email us at amarts@artifact3.com

Name: Amin Marts. No worries if you mispronounce the first name, I’ll correct you.

What I’m interested in: Simply, finding solutions for problems, excuse me, challenges.

What I bring to the table: Big picture thinking. Ruthless execution. The ability to distill complex topics into bite-sized and easy to digest contextual stories.

Turn On’s: Smart design. Simple solutions to complex problems. Billboards that make me stop, think, and take a picture to share with you. Jargon. Most of all, flowy singletrack.

Turn Off’s: Jargon. Overly complex solutions that don’t scale. Ambiguous messages. Unintelligible handwriting. Skiers who wear Starter jackets.

My Favorite Tools: iPad, Keynote, Mindmeister, DropBox, old skool whiteboards, OmniFocus, Glenn Beck.

Things I (admit) I read: HBR, Economist, anything Seth Godin writes, WSJ, on occasion the International Herald, when feeling snarky The New Yorker.

January’s Wish: To lose the twang I’ve developed from watching too much CMT during Christmas.

Best way to contact me: Through my twitter or email. I’m easy to find.

Traits of a ‘Course’

The term “e-learning” isn’t without baggage. When organizations, moreover people hear the term, the mind almost immediately moves to:

Education
Mandatory Coursework
Certification

These are but terms that distill the conversation even further but let’s move out of the weeds. E-learning is about imparting information to an audience, plain and simple. Regardless of the standards or delivery mechanisms the course must exhibit the following traits,

Reach the Audience
Accessibility
Impact-fulness
Verifiable

Reaching The Audience ::

A well designed course is crafted in such a way that entices the audience to come back for more. In a sense, it becomes a trusted portal to related ‘hard’ materials and soft points of interest. Succinctly, it’s a game of connecting the dots. The course designer’s role is to present the dots in an intriguing fashion while it’s the audience’s responsibility to connect them.

Accessible ::

Anytime, anywhere, online and offline access to content is not a luxury. The usage, impact, and pervasiveness of mobile devices to consume information will only increase and that’s how audiences eat information. Providing them with the flexibility to consume information on their own terms is a critical component of inviting the audience into the conversation (even if it’s a monologue).

Impact-fulness ::

Engaging with a mobile, multi-tasking audience is challenging. In short this a core reason why e-learning is deeper than an enhanced PowerPoint. Aligning the organization’s learning objectives with the needs of the audience adds a personal context the audience can relate to. It’s this relevance that contributes directly to an artifact’s relevance.

Verifiable ::

Did the course meet its objectives?

Usage metrics are great, however that information needs to be distilled into its essential components.

Who consumed the artifact?
Was the correct audience identified?
Did the audience share the artifact with other parties?
On what chapters, parts or sections did they spend the most and least time?

This information plays a critical role in building subsequent sustainable ‘artifacts’. These artifacts being supportive elearning course-work, dynamic whitepapers, manuals or marketing documentation.

Building an artifact without these tenets will provide little more than a shell of an idea. The objective is to create a 3-dimensional piece that engages the audience on mulitple levels, allowing them to consume the idea from perspectives they have yet to consider.

Posted by on 05.26.2009 at 5:32am   Tags: ,
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