Week 1 Welcome & Introductions

Hi everyone, my name is Leigh and I live in Sydney, Australia. I'm a Learning & Development Manager at a university and I've been here for 12 months, I previously worked in financial services for 30 years before moving to tertiary education. My work primarily focusses on managing our mandatory training suite working with a range of stakeholders across the campus and implementing a brand new LMS, our current one is 20 years old!!! 

I am interested in this course to help build my skill and improve the quality of what I create and improve translating complex compliance heavy training into engaging and digestible learning for our staff with the help of AI.  

Our last fur baby passed away 4 years ago, she was an English Staffy, but we do get to dog-sit for our friends who have an adorable mini foxy terrier

Hi I'm Nat, from Christchurch New Zealand, I'm a capability and learning lead at a small kiwi company called Ando. I partner with the business to create learning happen on the job - day to day this looks like a lot of content creation and working with SME's. My best buddy Obi (pictured below) ensures I get my 2 walks a day. He is a NZ Heading dog. We call him lovingly 'farm reject' as he's come off a farm as a failed student to live life in suburban luxury. 

Hi everyone! I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.

My name is Reinhold (pronounced like the river "Rhine" and the verb "hold" (just in case you're wondering) and I work for CWH, a corporate publishing company in Cologne, where I work as a project manager, instructional designer, author, ... ! In the past three years I have worked with a special focus on accessibility. 

So far, I have used LLMs (OpenAI, gemini, Claude) but haven't used built-in features of Articulate, yet. Looking forward to learn more.

Hi, my name is Jamie from Toronto. I have been working in Training Design for over 20 years and most recently for MPAC. I love all aspects of design and love learning how to integrate design concepts and learning together. Look forward to seeing how AI grows at Articulate and how we can leverage it within the software as the two grow together.

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:

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 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! 👋

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! 😊

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.  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.