AUTHORING INSIGHTS

Hello!

Welcome to this month's issue of "Authoring Insights".

IN THIS ISSUE:

Editor's Note - Contest Are You a Udutu Guru?
Expert's Corner - Using Web 2.0/eLearning to Improves Sales and Margins
Tips, Techniques and Ideas - Getting started or taking it up a notch here are some resources for you!
Featured Article - Why is it Free?
News and Events - Meet Udutu at BYOL eLearning 2009!
Rave Reviews - DO you like us? Spread the word!!

EDITOR'S NOTE:

"Are You a Udutu Guru"?

Udutu is giving away prizes and recognition of the best developed e-learning courses created in the myUdutu Online Authoring tool! Do you have the myUdutu skills to impress and wow our judges? Well then enter the "Are You a Udutu Guru?" Course Contest!

It is easy to participate! Simply submit a course you have created using the myUdutu Online Authoring tool. (Note: due to the sensitivity of materials contained in course we will accept samples or demos from courses).

Submit your courses by filling out the Entry Form.

We will be giving away:

A Flip Video Recorder
A 8GB iPod Nano
And a 4GB iPod Shuffle
Plus hosting packages worth $2500, $1000 and $500 and Udutu Guru T-shirts and hats for the runners up!

Winners will be announced December 15, 2009. Enter as many courses as you like before the submission deadline of December 1, 2009.

Courses will be evaluated on a variety of criteria including:

The effectiveness of the course content to transfer knowledge
The use of a variety authoring tool features
Pedagogy
Course structure and layout
How well the content is aligned with desired learning outcomes.

If you have great myUdutu course authoring skills but don’t have any non-confidential courses you can share or if you have yet to make that “knock-em dead” course then we encourage you to create a new course on any subject of your choice!
Getting Started:

It is easy! Just review the official rules, create your e-learning course and then submit it by filling out the Official Entry Form.

For more information and contest rules click here.

EXPERT'S CORNER:

Using Web 2.0/eLearning to improve Sales and Margins
Web 2.0 and eLearning are increasingly being adopted by industries and organizations who, to date, have thought it all to be inaccessible, unaffordable and/or too complicated. UDUTU attended the Marine Aftermarket Accessories Trade Show in July and presented some ideas on how Web 2.0 and eLearning could increase sales and margins for the marine industry.

Here are some screens from that presentation:
Using Web 2.0/eLearning to Improve your Sales and Margins.

If you would like to learn more about how Web 2.0 and eLearning can increase YOUR sales and margins contact us at :
info@udutu.com.

TIPS, TECHIQUES AND IDEAS:

Did you know?

Do you want to personalize your theme and jazz up your myUdutu course? Have you explored the theme builder but don't know where to start? Here is a mini course on Personalizing Your Theme.

Are you looking for other assistance with course development? Do you have questions? Check out our forum! If you can't find the answer you are looking for please send us a post. We would be happy to assist you.

FEATURED ARTICLE:

Why is it Free?

Perhaps the most common question we are asked is about our business model. Often the question is accompanied by concern about whether we can stay in business when we give away our software for free. So I’d like to address that and try to dispel the notion that we are just nuts.

In fact, if you think about it there’s a growing trend towards this sort of business model. Certainly we are all used to “free” online applications for social networking, blogging, search engines, and even sharing of video content, but most of these rely in one way or another on some form of advertising revenue. The enormous numbers of people around the world that can be reached with an online application or utility make some of these models successful and others seemingly plausible.

Online learning to date doesn’t really enjoy big enough numbers to support an advertising based model nor is that a model we intend to develop. A more relevant comparison could be made to what The Pearson International group has begun to do with the online textbooks they sell in their Prentice-Hall publishing division. They give away some online textbooks for free and then offer a variety of value added services such as the ability to order a print on demand version at a reduced price or to print sections of the book at an even lower price, to amalgamate sections from different textbooks, or to access additional materials or learning aids, etc.

Their initial response tells them that almost 70% of the users of the free online textbooks have purchased something, compared to the old method of one student purchasing a textbook then reselling it at the end of the term to another student. This approach actually yields more income for the author and the publishers and makes it easier to stay relevant and to sell additional value items.

Udutu works this way too. Presently the vast majority of our users enjoy the tools for free, but because there are so many more users than we’d have if we sold the software, the percentage who purchase additional services adds up to more revenue than we’d have made if we sold a copy of the software to every user. It also costs less in marketing expenses than competing service companies, thereby enabling us to offer unbeatable value.

What are the value added services we sell? Well, you probably know that we offer hosting and LMS services, but our biggest clients are the ones who turn to us for assistance with course development. This is an area where we can be extremely flexible and offer services that ranges from taking on the whole project, to assisting by providing only the resources that the client doesn’t have in-house. Most often those are graphic design, animation, and video capabilities, but they can range to project management, instructional design, editing, translation, sound recording, etc.

Another somewhat surprising revenue stream comes from the increasing number of organizations who decide to purchase their own myUdutu server software and bring it in-house, either to customize it or to enhance an existing system such as an LMS, Portal or Sharepoint server. A number of elearning solution providers have licensed the software to market as their own or to integrate with existing LMS systems, etc.

Our goal is to continually develop products and services that we can offer to users of our free tools as added value, and to always make the core tools free. In early 2010 we intend to release a desktop version of the myUdutu authoring tool. It won’t be free. We’ll sell it as a downloadable desktop tool. That may seem to some like a step backwards, and you might ask why anyone would purchase a tool they can use online for free?

One reason is that we have several users who cannot always get online access when they need it, and this version will allow an easy interchange between the free version when they need to collaborate, and the offline version when required. Another reason for this is that some users have expressed the concern that they could be cut off from the authoring tool by network outages at either their end or ours, so having a permanent copy acts as a safeguard. Finally it has amazed us how many organizations don’t like stuff to be free and prefer to use software they have purchased and thereby established a contractual agreement with that vendor.

It is our belief that the tools to enable the development and deployment of formal learning will eventually be as free as the ones that create informal learning (Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, etc.). That’s the only way elearning can become just “learning” and be available to everybody whether they are tied to a large organization or not. The emerging workforce will demand it and somebody had to get the ball rolling. So Udutu thought long and hard, and we decided to gamble on this new 21st century business model of “giving it away for free”. Thanks to you, our client base, so far the gamble has paid off!

NEWS AND EVENTS :

Come and Visit us at the Rapid Intake BYOL Conference in Salt Lake City, October 20-22. We will be exhibiting in the expo and Roger Mundell will be hosting a session on rapid deployment and learner tracking without an L(C)MS.

Receive a 25% discount off the current price (a savings of $200). Register and enter the coupon code BYOLEPF09. Hope to see you there!

RAVE REVIEWS:

Do you like us? Please vote!

Jane's List:

Help us move up the ranks from Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 to Top 10. To vote for us, please cast your ballot here.

What do you think of myUdutu?

"Hello, I have received the newsletter this month and it was quite a pleasant surprise. Please do keep it coming.
I am writing to tell you about how myudutu helped me. I am working for a IT consultant company and went on maternity leave last year. My boss had been hinting that I will need to create and manage online training for the organization on my return. However my personal plans changed and I needed to join my husband who was working overseas and I was planning on quitting. I didn’t want to because I had been there for 10 years and the place is like family. And then I found UDUTU. I went through the site and created some sample material. Then I wrote a proposal to my boss, describing how I could use all the features of UDUTU to create the material online, from home, overseas and still get the work done but not be a regular employee coming to work everyday. It worked. And now I am almost completing the work, and I am with my family and taking care of the baby AND doing the training material on a part time basis, all at the same time. THANK YOU.

Best Regards
Chamila"

Udutu would love to hear from you too! :

Have you created a course using myUdutu? Was the platform easy to use? How was the finished course received by others? Did the development team at Udutu assisted you in any way? Did you receive excellent customer service? Was your course produced by the Udutu professional team and what did you think of the finished product? We would like to hear from you.

Send us a Rave Review and be featured in a future Newsletter. Send to:
info@udutu.com