An Interview with Audrey Dalton from CodeBaby Part 2

Part 2 of Interview with Audrey Dalton

BSF: Can you share some examples for us as to how eLearning Designers are taking advantage of CodeBaby for their services or products?

Services:

We offer a very generous support policy for 18% of your final single license price.
Includes:
✓ 1 year of free updates including major version changes
✓ Priority phone and email support + 12 hours of application assistance on customer projects

Lots of designers take advantage of custom services through clothing changes, character changes, and even completely new characters. We have clients that ask for doctors, nurses, specific uniforms, hats, etc.

Additionally, in the very near future, we're gearing up to provide a more extensive lineup of training services, from self-service tutorials to webinars to onsite training. We currently provide this training, but we're looking forward to extending the offerings.

And at this point, since we're a very personalized organization that's still growing, we offer a very human connection when you're dealing with us. We provide unique solutions for each client.

Telstra, the largest internet provider, trains 40,000 employees on the best practices of social media engagement featuring character "Lily". They do this by integrating Lily into an interactive flash comic book.

The Medical School at McMaster University raised public awareness of asthma symptoms on behalf of the Asthma Society of Canada, in honor of World Asthma Day. They publicly launched the module “Taking Control of Your Asthma” on May 9, 2009.


ASTD Best Winner, global accounting firm, Grant Thornton, uses CodeBaby characters in multiple languages across the globe this is due to the language independent lip synching. Learners achieved an average of a 11% higher score than the national average for their most recent tax training.

The University of Illinois uses a specific mad scientist custom characters in its science eLearning modules.

I could go on, but the list is extensive.

BSF: What eLearning applications can you integrate CodeBaby into?

AD: Anything that accepts a swf, avi or flv file, for example Articulate, Captivate, PowerPoint, Lectora, Rapid Intake, and Learn.com, etc. I'm not recommending specific tools, but the point is that this works with most everything. The only restriction we have is that you are using the CodeBaby characters for internal learning uses and you're not trying to sell eLearning that includes the CodeBaby character, unless you have a specific agreement with us.


BSF: What is the learning curve for integrating CodeBaby into your current projects?

AD: Extremely fast. If you're an eLearning developer, with one or two tutorials and perhaps a webinar, you'll be able to create a two character interaction almost immediately. I'm fairly tech savvy but nowhere near the skill level of some of our eLearning partners, and I can now create custom animated one character interaction, and I learned that in one day. We have one client, Wendy Phillips with Big Pond in Australia, that learned the program and developed an award-winning flash comic book eLearning program on employee orientation all in a matter of two weeks - from start to finish.

BSF: Could you walk us briefly through the steps to develop an eLearning solution using the CodeBay Production Studio?

AD: Yes, first things first. After you decide to use characters to simulate role plays or specific people, define that character's persona. Run a contest to name and describe your persona and get people familiar with your chosen character. Second, write dialogue script and scene instructions. How will the character walk in? What will they say? What's the location/background? You're creating a rich story before opening Studio. This way, you have outlined your props and backgrounds, character personalities and scene instructions.

Then for a very straightforward interaction, you drag and drop selected character. Drag and drop selected background (there's another step if you use your own or when exporting, it can be a transparent export which then will overlay any background in your learning output).
Import audio and allow the default for auto animation and lip syncing. Hit play and adjust gestures as necessary by dropping and dragging any number of the 400 animations. Export as flv or swf, and you're done with your first animation! As time goes on, you'll learn to use the camera changes, tweening and multiple scene and stage development.


BSF: What services does CodeBaby offer for those professionals who may be interestested in out sourcing the development?

AD: If the client provides the storyboard, we'll develop the animation. They provide their own audio or we'll source professional voice talent for them. We also create props, minor to major modifications such as glasses, aging, new clothes all the way to face wraps which means creating a character likeness of a real person, and we also develop new characters based on the client's developed persona.


BSF: What features are current users of CodeBay Production Studio asking for at this point in time?

These features will eventually be available in upcoming new versions. The most asked for new features are more character with different body sizes and additional gestures that allow for more character movement. I won't go into detail on these yet, but with our new releases, we will be satisfying these requests.


BSF: In closing- please summarize for us why eLearning Specialists should consider using CodeBaby for their projects?

AD: If you want to create amazing learning that truly helps learners retain information while enjoying the development process as you create engaging scenes and interactions, CodeBaby is the solution. Contact us for a trial to experience this for yourself!

An Interview with Audrey Dalton from CodeBaby Part 1

I had the pleasure of meeting Audrey Dalton, Product Marketing Director at CodeBaby during the DevLearn 09 Conference and had a chance to sit down and talk to her about her role and the CodeBaby platform for eLearning.


BSF: Hello Audrey, can you share with us your position and tell us a little background information about CodeBaby and the company?

AD: Responsible for all product marketing functions for the eLearning product line: Product Release Planning and Marketing, Demand generation, MarCom, Tradeshow & Event Planning, Online Community Relations, Curriculum Design, and Corporate Marketing Activities. Essentially, I'm the jack of all trades for the eLearning product marketing line and additionally have oversight for the education sector. Since we're a growing company, I'm taking on a multitude of roles at this time. Most importantly, I enjoy working with clients, our eLearning developer partners and reseller in Australia, Symmetree, to showcase and promote new uses and ideas for using CodeBaby characters in eLearning programs. In this role, I leverage my prior eLearning project management experience to facilitate their success stories and understand the customer perspective when marketing and gathering research for future product releases.

CodeBaby's history is quite interesting. CodeBaby began as a incubation project within Bioware, a Canadian company based in Edmonton, Alberta. In creating memorable 3D characters for their story-driven games, Bioware founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk noticed that those interactive characters created a powerful digital engagement and emotional response with players. In 2001, CodeBaby officially spun off as a completely separate entity. Our web product consists of digital character-driven "Conversations" that are directed at engaging customers, while driving specific objectives such as lead capture, click-to-buy, up/cross-sell, and customer self service. This product is sold on a SaaS / monthly subscription model, and integrates with a customer's site via a single line of code.

The product that I'm responsible for is the eLearning product - CodeBaby Production Studio.
CodeBaby makes the creation of animated, 3D digital characters accessible to a variety of companies who want to make their training content come to life. CodeBaby Production Studio is a timeline-based, drag-and-drop production environment that puts the capabilities of a highly skilled, 3D artist in the hands of a eLearning/training content developer. Studio comes with a library of 20+ standard characters, and 400+ animation sequences. Lip synch to recorded audio files is driven programmatically by the software, condensing hundreds of hours of animation work into only about an hour per minute of finished content.


BSF: With the shift to eLearning happening in all kinds of markets how does CodeBaby fit into this move to online learning?

AD: Good question, CodeBaby Production Studio is a natural fit for online learning, informal learning, and easily exports into any cloud-based product. Since Production Studio exports your CodeBaby scenes as swf, flv and avi files, these can be used in virtually any learning delivery. If you want the CodeBaby character to introduce classroom instruction delivered from your cloud-based presentation tool, that's easily done. If you want to create up to the minute communication announcements for your company or school, just export the CodeBaby as a swf and export to your learning portal. If you want to create more complex scenario based scenes and export into a traditional rapid eLearning or authoring tool, it's perfectly suited. As long as the medium has to do with learning, and it's for internal use, CodeBaby interactive characters are a highly effective addition to any learning program.

BSF: What do you see are the benefits of developers using CodeBaby for their eLearning projects?

AD: Are you speaking from a technical aspect or instructional design aspect? If from a technical aspect, Studio is very rich in development possibilities. For a creative, experienced developer, they'll truly enjoy playing with the 400 animations and 24 stock characters, ability to create multiple scenes and stages and the capability of producing bulk renders and exports. We have developer options to create new outfits for the characters if they use graphics programs like Maya or 3ds Max. Just the other day, one of our eLearning partners said that they've explored the program so much and have extensively studied and utilized the gestures and animations that they are now incorporating neurolinguistic programming theory into the movements in order to enhance the learning transmission. Additionally, he said that he's really looking forward to the additional animations that will available in upcoming versions.

From an instructional design perspective, we have found from our own research, from customer experience, and from Byron Reeves at Stanford from his paper the "The Benefits of Interactive Online Characters", that character interfaces bring social intelligence to online interactions. Social intelligence determines engagement, attention in learning, and persistence in relationships. Compelling social interactions are as important in online transactions as they are to teachers in real life. Bottom line, socially intelligent, interactive characters foster learning and adoption of new information and behavioral skills. We consistently hear from customers that performance improved, attention increased and they saved money when comparing online instruction with CodeBaby characters to instructor-led training or using video production. Essentially, there are no limits with how CodeBaby characters are used: as peer instructors, experts, multiple character role plays in which students learn in a non-threatening environment, in immersive simulations, sales training, customer service training, organizational change, employee orientation, best practices, compliance training, etc.


To be continued.....

From Adobe Captivate 4 to YouTube

In a recent post I talked about how I used CodeBaby Production Studio with an Adobe Captivate 4 project to create some very unique and engaging content. In my effort to share the project I decided to upload it to YouTube so that others may find value in looking at what I did. One of the new features in Adobe Captivate 4 is the ability to export your projects and save them in a .AVI format which can then be uploaded to YouTube. In previous versions of Adobe Captivate you would have to use a third party application to convert your SWF project to .AVI. But now with the new enhancements in Adobe Captivate 4 all of the conversion can be done right from within the application. Here is an Adobe Captivate 4 video to show you how to export your video in an .AVI format. You can view the resulting video on YouTube by clicking here.

Screencasting for the Masses with Camtasia Studio 6 & Adobe Captivate 4.

Yesterday I had the privilege to present at 21st Century Learning Conference which was sponsored at by the Center for Innovative Education on the campus of Kean University. My first session was titled: Screencasting for the Masses with Camtasia Studio 6 & Adobe Captivate 4. It was very exciting to see the interest in this offering as the room quickly filled to capacity. Some of the educators had shared that the presentation was very timely, since they had just ordered the software to experiment with, in their districts. One of the overriding questions about the screencasting technology was just how long would it take to produce a video tutorial? Even though I shared with them that these tools were intended for the development of rapid eLearning material- it was going to take them some time to learn how to use the tools before they felt comfortable being able to create these assets quickly. Like anything else, with a little practice their skills would certainly improve and allow them to create materials that much faster.

I think that everyone who attended my presentation was floored with the quality of the finished videos that could be produced using Camtasia Studio 6 and Adobe Captivate 4. Many of the teacher present saw the value of creating these materials and more and more schools are now requiring their teachers to maintain a website and post materials. What better way to show students how to do something then with a video demonstration that can be streamed over the web.

During the course of the presentation I shared with my audience some tips and tricks and how to master the skills to do screencasting. I explained how it was important it was to script the video from the onset before having the urge to record. Once you start to record it is important to think about the audio and to keep your productions somewhere between two to four minutes in length. The post production work is where the fun begins and depending how compulsive you are- it can take a lot of time to edit your video. After the video is complete you will need to upload it to your server or host it for others to view. It is important to decide beforehand how you intend to use the video and where it will be hosted and what types of devices you intend to access the video. There are certainly lots of things to think about when using this technology but the outcome is certainly worth the investment of time.

If you are interested in learning how to use Camtasia Studio 6 or Adobe Captivate 4- please feel free to contact me for training and workshops. I can provide you with one on one coaching and training right over the web at your convenience. To get in touch with me click here.

Here are two examples that I used during my presentation showing off the two programs. Click on the image to view the video.

The following video was created with Camtasia Studio 6

The following video was created using Adobe Captivate 4 and CodeBaby

Working with CodeBaby Production Studio & Adobe Captivate 4

One of the really exciting features of DevLearn 09 Conference was the Marketplace Expo. Walking around the Marketplace Expo I was introduced to a number of new eLearning tools that really caught my eye. On the top of the list was the offering from CodeBaby, a unique production application with a set of life-like male and female avatars that one can lip synch with narration. When I first saw how the characters were able to lip synch with the audio file I was really floored. While many of us have encountered various avatars while we surf the web, the CodeBay characters have a natural appeal and are very engaging, with a human like quality that is hard to resist. I think it was this natural appeal that really got me hooked and I spent some time talking with the wonderful CodeBaby staff that were present at the conference to learn how I could integrate their characters into my Adobe Captivate 4 projects. I was excited to learn that once I had animated my CodeBaby character I could export it as a FLV or SWF and bring it right into Adobe Captivate 4.

By that time I was through talking to the CodeBaby staff my head was swirling. Once I got back to New Jersey I had emailed Audrey Dalton, eLearning Product Marketing Specialist at CodeBaby and she was able to set me up for a Trial of CodeBaby Prooduction Studio. The staff at CodeBaby were really fantastic and they set up a webinar to walk me through the steps to create my first CodeBaby project. A big thanks goes out to Jeff and Jim for coordinating this webinar. As sophisticated as the CodeBay software is I found it very intuitive to use and was up and running in no time. Using a copy of Audacity I was able to record my voice and import it directly into the CodeBaby Production Studio. Upon import, one of the really cool features is the auto animate feature which synchs the lips of the character from the wav. file. To see it in action is not to believe- it is a little spooky. Not only does CodeBaby synch your lips but the way the body, eyes and the figure moves so gracefully there are times you forget it is a avatar. Once I saw what I was able to do, I thought about all of the ways I could use CodeBay to make my demonstrations and simulations that much more engaging. Now imagine having my CodeBaby avatar as a guide on the side moving along the demonstration or assisting me during a simulation. With that in mind I got to work and am in the process of integrating a couple of scenarios with CodeBaby into my Adobe Captivate projects. Using short 5 to 15 seconds snippets my CodeBaby character can guide you through the process on screen, keeping my students engaged and supported.

In the example that follows I am introducing my students to Write:Outloud, a talking word processor and am having them work through a simulation of what it is like to use the Spell Checker. You will see how I was able to integrate the CodeBaby character (with my voice) into the simulation video which adds great depth and support for a user who maybe unfamiliar with the software application. The CodeBaby character can guide the student on screen and help them to learn how to use the software. I would be interested in your comments and how you think CodeBaby could be integrated into your projects. Here is the link to view the Write:Outloud Video.