ELEARNING

My core goal for all elearning projects is to make them memorable, motivational and measurable. Using story and narrative to engage learners is often part of my elearning designs, as is incorporating scenarios in which learner decisions result in realistic workplace outcomes.

Some projects featured here can be viewed in their entirety, by request.

BUILDING CLINICIAN WELL-BEING

Interactive component from Building Clinician Well-being elearning course.

Click to launch, then click titles to open and close topics.

A medical clinicians’ professional organization with more than 65,000 members wanted to help providers reduce burnout, which increased 65% in 2020. Burnout-prevention courses typically focus on how individuals can improve their own well-being. But burnout factors that can be controlled by the individual are only one cause of burnout.

Working with seven SMEs, I created narrative stories that represent different clinician experiences of burnout risk. The one-hour, four-unit, Building Clinician Well-being course teaches clinicians how to use systematic approaches to create wellness-oriented organizational change, including:

Identifying external and individual factors that affect well-being
Selecting well-being strategies that align with personal well-being goals
Building, implementing and evaluating an organizational wellness plan

Responsibilities: Instructional design, elearning design and development, artwork, animations, and graphic design

Tools Used: Storyline 360, Illustrator, Photoshop

Challenges and Solutions: The lead SME resigned from the project shortly after it began. The project manager resigned soon after. The course was at risk of being suspended. By carefully documenting all completed work and identifying specific tasks needing completion, I gave the organization what it needed to identify the staff and clinicians who could help me finish the course. Ultimately, the course development was successfully completed and implemented.

RESPECT & INCLUSION: EXPLORING OUR UNCONSCIOUS BIASES

This video includes excerpts from the Respect & Inclusion elearning course.

A retail business with more than 13,000 employees wanted to make sure all staff and customers feel they are treated respectfully. Stopping misunderstandings and escalations before they occur is the primary objective of this course.

Using the consultant trainer's four-hour ILT Respect and Inclusion presentation for managers and executives as the source material, I developed a 25-minute elearning course for all employees that:

Demonstrates unconscious bias in this company's workplace
Through interactive experiments, has learners experience their brains creating the conditions for unconscious bias to occur, and explains why this happens
Demonstrates how to recognize and challenge one's own unconscious biases throughout the work day

Responsibilities: Instructional design, elearning design and development, artwork, animations and graphic design

Tools Used: Storyline 360, Vyond, Photoshop, Audition

Challenges and Solutions: Given the intense divisions and polarization within the United States at this time, I gave a lot of consideration to how to present content for a very diverse staff that encourages curiosity and open-mindedness and avoids triggering individual political and cultural biases.

For the narration script, I focused on science and experience and avoided words that could be received as blaming or judgmental. The visual components support the narrative tone by maintaining a neutral, somewhat abstract aesthetic. I used illustrations exclusively and applied non-human skin colors to all animated characters that represent employees and customers.

To comply with the mandated course time limit, I reduced the ILT content to the most essential information by doing additional research on key concepts and working with the consultant trainer to identify experiments that resonated most strongly with ILT participants.

Employee and leadership response to this course was overwhelmingly positive.

BUILDING BACK BETTER: ENGINEERING PROCESS TRAINING

This video includes excerpts from the Die Management Process elearning course. References to the company name within the narration have been scrambled.

A company that manufactures exterior glass walls for skyscrapers and commercial buildings relied on webinar recordings for technical process training. When the recordings became unplayable because browsers stopped supporting Adobe Flash swf files, an immediate solution was essential.

After some experimentation, I was able to convert the swf recordings to mp4, making them playable again. Some of the content was clearly outdated, so I worked with management to develop new templates and content that is process- and procedure-focused, with an emphasis on practical and relevant information. Management was thrilled with the new content and continues to identify in-house material that can be used to create new elearning.

Responsibilities: Elearning template design, instructional design, elearning design and development, artwork, animations, graphic design, narration and audio editing.

Tools Used: Captivate, Photoshop, Audition, Media Encoder, Camtasia

Challenges and Solutions: Staff that created the original content were no longer at the company, so an initial challenge was assessing the existing content (the source files were lost) and recommending iterative improvements to current staff who were unfamiliar with the original content.

High quality, beautiful photographs of company projects inspired the template designs. By using the new templates and rapid prototyping, I helped management understand the benefits of, and return on investment for, replacing the old content.

EQUITY MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE: SETUP, ADMINISTRATION AND REPORTING

Equity plan management is complex and exacting. In these two- to 10-minute videos, software experts walk users (plan administrators and accountants) though the many steps, data checks, must-haves and exceptions of plan setup and quarterly and annual reporting.

Responsibilities: Instructional design, eLearning development, video editing and graphic design

Tools Used: Camtasia, Audition, Madcap Flare

Challenges and Solutions: This project was completely dependent on SME availability to make recordings and generate content. Focusing on critical needs and being patient and flexible were essential for success and contributed to positive experiences for the SMEs.

WORKING WITH ELECTRICAL INSPECTORS

Electricians who want to become foremen need more than technical skills. They need to know how to communicate effectively with regulators and gate keepers. This scenarios-based course presents learners with real-life examples of foreman-inspector conflicts and provides different outcomes, based on the learners' conflict-resolution choices.

Responsibilities: Instructional design, elearning development, ensure compliance with accrediting agency's requirements and standards for continuing education credit hours

Tools Used: Captivate, Photoshop

SIZING ELECTRICAL MOTOR CIRCUITS

To correctly size motor circuits for installation, electricians need a great deal of technical knowledge, practical skills, and the ability to coordinate and apply information from multiple regulatory and manufacturer sources. This eight-hour course walks learners through practical, detailed information about motors, their components and how they function. Electricians learn and practice all steps needed to accurately perform motor circuit calculations through scenario-based activities with contextual feedback.

Responsibilities: Instructional design and eLearning development, ensure compliance with accrediting agency's requirements and standards for continuing education credit hours

Tools Used: Captivate, Photoshop