Responsive E-Learning Module

What did you learn?

I considered this class the pivotal class in my ICT program, since my research focus was on learning technologies itself. My goal was to build upon my forecasting and usage recommendation research to look the practice of e-learning. The instructional design content of the course was not new to me, however I was looking to improve upon my existing knowledge. With emerging technologies such as mobile learning, I saw the ID field as changing. My belief was, and still is, that instructional designers may need to take a more holistic, design thinking approach. In addition, the widespread popularity of social media, YouTube, and MOOCs would require us to be curators of content, not just creators of it. The shift to remote work and the demand for informal and on-demand learning meant that the traditional ADDIE model could give way to more dynamic models like SAM and AGILE. Even if, for example, mobile learning is not currently adopted in an organization, it is important to "future proof" courses by designing them to be easily made available on smartphones or tablets in the future.

How did you learn this?

I chose to focus my research on responsive e-learning, which is an offshoot of responsive web design. Responsive design allows for the viewing of web page on any screen size. It has been increasingly become of a feature of e-learning platforms and authoring tools. To name one example, Articulate Global offers responsive publication within its core authoring tool Storyline, as well is a separate web-based authoring tool called Rise. I created two artifacts: an infographic and a module to analyze and test the concept of responsive design.

The artifact linked here shows both the process of instructional design, and the practice of responsive design. It was developed using Articulate Rise and published in TalentLMS. I had the opportunity to learn a new authoring tool and a new LMS for this project. For the subject matter I chose IT compliance, because it is a core aspect of corporate training. It's also an area that's intertwined with e-learning because of the need to protect personal and organizational data includes information presented in online courses and the data of the users who take them. This course portal also exhibits the instructional design process: the ID model used, stakeholder and SWOT analysis, and budget. The course was designed using the AGILE model, an IT project management approach which has been adapted to also fit e-learning projects, using rapid development, followed by iterative review and revision. AGILE is a design model that is well-suited to rapid development. If an instructional designer needed to design a compliance course on short turnaround, this is how it could be done.

What were some challenges that you overcame?

As with other artifact for this course, the biggest challenge was that the summer session was only eight weeks long (compared to 12 weeks for a normal semester). However, it presented a great opportunity to practice rapid design. Also order to publish the course, I had to learn the administrative functions of new LMS on a very short turnaround of only a week. I chose my LMS well, because TalentLMS had a relatively short learning curve for me, helped along by tutorial videos the vendor provided on their site. It would have been a lot more difficult to get this done with a less user-friendly interface.

How will you apply this information in the future?

The skills of responsive and rapid design represent what I believe to be the future of corporate e-learning. It never hurts to learn another LMS either.