Effective Parent Communication 

eLearning Course

A scenario based course for new teachers to practice communicating effectively with parents over the phone about behavior concerns.  

Audience: New teachers

​

Responsibilities: Analysis, Instructional Design, eLearning Development

​

Tools Used: Articulate Storyline 360, Canva, Google Suite, MindMeister

Process

This project is for a fictitious client who is looking for a training module to help new teachers navigate communicating with parents.

Using my own personal experiences as a former teacher, I acted as the subject matter expert (SME) to conduct a needs analysis and create an action map before moving on to the design process. My design process was broken into several chunks to create my final product:

• Action mapping

​​

• Text-based story board

​

• Creating visuals and visual storyboard in Canva

​​

• Developing in Articulate Storyline

​

I decided that a scenario-based eLearning experience would best allow new teachers to practice the necessary communication skills to both prepare for and initiate conversations with parents. 

Action Map

After identifying my learning objective, I went through the action mapping process to identify the most important practices to lead to positive communication with parents. I used this action map as guide when creating my text-based storyboard and script. 

Storyboarding

Once my action map was complete, I began my storyboarding process. I worked through each slide of my eLearning module to identify graphics, text, and animations. This pre-planning helped me work through entire module and ensure it was meeting the needs outlined in my action map.

During this process I decided to create a help option for each slide. This help option was guided by a character named Becky--named after my own mentor and partner from my time as a teacher. 

Once I was happy with my text-based storyboard I began creating a visual storyboard with all my graphics using Canva. Storyboarding in Canva first let me tweak visual mock-ups until I was happy with their look, then easily transfer them into the Articulate Storyline software to make interactive. 

Prototype Development

Once I was happy with my storyboard, I began transferring it to Articulate Storyline 360 to create an interactive module.  

This was my first time using this software, so I spent lots of time experimenting with it's different features and tools. One unique feature I incorporated was the drag-and-drop style question. I used this question type to create an interactive to-do list for the learner to make before they could make their parent phone call. Navigating this feature was tricky at first, but I was able to make it work as well as make insightful feedback as to why certain items should be done before calling. 

This project is still in the development stage. I am still collecting feedback from industry peers to see what improvements can be made.