Rose's summer internship at GuyKat
GuyKat offer an internship programme whereby we tailor the role and responsibilities around the individual’s skills and interests.
Rose is coming to the end of her internship with GuyKat, here’s what she got up to during her time with us:
What attracted you to the role at GuyKat?
The role stood out to me because it offered me a broad range of responsibilities. After finishing university, where I studied Business and Public Relations, I wanted to gain more experience and improve my communication skills. The role at an eLearning agency, such as GuyKat, gave me the opportunity improve my B2B marketing skills, but also apply my communication skills to writing scripts for some of the biggest brands in the world.
What were the main tasks you were given?
On a day-to-day basis, I regularly carried out market research to identify prospective customers. I’d also support the business with administrative tasks such as working on invoices and producing overviews on Excel. I wrote numerous blog posts which provided rich content for the GuyKat website, but also shareable content for the social media pages. I enjoyed having the responsibility of updating the GuyKat Twitter feed with news about the company and the eLearning industry. I was even lucky enough to attend an eLearning exhibition London, where I learnt about the latest trends and topics in the Learning and Development sector, and attended numerous talks from leading industry experts.
What were of your highlights during the internship?
I particularly enjoyed helping the GuyKat team with the task of script-writing! This involved taking subject-specific information from one of the biggest FMCG brands, and scripting it into easy-to-understand text. It was more difficult than I thought it would be, but I really enjoyed the challenge of making it as concise as possible. This was a highlight for me because I felt deeply involved with helping the eLearning team on one of their fast-paced projects. I gained a real insight into what is required for effective eLearning.
What did you enjoy about working with GuyKat?
The best part about my time at GuyKat was working with the brilliant team. I was introduced to everyone on my first day, it was clear there was a variety of roles across the business - from eLearning designers to business consultants. They are the friendliest bunch, and what really impressed me, was their expert knowledge in what they do. The eLearning developers create beautiful designs whilst the Docebo support team can apply their expert knowledge to solve problems quickly. Being able to work in such a motivated, hard-working team was really encouraging. They really are a pleasure to work with.
Any advice or tips for students or graduates looking for a career in marketing or communications?
My advice would be to gain as much experience as possible, especially in varying industries. Having some solid experience will provide you with skills that you will not have gained at college or university. These skills will also stand out to a potential employer, making you more likely to get hired. Gaining experience in different industries will help you to decide which path you want to take in future.
Dan's experience of being a GuyKat Apprentice
We caught up with Dan, our Junior eLearning Designer, who started his journey with GuyKat as an apprentice.
When did you join GuyKat?
I started at the beginning of February 2016 and my apprenticeship lasted for 13 months.
What responsibilities did you have as an apprentice? What were your day-to-day tasks?
When I first started, my responsibilities were all very heavily based on graphics and imagery. I would have to create graphics in the style of a client’s branding and match this to the look and feel of the eLearning that it would be a part of. I was also responsible for finding appropriate images from stock photo websites to download and, if required, edit them too. However, as I progressed through my apprenticeship, I became much more involved with the design and, eventually, the development of the eLearning that we make. Of course, as an apprentice I was given some of the less exciting jobs such as taking out the recycling and transcribing audio, but overall there weren’t many of those kinds of tasks. During a few days of filming, I was in charge of the clapperboard and keeping track of what take we were on.
What is your current job role?
I am currently the ‘Junior eLearning Designer’ at GuyKat. I am the most junior full-time member of the eLearning team.
How have your responsibilities changed?
My responsibilities now include designing and developing eLearning, graphic design, look and feel design, development of games within eLearning, and some instructional design. My work has massively developed since being an apprentice. When I first started, I had very little knowledge of page layout design or user experience/interface, which are features that I have since developed a real understanding for over time. I have also developed more technical skills such as my ability to use Adobe programmes. When I started, I only had some experience of using Adobe Photoshop, but I’ve since built my knowledge of using Captivate, After Effects and Illustrator and I am now even more confident in those than I am in Photoshop.
What were your motivations for choosing an apprenticeship?
I never really wanted to go to university, despite it being heavily encouraged in secondary school, and especially sixth form. The appeal of having zero amount of debt outweighed the possibility of a “good job”. Nor did I want to go straight into work, just because it would have been easy to find a job that related to nothing that I’m skilled in, and stay in it. So, this is why I chose to look for an apprenticeship. Being trained, earning money, gaining a qualification and the potential of a secured job seemed like the most logical and rewarding option. I feel that an apprenticeship gave me a head start against my peers that went to university, because experience is so important to employers. I see it as an extra year of experience.
What attracted you to GuyKat?
Honestly, I knew very little about the company when I applied. It was the position itself that I was interested in. Apprenticeships that aren’t just an employer looking for cheap labour are actually difficult to come by, so I applied for apprenticeships that had a design element in the description. I knew I wanted something creative. It wasn’t until the interview that I decided I wanted to work for GuyKat. I was given the impression that they wanted me as someone who could help the company whilst being taught from scratch.
What is your proudest achievement at GuyKat?
My proudest achievement was actually quite a recent one. I was given a piece of work from a client that had a very tight deadline of one week. The project involved designing and making an assessment from scratch (with questions provided). The assessment itself was fairly straightforward to create, yet making sure the scores were reported correctly was quite complicated. Different areas required separate scores and areas of strength and weakness to be shown. Through quite a bit of trial and error, I managed to create a complex scoring system that demonstrated the user’s strengths (i.e. the areas they scored highest in) and their weaknesses (the areas they scored lowest in). I also designed a certificate that pulled the user’s scores, strengths and weaknesses from the project. I had help with the coding side of this, as this was another complicated challenge. Even though the client had multiple rounds of changes, I still managed to complete the project before the deadline, and they were very happy with the finished product. All of this took a lot of thought and time from myself, and I learnt a lot through the process and felt a great sense of achievement from it.
What do you enjoy about working at GuyKat?
The culture at GuyKat is relaxed and extremely friendly, whilst still maintaining a very high level of productivity. Right from the start of my first day I felt welcomed and supported, and like a part of the team. Even though I was an apprentice, I wasn’t made to feel that I was providing any less value.
Would you recommend the apprenticeship route?
I would absolutely recommend the apprenticeship route to anyone who doesn’t think university is for them. It is a great way to gain experience of a real working environment whilst still receiving training and support from a college/training provider. By the end of an apprenticeship, you will have valuable experience and a qualification to continue onto something else. You might choose to continue to a higher-level apprenticeship, or you may even be offered a job at the place that you carried out your apprenticeship like I was.
Our favourite ‘new and improved’ features in Adobe Captivate 2017.
Our favourite 'new and improved' features in Adobe Captivate 2017.
Adobe Captivate is the development tool of choice for the in-house eLearning production team at GuyKat. Whilst at Learning DevCamp 2017 in Salt Lake City earlier this month, our team reviewed the new features in the latest release (Adobe Captivate 2017) with other industry experts.
Our eLearning Developer, Zoe Hall, shares her favourite features of the new update:
1) Retina screen software recording
Whilst you could record a Video Demo or Software Simulation using Captivate 9, the 2017 update has resolved the need to edit the AdobeCaptivate.ini file. We have have found this improvement really useful, especially for cutting down development time and simplifying our internal processes.
2) Multi-state buttons
The ability to use buttons with multiple states (e.g. Normal, Hover, Down) on Master Slides, Quiz Slides, Quiz Results Slides and Drag and Drop Slides is an excellent update that can streamline our workflow and improve the UX throughout our projects.
3) Typekit Integration
Adobe Typekit is now integrated with Adobe Captivate. This allows developers with a Creative Cloud account to use fonts from the Typekit library within Captivate projects. Not being limited to websafe fonts for HTML5 projects now allows for consistent design across all devices. This enables us to align with the brand guidelines of our varied clients that require eLearning for multiple devices.
4) Conditional ‘While’ loop within Advanced Actions
We love the new ‘Conditional Tab’ check box within Advanced Actions, but we’re even more excited by the possibilities of the ‘While’ loop to enhance quizzing, gaming and general UX!
The ‘While’ action can be used to shorten our workflow to create simple GIF style animations within Captivate, as well as more interactive games using variables to create timers, change states and assign points.
Having taken some time to explore the ‘While’ action at Learning DevCamp, this feature will allow our team to push the boundaries to create engaging and interactive eLearning.
5) Fluid Boxes
The release of Fluid Boxes has coincided well with the rising demand for fully responsive design in our daily digital experiences - including responsive eLearning.
Captivate 2017 Fluid Boxes are a development on the previous breakpoints used in Captivate 8 and 9. Objects within Fluid Boxes align and resize automatically on different devices, creating a course that isn’t just optimised for one screen. There are many powerful, hidden tools and options within Captivate 2017 to tailor the Fluid Boxes to each developer’s needs. This higher level of flexibility and control, along with the ability to preview multiple device resolutions within Captivate, is another way that the update has reduced the development time for a responsive project and has created a better experience for the learner, regardless of the device they are using.
We are already utilising some of these features in current client projects.
If you’re looking for Adobe Captivate experts who can create bespoke eLearning, then feel free to get in touch.
Take a look at what else we got up to at Learning DevCamp 2017.
A look back at Learning DevCamp 2017
A look back at Learning DevCamp 2017
Hannah, our Lead eLearning Developer, shares her highlights from the Learning DevCamp 2017 conference.
Held in Salt Lake City, Learning DevCamp (2017) is an eLearning conference dedicated to discussing instructional design theory and authoring tools for eLearning developers across the globe.
As the Lead eLearning Developer at GuyKat Solutions, I was lucky enough to experience the conference again this year, along with my fellow eLearning Developer (and friend) Zoe Hall. Just over a week ago we set off on the 15-hour journey from Birmingham (UK) to beautiful Utah, with high expectations of a great week.
The conference is set over four days. The focus is on eLearning professionals sharing and learning best practices. Whenever I attend DevCamp, it's always refreshing to find many L&D experts challenging the way online training has to be delivered. There shall be no more boring "click and read" training! This year, there were two innovative concepts that stood out. Firstly, Augmented Reality and the possibilities it can lend to supplement training design. Secondly, bite-size training - sometimes referred to as SHOTs - to provide precise and painless training.
Learning DevCamp also boasts some great industry speakers and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing from experts such as Kevin Siegel, Jennie Ruby, Joe Ganci, Nick Floro and the founder of DevCamp, Jason Bickle (to name only a few). A highlight from our week was discovering the new features and capabilities of Adobe Captivate 2017, the authoring tool that we use in-house. Whenever software upgrades become available, we pride ourselves on taking the plunge early on.
A personal highlight for me was reconnecting with some old friends and meeting some new ones. It was great to enjoy dinner (and a spontaneous hike up the Salt Lake Hills) with some energetic and creative people from the eLearning world. There is nothing quite like a sunset in Utah.
Overall, at GuyKat we always aim to make our eLearning engaging and exciting, so attending a conference like this enables us to stay ahead of industry trends and helps us to learn more about how to improve our eLearning modules for the future. I would highly recommend this conference for anyone who is involved in the L&D industry and has the desire to learn about online training. It really is a great way to gain expertise.
Horses for Courses
Increasing the likelihood of success in your eLearning journey: The Right Type of Content to the Right People at the Right Time.
Last week, I attended a roundtable session with various FTSE 100 HR leaders. One weary L&D Director was unhappy, and rightfully so. Despite investing heavily in both quality eLearning content and a modern LMS his workforce wasn’t engaging with it as regularly as hoped. There were nods of recognition around the table when he summed up; “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”
Whenever I meet new clients, variations on this observation are a common theme. People have spent good money on implementing flashy technology and they’ve carefully thought through their learning strategy and processes. Yet their workforce just doesn’t adopt it and so they don’t see the expected ROI. Why?
In my experience, the most common reason is that they’ve neglected thinking about the culture change that needs to go with the new technology. Has the organisational culture been one where staff have been spoon-fed their eLearning? Has content been confined to mandatory compliance-led subjects? Is it usually a simple ‘click-read-test’ format? Is completion of mandatory training typically ensured by increasingly threatening emails as the compliance deadline nears?
If so, you simply cannot make the jump overnight from that starting point to class-leading learning culture. By this, I mean a culture where you have a workforce motivated to pro-actively access corporate learning systems and self-serve relevant learning and development material appropriate to their personal growth or relevant job tasks, whilst sharing their experiential knowledge in a helpful and accessible way to their peers. That may be the vision, and you may have implemented the technology that theoretically supports the vision but like any change project, the technology and process implementation is the easy bit. It’s the people bit that’s difficult and often overlooked.
I get clients to think of the above in terms of a classic ‘capability maturity’ journey. Think of the starting point described above as ‘level 1’ and the vision described as ‘level 5’. There are steps 2,3 and 4 to be taken before you can reach level 5. Attempting to leapfrog any of these steps invites failure. Time and again though, you see that is exactly what people try to do. I’ll explain what each of these levels looks like in more detail, and how to accelerate the journey through them, in future blog posts.
The important point for this post is to realise that for some organisations, shooting straight for a level 5 is simply the wrong thing to do. The nature of the business, the complexity of the jobs, the educational profile of the employees may all mean you don’t need a thoroughbred if a trekking-pony will do. Thinking through the level of ambition that is right for your organisation, and understanding where you start from culturally will help you to set an achievable end goal and also better plan the change management strategy that complements the technology implementation.
Just because, another organisation has nailed social learning in their organisation, doesn’t necessarily mean that their approach or the technology they chose is right for you. The takeaway point - and my last equine metaphor – is that you need to think about it as: ‘horses for courses’.
The above post is by our CEO, Guy McEvoy, and was originally shared on his LinkedIn feed.
The Docebo Tower Bridge Experience
Many thanks to all those who attended this week's 'Docebo On The Road' event held in the iconic North Tower of London's Tower Bridge. A global landmark seems fitting for the launch of Docebo version 7.0. as this is a clear landmark in our product development. Amongst the speakers, GuyKat CEO Guy McEvoy (pictured), took the audience through how the new features in Docebo move some of the talk you hear about at HR conferences (70:20:10, micro-learning, the millennial challenge etc.) into practice in your organisation using our technology.
If you're based in the UK and are interested in Docebo, please feel to reach out to us directly and we'd love give you a trial and talk about how we can support you on your Journey.
Docebo On The Road - London
Are you interested in Docebo LMS? Do you want to hear about the latest features in version 7.0? Would you like to hear from existing clients how they've found their Docebo journey? Would you like to know more about how GuyKat can support your Docebo implementation? Do you fancy a few cheeky drinks in one of London's most historic and iconic locations? If yes to any, then please register your interest in attending our 'Docebo On The Road' event at Tower Bridge on Monday 27th March 2017.
Interactive Vid: Engaging Millennials in L&D
Click to begin demo (not for phones)
This blog post covers two things. First, we've been doing more interactive video for clients and want to share a demo. Second, we're meeting L&D professionals who are scratching their heads at how to adapt L&D strategy to suit the behaviours of millennials they're hiring. We'll be releasing a white paper on the millennial question soon, but as a teaser we've quickly put together a demo that is both a (very) basic example of how you can use interactive video format, and also trails some of our white paper findings.
Click image above to begin demo - note this is built for desktop/tablet - this particular example has not been designed to view on a phone sized device - we do build responsive, interactive video that works on phones, but for this demo we wanted the extra screen space afforded by a desktop.
If you want to be added to the distribution list for the white paper on release then please email info@guykat.com with the subject 'white paper'.
Brum Tech BBQ Sponsors
GuyKat were proud to sponsor this year's 'Summer Tech BBQ' hosted by our next-door neighbours - iCentrum as part of the "TechWednesday" schedule. Up-to-200 people from across Birmingham's flourishing tech community attended. Sausages, Burgers and Halloumi was scoffed, beer and Pimms was downed. The British weather came good. We hope all who attended had as good a time as we did.
Vets Win Big Tam Trophy
For the last three years GuyKat have provided support to a team of 'veteran' (i.e. over 35) footballers who play in the World Net Vets 'Big Tam' trophy representing Everton. The tournament takes place annually in Leeds and is spread over a July weekend. The Everton team have entered the tournament for the past 18 years (so long before we got involved). However, this year, for the first time ever the team won the overall trophy. Congratulations from everyone at GuyKat. Next year the challenge is to defend the title!