Workplace Harassment

One of the issues with third-party vendor materials is the lack of truly company-specific content. Usually, it's just a logo replacement. Often, the company is at the mercy of the vendor regarding overall design, layout, functionality, and (honestly) quality. 

This was the case with the vendor-supplied course, which was riddled with functionality issues, a poor UIX, antiquated approaches to delivering content, and more. 

After numerous complaints from users, both on the floor and at the upper levels, I decided to prototype a more company-specific, modern, clean... and WORKING... deliverable, based on the needed content provided as well as the internal elements.

Digging into the SCORM package, I was able to access the purchased materials to drop into the prototype as needed, primarily the video content. This was the only usable material provided, as the rest of the elements were, quite frankly (and as agreed by management), worthless. The course elements/topics were reviewed, and irrelevant information was removed, leaving only the company-desired and needed content. 

Graphics and additional elements, including company branding (color and fonts) were brought in and the entire outline was provided to senior leadership for verifiction and approval.

With the approved content signed off on and the new "vision" approved, it was time to design and develop. This is my traditional approach, the "double D" of ADDIE, with a Rapid Prototyping approach to reduce completion time and time to get into the reviewing SMEs' hands.

The outline provided the Agenda (something more beneficial to the adult learner than traditional learning objectives), and the Agenda drove the content. Research into current laws and policies - local, state, and federal, as well as internal - allowed the content to trult focus on company-specific requirements, reducing "fluff" and providing only need-to-know information.

Several formative knowledge checks were provided, navigational "restrictions" that relied on user competency, and of course, videos were all utilized in this version. 

From start to finish, the entire project took less than one work week to complete and release for an initial review.

The overall approval and success of this rebuilt and re-branded version was shocking to all involved, including management and senior leadership. While most data and feedback were quantitative, it was a resounding success and received a much higher approval rating (85-90% improvement) than the previous third-party-supplied version.

• Seat time was reduced by nearly 10 minutes. With over 10,000 employees, this resulted in significant savings for the organization.
• User satisfaction increased from around 30-40% to 85-90%.
• Internal ownership of the content enabled future revisions to be made internally, removing the need for and expense to the vendor.
• An enormous reduction in LMS/IT service tickets from the original poor development.