On a beautiful Sunday morning, while swiping through the updates from the amazing world of e-learning, I was wondering as to how learning has evolved across the years. From simple off- the shelf programs to complex customised learning topics, e-learning programs are becoming a popular way of learning a variety of topics.
In this blog, I have handpicked some popular award winning e-learning examples for the benefit of my readers.
1.Lifesaver
The award winning Lifesaver e-learning example by the Resuscitation Council & Unit teaches CPR by throwing you into the live action. It is a live-action film with interactivity enabled to fully immerse the learners to give them a feel of real life experience and show them how to respond to heart attack and choking.
Life saver is split into different scenes of an average 10 minute duration.
For example,in the first scene when “Jake” collapses from a heart attack, and from this moment the live action begins and the learner is made to continuously engage with the video. The screen shows the learner several steps and is questioned about what to do at each step. The real visual scenes used in the module increase adrenaline rush to save Jake.
With a clock running to represent the need to respond quickly to prevent death, I felt that the designers have never failed to engage the learners throughout the module.
To bring other elements of interactivity in the module you are asked to swipe or slide your screen or phone up and down in the air in the speed of the chest compressions.
The added sound effects does the final brilliance as you can hear the patient’s chest moving . The module gives you instant feedback if you’re going too fast or too slow in terms of giving chest compressions.
What I liked ?
1. A superb Interactive video with real life film scenes and actors.
2.Gamified elements like scores and points with progress bars ensuring that the learners gain points for their achievements and correct actions.Advanced levels get unlocked as you advance through the scenario by gaining points for correct decisions.
3.The module allows you to save your progress by logging in and even share the progress to social media websites
4.It also provides a wide variety of feedback at the end. It gave me a complete feedback on how many wrong answers I had clicked, the average time I took for answering etc. In fact a complete break up of scores was shown at the end of the module.
5.The interactivity options included in the module was something very amazing, as i was playing in my laptop I had to press certain key combinations within a very short time frame as otherwise the patient can die.
2.Virtual Reality House by Train4TradeSkills
Double gold medallist at the Elearning Awards,The Virtual Reality House allows trainees such as plumbers practice their skills in a simulated environment setting,
A simulated environment allows them to make mistakes and to learn from these mistakes.
What I Liked ?
1.Full simulated virtual reality environment which makes the learner experience the similarity to his working environment.
2.The use of 3D elements in the modules brings more realistic feel to the simulated environment and I feel that the 3D simulated environment works better where the workers are learning practical skills.
3.User engagement is attended by enabling the user to solve the problems in the virtual environment.
For example fixing a pipe leak etc, where the learner can observe the tools required and perform the activity.
3. Enter the Ninja, by Phil Mayor.
Selected as the Articulate Guru Award Gold Winner, this fun and engaging elearning course helps you to be a super cool Ninja by learning the skills through the module.
What i Liked ?
1.The music with the background images of Ninja gives a great visual appeal to me. As a learner that could give me the feel of getting into an adventure mode.
The perfect blend of music and voiceover which asks “ So you wanted to be a Ninja” makes you feel the start of an adrenaline rush .
2.The module uses the elements of gamification very wisely. As rewards the learner is able to collect Ninja suit parts which I felt is really associated with the topic and objective of the module.
4.The module is also filled with fun and engaging games, there are various user actions like sliding, drag and drops etc to keep the user engaged and ensure interactivity.
5. The module also allows the users to tweet the progress with an easy button placed on the top right.
6. This was my first time attending course to be a Ninja, but even for a beginner like me the course offered help with instructions which could be called upon anytime by just clicking an action button.
4.The Case of the Fraudulent Pharmacist:
The Guru Honorable Mention winner, this is a beautifully designed course with a mystery woven into the story to make it more engaging and interesting for the learner to solve the case by catching the fraudulent pharmacist.
What I Liked?
1.A simple elearning module with clever use of background images, music and scenes.
2.The scene has very minimal animations but the background images, graphics and design has perfectly blended together to suit the theme and feel.
3. Clever use of game elements and challenges:The game progresses through challenges and tasks for the user to complete. The rewards associated with the completion of challenge is to get a new clue and progressing through the objectives.
4.The module has not failed to communicate the objectives to the user. To check the progress of the users, there is no progress bars performing the function, but the achieved objectives simulate the progress screen. I felt that this style was more engaging and interesting to the context of the module.
5.MetaMythic’s- CIP Defender(Critical Infrastructure Protection Standards)
The Brandon Hall award winning elearning module, was made for the utility industry in response to the threat of cyber-attacks by hackers and terrorists against the power grid of the Americans.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requires utilities to comply with a new set of cyber-security standards.
The module gives the user the face of a hero who is protecting the Earth from a robotic invasion. The robots are on a mission to sabotage the power grids through various means like hacking and stealing of secret information etc.
What I liked ?
1.The module is woven around a fictional story which is very interesting and at the same time make the users engaging too with relatable characters and theme.
2.The learner takes the role of a hero to protect the infrastructure from the robot invasion, which gave the users a sense of responsibility on my shoulder and made me feel like a superhero in some hollywood movie with the ultimate aim to protect the earth from these robots
3. In this simulator, the user sees the real impact of a robot cyber-attacks against their facility, and once the user adds the required and mandatory CIP defense to protect the facility then the module is re-run to make us watch how the defense mechanism works.
4.What I loved the most in the module are the enemy robots i introduces several characters which further rises the level of engagement
5. The module also includes fun and engaging assessments like quiz which was scored and evaluated.
6.Broken Co-Worker.
The story gets started with a small backstory about the main character Sam, who has moved into the city for his dream job. But Sam finds himself falling into the trouble as he is unable to handle the character of the Co-worker Ema and he is on the verge of quiting.
The objective of the course is to help Sam in communicating with Ema with correct responses to the situations so that Sam doesn’t quit his dream job.
What i Liked
1.The comic strip like callouts and dialogue was pretty neat and gave a good visual appeal to the scenario of an office conversation .
2. Instead of using animated characters,the module uses real characters, real objects a and videos.
2.Careful use of the video was the highlight of the module. The interactive video used here takes the responses from the user and the next scene is shown in response to the decision made by the user.
3.There are active interactions across the modules as the user is never made to feel bored or disengaged.
The strength of the story woven around a real life office theme and to the strength of the module.
What I liked the most are the actions of the users which decides the next scene. The module doesn’t stop when a user selects a wrong choice, instead the actions are recorded and scored which is showed at last when you finish the module with Sam’s decision based on the choices you had made as a user.
4.The last screen feedback also showed every response I had made as a user and explained those scenarios where I made a wrong choice,
7.A Date with Data Dave
The gold winner at Omni Awards in the educational category, A Date with Data Dave according to their official makers is a ‘microlearning nugget on Data Security designed using the Interactive Parallax web-based scrolling technology’.
The learner needs to take a “scrolling” journey. A fictional character of “Data Dave” is introduced to the learner at the beginning who takes the learner through three offices with varying levels of data security.
I tried my hands on this award winning module and here is my view on it.
What I liked?
1.Quoting again the technology behind this – ‘Parallax web-based scrolling technology’. It was a welcome change from the regular click or slide of the next buttons on my screen.
2.The scrolling journey across the three offices had the elements of interactivity where as a learner I was asked to click on several assets like open laptops and books which showed tips and information about data protection and how people can be careless about data.
3.The module doesn’t want the learner to forget the things easily as there is a ‘Don’t forget’ label which appears and says about what was learned in the stage.
4.The module has interactive assessment towards the last which engages the user with drag and drop activity.
Altogether, I had some very enjoyable hours exploring these amazing award winning elearning modules. With technology evolving rapidly , It is certain that we will see more amazing elearning modules in the coming future .
