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Project Runway: 5 lessons for training and design

March 23, 2010 By

I recently got hooked on Project Runway, the reality show in which aspiring fashion designers compete to create new designs within significant restrictions on time, materials, and theme. I’m not a fan of reality shows nor am I a fashionista, but I find it fascinating to watch the participants’ responses to working creatively under intense pressure. I see some application to training and instructional design.

1. Mind the scope
The Project Runway participants perform under grueling time constraints. They hear about the theme of the week, make some quick sketches, go shopping with specified budget and time limits, start fabricating, fit their models, and polish the garments into readiness for the runway—all within a 15-hour day, followed by a 4-hour stint. It is critically important for them to gauge their designs to what can effectively be accomplished in that relentless schedule. Awareness of the realistic scope of a project is essential. In episode 6 of this season, Amy launched into an ambitious effort to create a pair of pants out of multi-layered, overlapping petals of fabric. She miscalculated the scope of the effort needed to pull it off successfully and she ended up being smacked down by the judges. Instructional designers and trainers also need to be mindful of scope. Although they may have more time to create training modules, the time constraint is in the delivery of the learning. It is tempting to cram too much into a lesson, to overload the learner and defeat the learning. Know your parameters and design accordingly.

2. Failure is okay …to a point
On Project Runway, designers are encouraged to take risks. Those who play it safe or stick to reliable formulas are not likely to arouse the judges’ admiration and votes. In many organizations, there is increasing attention to the productive aspects of risk-taking and failure. All this is good. However, there should be self-check points along the path of risk. When Jonathan’s colleagues were referring to one of his dresses as an explosion in a toilet paper factory, it was time for him to stop and seriously appraise his direction instead of plunging blindly ahead (episode 6). When Amy worried about the unruliness of her hair-filled, cowl-necked dress, it would have been a good move to just cut it off and rethink her expression of the concept (episode 8). Risk-taking stretches designers and trainers in new directions, but if those directions are not productive, know when it’s time to pull out and start over.

3. Limitation is liberating
In my favorite episode of this season (#7), the crew headed to the hardware store to buy all of their materials. As usual, they had a limited budget and time in which to make purchases. This combination of constraints produced some of the most impressive fashion creations I’ve seen on the show. Jay fabricated a stunning haute couture outfit out of black plastic garbage bags and blue painters tape. Mila sliced up black and white plastic paint tray liners into an amazing dress that totally belied the humble materials. By contrast, a later design challenge that was conceptually wide open, asking for fashions evoking earth, air, fire, or earth, yielded the least interesting garments. It’s tempting to seek out ever more sophisticated design tools to deliver effective training, but it’s a good exercise to see what you can accomplish with humble materials and simple techniques.

4. No prima donnas
Episode 9 paired the remaining eight designers in teams, forcing these highly individualist design sensibilities to work collaboratively. Jay, who has displayed superstar qualities in design and craftsmanahip, bombed seriously when he had to work with Mila. The animosity between the two of them was right on the surface. Mila was able to keep cool and focused but Jay stumbled badly. He was not able to manage his emotions and concentrate on the outcomes. Not only was his design poorly conceived, it was poorly crafted—a setback for the man who had produced that brilliant garbage bag outfit. There’s more room for prima donna behavior in the fashion world than there is in the training world. In training, collaboration is common. Even for those trainers who work solo, there is always team-building with your learners. Excellent training design and delivery is underwritten by those soft skills that enable good communication and teamwork.

5. Be unruffled
I am always impressed at the calm and confidence of the designers as they watch the models walk the runway in their creations. They speak with assurance about the concept and the technical effort they had put into the fashions, even if they are about to be cast out of the competition. In training, it’s the learners who are the ultimate judges. Go before them with confidence, take critiques in stride, and take your lessons learned back to the drawing board for the next round.

Betha Gutsche

Betha Gutsche has been a virtual librarian ever since receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington Information School. Immersed in the online community of WebJunction, she has cultivated community connections through forums, live online events, and writing stories about the library community. She has delved into e-learning design, curriculum development, needs assessment, and all things connected to social learning in the online world. Betha is the editor-in-chief of the Competency Index for the Library Field. She is now the manager of Project Compass, a program working with public libraries to augment their service to communities impacted by tough times. Underneath it all, Betha is an artist and loves to raise awareness of visual literacy and introduce people to the power of image.

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Filed Under: E-Learning, Presentation Tips, Resources for Trainers Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Fighting for Attention: Engaging E-Learning Hacks

December 21, 2009 By

Designing e-learning is my creative passion. I get stoked at the prospect of authoring a course that is fun, engaging, and appealing to learners. As an erstwhile student and current professional, I’ve taken scores of self-paced e-learning courses over the years. I’m often astonished by how static and dull most of these presentations are. Granted, there are technical limitations (and in some cases, design standards) that dictate how much multimedia can be used in self-paced course modules. However, smart uses of multimedia in online courses can help capture attention, which is fundamental to facilitating the learning process. Below you’ll find some of my favorite hacks for adding pizzazz to online presentations. Be sure to adhere to the terms of service of each resource listed… and be a good librarian by respecting copyright.

Let’s Get Visual

If you are in need of fun photorealistic visuals, but you are not a Photoshop pro, check out 3dVia’s 3D Collage app. This neat Facebook application allows you to design hybrid 2D/3D images by using a photograph as a backdrop and importing 3D models into the scene. 3D Collage is fast, fun, and free. Simply upload your own 2D image into the program or snag one from Flickr, locate a 3D model from inside the app’s library, and then publish the output to your Facebook profile. Once the picture has been published, simply save a copy of it and paste it into your e-learning course. I’m currently working on a point-and-click adventure about customer experience, and I’ve used 3D Collage to develop all the in-game images.

Hit learners with a quick shot of fun and creativity by using any of these e-learning hacks.

Hit learners with a quick shot of fun and creativity by using any of these e-learning hacks.


Of course there are times when you may need to add video to your e-learning modules. Youtube is an excellent clearinghouse for finding video assets. Depending on your authoring tool, however, streaming videos can present a challenge. If you are using Adobe Captivate 4, there is an excellent Youtube widget that allows for streaming directly to your Captivate presentation. If you do not have Captivate 4, you can likely import the Youtube video as a Flash video file. To save Youtube video as FLV, simply go to KeepVid, enter the URL of the video you want snag, download the file, and then save it as an FLV. Voila! You should now be able to insert the Flash video into your presentation. This tip is useful for authoring tools like Articulate and the free online course builder, Udutu.

Another hack I commonly use is recording screencasts to demonstrate processes. Screencasts are digital recordings of computer screen output. You do not need anything expensive like the commercial version of Camtasia to record one. It’s possible to make a screencast directly from your browser by using Screencast-o-matic.com. Screencast-o-matic integrates with Youtube so that you have a place to host your screencasts for free, provided you have a Youtube account. After recording the screencast, simply upload it to YouTube from the Screencast-o-matic interface. You can link to the screencast, stream it during a course if you are using Captivate’s Youtube widget, or you can rip the FLV file using KeepVid.

It’s Not What You Say, but How You Say It

I prefer self-paced e-learning modules that have audio narration (with the option to mute in the event that the narrator is terrible!) When recording audio, course authors must be mindful of sound quality and audio level. A best practice that I recommend is to record the audio separately, using an editor like the freeware Audacity, and then optimize the audio before importing it into a course. This ensures that all slides have equal sound levels. You can also use Audacity for more creative purposes. Consider applying a voice filter to the narration of an objective slide for a change in pace. If you are using characters or agents in your e-learning, you can also apply filters to their voices for a bit of variety. Here are my three favorite custom filters for Audacity and directions for creating each.

Robot Voice Filter:
1. Record voice
2. Highlight selection
3. Go to Effect, then scroll down to Delay
4. Change the Decay amount 10
5. Change the Delay time to .009
6. Change the Number of Echoes to 30, then click OK
7. Go back to Effect, and repeat Delay four times.
8. Play your edited track

Chipmunk filter:
1. Record voice
2. Highlight selection
3. Go to Effect, then select Change Pitch
4. Modify the Percent Change to 117.50
5. Play your edited track

Walkie-Talkie Filter:
1. Record voice
2. Highlight selection
3. Go to Effect, then FFT Filter
4. Click on purple line and drag it up to the top (12db)
5. Click 10000Hz
6. Click OK
7. Click Effect, then High Pass Filter
8. Change Cutoff Frequency to 2000, then click OK
9. Repeat this process 2 times
10. Play your edited track

Have fun using these hacks, but resist the urge of inserting too many. There is no substitute to sound instructional design.

Jay Turner

Jay Turner, Training Manager at Gwinnett County Public Library in Georgia, is responsible for all aspects of learning and development for a staff of 300+ employees. He considers himself a lifelong student, and delights in sharing his passion for learning with anyone willing to listen (much to their chagrin!) He is a library lifer, who began working in libraries as a teen and has worn almost every conceivable public services hat since. Jay’s diversity of experience helps him develop and deliver solutions that are creative, practical, and effective. He is a self-proclaimed information and tech junkie, who gets his fix by playing in his “digital sandbox” with new tools and neat ideas to make learning more accessible, more flexible, and more fun across any medium. He can be reached at jayturner[at]comcast.net.

Filed Under: Asynchronous Learning, Cool Tools, E-Learning, Screencasting Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Tufte the Magnificent

April 30, 2009 By

I finally seized the opportunity to see Edward Tufte deliver his one-day workshop Presenting Data and Information. Due to his rockstar reputation, I had some overblown expectations—something more theatrical, with flashy graphics, head stands, perhaps a light show? I spent the first two hours feeling a bit let down until I realized how antipodal his message is to the marketing flash of someone like Seth Godin. Tufte’s presentation is all about delivering substantive content that is cognitively engaging—an approach that he modeled expertly, sans bells and whistles. While I had overestimated Tufte’s histrionics, he did not underestimate my (his audience’s) intelligence.

The workshop is directed more toward those in the business world who need to present data and information to address engineering problems, inform budget decisions, and the like. However, I found a couple of take-aways for trainer-facilitators.

1. The Super Graphic (or Return of the Handout)

There is a tendency (especially in online learning) to reduce data and information to a minimal amount per screen, or to stretch data sets out over a series of screens. This is driven necessarily by the compact pixel real estate of the computer monitor, but the outcome is to shrink information toward meaninglessness or to confound the viewer’s cognitive ability to make comparisons and draw conclusions by scattering the inputs and forcing super-human acts of memorizing.

Enter the SUPER GRAPHIC! This is a printed, efficiently annotated graphic, dense with data, legal size or larger, that allows the learner to scan the entirety of an information set, make comparisons from proximal visual, numerical and textual information, and derive informed, self-propelled conclusions. This kind of information presentation could/should accompany most online training. Many courses include downloadable handouts of resources as more of an addendum than an integral part of the learning. Why not design a course around a super graphic, using the online portion to direct the learner’s attention, inject probing questions, and allow interactions to demonstrate the successful intake of knowledge?

2. Give the learner time to think

Several times during the workshop, Tufte asked the audience to study a data set or super graphic in one of his books, which we all had stacked in front of us. And then he stopped talking. Attention was not focused on the stage but on the pages of our books. There were some low murmurs of people sharing observations but the room of 400+ was otherwise quiet. This went on for five minutes—an eternity of “dead air” in broadcast parlance.

This was an aha! moment for me. Not only is it okay to give learners some studying-thinking time during instruction, it empowers them to absorb, reflect, and contribute to the formation of knowledge. It allows real learning to take place. Isn’t that more important than filling up every second of audio space?

Do I recommend going to see Tufte’s presentation next time he’s in your neighborhood? Sure! Yes, you can buy all the books for approximately half the price of the workshop, but you would miss the directed tour through the material and you would miss Tufte’s modeling of effective delivery.

Betha Gutsche

Betha Gutsche has been a virtual librarian ever since receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington Information School. Immersed in the online community of WebJunction, she has cultivated community connections through forums, live online events, and writing stories about the library community. She has delved into e-learning design, curriculum development, needs assessment, and all things connected to social learning in the online world. Betha is the editor-in-chief of the Competency Index for the Library Field. She is now the manager of Project Compass, a program working with public libraries to augment their service to communities impacted by tough times. Underneath it all, Betha is an artist and loves to raise awareness of visual literacy and introduce people to the power of image.

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Filed Under: Learning Styles, Presentation Tips Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Online training: not as easy as it looks

September 4, 2008 By

(Here I go again—blogging about another WebJunction event. Can I help it if there’s some cool stuff shakin’ at WJ?)

If you’ve presented, facilitated, or produced a live, online training session or webinar, you have a sense of how many variables are involved. It’s a juggling act with virtual balls. The really successful trainers make it look easy and seamless.

WebJunction has partnered with InSync Training to offer the Synchronous Learning Expert certificate series to help you master seamless and smooth online facilitation, as well as design of online training and the opportunity to create your own capstone e-design project. The great advantage of taking this course through WebJunction is being in a cohort with other library staff with similar interests AND having the new WJ collaborative learning space to maximize your online learning experience.

As a prerequisite to the SLE courses, WJ is offering a FREE one hour introductory course, Learn How to Learn Online. There are two offerings of this course currently scheduled:

  • Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 10:00 AM Pacific/1:00 PM Eastern
  • Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 2:00 PM Pacific/5:00 PM Eastern

To enroll in either offering, visit http://tinyurl.com/5896z8.

Questions? Email courses@webjunction.org

Betha Gutsche

Betha Gutsche has been a virtual librarian ever since receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington Information School. Immersed in the online community of WebJunction, she has cultivated community connections through forums, live online events, and writing stories about the library community. She has delved into e-learning design, curriculum development, needs assessment, and all things connected to social learning in the online world. Betha is the editor-in-chief of the Competency Index for the Library Field. She is now the manager of Project Compass, a program working with public libraries to augment their service to communities impacted by tough times. Underneath it all, Betha is an artist and loves to raise awareness of visual literacy and introduce people to the power of image.

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Filed Under: E-Learning, Free Stuff, Presentation Tips, Synchronous Learning Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

The Post-it™ Way

February 25, 2008 By

post-it1
“… the widespread use of Post-it™ notes and cheat sheets reveals a lot about the way people learn and how they apply that knowledge to their jobs.”

This is from an intriguing post by Tom Kuhlman on the Rapid E-Learning Blog: What We Can Learn About Instructional Design from Post-it™ Notes. I have to admit that I recognized myself in the description of a typical e-learning designer, who has a tendency to include “more information than is necessary to learn the task.”

After reading it, I did a quick tour of my office to see how many people had post-it notes scattered around their desks. Fourteen out of sixteen desks had visible post-its or equivalent note scraps. Why is the Post-it note such a winner?

  • Its small size forces you to record the bare essence of a thought or instruction. In Kuhlman’s words, a note does not contain all you need to know, but what you need to do.
  • It can be stuck on things to easily catch your attention.
  • It can be grouped with other Post-its and rearranged as needed.
  • Only the most immediately relevant bits of information stay within view, limited by the area of your desk.

I’m not going to convert all my training materials to Post-it notes, but I could do more to apply the “what you need to do” filter to instructional design. Along the same lines, Presentation Zen tells us we need to choose between deep or wide scope. “How much can I cover today vs. how much can my students absorb today?” Why not think of a PowerPoint presentation as a series of Post-it notes? Pare each slide down to the shorthand essence of what you want to convey.

Think Post-it! This is my new mantra. I have a Post-it on my laptop to remind me.

Betha Gutsche

Betha Gutsche has been a virtual librarian ever since receiving her MLIS from the University of Washington Information School. Immersed in the online community of WebJunction, she has cultivated community connections through forums, live online events, and writing stories about the library community. She has delved into e-learning design, curriculum development, needs assessment, and all things connected to social learning in the online world. Betha is the editor-in-chief of the Competency Index for the Library Field. She is now the manager of Project Compass, a program working with public libraries to augment their service to communities impacted by tough times. Underneath it all, Betha is an artist and loves to raise awareness of visual literacy and introduce people to the power of image.

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Filed Under: Learning Styles, Presentation Tips Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Online tutorial pedagogy and design (with a few examples)

October 23, 2007 By

“The potential benefits of online tutorials are many. Instruction can be scaled, increasing the ability of library staff to reach large groups of students. The variety and styles of web-based tutorials can accommodate different learning styles by using image, audio, and text simultaneously or in combination (Hook). Tempelman-Kluit found online tutorials to be a potential way to “reach those users who cannot or will not come into the library.” Because such users are increasingly able to fulfill academic assignments using full-text resources found online, and because users are increasingly expecting to be able fulfill assignments utilizing online resources, libraries find that online tutorials make sense in terms of adapting instruction to users’ needs. Those same users often have expectations about access in a time frame that doesn’t incorporate waiting for answers, or visiting the library to ask a question during hours the reference staff is traditionally available:

“Online tutorials are a lifeline when reference assistance is unavailable or when a user is accessing library resources from off site . . . [they] allow users to learn when it is most convenient for them to do so. And because tutorials are self-teaching, they allow a patron to internalize information at his or her own pace.“ (Hook)

Additionally, online tutorials, when teaching skills related to online resources, take advantage of situated cognition. Hook writes, “knowledge should be acquired in the same context in which it will be used.” Placing users on the computer, within the browser they will use to access online resources, and where they can instantly put to use what they have learned, makes educational sense.”

The text above is the beginning of a section of an Independent Study that one of my former students, Sara Zoe Patterson, completed over the summer ’07 semester. The completion of this (including a nice bib/webliography) and several examples of how she incorporated screencasts/online tutorials into a school library/media center homepage can be found:
http://eden.rutgers.edu/%7Esarazoe/howto/

I’m sharing this for a few reasons:

  1. I like her bibliography/webliography as it list some great sources of research in this area and, to me, goes a long way to take screencasting and online tutorials from the “flashy” to the necessary.

  2.  She makes use of a technology called Jing. While we both have our reservations about this service; I think it’s one we should keep an eye on.

  3. She also makes use of Spresent, another technology that I think is worth a look.

  4. Lastly, I think her work shows nice specific uses of the technology in a school library/media center environment

Steve Garwood

Filed Under: Cool Tools, E-Learning, Screencasting Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,