Guru Honorable Mention: Procurement Course by Cynthia Jump

This post by Articulate Community Manager Jeanette Brooks features one of the Honorable Mentions from the 2010 Articulate Guru Awards. To see other award-winning courses from the Guru Awards, check out the posts here.

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Today we’re featuring another Honorable Mention from the Articulate Guru Awards! It’s a course that Articulate user Cynthia Jump created for a consumer goods company. The course teaches learners about intercompany purchasing.

Previously, the company conducted the training in a classroom, in sessions designed for folks who enter procurement data. But the company needed everyone in the business unit’s distribution centers and factories to understand the basics of procurement, and how procurement data affects planning and budgeting.

So they called on Cynthia, an independent e-learning designer who is also a trainer and SAP supply chain functional expert. Her challenge was to create a multi-purpose e-learning course that would not only provide important refresher training for the people who enter data, but also help the larger employee population understand critical steps in the procurement process and how data is used.

Below are some screenshots of the course that Cynthia came up with. She even tapped in to some in-house talent for the voiceover — company associate Regina Kirby, Cynthia’s colleague on the training team, earned the nickname The Voice for handily recording the entire script in a single take!

What caught the judges’ attention? The Guru judges really liked how Cynthia placed course navigation info in a “Help” tab at the top of the player — this way it’s readily available for those who need it, but for those who don’t, it doesn’t get in the way. They also liked the way Cynthia synchronized simple but effective PowerPoint animations with the narration, making complex data easy to understand.

The tasteful slide designs and Cynthia’s use of No Sidebar View on the player contribute to the cleanness and simplicity of the course. And the judges appreciated how the course leverages intuitive graphics, clickable on-screen menu choices, and effective use of Articulate Presenter’s annotations to support the content.

Here, Cynthia shows how she built the opening animation sequence in her course:

View this screencast at Screenr

And here’s another behind-the-scenes look, where Cynthia shows how she created the main menu:

View this screencast at Screenr

Way to go, Cynthia, on winning an Honorable Mention in the Articulate Guru Awards!

We plan to keep the Honorable Mentions coming, so keep watching the Word of Mouth blog for more featured courses.