\n

Something all training departments should do but often don’t is review their existing courses regularly to ensure they’re up-to-date and functioning as expected. 

\n

There are a few common reasons this critical task is often overlooked:

\n

\n
1. Launching a course is considered the last step in the process—reviewing and updating isn’t on anyone’s radar.
\n
2. Everyone’s focused on creating new courses.
\n
3. There are so many existing courses that maintaining them all seems daunting.
\n

\n

If you’re in the same boat, now is the time to make a change. After all, if your training courses are outdated or broken, it’s a waste of time for employees to take them. When you think about it like that, it really highlights the importance of making time for course maintenance.

\n

To make the process feel more manageable, I’ve broken it down into four simple steps—and I’ve even included some tips for improving your courses while you’re at it. Let’s take a look!

\n

1. Make a List

\n

Start by compiling a list of your existing courses. Use Google Sheets, an Excel spreadsheet, or any other app you’re comfortable with to get organized. Here are some things you might want to include:  

\n

\n
• Course title
\n
• Date published
\n
• Authoring app
\n
• Published course URL
\n
• Source file location
\n
• Actions needed (e.g., republish, refresh, remove, or redesign—we’ll talk more about these options in the next section) 
\n
• Notes
\n
• Priority
\n

\n

Here’s an example of what that could look like:

\n

\n

Like how I’ve set this up? Download my template to help you get started. 

\n

2. Review Your Courses

\n

Once you’ve made a list, set aside some time to do a thorough review of your courses. Ensure your interactions, animations, and other course assets work as intended, that the content is still relevant, and the graphics are up-to-date. For a complete list of things to watch out for, use this handy resource: E-Learning Maintenance Checklist.

\n

If you come across some things that are broken or out-of-date, decide whether it makes most sense to update the existing course or to rebuild it from scratch. If the choice isn’t immediately obvious, head over to this article to help make the call: Update or Rebuild: How To Know if an Old E-Learning Course Can Be Revived.

\n

Then, update the spreadsheet you made in the previous section to include information about next steps. 

\n

3. Make a Plan

\n

Before you start updating, sit down and make a plan. Look at your list and decide the order in which you should update the courses. Prioritize business-critical courses such as new employee onboarding, software training used by your frontliners, or training that’s urgently needed to support business goals. 

\n

Think about whether it’s something you can do on your own or if you’ll need to enlist the help of a coworker or a freelancer (via our job board, for example). 

\n

Decide whether to update the courses all at once or little by little. Put together a schedule for updates to keep the project on track and set up checkpoints (using calendar reminders, for example) to ensure it’s progressing. 

\n

4. Take Action

\n

Once you’ve made a plan, you can start converting your content. Here’s how to update your courses based on your decision to republish, refresh, remove, or redesign.

\n

Republish

\n

Let’s say the course content and visuals are up-to-date but it’s not working anymore because it includes Flash content that’s no longer supported by most browsers. If you created the course in Storyline 1, Storyline 2, Studio ’09, or Studio ’13, just upgrade your course to Articulate 360 (which includes both Storyline 360 and Studio 360) or Storyline 3. Both options can do the hard work of converting older content for you, so in just minutes your legacy courses will work on modern browsers. We’ve made it super easy to upgrade. Just follow the steps outlined here:

\n

\n
• Upgrading Courses to Storyline 360
\n
• Upgrading Courses to Storyline 3
\n
• Upgrading Courses to Presenter 360
\n
• Upgrading Quizzes to Quizmaker 360
\n
• Upgrading Interactions to Engage 360
\n

\n

Once you upgrade a course, be sure to republish and reupload it to your Learning Management System (LMS) or website. 

\n

Refresh

\n

Go through and edit the course based on your notes during your review. This might include updating visuals, rewriting some content, or fixing minor technical issues. 

\n

And check out this article for some tips on how to quickly update the design of your older courses: 4 Fast & Easy Changes That Will Make Your Old Storyline Courses Look New Again.

\n

Remove 

\n

Even if you no longer need a course, take a look at the slides and see if there’s anything you want to recycle—an image, a cool interaction, etc. If there is, and you’re using Storyline 360, you can save those slides as a Storyline template to import later or use Team Slides to easily share with your team. When you’re done reviewing, remove the file and move on.

\n

If removing a course makes you a little nervous—even if you know it’s not needed—do what I do and keep a backup of the source file in case you want to revisit this content someday.

\n

Redesign 

\n

If your course’s source files are no longer available or if the content is really out-of-date, you may need to redesign the course. 

\n

When you’re faced with a redesign, start by deciding which app to use. Here’s an article that can help you make the call: Which app should I use—Rise 360 or Storyline 360? 

\n

From there, ask yourself questions like: 

\n

\n
• What content changes need to be made? 
\n
• What new graphics are needed? 
\n
• Are there videos that need updating? 
\n
• Would this content be better broken up into smaller courses?    
\n

\n

More Resources

\n

I hope these steps make it easier for you and your team to stay organized and keep your content up-to-date. 

\n

And in case you forgot to bookmark the helpful articles mentioned earlier in this article, here they are once again:

\n

\n
• E-Learning Maintenance Checklist
\n
• Course Update Spreadsheet
\n
• Refresh or Rebuild: How To Know if an Old E-Learning Course Can Be Revived
\n
• 4 Fast & Easy Changes That Will Make Your Old Storyline Courses Look New Again
\n
• 6 Ways to Quickly Update an Outdated E-Learning Design
\n
• Rise 360 or Storyline 360: Which One Should You Use for Your Project?
\n

\n

And be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.

\n

Something all training departments should do but often don’t is review their existing courses regularly to ensure they’re up-to-date and functioning as expected. 

\n

There are a few common reasons this critical task is often overlooked:

\n

\n
1. Launching a course is considered the last step in the process—reviewing and updating isn’t on anyone’s radar.
\n
2. Everyone’s focused on creating new courses.
\n
3. There are so many existing courses that maintaining them all seems daunting.
\n

\n

If you’re in the same boat, now is the time to make a change. After all, if your training courses are outdated or broken, it’s a waste of time for employees to take them. When you think about it like that, it really highlights the importance of making time for course maintenance.

\n

To make the process feel more manageable, I’ve broken it down into four simple steps—and I’ve even included some tips for improving your courses while you’re at it. Let’s take a look!

\n

1. Make a List

\n

Start by compiling a list of your existing courses. Use Google Sheets, an Excel spreadsheet, or any other app you’re comfortable with to get organized. Here are some things you might want to include:  

\n

\n
• Course title
\n
• Date published
\n
• Authoring app
\n
• Published course URL
\n
• Source file location
\n
• Actions needed (e.g., republish, refresh, remove, or redesign—we’ll talk more about these options in the next section) 
\n
• Notes
\n
• Priority
\n

\n

Here’s an example of what that could look like:

\n

\n

Like how I’ve set this up? Download my template to help you get started. 

\n

2. Review Your Courses

\n

Once you’ve made a list, set aside some time to do a thorough review of your courses. Ensure your interactions, animations, and other course assets work as intended, that the content is still relevant, and the graphics are up-to-date. For a complete list of things to watch out for, use this handy resource: E-Learning Maintenance Checklist.

\n

If you come across some things that are broken or out-of-date, decide whether it makes most sense to update the existing course or to rebuild it from scratch. If the choice isn’t immediately obvious, head over to this article to help make the call: Update or Rebuild: How To Know if an Old E-Learning Course Can Be Revived.

\n

Then, update the spreadsheet you made in the previous section to include information about next steps. 

\n

3. Make a Plan

\n

Before you start updating, sit down and make a plan. Look at your list and decide the order in which you should update the courses. Prioritize business-critical courses such as new employee onboarding, software training used by your frontliners, or training that’s urgently needed to support business goals. 

\n

Think about whether it’s something you can do on your own or if you’ll need to enlist the help of a coworker or a freelancer (via our job board, for example). 

\n

Decide whether to update the courses all at once or little by little. Put together a schedule for updates to keep the project on track and set up checkpoints (using calendar reminders, for example) to ensure it’s progressing. 

\n

4. Take Action

\n

Once you’ve made a plan, you can start converting your content. Here’s how to update your courses based on your decision to republish, refresh, remove, or redesign.

\n

Republish

\n

Let’s say the course content and visuals are up-to-date but it’s not working anymore because it includes Flash content that’s no longer supported by most browsers. If you created the course in Storyline 1, Storyline 2, Studio ’09, or Studio ’13, just upgrade your course to Articulate 360 (which includes both Storyline 360 and Studio 360) or Storyline 3. Both options can do the hard work of converting older content for you, so in just minutes your legacy courses will work on modern browsers. We’ve made it super easy to upgrade. Just follow the steps outlined here:

\n

\n
• Upgrading Courses to Storyline 360
\n
• Upgrading Courses to Storyline 3
\n
• Upgrading Courses to Presenter 360
\n
• Upgrading Quizzes to Quizmaker 360
\n
• Upgrading Interactions to Engage 360
\n

\n

Once you upgrade a course, be sure to republish and reupload it to your Learning Management System (LMS) or website. 

\n

Refresh

\n

Go through and edit the course based on your notes during your review. This might include updating visuals, rewriting some content, or fixing minor technical issues. 

\n

And check out this article for some tips on how to quickly update the design of your older courses: 4 Fast & Easy Changes That Will Make Your Old Storyline Courses Look New Again.

\n

Remove 

\n

Even if you no longer need a course, take a look at the slides and see if there’s anything you want to recycle—an image, a cool interaction, etc. If there is, and you’re using Storyline 360, you can save those slides as a Storyline template to import later or use Team Slides to easily share with your team. When you’re done reviewing, remove the file and move on.

\n

If removing a course makes you a little nervous—even if you know it’s not needed—do what I do and keep a backup of the source file in case you want to revisit this content someday.

\n

Redesign 

\n

If your course’s source files are no longer available or if the content is really out-of-date, you may need to redesign the course. 

\n

When you’re faced with a redesign, start by deciding which app to use. Here’s an article that can help you make the call: Which app should I use—Rise 360 or Storyline 360? 

\n

From there, ask yourself questions like: 

\n

\n
• What content changes need to be made? 
\n
• What new graphics are needed? 
\n
• Are there videos that need updating? 
\n
• Would this content be better broken up into smaller courses?    
\n

\n

More Resources

\n

I hope these steps make it easier for you and your team to stay organized and keep your content up-to-date. 

\n

And in case you forgot to bookmark the helpful articles mentioned earlier in this article, here they are once again:

\n

\n
• E-Learning Maintenance Checklist
\n
• Course Update Spreadsheet
\n
• Refresh or Rebuild: How To Know if an Old E-Learning Course Can Be Revived
\n
• 4 Fast & Easy Changes That Will Make Your Old Storyline Courses Look New Again
\n
• 6 Ways to Quickly Update an Outdated E-Learning Design
\n
• Rise 360 or Storyline 360: Which One Should You Use for Your Project?
\n

\n

And be sure to follow us on Twitter and come back to E-Learning Heroes regularly for more helpful advice on everything related to e-learning. If you have any questions, please share them in the comments.

You know I do appreciate all the supporting information that you provide but NONE of it is helpful. Everything is concerning Storyline. But this old man is only using Studio 360 and Presenter 360. Now when am I going to get the same kind of support for Presenter that you are providing for Storyline?

jellington@flyaeroguard.com 623-341-3385

If I understand what the author explained above in the article, Studio 360 and Presenter 360 don’t have any Flash dependencies and their HTML5 output works in all major browsers. Articulate 360 includes both Storyline 360 and Studio 360. We use Articulate 360 so none of our courses should be affected luckily.

Thanks for chiming in Marina. You are spot on. Projects created in Studio 360 and Presenter 360 will continue to work when Adobe discontinues Flash.

Is there any Way of testing whether or not a course will work after Adobe ends flash support, but before it is implemented? I know we can go into all storyline projects and have a look, but we have created a lot a do not have a full overview. So the easiest for us would be to be able to check if it works just by opening the SCORM.

Hi Christoffer! You may want to check out the Review Your Course Catalog section in this article:

https://community.articulate.com/articles/what-the-flash-phaseout-means-for-you

It walks you through that very process and includes more info in case you don't remember which app you used to create your courses. I hope that helps to speed up your process! 🙂

Hi - somewhere I am missing a discussion point. We build and publish our courses in Rise 360. Am I correct in understanding that Rise courses only export to HTML5? We've just run a Flash Apocalpse report and all my SCORM courses are showing that no HTML5 courses (the SCORM ones) are present?
Please help......

Hi Kirstyn! Yes, you are correct. Rise 360 publishes HTML5-only courses.

If a course is published with the setting, \"HTML5 with Flash backup\" is there any issues you've heard that would cause a problem after Flash goes away?

Hi Tony! Courses created with Storyline 1, Storyline 2, or Studio ’13 may be either Flash-only or Flash with HTML5 fallback. However, the HTML5 output will only work reliably in Google Chrome and Safari. For this reason, it’s best to republish these courses to HTML5 using Storyline 3 or Articulate 360 (which includes both Storyline 360 and Studio 360) since these apps don’t have any Flash dependencies and their HTML5 output works in all major browsers.

Thanks for your response. The courses I'm thinking about were all published using Articulate 360, with the \"HTML5 with Flash fallback\" option. Do you know of any issues for courses published in this manner?

Good question, Tony. Courses that were published in Articulate 360 will continue to work if they include HTML5 output. Web browsers will simply ignore the Flash content and display the HTML5 version instead.

Thank you for that additional detail !!
:^ )

I have imported Studio 13 Engage Interactions into Storyline 3. When I publish these (web - HTML5 only) they do not run and an error \"Adobe Flash Player is out of date, we couldn't download\" comes up. Any ideas what's gone wrong?

Hi, I seem to recall a post or an article that showed a list of animations/transitions that were supported in Flash but not in HTML5. I can't find that now but it would be really helpful if someone has that info.

Thanks for your comment Brett. Looks like I'll have to rebuild in Storyline. I found a discussion linked below where others had the same problem.
https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/republishing-storyline-course-in-html5-that-has-engage-interactions

We are using Storyline3 and when we publish as HTML5 only or HTML5 with Flash fallback, the courses will crash Internet Explorer. I know IE is bad, but our business must rely on it for at least another 10-12 months. It will launch the course but at some point (and the same point in the course), it will throw an error \"Internet Explorer has stopped working\" and it will refresh the LMS and start the course at the beginning; never letting it continue past that point. Does anyone have any suggestions other than using another browser?

Hi Katrina! I'm so sorry that's happening! HTML5 courses that you published with Storyline 3 should continue to work in Internet Explorer 11. Older versions of Internet Explorer are not supported. If yo're using Internet Explorer 11 and are still experiencing that issue, please use this link to submit a support case: http://articulatecase.com/

It is IE 11. I will submit the case. Thank you!