Guru Honorable Mention: Safety Stock by Accenture Academy

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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This week we’re showing off another noteworthy Honorable Mention from the Articulate Guru Awards! Sean Bengry submitted the course called Understanding Safety Stock. It was built for a segment of Accenture Academy, where Sean is Manager of Learning Strategy and Design.

The academy is a learning and collaboration group within the Talent and Organization Performance arm of Accenture, a global provider of management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing.

Chris Knecht, an instructional designer on Sean’s team, led the development process for this course. Professor Brent Williams served as the course’s content author and subject matter expert. Check out the course the team created:

View Understanding Safety Stock

What stood out to the judges? The Guru judges loved the opening animation sequence on the first few slides. It sets the stage for the course by providing an easy-to-understand explanation of safety stock, augmented with professional-quality narration, a friendly visual design, and simple but meaningful sync’d animations. The same tone and design carries nicely throughout the course. Scenarios based on the fictional “Outdoors Outlet” company help learners understand important principles by focusing on a realistic example.

Judges also liked how hyperlinks on some of the slides allow learners to choose the order in which they experience the content. And, several interactive exercises built in Articulate Quizmaker give learners practical opportunities to put their new skills and knowledge to work. Judges especially liked how the course leverages scenario-based activities like the one on slide 29, which includes a video displayed on a Quizmaker blank slide, a hyperlink to a job aid spreadsheet, and customized feedback.

Sean’s tip for managing the publishing of large courses

One of Sean’s favorite workflow tips when creating large, content-rich courses like this one is to use what he calls the “shell method.” This allows the team to optimize their publishing process by publishing pieces of the course separately, then combine the output into one course at the end.

He explains in the following videos:

View this screencast at Screenr

View this screencast at Screenr

Thank you, Sean, for sharing — and congrats to you and your team for creating a Guru-quality course!