Articulate vs. Captivate Part 1: Comparing popular rapid eLearning development tools.

With the rapid eLearning development tools becoming prevalent in the market, course development is getting faster and some aspects are getting easier and less costly. Among the many eLearning rapid development tools on the market, Articulate Studio and Adobe Captivate have become the most popular and widely-used among our clients.

As an eLearning consulting company, we are often asked for advice on which is best, Articulate or Captivate? This question is often asked by corporate learning groups who want to choose a standard tool for use within their company or group.

I want to note here that when I refer to “Articulate” in these blog entries, I’m referring to the full Articulate Studio package. While it is possible to buy individual Articulate products (like Articulate Presenter), I don’t think this makes sense for most needs because without the full Articulate Studio, the functionality and results would be limited.

So which is better, Articulate or Captivate? Of course, there’s no clear way to answer this question except to say “it depends”. Both tools work well in different areas and for different reasons. I’ll start this series of blog entries with the things that both Articulate and Captivate have in common. In upcoming entries, I’ll look at what each tool does well and not-so-well.

I have to add that the skill and experience of the developer does still matter. These tools are often purchased with the expectation that anyone will be able to use them to create great eLearning courses. The problem is that as developers and learners have demanded more sophistication from the courses that these tools produce, the number of features and the complexity of using these tools has increased with each new version. Whichever tool you choose, there is no substitute for knowing how to use it efficiently and effectively. The more skilled and experienced you are at using these tools, the better your results will be.

Since I’m a developer, I can’t resist starting with ease-of-development. From this standpoint, both tools are relatively easy to jump into (at least at a basic level) without extensive coding knowledge or formal training. Basically, developers use the built-in templates to build courses by adding written learning content, creating interactive components, and then adding audio, and so forth. The templates take care of the user interface, the navigation, and other features so these don’t have to be built from scratch as they would if you were developing using other technologies like Adobe Flash.

Both Articulate and Captivate have a number of features in common:

• Quiz development – Both tools can develop quizzes with an assortment of question types to cover different needs and to provide variety.

• LMS connectivity features – Both tools have features that allow the developer to define the LMS connectivity settings for the published course and then to save these settings. As with anything to do with an LMS, how close these settings get you to plug-and-play connectivity with your LMS will vary, but it’s still a significant advantage compared to developing courseware in other technologies.

• Flash-based output – Both Articulate and Captivate produce Flash-based courses that play in a standard browser (of course, Adobe’s Flash Player must be installed). But even in this similarity, there is a difference to note. Captivate publishes courses in a single SWF (Flash) file, whereas Articulate publishes the course as a “package” that includes multiple SWF files in a pre-defined directory structure. There are some advantages and disadvantages to each approach and I’ll get into these when I discuss the specifics of each tool in future entries.

• Learning interactions – Both packages can produce low to moderate complexity learning interactions and both can support branching. Of course, the type of interactions, the sophistication, and the ease-of-development varies with each package.

• Skins, color schemes, and interface customizations – At a basic level, both packages allow user interface (UI) customizations. The developer can change color schemes, button labels, turn on /off certain features, and can change other UI elements. In my experience, the UI customization that users are most interested in is the ability to change color schemes to match corporate or group branding standards. Both of these packages offer enough options to keep most users happy in this regard.
  

Now we come to the point where the tools start to diverge. Articulate and Captivate work differently and each tool has advantages and disadvantages when it comes to certain features and uses. To understand which tool is a better choice, you need to consider the tools in light of you or your organization’s needs, and the types of training you develop or intend to develop. You also need to consider the developer skills you possess or, in the case of a corporate learning group, the skills you have available on your team.

In the following entries, I’ll walk through what I think are the key functions of each tool, the types of training that I think they work best for, and finally I’ll give some thoughts about developer skills, publishing and deployment concerns, and other considerations.

Articulate vs. Captivate Part 2: Exploring Articulate Studio

In the previous section, I started to explore two of today’s most popular eLearning rapid development tools—Articulate Studio and Adobe Captivate. Now I’d like to talk about each of them separately and in more detail, starting with Articulate Studio. In the process, I’ll also discuss some of the best practices that may help with your development.

Just in case you’re new to Articulate Studio, I want to mention that there are four main components: Articulate Presenter, Engage, QuizMaker, and Video Encoder. If you need info or a refresher on what each component does, have a look at Articulate’s website.

Let me start by asking you a simple question: What is Articulate Studio?

The answer I most often hear goes something like this: “Articulate converts PowerPoint to a Flash presentation.” Technically, this is a true statement and it’s one of the factors that attracts many people to Articulate in the first place—it doesn’t require much in the way of programming skills to jump on board. Although using Engage and QuizMaker requires more practice, most users can get familiar with these Articulate Studio components in a short period of time.

For those shopping for rapid eLearning development capabilities, it can seem as if all you need to develop a good course is PowerPoint content to run through Articulate and out comes eLearning. This is an especially attractive proposition for those who are tasked with “converting” instructor-led training courses to be delivered as eLearning.

The problem that I hear over and over from both eLearning developers and actual learners is that the “PowerPoint look” of Articulate courses wears thin very quickly. Something’s missing, but what?

To answer this question, I have to stray a little from talking about tools and take a quick dive into instructional design. As you probably know, the traditional use of PowerPoint is in classroom-based training, which is also called synchronous or instructor-led learning. By contrast, Articulate eLearning courses are, of course, an asynchronous (self-paced) learning experience.

You probably see where I’m headed already: even if the course contains the same content, we have to take quite different approaches once the delivery medium changes. To substitute for the richness of activities and interactions that can take place in the classroom, we need to build a new layer of richer interaction and engagement on top of the content in the PowerPoint in order to make it effective as an eLearning course. When this layer is missing, people see the course as a shallow PowerPoint presentation, not as real learning.

I know that this problem is not just an Articulate Studio problem, but because of Articulate’s direct link to PowerPoint, it seems even easier for Articulate users to fall into this trap. Remember, a PowerPoint presentation is only one ingredient. One ingredient doesn’t make a cake.

Fortunately, Articulate Studio gives plenty of options to produce a richer eLearning course that goes beyond PowerPoint. For example, Engage interactions, quiz questions, Flash movies, and even customized Flash games. In addition, Articulate allows you to deliver your content through branched scenarios, which is another effective tool to keep learners’ attention.

Articulate Studio offers a lot of eLearning potential in one package. I’m not going to do a feature-by-feature list here—you can easily get that information elsewhere. Instead, I’d like to highlight just a few of features that I think are significant and either little-known or not often used to their potential:

• Articulate’s QuizMaker tool offers a plenty of new features to enhance the learning experience. For example, you can insert a blank page to deliver more content or the background story in order to set up a scenario. Also, with the “Slide View,” you can adjust the location of your question, the choices, and the related graphics.

  You may also use the drawing tool to create simple graphics or add special treatment to the existing graphics. The new timeline feature allows you to adjust the timing on all of the elements on the page. For example, you can synchronize your choices with the audio.

• With the annotation tool in the Presenter, you can easily add professionally-designed annotation shapes and spotlight effects to your presentation. This is extremely efficient and effective when creating software demonstrations with highlighted areas.

• The source file management is easier than ever before. The “Send to Articulate Package” function packs everything you need, including the PPT deck, audio/video clips, and even the attachments, in a zip file. This makes it very convenient to hand off the project to client or to a different developer.
  

After this discussion of my favorite features, I feel I have to deliver a brief word of warning. I’ve been using Articulate for about 7 years now and the product has evolved significantly. Many people used to see Articulate as a simple tool that would enable anyone to develop eLearning. This may or may not have ever been true, but what has happened over time is that eLearning developers and instructional designers have demanded more and more sophistication. And Articulate has largely delivered, but this means that to get the most out of Articulate, you have to be more and more skilled as a developer to take advantage of the richer features. Therefore, I think it’s best to look at Articulate as a “development suite” and the results really are closely linked to the developer’s skill and the instructional designer’s understanding of how to design learning to take advantage of Articulate’s strengths.

Since most of the Articulate courses involve an audio presentation with closed caption text, it requires a different design approach in PowerPoint. Research indicates that when audio and static text are presented at the same time, audio is the most dominant and efficient channel. Therefore, it’s often a distraction if the bulleted text repeats the audio. In many cases, it’s more effective to replace bulleted text with graphical elements like photos, illustrations, and flowcharts, and animations.¹

In the previous section, we talked briefly about software training. Can I use Articulate to develop this training by itself? Again, it depends how and what you want to achieve in the training. If the training only involves demonstration, you can insert a series of screenshots on the PowerPoint slides, and then spice them up with the annotation tool in Articulate. Gerry Wasiluk posted some excellent information on this topic as comments to my first Articulate vs. Captivate blog entry.

Or, you may opt to use one of the screencasts tools, for example, the Screenr. With these tools, you can easily export your screencasts to video clips, and then insert it into your Articulate course later. However, if you want to drop in a comprehensive simulation in your course, I would say that Articulate is not your best option. If software simulation and is your goal, you should consider Captivate, which I will cover in the next entry in this series.

¹ Of course, a transcript should be available so that learning content can be accessed by those who cannot hear the narration.

Articulate vs. Captivate Part 3: Exploring Adobe Captivate

In part two of this series, I explored Articulate Studio in more detail. Now it’s time to do the same with Adobe’s Captivate.

Captivate is a comprehensive rapid eLearning development tool for creating software demonstrations, interactive simulations, and quizzes. Compared to Articulate Studio, Captivate offers a better workflow to take the developer from screen recording to the process of interaction building. Most Captivate projects follow the “see it, do it” approach. In the “see it” segment section, the learners watch a recorded demonstration. In the “do it” segment, the learners complete a series of tasks in the simulated environment — for example, adding information to a customer’s account.

Like Articulate Studio, Captivate provides the users with some essential functionality, such as customized skins so that the look and feel can be modified. It also offers text/graphic animations, audio synchronization, interactive components, and publishing options for both web and LMS delivery.

Let’s take a closer look at these features.

• Customized skins. Both Articulate and Captivate offer the flexibility to customize the “skin,” which is the user interface of the eLearning course. In Captivate, the developer has more options to choose different control bar from the gallery, and then perform further customizations with different color schemes. You can also create your very own project skin from scratch, either by developing it in Flash, or by building it in the Captivate Master Slides (available in CS5 and higher).

• Animation. Unlike Articulate, which builds the animations in PowerPoint, Captivate creates all types of animations with the “effect” function on the Flash-like timeline. In the earlier version of Captivate, the animation types were limited to fade in/out and animated text. Starting from CS5, more animation can be applied to any object, such as a caption box, a graphic, and/or a drawing. The functions also offer precise control on the timing of an animation—for example, having a box fly in from the left of the screen at exactly 14.5 seconds.

• Audio synchronization. To synchronize audio in Captivate, the best approach is to use the timeline. This might be challenging to the users who are not familiar with timeline-based applications, such as Flash or Premiere. Comparing Captivate directly to Articulate, the initial synchronization process could take longer in Captivate. However, it is a lot easier to adjust the synchronization in Captivate. For example, if you later decide you want a caption box to come in a little earlier, you can precisely adjust the timing of this object without touching anything else. Articulate requires a user to re-synchronize the whole slide, which is much more time-consuming.

• Interactions and branching. Instead of using a pre-built template such as Engage, Captivate creates its own games and interactions by using rollover captions, buttons, and slidelets. Starting from CS4, Captivate introduced variables and ActionScript. This allows the developer to create more complicated learning activities within Captivate. Of course, advanced programming skills are required to perform this kind of development, so again we see the trend of these rapid development tools becoming more like “development suites.”

• Publishing for both the Web and the LMS. Like Articulate, you can publish your Captivate project for both Web and LMS delivery. Your project, including the audio, the text, and the interactions, are compiled in one SWF file. The playback skin, animations, and widgets can be exported into separate SWF files within the delivery package. If your project contains too many slides or too much audio, the loading time will become a major issue. In this case, you may consider splitting your course into smaller modules, and then binding them with Adobe Aggregator. Another well-publicized issue is AICC compliance, but it seems that Captivate has resolved this in version 5.5.
  

To enrich the functionality of Captivate, Adobe has developed some add-on applications, such as text-to-speech, widgets, a review tool, and a quiz result analyzer and aggregator. Developers can find even more add-ons from Adobe Exchange server. Articulate has a similar online community, and encourages the developers to submit their customized interactions.

The main difference that I have observed between the two online communities is that the Adobe Exchange community tends to be more willing to share code and methods for free. Of course, these are often just the starting point, the developer then needs to finish the object. The Articulate community members, on the other hand, will often offer finished enhancements such as interactions, but because these are finished objects that took larger amounts of time to create, the members often want to charge a fee.

After comparing Articulate and Captivate side-by-side, we have seen a lot of similarities and a few significant functional differences. One of the biggest differences I can highlight is the development process and the mindset it takes to get the most from these tools. In the next section, I will conclude this Articulate vs. Captivate comparison series by discussing my views of the circumstances and uses where I think each of these tools excel.

Articulate vs. Captivate Part 4: And the winner is. . .

In the previous parts of this series, we have explored the major features of Articulate and Captivate, and discussed the strengths and limitations of each tool. Of course, there really isn’t a winner. As I wrote at the beginning, the only answer to the question “Which is better?” is “It depends.” The tools have different strengths and the best fit depends on your needs.

And for larger organizations or those with more complex or varied learning needs, the answer to the question “Which should I buy?” is often “Both.”

Here’s a summary chart that I think clearly highlights the strengths of the two tools. Of course, some of these items can’t be reduced to a simple yes-or-no answer, so in some cases this chart simply reflects my opinion.

In 2012, we will see new players joining the rapid eLearning tool game. For example, Articulate Storyline and ZebraZapps are already attracting a lot of attention. There is also the possibility of new releases of Articulate Studio, Adobe Captivate, and SmartBuilder.

One of the interesting trends that we have noticed is the rise of mobile learning, and how the rapid eLearning tools are quickly incorporating functionality that gives them the potential to create mLearning content. For example, most of the new tools can publish your project as HTML 5 or in the mp4 video format. This gives eLearning developers an easier path to get a course running on Apple mobile devices such as the iPad.

I expect to see more projects developed with these new tools in 2012 and I will be using them myself for Fredrickson’s Learning business. As always, I’m glad to share my thoughts and findings with you.

It’s 2011. Has my jetpack arrived yet?

Introduction by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing

Learning and development, like any other business, has its trends, innovations, success stories, bubbles, and busts. As we begin a new year, it’s fun and interesting to look at the landscape and take stock of the trends and technology.

And who can resist thinking about and trying to predict where these trends and technologies might take us in 2011?

Making predictions is fun, but predictions can also be informative. In trying to determine where a trend might take us, one has to look at the reasons why it might take us there. A lot can be learned from listening to the give-and-take conversation that weighs both the promised benefits and the foreseeable hurdles.

As anyone who has ever looked at futurist articles like the ones that were a mainstay of Popular Science in the last century knows, it’s notoriously difficult to correctly predict the future. In fact, it’s tough to even get close. Anyone commute to work today using a jetpack? Unfortunately, I think not. Setting aside the fact that it would have been a pretty chilly commute (presumably, the future was supposed to be warm), there just aren’t many jetpacks out there compared to what was predicted. Most of us aren’t using personal helicopters or hovercraft either. Now that we’re in the future, we just don’t fly as much as we were supposed to.

It’s good for us to remember that the future is slippery because today’s logic and limitations don’t apply to tomorrow. We also tend to forget that adopting and adapting to new things takes time even today. This fact alone seems to provide a stark (and perhaps ironic?) contrast to our 21st century expectation that most things should happen instantly. Or sooner.

Here are a few trends that some of my fellow Fredcommers and I are watching in 2011.

The iPad as a learning delivery platform

Prediction by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing

Prediction: Despite a lot of talk about the potential, adoption of the iPad as a learning delivery platform will be slow in 2011. It’s not all gloomy for learning professionals who want to harness the advantages of the tablet computer, however. Tablet competitors to the iPad will rush into the market in 2011, bringing more choices and lower cost.

Of course there’s been lots (and lots, and lots) of talk about the iPad’s potential as a slick portable delivery platform for learning. Beyond talking about it, though, I think actual enterprise learning adaptation will be very slow in 2011. No doubt, the iPad is a cool tablet computer, but as an enterprise learning platform it has many hurdles to overcome.

First, there’s the iPad’s current inability to fully utilize Flash. Apple must have reasons for this anti-Flash direction, but introducing the iPad with what I’ll charitably call a glaring omission makes it especially unattractive as a business learning platform. At the very least, existing content that uses Flash components would need to be carefully tested and parts that don’t work would need to be re-developed specifically for the iPad. Developing new learning content destined for the iPad will also have an added layer of complexity due to Apple’s Flash-unfriendly stance. All of this adds up to a hassle factor that most learning content owners and developers don’t need.

Second, there’s the cost. As of this writing, the iPad starts at $499 and rises rapidly to a stratospheric $829 for the 64 gig version with 3G WiFi. Ouch! The iPad’s pricing obviously hasn’t presented a barrier for individual consumers, but that’s not a great benchmark. In a more conservative corporate environment, a proposal to buy numerous mid-range iPads at a cost of $600 each to deliver mobile learning to, say, field salespeople will likely receive close scrutiny to say the least.

The broader trend in 2011 seems to be the emergence of tablet computing alternatives to the iPad. If a learning initiative is hung up by the cost of the iPad, how about a very capable $300 Archos 70, running the Android OS instead? This emergence of the Android tablet PC is one of the biggest trends of 2011 and CNET’s portable electronics correspondent, Donald Bell, correctly predicted a blizzard of new Android-powered tablet launches at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in January. The New York Times also has covered this Android tablet invasion.

This introduction of lower-cost iPad competitors can only be a good thing for cost-constrained learning groups eyeing the possibilities that these portable devices offer. I can see the iPad featuring in high-profile or high-ROI learning initiatives where the iPad does double duty as a reward or incentive. This approach seems to leverage the best feature of the iPad: the cool toy factor.

I also recently had a conversation with a forward-thinking learning professional who successfully justified the purchase of iPads for a learning initiative based on a combination of cost savings and environmental benefits. I took this anecdote as a sign that even in the current business climate, there will be some room for learning use of the iPad and increasingly for other tablet computers, but I think the real shift will occur as people acquire tablet computers for other business uses and learning can then just focus on developing learning products .

Social Learning

Prediction by John Wooden, Director of Usability Services

Prediction: 2011 will see the continuation of a multi-year trend toward more widespread adoption of online social learning in corporate enterprises. Organizations that have not yet implemented tools to allow for online social learning will do so, and those that have will begin to confront some of the technical, cultural, and behavioral challenges these tools pose.

Social learning is usually understood to mean social media applied to organizational learning, either independent of formal learning content (a company-wide wiki or employee knowledge-networking site, for example), or integrated into formal eLearning and instructor-led training (a course blog, wiki, or discussion forum, for example).

One reason why more enterprises will enable online social learning is the enormous popularity of social media and the expectation of many younger employees that they will be able to use social networking tools in the enterprise to ask questions, share their perspectives, and post profiles. But a more important reason for the rise of enterprise social learning is that organizations will want to increase the speed of knowledge transfer – among employees, between employees and suppliers, and between customers and employees.

The competitive advantage of rapid knowledge transfer is only going to become more important in the coming years, and enterprise social media will play a critical role in this, amplifying and extending learning beyond the classroom or eLearning course, allowing employees, suppliers, and customers to learn by connecting with each other in a wider circle than would otherwise be easily possible.

Because of this perceived business value, more organizations will begin to implement or further develop their social learning infrastructures in 2011. More organizations will also begin to confront the technical, cultural, and behavioral challenges posed by social learning. We will see a shift from the excitement – and perhaps inflated expectations – that come with initial adoption, to a problem-solving attitude.

If Step 1 in implementing a social learning infrastructure is to get the tools out there, Step 2 involves helping employees become effective social learners – and this step has been overlooked by a good number of organizations. While many people understand the basic mechanics of how to use social networking tools – because many are already using Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn – a lot of employees understand much less about using enterprise social networking tools to support business and learning objectives.

The next few years will see more Learning and Development departments realize that they need to take charge of “engagement training” to help employees – and help their organizations – better understand what social learning is and how it can work. It’s perhaps ironic that L&D departments will employ some old-fashioned training techniques to get people to understand how to effectively use the new-fashioned stuff, but this will happen. For example, employees need to learn what makes for an effective online community, a compelling blog post, a useful profile, and so on. They will need to learn when information is better shared on an internal forum or a community site than through e-mail, or posted on a wiki rather than saved to a folder on a shared drive.

Another issue that organizations will begin to confront is how to reconcile various social tools with each other, with their respective enterprise learning management systems, and with their enterprise search capability. For two interesting perspectives on this issue, see Dave Wilkins’ lengthy but interesting blog post “A Defence of the LMS (and a Case for the Future of Social Learning)“ and Dan Pontefract’s reponse, “Standalone LMS is Still Dead (rebutting & agreeing with Dave Wilkins).”

All I will venture to predict here is that this issue will heat up over the next year – fueled by LMS vendors and social software vendors – but it will be far from resolved in 2011.

Online Learner-generated Course Reviews

Prediction by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing

Prediction: 2011 will be looked back on as the year where the concept of learner-generated reviews takes hold in enterprise learning.

Almost every website where you can buy something also offers the chance to both create and read customer-generated reviews. Why can’t we have the same function for enterprise learning products as well? The ability to choose courses by reading what others think of them and then leave our own review comments would certainly provide a wealth of useful information.

Good question! I’ve heard of several forward-thinking learning professionals who are trying to do just that — offer their learners the ability to leave reviews about the courses they take that can be seen by other learners.

I think 2011 will be the point where this trend starts to go mainstream. This is a very useful and relevant technical direction for both learners and learning development professionals and I think 2011 will be looked back on as the year it really took hold for a number of reasons.

First, let’s look at this from the “consumer perspective,” i.e. from the learner’s viewpoint. Reading online reviews has become a major step in the consumer buying process. We value the opinions of people whom we perceive to be our peers and this certainly applies to the process of trying to decide which learning products are worth consuming and why. Even in the case of mandatory courses, learners want to know what to expect.

Now, looking at the other side, there’s a certain fear factor on the part of the learning professionals that learners will abuse their newfound ability to leave reviews by trashing every course they take. In reality, this fear never seems become a reality for a simple reason: in a corporate learning setting, people understand that their comments aren’t anonymous. Reviewers will keep it in-bounds because they know they’re still at work and work rules still apply. So if we get beyond the fear in 2011, we can move on to the benefits.

And there are benefits. The benefits to L&D professionals should be clear: honest feedback is useful, or at least it should be useful. In reading online reviews of all sorts, I’m inclined to think that when people think of their review as helping people who are essentially just like themselves, they tend to leave more in-depth and meaningful feedback. This, of course, is more useful to anyone who wants to use feedback to make improvements.

There is also the case of user/learner expectation to consider. As my fellow Fredcommer John Wooden often points out, people develop their expectations of technology not just from what they experience at work, but from their much broader experiences outside of work. Over time, disconnects between these experiences become especially obvious. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that you can leave user feedback and read user reviews for practically every product on the web…so why not for learning products at work?

mLearning

Prediction by Tony Tao, Instructional Designer and eLearning Developer

Prediction: mLearning will continue to move ahead in 2011. User expectations and mobile device capabilities will start to narrow the gap between mLearning and eLearning, but the gap won’t go away entirely.

We first started hearing about mLearning about eight years ago. Given the name, it was easy to assume that this trend would eventually lead to the ability to offer eLearning-style courses delivered over our phones.

The reality, so far, seems to be quite a way from that vision. It appears that the technology and other factors have so far steered the main use of mLearning toward performance support. I want to add that there’s nothing wrong with performance support materials, and offering them on a mobile device is often a very good way to increase overall job performance. It’s just that so far the content and experience continue to make mLearning and eLearning very different media that, so far, serve different purposes.

Mobile phone technology has played a big role in determining exactly how, and how quickly, mLearning grows. The problem is that mobile phones have many different operating systems and capabilities. Some phones offer touch-screen navigation, some rely on keypad navigation. Some devices support Flash, some don’t. Some devices handle web content in ways that make it display and work better on a small screen and some don’t. Beyond the actual device, the capabilities of the mobile phone networks also vary widely.

This lack of common capabilities that the learning developer can rely on makes it very difficult to develop mLearning content that goes beyond text content because it’s almost impossible to know how it will work on the vast number of devices that are in use. This problem is even more apparent to me when I visit my family and friends in China. In China, people change mobile phones very often and the technology infrastructure in China makes it easy to do so.

Of course, one of the things that make people want to change phones is that they see other phones with more features than those on their current phone. In recent years, more and more people in China have switched to smartphones, with the capability of a wireless internet connection. This is mainly because these devices are quickly becoming very affordable. This rapid change makes the feature gap between new and old phones widen very quickly, which keeps the mobile phone application designers busy because the capabilities are always changing.

But in enterprise learning this lack of common device capabilities, I think, has been a big barrier to bringing mLearning closer to eLearning. But will the gap narrow at all in 2011? I think it will.

As anyone can see, there are more and more smartphones in people’s hands these days. Here in the US, it looks to me like we are moving to a point where it will soon be difficult to buy anything but a smartphone. The web browsing experience on these smartphones is getting better and that leads me to think that it will become easier to offer richer learning content that will not be heavily impacted by the individual device. At the same time, faster 3G and even 4G networks allow the developer to building more media-rich mLearning rather than just using basic text.

As J. Hruby touches on in one of his predictions, there’s a new angle to consider in 2011: “m” isn’t just about mobile phones anymore. Options for mLearning now include tablet computers, and another thing to keep an eye on is the arrival of new eBooks that feature wireless internet browsing capabilities and color screens.

Your Turn

Comments on our predictions? Want to make your own predictions on the trends you see in learning and development? We’d love to hear your feedback.

Head over the the Fredcomm Blog where we’ve started a discussion.

Satirical, Yet Oh So True

by Molly Emmings, Account Manager
Fredrickson Communications

Here at Fredrickson, we use the social media tool Yammer to keep each other in the loop on our individual goings-on and accomplishments. We also sometimes use it to give each other a little break in the day where we can laugh. The latter happened last week when Rebecca Kuhlman, our Director of Visual Design, posted a link to an article on TheOnion.com titled Nation Shudders at Large Block of Uninterrupted Text.

“Why won’t it just tell me what it’s about?” One reader asks. “There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I’ve looked everywhere – there’s nothing here but words.” I find it funny that an article is condemned for being “nothing but words.

Another reader says, “I’ve never seen anything like it…what does it want from us?

As most of you probably know, The Onion is known for its sarcasm, drama, and ironic humor. However, in this case, the exaggerated reactions described in response to the (fictional?) poorly-written web article are funny because they’re essentially true. This article drives home several important points about writing for today’s audience.

Read more . . .

Mainstream Mobile Devices – The Smartphone’s Impact on Learning.

by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing
Fredrickson Communications

Last month, fellow Fredcomm’er Pat McGuinn sent me a link to a very interesting radio interview featuring Robert Stephens, the founder of the Geek Squad. Joyce Lasecke also mentioned this interview on the Fredcomm Blog.

I listened to the interview and the observations that Stephens makes, and my thoughts immediately turned toward the impact that smartphones and other mobile devices will have on learning and development.

As with eLearning and social learning, the use of mobile technology for learning is already here and it will continue to grow. Beyond the fact that it makes sense in certain instances, the larger force that will make mobile learning a broad reality will be user expectations. We want our day job to reflect the rest of our lives. If I can use my mobile device to learn something in my non-work life, why can’t I use it for learning on the job as well?

Among Stephen’s many observations about the rise of the mobile device, he comments on the following:

• The benefits of designing for the small screen – simplicity and usability become paramount because of the limited screen size.
• The trend toward using someone’s online preferences to predict what they will want or need in the future.
• Everything new becomes normal or mainstream at some point. Conventions around how, when, and why to use any technology evolve and eventually become normalized part of our lives.

See my entry on the Fredcomm blog for a link to the full interview on Minnesota Public Radio. Then I’d be interested in your comments on the impact that the smartphone will have on workplace learning and development.

Listen to the interview . . .

The Learning Leadership Summit 2010 – The Power of Purpose for Learning Leaders

Fredrickson Communications proudly presents the fifth-annual Learning Leadership Summit on Thursday, July 15.

This year, our featured speaker and workshop leader for the Summit will be none other than Richard Leider, the international best-selling author of The Power of Purpose. Richard will deliver a groundbreaking seminar developed exclusively for the Summit: The Power of Purpose for Learning Leaders.

The Learning Leadership Summit is an annual gathering dedicated to the needs of leadership-level learning and development professionals in the Twin Cities and surrounding area. If you’re currently hold a leadership position within a corporate or public-sector learning and development organization and you’d like more information about the Learning Leadership Summit, please get in touch.

“Why won’t it just tell me what it’s about?” One reader asks. “There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I’ve looked everywhere – there’s nothing here but words.” I find it funny that an article is condemned for being “nothing but words.”

Another reader says, “I’ve never seen anything like it…what does it want from us?”

As most of you probably know, The Onion is known for its sarcasm, drama, and ironic humor. However, in this case, the exaggerated reactions described in response to the (fictional?) poorly-written web article are funny because they’re essentially true. This article drives home several important points about writing for today’s audience.

Your attention, please

The thing that anyone writing for any online medium wants from readers is attention. And because we all live life at warp-speed, that attention is measured in seconds or milliseconds. We don’t know what to do when we encounter large blocks of text, other than ignore them or avoid them.

Because of this ultra-short attention span, when we are making a point using electronic media of any kind, we must make it concisely. It sometimes might be emphasized with a photo or a different font; if there isn’t something for readers to grab onto, they move on.

And as they move on, they may also make a mental note not to go back to that same place when they need quick, reliable information. Their trust and your credibility can be shot with just one less-than-perfect experience. So the question is: why risk that kind of reaction to your website, intranet site, or email message?

The principles are pretty simple, yet take some special skills and thought to execute. As Jakob Nielsen wrote in his bi-weekly column called Alertbox 13 years ago (yes, it’s been that long!), people don’t read on the web. They scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. So, we as web writers must remember to:

• Use bulleted lists. (See? These bullets got your attention, didn’t they?)
• Highlight key words. (Got you again.)
• Be sure we have just one idea per paragraph. Readers will miss any more than one.
• Use the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion.
• Be brief. Use just half the words you would for conventional writing.

That said, I think I’ve made my point.

The Learning Organization’s Brand

by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing
Fredrickson Communications

The recent news of the problems at Toyota started me thinking about the importance of brand image—not just for businesses, but for all types of organizations and even for individuals.
If you’d asked three months ago, few would have predicted that Toyota would (or even could) ever find themselves in a position where their carefully-crafted image for quality and reliability was in question. I mean, we’re talking about Toyota here! Things change very quickly in an age of instant and constant communication.

One of the most valuable assets a business has is its brand image—the image consumers have of the company and its product(s) in the marketplace. It’s hard to understate the value of a positive brand image. Beyond the “warm and fuzzy” aspect of being well-regarded, brand image can be a giant business enabler. Because of its image for quality, Toyota has been able to charge premium prices, sell more, and do so while offering less in the way of buyer incentives. These factors combined to make Toyota very profitable in an industry that isn’t exactly known for being profitable at all.

Brand image matters because it influences the perception of value. And who doesn’t want to be perceived as valuable? My musing about the importance of brand quickly turned to the brand of the learning organization and two questions immediately came to mind:

• If we looked at a learning organization as if it were a company, and the company’s employees and managers as the consumers, what brand image does the learning organization have?
• What influences the image and the perceptions that others have of the learning organization?

Read more . . .

Leveraging Learning in a Down Economy

A Learning Paths International (LPI) Workshop
March 11, 2010
8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Aloft Hotel, Minneapolis

There’s a one-day workshop opportunity that may be of interest to many in the Twin Cities training and development community. Steve Rosenbaum and Ira Kasdan of LPI will present Leveraging Learning in a Down Economy. This workshop will focus on using the Learning Paths Methodology to help participants:

• Turn employee development into a competitive advantage
• Get higher productivity and quality from current employees
• Implement process changes and operational improvements faster and more effectively
• Quickly get employees fully productive when roles expand or change
• Capture and transfer best practices before they are lost or leave
• Drive out time, waste, variability and cost from training
• Identify and close proficiency gaps in record time
• Use your onboarding process as a key recruiting and retention tool
• Dramatically cut the time it takes your salespeople to become fully productive in their roles
  
  Registration
  For more information and to register for the workshop, visit the Learning Paths International website.

If you’d asked three months ago, few would have predicted that Toyota would (or even could) ever find themselves in a position where their carefully-crafted image for quality and reliability was in question. I mean, we’re talking about Toyota here! Things change very quickly in an age of instant and constant communication.

One of the most valuable assets a business has is its brand image—the image consumers have of the company and its product(s) in the marketplace. It’s hard to understate the value of a positive brand image. Beyond the “warm and fuzzy” aspect of being well-regarded, brand image can be a giant business enabler. Because of its image for quality, Toyota has been able to charge premium prices, sell more, and do so while offering less in the way of buyer incentives. These factors combined to make Toyota very profitable in an industry that isn’t exactly known for being profitable at all.

Brand image matters because it influences the perception of value. And who doesn’t want to be perceived as valuable? My musing about the importance of brand quickly turned to the brand of the learning organization and two questions immediately came to mind:

• If we looked at a learning organization as if it were a company, and the company’s employees and managers as the consumers, what brand image does the learning organization have?

• What influences the image and the perceptions that others have of the learning organization?

The learning organization’s brand

Like any questions that beg feedback that could wander into the category of “painfully honest”, asking about the brand image of the learning organization can take us into potentially uncomfortable territory. But I think taking a step back and assessing the overall image is important for two reasons.

First, because the majority of the feedback that many learning groups receive is focused at the course level. In business terms, this equates to getting feedback on the performance of individual products. There’s nothing wrong with this type of feedback, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the overall perception of the learning organization. Are we really seen as we’d like to be: as problem-solvers and performance-improvers?

The danger in relying on feedback at the individual product/service level is that it doesn’t paint the whole picture. Unfortunately, it’s completely possible to meet the customer’s expectations at the basic product level, yet still cultivate a negative brand image in the process. Want an example? Been on an airplane lately?

Admittedly, the airlines have managed to deliver me from Point A to Point B every time I’ve flown, so they do, in fact, deliver a service that meets my expectations on that basic level. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? Did they get me where I paid to go? Yes. Do I have a few comments about the new baggage fee fad? Don’t get me started.

There’s no way to avoid the fact that it’s the overall experience that affects how we view an organization. It’s the same with the products or services delivered by a learning group. What do we know about the overall experience that makes up the bulk of how our brand image is perceived?

The other reason I think it’s important to consider overall brand image is because it’s relatively easy to damage and can be very difficult to fix or change. Customers don’t tend to think about our brand as much as they simply know it. Once they feel like they know something, changing their minds becomes a gradual process that requires a sustained effort over time.

Influencing the brand image

People form their image of a company’s brand by linking together perceptions and experiences to form an opinion of the organization and what it stands for. I can think of several key interaction points that could influence the learning customer’s perception of the learning group’s brand as a whole. Let’s break this down into two key categories – the products you deliver and the overall experience of your customer.

The products
The quality and appeal of the learning products – whether classroom courses, eLearning, or the less-obvious products like consulting, needs assessments, or supporting knowledge-sharing – really matters and contributes substantially to brand image. I’m know I’m not breaking any new ground with that statement, but I think we have to dig deeper than just looking at whether or not the products fulfilled the basic need.

As I already pointed out, the brand image is formed not just by meeting the need, but by how well the need was met. Was it visually appealing? Was it engaging? Was it easy to use? Was it innovative? Was the product interesting or even fun?

Many factors influence the overall perception of a brand. It’s worth mentioning that Apple didn’t invent the digital music player, nor do they have the only player on the market, but the iPod has dominated the category by combining function, ease-of-use, and appealing design. This certainly can provide food for thought for anyone creating learning products. How well we perform beyond fulfilling the basic need is going to be a major driver of our brand image.

The overall experience
As I pointed out earlier, the experience that the customer has while obtaining a product has as much (or more) impact on their perception of brand than the product itself does.

In fact, one of my favorite business books, The Experience Economy, focuses on companies where the experience with the brand makes up a substantial part of the product itself. The book gives a number of examples of how companies make brand experience part of a product. For example, it wouldn’t really be correct to say that American Girl is just a company that makes dolls. I’ve personally seen the line of parents and children in front of their flagship Chicago store, they aren’t waiting in line just to buy a doll. The Apple Store’s café-style approach to computer service or Diesel’s “denim bar” jeans stores are other great examples of the experience making up a substantial part of the brand. Has anyone ever tried to run into an IKEA just for 10 minutes to pick up a few quick items? Good luck! I wonder how many people, if asked, would classify a trip to IKEA more as entertainment than shopping?

So here’s the question: besides taking our training courses, how do our learning customers interact with the brand of our learning organization?

Let’s start with the LMS. Groan! You knew I was going to go there, didn’t you?

Fredrickson’s John Wooden has taken on this topic of the LMS user experience before. In large organizations, the LMS’s learner interface is to learners what Travelocity is to the world of travel, and what Google is to search. The LMS is the gateway to the products or services of many learning organizations. The learner’s brand experience, in many cases, starts with the LMS interface.

The LMS provides a great illustration of the importance of the overall experience when it comes to the image of learning professionals, but there are other examples. These days, how (and how well) we communicate and interact with others online has a major impact on our brand image either as individuals or organizations.

How does the learning organization’s intranet presence measure up? What tools are being deployed to support fingertip knowledge? Do the search results on the company’s intranet include courses, wikis, forums, and other products created or supported by the learning organization?

Pulling up a chair

Ultimately, like the brand of a company, the learning organization’s brand can be a key asset and enabler, not just for individual learning organizations, but for the learning profession as a whole. Everyone in the learning profession has heard discussion of how to get “a seat at the table”. We want to be – and we know we can be – valued business professionals who make a difference in our companies.

But to be seen this way, and to have the opportunity for more involvement, we need to add value and just as importantly we need to be perceived to be adding value. By thinking about and actively managing our own brand image, we need to rely less on the hope that we’ll be offered a seat. Instead, we can get much closer to pulling up our own chair when it comes to being seen as an important part of the core business.

Happy Holidays

by Lola Fredrickson, CEO
Fredrickson Communications

On behalf of the owners and all the employees of Fredrickson Communications, we wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season and a prosperous beginning to 2010.

I know most of us will remember 2009 for the very difficult economic times that we’ve all had to face. It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve managed to pull through and I hope that we all find better times ahead in 2010.

I hope everyone can take the time to be with family and friends and to enjoy the season. Happy holidays!

Lola Fredrickson

How Do We Improve the Learner Experience of LMS’s?

by John Wooden, Director of Usability Services
Fredrickson Communications

Corporate learning management systems do not appear very often in usability research literature. True, there’s been plenty of discussion of the issues that often arise during LMS implementations, especially as administrators try to integrate various types of content. (Fredrickson technical architect Monique Benson addressed these issues in an earlier article on our site.) But the end user (the learner rather than the administrator or instructor) experience of these applications has not been a high priority. This needs to change if the promise of these tools is ever to be realized. I don’t mean to suggest that vendors haven’t made improvements over the years, but more remains to be done.

As a client of ours explained in an email to me, “LMS’s are designed for learning professionals and not for mainstream learners. There’s a real need to make them more usable for the learners.” I agree completely. So what can be done about it?

Read more. . .

As a client of ours explained in an email to me, “LMS’s are designed for learning professionals and not for mainstream learners. There’s a real need to make them more usable for the learners.” I agree completely. So what can be done about it?

The issue of LMS usability is complex, and there’s no quick five-step answer to the question in this article’s title. To mention just one knotty problem, it’s long been a concern that LMS’s are only searchable from within the system itself. This means that you can’t do a general intranet search and get LMS content in your search results. There are potential ways to address this, but they are challenging.

Still, it would be an important step in the right direction if more companies using these systems routinely conducted usability tests of their LMS’s with representative learners. When I’ve had the opportunity to do testing of major LMS’s at client sites, we’ve always gained insight into how people interact with these tools and how to improve the experience of using them.

Let’s take one LMS test project as an example of what you could do and what you might learn in your own organization.

Usability test questions

We began by drafting a usability test plan and recruiting about 15 testers in the client company to represent two user groups: (1) learners and (2) those who played a role in helping learners select and register for courses. Those in the latter group were often administrative assistants, rather than LMS administrators or instructors. In our test plan, we listed 10 key questions that we wanted to answer:

1. How do testers prefer to find courses – browsing the catalog, or using the search feature?
2. When do they browse versus search?
3. What tester performance issues arise when using the catalog and when using search?
4. Are the training content categories helpful and clear?
5. Do learners use the advanced search feature? What performance and preference issues arise? For example, do they know that they need to do an advanced search to find courses by location and type?
6. Are the search categories provided in advanced search helpful and clear?
7. Can users easily begin a new advanced search?
8. Are the icons meaningful to testers?
9. Can users easily register for a course?
10. Is it clear to testers how to check their transcript and change preferences?

We then drafted task scenarios designed to help us answer these questions. What follows is a high-level summary of the key issues the test uncovered.

Browse or search?

Even though the LMS user interface (UI) was designed for browsing, most testers ended up using the search feature. The learner’s starting point in the system was a topic index page that presented about 10 topic headings — such as Business Systems & Applications, Human Resources, Project Management, and Personal Effectiveness — in a very large bold font. When the learner clicked one of these headings, they would see the first page of an often lengthy course list. They could then click the course they wanted, read the description, and proceed to register for it.

Two main problems were evident when testers tried to find a course by browsing: (1) It wasn’t always obvious which category to check for a particular course. Although some headings were clear, others were ambiguous, such as Personal Effectiveness. (2) It took too much time to review the long lists of courses in some categories – for example, Project Management had 80 courses. So although the LMS interface invited the testers to browse by presenting big, bold category headings on the first page, this activity became too time consuming and difficult and was abandoned.

What testers did instead was to use the search, though this feature was much less prominent on the page than the topic categories. Unfortunately, the testers found that Search was not the easy alternative they were hoping for, because as some of them eventually realized to their frustration, the searches were scoped by default. In other words, they were limited to searching within just one topic category at a time. This meant that if they inadvertently looked for a course in the wrong category and saw no results, they might think that the course did not exist. (In a usability test of another LMS, we found the search logic was set at “Starts with” by default, leading to disastrous results for most testers who used it. Few testers knew precisely what the course names started with – “MS Project?” Sorry, no results. The user had to enter “Microsoft Project” to find anything.)

Advanced search

The advanced search feature of the LMS being tested was more than just a supplement for savvy users — it was a critical feature. It presented a number of additional search options that many learners would be interested in. For example, they could look for a classroom course in a particular physical location (the client company is based in many cities in different countries) or find learning material in a specific format (such as eLearning, CD, book, etc.). But in most cases the testers did not even see the Advanced Search option, and if they did, they were not typically enthusiastic about using it. (Most users avoid Advanced Search on websites. Just calling something “Advanced” scares most of us away.)

Training lingo

Another problem was evident from observing and listening to the testers – the use of training lingo in field labels and menus, such as “ILT,” “Training Activity Type,” “Roster,” and so on. Most of the testers didn’t understand these terms and would sometimes make an incorrect choice because of it.

Course registration

Testers stumbled through the process of course registration and were often unsure if they had actually registered. After the trouble they experienced finding a course, this compounded their frustration. The key concerns the testers expressed were uncertainty about where they were in the registration process, how many steps they needed to complete, and whether they had successfully registered. Just as with the shopping cart and checkout experiences on retail websites, the course registration process in LMS’s requires clear signposting and lots of feedback to let learners know where they are, what they need to do next, and whether they have been successful.

What you can do

Based on this high-level summary, it’s obvious there was a lot of room for improvement in the usability of this client’s LMS – in the labeling and presentation of search and navigation options, in the search logic, in the registration process, and in terminology.

And as we recommended to our client’s LMS vendor, we believe one of the most useful features an LMS can provide is faceted search (also known as guided navigation). For users looking for learning materials, a well-implemented faceted search feature would be a huge help. (The vendor said they were working on it.)

But this leads to a key question: “Even if I do test the usability of our LMS, what can I do about the issues the test uncovers? It’s a vendor product. We don’t want to do significant customization because that will complicate future upgrades.”

If you are working with a vendor system, as opposed to an open-source product, it’s true that not all of the power is in your hands. However, here are few options to consider:

• If a problem is within your scope, as a client, to configure, then you can address it in house. This is usually the case with labels and terms that learners have trouble understanding. And terminology is often a huge part of usability.
• Invite vendor reps to observe usability testing – there is no better catalyst for change. This is preferable to simply reporting the issues to the vendor, because when vendors see real users experience real issues, the impact is much greater. It’s hard for them to try to deny or explain away this evidence. (If the vendor can’t be there in person, send them video clips.) In addition, make sure your vendor has a user forum and make your voice heard.
• With issues that you know the vendor is unlikely to address any time soon because of their complexity (such as issues pertaining to search functionality), you can at least create quick reference cards or other guidelines for instructors and learners. If nothing else, by uncovering the specific tasks or process steps that learners struggle with, you can create more targeted and helpful user assistance material.
• Finally, don’t let LMS vendors off the hook – let them know what is frustrating end users, and slowing their productivity. Tell them that the learner experience has to become more of a priority.

The Fredcomm Blog

by Lola Fredrickson, CEO
Fredrickson Communications

We have a new addition to the Fredrickson Communications website—the Fredcomm Blog.

At Fredrickson, we make sharing information and fostering connections between learning, communications, and usability professionals part of our business. We do so through our seminars, the organizations we sponsor like the Fredrickson Roundtable for Learning Leaders and Intersect, and now through our blog.

We decided a blog would be a great addition to our website because it enables us to publish more frequently and with greater ease.

Like our eZine, our blog isn’t dedicated to just one area of our business. Our Fredrickson contributors will all be weighing in with perspectives from all our practice areas. John Wooden will be there with views on usability and technology, Robin Lucas will be writing about the business of learning, and we’ll have contributions from Joyce Lasecke and other Fredcommers. We hope you’ll visit and return often.

2010: The Year Social Learning Goes Mainstream?

by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing
Fredrickson Communications

One of the most talked-about trends in corporate learning over the past few years has been social learning—using social media technologies like blogs, discussion forums, and wikis to enhance learning.

Of course, talking about something and actually doing it are always two different things. Many corporate learning groups have found resistance both on the acceptance and implementation sides of the social learning equation.

First let’s consider the acceptance of social media. Some companies have been very slow in allowing or encouraging the use of social media tools because some have branded them as “time wasters” and “only of interest to tech-addicted Gen Y’ers.”

I can’t help but feel déjà vu all over again when I hear statements like this.

Read more . . .

Seminar: Surefire Ways to Manage the Review Process for Online Learning

Part of the 2009
ASTD-TCC Regional Conference & Expo – November 12, 2009

Fredrickson’s Robin Lucas and J. Hruby will deliver a seminar about conducting more efficient and effective reviews of online content. This seminar is part of the Technology and eLearning track at the 2009 ASTD-TCC Regional Conference & Expo.
Content reviews are an important step in the development process for online learning. Even in a world of rapid development tools, most online learning courses still require one or more formal reviews. Stakeholders, partners, and others usually want a say in the course’s design and content.

The question for every learning manager and content developer is this: How do you manage reviews so that they are effective, targeted, and consume the least amount of time? This seminar is designed to answer this question with a proven process, techniques, and advice for everyone involved in online learning development.

Read More
For more advice on conducting effective online reviews, see
Robin Lucas’s article on the Fredrickson Communications website:

Seminar Date, Time, & Location
November 12, 2009
3:00 to 4:15 p.m.
RiverCentre, St. Paul, MN

Registration
For more information and to register for the 2009 ASTD-TCC Regional Conference & Expo, visit the
ASTD-TCC’s website.

Fredrickson Communications Shares in Prestigious Tekne Award

by J. Hruby, Director of Marketing
Fredrickson Communications

A project for which Fredrickson provided usability and user-centered design support has won a Tekne Award. Fredrickson’s John Wooden provided a series of usability and user-centered design classes to key members of the CareerOneStop redesign team in order to help them during the redesign process.

Read more . . .

From the Techne Awards program:
Under the guidance of Program Director Mike Ellsworth, the state of Minnesota’s Department of Employment & Economic Development and Minnesota State Colleges & Universities collaborated to redevelop CareerOneStop.org, integrating a new web content management system, a web site search engine and a new information architecture and taxonomy. CareerOneStop.org, a U.S. Department of Labor-sponsored website, offers career resources and workforce information to various audiences including job seekers, workforce counselors, employers, and economic developers. The site is now the premier source for career information, with a greater breadth of data than any other public or private site. It offers much of its information and services for integration into other web sites through Web Services. CareerOneStop.org serves more than 24 million unique visitors each year and its new look has garnered mentions by ABC News as well as financial commentator, Suze Orman.

The Star Tribune published a complete list of the 2009 Techne Award winners. Fredrickson is very proud to have contributed to this project’s success.