Course with multiple topics for various audiences

May 26, 2011

We are working on a custom privacy course that would cover all privacy laws our company must comply with. The level of detail varies from topic to topic based on employee role (employee vs leader). We would like to consolidate them into one course so our employees don't have to take 6 different eLearning courses and could learn everything they need in one sitting. Has anyone else built a similar course and if so, how did you structure it so each population received the info they needed and how did you confirm completion of the right content?

Ex. General Privacy Course

Includes: FERPA regulations, HIPAA regulations, GLBA regulations, PCI, Consumer Credit Protection Act, etc.

12 Replies
Sayuj Ravindran

Hi Cindy,

Thanks for putting this topic here...

I am currently working on a similar project... there are about 8 or 9 different roles and our plan is to make an individual course for each role. Of course, some concepts are to be learnt by everyone so we would just use the same slides.

We are framing the contents of each course in such a manner that a participant will have to undergo only one course to understand all that they require to know....

Sayuj Ravindran

That seemed to be the best possible method for this project... the roles are already clearly defined.. Its about a 'Change Management' procedure which involves Engineers, Change Managers, Cost Calculators, Sales Coordinators etc... basically.. every user has to know the workflow (made using Articulate) followed by a demo of the application used for Change Management (made using captivate)..

One of the roles - Change Manager (CM) needs to know the workflow in detail...for all the others a simplified explanation will do. We will first create the simplified workflow...use it for all the roles except for CM... For CM, we will reuse the same course and in between go into details...

Demo handling has been quite challenging.. Let me try to put it as simple as I can... In the Change Management process, every user will receive a notification mail with a particular action as the subject... This action is being chosen as the title of the lessons for each user..  That makes things simpler for the learner...

David Anderson

HI Cindy,

One thing to do is map out your content to identify "general content" and "role-specific" content.  Your general content would follow a normal, linear path and each time you come to role-specific, you ask learners to choose their roles. See this tutorial for an example.

After the role-specific diversion, you'll branch everyone back to the main path where they'll continue until the next role-specific content comes up.

This might require writing your course in a way that groups as much general content together and ends with role-specific. This can be on a topic or single slide level.

FERPA (general): FERPA defined, FERPA importance, FERPA, challenges

FERPA (role specific, learners select their role and branch to specific slides): FERPA for Administrators | FERPA for parents | FERPA for instructors

Here's a rough map of what your slide content could look like.

Bob S

Cindy,

You've hit upon one of the two vexing questions we ran into while attempting something similar...

  1. Ensuring AccurateTesting
  2. Reporting to Regulators

In the case of #2, our specifics include being able to prove that every person in X role took X version of the course.

So while it's possible to build the kind of smart branching mentioned in this thread, we chose instead to create separate courses that simply reused the generic content modules where ever possible.

Good luck.

David Anderson

Cindy Goldizen said:

Thanks David! That's exactly the format we are thinking of using

Do you have any thoughts on how to test participants on the right level of content in the final test?


Are you considering an all-inclusive test at the end of the full course or a smaller "final" quiz at the end of each module? Would the quizzes be targeted around the general learning objectives or also include role-specific questions?

You're creating a larger course by combining the smaller courses, so it might make more sense to include the quiz reviews at the end of each topic. That's likely how you'd do it if the topics were standalone courses so it probably flows better to place each topic's quiz at the end of the topic.

Nicole Young

Dave, thank you for your responses - I have some additional questions about the quizzing issue that Cindy and I were both discussing today as we put this project together.

Can a Quizmaker quiz branch by role? Meaning, can we have an initial screen that says, "Click here if you are a leader" and "Click here if you are an employee"? Then the managers would take the manager-related quiz, and the employees would take the employee-related quiz.

Also, when selecting the publish to LMS option, Articulate will set up the SCORM files so the LMS can recognize course completion by either number of slides completed or by the completion of a quiz. I've only been able to select one quiz in the past. Through some research, I found another Dave who uses Articulate and has found a way to have multiple quizzes tracked:

Here are my questions about the above links:

  • Are you familiar with these methods?
  • Are they worth it?
  • Can they be set up to track the quizzes by role? Meaning, if a leader explores the leader branch of FERPA, could it track that the leader took the FERPA quiz for leaders?
  • How would the LMS know that the person completed the course? When all quizzes are taken?

I hope this makes sense - thanks for any input you have!

Nicole

David Anderson

Nicole Young said:

Can a Quizmaker quiz branch by role? Meaning, can we have an initial screen that says, "Click here if you are a leader" and "Click here if you are an employee"? Then the managers would take the manager-related quiz, and the employees would take the employee-related quiz.


Not really in Quizmaker. Your best option would be to create a start screen in PowerPoint and branch to one of three quizzes designed for each job role. 

Now you could do this in Quizmaker. You would create a Multiple Choice question and ask the learner to select the radio button---could be accompanied with an image or job role icon-- and Submit their choice. You're essentially asking them a question and branching to choice-specific feedback. Here's the general idea: http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/creating-customized-feedback-with-blank-slides-and-branching.aspx

Brian Batt

Hi Nicole,

Using the method from Dave Moxon's website, you would want to create a slide that contains a link to a slide that contains a Leader quiz and the other that contains the Employee quiz.  Keep in mind that each of these quizzes would need to be published as stand-alone quizzes to your LMS and then inserted as web object into your presentation.  This would ensure that the LMS would track the quiz, but the end-user would take the right quiz.

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