Brand New - Be Gentle

Hi John,

I understand what you are going through.. Don't worry, everything will be alright if you look at good examples and focus on delivering first things first and leave fancy optional stuff for later.

E-learning is really more about good, useful, actionable content, so the biggest challenge is managing SMEs into delivering proper stuff. Putting it together in an engaging non-powerpointy form is easier (comes with practice, too).

Here's a few resources (from Lectora's rivals) on e-learning authoring basics: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/rapid-e-learning-101/

If you'd like, I could show you a few things we did in Lectora. You can add me on Skype (ssneg_) and arrange a time. We only work with one medical organisation but it has over 70 000 employees, so we do know something about it :)

And don't forget to come to this forum for friendly advice on specific issues.

I work in Healthcare too! Our hospital is much smaller though, only 900-1000 staff (though we are part of a much larger organization). Are you using HealthStream for your LMS? That's what we use.

I understand how you're feeling, when I started this job I had no experience with Lectora or an LMS, and minimal experience with graphic design (I'm still not a Photoshop expert, but I'm leaps and bounds ahead of where I was a couple years ago!). Plus, I had never worked in healthcare before and don't really have any medical knowledge at all, so at least you have that going for you!

Sometimes you can't escape the slide-by-slide courses... especially in healthcare as sometimes administration just wants a simple, informational course out to meet some accreditation standard. But as ssneg said, getting better content from your SMEs gets easier over time.

I also agree with ssneg that you should first focus on meeting learning goals. If you spend too much time focusing on finding a receiver for your hail-mary pass, you're going to miss the 250lb linebacker staring you in the face.

You're welcome to contact me anytime as well (in addition to posting on the forum), my e-mail should be in my profile on this forum (if not, just PM me and I'll get it to you). I've helped a lot of people throughout our parent organization getting into Lectora, as well as plenty of people who use HealthStream and need help with course authoring... so helping people dive into Lectora has become something of a specialty of mine!

Just take a deep breath, and remember that the world won't end if you don't meet all your goals for the course the first time around!

John, I love the idea of using a theme for your 9 topics but if this is your first project it may be better saved for a future project. Though I think Lectora is the best tool out there for rapid development of online content, it still takes time to flush out and chunk up the final content before you convert the content into Lectora.

You could use a nice ready made Lectora template or make you own and use it to build all your courses in. If you need them to be taken in a certain order you will probably need to build them as 9 modules into one Lectora course though I hate to think of what a massive file that is going to be. If you think your LMS will allow you to build these into a Curriculum that is taken in order then you could build them as 9 separate courses.

If you do go ahead and do the theme you will probably need to build one course with 9 modules just so you can use variables to keep track of their progress in the modules and know when they get to go to the next module. I do love themes and I have built several curriculums in my time using the same theme throughout.

Trivantis provides a great example of a themed course where the user takes the modules in any order and it tracks which modules are completed. It's on the Trivantis website in the Lectora U drop down select Sample courses. It's called Survival Skills. You can download it and take a look at how it all works. Wonderful stuff.

Good Luck, Leslie

agree about keeping it all in one activity. Especially if you have to make updates later. Far easier to find what you want to fix when you don't have to dig through 9 separate files.

I do think implementing a theme in your first attempt is pretty ambitious. Without the graphic skills you mention, as suggested above, you might be better off using a pre-built template. Nothing is worse, to me, than going for the gusto when you're still learning, then finishing and looking back realizing how much better you could've made it.

Engaging doesn't automatically mean it has to be cutesy. You could just as easily make it fun and engaging while still keeping it in the work-place context. I like to use the model of the learner being the 'expert' and helping the new employee do their job. Connect the elearning to online performance support or build resource into the activity and let them fail as much as they need to until they reach mastery.

If you have 9 lessons to build, sketch out which ones are dependent on others, if at any.

Use a menu and let the learner navigate to any of the 9 lessons in any order they want, keeping in mind any prerequisites. Try to put a time on each lesson so they know what they're getting into (ie, if they have 10 minutes to spend, they know which lesson will only take 10 minutes, instead of getting 'stuck' in the middle of a 30 minute lesson).

Hello John!

Sometimes it can be impossible to escape the boring page-by-page powerpointesque courses, but ANYTHING you can do to create your course more interactive and engaging is almost always a good thing.

I don't know where you work, or what the culture is like... but I've found that adults are still like kids in that you need to find ways to keep them entertained throughout an entire course to actually teach them successfully (sometimes resorting to goofy methods). So no, I wouldn't say your Indiana Jones idea is too corny! (and even if it is corny, if they remember it being corny, at least they remember it!)

How you handle it could be up to you and how you want it to flow. In my opinion, the best way to keep a solid flow in the course, would be to have the 9 modules contained in one title. That way they are kept within one continuous course while they complete the 9 "missions". That should help them make the connections between each module. Plus, if they just see one activity they need to do (despite it having 9 sections), they'll hopefully be slightly less apprehensive than if they saw 9 different activities listed out for them to do.

If you want them to be able to go between the 9 modules at their own discretion (instead of forcing them to go in order, one by one) you can handle that in Lectora (and maybe your LMS? not sure what you're using). If you decide to have them do each module one by one, and in a specific order, you should probably handle that with your LMS.

Hope this is helpful, other people on here might have advice as well. Don't hesitate to ask anything else!

Thanks for the advice Altarium. I find myself waffling like crazy over this. Let me impart some information and obstacles and maybe even just typing this out will help me with the decision as to what to do.

Industry: Medical

Audience size: Approximately 5,000

Audience type: Doctors, Nurses, Patient Care Staff, Biomed, Administrative

Time constraints: Have to crank it out! 2-3 months tops.

My comfort level: Scared to death. New to Lectora, new to any graphics design or content building.

My saving grace: 25 years in this medical field. I understand the content very well.

LMS: Brand new (implementation stages right now)

So I am being looked upon to produce lessons that are a drastic change from what has preceded me thus far (Voiced over Power Points on an In-house LMS). So luckily for me I think the bar is set rather low…lol.

To describe my choices with a football analogy…

Do I impress the crowd with a stunning long passes and string of first downs? (9 different well done presentations with some video, basic graphics and interactive testing. But I know this would still have a “slide by slide feel”.)

-or-

Do I go for broke and launch one in the end zone? (One long “themed” title where I try to gain audience involvement by having them participate in, and hopefully look forward to, the episodes and games.)

I’m a freaking mess…..

John