This week I took three LinkedIn courses. The courses were by David Anderson, Brett Kirkpatrick and EverCourse.

• Accessible eLearning in Articulate 360, narrated by David Anderson, is a lengthy course – slightly over 2 hours long – but well worth it! Accessible learning design (aka inclusive or universal design) is design that can be navigated by a wide range of people of various backgrounds. This includes people who have traditionally been excluded or limited by technology, such as the elderly, people with physical disabilities, people who are neurodiverse, and by speakers of minority languages. Anderson’s Accessible eLearning in Articulate 360 explains how to enhance websites and online courses so that abled and disabled people can navigate them. Anderson presents a wide array of tools and techniques that make online content more accessible for people with disabilities. Among these tools are: closed captioning, video narration, transcriptions of video narrations, sharp colour contrast, and the use of descriptive subject text links, instead of long hyperlinks. I applied the knowledge I gained from this course to designing a storyboard for my EL6072 instructional design project.  

• eLearning essentials: Storyboarding by Brett Kirkpatrick is straighforward and easy to understand. Brett’s storyboard format is different from the storyboard formats I’ve seen in YouTube instructional design videos. I compared them and found I prefer the storyboard formats created by the YouTuber, Tim Slade. Here’s a link to Tim Slade’s storyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLiXVNjq3-s&t=25s . But chosing one format of storyboard over another is a personal choice influenced by the topic, course type, and other tools the designer plans to use.

• UX writing fundamentals: A comprehensive guide to UX writing by EverCourse, teaches the fundamentals of UX writing, including how to craft engaging microcopy and how to use words to build rapport with users. It was well presented, but I was already familiar with most of the topics discussed.

LinkedIn has many free courses that are easy to read and full of valuable information for instructional designers. I recommend them highly.

Next week I’ll be interviewing a well known Namibian scholar and content writer, Elizabeth Ndura, who also works as a Senior Controller for the city of Windhoek, Namibia. This will be my very first interview of a technical writer, and I’m looking forward to it.

On to the new!

Obi Ikeako

March 16, 2025.