How Vital Learning Built 25 HTML5 Compliant eLearning Courses In 5 months, Under Budget!

How Vital Learning Built 25 HTML5 Compliant eLearning Courses In 5 months, Under Budget!
Summary: For 25 years, Vital Learning LLC has produced essential skills training and development courses that address engagement and organizational challenges. When the Vital Learning team was faced with a time-sensitive challenge, it chose dominKnow’s web-based eLearning and mobile-learning authoring product, Claro, to "get the job done".

HTML5 Compliant eLearning Courses: A challenge at Vital Learning

Early in 2014, Vital Learning was presented with a challenge. The team had to rebuild and republish a suite of 25 eLearning courses – with over 1000 pages of content – from scratch and ensure HTML5 compatibility. The new courses would be accessible on all mobile devices, launch in all browsers and deploy across all platforms.

Vital Learning’s Product Manager, Todd Macey is responsible for evaluating emerging trends and technologies in the global training and development industry and adapting Vital Learning courses and methods to meet the needs of a competitive market. To build the company’s eLearning courses, Macey works with instructional designers and subject matter expert reviewers. This type of two to five person workgroup, which includes remote members, is increasingly common in companies producing online training content.

Why dominKnow’s Claro was chosen to “get the job done”

Macey chose dominKnow’s web-based eLearning and mobile-learning authoring product, Claro, to rebuild the 25 courses, and cites the product's easy learning curve, web-based real-time collaborative development features and HTML5 mobile compliancy as key reasons for his choice.

"Our workgroup got up to speed and started building a course in just a few weeks (far faster, in my experience, than for Adobe products). Claro’s reusable content features also save development time and the web-based platform means easy collaboration with remote team members. The project was completed under budget, in 5 months."

Macey continued, “I hired an instructional designer located in Baltimore, MD for this project and also worked with team members in Omaha, NE. Claro is cloud-based, which turned out to be supremely cost effective. I estimate the review and comment process in Claro took my team half the time it would have with a non-cloud-based method. We were able to build, edit and review in real time from where ever we were located – there was no duplication of work and no lost content.”

The best authoring tools available today are designed to take full advantage of cloud-based (web-based) computing, with several built-in features to help people collaborate better. Features such as working on the same project at the same time, the ability to share and re-use learning resources and other files across all projects, and the ability to allow subject matter experts and other stakeholders (an unlimited number) to review and approve content online — with no special tools or configurations necessary.

Says Macey of the process at Vital Learning, “the cloud-based platform was extremely helpful for resource management and the review process. After testing, we created ten "template" pages and locked down the layout and design for each kind of page. My designer took these templates, used Claro's "copy page" feature and inserted page-specific content. Once this system was established, the development process moved along very quickly. We were able to load and share all of our resources (audio, pictures, video) and associate each resource with a course. This authoring platform also made the review and Quality Assurance (QA) process very simple. After the designer finished a round of work, I’d review and give comments. After the first review, I assigned the course to several other team members to do QA and give comments. If we weren't using Claro, this process would have been very lengthy and tricky, but Claro made remote collaboration seamless and enabled us to stay organized and more efficient.”

Results exceeded expectations

Vital Learning built 25 courses from scratch in 5 months – 39% less than budgeted.

Vital Learning’s contracted instructional designer was familiar with Storyline from previous work, yet, after his experience on this job, highly recommended Claro.

The Vital Learning eLearning courses are mobile compatible, launch easily across all browsers, and offer improved learner engagement with dynamic interactive exercises, new design and better feedback – in short everything that Macey’s team needed to deliver. Problem solved.