Insights from an effective eLearning expert

Best known by some for our persuasive presentations, the brilliant BrightCarbon team also excel in effective eLearning. And alliteration! Our skills developing eLearning that works are called on more often than our talent with literary devices, so I was excited to sit down with BrightCarbon’s eLearning development lead Kelly Atkins. We discuss our eLearning process, common client challenges and cake – enjoy!

Hi Kelly! You know that we’re an interesting bunch here at BrightCarbon. Unsurprisingly not many of us have degrees in making really great PowerPoints, so what did you do before you joined BrightCarbon?

Directly before BrightCarbon I was a research scientist with a passion for circadian biology, sigma factors and communication of cellular timing. I was also super interested in the effects of nanoparticles. I’ve managed laboratories, organised science outreach festivals, and did quite a few art science collaboration projects including performing in an interactive theatre piece. And who doesn’t have a couple of obscure jobs along the way – an office manager and product designer in the solar power industry. Oh and I love to bake.

Cake aside, you’ve been delighting clients at BrightCarbon for a while now and moved into the role of eLearning development lead last year, tell me a bit about the role.

Great question. It’s a tale of 2 halves; a reactive side and a proactive side.

Reactively I respond to my colleagues’ requests for support, and lend a hand/give advice/hop in to support as and when needed. Proactively, I keep eLearning in BrightCarbon run smoothly and progressing. I push to develop our Carbonites, supporting building their skillsets to delight our clients and build their expertise in all things training and eLearning from the theory through to the practical.

Supporting on so many projects, you must get to know our clients pretty well. What are some of the common challenges they face in creating effective eLearning?

Often our clients know they have a business need for training but aren’t sure how to make it effective. That’s where we come in. We also work with a lot of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). SMEs are essential to many eLearning projects but they sometimes know too much! This means they can get bogged down in the details and forget about the business need and overall aim of the training. We help keep the project focused and on track.

And, of course, many clients are dealing with what seems to be an ever decreasing budget, matched with high expectations for outstanding outcomes. Through discussion, and a bit of out the box thinking, we tend to find a way to create an effective solution.

What’s the process for creating eLearning at BrightCarbon?

Our clients should start by clearly working out what their business need is and what their learners need to be able to do differently by the end of the training. We can then advise on whether eLearning is the solution for their business need. If it is then we recommend having everyone who will be making decisions about the eLearning in the room from the very start of the project – everyone needs oversight as to the big picture.

At the very start of the project we help define your learning objectives and then we stick to them. These become our anchor as we navigate through the sea of glorious content together. At BrightCarbon we refer to this bit of the process as ‘Phase 1’. At the end of Phase 1 you should know the answers to questions like:

• Who are our learners?
• What are our learning objectives?
• What tool will we use to build the training?
• How will we structure the content?

Once all your stakeholders agree on the answers, we can move on to Phase 2. At BrightCarbon, Phase 2 is the storyboarding phase. Our instructional designers storyboard animations and interactions, and write scripts and assessments to produce a complete blueprint of the learning. As with Phase 1, it’s really important that all stakeholders sign off on the plan at this stage, to prevent potentially costly delays later down the line.

Finally, it’s Phase 3. The build! We usually start with a design sample, to make sure everyone is on the same page about the look and feel of the eLearning. Once we get the green light, we dive into the full build and deliver an Alpha, Beta and final Gold build to make sure all feedback is captured before we send over the final files.

eLearning projects can be quite complex, so it’s important that you work with great project managers (like our teams!) to help everything run smoothly.

Across all the projects you’ve worked on, what have your clients found most valuable about working with BrightCarbon?

BrightCarbon was built on developing persuasive presentations and we take a similar storytelling approach to learning, so that we can use the brain to its full potential. When you work with us, we really get to grips with your content and represent it in an engaging, visual way that helps learners stay engaged and retain the information. You’ll also often work with the same team on all your projects who become experts in your organisation. And we like to think we’re easy to work with, we’re responsive – so that question you really need the answer too, we’ll get right back to you on that!

Have you learnt anything surprising as part of your role?

Yes! Everyone truly is different, every project is different and so it’s so important to pin down the exact business need, audience and learning objectives at the start of any and every project. It’s so easy for our clients to drift away from their core message, and increase scope, by adding content that they think is interesting but that doesn’t align with their business need. So, agreeing on objectives makes us all stay on course and acts as the centring point for the project.

I’ve also been surprised by the fact that people tend to overestimate the quantity of information they can cram into a seat time – don’t cram so much info in that there isn’t time for knowledge checks or application of knowledge in skills based practice/scenarios.

Read about the importance of elearning assessment here!

What’s a piece of advice from a colleague that you’ve kept?

One thing I would say we are good at internally at BrightCarbon is sharing our experience and therefore advice. Over the years there have been a few great pieces of advice given to me, but those that spring to the top of my mind are ‘Always remember to review your eLearning as if you are the learner sat in the seat’ and ‘Use your learning objectives as your anchors to navigate through content. If it doesn’t serve them, does it have a place in the training?’

Asking the hard questions! And what piece of advice would you pass on?

The way we interact with digital is always evolving. The way our brains are evolving alongside technology is infinitely interesting – or perhaps that’s the scientist in me. Keep engaged with the developments in the field.

A more tangible piece of advice, always leave the door open for ideas and conversation to flow. Often the people who have the solutions are the people who encounter the problem. With an open door policy, the problems find the door – usually before they snowball!

And broadly speaking, I would always say stay curious, keep learning and you don’t need an excuse to eat cake.

I can’t help but agree with that! We’re almost out of time today but before we go, can you share some of your favourite training resources?

If you’re starting out in eLearning and instructional design, I would highly recommend The Accidental Instructional Designer – by Cammy Bean. If you’re looking for a bit of a deeper dive into eLearning – Michael Allen’s Guide to eLearning.

But for day to day inspo and updates I have to say The Learning Guild, Training Mag Network, eLearning heroes and Adobe Captivate Community. Of course, shameless plug alert, our BrightCarbon Blog and Masterclasses!

Thanks so much for talking to us Kelly! If you’d like to chat to Kelly or another one of our learning experts about a piece of training then get in touch!