the challenge

One of our clients traditionally delivered all of their trainings through a vILT delivery modality. They capped their courses at 25 participants, and ran 4-day virtual trainings with a cohort of 5 instructors. In 2024, budget cuts caused them to look for ways to bring their courses to more participants, without going over their participant cap, and without paying more instructors.

the learners

Local (e.g., county- and state- level) regulators in food safety, who came to trainings with 1 to 6 years of professional experience.

the approach

I wanted to maintain the feel of the vILT environment as much as possible. Participants should feel that the content was still being delivered by SMEs who had worked in the field and could provide a “been there, done that” atmosphere.

the team

• 5 SMEs

• 1 videographer

• 2 internal course delivery staff

• 1 instructional designer (myself)

the software

• Riverside.fm

• Microsoft Word

• Microsoft PowerPoint

the learning solution

We decided to create a series of Online/Asynchronous plus vILT hybrids, with SMEs delivering content by recored presentation in the Online/Asynch portion of the course. This allowed us to decrease the virtual training day from 4 business days to 1 business day.

Our course conversion process included the following 6 phases:

• a SME review process to first make any necessary content updates

• parsing content into delivery modalities based on conceptual complexity: online/asynch or vILT

• developing the script for SME filming (for the online/asynch components)

• coaching and filming SMEs delivering content

• online/asynch course authoring

• development of vILT materials

my role

Project lead; consulting with SMEs to develop the script used in film delivery; coaching SMEs on delivering content to the camera on film; script checking for accuracy during filmed content delivery; approving final cuts from the videographer; proof reading closed captioning; developing slide deck to accompany vILT portion of the course.