E-learning standards in your comany?

Jul 25, 2011

Karen Loomis
By Karen Loomis

I have been tasked with creating E-Learning standards at my company to:

-- document our internal development guidelines

-- provide guidance for vendor-created content.

Below is my first draft...I would love to hear if/what other people are doing not only for Articulate designed courses but also for courses created by other companies.  Keep in my mind company delivers everything through our LMS...

Design Standards

        Courses bookmark

        There is a status indicator or table of contents

        Do not use auto advancing screens; let users go at their own pace

        Title page should have DCO number and document numbers where applicable

        Attachments should be watermarked to say “For training purposes only”

        All information should fit on one screen without any scrolling

Quiz Standards

        Include quiz and storyboard as part of validation paperwork

        Indicate how users get credit for the course in the body of the course (in the SYN212 course, there was no indication you were at the end of the course and needed to answer a question to get credit)

        List the question number and number of questions for each quiz question (Question 3 of 5)

        Provide feedback (correct or incorrect) after users answer questions

        Quiz questions should be in multiples of 5 where possible

Audio Standards

        Indicate if a course has audio

        Provide controls to adjust the volume

        Make narration/script clearly available to users if they do not have audio

Instructional Design Standards

        List objectives for every course

        ID to work with SME on creating a content outline

        ID should review quizzes to ensure they map to learning objectives and are covered in the course

Thanks, looking forward to hearing your feedback!

7 Replies
Mike Taylor
over 12 years ago07/26/11 at 3:46 am (UTC)

This looks pretty good. The one thing I'm curious about is "Do not use auto advancing screens; let users go at their own pace." 

If it's a narrated course it seems like you would want it to auto-advance with the narration wouldn't you? I can see stopping after a diagram or something they might want to spend some extra time on or for when there isn't any narration. 

Just curious to hear  your reasoning for including that one. 

Thanks for sharing,

Mike

Karen Loomis
over 12 years ago07/26/11 at 6:32 am (UTC)

I think it might be personal preference on the auto advance option.  Definitely if the course doesn't have audio, I like users to be able to control the speed of the course because everyone has different reading speeds.  As for audio courses, I still like to control the pace myself.  For instance, I may want to "sit" and absorb some informaiton between screens if there's something though-provoking on a screen.

Creating standards is challenging because I want to cover important points, yet not write SO many stanbdards that nobody will follow them.  Does anyone else have any experience enforcing standards and do they have good adoption working with other content vendors?

Efrat Maor
over 12 years ago10/05/11 at 6:26 am (UTC)

I like using 1-2 questions during a session.

Breaking things up.

Also using them not only for evaluation, but self evaluations (on previous knowledge, in the course intro or begining of a lesson) and triggering thoughts on a topic.

But also for evaluation purposes - prefer to do it during and not in the end.

Especially when using questions where you need to apply and extrapolate from what was learned.

Agree with mark that these are important.

Avrg. resolution in your company: Are people using mainly desktops or laptops?

Course length - short ones? long ones?

Do you want to allow access (based on tags or other indexing) for parts in the course. If so - what is the maximum length for a standalone part?

Personally I prefer not showing the objectives to learners, and having them on a hidden slide, for reviewing purposes only.

Use of templates, logo and branding. Can each project/unit have their own branding on the content? 

Can each course have a totally different look-n-feel?

QA - when? By whom? Topics for review. Does content go throgh technical writing?

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