With Rapid Intake Unison, multiple course developers can work on the same course at exactly the same time, providing real-time collaboration while building your course.
Using Unison, you can:
- Collaborate simultaneously with other developers from anywhere
- Rely on automatically saved changes so you don't have to worry
- Keep a version history so you can roll back at any time
- Lock pages so others don't accidentally overwrite your work
- Chat instantly with others logged onto the project
To build a course collaboratively, start by clicking the project title on the My Projects page. Then on the Project Home page, click Build / Modify the Course. Unison opens the online collabor-ative authoring environment.
You can build courses on your own, or work with others. If another developer comes into that course while you are working on it, Unison shows you who has just logged in and is editing the course with you. (See Figure 1.)
Figure 1: Unison lets you know if someone else is currently working on the same course.
Once they select a page from the Storyboard panel’s table of contents, Unison shows you in real time which page they are working on by displaying a lock in the table of contents. (See Figure 2.) If you try accessing the page while they are editing it, it will lock you out of that page to avoid simul-taneously changing the same thing. All of this happens automatically.
Figure 2: Unison shows a lock in the Table of Contents to indicate in real time the pages on which other developers are working.
Click the button with the user name to instantly chat with them. For example, you might want to view or edit that page content as soon as they finish.
Collaboration in Rapid Intake Unison can help with one of the most challenging phases in an e-Learning project: course review and testing. Any course reviewer, such as a manager, SME, or another team member can launch the course in a special preview window to see exactly how the learner is going to see it. Reviewers simply add comments, suggestions, or to-do items on a page by page basis. This helps assure everything gets taken care of before deploying to the learners.
To contribute feedback or perform quality assurance testing, the reviewer logs into Unison, accesses a project, and clicks "Test the Course."
Unison opens the course in a special window. (See Figure 3.) In the upper frame the reviewer views and interacts with the course. In the lower frame the reviewer adds feedback comments by typing them in the Describe Your Issue field and clicking Add Issue. Because you build the course online and the review system is integrated with course authoring, the reviewer is always viewing the latest build. Also, Unison automatically records where the reviewer was when they entered the note.
Figure 3: Developers test courses before release by using this special window, which also provides a way to log issues.
At any time a project manager can quickly and easily access the feedback notes, start a threaded discussion, assign or route to other team members, and attach related files.
To manage feedback notes, click Manage Issues on the Project Home page. Unison displays the Manage Issues page.
With the integrated project manager inside of the tool, you can search, filter, and reassign issues that need to be taken care of. (See Figure 4.) Easily see what page the note was made on, click on the link to go to that page to make the change, and then add updates to the to-do items. When an issue has been resolved, change the status to Closed so to remove it from the default view.
Figure 4: The integrated project manager in Unison facilitates issue resolution, changes, and updates.
Collaborative course authoring and review has never been as simple as using the Rapid Intake Unison platform.
