Who we are:Acqal specializes in providing website management systems that grow with you through TYPO3 and WordPress. Magento ecommerce and OpenX ad delivery open source solutions.Michael – CEO, DevelopmentVirgil – COO, TrainingNicole – CMO, DesignWhat we have done / are doing: Alamance County and Alamance County Library system – asp to TYPO3 migration Brainstorm Group – 60,000 member content subscription and lead generation Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts – TYPO3 calendar and Magento integrationWhere we are going: TYPO3 hosting Packaged web sites Training development and course delivery
Let’s compare two ends of the training spectrum. The first is videos only, later learning management systems , otherwise known as LMS.I’ll show you very brief clips from two video types. The first is the quickest to produce and of minimal learning value except for very short tasks. Videos like these may be very effective when bundled into an interactive course.Personally, I do not learn well from the videos. And one example – PM software we used for a while only had videos like this for learning. I never was able to fully realize the potential of the program.
The video with Table of Contents is the first example with some interactivity. Here the student can navigate to specific points in the video easily. The longer the video, the more important this becomes. Of course, this video needs more than just a table of contents, it needs checks on learning with feedback and other interactive features.These videos were made with Camtasia and this program allows for more interactivity than this.
This LMS is used for self-paced non-instructor led courses, although LMSs are used very much for instructor led synchronous and asynchronous courses.Here’s a main view after logging in.Left nav has all the personalized links specific to me plus some other itemsMain view lists available course top level categories available in this lmsI’ll selct IT Prof. Certs.
Here’s a selection of course topic areas like cisco.Today’s let’s learn about Linux
Actual courses to selectSelect junior level
Most courses are made up of multiple lessons. You select the lesson you want to take.1st lesson – Linux and CLI (command line interface)
The course player opens up and lists the lessons, what type of instructions, your status and test scoresInstructionArticleExerciseTestYou can stop anytime and the lms keeps track of where you were in the lesson
Lesson introduction tell you what the learning objective is and what the lesson covers
Here’s a quiz or what is often called a “check on learning”.This offers assessment and reinforcement if you miss the question. This type of process increases learning retention
An example of a lesson test questionNow back to Michael to discuss tools.
As Ron Hall reminded us on Thursday morning, the key to learning TYPO3 is through the community.As a whole, we try to do things right, but not always in the right areas. The time has come for some of us experienced folks to get our noses out of development and into putting together a professional training program to cover authors, editors, admins and even developers. This needs to be in a learning management system that’s accessible online and off.Why LMS you might ask? It’s simple, our survey lines up with that of well funded, well educated researchers that can easily tell us that the more interactive the training is, the more effective, practical and useful the training is.