Evolve, from Appitierre, has a couple of new interactive components. I wanted to learn how they worked and figured I’d make a little demo and share my thoughts.
Here’s my starting point; how do I bring life to a compliance course? Well, I may as well start with a typical compliance subject – password security. I know some systems are smart enough to force users to vary their password to a set criteria. However, do they know why there’s a minimum, or even why they should go beyond it?
So that was my starting point. Try three new components, narrative, branching and hint to see if I could make a little snippet of a larger ‘infosec’ course. Click the image below for the demo, it’ll open in a new tab:
Here are the techniques used and the thinking behind them:
- Dare I say it? Yes, I’m using content locking. Always a thorny subject. Learning designers and users kind of hate it, but it gets used a lot to evidence that something was viewed. However, in this example, I’ve used it purely for sequencing. And unless you specifically notice it, it’s kind of invisible.
- The demo opens with a story-telling narrative component to make it feel a bit more ‘real-world’ and less of a compliance lecture. I feel that starting with a real-life(ish) example helps to make it more relatable. The reaction I’m looking for is ‘Yeah! That sounds a bit like me’.
- A branching scenario follows the narrative. Here the user explores the content in a way that feels relevant to them. Choose what you might do in the workplace, and the specific stuff for that choice is presented. The reaction should be ‘Ah! That’s what I’d do’.
- Discuss the pros and cons of each choice and point to supplementary ‘learning’ resources. With compliance, there’s often a need to read a specific policy. But, what I wanted to do in this example is explore the practical application of a policy rather than the policy itself.
- Content curation. Why reinvent the wheel? If people want to know stuff they look it up online, don’t they? So why not save time and effort and point them to a few resources that support the topic. I’ve used web pages and YouTube videos. For the videos, I’ve used Evolve’s ability to start at a specific point, although you can do the ‘start from point’ directly via YouTube.
If you’d like a sneak peek ‘under the hood’, here’s a screenshot of the branching component setup. An initial three options lead through to nine curated resources depending on the user’s choices.
It’s only a short demo. I’m not saying it’s the finished thing by a long way. In fact, it’s just a little prototype. I’d love to know what I’ve missed. What do you reckon?
I have to say a big thank you to the following for creating the original content to enable the curation; smallbiztrends.com, howtogeek.com, teamsid.com, kitestrings.io, time.com, and YouTube users Tinkernut, and Linus Tech Tips.
And gratitude to Appitierre for their continued improvement of a great authoring tool.