eLC held a series of training on Basic Lectora, Advance Lectora and Instructional Design Workshops for MINDEF and the November 2009 workshop is another one of such workshops. Participants, including Commanders, Warrant Officers, and Specialists, from various units such as SAFTI Military Institute (SAFTI MI-CLME), Army, Singapore Air Force School (RSAF), and Officer Cadet School (OCS), formed a 20-strong group to attend the week-long intensive training at the eLC Training Center.
They started off with Basic Lectora Training, a hands-on workshop. Armed with a manual detailing step-by-step content, along with demonstrative guidance from the various trainers on-hand during the workshop, helped participants of different levels learned effectively. Besides being equipped with the basic skills, they are also able to create a comprehensive courseware by the end of the training. Thus, allowing them to experience the immediate ease of an end-user authoring tool and certainly increase the enthusiasm level for the rest of the training.
"To a certain extent, it has widened my knowledge in training/teaching tools." Commented one of the participants; Mr Ravi, from AFTC.
Once the participants gained the confidence in creating content on their own, more in-depth skills were imparted in the Advanced Lectora Training. Features such as variables, conditions and programming logic enabled the participants to be more creative and manipulate the design of their content. Other useful features and shortcut skills of the tool were also introduced in the workshop. Ultimately, it exposed our participants to the advanced capabilities that Lectora has and more that can be utilised as expertise in the tool grows.
Mr Edward from CLME said "Able to learn more useful and advanced features in Lectora [during the training]."
Next up was the Instructional Design Workshop, which was conducted over two consecutive days. Its aim is to provide the participants with the fundamentals of instructional design e.g. theories of learning, information types, etc., so that participants may consider the best approach to close their training gaps and create an effective courseware to enhance learning.
Lastly, it was time for the participants to put on their thinking caps! With our trainers´ facilitation, the participants got involved in group discussions, presenting ideas to the class, and obtained immediate feedback on their training considerations and design ideas. Enthusiasm level was on an all-time high (maybe because it was the final session as everyone was very responsive and contributed much to the various activities. And, the week-long training concluded on this high note.
"The participants came in with a wide range of background knowledge, but all of them either sharpened their lectora skills, or learnt new skills, or leveled up their instructional design knowledge after completing the workshops." said trainer, Sherly Chiech. "It was a very rewarding experience."
eLC Training Center.