About Actian
Actian is a software company specializing in data management, analytics, and integration products and services. The company provides database software and technology, cloud-engineered systems, and solutions to help businesses manage, connect, and analyze data and make informed decisions.
Actian’s services feature scalable cloud technologies, support for existing platforms, and proactive, always-available support to detect and resolve potential issues, ensuring their clients’ robust and reliable data solutions.
Actian’s educational resources
Actian also offers an educational platform to enhance users’ proficiency with its products and services. The Actian Academy includes a comprehensive library of self-paced training courses and learning paths on various products, such as the Actian Data Platform, Vector, Actian Ingres, HCL Informix, and OpenROAD. These are curated to suit different roles so each can get the training they need.
In addition to product courses, Actian Academy offers certification programs that recognize the skills and expertise of Actian product specialists.
Problem
With a large (and growing) suite of highly technical and sophisticated products, Actian needs various training materials to help its users learn its products quickly. The education team relies on subject matter expert content for topics and the content needed to create educational content for the Actian Academy.
Since 2019, the education team has produced hundreds of eLearning modules using traditional methods and the following resources:
- Product screenshots: Provided by subject matter experts (SMEs) to visually support the training content.
- Written instructions: Detailed guidelines from SMEs on effectively presenting screenshots and information to customers.
- Storyboards: Developed using Microsoft PowerPoint to outline the structure and flow of each course.
- Audio scripts: Created in Microsoft Word to provide narration guidance for the voiceovers.
- Video creation and editing: Completed using Camtasia to produce instructional videos.
- Voiceovers: Recorded in-house by Actian content creators to personalize the learning experience.
- Learning Content Management: Organized and delivered through the Skilljar LMS.
However, the team needed a more efficient way to create new training content, update existing training and convert past video recordings of presentations into training content.
Converting recordings to eLearning
We can load up an mp4 into LEAi and using its great AI facilities…, we have been able to now rescue that content, reshape it, update it, modernize it bring it up to date and present it in a nicely structured format with our branding.
(We’ve also) been able to add some of the LEAi annotations and widgets to enhance the learning experience but also to autogenerate questions…
(With LEAi) We have been able to rescue some content that we we were going to struggle to bring forward without spending a great deal of time rewriting it and reproducing it.”
Solution
Looking to take advantage of AI’s power, the Actian education team started using LEAi by LearnExperts to build training content.
The team started by importing the MP4 recordings of SME presentations into LEAi, letting the tool efficiently convert them into learning content, annotations, and assessment questions.
“With LEAi, we’ve rescued and repurposed older SME video recordings that would have otherwise required extensive rewriting and reproduction to fit our eLearning courses,” said Matthew Rendell, Director of Technical Education. “The tool enabled us to reshape, modernize, and present the content in a structured, branded format. LEAi also suggested annotations and widgets to enhance the learning experience.”
In addition to using LEAi to create training content, the team switched to Synthesia for video production. The tool allows them to generate advanced voiceovers and high-quality videos efficiently.
Once the courses are complete, the team uses the LEAi-Skilljar publish direct upload option to seamlessly push all content, including assessment questions, directly to their Skilljar LMS. “Creating questions in LEAi and transferring them to Skilljar via the API has become a seamless, painless process,” Matt added.
Using LEAi to generate quiz or certification quiz
..Anyone who has to do that (generating quick questions) manually knows that it is a very time consuming practice.
…LEAi is now allowing us very quickly to add questions and knowledge checker questions into our courses just at a push of a button. That is very nice that we can do that as well.
Business Impact for Actian
Matthew Rendell highlighted that the most significant benefit of incorporating AI-based tools like LEAi into their technology stack is the increased efficiency in the training creation process. “LEAi takes us 75 percent of the way,” Matt explained. “The remaining 25 percent involves manually fact-checking and ensuring everything makes sense. LEAi is a big time-saver for us.”
The feedback from the SMEs has also been overwhelmingly positive. Matt noted that his team receives very few review comments on the content produced by LEAi, allowing them to transition quickly to eLearning production.
One area where LEAi has made a particularly notable impact is in creating assessment questions and certification quizzes. “Anyone who has had to create questions manually knows how time-consuming that process can be,” Matt said. “LEAi scans the entire course and generates a comprehensive set of questions with the push of a button, which significantly speeds up the process.”
Looking ahead, the team plans to leverage more of LEAi’s microlearning capabilities, breaking training content into smaller, easily digestible chunks for better learner engagement.
LEAi and Skilljar
“One of the attractions for us with LEAi was the integration with Skilljar. It’s very seamless for us to deploy a course into Skilljar, and more importantly as well, it (LEAi) deploys questions into Skilljar.
So being able to create questions in LEAi and send them across to Skilljar is a very seamless and painless task to do now.”
AI skeptic to believer
I would have been one of those skeptical people and we have been on quite a learning journey with AI.
The way LEAi is able to take a recording…, take the narrative from the MP4 and present it in a course which is probably 75% of the way is quite outstanding and amazing to see that happen..
LEAi knows nothing about our technology, it’s never going to be 100% – that’s not what AI is about anyway. But it takes us about 75% of the way down the road. The other 25% is a manual process that we need to go through, fact check, make sure everything still makes sense, make sure the context isn’t lost…, but it is quite incredible.
That is an incredible efficiency and one that we do enjoy.
LEAi – AI tool for customer education
LEAi by LearnExperts uses AI to allow companies to rapidly create comprehensive training programs. Powerful features in the tool include:
- Automated content conversion: Quickly transform existing Word documents, PDFs, video recordings, and PowerPoint presentations into various formats, including eLearning courses, microlearning modules, video scripts, and interactive presentations.
- AI-powered content structuring: LEAi intelligently organizes and structures content, making creating cohesive and logical learning paths tailored to your team’s needs easier.
- Interactive assessments: Create quizzes, simulations, and other interactive elements that engage learners and reinforce key concepts.
- Seamless integration: LEAi integrates smoothly with your existing Learning Management System (LMS), like Skilljar, ensuring a hassle-free implementation.
- Scalable content creation: Whether you’re developing training for a small team or an entire organization, LEAi scales with your needs, enabling rapid deployment across multiple departments.
- Collaboration tools: Facilitate teamwork and input from multiple stakeholders with collaborative features that allow for easy content review and approval processes.
Contact us to discover how LEAi can streamline your content creation.
