What Does “Compliance” Mean And Why Does It Matter?
Let’s take a quick look at a few different meanings of “compliance”:
- Compliance training is courseware created to educate your employees on the laws, regulations, and company policies that apply to their day-to-day job responsibilities. This type of training is very common in banking or healthcare industries.
- Section 508 Compliance refers to creating content that is accessible to all learners according to the standards set out in Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act.
- SCORM-compliant eLearning is necessary if you are delivering and tracking graded learning content via a Learning Management System, or LMS.
Feeling overwhelmed by all these things you have to comply with? Don’t worry—it’s easy to find free resources on compliance training, 508-compliant content, and SCORM-compliant tools. Read on as I break it down for you.
Compliance Training
If you’re creating eLearning content for a heavily regulated industry, chances are your learners are required by an outside agency to complete training on certain compliance topics. Compliance training typically covers legal and ethical situations like workplace discrimination and harassment, dealings with competitors, insider trading, protecting trade secrets, record management, bribery and kickbacks, etc.
I’ll admit, none of these compliance training topics sound terribly riveting, but when you use a full-featured authoring tool like Lectora® Inspire to create them, you’re able to add in dynamic interactions and turn assessments into games.
Section 508 Compliance
Section 508 of the Workforce Rehabilitation Act is a law that requires federal agencies and their contractors to make their electronic and information technology accessible to those with disabilities, such as visual or hearing impairments. It outlines the minimum acceptable standards, such as “the use of text labels or descriptors for graphics and certain format elements”. Industry best practices encourage even those not affiliated with a federal agency to ensure their online training is 508 compliant. Many eLearning authoring tools, like Lectora eLearning software, are built with functions that help you easily create engaging and interactive 508-compliant eLearning courses.
These two tutorials are full of great resources for creating 508-compliant content in Lectora:
- How To Add Closed Captions To Video And Audio In Lectora
- Accessibility: How To Order Title Objects In Lectora
SCORM Compliance
SCORM is a common eLearning standard. You’ve probably heard a bit about SCORM by now. Or maybe you’ve heard about xAPI; the new eLearning standard on the block. Both are ways of tracking learner activity to show progress and understanding. These standards are the link between your eLearning content and your Learning Management System. Take a look at these two articles to get a brief history of these eLearning standards and see where things are going today:
- eLearning Standards—What They Are and Why They Matter
- Thursday’s Trending eLearning Topic: xAPI
