Frequently Asked Questions

Most frequently asked questions and answers
Creating courses with Total Recall

Total Recall can work with any type of video content – if that content has been produced with Total Recall in mind. 

For existing video content, we can support you to assess its suitability for a Total Recall course. 

Some video content naturally lends itself to a Total Recall application e.g. shorter videos or 3 minutes or less, summary videos, training videos, process and procedure videos. 

Drama scenarios can also be used with Total Recall. It is trickier because a lot of the learning in a drama scenario is in the sub-text as well as the dialogue. However, by using summary video content that encapsulates the key learning points from a drama, you can have the best of both worlds and engage learners with compelling drama content followed by the interactive Total Recall experience.

Yes. The AI tool behind Total Recall is Wildfire. Wildfire has been designed to work with transcripts from any content – Word documents, PDFs, audio recordings.

It really does depend on the type of video content and how it has been designed, but generally we would recommend no more than 3 minutes.

Chunking is a technique we use with Total Recall which involves breaking a video down into bite-sized chunks and serving each chunk separately with its own set of questions. 

Chunking is an established principle in learning. It makes the learning experience more manageable and avoids cognitive overload.

If submitting existing video content for Total Recall, you can submit an MP4 or a URL link to a video.

If we are creating bespoke video content for your Total Recall course, the first stage is to design and produce the content. The stages of video production are:

Pre-production: When we design your course and your videos, and make logisitical arrangements for the video shoot.

Production: When we film the video content.

Post-production: When we edit and refine the content.

Then the next part of the process is to run the videos through the AI tool which will semantically read and interpret the transcript and the create the interactive learning element.

The key dependency in terms of how long it takes is the video content; whether you would want to create a course from exiting content or new content, and what that new content consists of if we are starting from scratch. 

The short answer is anything between one week and 12 weeks. 

We can provide draft project schedules once we have discussed your specific brief.

In Total Recall you have control over the look and feel. The first step is normally your company logo, we can actually go directly and just get a URL and sample the pallet colours without going through your marketing department. 

Step two is to make things look as you would wish (e.g. rounded or square buttons, vertical or horizontal– it’s easy, because there is a presentation layer in front of the content. We’ll brand it for you and then if you want any improvements, you can add to it. 

Functionality of Total Recall

Total Recall, based on cognitive science, promotes effortful learning. The last 15 years of cognitive science show that that clickthrough learning (e.g. multiple-choice questions) isn’t effective; people need to use cognitive effort to retrieve and recall things. 

By asking open questions, Total Recall pushes learners to retrieve information from their short-term memory. This act of recalling information is a reinforcement  proven to be more efficient than the original teaching event, for transferring information into longterm memory. 

Total Recall also uses several other aspects of cognitive science such as, chunking, personalisation and delayed feedback.  

Total Recall will produce varied answers, but they’re very focused on open input.  In one type of question, the AI identifies key words or numbers from the learning, and builds a sophisticated ‘fill in the blank’. Another form of question is based on open input, where you can type in full sentences and the AI will interpret your answer. The system uses semantic analysis and is forgiving with synonyms and misspelling, such as the difference between British and American spellings and answers such as ‘2’ and ‘two’ or ‘pair’ and ‘dual’.  

 This process is unusual in eLearning, but absolutely applicable to effortful learning as you produce the answer without any help, pushing the information into long term memory.  

Total Recall can take a piece text and ask, “What are the important learning points?” 

The AI will identify, intelligently, the really important things for the learners to know. It will then remove them from the text so that they have to replace them, correctly, to complete the learning module. 

The semantic variance is also interpreted by the AI (whether they put 4 or F.O.U.R. and it will know if they got it right or wrong. 

If the learner misspells an answer in Total Recall, we can vary the forgiveness of the spelling (e.g: one ‘L’ or two?). However, you might want a medicine or scientific term to have only the correct spelling. You might want synonyms accepted: for ‘inspect’ you might also accept ‘observe’ or ‘examine’. 

American vs. British spelling (Z versus S) is a matter of choice: you can have the flexibility of choosing what’s right in terms of learning.  

Total Recall is based on delayed feedback. According to cognitive science, immediate feedback can be a damaging thing, in learning, because there’s no time to consolidate the answer. 

We ask lots of questions, then give you feedback at the end. The A.I helps identify what you struggled with. It recaps on those things you half-knew and didn’t know, so you end up with 100 percent competence on any short piece of learning. 

The AI also interprets OPEN INPUT: it will highlight the elements you got right, prompting you to complete your answer – making it more substantive, until you get it right. 

The feedback is more than ‘Let’s give them the right answer if they get it wrong’ – that’s so common in eLearning and multiple-choice questions – where the answers are given to you! 

Yes, we use SCORM 2014 to send data to your LMS.

Courses questions can be edited. Whether you spot a mistake, or if a particular detail changes over time, we can amend the copy in the course. 

Video can also be re-edited, within the realms of what is practically possible. E.g. you can cut video out, or add new content in, or amend a graphic. 

The process of changing a course will have time and therefore cost implications that can be discussed on a case-by-case basis. 

Total Recall works on mobiles, tablets and desktop. Built to be mobile friendly, the system is fully responsive across devices. This has been important in work areas where mobile devices are dominant, such as manufacturing.  

People are familiar with mobile devices which makes Total Recall user friendly.  

Total Recall works in 3D and VR because it can use voice activation. By speaking your answers, you can complete questions in a VR scenario without using your hands to type. This gives a big advantage in Virtual reality and 3D programmes.  

With Total Recall, we can use text-to-speech to turn any text into human speech; we don’t need to record in a studio to create audio.  

One great advantage of this is that you can introduce a course (for exampleusing voice, and you can change it at any time in the future: create a new introduction, or add something that was missing by simply changing the text file so that it reads it out differently next time.  

Using AI allows us to have cheap and brilliant audio facility, within the courses. 

General Questions

Once the video content is produced, we can create a course within a couple of days.

For more detailed about timings for your specific brief, contact us.

Total Recall is generally less expensive than traditional e-learning because of the speed and efficiency of production. 

The AI automates the production of the course content which saves time and therefore budget. 

Total recall uses a light touch of gamification. Full blown gamification can be harmful to learning, as you pay more attention to the game than the information. However, Total Recall uses key features from games to incentivise and inform you. On feedback you’re marked with a red-amber-green system to keep track of what you got wrong, what you got half-right, and what you got correct, taking you back through the reds and the ambers until you achieve 100% competence. 

Total Recall has another tool called Curation. We use AI to help you find good resources (video, reading material, etc.) to embed into the learning; you can add your own specific text and information allowing the learner a more structured learning experience. 

Total Recall is easy to adopt because it is quick and easy to produce. It is nimble and can sit within your current learning ecosystem (using SCORM) or you can stream it from the Wildfire (AI tool) servers. The user-experience is clear and simple and because of the combination of video and an active learning experience, it is engaging.

Yes. SCORM 2014.

Total Recall is totally SCORM compliant, in fact it can add to it.

We can package any Total Recall module in a SCORM wrapper to put on your LMS; because we have all the assets wrapped in the SCORM envelope. We have embedded a tool that allows you to harvest and store much more data than usual, inside the SCORM wrapper. You’ll be able to know who did the course, their average times, how long they spent watching the videos, what questions they got right and wrong, whether they used external links, and much more. If run from our own server, we can supply you with the harvested data.

You can create a Total Recall course with existing video content or with new video content. If you want to use existing video content we will review the assets with you to ensure we maximise the usefulness of the content in a Total Recall context. This will include considering what your learners ‘need to know’ and where we can use techniques like chunking to boost the effectiveness of the course.

Total Recall uses Afor three reasons: – 

One: Time. It saves a huge amount of time: send us a video and we can produce the extra eLearning through Total Recall within the same day. 

Two: Cost. Because it’s so quick, it’s around 10 percent of the cost of standard eLearning in the marketplace  that’s a 90% saving that could be spent on other eLearning? 

Three: Retention. The AI promotes effortful learning, enabling much higher levels of retention, and therefore, recall. 

It’s fast; it’s cheap; and you remember – but remembering is most important. 

We support most languages that are within the UTF-8 character encoding. This contains symbols from Latin, Arabic, Greek, and Asian languages. So the system works with with any of these languages.

However the challenge is testing – we would need to work closely with your teams in different localities to test and proof the different language versions.

In conclusion, we support mainly Roman / Latin languages. There is a cost implication to translation, sub-titling and course creation in multiple languages; we would  consult to understand your requirements and work out the most effective and efficient production process.
“The whole process with you was thoroughly enjoyable. Your attention to direction was sublime and I felt reassured and in good hands at all times.”
Peter Brown
Bayer

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