Game design – The book process

Just a quick side project I made for a high school teacher. She wanted to design a little game to introduce the process leading the writing of a book by its author to the hands of the reader.

We decided to make a card game that can be used as a timeline activity but also contains informations about each job involved in the creation of a book. So here is the end result !

visuels des cartes de la chaîne du livre

Accessibility certification for designers

So, it’s been a while since my last update. Early december, I was lucky enough to be part of an accessibility training, organised by the COMUE Normandy University, with the society KOENA.

As laws are passed here in EU, working to make the internet more accessible for everyone is becoming more urgent and important than ever. Koena training was spot on, with master classes and workshops… Definitely worth checking if you or your company is looking for basic or advanced training on this topic.

Certificat de réussite à l'examen Fondamentaux de l'accessibilité numérique

[FR] Module profondeur de champ

Sorry for not translating this module for now, I’ll do it when I have spare time and update

Voici un exemple de module créé pour aborder la notion de profondeur de champ de manière plus visuelle.

Ce module s’intègre dans une série de 6 couvrant toutes les notions théoriques utilisées en photographie judiciaire. L’apprenant utilise des curseurs afin de modifier les réglages utilisés pour la photo, il visualise en direct les modifications notables (à l’aide d’info-bulles).

Un schéma matérialise concrètement la longueur de la profondeur de champ et l’apprenant termine le module sur 2 exercices pour vérifier sa bonne compréhension de la notion.

Réalisé avec Articulate Storyline 3 – Lien vers le module

Flashcards enhanced with Javascript

Flashcards are very interesting to help with revision. This is a sample of an activity I designed for our forensics students. Cards appear randomly and the student have to guess the class of the fingerprint according to the Henry Classification System

By pressing the ANSWER area, he can check the right answer with hints drawn on the fingerprint.

Now the interesting part is that he can choose to remove the card from the deck by dragging it over the trash bin on the left, or shuffle it back in the deck by dragging it over the cards on the right

When there is no card left, he can shuffle the full deck and start again

demo : http://gz-elearning.com/henry-classification/story_html5.html

SL3 story file : flashcards-henry-classification.zip

Getting started in the e-learning field

I find Instructional Design, and e-learning, particularly exciting. I kind of stumbled upon e-learning, as I’m absolutely not from the educational field. Untill 2017, I was investigating crime scenes for the french Police. Turns out the Forensic Police here doesn’t have a dedicated school like regular Police Officers. In fact, there is a training center, but all the instructors are former Crime Scene Investigators.

So I started with face to face training, before joining the e-learning developement team, consisting of two members, including me.

There is a lot to learn, and it’s hard to find where to start. Here is a list of things that helped me back :

  • Learn the ADDIE model. It’s not the only model out there, maybe not the best in few situations, but it’s hands down the most versatile. Plus it’s the most documented so you should get the basics fairly quickly
  • Join a community, and be an active member. LinkedIn, Twitter, Viadeo,… you want to be in touch with professionals. It’s agreed now that only 10% of the knowledge we acquire comes from formal training, 20% from informal relationships (from colleagues, managers,…) and 70% from challenging projects.
  • Quickly find a screen recording solution (I personally use Camtasia but there are free softwares out there). Video tutorials are great and easy to make. You can also use your webcam to add your face to it.
  • Take a look at rapid authoring tools, this will step up your design game like crazy. The most famous out there are Articulate products and Adobe Captivate
  • If you need a Learning Management System, Moodle is free, and just great. Make sure to have a look at HTML5 packages you could add to it

So if I go back in time, that’s the tools my buddy and I had in hands to design our first online course.

I learned a lot by trial and error, and I’ll try to go through the errors in further posts, as I think we learn more from mistakes than from easy wins.

And you ? where did you start from ? What helped you the most in your early days ?