Elearning Course: The Financial Essentials of Construction for Professional Service Providers

Responsibilities: Project Lead, Instructional Design, eLearning Designer and Developer
Target Audience: Professional Service Providers to the Financial Construction Industry
Tools Used: Articulate Storyline 360, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe XD, WellSaid Labs AI Voiceover

Overview
The financial aspect of Construction is complicated and highly specialized. Often professional service providers need a more comprehensive understanding of the terminology and processes involved in accurately assessing financial risk and operations.

This series of eLearning modules equip professional services providers with the knowledge needed to better service their construction company clients. The modules familiarize the providers with the day-to-day realities of the construction company’s finance department. They are NASBA approved, and provide CPE credits.

Problem
At CFMA, currently there are no accredited self-study courses targeted toward the professional service provider. Due to the industry’s specialized processes, there can be a knowledge gap between service providers and the financial  construction teams that they serve, which can result in misunderstanding, delays and financial cost to the projects.

Solution
Create interactive eLearning modules with NASBA approved exam questions, to close the knowledge gap, and provide CPE credits for successfully completing the exam.  These modules are built from a resource of 4 hour-long live webinars.

Design and Development Process
I worked with the Director of Education and the Construction Accounting Subject Matter Experts (SME) to:

  • Create and oversee a comprehensive Project Timeline and Production Schedule

  • Conduct Kickoff and all scheduled meetings with Director, Subject Matter Experts, Voiceover Talent and other contractors

  • Perform an initial learning assessment, and identify learning objectives

  • Review and edit the webinar transcript into a finalized script to use as basis for professional voice over recording

  • Create comprehensive text storyboard in Google Docs for review and comments from SMEs

  • In Adobe XD and PowerPoint, created mockups based on branding and design of previous eLearning modules created for the company.

  • In Articulate Storyline 360, designed and developed the course modules closely based on the webinar content. I incorporated interactive and animated elements, as well as interspersed knowledge checks in multiple choice, true/false and other formats.

Below is a slide show of a few interface examples.

Course Title Page

Course Title Page

Portal to the four modules

Portal to the four modules

Project Life Cycle Reveal

Project Life Cycle Reveal

Contractor Responsibilities

Contractor Responsibilities

WIP.png
Knowledge Check

Knowledge Check

Visual Storyboard
With the mockups reviewed and finalized, I created a full visual storyboard including screen by screen narrative text, visuals and interactive elements and functions.

Final Development
Once all text and visual storyboard content was approved by the SMEs and stakeholders, I proceeded to develop the four modules’ content and visuals, knowledge checks, combining interactivity, animation, and AI voiceover.

Takeaways
Working with an established brand and format has been an interesting experience. Even though I had no source files, I was able to replicate the branding look, feel and functionality of previous online training modules, and still incorporate original ideas and interactivity into the project.