Running a service area
Building an e-learning module
Six kinds of step in any order, a picture beside any of them, and no developer involved.
On this page
E-learning is where modules are built. A module is a series of steps, and you build it on screen: there is no developer, no authoring tool and no file to send anybody.
The six kinds of step
| Step | For |
|---|---|
| Written | A heading and whatever you want to say under it. |
| Picture | A diagram or photograph that is itself the content. Shown whole rather than cropped. |
| Film | A video, with a transcript underneath. |
| Callout | A box drawing attention to something, in one of three tones: good, warning or information. |
| Download | A document to keep: a checklist, a template, a one-page summary. |
| Knowledge check | Questions. See writing a knowledge check. |
Any step can also carry a picture beside its words, so the picture step is for the case where the picture is the point.
Order
Steps are reordered from the builder with the arrows beside each one. Editing a step never moves it, which is worth stating because it is exactly the kind of thing that would be silently wrong: correcting a typo on step two of five leaves it as step two.
Films
Always write the transcript. A school network that blocks video sites is common, sound in an open-plan office is not always possible, and the transcript is quicker to read than the film is to watch. A film step with no transcript is a step that reaches some of your audience.
Pictures that carry information
Where a diagram is the content, use a picture step: it is shown whole rather than cropped to a banner shape, which matters when a quarter of the picture is the part with the annotations on it.
Write the caption so that it says everything the picture says. The step's title is all the alternative text there is, and somebody using a screen reader needs the content rather than the label.
Length
Ten to fifteen steps is a comfortable module: enough to make progress feel like progress, short enough to finish in one sitting. A three-step module cannot show anybody where they are, and a forty-step one is abandoned in the middle.
Publishing
A module is a draft until you publish it, and a draft is invisible.
Who can open it
A module can be open to everybody, or reserved to schools holding a particular subscription. Where a school cannot open one, the page says which service includes it rather than only refusing.
Versions and validity
SCORM packages, versions and validity.
Assigning it
Schools assign your modules to their own people. City Council has one lever: assigning across every school holding a chosen subscription, from the module's own page. Not everybody at those schools — who needs it is the school's decision — and not schools that have not bought it.
Not what you were after?
Ask City Council in the bubble at the corner of any page, or open your help conversation in full. It is one conversation that never closes, so there is nothing to raise and no subject line to invent.