Macros are your friends
Spreadsheets have had macros for decades. So have word processors and presentation software. Anyone who has used them for real work knows why: sooner or later, every job turns into doing the same thing many times. Most e-learning authoring tools leave that part to you.
Macros in IRLO Studio
IRLO Studio lets you create macros. It also lets the AI create them for you.
The AI can also put macros to work. Give it your specific instructions for revising a course, such as what to change, where, and how, and it uses macros alongside those instructions to carry the work out for you. You decide what the job is. The AI does the repetitive part. That is the same arrangement as everywhere else in IRLO Studio: the AI assists, and you stay in charge.
Your choice of model
IRLO Studio comes with a choice of local language models that create and run macros and generate content. They run on your own machine, so your course never has to leave it.
If you would rather use a cloud model, bring your own API key and connect to your favorite one.
Use them for the usual reasons
There is nothing exotic about macros in a course. Use them for the same reasons you would use them in any other application.
Save time on repetition. The same small change made across forty screens is not skilled work. It is the same click, forty times. A macro makes it once and applies it everywhere, in seconds instead of an afternoon.
Keep the brand consistent. Fonts, colors, spacing, and button styles drift as a course grows and more people touch it. A macro applies the house style exactly, every time, without anyone having to remember the rules.
Clean up old courses. Courses that have been through several authors and several years collect leftovers: stray styles, unused media, text boxes that almost line up. Tidying them by hand is the job that never gets scheduled. A macro makes it a job that takes a minute.
Make checks repeatable. Does every image have alt text? Does every question have feedback? Is the old product name still hiding somewhere? A macro can walk the whole course and answer the same question the same way every time you ask it.
By hand, or with a macro
A few of the jobs that come up in almost every course:
Updating a policy date
- By hand
- Find it on every screen and retype it
- With a macro
- Replace it everywhere in one run
Applying a new brand color
- By hand
- Restyle buttons and headings one at a time
- With a macro
- Restyle every matching element at once
Checking accessibility
- By hand
- Open every image to look for alt text
- With a macro
- List every image that is missing it
Renaming a product
- By hand
- Search screen by screen and hope nothing is missed
- With a macro
- Change every mention in one pass
None of these are hard. They are just slow, and slow work done by hand is where mistakes creep in. The fortieth screen gets less attention than the first.
Every e-learning tool should have macros
We think macros should be a standard feature of every e-learning authoring tool, not a bonus. Course building is full of repetition, and the people doing it are instructional designers, not typists. Their time belongs on the parts of a course that need judgment: what a learner needs to know, how to show it, and how to check it stuck.
Everything else is a candidate for a macro.
Try it
IRLO Studio has not launched yet. Join the early access waitlist, and when it opens, think of the most tedious job in your last course, and see how long it takes as a macro.