🦇 Microlearning, QR codes, and bats
🦇 Microlearning, QR codes, and bats
Plus the week's best content, news, and events for learning professionals
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💡 The Big Idea
What does eLearning have to do with bats, QR codes, and vandalism?
You’re about to find out, as we wrap up our series on mobile-first learning tools!
A refresher on 7taps
7taps is an awesome tool that makes creating and deploying mobile-first courses a breeze.
Platforms like 7taps are designed to meet learners where they are already… on their phones. The courses can be distributed by link, QR code, Email, or SMS. There are no downloads or signups required for learners, making the experience as frictionless as possible.
Taking a 7taps course feels a bit like scrolling through Instagram stories, and can include elements like quizzes, gifs, audio, and links.
Creating the bat course
On summer evenings in Austin, TX, crowds line up along the Congress Avenue bridge to watch North America’s largest urban bat colony take flight.
Inspiration for a 7taps course struck one evening in August when I passed by hundreds of bat watchers on an evening run.
Within 90 minutes of returning home, I had:
Done a bunch of Google research about bats
Created a bat course on 7taps
Designed and ordered stickers on Canva with a QR code linking to the course
Launching the course
The stickers came in the mail three days later.
The rule-follower in me is still conflicted about the next part of the project, because placing stickers in public spaces is technically vandalism.
The area around the bridge has plenty of graffiti, plus stickers and posters for things like dating apps and upcoming shows. I figured that any vandalism that results in knowledge about the world around us was a noble enough cause, and placed the stickers around the areas where spectators gather:
Hundreds of course completions!
In the few days since launch, over 800 people have taken the course, with a completion rate of around 75%! 7taps makes it easy to track basic completion metrics through its platform.
There have even been a handful of donations through the link at the end of the course, which I’m sending over to a local charity that rehabilitates injured and orphaned bats.
Do it yourself!
There are SO MANY creative uses for mobile-first learning. My hope is that this project inspires others to find creative uses for this technology.
Here’s a challenge for you: build your own course on 7taps!
The best way to start is a 30 day free trial of the pro version. The delightful team at 7taps also gave us a discount code, so if you stick with the pro version you can get 10% off by entering ‘jonathan’ as a discount code. How cool is that?
There’s also a community version that’s free forever. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles of the pro version, so I’d recommend trying out the 30 day trial of the pro version first.
Happy creating! I would love to see whatever you make, so send it over when you’re finished and I can link it in the newsletter!
📆 Upcoming Events
⚓️ The Anchored in Learning Summit is a taking place September 9th and 10th. The free two day event features sessions on a wide range of subjects including onboarding, culture, eLearning, gamification, virtual training, DEIA, and more.
🛋 The L&D Lounge has launched a new membership community! Sign up here in time for the September 10th launch party!
🎧 Interview Tips for Instructional Designers
Heidi Kirby shares how to nail the most common interview questions that instructional designers face, as well as some red flags to watch out for during the interview process.
📚Recommended Reading
🏥 How a children’s hospital with 12,000 employees used education to reduce microaggressions.
✈️ Who invented virtual reality training? It turns out it was Edwin A. Link, who created the flight simulator in 1929. 500,000 World War II pilots learned to fly using his “blue box” training device.
💻 These Chome shortcuts will save you a few precious seconds, and also make you feel really smart.
🔦 An introduction to the role of Agile Team Facilitator.
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