SkillDisplay - Help People Solve Their Problems With an Online Tutorial

Thanks to Christina from SkillDisplay for sharing!

You want to make a tutorial to help people solve their problems and don’t know where to begin? This blogpost is all about E-Learning and how you can make your tutorial king!

5 steps to create an online tutorial:

• What is E-Learning and which techniques are there?

• Stick to one main topic and make content king

• Ways to implement your tutorial

• How to increase usability and the ‘joy of use’ of your course

• It’s time to publish your tutorial and implement a Self-SkillUp button!

E-Learning is any kind of electronic teaching and learning. Learning platforms like SkillDisplay are the interface between students and teachers, respectively the experts who provide the content.

To start with, here are some basic E-Learning techniques:

• Web-Based-Training (WBT)

Web-Based-Training is the advanced version of Computer-Based-Training (CBT). While a CBT course is spread by CDs and DVDs, a WBT is accessible on a web server, where it can be accessed at any time by those authorized. Also, a tutor is usually available who can be questioned via eMail for example.

• Blended learning

Blended learning combines the advantages of E-Learning and face-to-face tuition. As it’s an online course, it’s flexible, but it also has the social aspects and communication included.

• Virtual classroom

A virtual classroom is a specific form of Web-Based-Training. The transfer of knowledge happens online, teachers and coaches are not at the same place as their students. They are all online at the same time for a seminar; this can take place i.e. as an online or a video conference.

Now you know the different E-Learning techniques, it’s time to find a topic. What do you want to make the tutorial about?

Whatever you are doing, always remember “Content is king”. If your content is not meaningful and is not a solution to a problem people have, no one will use your tutorial. Put yourself into the position of the learner.

It’s important to stick to a central theme; creating a mindmap or brainstorming can be a great help for staying focused. If you are putting things into a sequence, you can then easily write an abstract with all necessary points. Make a structure like a story you are supposed to write in high school. First there is the intro, then the structured content and at the end, is space for some closing words. This is the perfect base for your tutorial.

For self-confident and motivated speakers, I would recommend podcasting. Podcasts are online resources, that can be watched or listened to wherever and whenever the learner wants to. Here are some characteristics:

• Audio Podcasts

Audio Podcasts are auditive media files. They’re easy to create and publish.

The quality of a recording should be as good as you would expect it to be on a CD. Use an external microphone and make the podcast somewhere you don’t have any distracting noises. There is software available for removing background sounds and cutting off the first and last seconds, where you clicked the record button. If it fits, you can use some special sounds to brighten the podcast up.

Make sure you know what you want to say in the beginning, a document where you have written down everything you want to say would be a good idea here. To prevent splutters, you might want to write it out word by word and practice the text before you start recording.

• Video Podcasts

Video Podcasts include audiovisual resources. The visual parts help the learner understand your content better. If videos are very long, they are often streamed. So before you make the video, decide where you want to publish it.

Animated videos – like you can see at the end of this blog post– are perfect for visualizing spoken words.

Another option is using a video, where you stand in front of the camera. Always think of what you can do to expand the auditive content. If you are just standing in front of the camera and talk to people, while nothing is happening, you might as well make an audio podcast. Fade in important messages or use a slideshow next to you in the video.

As with audio podcasts, the quality of a video podcast needs to be very good. Just think of yourself as being a user. Would you watch a video which is blurred or wiggly? It wouldn’t seem to be trustworthy, even if the content was great.

• Screen- and Slidecasts

Screen- and slidecasts are digital video recordings of your screen. They usually have audio assistance. Screencasts are perfect if you want to explain a tool to anyone. Basically, slidecasts are like presentations, you just don’t see the speaker. Search online for tools to create casts, there are ever so many!

• Blogpost

If you are more the writer type, you can write a blogpost. For a blogpost, you just need a place to publish, for example in your own blog. If you don’t have one, you are very welcome here, try to develop your own with TYPO3. The SkillPathTYPO3 CMS Certified Editor (TCCE) would be a perfect beginning! Just register at the SkillDisplay platform and start showing what you can do by learning the listed skills.

Make sure you use enough graphical material to underline your content. Whether it’s an infographic or a diagram, visual content is a great help for understanding words.

Usability is a big topic in the web. If the website is not working or takes until forever to load content, people will use another website to get their information.

Here are some points, you should take to heart:

• The tutorial should have a capability of self-description.

• The structure of the tutorial should be reproducible. It’s necessary to have a logical order that isn’t irritating.

• Use your corporate design to get consistency into your tutorial. If you don’t have one, create one!

• Error tolerance: Give feedback to your readers.

Have you ever heard of “joy of use”?

After you have improved the usability, you can think of joy of use.

Joy of use is the positive feeling one gets when using a tutorial. It includes the functionality, the content and the esthetics. Get a little creative!

So, if you have finished your tutorial, you are ready to publish it online. If you want people to show what they can do, you should implement a Self-SkillUp button.

For more instructions read SkillDisplays latest post. It’s quite easy to implement it, so I decided to actually place it in this blogpost.

Here we have for example the great “What is TYPO3?” video-tutorial. After you watched it and are sure that you have understood what the video is about, just click on the Self-SkillUp Button below. It shows what the learners can do, after they have registered at www.skilldisplay.eu

I hope you have lots of fun!

A content management system is an application which can be used to create content like text, videos and pictures. To sum it up, it’s  a software which helps you manage digital content. They are often deployed to generate websites because they simplify the building process.

Congratulations - now you have a short overview of CMS and TYPO3.
Click the "SkillUp" Button to show that you possess this knowledge on the SkillDisplay platform!
After you’ve tracked the provided skills you can also use the other learning resources at SkillDisplay to widen your knowledge.