Overview

I was asked to re-design a long-standing HR search committee compliance course.  The course was very important because training ensures those serving follow university practices and legal guidelines.  Anyone at the university who hires staff or faculty must complete this course. 

The challenge

To standardize and convert content from a decade old in-person course to online delivery.  I also needed to cut delivery time of this eight-hour course delivered by two employees, from Human Resources and EEO.  

The solution I offered

The content we had was already approved by general counsel and HR.  Scenarios were considered but discarded due to the additional time for outside approval.  

First, my solution included carefully chunking the content into easily understood amounts, developing an outline for the course that read like a table of contents, told a story.  Doing so enabled participants to get the big picture right-away and also facilitated review.

Second, I included frequent interactive progress checks, to summarize progress for participants.  Doing so created momentum and provided motivation.

Then, I used Articulate to design the content and added a voice-over track.  I did this because reading and hearing reinforce each other, there is synergy.  I included a fair amount of color and image movement on each slide.  It wasn’t noisy, but enough to keep participant attention.

Results from my solution

The payoff was big.  I delivered a 1-hour, self-paced, online course, that employees could take from anywhere, at anytime.  In an hour.  Uptake was immediate.  Yes, it was required, but feedback confirmed it was a much more pleasant experience.  I received many compliments from those who recognized my voice from other video tutorials or from participating in my online seminars.

To this day, with thousands of registrations, it our most viewed online course.

My role in the solution?

I served as the Instructional Designer.

Here’s a brief timeline of what I did and how I did it.

 First meetings

What is the benefit to examining the process?

In these early steps we do a gap analysis for the process for which training is being developed. I have fresh eyes on it as an instructional designer, and am also looking at the project with the eyes of an end user.

What this means is I ask a lot of questions about process. And from that end user perspective, I learn the process, get as intuitive an understanding as I can.  It’s important I understand the process so that when I am reading the script and speaking the audio, I can speak credibly and conversationally to the end user and sound like I know what I’m talking about because, by that point, I do.

Over the many years and projects, I’ve found starting from the end user point of view very beneficial because, as we explain the process back to ourselves, we notice or discover process gaps that need fixed.  It works a bit like proofreading a document by starting from the bottom and reading upwards.  You are less likely to mentally fill-in any gaps.

 

Current State of course – what needed fixed?

From interviewing the HR Director, we learned the current version of the course had two components, made by EEO and HR, which were presented in-person by staff from the respective departments (this was pre-pandemic).  

The project team made its initial review during a two week period. There was a lot of PowerPoint deck prints of material, most pages with annotations in the margins.  We learned that, over the years, many edits were made by presenters, themselves different as people moved-on. 

Two separate presenters, almost two separate courses, and the accumulation of edits had a ‘telephone game’ effect on the course.  Additionally, run times were about six hours. 

 

How we decided to measure course improvement

In my early conversations with the director, we discussed and defined what metric our efforts would improve in the course and how we would measure it.  That pain point was failed search committees. 

To be sure, failures occur for many reasons, they can be as simple as unintentionally using different questions for the candidates.

We agreed our metric to improve was a reduction in failed search committees, by a certain percentage.

To ensure compliance with hiring laws, university rules, and faculty union, I suggested and the group agreed we would figure a way to deliver the same or nearly the exact same course, each time.

The project team felt that, to get to our goal, we had to make two primary corrections: to the many impromptu edits and update course materials to current standards.  

 

Storyboard

 

Storyboards = prototype using text

This was primarily a compliance course, not a software demonstration.  While there were screen captures of clicking buttons, there was going to be a lot of talking.

To increase retention around the more technical slides (EEO or legal requirements to ‘say this exactly’) we wanted emphasis and repetition. So, we decided the verbiage for technical slides would be on screen and also spoken.

Storyboards are a perfect and low cost method for capturing the exact wording I need for my spoken audio. 

My storyboard, I think of it as prototyping with text, was very well suited for thinking through how to present other less technical topics.  A row on a storyboard represented a single slide and we studied which infographics and bullet lists would enhance or summarize spoken audio for each slide. 

Prototyping with text was completed far faster than iterating through actual infographics and bullet lists on Articulate slides.

My storyboards are usually a four-column Word table, with numbered rows corresponding to each slide.  On each row I write the audio script, describe the screen capture that needs to occur, select a button for example.  In the third column I describe the animation emphasis I will add.  For example add a red border before the button is selected.  It’s a clear and easy to follow format that facilitates project team review. 

Once we had our wording from EEO, HR and legal in the script, I needed to make it more conversational, change language I was permitted to change, make everything more conversational and less wooden. 

Finally, I added bookends: introductions and segues to connect the slides, so moving between slides flowed and wasn’t choppy. 

 

Why interaction is important

[Please note: the above interaction demo contains audio gaps where the company name was removed]

I have seen many compliance courses present an entire module, followed by a comprehensive quiz, expecting participants to recall considerable amounts of new information.  This approach focuses too much only on memorization and less than I prefer on understanding and applying the concepts.

 

Make mine chunky

Noted above, there was a lot of spoken audio, a lot of attention would be required of the participant. 

To help reinforce the more technical concepts and exact wording participants were expected to recall where needed, I suggested we include frequent hands-on activities directly following the major points we wanted to emphasize.  Chunking content by major topic helped participants recall new learning.

For interactive content I recommended H5P, which has a wide menu of varied interactions and was compatible with our LMS, Desire2Learn (D2L).  I added a fourth column in the storyboard to document H5P interactions. 

The interactive activities also substituted for frequent knowledge checks, maintained engagement, and improved retention. 

 

Storyboard reviews are good project documentation

We reviewed my updates, to make sure I didn’t accidentally change the meaning or use incorrect wording.

The reviews were thorough, and I documented them directly in dated versions of the storyboard.  I saved each meeting as a different storyboard version (‘2-21-2019-002’), which greatly aided any ‘who said what’ or ‘when did we do that?’ questions after the course was approved.

 

Development

I used the Five Moments of Need instructional design model for this project

For those learning this material for the first time their needs were addressed in these ways:

• Condensed format
• Course graphics were designed to aid focus and add emphasis to the learning goals of the current topic. 
• Interactive, hands-on activities were designed to reflect the benefits to their department in completing a quality hire process.
• On screen summaries were added to aid recall. 
• Additionally, a job aid was added to the course Resource module that included the same summaries.

Search Committee chairs manage the hiring project, as it were, and had served on many prior search efforts.  We were expanding on their prior process knowledge.

Additionally, chairs had deep department knowledge and were positioned to guide new committee members. Again, we posted reference content in the Resource module.  Of use were process checklists, sample rejection letters, waiver checklists for faculty, links to university articles (laws) referenced in the course. 

There were dozens of resources.  And because we used links to resource documents and did not copy documents into the LMS, updates to any resource were always reflected.

 

We needed a way for users to apply recall and apply the many ethical principles, legal requirements and university policies laid out in the course. 

An LMS was our answer.  For these reasons, I always intended to base the course in the LMS.

First, was easy reference of content modules and Resources.  Second, D2L courses are available on any screen: web, phone, or tablet.  So wherever someone needing access might be, the course content and performance support documents were always available, affording an access even better than even from in-office.  Course content is available wherever a participant has internet access.

There were many who were already familiar with the course in its prior format and content.  They needed their knowledge updated to stay current with new search committee requirements.  In our testing we found that because the course was so much shorter, down from six hours to 30 minutes, these participants felt the time investment was reasonable.

 

I used Articulate

For development where video was expected, I used Articulate’s slide approach (I later switched to Active Presenter) for it’s story view to better manage the many slides I knew our content would generate.

This project is organized into 6 scenes for my convenience managing the 62 slide project.  When posting to the LMS, the output was organized into 14 video files mapped to the 14 LMS modules.

I made extensive use of Articulate’s layered timeline.  When building up a concept on a slide, I used layers to control timing of spoken word and bulleted lists or layered-in graphic elements, building up an idea into a complete thought. 

 

Using graphics to aid focus and add emphasis

This project had dozens of infographics.  I made informational, timeline, lists, process, comparison, and hierarchical infographics for this project.  I made them using Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, or Affinity Publisher.  When I designed an infographic, I broke down a process, built a timeline, or made a comparison to reinforce the spoken audio of that slide. I took care across the entire course to use images consistent in style with each other.  For other topics I used light-hearted images when I felt the tone was helpful for engagement.  For Search Committee image needs, I stayed mostly with a realistic, photo image format.  

For example, the slide that focused on recognizing bias in oneself needed to emphasize the downside of bias.  I worked through iterations until I found a ‘road closed’ poster that had potential.  In one photo example, I used Affinity Photo to enhance and exaggerate the dramatic, dystopian skies, and vanishing horizon, then converted it to a lifeless grey while maintaining the white lettering ‘Road Closed’, to emphasize how bias leads to a dead end and is ‘not good’ in the search committee process.

In another example, we discuss the results of improper screening, bullet list some examples, which are factual and we need, but you know, dry.  To maintain engagement, keep the momentum and make the point, I slowly faded in a picture of someone lifting their foot from a line on the road, clearly the wrong side of the line, trying to unstick a giant wad of bubblegum.

For all assets I used subscription services I keep or just searched Unsplash or Pixabay.  Every graphic had clearance from my service. When sourcing in Pixabay and Unsplash I filtered on ‘Creative Commons License 0’, meaning no rights reserved and the work is in the public domain.

 

Professional audio production tools and techniques were used to create high quality audio

High quality audio is an unseen but very important dimension of an online course.  Done correctly, the instructor sounds as if they are talking directly with the participant.  This immediacy increases participant engagement with the course. 

Too many courses have audio that sounds like the voice over talent is speaking in a hall, gymnasium or other large space. 

Think about your own experience: don’t you notice when a audio sounds like it was recorded in a garage or basement?  The effect is distracting and the cost is less participant engagement.

How does this happen?

Recording space and mic technique are usually the cause.  Untreated spaces, such as smooth walls in many offices or residences, reflect the talent’s voice in the space.  The microphone records both the original spoken word and the slight delay coming off the walls, creating an echo effect.  On the mic, being too far from it can cause room reflection.  Improved microphone technique can remove some of the effect. 

A good and consistent result requires a lot of experience.

I used my home studio to produce the spoken audio for this project.  My goal when producing the course was for spoken audio to sound close and conversational to the participant.

My studio includes a professional studio microphone, treated recording space, and Bitwig digital audio workstation (DAW).  In this space I record, clean, edit, correct, and enhance the original recording to get the effect we want.  I use Bitwig DAW along with some studio plug-ins to build a workflow that consistently produces high quality, conversational audio, echo free.

 

Teamwork

Workflow is different for every project.  University HR is a small, in-demand team.  They often needed to pause work and it was often necessary to work with their schedule and accept that milestones were not written…in stone, but for this group were guides.   I always had multiple projects in development and when HR was not available, I got ahead on other projects.

 

Creating the LMS Course

A result of the many years of edits meant content was disorganized. While completing the storyboard, it was easy to see our 30-minute course was dense with content and needed grouped into easier to recall chunks.

Noted earlier, we grouped some content.  Chunking content into digestible sections facilitates retention. To chunk the content at the course level, I created topic modules in the LMS, including duties, ethical issues, and starting a search, for seven modules.  I used very descriptive module names to facilitate LMS navigation.

In the follow-up, participants later reported they preferred discrete modules over a monolithic video.  No one wants to scrub through a 30-minute video to find a 30-second explanation for review.

Additionally, a self-enroll feature was turned on for the course which facilitated the hundreds of participants anticipated. 

I added HR associates and their director to the course as instructors or managers.  The difference in roles is in the ability to access reports only or the course roster and reports.  The director wanted to have full access in the event they could not wait for me to run reports on request.

Completion was tracked via standard reporting available in the LMS.  I added report access to the above roles and configured reporting to monitor and report participation.

A separate Resource module was added and listed every single document referenced in the video.  We included:

• Hiring process checklists for faculty, staff
• Contract articles
• University rules
• Sample ‘not selected’ letters

There were almost 36 resource links posted.

The LMS makes available a tool, called Intelligent Agents and similar to Outlook’s rules tool, for automating routine LMS tasks. 

I have used the Intelligent Agents tool for other projects and for this project we wanted to send a reminder to anyone approaching two years since last attending training.

I configured and tested the rule, then activated it.  At any time, I can check who was sent a reminder.

Once triggered, the rule sends an email message to the committee member, the HR Director, and myself for safety.  The message includes a gentle reminder and an attachment of the agreement each search committee person signs when serving.

 

Results & Takeaways

The result was we ensured each participant received exactly the same training, which assured leadership compliance was met; a standardized course

Recognizing when to push and when to be flexible sustains momentum and keeps pressure down. 

HR was very happy to have a course in compliance with current standards.  They appreciated the always available online delivery.

Finally, they really appreciated my fresh approach presenting the content as well as the hands-on interactive activities.

 

Closing

Almost four years since being published, the course is still active with hundreds of faculty and staff participants. Link updates in the Resource section have kept the course current.  No further updates have been needed to video or audio.

 

Generally, my projects need a target metric, gap analysis, stakeholder motivation, target audience, output format, an outline or SME, and a due date. 

I hope this gives you some insight into my process for delivering your projects.