Supplemental Course Information

Hi Mike,

I like your idea of having support material external to the eLearning course.  This additional information can be considered as a performance support tool that is aimed to empower the learners with additional information. It can be an simple HTML page or WiKi.  I personally will create a simple page with the course's look and feel to maintain identification, and then observe learners response. Then, I would go ahead an create a template, so I can reuse it for other courses. 

Hi Mike,

This may not be the type of response you are looking for but what we did in my organization is post all these job aids on an internal wiki so that you can use the wiki page as a web object and it is easier to access later without going back in to the elearning course to find it.  Now it has turned into this great resource that people use when they need an answer quickly.  We used MediaWiki but like with anything there's lot's of competition out there.  Doesn't exactly help you with format ideas but wanted to share what has worked out really well for us.

Mike,

We're looking to do this exact thing as well.  In our LMS, there is a resources section where we can include all these kinds of things, and they are categorized and searchable by keyword.  We're not yet sure if this will work as envisioned.  How many items are you thinking of?  We were going to have categories like: Free Online Resources, Publications, Subscriptions, Simulations,etc.  But we're not sure whether the customer would rather see more topic-based organization versus type of resource.  But we're still tinkering.

Stephanie

Thanks guys!

@Joe That's a great idea and that also could potentially allow the SMEs themselves to add/update the content on that page. I'm curious

what your wiki page looks like. i.e what headings, etc you have?  Most of my stuff is safety related so I'm thinking of headings like Related policy, Applicable OSHA standard, etc and maybe others like Video, Documents, etc.  I'm not sure on those last ones though...still contemplating. 

@Stephanie...I'm thinking of that same question of topic based vs content type.....hmmmm....anyone else have thoughts on that?

Yes on the SME's.  I actually ended up putting together an elearning course covering how to add/edit wiki pages.  As far as what they look like, we take it on a case by case basis depending on the topic.  We have to cover a wide range of topics from software to policies so it would be hard to have a common layout.  Most of the time we set it up based off of the resources that are available or were built to use in the elearning course.

I do this a couple of ways - I include a resource slide with links, and use pictures of the resource (cover page of manual, first slide of a program, etc. for the learner to click on to go to the link, instead of a string of links on the slide. I also use the Attachments tab, especially if I refer to the resource(s) during the program.

Joe and Stephanie,

We do this sort of thing with supplemental content. As far as how to organize it.... it's all about the learner right?

So if your learners are more likely to go searching for info on topic X; organize by topic.

However if your learners are more experienced and the supplemental content is more resource-based (eg A request/change form that gets filled out every so often), then organize by resource type.

Hope this helps,

Bob

I would love to see an example of this if somebody can help......

I like the idea!

Cheers,

Dave