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28 Jan 2008 Management and Processes -- Bruce Perrin - Boeing Bruce described a study that began in 1998. It was to determine the value of virtual environments and virtual humans in training scenarios. First results showed that immersive training was much less effective than desktop training. Bruce is proposing a focus on training evaluation for the subcommittee. There is also a need to develop guidelines and recommendations for the use of technologies/interventions of concern to the community. Bruce then presented several issues he thought might be of interest to AICC members. CMI Working Group/Independent Test Lab - Bill McDonald - Alteon/Boeing The CSA discussion has focused on scope and use cases. The use case discussion was continued at this meeting. Once the use cases seem complete, we need to ask ourselves, do we have participation from all the roles in the use cases. Ed Cohen has built a use case analysis for discussion. He made a presentation to cover this. It begins with roles Going forward we will try to prioritize the business relationships - then identify technical solutions to those relationships that are most important. Bill reviewed the list of participants in the CSA effort. He identified for each participant, what role they play. The question he was trying to answer, “Are there roles in Ed's case studies that are not represented?” Bill reviewed the WISL RFP. Metadata Working Group - Bill Shook - Boeing Bill brought up the question of do we need an AGR? Bill suggested there should be an AGR and he has worked on a draft. Smart Graphics and Airbus - Jean Louis Bravo - Airbus They are now working on another solution because of the lack of acceptance of SVG in the Windows world. Airbus has decided that Silverlight 1.1 would be a good format to migrate to. Jean Louis demonstrated some simple examples of using Silverlight for interactive graphics. Update on LETSI and the LETSI Technical Working Group - Avron Barr, ADL LETSI was created to unburden the ADL which is not positioned to support and move SCORM forward. Communication and Industry Affairs Subcommittee - Tom King - AICC Montreal eLearning Plugfest on May 5 has asked for AICC participation. WATS and CATS. We have been given the opportunity to present at WATS and we have been asked to provide bi-monthly articles for CAT. 29 Jan 2008 The executive committee voted to eliminate the Communications subcommittee. Those duties and responsibilities will now be performed by the AICC technical staff. Tom King will become a technical staff member performing that role. The AICC will continue to support LETSI and the ISO SC36. Now that the financial picture has improved, we will be sending Jack Hyde to the next LETSI and ISO meetings which will be held back-to-back in Korea in March. The AICC will be making a presentation this year at the WATS conference, which several AICC members will be attending. The presentation will highlight the fact that this is the 20th year of the AICC existence. Next meetings: The executive committee decided to raise the meeting fee to $125 per person, starting at the June meeting in Germany. The AICC membership then voted unanimously to approve the addition of the LCMS checklist to AGR 012. Welcome from Adobe - Don Walker, Sr Director PPBU, Adobe He then discussed the relationship of Adobe products to eLearning and the ISD process, and introduced Ellen Wagner, the director of eLearning at Adobe, and Tom Persons an Adobe eLearning evangelist. Microsoft ESP as a Revolutionary Aviation Training Platform - Scott Andersen, Microsoft ESP is a simulator development platform. It provides the world (or a simulation of same). This includes 3D graphics and data for all airports, locations of all cities, key landmarks in these cities, topography, weather modeling, and support for the dynamics of flight. The out of the box ESP also include sample aircraft simulations for a 737-800, Cesna 72, F18 and some others - although it does not include modeling all the systems in these airplanes (such as the FMS, Autoflight system ,etc.) Scott then discussed the components that simulate the world, and how they can be augmented by the user/simulation developer. For instance, you can create a cockpit with every switch and light working just as it would in the airplane. You can add reverse engineered system behavior, or use airplane code (as in the case of the Honeywell FMS simulation). You can create missions and training scenarios with trigger boxes. When the plane flies through a trigger box, you program what happens. It also supports multi-players -- the number being dependant on the power of the server. It also contains ATC controller data. It supports a shared cockpit mode where 2 or more people can be in and manipulate the same airplane (from different terminals). The simulations built on ESP can get FAA/JAR approval for any level of simulation, up to and including full flight simulation. The product supports 5 levels of complexity. ESP has an API for communicating with outside programs, such as CBT as well as outside hardware. The cost is dependent on the user's volume license - it can vary from $500 for a low cost student seat to $900 for a low volume instructor's seat. Once the engine is on the computer, that seat can run an infinite number of simulations and scenarios at no additional cost to Microsoft (the simulation vendor of course can charge for his simulations running on the platform any way he chooses.) Version 1 came out this month (January 2008). Version 2 is scheduled for late 2009, and version 3 in 2011 or 2012. Graphics are brought in from any editor that will export into a BGL format. Adobe Acrobat 3D - Rak Bhalla A recent survey revealed that best-in-class companies tend to leverage their 3D design data by using it in may places, not just engineering. Rak proceeded to introduce the product - Acrobat 3D. It is a superset of all acrobat products. It converts multiple CAD formats to compressed PDF that can be viewed with any free Acrobat reader. He then demonstrated the use of Acrobat 3D. He showed some examples of how the resulting PDF can be used.
Rak then demonstrated how to take a PowerPoint presentation and embed 3D graphics in it. He then exported the PowerPoint presentation to create a PDF. Inside the PDF he then showed how to create links to different views of the same object. The result is that instead of requiring 10 (or more) PowerPoint frames for each link to a different view of the same object, only one page is needed with the links to 10 different views of the same 3D graphic. Managing e-Learning for Aviation Training with ATMS - Bill Carson, AQT Solutions Simulation-Based Training - Andy Moon - Aerosim VFD integrates interactive schematics with the cockpit simulation and allows lessons, free play with the simulation, and snapshots of a given instant in a simulation scenario. Andy then went on to describe the training Aerosim is working on with Northwest Airlines. The NWA training is divided into Lessons, Modules, Topics, and Sections. Modules are comparable to what the AICC refers to as Assignable Units (or AUs). These are the segments that report student data to the LMS. NWA puts the course built with Aerosim tools on a 4 gig thumb drive. The content and the student records are stored on the thumb drive. No runtimes or other software need be on the student hard disk. The entire program runs from the thumb drive. This solves multiple configuration problems. When the student connects with the LMS on the internet, the student data will automatically be uploaded from the thumb drive. 30 Jan 2008 Adobe Presenter Peter then showed some examples that were developed with Presenter to demonstrate how sophisticated the end product could become. Presenter allows the addition of questions and reporting student activity back to an LMS if desired - using AICC or SCORM protocols. Connect can act as a mini LMS and record student data. Essentially the developer lives inside a PowerPoint environment as he builds his presentation/training. What Present does is add metadata with questions, branching, etc information. Adobe Acrobat Connect Meeting Room During an on-line presentation, all the slides are being converted to Flash frames on the fly, thus taking much less bandwidth than sending a full screen image. Future frames are sent and cached during the presentation so only a few bites are needed to synchronize progress of all the viewers with what is being presented. Hence, Connect can even work on a dial-up connection. Even live video is converted to Flash. The Connect Meeting Room can be ready for meetings with virtually no notes - 30 seconds. The room is always there, so you do not have to schedule around it. All training materials can be in the room and ready to use anytime. The meeting room can be scheduled or ad hoc. You can also record a meeting - the recording is automatically indexed so it is easier to find a particular segment of a previous meeting. You can also play a previous meeting just as if you were there. Connect can be purchased to run on your own server, or you can by it hosted by Adobe. Adobe Flex and AIR Overview - Lee Brimelow - Adobe Adobe Flex The benefits of Flex are Lee then showed some examples of Flex applications. Flex was invented because Flash development is very complex. Flex simplifies the development of applications. Adobe AIR The AIR feature set includes AIR apps can Lee then showed a couple of examples of applications that have been built in AIR. AIR has no graphic design tools inside. You must import graphics from Photoshop or Flash. Informal Learning on the Spot Using FlockPod - Ms Janhavi Padture - Harbinger According to a study by Capital Works, 70% of learning is informal. Forrester Research on informal learning studied two cases where companies introduced informal learning - Reuters and Subaru. eLearning today includes LMS/LCMS, authoring tools, live collaboration tools (virtual classroom), and Web 2.0 - wikis, blogs, podcasts, and social networks. But there is no informal learning technology. That is what FlockPad is all about. It enables user generated content, and extends formal learning with informal approaches. FlockPod is a widget that floats on top of any web page. 5 different interactions are available on FlockPod. The objective is to encourage social learning and enable content augmentation. The Flocktiviies include It uses the SaaS model (software as a service). To work with FlockPod all you need is a browser and Flash on your machine. An administrator can create a pod and assign a pod manager for each pod that he creates. He can also have managers of multiple pods with separate managers for each pod under other pods. A single sign-on can enable access to multiple FlockPods. There can be public and private FlockPods. Advantages of FlockPods include SumTotal: Sum Total Training - Bill Docherty - SumTotal LMS market drivers include LMS is a core market for SumTotal but performance and compensation management were acquired with MindSolve. SumTotal has about 1500 customers. It also has enterprise solutions and on-demand solutions that include: SumTotal products support standards, including AICC, SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, and Skilsoft OLSA. Learning Industry Observations Oracle: Trends Driving Oracle's Product Strategy - Jonathan Vinoskey, Oracle
A very interesting discussion followed covering a wide range of topics. The value of IM circles was described and challenged. A Googling verses metadata discussion. Mining IM's pros and cons. How do you find company wisdom? How intrusive can a company be on its employees? You should have been here. Rapid Simulation Development - Ken Speru, Humentum We learn from experience. So create simulations to replicate experience. Simulations are about critical thinking. You can capture scenarios that force you to Simulations can provide an opportunity to try things out. You capture information in Excel. Start with the story - no branching - just the straight thru story. Then plug the story into "TrackBuilder" - the simulation authoring platform. TrackBuilder then publishes to a Flash program. Ken then showed another example involving a call center. Simulation in 5 steps.
Platform architecture. TrackBuilder is on an access database. It is a series of media assets. Three simulations can be seen on the Web showing you how to build simulations. 31 Jan 2008 Background on Authorware. Enterprises with complex training needs depend on Authorware. The demand for Authorware has been declining for about 11 years. The focus of the training community has shifted to the Web and Flash. Adobe announced the end of Authorware development on August 3, 2007. What Adobe is doing about it?
The 6-Point Plan:
Bill McDonald suggested that a textual description of interactivity in a lesson could be a helpful intermediate. This textual description would be valuable if available to go into an authoring system and be able to be exported from an authoring system. It would be an invaluable tool to insulate business from the pain of authoring tools disappearing. Fred Banks: Will new tools be more cost effective or less? Are we going to need 2 or more tools to accomplish the same training tasks? Ans: Cost effective and capability are a moving target. In the future we may not want to accomplish the same tasks. For any product, there are maintenance points: points at which you must do something just to maintain the operation of the product. You cannot buy a house and never paint it. That maintenance point, whatever it might be caused by, may be the opportunity to migrate to a new tool. George Uhrich: We have studied conversions and come to some realizations. You normally do not want to just convert. It is more likely that you will want to modernize the content. Maybe the problem is media going from 640x480 to higher resolution. Or maybe going from bitmaps to vector graphics. Schawn Thropp: Is there a possible common courseware interchange language that would capture maybe 80% of the logic. Tom King then described the AICC Survey. The result gathered information from 35 different companies. Not all are aviation oriented companies. The results can be found at Data includes Fred Banks: Authorware 8 was going to include an Authorware to SWF player. The option to create SWF files would allow us to maintain and move forward. Neil Cramer: Can you assure us that the Authorware file will be able to play in VISTA? Dave Jacobson: At least 50% of Authorware lessons do not have extensions. So a SWF conversion would be able to handle 50% just fine. Adobe is currently working on runtime support for Vista and IE 7. It is in pre alpha and not tested yet. Bill McDonald: Is there a notion as to when you will be able to make a definite statement? Fred Banks: Moving on. Note that Authoware add-ons like API's, DLL's, and ODBC calls etc are much less important now than when they were invented. Next Steps: Tom K: Is anyone interested in once or twice a month teleconference on these issues? We can avoid the 6 month to 2 year silence cycle. Ellen W: The next Adobe eLearning summit will be around November 10, 2008. Tom K: A next step would be to create a working group with Adobe support but not Adobe leadership. It could work on getting samples. It could become a collection point for samples, ideas, etc. Bill M: The AICC wants to collect issues. Send us your problems. authorware@aicc.org Tom K: Would like to see a knowledge base. Consolidate multiple inputs into a searchable knowledgebase. Mike Sharp: What will be done in the future to avoid this problem? Will new tools have export capability? Will new Adobe tools consider this? There are at least two sets of responsibilities: The AICC has an address: authorware@aicc.org. If you want to participate in a work group on Authorware, send us an email. Using XML-Based State-Engine-Driven Instructional Interactions in Flash – David Castillo, Concurrent Technologies He then went into the anatomy of a reusable object. In his simulation world he can reuse lamps (2 states), switches/buttons (2 states), 3-position/multi-position selectors, dials, digital readouts, barrel dials, gages, etc. Tools that he has developed to help him in his development of a simulation (based on a state network) is
Lessons learned from building simulations:
Architecture – 3 layers:
He then showed and demonstrated a state chart example – a stop watch. David then discussed the state engine development process. He identified 4 levels of interactivity:
He then described a chart that shows when you need each level. Finally, David described what he calls the presentation engine. Here everything is defined in XML (including the operation of the state engine). The player pulls in the XML document and uses it to create the program. Authorware Transformation – Robby Robson, Eduworks and Kris Rockwell, Hybrid Learning Systems.
He then provided a description of his vision of the next generation of eLearning.
The next gen content will include layers:
Standards and best practices will be an important part of the next gen of eLearning. Authorware conversion is the process of providing a new copy of old courseware.
Steps (back to the beginning of the presentation:
Transformation involves taking content out of existing files and putting it in a repository. Understanding how the course is structured, then rebuilding the content and the structure. This cannot all be automated. It takes work. Especially if external assets are to be used. An additional challenge is to make the content usable in different formats, such as DHTML and DITA (an XML architecture for technical information.) Robby and Kris then showed a conversion example – live –using a Java program to covert segments of an Authorware lesson to DHTML. Robby then demonstrated the use of an Eduware tool called Tenario. Best Practices on Courseware Conversion – Abhijit Navale, Hurix Learning
The decision is a business one that depends on a number of factors.
It is possible to take Authorware courseware and add features, with high maintainability, aligned with the latest company training model, multiple output formats, and using best practices. The Hurix approach has been followed for a number of customers with 100’s of hours of courseware. Hurix has been converting Authorware for about four years. It has converted over a 1000 hours. During that period Hurix has evolved a model of analysis called the 3-Dimensional ConCube analysis model – because analysis is critical. The overall process is to first analize, then build an external XML engine to handle the content and media, and finally you have multi-platform-ready content. The 3 dimensions of media analysis are:
Once the decision is made and all the media is ready, an XML file is made. At run time, the Flash program reads the XML then goes out and gets the assets and puts them on screen and pulls in the appropriate templates to play the program. Speed, Simplicity, Flexibility. Publishing and Managing Technical Documentation and Training Materials in the “Real World”. – Maria McGinn and Daniel Lemieux, EEDO.
Dan then demonstrated how EEDO Publisher works. The master document has graphics, questions, everything to enable it to generate multiple documents, including PowerPoint slides, training, etc. Dan exported a couple of documents from the master in real time to show how they differed in purpose. EEDO provides full integration with ForceTen (the EEDO LCMS). The storage of everything is a single source knowledgebase which allows the reuse of all assets. Dan then demonstrated the ForceTen Structure Builder. |
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