Newly Hired Learning Advisor Blended Training Solution
Project Info
Audience: Newly hired learning advisors (customer support role) at a global online K12 tutoring company.
Responsibilities: Instructional Design, eLearning Development, Graphic Design
Tools Used: Articulate Storyline, Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator, Mindmeister, PowerPoint
Year: 2022
Overview
This is a blended eLearning project for newly hired learning advisors (customer support role) at a global online K12 tutoring company. The project includes:
Three Instructor Led Training-based (ILT-based) synchronous online training sessions.
One asynchronous scenario-based eLearning experience.
A series of job aids.
The training goal is to accelerate the onboarding process and maximize the outcome of the newly hired learning advisors.
1. ILT-based Online Training Sessions (Synchronous)
ILT sessions aim to help learners build up fundamental knowledge and skills systematically. The sessions include:
Tools Training: In this session, a senior learning advisor teaches and demonstrates the operations of the students' operation system, Microsoft Office, and Trello.
Standard Operation Process (SOP) Training: In this session the learning advisor manager lectures on the essential operating procedures and standards of new students' onboarding, package renewal, and customer complaints. The instructor will share the email and calling scripts before class.
Products Training: In this session, a curriculum management expert introduces all products (programs) to learning advisors including the program name, target students' age range, program structure, and program goal.
2. Scenario-based eLearning Experience (Asynchronous)
This gamified learning experience, developed by Articulate Storyline, works simultaneously as a comprehension test and a problem-solving simulation. Tasks in this eLearning experience are all relevant to the previous ILT training sessions. In a nutshell, learners need to complete tasks in six themes regarding student service and parent complaints. The goal is to enhance learners’ essential work knowledge and skills previously taught and create a safe environment for newly hired learning advisors to cope with real-life customer issues.
3. Job Aids
After finishing all training, a series of PDF job aids are prepared for learners. There are three job aids, new students’ onboarding SOP, package renewal SOP, and student handover SOP. The goal is to shorten the time spent on file searching and communication to increase learning advisors’ daily work efficiency.
Due to business expansion, my client hired a few new learning advisors to support the flourishing North American market and planned to get them fully onboarded within two weeks. The client expressed issues with the previous training performance, which couldn't effectively help newly hired learning advisors familiarize mandatory customer support knowledge and skills. Those junior learning advisors who didn't receive proper training had to seek help from senior learning advisors. They not only needed help with customer complaints, but also basic system operation issues, which increased workloads for senior learning advisors and the manager, affecting the whole team's service performance. As a fast-growing start-up, my client can't afford long-term training processes, and they can't host in-person training sessions as most employees work remotely. Therefore, they were seeking for effective eLearning training plan to improve the training outcome for achieving the goal of improving the performance of new learning advisors in a short period.
After interviewing stakeholders and some learning advisors, consulting an SME, and researching and analyzing the existing training material and data, I proposed a two-week eLearning training plan that aims to consolidate fundamental knowledge and skills, simulate real-life problem-solving scenarios, and improve the efficiency of daily work.
Problem & Solutions
In the kickoff meeting, I action-mapped with the stakeholder (learning advisor manager) and SMEs (a senior learning advisor and a course management expert) to determine the fundamental cause of newly hired learning advisors’ low-performance rate. As a result, we agreed that inadequate and outdated onboarding training is the main reason for the performance gap. After conducting a series of interviews and data analysis, I proposed a blended eLearning solution idea combined with ILT-based training and scenario-based eLearning experience. I then storyboarded my design for the scenario-based eLearning content. After the stakeholders and SMEs reviewed and approved the storyboard, I created a prototype to present the visual design and interactions. I then moved to the development phase.
Process
Action Mapping
Action mapping helps me to focus on solving the performance problem instead of creating info-dumped content. We finally identified the business goal, which is that 98% of newly learning advisors’ first three-month performance review will meet expectations after finishing both synchronous and asynchronous training. And the learning advisor manager must review the scenario-based training results and provide feedback in time.
I also brainstormed with the stakeholders and SMEs about the focuses of synchronous and asynchronous training, respectively, and what activities should be included. We formed a clear blueprint to support the design process by getting the action map down.
Text-based Storyboard
The ILT training sessions are based on PowerPoint slides with regular interactions and visual design, so I laid out the structure and text content in a document for reviewing. The following text-based and visual-based storyboards and mockups are for the scenario-based eLearning content.
This scenario-based eLearning experience provided a safe, simulated environment for new hires to solve real-life problems and make mistakes. I divided the learning experience into two categories——SOP experience and Customer Incident. Each category contains 3 themes, and each includes 3-5 tasks.
To complete the SOP themes, learners had opportunities to apply the knowledge and practice the skills they learned in the ILT training sessions. For instance, they helped a new student onboard by operating the student management system and sending out a welcome email to the trainer. They also had to convince a customer to renew the class package.
Customer incident themes are all conversational scenarios, meaning learners will immediately receive customers’ reactions to their responses. I collected those real-life conversations from SMEs and used them in the themes so learners can experience the consequences triggered by bad choices with no harm.
After SMEs and stakeholders reviewed and approved this text-based storyboard, I started creating functional prototypes.
Visual Mockups
Chosen color scheme based on the company color scheme
I used Adobe Illustrator to recreate vector graphics and Adobe XD to create a general but functional prototype. The color scheme I used matches my client’s company color scheme.
I gamified and customized the experience to make the training more engaging, interactive, and fun.
Customization benefits creating an immersive eLearning environment and makes learners feel more resonated with this experience. Therefore, a learner-named avatar will be generated for learners based on the name and biological gender they provided at the beginning of the experience.
The gamified design will increase engagement and encourage learners to perform better. In my design, learners will receive a star once they complete one theme. They need to collect six stars to finish the full training.
I iterated the design a few times per the client’s feedback before incorporating the visual mockups with the text storyboard and forming a visual storyboard.
Visual mockup
Visual Storyboard
To improve the efficiency of the development process and ensure everyone is on the same page, I created a visual storyboard to present key activities and interactions in the eLearning experience. After being reviewed and approved by the client, I finally moved to the development phase.
I first created six prototypes with interactions in Articulate Storyline for the six themes to form a more efficient workflow, as I can duplicate all the interactions to the same situation.
Then I created the content in batches to facilitate the iteration process. After finishing every theme, I asked for feedback from SMEs and stakeholders so I could make changes in time and prepare for the adjustment to upcoming themes.
To achieve the customized avatar effect, I added a male state to the female character so it would be easy to assign the correct character by changing the state of the graphic along with adding an “Adjust variable” trigger under certain conditions.
I also inserted a few sound effects in the content, such as a phone ringing while the customer calls and cheering when learners complete one theme, to increase the immersion and amusement.
After finishing the final adjustment and getting approved by the client, I published the content and tested it by experiencing the whole process to make sure everything was perfect.
