Jennifer Stainer Authors 37 AcroTrain Courses in 111 Days
Jennifer Stainer, Trainer/Training Coordinator, of the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, Florida has made record progress building an e-Learning system with AcroTrain. In five short weeks from first downloading the AcroTrain demo she converted 15 courses from instructor-led PowerPoint presentations to full-feature computer-based training. In less than four months she has single-handedly converted or created 37 courses. The center has over 200 employees that need training on subjects such as disaster management, blood-borne pathogens, personnel policies, sexual harassment and conducting pat-down searches.
Her live trial with users and management observing went beautifully. Management is delighted with the flexibility and cost savings that AcroTrain e-Learning will provide. The users also appreciate the flexibility. Per Jennifer, “Through all our testing, the software never failed.”
Jennifer plans to complete 40 courses as a part of the initial instructor-led to e-Learning conversion project. Jennifer imports data from learner’s personnel records to register them as AcroTrain system learners. She then pre-registers them for their required courses. Learners will be able to take courses in the CBT lab, or employees with computers may take courses at their desktops. Initially just the center employees will take courses. However, Jennifer is considering a “What to Expect” CBT course for new residents and a sister company in Pennsylvania is very interested in developing their own e-Learning courses.
For each course she reviews the existing Power Point slides and any available assessments and supporting materials. The slides are supplemented with additional information where needed and divided into brief topics. The topics are grouped into modules and courses. Each topic has related formative questions, and most include exam questions. Most of the development time was spent researching to update and supplement the existing information. Jennifer’s plan was to design each course to require an hour or less average completion time.
‘Emergencies & Disaster Management’ is Jennifer’s favorite course. This had been a single bulleted item in the previous instructor-led program. Instructor discretion determined the actual message that learners received. Jennifer conducted the necessary research and expanded the item to a brief course. She notes that all employees will now get the same carefully prepared training on this important topic.
When asked about her decision to purchase the AcroTrain e-Learning System, Jennifer replied, “Before buying AcroTrain I did a lot of Internet research to find the right authoring software, and I didn’t have unlimited funding.” She was concerned that most systems had desirable features but also had astronomical prices. In addition, many had extremely steep learning curves. “AcroTrain was exactly what I needed.” Jennifer’s only prior multi-media experience was with the production of ‘talking head’ videos for a previous employer.