Thoughts on course updates?

Hi Bill,

Isn't it fun designing software training? For the situation you're describing, I would envision a project that branches at the beginning. Learners could select which version they're using, which you could use to direct them to a specific scene. If you want to do more complicated things, you could store that information in a variable and load different content based on the variable value.

That being said, it does depend on how much content you have. If the training is pretty in depth with a lot of media files, you might want learners to make the decision at the LMS level rather than in a course just for performance reasons.

Hope that helps!

Allison

Hi Bill,

Allison has this right. I would think of this in terms of learner groups.

You have three learner groups...  Legacy users that stay legacy, Legacy users that are migrating to new versions, and 100% new users that will get the new version.

Create a solution for each, but remember to re-leverage existing content wherever you can.

• Legacy to Legacy - You have this already. It will serve as refresher for that group and will be content fodder for you to draw from for other two
• Legacy to New - Here you want to take a "what's new" approach. Don't reteach everything (but make it available as option).  Focus on the differences and moving from how they used to do it to how they will now.  Remember, for this group you can take shortcuts and make assumptions.... just spell those out in the beginning so it's clear.
• New user to New - Here you will  have to build another ground-up course (but remember to reuse what you can from Legacy materials!).

Depending on how complex your software and resulting courseware is, I might use the LMS to assign the learners rather than one giant course.  Just be SUPER CLEAR in the descriptions and/or enrollments as to who is getting what course and why.

Hope this helps!

Bob