Now You Know Blog - instructional design

Show, don’t tell! Using video in your e-learning courses

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:29:00 -0400

Say the word video at the start of an e-learning project, and many of us will enthusiastically call out, "Lights, Camera, Action!" And then we'll pause, as we start thinking of the Hollywood budgets often required for projects using video. But the success of YouTube should give us all inspiration that creativity can count for more than budget when it comes to adding video to a learning experience. The Authoring Tool in our dominKnow LCMS includes a video capture feature that allows video to be recorded from a web cam directly to a page in your e-learning course. The first idea that most people think of when they discover this feature is that it's a quick and easy way to record a talking head video clip, like an introduction to a topic or a welcome greeting at the start of a course. But flex your creative muscles a little further, and you'll see there are far more engaging learning experiences that can be created with this tool. Here's an example. Last week I was asked by a client to show them what a video-capture screen can look like in the LCMS. I didn't have an example readily at hand, so I quickly put one together. Instead of just recording myself doing an introduction, though, I took a few minutes and developed a bit of a back story to use as part of a scenario, in this case a phone sales call. In the example, the learner watches the video to hear and see my responses to the conversation so far, and then makes a decision on what action to take next. Creating the page only took about 10 minutes, including recording time. Here's a screen cap (and yes, that's my mug in the video). An approach like this takes advantage of video's ability to help us tell a story, and stories can bring powerful engagement advantages to the learning experience. And almost as importantly, it doesn't take a Hollywood budget to carry out. In fact, the nature of the scenario even turned the limited quality of my computer's mic into a contextually-relevant production feature for this clip. Since the scenario is based around a phone sales call, no one will expect big budget editing or foley effects in the soundtrack. A little mic and background noise is just what you'd expect in a phone call. There are many other inexpensive ways to bring video into your next e-learning project. Try sending your SMEs out with video cameras to record clips that explain important topics or demonstrate critical skills. Hey, the budget could be very tight on this, since so many of us now carry a video recorder -- also known as a cell phone -- in our pocket every day. Your SMEs won't likely be expert videographers or even professional actors or voice-over talents. But their in-depth knowledge of the topic or task and the personal experience they speak from can give the video clips an authenticity no actor could ever reach, either. And authenticity is another great way to create engagement in a learning experience. You'll be surprised at how much usable video you get in a hurry, and if anything needs to be reshot, you'll already have a working prototype of it for use during storyboarding. What's the lesson here? Don't let your ears hear "video" and your mind automatically think "Hollywood budget". Daring to think differently can hep take your next e-learning course to a new level of learning engagement -- and that really is the goal, after all. Chris Van Wingerden is Vice President Learning Solutions at dominKnow Learning Systems.

Do you see how I see?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:58:00 -0400

One of the first major e-learning projects I worked on (way back near the beginning of this century) was aimed at training oil sands personnel to run a plant that didn't exist. The facility was under construction and every day several thousand trades people added new parts and pieces to the multi-acre project. As soon as everything was completed, the operations team had to be ready to start turning everything on. Yep, the operators had to learn how to run the plant before they could put their hands on much of it. Enter our team and the e-learning project, including proposed 3-D models of the facility so operators could see the finished system as part of their training. This was the best way, it was reasoned, to deal with training on a structure that didn't exist yet. Beginning with introductory-level learning topics we started creating 3-D models for almost every learning experience we designed, from sky-high viewpoints for locating fire equipment locations to inside looks at the various reactions taking place as heavy oil was converted into product ready for the refinery. About a third of the way into the project, we started crafting the process operations modules, the real meat of how the plant was going to run. I was reviewing design notes (one of the collaboration features of the dominKnow LCMS) submitted by the client team leader as part of an early module review. One particular note caught my eye; it said something like "These pipes don't look anything like this. Let's get rid of the 3-D." I called the client to catch up on this. He said the 3-D model we had created in this case looked more like household plumbing than the piping found at an oil processing plant to him. If the images didn't look right, the learners – in this case, experienced operators – would be skeptical of the validity of the information overall. So, let's just get rid of the 3-D images. Ummm, okay. But how are your learners going to understand how the oil product moves through the unit? Why don't we just use the P&ID diagrams? What? In the earliest stages of the project's design, a set of Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams had been created. These were line and symbol-based diagrams, like a logic diagram or a flow chart, that outlined the design specs for the project, such as how different pumps were to be connected in sequence, what the operating pressures and temperatures were expected to be, and which types of valves were needed along the way, for example. The P&ID diagrams had almost no direct relation to the physical layout of the facility or actual dimensions or distances or practically anything relating to the eventual physical appearance of the facility – but they were a visual language that made sense to the operations team. The P&ID diagrams were a very precise way of explaining how product moved from point a to point b. I won't even begin to explain why we could have made it several months into the project without understanding this critical piece of the client's culture. But the upshot was that for process operations we were able to use simple line drawing approaches instead of 3-D models. And although the visual design was no where near as cool as the 3-D models in the other modules, the learning still happened because it used a visual language the learners were comfortable with and trusted. The lesson? Not everyone "sees" the same way, especially when it comes to making sense of information in a visual medium like e-learning. Needless to say, our needs analysis process was quickly adjusted to include identifying such issues when we start working with a client on a new e-learning project. And our clients get to "see" better learning results. Chris Van Wingerden is Vice President Learning Solutions at dominKnow Learning Systems.

Visual Design Primer Part 4: Using Color Theory in Design

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:24:00 -0400

In our previous post we looked at the basics of color theory. In this post we'll look at ways to put that theory to use in our designs, by understanding how to combine colors effectively and how to use color to help us communicate ideas to our learners.

Color Combinations
Good design is about choosing the right colors to represent what you are trying to convey. Colors are often used in combination, so understanding how people perceive color combinations is important. Successful color combinations can be represented through an extended color wheel which includes shades and tints. Color relationships can be:

Monochromatic

Triadic

Complementary

Analogous

Split-Complimentary

Double-complimentary

In general, you will pick one of these color relationship types and use it as the basis of your overall design, from the big picture aspects such as background color and navigation layer color to the more subtle course visual elements such as button colors and the use of color for some text elements such as page headers, for example.

Color and Contrast in Design
Contrast is the most important element in design: you can achieve contrast through color, scale, texture, shape, and weight.

The ability to clearly see the subject or words in a design is good legibility, and legibility is a function of contrast. Light type can be placed over dark backgrounds between 35 and 100 per cent in contrast, and dark type can be placed on a light background between 0 and 35 per cent contrast.

Itten's Color Contrasts
In his book The Art of Color, Johannes Itten describes methods for color combinations using contrasting properties of hue. Itten's color star did not recognize magenta or cyan as primaries, but his book summarizes most other color knowledge to date. Through his research he developed seven color contrasts for coordinating colors by using the hue's contrasting properties. He learned that contrasts may be obtained by light, moderate, or dark values. This image shows Itten's seven color contrasts. Of course, there is one other aspect of designing with color that should always be considered, and that is how color can affect your audience. This is a huge subject to begin understanding, but here's a good place to start. Next post: Web resources to help you learn more about visual design Chris Van Wingerden is Vice President Learning Solutions at dominKnow Learning Systems.

Visual Design Primer Part 3: Color Theory Basics

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:22:00 -0400

This is our third posting in our Visual Design Primer series looking at visual design issues and concepts that relatively new e-learning and multimedia designers can really benefit from. We've looked at image and animation use and typography and font usage in the previous two posts. This post is the first of two on using color in your design process. Color is the visual perceptual property corresponding to the categories called red, yellow, white, etc. Color is derived from the spectrum of light, and it is reflected or absorbed, as it is received by the eye, and processed by the brain. In this post, we outline a few of the most important color theory concepts. Understanding color and color relationships will greatly assist you in an effective design process. In the next post we'll look at ways to use color in your design thinking.

Qualities of Color, or Hue In design, it's not enough to be able to know a color's name. Anyone who has ever tried to pick a paint color for the living room already knows that all reds are not created equal, for example. There are a number of different qualities that we can use to describe color. The key qualities we most often need to think about are:

Chroma and saturation

Value, intensity and luminance

Shade

Tint

Chroma and saturation represents how pure or gray a color or hue is. Intensity, luminance and value represent how bright or dull a hue is; how much light is reflected from the hue. Shade and tint represent how much black or white is added to a color. The image above shows how these different qualities affect how a color looks. When we start to think in terms of these qualities, we're able to describe how and why one red is different from another.

The Color Wheel To start thinking about the differences between more than one color, we need to understand the color wheel. The color wheel is the primary tool used in color theory. Colors are arranged on the wheel according to their hue and relationship. Understanding the color wheel will help you understand how certain colors relate to each other, and why they work well together - or don't! The color wheel can be broken down into Primary colors, Secondary colors and Tertiary colors. When talking about how colors relate to each other, we speak about Harmonious colors, Complementary colors, and Analogous colors. Primary colors are the main colors that cannot be made from others but are used to create all other colors. Secondary colors are those made when two primaries are mixed. Tertiary colors are those made when primary and secondary colors are mixed. Complementary colors are colors opposite each other on the color wheel. Harmonious colors are colors that are next to one another on the color wheel or very close to it. Analogous colors are located near each other on the color wheel and can be a pleasing combination. Getting these color theory basics under your belt is important. You'll not only make better decisions on color use in your e-learning designs, you'll also be better prepared to work (and talk!) with graphic artists and other design team members. Next post: Using color theory in design Chris Van Wingerden is Vice President Learning Solutions at dominKnow Learning Systems 9wefv5g7yj

Visual Design Primer Part 2: Typography and Font Usage

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:41:00 -0400

In our previous post we looked at some critical issues to keep in mind when thinking about image and animation use in an online learning project. The old saying might be that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in e-learning you really can't get away from words completely. But text in an online learning experience is more than just words on the screen. It is also a key element of visual design. It's especially important to especially ensure that the visual design of the text presentation best supports the learning that needs to take place. Here are some key concepts to keep in mind when you think about using text in your online learning course. Typography
Typography is the art and technique of setting written subject matter in type using a combination of fonts, font sizes, line lengths, leading (line spacing), and letter spacing. When dealing with typefaces, always limit yourself to full families of fonts, and only mix serif and sans serif fonts based on the structure of the project. As a general rule:

Avoid having two consecutive lines that end with hyphens

Widows and orphans (one word on a line by itself) are undesirable

Tighten text (decrease letter spacing) no more than -3

Kern (manually adjust the space between letters and words) on titles/word-marks to improve letter spacing

Note: Typographic controls such as kerning and leading are often not available in applications meant for online display. They may be still used to good effect when preparing text as an image for online display, as in this example: Here's a link to a good general overview of the subject of typography.

Fonts are the visual families that you choose to use to display your text. Microsoft has a great site to spend time at if you are new to typography and fonts. For example, it explains what TrueType fonts and ClearType fonts are. It also gives a great overview of typography in general. General Font Information for Web-based Training
Since text will carry the bulk of your learning content, it will be very important that it display clearly. Here are some guidelines for text use:

Fonts should be a minimum of 14 points for online learning. People above the age of 40 and people with visual perceptual deficit may have problems reading text if it is smaller.

Place text on an uncluttered background, distinctly separate from other screen elements. There should be a clear contrast between text and background elements.

Provide plenty of white space, and keep your columns of text narrow (8-12 words).

Try not to use more than two typefaces in your project. When using more than one typeface, make them quite different.

Use a typeface that is easy to read on-screen, for example Arial or Verdana. Small serif fonts such as Times New Roman are difficult to read on a monitor.

Make sure the spacing between sections of text in the project (between headings and main content, between paragraphs, etc.) is consistent.

Be aware that underlined fonts may be confused with active links to information and could be frustrating for learners. Fonts and Color
It's always tempting to add a bit of color to your text to help it stand out, but generally you should use color cautiously on text. For example, you should avoid using a font color against a background color that is adjacent to it on the color wheel, since the text will blend in with the background. Pick colors that have enough contrast to be easily read. Use dark colors for text. Generally, bright or light colors used for body text makes this text difficult to read. Avoid using colors which are opposite each other on the color wheel as they will be distracting, and may cause the illusion of 'vibration', as shown in the example below. Online learning is a visual medium, but text will inevitably still play a role in almost every online course you create. Following these guidelines will help make sure you are using text in the best ways possible, all in an effort to improve the effectiveness of the learning experience. Next post: Color theory Chris Van Wingerden is Vice President Learning Solutions at dominKnow Learning Systems

Visual Design Primer: Image and Animation Use

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:42:00 -0400

When you transition from being a traditional trainer for instructor-led sessions to working on e-learning projects you find out quickly there are whole new worlds of knowledge you suddenly need to acquire. A critical example is the realm of visual design, which can have a huge impact on the learning experience you are creating. Our clients often need to become instant experts in visual design as they move into using the dominKnow LCMS, especially if they are transitioning from a more traditional training approach. Our creative services team has created a short overview document that highlights some key issues and concepts to help give clients a head start on this transition. In this post, we'll highlight some important things to consider when using images and animations. Over the next few posts we'll look at typography and font use as well as color theory. We'll also post up a collection of web resources on these topics, to help anyone interested in learning more. A thought to keep in mind: Rules are meant to be broken and there's an exception to every rule. Okay, that's two thoughts, but they point to the same thing. These are good guidelines to follow, but at some point you may need to ignore or break them. Just make sure whatever you do is in the best interest of your learmers! Images and Animation Use General Image Considerations
Ensure that images complement and support the content.

Images should be consistent in style, and should complement each other as well. The mood of the images should be appropriate to the subject and your audience. The image above shows three different visual styles - you'll quickly recognize that they aren't equally appropriate for every learning experience, that they each have their place.

Always create images at their final size. In other words, do not use your course authoring tool settings to resize an image's pixel height or width. Scaling an image to make it appear larger on screen (scaling up) will cause it to look pixilated. The image above shows an example of this effect. Scaling to make an image appear smaller (scaling down) will mean you are using a larger-than-necessary file size, adding unnecessary bulk to your course. You should always try to minimize file size to prevent bandwidth or loading issues for your learners. You may also reduce the number of colors or quality in your image in order to reduce the file size, thereby decreasing the time the image takes to display in your course. For example, if you save the image as a JPG, you can usually reduce the image quality and still retain an image almost identical to the quality of the original. Stock Images
If you do not produce your own photographs or images for a course and need to obtain some from an online (or other) source, make sure that you have proper authorization to use them. This may mean purchasing the rights to the image or getting permission from its creator for its use. You can visit stock image websites to see thousands of images that are usually available for purchase (vector images, photographs, illustrations etc.). Well-known vendors include Jupiter Images, iStockPhoto and Getty Images. Animations
Animations often play a critical part in illustrating a concept. When adding animations make sure you pay attention to how large the file is, as this can reduce a course's playability. Any animations used in courseware should require a cue from the learner for startup; be aware that looping animations or videos that play automatically can be distracting to the learner. Keep all animations and videos in the control of the user, so they can start and stop them as they wish. Next post: Typography and font use Chris Van Wingerden is Vice President Learning Solutions at dominknow Learning Systems.

Adding 'Character' to Online Learning

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:50:00 -0400

When I talk about using Agents (or Avatars) in online courses, people sometimes give me a horrified look. I can almost see the shadow of Microsoft's Clippy in their eyes. For those lucky enough to not to know Clippy, he was an obtrusive, paperclip-shaped help agent that would appear (at the most inopportune times) when using Microsoft Office applications. Clippy was notoriously hard to turn off and was exceedingly annoying. He was a good concept, just badly executed (Sorry Microsoft!). This has scared many people away from the idea of using Agents in learning. But what exactly are Agents? [More]

Podcasting gives new voice to e-learning

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:04:00 -0400

Bersin and Associates rolled out their predictions for 2007 last week, announcing that this will be the year that "E-learning 3.0 arrives." The company is predicting that organizations will make greater and better use of self-published training resources. And dominKnow Learning Systems is ready to help make that happen. Version 5.1 of the dominKnow LCMS includes support for managing and deploying podcasts as part of an organizational learning strategy. We see this as opening a lot of doors for organizations and their employees or team members. It gives learners another channel for learning, particularly auditory learners. It frees up the learning process, allowing learning to take place without requiring an online connection. With the RSS feed capability of the podcast feature, learners can have content forwarded to them without logging even into the LCMS. It also gives organizations an opportunity to encourage subject matter experts and even learners to help create learning content. It's fairly easy to create an audio file - almost anyone can do it on their computer. So now it's easy for learners to share success stories or tips, for example. In this way, everyone in the organization benefits from each learner's knowledge and experience. We also hope it will open new creative options for designing learning. Last month, the E-Learning Queen offered some observations on ways the best-written television shows generate interest and hold a viewer's attention - and how these could be used in educational podcasts. More creativity will flow, no doubt!

All We Want for Christmas

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 14:14:00 -0400

It's the time of year for list-making. Children (and even some of us adults) write lists of what they want.
Adults write lists of what to get others.
There are seemingly endless grocery lists for all that holiday entertaining. And any time now the end-of-year lists will start to roll out. We thought we'd put together a wish list of a different sort - what we wish for everyone who is embarking on or continuing along the path of e-learning.

Here are our top 5 wishes for successful e-learning courseware.

1. We wish everyone would make training relevant for the learner. A learner should know from the start that the course will be meaningful to her everyday work life and will provide her with information and skills to help her do her job better. Courses should be designed around exercises and assessments that are centered on job-related issues or scenarios.

2. We wish everyone would use active voice, a conversational tone and the second person to help learners connect to the learning experience. Formal language that uses passive voice is a barrier to learning that can distract even the most attentive e-learner.

3. We wish everyone would keep it short. E-learning benefits from being concise and focused. This applies to language use as well as course structures. Short courses, or short modules within a course, help keep learner attention. It's also easier for learners to commit to taking a series of 15-minute courses as part of a busy work schedule rather than a single two-hour course.

4. We wish everyone would make e-learning accessible from wherever their learners work, and use e-learning to solve job-related problems. Taking a training course is great, unless three months goes by before you actually have to carry out a task. Providing access to the e-learning program allows learners to review steps in a process, for instance, right at the time they need to know this information. That's when learning has its greatest effect.

5. We wish everyone would support their learners. Provide resources to help them troubleshoot any technical problems. Provide them with access to topic experts if they feel they need to learn more. Provide them with resources they can take away from the course, to help them when they return to their job.

Informal learning is anything but casual

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 22:41:00 -0400

According to the eLearning Guild's The Informal Learning Research Report 2006, 97% of survey respondents strongly agreed or agreed that "Informal learning takes place wherever and whenever people have the need, motivation, and opportunity for learning." Okay, that's not so startling. In fact, unless we want to get picky in our definitions of informal learning, just about anyone in the training or education field would agree with this statement. What's really interesting is that more than half of the respondents to the survey (57%, in fact) strongly agreed or agreed with the following statement: "Informal learning works better than formal learning because it is learner-driven." As organizational learning culture grows into a full embrace of technology and e-learning becomes more and more common, companies are looking to take best advantage of everything technology can offer. And at some point just about all of us had the lightbulb go on above our heads as we typed a keyword into a search engine, and we realized just how much informal learning was going on around us. The result is nearly unanimous - 98 % of respondents to the survey strongly agreed or agreed that "Informal learning can be deliberately encouraged by an organization." Why wouldn't we want to encourage it? What better learning opportunity could we hope for than helping an employee get access to information right when she needs to know it and is able to put that information to immediate use? The dominKnow Learning Content Management System can help organizations encourage informal learning. One of the chief advantages of our approach to Learning Objects is that it is driven by instructional design principles, not just technology principles. The LCMS creates Learning Objects that are complete instructional units intended to support learning of a specific topic. And this means that courses aren't the only application for these Learning Objects. The LCMS's Reference Feature gives learners access to learning objects as individual reference items. Learners can search the Reference by keyword to quickly find the topic they are looking for and access the Learning Object immediately, without having to take or return to a course to find it. They get the information and training they need, right when they need it most. And since the Learning Objects are designed as complete instructional units, they get the full learning they need.

Making it real - using the dominKnow LCMS for software training

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:45:00 -0400

An important goal of any course focused on the use of software programs is to offer students a chance to learn how to work with the software in a low-risk, supported learning environment. Many clients use our Learning Content Management System for software instruction. The LCMS supports such training easily by allowing clients to use their choice of simulation tools to create their training. Many clients use Captivate or Camtasia, outputting files as .swfs to upload into the LCMS. Flash-developers can use the Envision extension from Digital Curiosity, which allows software captures from within Flash. These tools allow a range of instructional approaches to be supported, from animated demos to remarkably accurate active simulations that allow learners to work through process steps. The dominKnow LCMS also allows instructional designers to control the software instruction to suit the potential learner. If the training is aimed at learners with limited experience, navigation controls can be locked down at each lesson to ensure that all pieces of instruction are successfully competed. Learners with substantial experience can be offered courses which allow them to navigate freely within the course, covering off topics that they feel are new first, for instance, to help them focus on the specific tasks they need to learn or relearn. And the LCMS's reference feature supports learners after the training is completed, providing searchable access (much like an index) to specific tasks contained in the training. Months may pass between the training and the time a learner finally needs to carry out a task - and the reference function gives them an opportunity to review the task steps without having to re-take the full course. An important thing to keep in mind for software simulations is the modality principle in e-learning. Software simulations benefit greatly from audio instructions, rather than text instructions. Using audio to guide the learner through the steps of a task helps prevent the confusion and learning overload that can result from trying to look at on-screen text instructions at the same time as trying to pay attention to the software tool environment. The dominKnow LCMS's audio controls can help you tailor this approach further by triggering text versus audio instructions, just in case the learner does not have speakers or headphones or if the learner is hearing impaired.
The range of approaches has been quite varied, but we've found that the more robust We've found that a very effective approach for these projects is to structure the software simulations for each task-based lesson into two sections.
In the first section of each task, the student is offered a choice of:
1. Seeing a demonstration of the steps being taught in the LO, or
2. Trying the steps with on-screen guidance and corrective feedback. Once the student has made a choice and the exercise has been completed the student will move to the second section of the task lesson, where they are offered the same two choices above as well as an option of: 3. Trying the steps without the on-screen guidance and corrective feedback. Setting up software simulation lessons this way gives students a choice in how they wish to learn, based on their own level of comfort in the software environment. Students with a relatively low level of computer experience, for instance, may wish to watch the steps before ever trying them out themselves while more experienced students may wish to try the steps immediately. The "try without guidance" option is reserved until after a student has at least seen the steps or tried them with guidance, to ensure that he or she has been correctly instructed in the steps. Giving students a choice in how they wish to begin and then continue in a lesson allows the student to work through the steps with guidance and corrective feedback until they are comfortable and confident enough to try the steps from memory. This approach has been successfully used by GeoLearning in the creation of software training courses for many different sectors, from insurance benefits programs to legal software to government software applications.

Cracking the code for compliance training

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 06:35:00 -0400

We've worked on a string of online compliance program and code of conduct courses over the past few months. The experience, for me, has underscored the strong influence language use can have on the success of an e-learning project. There are usually two constituent groups involved in the creation of these projects, those responsible for the compliance program or code of conduct (often the legal department) and those responsible for the training component. Perhaps more than in most other SME/instructional designer relationships, there's a real potential these two groups will perceive a need to use language in quite different ways. The legal department needs to ensure that the language is as accurate as possible – from its perspective. All the T's need to get crossed and all the I's dotted. And a lot of subordinate clauses get added. There is a lot of risk involved for the legal department, whose role it often is to ensure that all risks are as mitigated as possible. The training department needs to keep the audience in mind. Organizations of a decent size inevitably have employees with a wide range of literacy levels. Burdening a learner with "legalese" almost never leads to full understanding. Instead of a tug-of-war, this really ought to be a case of everyone pulling together. (In most cases, even the legal department representatives already understand this. It's just not always at the forefront of their minds when reviewing paragraphs or screens.) How can you get these two sometimes divergent groups pulling together? Reinforce the importance of language in achieving the training goal of successfully supporting understanding. A study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology in 2000 by Richard E. Mayer and RoxanaMoreno showed that informal, conversational language (using first and second person pronouns, for example) results in better learning in an online environment than a formal use of language. Making sure everyone knows the audience is a valuable approach as well. Understanding workplace literacy levels in the U.S. and around the world can play an important (sometimes sobering) role in helping everyone remain focused on the learner's needs. Make sure you relate those stats to your own organization. Once everyone is on board, it's the instructional designer's job to lead by example. Audio, used effectively, can help support learners who are challenged by reading. If reading is a must (like when the budget can't support audio), make sure you understand how low literacy affects a learner's approach to reading, especially in an online environment. Use plain language and employ suitable writing strategies. And always try to advocate for these approaches by explaining their importance to everyone involved in the project, especially at the start of a review period.