Project Purpose
The ultimate purpose I hoped to fulfill over the last three months was to learn how to develop e-learnings. I wanted to make sure that I also kept in mind that these e-learnings needed to be easy to understand and truly effective. That meant a few things, but the biggest thing I had to do was utilize clear communication skills. Not only did the explanations I wrote have to be clear, but I also needed to have thoughtful organization and visuals. I’m excited to report that this process and project was a success, but it wasn’t without its difficulties.
The Project
The task I set for myself was to create two e-learnings, to aid my company’s employees in different areas of the job. The tops that I ended up choosing were how to send dispatch (police, fire, paramedics) in Canada and information about three types of signals our operators take, fire, medical, and panic alarms. I will include some screenshots of the e-learnings and the links to each can be found below!
Servicing Canadian Accounts – Overview | Rise 360 (articulate.com)
Fire Med and Panic Alarms | Rise 360 (articulate.com)
Canada E-Learning Screen Shots
Fire/Med/Panic E-Learning Screen Shots
Challenges Encountered
A lot of the time I spent working on these e-learnings ended up being in overcoming challenges. Because I had never created e-learnings before, I was naturally eager to jump in and start creating! I spent hours working on my first draft of an e-learning just to learn the hard way that planning is absolutely necessary when it comes to creating e-learnings. I scrapped what I had and again spent hours, this time on creating a thorough outline that would carefully guide my e-learning creation.
The outline that I created helped the new e-learning to be significantly more clear and more understandable. It was important to me that I made sure to put a big emphasis on that, and I realized without an outline and a lot of planning that goal wasn’t achievable. I also ran into some significant roadblocks because a lot of the information I was tasked with explaining was unfamiliar to me. I knew that if I was going to attempt to teach it though, I would need to truly understand it myself.
To understand the information, I turned to my coworkers and sought explanations about even the smallest pieces of information. Their guidance and training on these topics allowed me to not only understand the topics better, but it helped me to explain things in such a way that others could understand as well-something that is absolutely necessary for e-learnings.
Project Processes
As I mentioned, when I first started my e-learning creation, I was eager to jump in, but I eventually came to understand that creating an outline needed to be my first step. That outline included detailed explanations so that I had an idea of whether or not I covered the concepts well enough before I focused on visuals and more interactive content. Once my outline was done, I began creating the components of the e-learning and then sought feedback from mentors and coworkers. With that feedback, I made changes that led to the final products linked about!
I wanted to keep improving even after they were “finished” so I also sought feedback about any explanations that could have been better or any suggestions about elements the e-learning contained. This feedback contributed to the e-learnings becoming even more refined.
Experience Overview
Overall, the experiences I had when learning how to create e-learnings were empowering! It gave me an additional tool I can use to communicate with others and express ideas. Although there were challenges along the way, and the platform I used was difficult to get a hang of, I feel accomplished and successful!
Insights and Takeaways
In the end, I feel I came away from this experience having learned two main lessons. The first one is that preparation will only ever help the end result. This applies to so many things. Preparation helps a project like this feel more intentional, it helps create a natural flow of organization, and it allows the actual content to shine. The second lesson would be that I am capable of learning new things! I always love a good challenge, but learning to create e-learnings presented some challenges I did not anticipate. I was able, through hard work and commitment, to learn a new skill that I am thrilled to have in my skillset as a communication professional.