Get Hands-On Instructional Design Training at E-Learn: Interview with David Mahaley about Course Authoring Tools
The upcoming E-Learn conference will be held from November 4-7 in New Orleans. The program contains four workshops as part of the conference. Workshops are a great way to explore a concept, technology or practice in depth, network with other participants and receive a mix of scholarly overview and practical advice. To highlight why you should attend a workshop or consider organizing one yourself, AACE Review features selected presenters in a series of interviews.
David Mahaley is hosting a workshop on Adobe Captivate. His workshop will take place on Monday, November 4 from 1:00PM-4:30PM. We talked to him about reasons for attending E-Learn and the concept of their workshop entitled ‘Micro-Learning Professional Development using Adobe Captivate 2019 for Beginners.’ In the interview for AACE Review, David Mahaley talks about why he is part of the AACE conference community, what participants will learn in his workshop, and what methods he is planning on using.
Is this your first time at E-Learn? What are you most looking forward to at this conference?
I have attended and presented before at AACE, although it has been a few years. I am looking forward to the opportunity to interact and help fellow educators with the Adobe Captivate platform to create interactive professional and learning activities. I am excited to take part in many other sessions while attending the conference to continue my own professional growth in technology and learning.
Why did you decide to submit a workshop proposal?
About 5 years ago I assumed some additional responsibilities which included creating and delivering professional development. I began using Adobe Captivate as a tool to prepare and deliver these experiences. In 2018, I became a certified Adobe Captivate Specialist which helped solidify my skills with the application. As I worked to create professional development for educators and others, I felt it was important to start sharing the capabilities of the platform with others. I believe the E-Learn event would offer a great opportunity to offer an entry level experience with Adobe Captivate and share my enthusiasm for creating learning experiences with others from the education technology field.
What key insights do you hope your participants will take away from your workshop?
I hope that the participants come away with a new level of confidence about learning an authoring tool like Captivate and not be intimidated by the thought of creating your own learning experiences. They will also come away with some great “starters” to allow them to easily plug their content into a ready made micro-learning format. The participants will also understand ways to make their learning project available to other users once completed.
What methods will you use during the workshop?
The workshop will contain periods of show and do format where I demonstrate and the participants practice. Through the show portion they will learn about the basic tools available in Captivate and how to put them to use in their project. There will also be demonstration sessions of sample projects to give them an idea of the types of learning experiences they can create. Finally there will be some work time, using their own ideas and content, to create a quick micro-learning sample activity that will help build their capacity with the tools in the software. Hopefully we will have a few minutes to allow participants to share their creations before we break at the end.
Who should be coming to your workshop and why?
I would encourage anyone who is responsible for developing and overseeing professional development for employees in their institution. It will be a great experience to sample out Adobe Captivate and see how it could transform some traditional approaches to training into a more interactive and rewarding experience. I would also encourage any educator to attend who wants to make learning experiences a more powerful experience for their learners. This is where I started with Adobe Captivate and realized my students were far more engaged in the content. This idea spread to the adults in the organization through training and professional development.
