned skill - I had just learned it in another industry. I also saw how keen everyone was to learn more just as I did - attending conferences, events, reading blogs. So I decided to do something about it.

After a few years of gathering content, in between working to pay the bills and with help from a few friends (Anna Kingston, Michelle Childs, Miranda Verswijvelen and without doubt the NZATD influence), the IDEA Academy is finally live.

The idea is to add courses every year until we are covering the gamut of learning that a new Instructional Designer or Elearning Developer might want to know. This year its Instructional Design for Elearning, next year its UX and Graphic Design, then Scenario Design and Learning Activities with both a design and a development thread. This Academy is not designed as a profit making venture (although wouldn't that be a nice surprise); its designed to help the industry set new standards, keep improving and give elearning back its good name. 

The course is done in Moodle and will take about 2-4 hours of study each week for 10 weeks. It includes a case study, examples of elearning, learning theory and models of application and project based assessments. In addition it contains a heavy smattering of social learning, not only allowing learners to share their experience and learn from others, but teaching them how to stop and reflect on their design and application. It focuses more on rapid learning but also has some broad coverage of other tools and when to use them. Learn more at the following link https://www.workbright.co.nz/idea.html 

In xapi.ly add another Activity named for the Input data you are wanting to see e.g. Hazard List. Add a statement with the verb commented. This time in the Response field, put the variable name of the text input box. Copy the code. ​

Return to Storyline and add a trigger to execute javascript when a Submit button is clicked.​

In xapi.ly click on the Publish tab. Enter an LRS instance called YetAnalytics, using the info on the YetAnalytics info page. ​

Choose the standalone option. Select your LRS instance from the dropdown. For an activity ID use a URL address that no-one is likely to use - this is the unique identifier for the xapi data. For instance https://yourwebsite.com/xapi/hazardtest/

Then generate the code. Copy this and paste it into a javascript trigger on your master slide. This ensures that the xapi statements will be sent to the right place with every slide. 
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4) Publish your course to Review 360 and try it a few times. Then check your Yet Analytics account. Data will start to appear. To see the input data, add a column to the list or export the data. ​

Having the ability to send xapi statements with a Storyline trigger means that we can now collect all sorts of data about our learning. We can see what people do with the resources we provide, which way they go first, which answers they know and which they miss and even collecting input from the learners. 

But more than this, we can also use query statements, so we can get information from the LRS and then show it in the learning. So we can create leaderboards, show poll results, change Storyline variables and make truely interactive experiences that change over time or draw from real databases. This is more complicated but can provide advanced experiences worthy of consideration.
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Basically it means the world of data is our oyster. Have a play and consider the possibilities.

​So often the multiple choice quiz can be a last minute add-on to the rest of the elearning design. As with all elearning, the more thought put into the design, the better learning (or assessment) you will achieve. Recently I read an article on How to Prepare Better Multiple-Choice Test Items by Steven Burton. I thought I would summarize here as well as providing the PDF file below.
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This was their summary of weaknesses in many mutiple choice answers:

• They attempt to measure an objective for which they are not well-suited  
• They contain clues to the correct answer 
• They are worded ambiguously

Firstly they covered when you should use multiple choice instead of a free text answer. Obviously its easier for marking purposes, but their main point was that multiple choice is when people can select an answer to prove their knowledge rather than having to articulate their own understanding, viewpoint or skill. They called this when an answer may be 'selected' over when an answer must be 'supplied'.

They pointed out that the more questions you have the less chance they have of guessing all the answers randomly. 10 was a great number surpisingly with only a 1 in 64 chance of guessing 70% of the answers correctly. 15 or 20 is even better.

Then they provided the following 16 point checklist:

1. Construct each item to assess a single written objective.
2. Base each item on a specific problem stated clearly in the stem.
3. Include as much of the item as possible in the stem, but do not include irrelevant material (or redundant phrases).
4. State the stem in positive form (in general).
5. Word the alternatives clearly and concisely.
6. Keep the alternatives mutually exclusive.
7. Keep the alternatives homogeneous in content. 
8. Keep the alternatives free from clues as to which response is correct. 
9. Avoid the alternatives “all of the above” and “none of the above” (in general).
10. Use as many functional distractors as are feasible.
11. Include one and only one correct or clearly best answer in each item. 
12. Present the answer in each of the alternative positions approximately an equal number of times, in a random order.
13. Lay out the items in a clear and consistent manner.
14. Use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
15. Avoid using unnecessarily difficult vocabulary.
16. Analyze the effectiveness of each item after each administration of the test.

They also particularly delved into point 8 on distractors.

• Keep the grammar of each alternative consistent with the stem. Students often assume that inconsistent grammar is the sign of a distractor, and they are generally right.
• Keep the alternatives parallel in form. If the answer is worded in a certain way and the distractors are worded differently, the student may take notice and respond accordingly.
• Keep the alternatives similar in length. An alternative noticeably longer or shorter than the other is frequently assumed to be the answer, and not without good reason.
• Avoid textbook, verbatim phrasing. If the answer has been lifted word-for-word from the pages of the textbook, the students may recognize the phrasing and choose correctly out of familiarity rather than achievement. 
• Avoid the use of specific determiners. When words such as never, always, and only are included in distractors in order to make them false, they serve as flags to the alert student.
• Avoid including keywords in the alternatives. When a word or phrase in the stem is also found in one of the alternatives, it tips the student off that the alternative is probably the answer.
• ​Use plausible distractors. For the student who does not possess the ability being measured by the item, the distractors should look as plausible as the answer. Unrealistic or humorous distractors are nonfunctional and increase the student’s chance of guessing the correct answer.

I do strongly recommend grabbing a coffee, finding a quiet place and reading through their whole article when you have a moment. For those of us looking to provide excellence in instructional design this type of small targeted improvement can really elevate our work.

Recently I presented at iDesignX to share what we had learnt about designing in VR. As I've discussed previously most of our learning comes from mistakes and from spending time using other Virtual Reality apps. Here is a summary:

1) Make sure it’s 3D suitable. 
Should it be in VR? If your learning needs people to memorise text, read policies etc, it shouldn’t be in VR. If your training is about a 3D environment or practicing what policies mean in real life, it can be in VR. That might be hazards, introducing them to a new environment, retail sales, leadership, sexual harassment. If your training is about giving people embodied experience, it absolutely should be in VR or on the job. Forklift driving, crane driving, mining, fire extinguishing, foresty,
             
2) Use good instructional design with action mapping. 
Plan your experience with action mapping, or similar problem solving techniques. Plan an experience or a story that will have them practice and become comfortable in that role or task.
                
3) Make it easy to use. 
VR is new. People are unfamiliar with it. Make the experience as easy to use as possible. Have an avatar helper or an easy to find menu, have a tutorial for how to move around or grab items.

4) Remember it is 360 degrees. 
They may not always be looking the way you want, or in the right area for the learning. Use sound or pointers to send them in the right general direction.
               
5) Lots and lots of feedback and hints. 
Make things glow if you can pick them up, or enlarge when you look at options that you can select. Have an avatar give feedback with audio, instead of text saying “Correct”. People respond to emotions on faces – so have a smiling nodding avatar say well done. Or a slight frown saying “I’m afraid that would cause a problem. Maybe you should try something else?” (Or clutching their head saying “No what have you done?! The engine’s going to blow” – trust me, that they will remember!). This may challenge your thinking – design for the kind of feedback they might get in real life rather than just a “No”.

6) Show progress. Often. 
Make sure actions and challenges will happen in a timely manner without big gaps – in VR, these can seem endless. Put obstacles fairly close together so they aren’t left wandering around wondering if there is anything else to find. And if they just can’t find that last hazard, start giving them hints… plus tell them how many they have to go.
 
7) Make sure its accurate to real life. 
They are going to learn this in a part of their brain which directs their body movements. If you teach them on a forklift trainer which has a foot pedal, when your actual brand of forklift uses a hand lever, they will constantly be pedalling the floor while relearning again. Don’t skimp on these kind of details – pay for the change.
 
8) Avoid nausea 
Either allow them to stay in one place or use teleportation for movement. Large numbers of users will experience nausea when you use a normal walking movement. On driving machines, keep the speed slow and blur the periphery to avoid nausea while driving. Additionally better headsets with better frame rates working off faster computers will be smoother and better for brain processing.
 
9) Have a non VR option 
Some people just can’t use VR – they don’t have binocular vision, its quite common. Others have thick glasses that aren’t comfortable in a headset (some are fine). Always publish in a way that can also be viewed on a desktop or mobile. WebVR is great for this. Unity can publish to lots of options including webvr and it can be scorm wrapped too. Publishing a 360 video on YouTube means you can play it naturally or select the mobile headset option. 3D animations can be created with an app that has a choice of phone or headset view.
 
10) Don’t mix graphic styles
If you have a low to medium poly 3d environment made by a graphic designer, don’t use a high poly photorealistic 3d object. This will jar the brain and remind them its not real. It is better to have low poly environment and low poly objects, or all photo realistic, than to mix. But low poly will play much better on mobile and thin networks and is just as effective on learning.
                
So get out there and experiment in some of the new authoring tools - try out everything you can at expos and stores, so you can start to imagine how VR can be a great solution to some of your training problems.

As elearning professionals we always aspire to create great learning - it needs to be engaging, easy to understand, and easy to apply in the workplace.  To do this we have trained ourselves on all the current learning theories: Blooms taxonomy, Cathy Moore's action mapping, Malcolm Knowles Pedagogy, Social Learning theory etc and we try to use these in our work, to make it work. 

One theory is that of cognitive overload: John Sweller theorised that instructional design can help to reduce cognitive load when problem solving (Cognitive load being the mental effort required within the brain's memory to solve the problem). Heavy cognitive load can have an effect on task completion i.e. if it's too complicated and you need to remember too much at one time, you are unlikely to get the job done right! 

Embodied Cognition is a new theory where cognition is the connection between the body and the mind. It states that not just our mind shapes our world view, but also our body, and the experiences it has, lead to learning activities in the mind.  This is of course yet another reason where virtual reality is going to become the gold standard of training - where not just your mind but your body can experience ducking a hazard, setting up a machine, driving a crane etc. Or you have learned about the theory of fertilisation and low motility and then experience a VR of a sperm swimming up the canal racing the others to get to the egg but running out of energy just before the goal, every time. Then a VR of getting to the egg in the IVF setting - bingo easy! How much more memorable would that be? (Sigh, really worried about the comments I could get for this example, please keep it clean people!) So we have this new tool that enables people to cement their learning in the part of the brain where they USE knowledge, rather than STORE knowledge, and it can make our learning so powerful.

However, with great power comes great responsibility. And as VR designers, we need to take into account the issues of cognitive overload for our learners in VR. For they are quite likely in a very new setting, not just a new virtual environment but also not having used controllers before, or even VR at all. They won't know what to do, and may be overwhelmed by being in a 360 setting. Additionally, we do find some people don't turn around and look at all, and stand with feet frozen, while others look around wildly.

These reactions need to be taken into account as does our design planning for the learning. Let's make it easy for our learners - make the challenge about the learning, not figuring out HOW to learn. Here are our tips:

• Include instructions on how to use the controllers, with a small activity, like moving to another spot or picking up an object. Make these available at the very beginning, but also on a simple diagram available through a menu or button, for later, particularly if you have a complex game-like scenario.
• Make it clear where they are supposed to go - don't make them spend their time navigating or remembering which areas they have been to already. Use arrows for each task, or mark off areas that have been done somehow or have an easy to read map available at all times through one of the controller buttons. Give them one task at a time.
• Keep your environment simple, this will reduce the cogntive overload for each scene and make it clearer what items they SHOULD pay attention to. Also keep it familiar - make the environment and the physics of objects realistic enough so these are just background.
• Don't overwhelm with options - it has been noticed that if you give people the ability to grab, and then put lots of items in an area, they will try to grab everything! 
• Include hints - as they go through the training, when they approach areas, people or objects, give them hints about what to do - how they can use the controller, or what options they have for their behaviour
• Let them know where they are up to - icons with "1/3 hazards found" etc
• Avoid text - try to use voice or an avatar to give your learners options about what to do, and then let them do it, rather than choosing a text option as we do in elearning. Remember this is about doing it, rather than just knowing it and using these options will keep them fully engaged. The only real exception to this is going to be options for what they can say, to a customer, or employee etc. For now that might be text options, but soon enough, it will be done with voice recognition.
• Give feedback with avatar facial and body language if you can as well as voice, rather than text. Again they are more likely to remember the correction, due to the social part of the brain which wishes to please, than with a simple "Incorrect" text.

Overall our best advice is keep it simple, and make it easy. If you have other ideas on how to reduce cognitive load in VR we welcome your comments below or on twitter.

We hope this has been helpful for you in considering your Virtual Reality training project. If you have some ideas on some VR training and would like to discuss with us how they could be done, please get in touch. We are able to work globally.

Jacinta Penn
[email protected] 

For more reading on this topic  
digitalculturist.com/embodied-cognition-and-the-possibility-of-virtual-reality-ca2ec8fd05ea 

virtualrealitypop.com/reducing-cognitive-load-in-vr-d922ef8c6876

www.researchgate.net/publication/305027149_The_Impact_of_a_Self-Avatar_on_Cognitive_Load_in_Immersive_Virtual_Reality

As part of our role as industry leaders and knowledge sharers, we spent some time each week trawling twitter, technology news sites and other sources for the latest in what's happening. For items of particular interest we will research further, engage in free trials etc. This week has been a life changing week for those of us working in the field of VR,  for two reasons.

Firstly, Magic Leap has finally released the details of their new Mixed Reality goggles. This has been majorly anticipated but the release lengthened out so much that some people did begin to wonder if it was a scam. However the faith of investors like Google has paid off in the end, with Magic Leap releasing something so new it may take people a while to get their heads around it. Run by a computer the size of an old CD walkman, with goggles that look like a cross between a sunglasses advert and a Willy Wonker poster, it certainly does not look like the VR and AR we have become familiar with. But the magic is what is inside the technology - the mixed reality. Augmented reality is the ability to overlay something on top of the reality we see. Mixed Reality is when we can put 3d virtual objects in our real world and have them interact with, or more accurately, around it. The sensors on the magic leap headset, Lightwear combined with a controller, identify the objects in your space and use them as part of the environment for their software. In addition it recognises eye direction, head movements and gestures. 

Think about that for a second - robots that jump out of your ceiling, waterfalls that run off the edge of your table and butterflies that land on your couch. A virtual tv screen you can put on a real wall, and leave there still playing, while you look elsewhere; multiple computer screens in front of you with your work; your kids sitting at the table eating dinner while a virtual puppy sits at their feet. And all of it able to happen at the same time. 

Now move on to consider how this can be used for organisational training: fire drills or firefighter training in a real environment, with flames, smoke and things falling around you; information popping up on any machine you look at in a plant, that you can reach out and touch for more detail; experts being able to pop in and help problem solve; avatars that appear and give you a tour around a facility or museum; role play with virtual customers in a real world retail space or the inside of an airliner. The possibilities are endless. The SDK will be available in 2018 and developers like ourselves will be able to buy the headset, but it won't be easy. Imagine trying to plan a design with no prior knowledge of the space or furniture - it will certainly be a new challenge. But most of all, its different - right now you can create something once in Unity or a VR authoring tool and then publish to multiple headsets, particularly Vive and Oculus. But Magic Leap SDK is proprietary - it will only work  with the Magic Leap Lightwear goggles. This may slow down its distribution but the advantages and opportunities may outweigh these negatives in the long run.

Secondly this week Amazon Web Services has, out of the blue, released a VR authoring tool, Sumerian. They are still in the beta process and people have had to apply for the preview but I was lucky enough to get in early thanks to the helpful and responsive CEO Kyle Roche. I was given access after completing multiple tutorials in anticipation of the preview release and tweeting about them. With these helpful guides open on one web browser and Sumerian in the other, I was quickly able to develop my first VR space. I hit a few snags but they had kindly provided a slack channel where I could ask for help. While they are still perfecting it and ironing out the gliches, I would still already recommend this strongly, for ease of use, intuitive interface and ability to customise so many different actions. One note of advice - its easy to move from place to place in your scene, but moving to a totally different scene would require a new window to load, so consider carefully how you could handle your whole training in one 3D environment - that might mean you have to let go reality a little, and have reception that leads to a shop floor that leads to a distribution warehouse.
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As someone who uses software all the time and to quite a high level, I have thus far found VR frustrating. I'm a user not a coder - I can't work in Unity myself and I have to give that to someone else to do, which means I can't always make good suggestions on fixes or shortcuts. Now with Sumerian I can import my 3d scene (FBX, or OBJ formats), add obects, enable the learner to teleport around the room, give them the ability to grab or interact with objects, change things when they are touched etc, all without writing one line of code. I simply drag and drop pre written script "drag", "teleport" and assign it to a button on the controller. It also has triggers and conditions similar to Storyline but done in a different way - it takes a bit of getting your head around to switch to their way of thinking, but then it makes perfect sense. And that's where Amazon have really excelled - like Articulate, their learning tutorials are easy to read, step by step instructions plus they are ready to help o their Slack channel. I predict this will be the next wave of digital learning - Virtual Reality training done as easily and affordably as elearning is now, using VR authoring tools. Sumerian right now for true Virtual Reality, and CenarioVR from Trivantis next year for VR using 360 photos and video with xAPI and Lectora options to put in your LMS. It's the new wave and its starting now.