Elearning essentials for beginners - Articulate 360 Tutorial

- All right, so picture this. You've just been tasked with creating your first e-learning course, your first online course, and you've got to get started. Where do you even start? What if the course is boring? What if the course doesn't look good? How do you even know if the course is going to work? So, a couple things to think about. It's not have to be overwhelming. There's a lot of different processes, a lot of different timelines and development processes that you can find for really getting through e-learning. But essentially, the e-learning process is, is pretty straightforward, right? You could break it down in three or four steps. Obviously, you could expand it to more than a hundred steps, depending on the number of stakeholders, the number of the team and size of the course. But essentially, there's only a few steps you really have to think about. And what you'll also notice is that there's no one right way. So when you move from either project to project or company to company, or maybe you're consulting, you'll find that everyone's got a different process. Don't worry about that. That actually makes you better. That was one of the things I enjoyed, was realizing that there isn't just one right way. But when you're starting out, you do need a right way, or at least you need a map. So, step one, I would say probably the most important thing that you're going to see, you need to define your training goals. First, you have to figure out what are your goals for your course. So you can connect a needs assessment, you can identify the gap between current and desired performance. Then you're going to set your learning goals, your goals for the course you're aiming for, that's going to change that behavior. Now are you trying to change behavior or are you just trying to share information? So that's another concept that we like to use to break up how we present or how we think about our courses. So performance-based courses, if you're just developing a performance-based, you have goals that are trying to change how the learners do their job. Good example, you need the customer service rep to handle calls more efficiently. Well, that's something that's performance-based. An information-based version of that might be you're just trying to raise awareness, a new course on safety regulations, an annual compliance course. Really it's just information that's pushing to the learner, which is still okay. It's just you needed to find that upfront. And that's important for this reason. It helps you determine the content that you're going to use and that you're going to create. And it also helps you measure that success of the course, right? Because if you're trying to measure a performance-based change on an information course, you're probably not going to have really good results. So what you want to do is break those goals of yours into specific and measurable learning objectives that's going to guide your content creation. All right, so step two. Gather and organize your content. So this is a big part of it, right? Because you're going to look at, first, analyzing your learners. What do they already know? What motivates the learners? Who are they? The audience analysis is so crucial for tailoring your content, but you're going to want to gather as much content that you have access to. A lot of times you don't have anything for e-learning, that's totally fine. But everything you want, as much as that you can get, and you're going to leverage as many different content sources as possible. So you get the most comprehensive material. It's a lot easier to take that of material and discard material than it is to kind of incrementally try to go hunt down and find more. So you want as much of that info as you can get. You're going to talk to SMEs or subject matter experts, any star performers in your organization. They always have invaluable insights and resources. Maybe things that are maybe not formally published resources, but guaranteed they'll have something that they use to do their job if they're a top performer. So the one thing you want to forget, not forget, is you don't want to forget to consider any existing documentation or industry standards. There's a lot of things out there that you could pull externally that still apply to what you're doing internally in your organization. Now, once you've gathered all that, all that information, it's really time to start prioritizing and organizing. So this is the part I think that trips up some designers, some folks aren't as good at this part, but this is probably one of the most important parts about that gathering and organizing of content. So if you're really good at sorting, you'll probably enjoy this part. And that is, I have my content for the the need to know, and then I have my content for the nice to know. And make sure you label it and put 'em in separate folders, put 'em in separate ways, so that you keep that separate, and that's going to help keep your training focused and prevents that content overload, that's so common to e-learning. What do they need to know? What is nice to know? So the key is to keep that training lean and impactful by understanding your audience. So you need to know who your learners are. You're going to tap into diverse resources, and then you're going to organize that content strategically. Think about the course that's both effective and engaging. You're going to have content that's most meaningful, and then you have some extra. Doesn't mean that you can't send the learners and point them to those resources for that extra content, but you're not necessarily going to put that in the course. Okay, so step three. Develop and publish your training. Now, this is the big one, not the published part. Publish is pretty easy, but development can be kind of big depending on the type of course you're building, information, performance, how long it's going to be. But regardless, before you develop, you're going to want to start with scripting. So scripting, I mean by outlining it, that means your chapters and your lessons, how many chapters, modules, lessons, the individual activities, you need to start scripting that out. Some folks will use Rise. Rise works really well. I'd say for simple projects, you can use the sections as the chapter headings, and then you can use the lessons as the individual lessons. Some folks like Storyline or PowerPoint, 'cause you have the slide. Each slide is its own topic. That's a really good way to think about content. Personally, I've always liked to use a Word or Google Docs, but I like seeing that in line. I like seeing all three, 5,000 words all in a single doc. Nicely chunked and grouped with headings. Subheading, heading one and heading two is just to help chunk and group everything. Whatever you're doing, you're going to script that content. You're going to fill in the blanks using the material, the source material that you identified. But you need to start to fill in those blanks as you craft each slide or each lesson in that document. So you're going to get reviews from the legal team, maybe branding teams, maybe the content team, right? Whoever's the subject matter expert. So you're going to want to get reviews along the way. It's far better to get reviews early than it is late. So the sooner you get something in front of someone, the faster they can respond versus trying to hold onto it, which a lot of folks in our industry like to do that. So get those scripts in front of folks, it's sooner the better because that feedback is going to help determine kind of how you move forward with the course. And then you're going to start developing your media. That means gathering your images, your illustrations. You have to create something from scratch with maybe some clip art or some professional illustrations. You're going to choose and develop that visual style. Look for that consistent look in the course. So again, maybe there's templates that you can use and that makes it really easy. Or are you also recording narration? Are you going to record narration professionally, internally? How are you going to do that? So these are all the parts that come from that script. That's why that script part is just so important for the process. You start developing before you have your script finished, you just end up working a little harder. Although that's sometimes that's how it's, that's how it happens for the folks in the training team. But just consider that, that you want that script refined before you start going in there. You're going to consider things like accessibility from the beginning, right? How are you kind of determine some of the activities that you're going to build based on how accessible they'd be. And then you're just going to start assembling your course. You can use Rise, you can use Storyline, but you're going to start really just building those slides and those modules, looking for ways to enhance the course with media, different types of animations, interactivity like scenarios or practice activities. So learners can demonstrate that they're learning. You're going to look for other types of practice, maybe with assessments and quizzes. And then don't forget the feedback. Feedback, something that gets skipped a lot. Include that feedback. Don't just say, yes, no good dog, bad dog. Look for ways to say, yes, this was correct because, or this was incorrect because, or something like that that actually tells them why they made a correct or incorrect choice. Or maybe you're just going to use hints, but you want to provide those opportunities for practice. And then the feedback for correction and immediate feedback so they actually know what they're doing. But as you start to develop that course, that's going to be the big part of the timeline is, how long it takes you to assemble all of that. And then you're also developing your assessments, but circling back to make sure that they actually align with the learning objectives. And sometimes you might need a second reviewer, maybe someone on your team who can help with that. But that in the back of your mind is what you're always looking for. 'Cause it's easy as you start cut those learning objectives, they're all set up front and then you kind of just start strain as you go, right? 'Cause sometimes projects get drawn out. So have someone that can help you really identify, is this really targeted? Is are we working, you know, against those learning objectives or have we kind of introduced some extra nice to know type content? Alright, so after that, we're going to do a part of the development process is the QC or the quality control or QA, quality assurance, type process. That means you're publishing your content to a review type platform. Maybe like Review 360, or you're publishing it somewhere where you can get feedback, but it's not live for your learners. Again, just like with the scripting, the sooner you can get slides or lessons in front of people, people who, the stakeholders, people who matter, people who can, you know, approve or disapprove of the course, the better. Right, again, it's the nature of development. You want to hold onto it until it's really ready for that. The big e-learning reveal, and it doesn't usually work out like that. It's a lot better when everyone's been part, brought through that process together. So you're reviewing internally with your maybe your own team. You have some teammates who can help with that. And then maybe your external team, whether it's the legal, the compliance, whoever your stakeholder was, your client. And then you're going to pilot that course, you're going to share that course with a small audience. So you're going to run it like it's a real course, but that's going to put it in a live environment where actual learners, people who don't have a stake in the course can provide that valuable feedback. So then finally, we're going to also test for accessibility and cross device functionality. With Rise, you're not going to have to worry about that storyline. You're not going to have to worry about that, but you want to make that part of your process to have people test it on different devices. If everyone's on a desktop testing it, you may not know that the radio buttons on one of your interactions was a little too small. People were having a tough time tapping it, right? So make that part of your style guide or your QA process where you identify, okay, what devices do you have? You know, just to have that variety of devices so that you know better idea before you go live with your course. And you're going to get that feedback later or sooner. May as well get it sooner. And then finally, you're going to publish your course. Storyline arrives. It's just a single button, you publish it, score 'em, XAPI, reach 360, whatever you're publishing to, most likely an LMS so that you can upload track and obviously record how the learners perform in the course. One other thing to consider is any supplementary materials, you can link to those usually in tools like Rise and Storyline as attachments or resources. Maybe you just link out to them to your company network site, basically as a way to provide some ongoing performance support. Maybe some checklists or job aids that learners can download. Resource section. Highly recommend it because learners don't usually go back to the course when they need help, right? They're going to go for those quick hits, those quick hit resources. So that's going to be the next part that you're going to want to at least include in the course or maybe in the course description so that you can include that forum. All right, step four. Measure your training's effectiveness. Now it's time, you've finished the course, you've deployed it. Now check in on the training. How's it working? Revisit the goals that you set up in step one, right, for information-based training and performance-based. So if it's an information based training, maybe it's just completion rates. Did everyone complete it? 90% completion, is that what you're after? Performance-based, you have to dig a little deeper. Our customer service reps handling calls faster, slower, hopefully faster, right? Because that's an improvement that you'd be after. But remember, it's an iterative process in e-learning. You're gathering feedback, you're going to implement that feedback, and each course is going to get better. You can save those courses. Even if you update 'em and you make a new version of it. Make sure to save a version of it so you can kind of look back in a year or six months and say, "Ah, you know what? It is getting better. I am learning how to write better. I'm writing for e-learning, I'm using more media selectively. I'm finding ways to build engagement rather than just pushing content out to my learners." So this is just a big picture overview of the e-learning design process. Again, as you evolve your process, as you create more complicated courses, maybe as more folks come in to the mix and they're part of that process, you'll have more steps. But essentially those four steps will get you at least through that initial process. And don't worry about comparing to other development cycles that you read. Those are professional. They list almost everything, and then you just find what fits for you. Maybe there is a media develop one where you have to offload some videos, so that's an extra step, right? Maybe you have to have a separate step for media development if you're creating custom graphics or videos, right? Things like that. But creating e-learning doesn't have to be complicated. I think we, as in our industry, we tend to complicate 'em more than anything. But the idea is just start simple, iterate on what you're doing, and just realize that as you start to craft e-learning over and over, each course is going to develop. It's going to get better. You're going to boost your skills, you're going to have greater confidence. And then of course, your learners are going to have a better time as well.