It's that time of year....upgrading and improving my courses

It's that time of year when once again the kids are back in school, the evenings are getting cooler, the leaves are just starting to change colour, and I'm stuck looking at our Core Curriculum courses.

I've learned a lot from so many great elearning people and resources over the past year that when I look at my courses from last year I cry. They could be sooooo much better, but when you're a department of one with limited time, money and resources you often get stuck with something that gets you by, but not the something you're truly happy to put out to the masses.

My first struggle for this year's revamp is WHMIS. The mere word makes one cry. Last year's attempt to put this online for 2700 staff, all with many different roles was successful in that they completed it. It was unsuccessful from my point of view in that it was very very boring. Read, click, read, click, quiz. This year I wanted to try (at least minimally) to make this and a few other courses better. Still with a very limited amount of time. Facing 6 courses and about 4 weeks to fix them up...the odds are not in my favour.

I did get a really good start on taking the language of the courses and scaling it back dramatically. The number of words per screen were okay, but still way too wordy. The level of the language was also to high for some within our organization. Paring this back and simplifying the wording should at a minimum get the courses down 5-10 minutes each in time. (I refuse to tell you how long some are....next year's task).

After the language improvements the next part I want to tackle is the engagement the courses include. I'm having trouble coming up with global scenarios that apply to all types and levels of staff. Perhaps I'll brainstorm something next year. What I have started to do is at least change some of the placement of quiz questions. Instead of being lumped at the end they are embedded into the material. My goal is to create "mini" scenarios that can be answered regarding various pieces of information instead of one overall scenario for the course to be centered around.

I'll share one example here. It's still not exactly the level I'd like to get this course to, but it's a start and it's better than last year.

Last year I shared my use of the Carousel Engage activity to explain various WHMIS (my activity) symbols. This year I decided I didn't just want people to just read through all the material that this interaction held, I wanted to take it a little farther and turn it into more of a "scavenger hunt". Using the interaction can they answer questions about the various symbols or hazardous materials?

I've added 2 screenrs below to show how I created this. You can also find detailed explaination on how do to this from Dave Moxon's Articulate eLearning Blog - "How to embed engage 09 within quizmaker 09"

• Embedding an engage carousel interaction into an #quizmaker quiz. #Articulate (part 1)
• Embedding an engage interaction into quizmaker - part 2. #Articluate (thx @articulatedave http://bit.ly/vAudW)

Here's to hoping the feedback this year from participants is that they like this new format to the material.