What’s the best way to submit feedback for your online training?
In my many years of experience and the number of eLearning modules that I have completed for clients and their online training initiatives, the most common part of the process in developing these modules, is to receive feedback from the client and action those changes.
This feedback goes from content changes (either text or images), voiceover changes, animations and even programming changes (sometimes we even need to redo parts of the eLearning modules due to changes in scope), and the way the clients submit it has changed from time to time, although there isn’t really a standard way to receive this feedback.
Since the launch of Articulate 360, their review platform has become one of our favorites to send our clients the different versions of their online training, because we can gather feedback in real time, and this feedback is paired with a screenshot of the slide or layer where it needs to be actions, which gives us developers a huge advantage, because it prevents us from shooting in the dark to find where the issues are happening. Also, clients get our comments in real time as well, and if there is ever a question, we can get answers in a short time.
That being said, when it comes to getting this feedback, not everything is perfect regardless of the format in which this feedback is submitted, clients being the experts when it comes to the content, and the ones who ultimately decide what they want for their products, will usually write down their thoughts on what they want us to change, and while this is perfectly acceptable, it might lead to misunderstandings and unnecessary back and forth that can potentially delay the timelines, and that’s why we always try to guide them to write down their feedback in a format that is both understandable for developers, and easy for the clients to track completion of these changes.
Here’s is the format that has worked for us:
Issue: Here is where the reviewers describe the problems they are having with the eLearning, it could be image, content, audio or programming related.
Priority: The importance of the issue. Most of the times is a critical change to action, but sometimes it’s only a nice to have. Identifying this, will give us the clarity on where to focus our efforts.
Action: How the client wants us to resolve the issue, either by rewriting the content or describing how they want that feature to work.
Suggestion: If the client is still not sure how they want us to fix the issue, they can always submit ideas, and based on that we can decide the best course of action.
Hopefully these tips will help you improve your feedback gathering process.
