I’m really excited about the Articulate User Conference this year. It’s on October 25, 2022 and co-located with Devlearn. The conference includes five tracks covering 25 topics. They’re all designed to be practical sessions where you will walk away with solid tips & tricks to help build better courses.

I’m also excited because there are a number of new speakers and people you’ll recognize from the community. People who frequently share examples of what they build and offer help in the e-learning community. It’ll be a great time.

Here’s why it’s worth your time:

• The sessions are practical and have real-value. You’ll see some great examples and learn to apply what’s shown to your own course design.
• Community is where it’s at. Most e-learning developers are on small teams, and often teams of one. I see the community as an extension of your cubicle or team. There are people there who can help you get things done and vice versa. Build on those relationships by meeting some of the people from the community.
• Lots of resources to take back with you. Each session will include all sorts of resources, downloads, and additional help so that when you get back you can lean into what you learned at the conference.

Below are the five core learning tracks and their sessions for you to review.

Articulate 360 Foundations

• 10 Ways to Use Sliders in Storyline 360 | Jodi Sansone
• How I Stumbled Into E-Learning and Became a Successful E-Learning Designer | Kandice Kidd
• Troubleshooting Storyline 360 Courses: Tips to Keep You on Track! | Tom Kuhlmann
• Top Tips for Streamlining Your Course Development | Ashley Chiasson
• Spicing Up Your Rise 360 Course | Brooke Schepker

Improving Course Design

• Using 360° Images to Give Employees a Realistic Look at Their Work Environment | Paul Njuguna
• Simulation & Gamification as Part of a Blended Learning Strategy | Alex Ryan & Tristia Hennessey
• State of Play: How To Build a Game-Like Quiz in Storyline 360 | Jonathan Hill

Advanced Course Design

• Three Common Variable Challenges and How to Resolve Them | David Anderson
• What is xAPI & Why Should I Care? | Megan Torrance
• Getting Started with xAPI | Matthew Kliewer
• How to Extend Storyline with JavaScript Snippets | Jeff Batt
• Widgets to Help You Do More with Articulate 360 | Nicholas Soldatenko

Accessibility

• What is Accessible E-Learning? | Elizabeth Pawlicki
• How to Write Alt Text for E-Learning | Ginger Swart
• How to Create an Accessibility Checklist | Raye Shilen
• My Course Isn’t Accessible! Now What? | Raye Shilen
• Top 10 Most Helpful Accessibility Tools | Elizabeth Pawlicki
• Making the Business Case for Accessibility | Leslie McKerchie

Showcase & Deconstruction

• Fear and Loathing in E-Learning Quiz | Jonathan Hill
• Get Kimiko Branching Video Scenario | Jonathan Hill
• Safety Equipment Drag & Drop Activity | Samuel Apata
• Bravehearts Interactive Map | Samuel Apata
• Using Drag & Drop to Simulate Real World Activities | Yvonne Urra-Bazain
• Zooming in on a Masterpiece | Jodi Sansone
• Storyline Showcase: Adaptive Interactions | Alex Ryan & James Oakley

As you can see, that’s a packed agenda. You’ll learn a lot and you’ll meet other e-learning developers who are in the same boat and face similar challenges at work. I am sure you’ll have a great time.

It’s not too late to sign up. And you don’t need to attend the entire Devlearn event, if all you want to do is attend the Articulate User Conference. Below is the pricing info:

• $495.00 USD — When combined with DevLearn registration
• $595.00 USD — Standard rate

Hopefully you can make it.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

When I first learned to build e-learning courses, the general instruction for building e-learning content was to craft some learning objectives, organize and present the content, and then assess the learners using some sort of simple quiz. I think that’s how a lot of people learned to build courses with many of them following a similar structure.

Back in those days, the course authoring tools weren’t easily available and building something overly sophisticated required a lot more resources. Thus, many courses were relatively simple in terms of the instructional design and the e-learning content. Nowadays, there are much more sophisticated authoring tools available, so you can build e-learning courses that are more creative and engaging.

While the tools are easier to use and there is more information available on how to build a better e-learning course, most courses still follow the same general structure: objectives, content, and quiz.

This makes sense because it’s organized, seems logical, and most e-learning course expectations probably lean more into the explainer-type content than performance. So it’s more about presenting content and a simple assessment than it is a robust learning experience.

This approach is very similar to how we’d build products on an assembly line in a factory. Design something that generally meets the needs for most people and push it out to everyone. There’s nothing wrong with this approach per se. If your content is well-designed and engaging, it can work just fine. This is especially true if all you need is tracked completion and there are no real performance requirements for the course.

However, it does have its downsides. For one, it assumes that all of the information is equally relevant to the learners and meets their learning needs. And in a world where learners are used to getting what they want when they want it, the one-size-fits-all approach to e-learning just doesn’t cut it anymore.

So what’s the solution?

Here are three general ideas to stimulate your thinking when it comes to e-learning content:

• Stay in the right lane. This may sound a bit cynical, but many courses may be important to the organization and annual compliance, but not relevant to the end user. Assembly line courses are fine for that. Don’t overbuild them and get the learners in and out and back to something more productive.
• As note above, keep the content-heavy courses simple and build the right decision-making activities in the courses that are more meaningful and tied to performance metrics.
• The key to successful learning is meaningful content and activities. Ultimately, the courses should be relevant to the learners and mirror how they’d use the content in real life. Create situations that simulate the decisions they need to make and present your content through those simulations rather than as a a series of bullet-point screens.

That’s enough to get you thinking. What would you add?

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.