UltraMashup Studio allows you to mix multiple videos, audios and images together, to create a high-impact message. The studio also has features to create and add multiple text captions, and feedback forms to the training.

First select a “base” video that depicts most of your message. Add it to the content library, whether from “My Desktop” or from the studio page itself, using the Upload button. Add this video to the timeline by using the + icon.

Preview the video by playing it in the preview pane. During this preview, identify the points in the video that you feel should be re-emphasized, and are important for the viewers to pay special attention to. Pause the preview at each such point, and decide the method of emphasizing this message.

• A text-caption provides a visual cue and association in the viewer’s mind, and can act as a bullet. Reading text and watching a video at the same time stresses the importance of a message, but only if the text captions are not over used.
• Text captions can also be used to translate a video into another language, or to repeat terms that may not be very clear in the video.
• A related image showing for a few seconds can illustrate concepts. You can use a flowchart, stock photo, a picture from a quick search on Flickr, a quick illustration that you can make in power point, visio or mspaint. This image can show on the side while the video is playing, or it can occupy the entire screen if only the voice from the video is important at this step. Using the “exclusive play mode” on the image advanced toolbar, you can even pause the video, show the image for a few seconds, and replay the video.
• Embedding audio files can also be instrumental in enhancing a training. You can quickly record your own audio using any of the accessories that are usually available with desktop operating systems… or you can use your PDA or MP3 recorder. There are also many “text-to-speech” converters (software and websites) available that convert a line of text to audio files.
• Audio can be used to translate videos into another language, clarify a term or sentence that may not be very audible in the video, alert the viewer to a specific action in the video, etc. For example, “We shall now begin the next part of this presentation…”, or “This section of the video will be followed by an evaluation…”, etc.
• You can run a search on the internet for videos related to your topic. If you find anything interesting, simply refer the URL in the UltraMashup Studio and select the specific, relevant section. You can play this in exclusive mode that would pause the base video. Or you can run it in a small window in parallel with the base video.

UltraMashup Studio provides a unique ability to add interactivity to any video based training, by allowing users to design and embed feedback forms. You can use any of the existing forms that you have created or others have shared publicly. You can create a new one from the content browser window under the Feedback Form tab.

To design a quiz, preview your video for important points in the training. If the video is long or distinctly split into various parts, you may want to embed multiple quizzes. Create questions for each important point.

Multiple choice questions with close answers and option to select more than one answer, is a good tool to really test whether the person has grasped the concept as clearly as you would like.

Single choice questions can be used for terms and items which you are ok if the viewer has grasped the high level understanding of.

Use descriptive questions to ask questions that compel learners to apply the concepts in different situations and provide a subjective assessment of how the topic relates to different scenarios.

Assign “marks” (scores) to multiple and single choice questions to evaluate each learner’s understanding and to get an overall feel of how successfully has the message been delivered to learners.

You can get paid by sponsors for including their message in your training. You can ask the sponsor to provide you image, audio and/or video of their message. Or they can provide you a URL for the image, audio or video. The advantage of the URL is that the sponsors can change the messages as they wish and this will automatically reflect in your training without the need for you to change anything. You or they could easily upload such a video into the UltraLearn content library or any media sharing site.

You can, for example, add an image saying “A message from our sponsors”, and run their message in exclusive play mode. This can be followed by another image saying “Returning to our training…”.

Another way to add advertisement is through adding text-caption messages that they have provided to you. Yet another way is if the sponsors would like your training viewers to provide feedback on their products. For example, if you are publishing a training on health related matters, a vendor of a specific medicine can gather feedback from your training viewers about their medicinal products.

You can bill your sponsors for including the message, or even based on the number of views over that message. The latter can be achieved based on the deep tracking that UltraMashup Player provides, and the reports that are based on the recorded data.

If you wish to run a daily/weekly/monthly program featuring a message from the CEO or any other important personality in your organization or industry, you can easily record these videos, upload and publish. You can assign these to target viewers in the organization or make them available publicly.

Running a live broadcast is possible by implementing a media streaming technology such as Microsoft Media Streaming Server. ..???

Governance, Risk Management and Compliance are terms used for initiatives that address longevity and business continuity issues, as well as standardization, licensing requirements, departmental performance, strategic alignment, etc.

Successful GRC initiatives depend partially on the quality of strategy, planning and execution. An important factor is widespread buy-in into these initiatives by line managers and staff in general. Such a buy-in can only be achieved by training, communicating and convincing.

Running relevant video-trainings, informative broadcasts and knowledge sharing by different people leading the GRC efforts can provide a valuable complementary asset to any organization.

Where UltraMashup Player adds great value is the aspect of knowing if the message was watched by the target viewers. Yet greater value can be added by discovering if people have understood the message effectively. Gathering general feedback on the initiative or a specific video message can provide valuable insight into the progress of the initiative and if there is a need to re-strategize or re-assess the risks.

Many standards and licensure requirements call for people to have attended specific trainings or to have given a specified number of hours towards training. UltraTracking makes it very easy to track the amount of time learners spent on a training and what was their behavior: did they skip parts of the training, did they watch it multiple times, did they watch a specific section over and over again, etc.

Embedding feedback forms during and at the end of trainings can provide quality insight into the learner’s grasp on the subject. This can also be used to certify completion of a training for compliance purposes.

Academic institutions and large enterprises with dispersed regional offices need to disseminate information and knowledge to larger distances. The internet has provided a ready infrastructure to achieve this goal. With UltraLearn.com software as a service, provides distance learning in a Low Cost of Ownership mode.

Organizations that are interested in reaching out to a wider audience of learners, can sign up to create an Organizational Learning account at UltraLearn.com . The organization gets a private area for themselves where they can administer their content, users and permissions.

Administrators in the organization personalize the account for themselves and provide a list of users they would like to register. UltraLearn.com sends out invitation emails to these users to register and complete their profiles. Users can also request association with a registered organization. The organization’s administrator gets and processes these requests. Administrators can create many user-groups… a user can belong to multiple groups. For students this can mean a group for a specific course (e.g. CS101) or student body (e.g. ACM) … for organizations this can mean departments (e.g. Sales) or designations (e.g. Managers) or special interest groups (e.g. Architecture group).

Once users are registered, authors can start uploading their content and publishing their trainings. Associating trainings to groups and users prompts the system to send out emails to these assignees.

Learning managers, teachers, trainers and organization executives can run reports to see who has watched a training/lesson and how have they fared in the evaluations.

With the onset of technology, competition in the industry and the workplace, changing demands of society from students, and the widespread availability of information to the general public… learning patterns have had to change.

Comprehensive, structured, planned courses offered by corporate universities to workers, have yielded to “on-demand” learning.

In academia, experts are challenging the traditional “classroom” style teaching where the teacher is the home of all information. Increasing emphasis is therefore being placed on collaborative learning modes.

UltraLearn.com provides a powerful set of features that can be utilized by any business to implement on-demand learning. Academic institutions can utilize UltraLearn.com to adopt the changing trends in student learning.

The UltraLearn.com Content Library is a central point where all pieces of information converge and reside. Complemented with links from external sources and sites, the Content Library can become an ever-growing repository of information, especially if the user community is allowed to add their contents to it.

Administrators can give permission to everyone in the organization (students, corporate learners) to contribute content and create video-knowledge. For example a sales-person specializes on a particular product and wishes to share his expertise with others in the organization. A group of students in a class decide to compile a video on a specific topic, as an assignment or for future students of that class.

They only thing required to enable this collective mode of knowledge sharing, is for the administrator to give authoring permissions to users!

Product manufacturer often wish to train their supply chain partners on their products. This can also be for creating a competitive edge on other manufacturers. Getting regular feedback from channel partners on products and their sales can be very instrumental in focusing or not focusing on producing or selling a specific product to a specific region.

For example, a drug-maker may find it very useful to get heads up knowledge from doctors and chemists on a specific drug in terms of its current demand and quality.

Many times, it is often very important to submit a product idea to the general market and see how they respond.

Politicians often like to gauge public response on a specific stance they have taken. The traditional way is time consuming and is based on hearsay and opinion polls run by third party agencies.

In the above scenarios and similar ones, UltraLearn.com can be an important tool to make it easy for people to present a message and gather feedback.

Upload contents, create survey forms, and publish the training… viewers would submit their responses and you can get the reports, ratings and comments.

UltraLearn.com offers a multi-tenant knowledge exchange platform to organizations. At the same time, it also showcases a public website for general users worldwide. With the unique technology and concept of UltraLearn and the excitement it has created thus far (while it is in beta), we are looking at a massive number of visitors to UltraLearn within a short amount of time after release.

This presents a unique opportunity to individuals, companies and public service organizations to spread their message in a highly effective manner while gathering tracking data and viewer feedback. With the number of viewers viewing your trainings, UltraLearn.com can become an invaluable part of your marketing or public service campaign.