Thursday, December 25, 2008

The dreaded Right Click

I am working on developing eLearning technical training courses for an ERP software application being implemented within a division of the company I work for using Adobe Captivate 3. If you are familiar with Adobe Captivate then you are familiar with "Assesment Simulations." I love assessment simulations because they require the learner to do the clicking rather than just viewing a screen recording of the process. This is great because they can actually practice using the software in a safe environment where they can't mess anything up and they will receive constructive feedback based on where they click. This is particularly great for my situation because in this software implementation, learners will be expected to be using the application full time the day the switch is flipped and the software is available to them. Captivate and the assessment simulations are a life saver for me because I can train them on the software without them actually having access to it.

Problem is that the software application has a lot of features that are accessed through right clicking and Captivate has no answer for the right click. I am on a deep dive for ideas of how to simulate the right click in a captivate simulation. I have heard that Captivate 4 is the answer for the right click in a post on Wendy Wickhams blog. Unfortunately Captivate 4 is not out yet and it's going to be a while before I have the budget to upgrade.

There's got to be some creative instructional designers out there who have come up with a way to cover right clicking in a Captivate assessment simulation but I haven't found them yet.
Please post a comment or send me an email if you have any ideas. Look for future posts on my solution to this issue

Sunday, December 14, 2008

eLearning Learning Widget

In a previous post I mentioned a new eLearning community I am taking part in called eLearning Learning. If you haven't already, you really should check out this site. Dr. Tony Karrer has really done some amazing things with the keyword widget making it easy to dig deep into a research topic.

You can actually dive in right here from my blog. In my sidebar you will see the eLearning Learning keyword widget which lists common topics I talk about on my blog. If you click on one of those topics not only will you be brought to posts related to that topic but the keyword list available on the left side of the screen will re sort and display topics related to the previous selected topic. This is a great tool which helps do the research for you. Tony has a much better explanation of how the keyword widget functions in this post.

Diving into this widget I was surprised how often I talk about and research freeware. Guess that goes to show what matters to an instructional designer in this current economic climate. I look forward to spending more time diving into other topics and seeing how relationships emerge.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Moodle: Increasing Max File Upload Size

One of the first hurdles myself and other rookie Moodle implementers have to overcome is increasing the maximum file upload size. Moodle defaults to a measly 2 MB maximum file upload size which is pretty limiting. Through my research I found that many other people struggle with the same problem especially when Moodle is installed on a hosted non dedicated server which is the situation I am in. Here's a brief rundown of how I was able to increase the max file upload size for moodle on a hosted server.

The key to confusion is when you search for answers to this problem on Moodle forums most of the posts instruct to edit the "Max Upload Size" settings (there's 3 of them) in the php.ini file. Problem is that if you are on a hosted server sometimes you don't have access to this file through the Cpanel. But because of the fantastic Moodle community, I finally found more specific instructions for accomplishing this task on a hosted server.

On a hosted server you need to access these settings through FTP. By accessing Moodles files through FTP I was able to access both the .htaccess file and the php.ini file. Once I found the files it was easy to find the line of code to change. Many of the posts on Moodle forums recommend changing these settings in both the .ht access and php.ini files so make sure you check both. The screen shot below points out the files that contain these settings.