Authors: Bryan Chapman and the
staff of Brandon Hall Research
Published September
2005 • Download file size: 8 MB •
353 pages • $345
Making Lemonade… With PowerPoint
What’s the most popular e-learning
tool on the market? Yes, PowerPoint.
It’s controversial, but it’s
true. Throughout our research on using technology for learning,
we’ve discovered two distinct camps when it comes to
the intersection of best practices and PowerPoint: (1) those
who praise PowerPoint as a primary enabler of rapid e-learning
content development, and (2) those who view PowerPoint as
nothing more than a way to mass-produce page-turning content.
Why the divide between these two camps?
One key to understanding how this argument
applies to your own learning initiative involves deciding whether
or not you’re looking for rapid development.
Organizations with limited budgets, or who can’t obtain
the buy-in to make learning as important as they would like,
often turn to PowerPoint to jump-start their training initiatives.
There’s nothing wrong with that model. It’s all
about taking your lemons and making lemonade. You use what’s
already installed on everyone’s computer – PowerPoint.
Focusing on rapid development is one way
to understand the divide between PowerPoint accepters and
nay-sayers. There are many other ways to look at the issue.
For this report on using PowerPoint as an e-learning tool,
we surveyed users and discovered a wealth of other reasons
– and a lot of great advice – about how to use
(and how not to use) PowerPoint. The key to making it work
involves using PowerPoint to its utmost effectiveness and taking advantage
of third-party tools that work with PowerPoint specifically
for the purposes of creating e-learning courseware.
In addition to a survey, our team interviewed
high-profile companies about their PowerPoint to e-learning
initiatives. This information is reported in the case studies
section of the report and includes information about the size
and scope of each company’s project, tips for creating
PowerPoint-based learning content, staffing for creating content,
tools used in the development process, learning results, etc.
This can help you when modeling your own in-house development
practice.
The report also provides apples-to-apples
comparative information on the leading PowerPoint to e-learning
tools. To help you understand PowerPoint better, we created a comprehensive
“request for information” and collected data from
the leading authoring tools in this space. The report includes
a profile of each system we surveyed, covering areas such
as an overview of each system, size of company, number of
clients, primary competition, links to demo or trial versions,
key clients, output formats, platform support, templates,
testing capabilities, question types, tracking capabilities,
standards conformance, interoperability with other learning
technologies (e.g., LMSs), extensibility of the authoring environment,
language support, pricing information, and much more. This
information can be invaluable in helping you select the tools
to meet your real business needs.
The final result of all of this research
on using PowerPoint to create e-learning content clocks in
at 353 pages and provides critical information you can use
to do the following:
- Choose tools that match your instructional
and business needs through comparative analysis of best-of-breed
PowerPoint to e-learning authoring tools.
- Model your PowerPoint-based learning
initiatives after best practice examples.
- Apply tips and techniques that will enhance
your PowerPoint-converted, online courseware.
PowerPoint is ubiquitous, but using it effectively
for e-learning purposes requires a focused approach. You need
to understand what works and what doesn’t in the rapid-development
environment that PowerPoint encourages. This report will help
you uncover new and innovative third-party PowerPoint plug-ins
that will enhance your courseware. It also provides the kind of best practice information only available
from Brandon Hall Research.
PowerPoint can be boring, or it can be innovative.
Learn how to use it effectively with this one-of-a-kind report.
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