Overview

Note: Link to the course is unavailable and images are blurred to comply with Allen Communication's client confidentiality agreement.

I designed and built five compliance trainings for Morgan Stanley to educate their learners on the laws and company regulations they needed to be aware of and to follow to be compliant in their business practice.

Define

What is the business need?

Morgan Stanley needed a compliance training to make sure their financial advisors remain compliant according to both domestic and international law requirements.

Who are the learners?

The learners are financial advisors, ranging from 30 to 70, who need to remain compliant to stay in business. These financial advisors fall under five categories:

• Field Financial Advisors
• Financial Advisor Supervisors
• Home-Office Financial Advisors
• Home-Office Supervisors
• Financial Advisors working internationally

What are the learning gaps?

To determine the learning gaps, Morgan Stanley conducted informational interviews with their Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and their learners. From the data gathered, I developed five versions of the course so I could tailor the knowledge gaps to each of the learner groups.

How will we evaluate success?

I determined the success of these courses by the client’s reaction to my work and what percentage of the learners completed the course.

Design

Design Challenge

The design of the course had to balance between the need to be updated to be visually appealing and have a modern web-based layout, while also being easy to navigate for Morgan Stanley’s audience, the vast majority of which was not technologically literate.

Design Thinking Behind the Deliverables

Theories and models I found helpful in designing these courses:

• SAM
  • To keep this project on track, it’s crucial to manage the timeline well. I often reference the SAM model to help expedite the course production process.
• ADDIE
  • I don’t typically think of ADDIE as a model, but more of a dictionary that’s good to reference to make sure I didn’t miss anything important.
• Kirkpatrick’s Levels
  • I’ve always found this model useful for setting up evaluation.
• Gagne's 9 Events
  • While I don’t think all nine events apply for every learning experience, I find this a useful framework for mapping out activity types and how to sequence them.
• Micro-Learning
  • I find this concept especially important in the online space, since learners face a great deal more opportunity for distraction.

Develop

Deliverables

• Web-Based Courses
  • Since the learners live across the US, and factoring in the budget, timeline, scope, and intention of this course, using a web-based format was the best option. The course includes the following elements:
  • Video: I edit interview-style videos with Financial Advisors from Morgan Stanley that help explain more technical concepts to do with their industry.
  • Knowledge Checks and Certification Exams: I script questions and answers for the certification exams as well as quick knowledge checks throughout the courses.
  • Interactive Activities: To keep the learning experience fun and engaging, I used a variety of activity templates in my organization’s proprietary tool which makes the content more interesting and easier to understand.
• Job Aids
  • Downloadable PDFs that include links to resources the learners need to be familiar with in order to remain compliant.

Tools Used

• DesignLab: Proprietary tool used to create the web-based trainings
• Photoshop: To create images and graphics for activities in course
• Illustrator: To create graphics for courses
• Camtasia: To edit the interview videos
• SoundForge: To edit audio
• Word: To create downloadable job aids

Deliver

Business Impact

This course had an important business impact for both the client and my employer, Allen Communications.

For Morgan Stanley, after the course launched, it was so positively received by Morgan Stanley and their learners that it became the company’s standard for their other compliance trainings.

As a member of the Morgan Stanley team wrote to Allen Communications:

‘The WM Compliance ACM is the most requested program at the Firm by regulators and outside counsel.’ -Millie Guzman, Compliance Team, Morgan Stanley

For Allen Communications, the quality of work I provided for the client persuaded them to stay on as a recurring client and remain one of Allen Communication’s highest sources of revenue—an outcome that was not guaranteed due to unsatisfactory past iterations of the ACM course.