Instructional Design and eAuthoring Week 4 – 19 Nov 2013

This week a previous student from the course, Michael Seery, gave us a a talk on how he found the course and the project he had done as part of the final year. His group design an elearning module on becoming an eTeacher. He said he found it very interesting and showed the site, based on Google sites, and give a brief talk on how it was structured.

One thing Michael was very concious of was Cognitive Load Theory which he said was very important. After looking into it a bit further I can see how having an understanding of it will aid us in our project work. We will need to try and ensure that we do not present too much information too quickly.

We then had a chance to try out Articulate Studio on a PowerPoint presentation we had brought along. I was was very impressed by it and since then requested that we purchase Articulate StoryLine in work to help us develop elearning material.

Damien give us a quick session on ‘F’ shaped scan patterns, which states that someone reading a website scans the top, left and middle to find content. This alarmed me as the website we are designing for our group work has a right hand tool bar as well as a left one, however a discussion with Claire I am happy that if someone is coming to our website it is for a purpose and they will scan the page until they see what they need.