Starting a Learning Design Business
Hello E-Learning Heroes community! I'm Erin from Toronto, Ontario Canada. I'm an instructional designer, currently in the process of opening my own business (website coming soon!). I have some ideas on next steps, but I would love to hear from anyone who has launched their on instructional design business. What did you do to market yourself?Which LMS are you using?
Our current LMS (Litmos) is up for renewal and we're reviewing what else is out there. While changing LMS's is a big job, we feel that while once it was leading, Litmos is lagging behind in features and updates, and the admin side is clunky compared to other more modern LMS's. We're looking for an easy to use, but powerful, admin interface, robust reporting and learner insights, easily customisable for the look and feel, engagement tools such as social learning or allowing learners to connect through discussion forums, to name a few. I have contacted both Absorb and Continu who will both be giving me a demo next week, but wanted to know - what LMS are you using and what are the pros and cons?Brainstorm Help Needed
I am currently building an Introduction to Recruitment training course in Rise (with Storyline elements). I would like to do an activity of reviewing a job description and then review 2-3 resumes and have the learner determine who the best fit is. I'm struggling with how to structure this in a way that the information is always available as they may need to flip back and forth to compare the job requirements and the resumes. Any creative suggestions? I have thought of doing something in Storyline with the job description and resumes all being layers or lightboxes, but then run into what it looks like once I need to add questions and knowledge checks. Any ideas are welcome!How Do You Approach a Needs Analysis?
Before diving into building a course or training, figuring out what people actually need to learn is such a key stepβbut everyone approaches it a little differently. I'd love to hear from you! π¬ ππΌ What does your needs analysis process look like? ππΌ Do you follow a standard method or use any go-to resources? ππΌ Have any examples you're willing to share? I'm gathering insights for an upcoming community program π , so real-world examples and tips from this awesome community would be incredibly helpful! ππΌ Can't wait to see how you approach it!What does engagement mean to you...?
Our chief learning officer is tasking us to make our compliance courses to be more engaging. I find this word to be ambiguous and, as I am not opposed to making the courses engaging, what are some of the things you do to help engage the learner? Some of the things that I am doing is to include what I call "thinking slides". I will ask a question or pose a scenario that has the learner make a choice. If they make the wrong choice, there is a layer or some other feature that informs the learner of what the more positive outcome would be. If they are correct, I try to give them praise for their progress. I also try to use images and videos to break up the constant text heavy information. I will use short bullets with extended explanation with TTS narration. I am actually getting push back because the neural TTS voices aren't good enough and sound artificial. After using and hearing the old TTS voices, I think the neural voices sound pretty good and does an excellent job of conveying information. So, are there other things that you do to engage your learners? I would appreciate hearing your comments! Thanks, Lance.Live Workshop After Students Complete Online Course
Hi there! We have an hourlong live class that meets every week. Before class, the students are supposed to complete the corresponding module before attending class. It's very much set up like a college class. But up until now, the live workshop has just been repeating the content they just learned. What should I do instead to make it more of a discussion and not a lecture?Alt Text for System Screenshots
I got into a discussion today with someone developing a training manual/users guide for our program, about appropriate alt-text for a screenshot of a system. Let's say you have a brand new program, and you have to get everyone up to speed on its functionality. You have a step by step guide of how to do the XYZ task. And you throw in some screenshots to help callout buttons to give the viewer an idea of what they will be looking at. But, what kind of alt-text do you put for that image? I follow the rule of "what do you want the learner to see" in the image. If your tasks are highlighting the tabs on the screen, then maybe my alt-text is "Main page, with the following tabs available - one, two, three, four". For me, its providing enough context so that the screen reader user "sees" what a sighted learner sees. If its an eLearning course, sometimes I will have a hidden text box to provide more information or context. I'm curious how others have handled writing alt-text for progam screenshots. Please share!Storyline Closed Captioning-adding Multiple Languages
Hello! Anyone come up with an easy way to add multiple closed captioning files to a Storyline project. RISE allows for multiple languages when inserting an MP4 video as easy as uploading the multiple .VVT files, but I do not see an easy way when adding audio to a Storyline project to add multiple languages for the Closed Captioning file. I only see you can import one or do one manually. Any thoughts to be able to add ten or more languages as closed captioning in my Storyline projects? Thank you!Rise and motion sickness
We've recently had an email about one of our Rise courses which includes a complaint about it being inaccessible to users who may experience cybersickness or have a vestibular disorder. We've been informed that: the movement side-to-side and auto movement has no bellcurve on it (slow-fast-slow) which is specifically designed to stop motion sickness - it's said to be standard across nearly all viewing platforms. ---- The course that we've built has block animations turned off, but does include a process component. Is there anything that we can do to make this more accessible? As far as I can see from the Rise accessibility report, it is compliant with WCAG AAA around animations, but we'd like to know how to support users in the future or if there's anything we can do to our current courses to improve this. So, 1) Are we correct in our thinking that Rise is complaint with WCAG in terms of its animation speeds and settings? Or is there something missing that other 'standard viewing platforms' have? 2) Is there anything that we can do, or software we can recommend, to our learners?
