Overview

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

I designed, scripted, and developed more than 70 online courses to train Morgan Stanley Financial Advisors on investing, retirement, business management, among other topics, to help them advance in their careers, no matter their career’s current stage or education level.

Define

What is the business need?

Morgan Stanley needed online courses that are legally compliant to certify their financial advisors so they could grow their businesses.

Who are the learners?

The learners are financial advisors, typically 55+, who need further certifications to expand their business.

What are the learning gaps?

To determine the learning gaps, Morgan Stanley conducted informational interviews with their Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and their learners. Each of the 70+ courses addresses different categories of knowledge the learners need to understand to pass their certification exams.

How will we evaluate success?

Referring to Kirkpatrick’s 4 levels of evaluation, I determine the success of each course by the client’s reaction to my work as well as the passing rate of the learners when they take their certification exams.

Design

Design Challenge

We constantly faced two challenges with these courses:

• Providing eLearning courses that were intuitive to navigate for an audience that was not familiar with technology
• Transforming highly technical information into small, easy-to-comprehend pieces that still contained a comprehensive view of the learning material

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.
• Workbooks & Job Aids
  • Interactive, downloadable PDFs that include knowledge assessments and writing prompts to help learner retain information from course.

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
• InDesign: To create the workbooks
• Camtasia: To edit the interview videos
• SoundForge: To edit audio
• Word: To create other downloadable learning aids other than the workbooks
• Excel: To create other downloadable learning aids other than the workbooks

Deliver

Business Impact

The courses I created have been taken by over 100,000 Morgan Stanley employees across two continents, and over 70% have received specialized certifications that have allowed them to obtain promotions as well as grow their businesses and income.