I have been working on a particular design for awhile now, and while I really like it, there is clearly something missing. Despite my best efforts, however, I cannot put my finger on it.
I thought I'd reach out to the wisdom of the blog! Would you please glance at the attached and let me know your thoughts/suggestions/ideas?
You have medical info that your teaching, why not try to make it look like a patient's file? If I have time I'll build you a mock-up of what I thinking.
Here are a couple quick ideas. One is based on your existing layout and the other is something I'd used for a project a while ago with your content added.
The biggest thing I think you can do is rethink the selected colors. Dizziness, headaches and medical in general are often associated with blues, grays and off-white colors. The light yellow, green and blue in your theme imply happiness and energy which is probably not what you're going for.
Using one of the folder downloads from our PowerPoint templates, I modified your colors and added some "medical label" looking graphics. They're the same shape as your current buttons but align a little more with your medical theme.
Hopefully these quick samples spark some new ideas!
I hate disagree with David and Linda, because I love their ideas, I work in a healthcare setting and the amount of elearning we see that uses medical notes as its theme is unbelievable and does create learning fatigue. Although Davids example is one of the better ones I have seen.
I would probably do it as a scenario based course where you question the patient to get the symptomas and then try to diagnose the problem with information being fed back as you make decisions
I hate disagree with David and Linda, because I love their ideas, I work in a healthcare setting and the amount of elearning we see that uses medical notes as its theme is unbelievable and does create learning fatigue.
That's a really good point, Phil. I haven't heard that much but yes, I can totally see where an industry's imagery can get exhausting.
I did some work for mortgage banking industry and heard something similar. The class was for new bank ops managers and how to manage their loans in the pipeline. Because I knew next to nothing about that industry and how "loan pipelines" work, I did some analogy mapping and found that loans were like airplanes--they come in various sizes, fly at different speeds and take different times to land. So using that metaphor, we came up with an airplane radar theme where learners "landed planes" that represented loans.
Based on your experience, what type of themes would be appropriate without being too cliche or tiring for your audience?
I think you can apply most themes to healthcare if you are brave enough, I try to avoid the medical notes one if I can
My first though was to use something like clinic room doors lined up and behind each was a patient, who you could question to get symptoms and then try and produce a diagnosis, the learning would be in feedback based on your decisions.
It needs work on branching but could be interesting.
We have created a lot of elearning that does not use any healthcare settings, we did a nice one on patient prescriptions that used a cartoon bird to guide you through a paper landscape
There was a really good example of what Phil is talking about that was posted on the forums. It had different patients, with different symptoms and the viewer would choose the question they wanted to ask and the patient would respond based on each question. When you asked enough questions you could go on to make a diagnosis. Maybe someone bookmarked that one and can provide the link. It was similar to this HR module that Tom built in the Rapid elearning blog.http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/these-12-tutorials-teach-you-how-to-build-an-interactive-e-learning-course/
Thank you all for your replies! I really appreciate all of your ideas!
David, I am floored by how quickly you put together those samples. They look great!
Phil, I have been using the hospital door method in another one of my courses.
All of my courses are based around interactive patient scenarios. This one is special because the content has the strong risk of appearing like an information dump as opposed to a clear process. Thus why I want the learner to be able to see where they are at each point in the course. I built 21 quizzes in quizmaker, but I now feel that it is pertinent to use hyperlinking to allow the user to have a more active role in navigating between slides.
7 Replies
Hi Heidi,
You have medical info that your teaching, why not try to make it look like a patient's file? If I have time I'll build you a mock-up of what I thinking.
Linda
Hi Heidi,
Here are a couple quick ideas. One is based on your existing layout and the other is something I'd used for a project a while ago with your content added.
The biggest thing I think you can do is rethink the selected colors. Dizziness, headaches and medical in general are often associated with blues, grays and off-white colors. The light yellow, green and blue in your theme imply happiness and energy which is probably not what you're going for.
Using one of the folder downloads from our PowerPoint templates, I modified your colors and added some "medical label" looking graphics. They're the same shape as your current buttons but align a little more with your medical theme.
Hopefully these quick samples spark some new ideas!
I hate disagree with David and Linda, because I love their ideas, I work in a healthcare setting and the amount of elearning we see that uses medical notes as its theme is unbelievable and does create learning fatigue. Although Davids example is one of the better ones I have seen.
I would probably do it as a scenario based course where you question the patient to get the symptomas and then try to diagnose the problem with information being fed back as you make decisions
I did some work for mortgage banking industry and heard something similar. The class was for new bank ops managers and how to manage their loans in the pipeline. Because I knew next to nothing about that industry and how "loan pipelines" work, I did some analogy mapping and found that loans were like airplanes--they come in various sizes, fly at different speeds and take different times to land. So using that metaphor, we came up with an airplane radar theme where learners "landed planes" that represented loans.
Based on your experience, what type of themes would be appropriate without being too cliche or tiring for your audience?
David, I like that.
I think you can apply most themes to healthcare if you are brave enough, I try to avoid the medical notes one if I can
My first though was to use something like clinic room doors lined up and behind each was a patient, who you could question to get symptoms and then try and produce a diagnosis, the learning would be in feedback based on your decisions.
It needs work on branching but could be interesting.
We have created a lot of elearning that does not use any healthcare settings, we did a nice one on patient prescriptions that used a cartoon bird to guide you through a paper landscape
There was a really good example of what Phil is talking about that was posted on the forums. It had different patients, with different symptoms and the viewer would choose the question they wanted to ask and the patient would respond based on each question. When you asked enough questions you could go on to make a diagnosis. Maybe someone bookmarked that one and can provide the link. It was similar to this HR module that Tom built in the Rapid elearning blog.http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/these-12-tutorials-teach-you-how-to-build-an-interactive-e-learning-course/
Thank you all for your replies! I really appreciate all of your ideas!
David, I am floored by how quickly you put together those samples. They look great!
Phil, I have been using the hospital door method in another one of my courses.
All of my courses are based around interactive patient scenarios. This one is special because the content has the strong risk of appearing like an information dump as opposed to a clear process. Thus why I want the learner to be able to see where they are at each point in the course. I built 21 quizzes in quizmaker, but I now feel that it is pertinent to use hyperlinking to allow the user to have a more active role in navigating between slides.
Many thanks,
Heidi
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