Responsibilities: Instructional Designer, eLearning Developer

Problem: Citizens across the country are facing a higher amount of natural disasters then ever before. Some areas are facing disasters that have not happened in that area. With the increase in storms and events, citizens need to know the emergency preparations to take and what to do if a natural disaster happens in their area.

Solution: Scenario based eLearning course that is based off of CDC guidelines but uses a zombie invasion as the potential disaster to keep learners engaged on the course. Learners will go through sections on preparing an emergency supply kit, fixing potential problem areas in the home and planning for if the emergency happens. Learners will also go through knowledge checks to ensure understanding of each section.

Tools Used: Articulate Storyline, Ocenaudio, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, MS Word

Target Audience: All adults in natural disaster areas

Date: 2021

I started this process by researching what should be done in an emergency. I used ready.gov and the CDC, who has ways to prepare for all natural disasters, including a blog post on what to do if a zombie invasion happens. Once I had my research together I broke down the information into three categories. Those categories were making a supply kit, preparing the home and what to do in an attack. From there I created a written storyboard that broke down the information by slide with the graphic ideas and activities on each section.

As I was writing the storyboard some slides seemed too wordy and during the editing process different interactions, including tab and accordion were added. As the storyboard was created, an important goal was to keep learners engaged by repeatedly bringing in the zombie element. The knowledge checks were created to build on each other and get learners to the identify and apply phases of Bloom's Taxonomy.

This project started with a functional prototype. Once graphics and audio were added slides quickly changed. Ensuring that learners did not have large amounts of text meant adding tabs and accordion tabs to some slides. In addition choosing zombie images that were not overly graphic but not super jokey was important as learners need to take the emergency content seriously, even if the zombie invasion is not. Working on the timeline for the opening slide was an important part of development, as the images need to correspond with the audio as they would in a news summary.

During the development of the knowledge course, making sure the images kept learners engaged, while not detracting from the learners ability to read the type crucial. I used transparency and keeping sections blank for writing to make it easy for learners to quickly understand the text.

I received feedback during the development phase that users were having difficulty with the knowledge checks because the directions said to push submit, but users were to use the player submit button. I created my own submit button in the course for each submit button to make the knowledge checks more user friendly.