The coming era of Rapid Sims

The eLearning world is alive with the buzz of Rapid elearning. Infact, with companies like Kineo and Line Communications in the UK making huge strides then this is more than a buzz – it is driving uptake.

 

A challenge for the nascent ILS sector is that ILS development is an unknown quantity for most would be buyers in the Organisational training market. High levels of uncertainty and possible anxiety exist around: what an ILS takes to develop; how much it will cost; how long it will take; how it can fit in to training and how long it will take.

 

The eLearning development market is aided by the wide availability of authoring tools that facilitate the rapid and flexible production of eLearning courses. For ILS to go mainstream a big part of the solution will be ‘Rapid Sims’ tools to simplify, speed up and extend the utility of ILS.

Rapid Sims tools – characteristics

¨       Rapid development – more closely approximating elearning delivery times. Tools can integrate and publish all elements of ILS production: content, art, ID, scripting. Libraries of 3D art assets and easy assimilation of various 3D art formats.

¨       Lower technical skillsets – bye bye programming. The target user of the tools is likely an instructional designer or SME. The industry standard is for templates and wizards to guide content development supported by more events editors for more complex and custom functionality.

¨       Reusabilty – ability to rapidly update and change existing content; ability to reuse art assets to create new experiences.

¨       Training integration:

• As part of blended experience and larger course – ability to create short and longer ILS experiences.
• Delivery – tools must be able to publish for delivery via web browser and also as executable.
• Data in and out – Performance data can be read into and out from the ILS to LMS or other; via standards.
• Hardware – published ILS can run on lower specification machines.

What will they do?

Well not everything!

 

It will be near impossible for one tool to satisfy all requirements. Clark Quinn makes this point very well with reference to model driven ILS – these are inherently so different that a tool would effectively be a programming language to cover all variations. Clark has captured this in a diagram that maps different tools ranging from the ubiquitous PowerPoint to C++ programming. These are referenced against increasing technical complexity against two types of ILS (branching and model driven).

 

I agree with this and it has got me wondering whether in fact different tools and platforms will emerge that cover distinctly different types of ILS? We know that many customers are confused about – what is an ILS? Developers in this space know that there are many different types of ILS. They all have their place and the choice of which one depends on many factors: learning objectives, audience, technology, availability of design resource, etc. As an industry we have not articulated the types and different uses very clearly. I utilize this taxonomy of ILS with clients. It is a starting point for clearly delineating the different types of ILS and their learning use cases. I have begun to detail the tools available within each and will update this as new information appears.

 

Already on the radar

This is happening now and we are going to see a lot of development over the next 18 months as the market starts to experiment to see what works.

 

Code3D – Toolset for creating Fire Service emergency responder sims. Used to develop Egocentric type ILS. Template and widget driven. Libraries of emergency responser art provided.

 

RBITS – Reality Based Interactive Training System. A platform that enables rapid creation of branching story sims.

 

3Dwave – is a platform for developing Exocentric Sim scenarios, enabling the creation and simulation of 3D objects, environments, and scenarios. Uses XML for scenario definition and Lingo for simple scripting. Can be published as an executable or via the web browser (Shockwave movie).

 

LearningBeans. Developed by Pixelearning. A platform for creating business simulations; a type of Construction and Management Sim. The platform uses templates and scripts to rapidly develop business sims. Delivered through a browser via Flash.

 

Thinking Worlds 3.0. Developed by Caspian Learning TW3 is an authoring platform for the rapid creation of Egocentric Sims and Branching Stories. The tool provides instructional design templates and wizards, visual programming interface and direct scripting to rapidly create sims. Publishable as an executable or Shockwave Movie for browser delivery.