It amazes me how learning and collaboration take place via the Internet and the World Wide Web. I thank Tim Burners-Lee for the Web and those who develop applications (Skype, Base Camp, blogs, etc.) to promote global sharing and team work.
What inspired this post? Well, every Tuesday, Tom Kuhlmann of Articulate (he’s V.P. of Community) publishes a new post on his Rapid e-Learning blog. I’m one of many who comment on his posts to share ideas, experience, and even lessons learned.
One of Tom’s blog readers read a comment of mine, then clicked the URL to visit my Web site. (http://www.RidgeViewMedia.com) At the time, my Home page had a news notice about an Articulate Quizmaker demo I had created.
I don’t know that reader, but he’s the Training Manager at an insurance company in another state and time zone. He liked the demo so much that he wanted his in-house e-learning team to recreate it for one of their courses. Want to view the demo? Click the link below.
They began their efforts, and then one of the IDs/Developers contacted me via an e-mail message to ask for help. They ran into a problem with their Quizmaker project file. I asked him to send me their files so I could troubleshoot and find the issue, and he did (removing corporate proprietary information and including only the Adobe Flash SWF file).
Now, I have some experience as a Q.A. Tester, and I determined the issue came from their Flash SWF file. They weren’t quite sure what to do, so I sent them my Quizmaker project file and my Flash FLA file.
That did it!
The *.fla file I sent helped them resolve their roadblock, they successfully published their quiz, and their manager was very happy. (It’s a good thing when your manager is happy!)
Wrap Up
This brief experience with “strangers”, people I’ve never met nor seen, warmed my heart. First, I feel privileged to be a part of the global learning community. This community bubbles over with caring, active, and exciting professionals. As a community, we are always learning so we can help our learners to increase their performance by improving their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
And, all of this happened when a learning professional reached out to me to ask for guidance, and I provided the resources they needed to achieve success. I still feel touched thinking about it. And, in the spirit of learning and collaboration, if you’d like the Quizmaker/Flash project files for your next Quizmaker project, send me a message to: info AT ridgeviewmedia.com
You and I are “Always Learning”, so feel free to share this post with others who use (or are planning to use) Articulate’s Quizmaker ’09 application.
If you like this post, you may also enjoy:
Adobe Flash SWF Scenarios Inside Quizzes
PowerPoint 2007 Designs for e-Learning
Creating Effective Assessments | Video of the Month 200808
Thanks for the helpful example of how social media (participating in a blog) helped solve a problem.
Hi Jenise,
I am the happy manager you spoke of in your post! And yes, we do appreciate your willingness to work with strangers out of the blue (it was a big help). I have to agree with you – I also see a consistent and genuine desire to help others throughout our learning community. Your quick response was a shining example of that!
This collaborative approach to solving (common) problems has been very beneficial to my team. We use a combination of open source and commercial training applications to develop/deliver training content for three different insurance companies (under our parent organization Unitrin).
Tom’s blog, training development communities, and practical examples like the one you offered, have all been a great help in solving course design problems and more often than not, inspiring us to try new and innovative techniques.
This was a very good read. Thanks again for your help!
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