This RISE 360 course was designed to help travelers prepare for a safe, enjoyable solo trip.
Audience: Aspiring and new solo travelers
Responsibilities: Content Creation, Learning Design, Visuals Sourcing & Creation, eLearning Development
Tools Used: Rise 360, Google Docs, Canva, ChatGPT-4o
Many first-time solo travelers under-prepare for their trip, exposing themselves to unnecessary risks in a new place. This adversely affects their safety and wellbeing, and might deter their love for travel and exploration.
After interviewing new and experienced solo travelers and drawing from my first-hand experience, I identified the lack of knowledge and skills in two phases: when preparing for the trip (destination research, health, accommodations, contacts & documents, packing) and while on the trip (staying vigilant and handling money & frauds.)
Since the target learners live in different time zones and have varied departure dates, I figured eLearning would give them the time and location flexibility to make learning convenient. Completing the course helps solo travelers start their first trips safely and enjoyably.
To design the eLearning, I followed the agile ADDIE process. I created an MVP version for each step and sought feedback from different stakeholders, including the target learners. This saves me time fixing issues as they come up.
After consolidating the key safety issues new solo travelers often encounter before and during their trip, I summarized the goal and objectives of the eLearning experience to ensure it solves the right problem.
I documented the course goal and objectives in a course document. This document acts as a blueprint that helps organize my thoughts and record all the course details for smooth collaboration if needed later on.
Next, I designed the assessments to evaluate if the course objectives were achieved.
The assessments consist of two types: formative and summative.
Formative: A quick quiz in each lesson to check learners' understanding along the way. The quiz comes with option-specific feedback so that learners can reinforce their knowledge.
Summative: A final quiz at the end of the course to evaluate how ready learners are for their upcoming solo trip.
The quiz focuses not on mere memorization but requires learners to analyze and choose appropriate courses of action in common solo travel scenarios.
Formative assessment in each lesson
Summative assessment at the end of the course
In this step, I created the content structure. The course consists of four modules:
Let's get started
Pre-trip essentials
On-the-go essentials
Conclusion
Each lesson addresses critical safety precautions that solo travelers often overlook. For example, the lesson 'Pack light & smart' focuses on correcting mistakes like overpacking, underpacking, and packing last minute, all of which affect a traveler's safety during their solo trip.
I used ChatGPT to help fine tune content based on my bullet points. This often took several rounds of edits.
Deciding the Look & Feel
I utilized a built-in template for the course and then adjusted the theme color and text styles for different text levels.
I then used the Adobe color wheel to generate a color scheme for the course.
Rise 360 has an integrated AI image generation feature, and I used it to generate realistic photos that match the content.
To design detailed, specific visuals that the AI feature could not generate, I used Canva. Canva was also used for creating GIFs.
Choosing Interactives
I used interactives that enhance the content and are generally ACCESSIBLE. For example, I tried to avoid drags-and-drops as they are not friendly to learners with limited hand mobility.
In the 'Save Important Contacts & Documents' lesson, I created a checklist to help solo travelers keep track of crucial documents during their trip and save necessary contacts to their phones.
Since they have time to prepare documents (they don't have to keep these at the top of their mind all the time) , a checklist will be the perfect assistance.
The project was well-received by my fellow solo travelers.
"I wish I learned this when I first traveled solo.“
-Linh Le, Solo Traveler from Vietnam
"The information is new, practical, and helpful. I loved the course!"
-Nikki, Solo Traveler from the U.S.
"I relate with the packing tips so much! As a 'just in case' solo traveler, I needed to learn this. Helpful techniques!”
-Yuri, Solo Traveler from Japan
Customizing templates in Rise instead of building from Scratch saves me a great chunk of time developing the course.
Researching key problems is critical to the course's success. Addressing these key problems makes the course relevant, engaging, and helpful for learners.
Training AI to develop scripts and prompts saves time, but it takes patience to train the AI to produce the intended output precisely. Quality Control after using AI is also critical.
