Week 1 Welcome & Introductions

Hi Everyone!

I'm Tot! I work remotely for Goldbelt, Inc., an Alaska Native Corporation. I first joined the company while living in Alaska and have been with Goldbelt for nearly five years. I transitioned from the HR team into the newly formed Training Team, where our two‑person team manages all aspects of training—from creating content to maintaining our LMS and supporting companywide development.

I joined this AI Assistant Certification Cohort to gain more knowledge on best practices and utilize the system to fit into my teams day-to-day.

I have a cat named Guillermo (full name: Guillermo Worcestershire Inigo Montoy Ramirez)

Hi everyone!

My name is Heidi, and I am located in Elk River, Minnesota. I work in a hybrid role for Luther Automotive as a Training Content Coordinator. My primary responsibilities include creating online training content and managing our LMS.

I joined the AI Assistant Certification Cohort to expand my knowledge of AI Assistant and learn new techniques that I can apply in my work. I primarily work with Articulate Storyline, but I have recently started developing more content in Rise as well.

This is a picture of Nova, our one-year-old Boxer, who thinks she's my boss when I work from home!

Hello from Florida!!

My name is Michelle and I work for the International Justice and Public Safety Network - Nlets - as an eLearning Training Associate. We connect all of the U.S. states, U.S. territories, and Canada together so they can share state level information with law enforcement and criminal justice agencies throughout the country and Canada. 

Prior to Nlets, I was with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and began using Articulate Storyline to create online Criminal Justice Information Services certification training modules in 2012. I currently use Rise 360 for all of the modules I create and maintain for Nlets (around 100), but I still use Storyline to create the scenarios that I place within the Rise modules.

Since Nlets is based out of Phoenix, AZ, I work from home with my two assistants, Peaches and Marshmallow. They are both rescues and are mother and daughter. The darker one on the left is Peaches, she is the mom. Marshmallow is the daughter. They are both hilarious and full of personality.

I'm excited to learn some new things about Rise and Storyline, and to see what everyone else creates!

Hello everyone! I am Heather Kraus and I am working from home in Cleveland, TX. I am one of the Instructional Designer Managers for Sedgwick. I am a working manager so I create content all day as well as manage the team and project lists and workload.

As a long time Articulate user, I am hoping to learn all I can about how AI Assistant will help us be more efficient with our time and how we use the tools available to us.

Here are my two babies - Nog and Kai (yes named after Star Trek Deep Space Nine) Boston Terriers age 3 and 12.

Hi everyone.  My name is Nol and I currently work for a university's financial division helping to create financial related training or similar for staff/faculty at the university.  I am a one-person shop leveraging various technologies to create learning.  Articulate is of course, one of those tools used.  I take every opportunity to learn and share more about how others are utilizing the AI features that are constantly evolving in Articulate.   Over my 25+ years in this field spanning military, government, corporate, and public entities I (or my previous teams) can never revise or produce enough to keep up either with the needs identified or the wishes I could facilitate services to other areas of interest. AI continues, as I learn how best to use (or not use) it, helps us to create meaningful, impactful, and at scale designs.  

Hello, my name is Janelle. I work for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce as a Technology-Based Training Developer. I design and develop courses for educators in the state of Ohio primarily, but our courses are open to any Ohio citizen. Our little team of 4 also handles LMS coordination on the back end. We wear many hats. 

I joined this cohort because I use RISE and Storyline often and have dabbled with the new AI features and I enjoy how much easier it has made things. I also have questions so I am hoping this will help clarify some things for me. Any new training in Artificial Intelligence in Instructional Design is valuable!

No pets! I am allergic to fur and I don't like fish or reptiles. 😁

Hi everyone! 👋

I'm Smriti, a Learning Solutions Architect in the Washington D.C area. I spend my days creating eLearning and training experiences and figuring out how to make complex topics a little easier (and hopefully more fun!) to learn.

I joined this cohort to learn how AI can help me work smarter, spark new ideas, create more engaging training—and spend less time doing the repetitive stuff.

I'm excited to learn alongside all of you, swap ideas, and see the creative ways you're using AI. Looking forward to getting to know everyone! 😊

Hi everyone! My name is Tommy Peterson (he/him) located in Baltimore, Maryland. I work for a state department where I support our system of record from system development, user support, as well as training and development. I'm excited to be able to better learn how to streamline eLearning opportunities for our users where we can make simulations to go through various workflows of our system to get the most out of asynchronous resources.

I'm also fortunate enough to be hybrid with my position, so my trusty colleague who reminds me to take breaks throughout the day for walks, cuddles, and treats is Daphne as seen below. Excited to learn amongst and from you all!

Hi everyone! My name is Katie, and I'm the Sr. Learning & Development Advisor at a mid-sized insurance broker. I'm based in Milwaukee, WI, and my role is a combination of instructional designer, learning consultant, program manager, and LMS administrator... with a small team, we wear a lot of hats! I'm looking forward to learning how to use the AI Assistant more effectively in Articulate.

Here is a picture of my boy Taco! He is about 18 months old and over 80lbs, a goofy mystery mutt who keeps me on my toes! Taco tore his CCL this spring and had surgery in June. His recovery has gone really well so far and he's looking forward to no more activity restrictions in a few weeks to get back to his normal crazy self! 

Taco

Hi y'all! I'm Allison. I'm a New Orleans native who moved to Chelmsford, MA (it's about 40 min from Boston) last year after living in the Austin, TX area for almost 20 years. I am a Senior Instructional Designer and Curriculum Specialist at Blackbaud, a company that makes software to help power the social good community (a fancy way of saying non-profits). My department focuses on helping our clients learn how to use our software in the most effective ways while implementing industry-standard best practices. I used to be mostly focused on building instructor-led trainings, but recently have moved over to being mostly focused on eLearnings. 

I have a Masters of Science in Information Studies (Library Science). I often say that my job is really to take large amounts of information and break it down and organize it in a way that people understand. 

I've been super interested in AI for a while now. I'm hoping to learn some good tricks for converting ILTs into eLearnings in a way that are structured how I'm looking for them to be structured. 

We don't have any pets at the moment, but we used to have cats. We always name our cats after villians. Our most recent ones were Boris and Natasha. Natasha was my soul cat and after she died at 18 years old, I got a tattoo of her paw print on my left shoulder. 

Here's a picture of Jimothy instead: