Preface & Background
At the time of writing this blog entry, I’ve successfully presented webinar #5 of 10 of the webinar series, “How to create great e-Learning content from A to Z”, hosted by iSpring Solutions. Given this mid-point milestone, I felt this would be a good opportunity to reflect and report on how the series is going and what I’ve learned thus far.
High Points
This webinar series has been fantastic, so far – I’ve had a great time sharing some insights and have learned so much from the participants, as they contribute and share their own experiences, workarounds, and pain-points.
From a technical aspect, things have been going very smoothly as iSpring’s Community Manager, Polina Khizhnyak, administrates the webinar hosting, chat, and recording technology. Additionally, Polina included various in-house iSpring technical experts to sit in on the webinar and so answer participants’ questions, live, inside the chat area.
Both these factors have definitely contributed to the overall success of the webinars, allowing me to focus on presenting my information, then answering and discussing participants during the Q&A session.
Pleasant Surprises
In addition to sharing knowledge and discussing eLearning content, the participants have been tremendously supportive. Time after time, various individuals have taken time to offer encouragement, support, and kinds words via email, chat, or in comment sections of iSpring’s website.
This rally of support has continued even when pointing out mistakes, typos, and other small errors in my presentation, which only speaks to the quality of the webinar participants. This openness of the audience has led to increased quality in the webinars, as we’ve taken great strides to genuinely listen, respond, and/or adjust our webinars to the various suggestions, requests, and comments.
Registration and attendance to the webinar series has also been strong. Here are the numbers:
| week | registered | attended |
| 1 | 331 | 156 |
| 2 | 347 | 107 |
| 3 | 328 | 152 |
| 4 | 406 | 164 |
| 5 | 329 | 126 |
| TOTAL | 1641 | 705 |
Additionally, I’m humbled by the amount of support and celebration I’ve received from my peers and individuals within my network in the eLearning industry. Each week I am deeply touched as I see announcements in social media about the webinars retweeted, liked, and generally celebrated by other industry leaders. I’m both grateful and in awe of my peers.
Looking Towards the Future
If the last half of this webinar series is anything like the first half, there will be some great discussions, thoughts, and problem-solving chats coming-up.
There’s still several exciting topics still-to-come in this webinar series, such as: interactivity & engagement; UI/UX; accessibility; publishing; & more. Additionally, iSpring is creating blog posts for each webinar, so be sure to keep an eye out for that.
Here are the first two blog entries from iSpring:
https://www.ispringsolutions.com/blog/how-to-create-online-course/lesson-1/
https://www.ispringsolutions.com/blog/how-to-create-online-course/lesson-2/
Above all, I’m sincerely look forward to each of the webinars, as they challenge me to learn more about creating great eLearning content and doing the webinars allows me to be in direct contact with other eLearning professionals trying to do just that: create great eLearning content.
It’s a win-win-WIN.