Western fonts and typefaces fall into one of two identifiable categories; either they have small features at the end of strokes to distinguish each character, or they don’t. Serif fonts (or “Roman” fonts) are the ones with the swishes, and sans serif typefaces are the ones that don’t. Put simply, Times New Roman is a serif font; Arial is sans serif.

Sans serif fonts (also known as “gothic” script) have become the acceptable standard. At Saffron, we use a sans serif font for this blog, our website, our courses, even our internal communications. Am I complaining? No way. I would pick using a sans serif font to write an email ten out of ten times. Why? I think for me the main reason has to be that it looks cleaner – the text sits on the page nicely and doesn’t look like it might err off course into the empty spaces and escape from the page.

It’s not just me that prefers sans serif. A quick sweep of the office shows that everyone else is of the same mind. “I think it’s more accessible” and “the space between characters makes Arial easier to read” were two of the replies I had. But the remark I found most intriguing was “I would pick Arial to write an email, but when I was younger I used to love Lucida Handwriting”.

I hate Lucida Handwriting. A scrawling monstrosity, it renders even the most fluid prose completely illegible. To be honest, in that aspect it probably reminds me too much of my own handwriting, which is so lacking in definition that a friend once said it was like “the heartbeat of a dying man”.

So why would anybody pick a serif font designed to mimic handwriting when writing something? I think the answer was hinted at when the colleague admitted that she was “younger” when she liked to use it. It makes communication seem more personal and identifiable, even if in a really rudimentary way. It’s probably also why publishers prefer to use serif fonts for classic fiction. We get a sense of history with the antiquated script of the characters, but also feel like a singular, personal voice is trying to speak to us.

That’s why we avoid serif fonts in e-learning. Text needs to be open, accessible, and, frankly, anonymous. The same reason we avoid serif fonts is the same reason we avoid the use of “I” in our instructional text. “We are going to look at” and “I am going to show you” make the same point, but notice the impact.

We often try to foster a sense of community in our instructional writing for business, encouraging the employee (the learner) to identify with the business (the teacher). Companies have been making the progressive effort to change their language to homogenise and simplify their communications, which is great for everyone. Fewer words + user friendly language = happy customers = profitable business.

But if we want to be indentified by our writing, why use the same font? I’m not taking about simply making all our communications Arial-based. Everyone uses Arial. I’m advocating companies developing their own, branded sans serif font that they can use in communication. Not just focusing on logos and headings, but adopting a typeface that is identifiable, a kind of corporate handwriting. It carries all the weighting of the brand and its core values but, unlike a static logo, can adopt. Employees identify with and get used to using the “voice” of the business because they can begin to visual recognise the business voice constructions in communications, and know when they should be using appropriate language for the business because the separation from their personal communication is evident in the typography. lf business communication attains a greater degree of homogeneity, then the knock-on benefit for elearning is that instructional designers will be able to replicate the business “voice” of the client with greater success, maximising the effectiveness of their courses.

Thinking about it, I might go and trawl the internet to find a font and adapt it for my own. Why not? There isn’t just one sans serif font out there, so why restrict yourself? Discover a new handwriting.

What are your thoughts on e-learning and business typography? Think the design of one of your courses would have looked better in another font? Perhaps you’ve even used serif fonts to build courses – let us know why you prefer them in the comments box below.

A lot of people in e-learning and beyond have been asking us about Moodle recently. They’re curious about this funny word because what was once a little-known verb is now a global movement: forty million users in 216 countries and fifteen books written about how to use it so far. And it’s no longer just universities, colleges and schools which are using Moodle-based online learning environments. Increasingly, the corporate LMS is a Moodle-based LMS.

Private sector ears pricked up when they heard that Moodle was adaptable, easy-to-use and above all, open source. That means no license fees and an army of enthusiastic volunteers to do your development for you. Every day Moodle grows new functionality.

But many still have reservations, and I can understand why. When I bought my first laptop, much like IT purchasing managers everywhere I trembled at the thought of paying a license fee for the operating system. And so it was that Tux, the Linux Penguin, beckoned to me with his bright, booming eyes. Linux was in many ways beautiful: free, fast and totally immune to viruses. But as the months rolled on I sensed I was abusing my Penguin.

Basic functionality like downloading updates and plug-ins and connecting to different devices isn’t easy with Linux for a novice (this was long before I had any programming know-how). It was like I’d never seen a Penguin before and I was keeping it alive by cramming it into a humid reptile breeding box and feeding it cheese slices all day.

My Penguin stopped working properly. I turned to the Linux community of experts for help and found more impenetrable programming-speak and the assumption of proficiency. The open source party was rocking, but there were no invites for average users.

Things are very different now. The joy of Moodle for enterprises is not only that there is no license fee, but that learning professionals don’t need to be IT professionals to create a virtual learning environment that looks and feels exciting.

You want a news feed to deliver live headlines about your company? Easy – just add an RSS block and paste in the link. You want videos of all shapes and sizes sprouting from customisable players? Child’s play – Moodle has a multimedia plug-in filter that can turn any link into whatever media you want.

SCORM assessments, progress tracking, certificates? Click-and-drag page design? Self congratulatory webinars? Sure! And here’s the best part. You know that guy on the IT helpdesk who sneers at you and makes you feel two inches tall every time you spill coffee on your keyboard? Forget about him, Moodle just wants you. The dead Penguin is as far from my mind as it has ever been.

Moodle in its standard form may be very easy to use, but on the other hand, you can’t just download Moodle all shiny and ready to go. It has its quirks and corners (and a few gaps to fall into). Like any potent and open sourced thing, an enterprise Moodle that’s fit for purpose needs to be brought into the world with care and shepherded well.

It must also be disciplined. The interface is actually so easy to use that if you aren’t careful you can have a blooming, uncontrolled social jungle of blogs, chats and forums before you know it – and find the rest of the internet pouring into your Moodle in places where it isn’t always welcome.

Just like Linux and the Linux community of experts, the success of Moodle is based on a set of open-source assumptions that need to be managed and modified for its successful deployment as an enterprise-wide VLE. At Saffron we’re a part of the Moodle movement, but we understand that successful companies don’t march with the herd.

In this day and age, we see videos played out to introduce learners to the learning objectives of the course, to show them a simulated problem-solving scenario that they can identify with, or even to relate previous learner experience.

Used well, video can be a valuable addition to your course; used badly, it will have heavily impacted on your resources to no discernable advantage and, worst of all, could alienate the learner. After all, who wants to watch a video that gives the same tired clichés the learner has probably encountered X times in Y years?

To steer clear of this, there are three concepts that I believe are fundamental to scripting an effective video scenario:

• Content

Catherine Blanchard, Camilla Weich and Stephanie Dedhar have all mentioned in previous blogs the importance of making your content relevant to your audience. Video scripts are no exception. Make sure that the content of your conversation is succinct – don’t try and force in fictional discussion that isn’t relevant to the scenario. For example:

Subject A: “Hey, did you and Toni go to the cinema last night?
Subject B: “Yeah, but all we could talk about was due diligence procedure”

As you can see, the script doesn’t flow and seems quite unnatural. Not that I’m saying talking about due diligence in your spare time would be unnatural, but it isn’t necessarily something you would bring up in a conversation with a colleague within the context of the conversation. Instead, keep it focused on business and the learning objectives:

Subject A: “Hey, have you had time to look at the due diligence guidelines?”
Subject B: “Yeah, I tried having a read last night, but I got really confused”

This admission from subject B can then be used as motivation for subject A to give a definition of due diligence. Subject B also seems more human, and the learner may also sympathise with the confusion. It’s less false, concentrates on the course objective and flows better than the first example.

• Character

Character is perhaps the area that those new to script-writing will find the hardest. Again, the key to integrating them into the fabric of your course is to make your characters relevant, enhancing (and I apologise, as I’m about to use a clunky neologism that makes me cringe) the “believability” of your fictional scenario. Think about the target audience – information such as targeted learner age and the diversity of the business. With this information, you’ll be better equipped to create believable, plausible characters that the learner can identify with.

• Conversation 

If you can accurately capture the tone of the business and successfully replicate how the learner interacts with colleagues on a day-to-day basis, then you should find that the learner immediately finds the video more engaging. Proceed with caution though – if you get too bogged down in trying to recreate the vernacular of the business, then you’ll only highlight the falsity of your video. To put it another way, you wouldn’t try and have a conversation with a cockney by constructing a whole sentence with rhyming slang. But drop in the odd colloquial phrase here and you’ll find your video interaction becomes more than just Robin Hood (good).

There is no generic formula for scripting an effective video scenario, no magic words that will work in every case – but if you make these three concepts integral to your script and execute them well, then you’ll find your video content doesn’t fade into the background of your course.

Got any ideas of your own about what makes a script effective? Maybe you’ve seen a really good video interaction – what was it that made it great? Likewise, what is it that you feel contributes to making a bad script? Share your experience in the comments section below.

Rapid development. One of those fairly nondescript-seeming phrases you might see anywhere on an agenda at pretty much any company in the City. For those of us who work in e-learning, though, it’s a bit of a buzzword (or should I say buzzphrase?). Semantics aside, these days it’s all about delivering the same quality at half the price and twice the speed.

I recall an engineering adage that goes, ‘build it fast, build it well, build it cheap – pick two.’ In rapid e-learning, we don’t get the luxury of just picking two. The challenge, the long hours spent building the content into the course, and the satisfaction of getting a release turned around in ten days all go hand-in-hand.

The rapid development of e-learning projects is all about adaptability and versatility. Let me use a recent project as an example. This was a two-hour systems simulation which took – if you’ll permit me to quickly check my Outlook calendar and do a double take – six days, as well as a few hours in the office over a weekend.

Now, I work with some extremely bright and professional Instructional Designers (IDs). And even they struggle with workload from time to time. So what does a rapidly developing ID like me do when, suddenly, a new brief lands on their desk with the final release date looming closer than most pilot release dates?

Here’s where adaptability and versatility come into the equation. Working on rapid projects, even for a little while, makes you especially sensitive to any change in your schedules. Having contingency is a great thing. Sweeping everything non-essential aside, I set about trying to shoehorn the development hours into the hours available.

Naturally, no amount of contingency can prepare you fully for the arrival of a whole project, so it’s important to build a solid plan as soon as possible. Once I had the time blocked out for this project, the next thing was to figure out the best possible use for it. I asked colleagues to help and delegated as much work as possible. We roped in senior management to tackle the client queries. The tech team got themselves stuck into the LMS.

After six (and a bit) days we’d built, quality checked and released a course which our client was very happy with.

Adaptability and versatility are your greatest weapons when going into battle against a seemingly impossible list of deliverables. You have to ensure that all of the essential processes are followed while simultaneously making the most of every possible shortcut you can take. Without doubt, it’s risky business.

I made a few mistakes along the way – rapid development isn’t only a learning process for your target group of users. The upshot is that if you can adapt and stay versatile, it won’t just be your courses that are being rapidly developed.

Three months ago, completely new to the world of e-learning, I was given some time by Saffron to do as much research as I could on instructional design and effective learning strategies before starting my first project. It was rather daunting, but I leapt to the challenge and one of the ways I found out what good instructional design looks like was to review some of Saffron’s past courses and do some research online. Now that I have experience of both writing and reviewing courses, there are a few things that I’ve learnt. So, if you’re also new to this industry, read on for my thoughts on how best to write an engaging e-learning course that achieves the desired behavioural changes.

Firstly, anyone in the e-learning industry will encourage you to be innovative with your writing and while this is certainly a worthy aim, before leaping straight into an exciting approach, you should first look at what has worked well in the past. I’ve learnt that addressing the learner directly is really effective (using ‘you’), as it will make them feel that the course is relevant and designed specifically with them in mind. Using the active tense rather than the passive tense is often a good way to infuse some energy into your writing. Also, try to inject emotion – perhaps by adding humor – because emotion engages like nothing else does.
 
Secondly, keeping the learning outcomes in sight is essential because otherwise the training will drift away from the course objectives. So glance at the learning outcomes after you’ve written a few screens of a course and imagine being asked by an uninspired reader just why they need to know this. Keep doing this every now and again – although it may seem time consuming, it really did save me time in the long run and ensured that I kept on track!

Thirdly, really understanding the content is a crucial part of instructional design. Imagine this scenario: you’ve been given the material for a course and it’s about, say, VAT or financial management. Your task is to get to grips with said content and mould it into an engaging, interactive storyboard. How? Sustainable (and transmittable) ideas only come to those who really spend time familiarising themselves with the content – it’s an ID’s job to become the expert. Also, read a little around the area – you won’t necessarily use everything you research but it will increase both your knowledge and confidence and it’s that which will show in your writing – and engage the learner.
 
Fourthly; know your audience. You can’t structure content coherently unless you understand who they are and what they need to learn. Otherwise, you’ll be tempted to include as much content as possible, to cover every eventuality, and trawling through text which isn’t personally relevant to them can make a learner switch off double quick. Knowing your audience also means you’ll be able to use realistic examples and scenarios familiar to them. You should aim for the learner’s sigh of recognition, their empathy and emotional involvement, which is likely to lead to better retention of information.

Lastly, signposting is something which should be included in every storyboard written by a good instructional designer. The learner only has the screen in front of them to indicate where they are in the course and what’s left to cover, so it’s important that they’re reminded of what’s coming up and what they’ve already learnt. Why? Because that way they not only understand how each screen is linked, but they are also able to organise their time and choose how much of the course to take in one sitting. Having a sense of control over their own learning will further engage them and can only add to their positive experience of an e-learning course.

So here lie my words of wisdom but I’m sure there are many points which I have missed as I’m still learning about instructional design every day. But these are good pointers to start with, and I hope that they help any new instructional designers as much as they helped me!