What better way to kick off July than with some updates to the Go1 Platform. As we pass by the midpoint of the year, we have made more updates to improve your learning experience and to ensure that you are getting the most out of the Go1 System. In this update, you will find improvements to several Administrator functions, including assigning courses,  managing you learning items, as well and being able bulk delete items and much more.

If you have any questions or comments about any of the updates below, please let us know and we’d be happy to help you out.

Want to assign a particular team or department certain courses? Now you can. Within the ‘Discussion’ in the menu bar you can select a group on the right hand side and then click on the ‘Learning’ header on the left hand side of the screen. From here you can add courses that will be included as assigned learning for all members of that group.

Courses can be arranged in user specified order for Awards

We recently introduced you to the Awards feature within the Go1 Platform. We have made an update that allows you to control how the courses in awards are displayed by enabling Administrators to define the display order of all courses within an Award. This means you can position the courses you would prefer your learners enroll into as the top courses.

Updated Welcome message to suit new interface

Enrollment bulk delete enabled, with ability to select all items to delete

Force user to watch entire video before completing

Ability to hide prices of courses in explore tab

Admin can generate multiple LTI for courses

All currencies supported by Stripe are now enabled

Sign up for a free trial today and try it out for yourself!

If you have any questions about any of the updates and improvements listed above, please let us know and our Customer Success Team can help you out!

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What you need to know about the Go1 July update

Have you moved into a role which requires you to be an LMS administrator?

It’s important for organizations to have a dedicated person in charge of managing and monitoring their Learning Management System. Your LMS can be used to improve business operations, workplace processes and company culture – and as an LMS administrator, you hold the keys to the success of your LMS.

Here’s what you need to know about being an LMS administrator, to help you feel more comfortable and confident in your new role. For managers and leaders, this article will also highlight the skills you should look for in an LMS admin, and how their job duties can help improve your business.

Learning management systems can be used successfully for a number of different reasons. They can be used to onboard new hires, enrol learners into eLearning courses, and monitor and track professional development. They can also be used as communication and collaboration platforms, to help improve organizational culture.

For your LMS to work well for your business, an LMS administrator must be able to take care of the everyday operations of the system, for administration, documentation, reporting, and creation of training programs. If you’re an LMS admin, you should also work to establish a positive working relationship between technical support and the program manager.

Kamy Anderson, expert in learning management system and eLearning authoring tools, divides the key responsibilities of an LMS admin into three categories:

Technical duties – defining user roles, creating learning courses, building custom certification, providing feedback for learners.

Collaboration duties – Participate in the process of information exchange, assist in the process of the review creation, consult with other teams to implement the best learning practices.

Staff training duties – create training courses on a regular basis, keep track of freshly uploaded relevant courses, spot and resolve issues in courses, help learners with any issues.

Let’s look closer at the technical duty of creating online learning courses, because it’s one of the most important duties of the LMS admin. Many administrators are given the task to create online courses either within the LMS or through an authoring tool that is then uploaded into the system.

If you’re new to creating eLearning courses this could appear as a pretty daunting challenge. But we’re here to help you out with that too. We recently published a handy eLearning course design checklist, to help you feel confident in designing online courses in the best way possible for your audience. This comprehensive design checklist will ensure you’re covering important aspects of eLearning design throughout the process – such as accessibility, navigation, graphics, multimedia and assessments.

You can also read our article on what makes a good online course design, in terms of the psychology behind the design process. This will give you a more in-depth discussion of online course design, helping you to connect more closely with your learners and their needs.

Taking the time to learn more about creating online courses will help you to provide your organization with user-friendly, successful, effective eLearning courses.

With so many duties and responsibilities, an LMS admin needs to have strong skills in a number of different areas.

First up, you obviously need to have the technical computer skills to manage the Learning Management System, and the ability to learn systems and processes quickly.

You’ll also need to be an effective communicator, with the interpersonal skills to talk to people from business units across the organization – face-to-face, in email and over the phone. Being organized, efficient and able to manage your own workload is essential for LMS admin. And having a strong eye for detail will be an advantage, to both minimize and recognize errors in the LMS.

Anderson adds to this list, believing that a good LMS administrator needs to have “a dedicated approach and perfect understanding of your organization’s policy and goals when it comes to learning” and be 100% “familiar with the compliance requirements in your business sphere.”

As you can see, the role of LMS administrator is very important for an organization's learning processes, and the professional development of its employees. With your role, you have the ability to make a very positive impact on company culture and the people who work within the organization. Good luck in your exciting new role!

What you need to know about being an LMS administrator

As a manager, you have a responsibility to the professional development of your staff, helping members of your team to continually develop and strengthen their knowledge and skills. To do this, it’s important to know how to choose the best learning environments for your team – so each employee has the opportunity to learn in the way that is best for them.

Everyone is different. And we all learn in different ways. Recognising your own learning style and the environment you work best in is a huge factor in your own professional development. In the same way, understanding which type of learning environment suits your employees best will allow you to work with them in the most effective way, while also making the most of your L&D resources.

If you’re in a management or leadership role, you’re in an exciting position to lead the way in improving professional development in your workplace. So why not take the time to gain a better understanding of learning environments, for the benefit of your team and organisation?

Thanks to technology, we’ve moved far beyond the dull days of workplace training. With new learning technologies, there are now plenty of exciting ways to help people learn, including eLearning, mobile, social and blended learning. And learning isn’t just confined to the training room.

There are many environments in which you can gain knowledge, which can be divided into four quadrants:

Effective learners learn in all four quadrants. So it’s wise to adapt to the future of learning and use this information to the advantage of your team.

HR managers, for example, are using a range of tech tools to improve the way they hire, onboard, train and manage employees. By investing in good learning technology, you’ll be far more likely to keep staff engaged, motivated and happy in their jobs – which is a win for both individual and organisation.

Keen to learn more about different learning environments for your staff?

The online course, How to Make the Best Learning Environment Choices, is a great place to start. Through this eLearning course, you’ll learn how to embrace learning environment diversity, which means offering development opportunities in a way that better meets the needs of the individual, not just the business.

Through videos, interviews and presentations from experts, you’ll learn what the future of workplace learning looks like, and discuss trends in leadership development and how workplace learning has changed.

You’ll work through the blended learning model, to understand the benefits of this practice for your employees. The course is specifically created for managers, so you’ll be given plenty of tips and tricks you can use back in the workplace to really understand and support your team.

While discovering how to identify your preferred learning style and environment, you’ll also be encouraged to experiment and try to expand your learning style, so that you can learn in other ways or environments. With the course running for approximately 30 to 45 minutes, you can cover all this in less than an hour!


How to choose the best learning environments for your team

Employees are typically given specific roles and responsibilities within a workplace. When something doesn’t fall within their wheelhouse, it gets shifted to someone else. Over time, the culture of sending something down the chain creates silos which harm productivity and keep knowledge segmented.

What causes these silos? Often, it’s a lack of proper communication and collaboration within the office. And it’s a highly prevalent issue.

In a survey of senior executives, only 25 percent of the participants said their workplace was effective at sharing knowledge across theoretical boundaries. Luckily, there are options for those interested in improving collaboration and focus in their teams. It requires fundamental changes to a company’s culture but, once these are in place, you’ll see productivity rise as workers are able to communicate more effectively, even between departments.

The How to Build Collaborative and Focused Teams course will help you bust through harmful silos to create a more supportive environment that encourages everyone to work as a unit. It provides methods for letting employees play to their strengths by creating thorough plans based on shared goals.

Here's a snapshot of everything covered in the course, so you know exactly what to expect as well as the benefits you’ll receive.

Welcome to the better way of doing business

The course begins with an introduction designed to help you see the various methods for building strong relationships with your team. You’ll learn about motivating your workers to be at their best and how to encourage trust among the group’s members.

This serves as a critical foundation, one upon which you’ll build a collaborative and focused team that can accomplish more in less time or by using fewer resources, all while working together seamlessly.

If you want to institute real change within your team, you’ll need to create a culture that fosters the new concepts of increased collaboration. In this module, key aspects of the “Circle of Safety,” an approach supported by Simon Sinek, will be covered.

The intention is to help you learn what it takes to build a workplace that functions on mutual trust and respect, ensuring all members of the team feel supported by each other and their manager. By establishing a “Circle of Safety” everyone has one another’s backs, keeping everyone protected and secure as they do their part.

Trust alone isn’t enough to get your team operating at their optimal level. The “Performance Planning” module teaches you how to motivate your employees properly and plan to ensure peak efficiency. You’ll be introduced to the cycle of driving team performance as well as techniques for bringing it into your workplace.

The purpose of this lesson is to understand what makes your team tick and how that information can help you motivate them to be at their best. Each person’s source of motivation may differ slightly, so knowing what they value is important to group success. This enables you to keep them moving forward even if times get challenging.

At their core, all performance plans are either reactive or proactive. The “Reactive and Proactive Performance Plans” module helps you learn to distinguish between the two paradigms, allowing you to make intelligent choices during the planning phases.

A collaborative workplace also means achievement is a group effort, even if the contributors are individuals. So, the successes and failures of the one are also the successes and failures of the team.

This section discusses the interconnectedness of performance. You’ll see how individuals, the team, and the organization all share responsibility in the performance arena, and how each piece affects the other within a business.

Many leaders wonder about the most efficient way to measure performance within the team. The “Measuring Performance” module helps answer that question.

You’ll learn about Key Results Areas (KRAs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how these can measure the success of team efforts. This section also explores lead and lag indicators in relation to KPIs, as well as how Professional Improvement Plans can impact the workplace culture in positive and negative ways.

The intention is to give you methods that can help you monitor performance while ensuring you have the tools necessary to make internal adjustments to create greater success.

The “What’s Your Game Plan?” section is an opportunity to explore what you’ve learned in the course and see how you can use the information to increase collaboration and focus within a team.

You’re provided a scenario featuring details about a team that has fallen off track. Then, using information from the entire How to Build Collaborative and Focused Teams course, you can put your skills to the test and select three areas of focus to help improve the team. This gives you a chance to explore your understanding of the lessons from a place of safety.

The final section offers congratulations, as you now have the knowledge to help you build collaborative, performance focused teams in your own workplace. The skills are yours to use, so you can move forward confidently as you bring positive change into your organization.

How to build collaborative and focused teams

There’s a lot of research into diversity and its impact on the workforce. The main message that’s currently broadcast is that diversity is a great thing and beneficial to business.

It can be a good thing, but it can also be problematic. I looked into both these aspects in my recent PhD into diversity in business. Understanding how and why diversity can have positive and negative effects is an important step in understanding how to create more effective and efficient teams.


Diversity can take many specific forms, such as differences in age, gender, ideology, geography, and many other attributes.

Research suggests that greater levels of diversity are critical when pursuing creative endeavours. Socially and professionally diverse groups have been shown to be more innovative than homogenous groups. Coming up with new ideas unsurprisingly benefits from a diversity of perspectives.

But in other pursuits, greater homogeneity may prove to be a quicker way of getting the job done. When it comes to implementing a task, diversity can introduce communication ‘overheads and other forms of friction.

I believe there’s a way of having our diversity cake and eating it too. The solution comes from implementing systems and processes that minimise the overheads associated with diversity.

To illustrate this abstract concept, imagine that you are working in a two-person team, and that you’re tasked with drawing a map of the world from scratch.

You might have a pretty good idea of the region around Australia. Perhaps you can add in New Zealand and parts of Asia too.

If you’re paired with a person who is similar to you, you’ll be able to work together and quickly add more detail to the parts of the world that you both know well. As you start drawing countries further from home you might struggle a bit more and the shapes will probably get a little less accurate.

Then imagine being paired with someone who is from another country instead. The chances are that they’ll be able to fill in some of the gaps that you’re not sure of. Together you’ll be able to produce a better overall map of the world.

However, it’s more likely than not that the person you’re paired with in the second scenario doesn’t speak English. Progress might be slower as you try and coordinate and communicate. Perhaps communication is so difficult you can’t even communicate that it’s a map you’re trying to draw.

This is the double-edged sword of diversity.


If we added a translation service into our hypothetical map drawing project, then nine times out of ten, the more diverse team is going to end up with the better product. Without this bridge, the barriers to communication and collaboration could mean it goes either way.

There is much that needs to be done to improve diversity for many workplaces. This includes obvious forms of diversity, but I think we should also be aware of the less obvious examples of diversity too.

Fortunately, it is not difficult to implement systems and processes that help harness a diversity of perspectives. Rotating staff between teams is just one simple strategy to share ideas and experiences. Another effective approach is to run hackathons or other events which break people out of their normal paradigms and environments. And of course, having a strong organisational culture that spans roles and locations makes it easier for people to work together.

This article was originally published by HR Magazine 

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

How to harness the power of diversity in the workplace - Go1

Diversity can be a double-edged sword when businesses don’t have systems to harness it

Are you responsible for creating online courses and learning materials for your organization?

Designing eLearning courses for other people, such as managers and colleagues, can be tricky. You no doubt want to make sure that you’re creating content that addresses the needs of your learners, as well as the business. But often, eLearning professionals are pressured to produce content under tight deadlines, with very little briefing.

While this might seem to be time-saving and productive, it actually holds little benefit for both learners and the organization. Because when creating an eLearning course for employees, you want to know that you’re meeting their learning objectives and delivering effective, engaging training materials. And this takes time. Rushing your online course design will only result in lower quality content that’s no good to your users or organizational goals.

So what can you do about handling this situation? Well, next time someone approaches you with a training request, you need to stop and ask yourself one important question – why. This one simple word can help create better alignment between the business needs of your organization and the training content you develop for your learners.

Kevin M. Yates, Learning and Development Measurement Expert, uses a great analogy to explore the frustrations faced by many eLearning professionals when dealing with the way training requests are delivered.

“There are times where the discussion between the L&D team and the business sounds like placing a fast-food order for training, Yates says, likening the process to ordering “a classroom training from the lite menu with a side order of video-conference” or “a couple of WebEx programs to go.”

Approaching learning content in this generic, out-of-the-box way fails to consider the specific needs of your audience, or even your audience themselves. We’ve talked before about taking a cookie cutter approach to learning and how it’s never the best way to educate students or staff. That’s why you need to deliver customized training solutions that are tailor-made for your staff.

To do this, Paul Rosevear suggests using the The 5 Whys questioning technique, pioneered by Taiichi Ohno and made famous by Toyota. This technique encourages employees to ask “why?” at least five times in succession, to drill down to the root of any problem.

As Rosevear says, “blindly fulfilling training often invites a far simpler conundrum: the training that’s been requested might not even be solving the right problem.”

In contrast, asking why helps you to determine the issue or problem that needs to be solved. Once you’ve established this, you can move on to determining how to solve it through your eLearning materials.

Rosevear uses this dialogue between a VP and eLearning professional to illustrate this point, and the process of the 5 Whys questioning technique.

As you can see, the questions asked by the eLearning professional help to uncover the team's true issue, along with the learning objective that needs to be achieved. He can then go ahead and create an online course that will successfully address and meet this learning objective.

Imagine, on the other hand, that he had walked away from the VP immediately after the initial briefing. It's likely that he would have created eLearning materials around collaboration, right? By asking questions, and drilling down to the crux of the issue, our eLearning professional is able to design far more targeted and effective materials around the topic of critical feedback. He's able to help the Product team function better, leading to more positive results for the team, their VP, the organization and its customers or clients!

Try out the 5 Whys technique next time you're asked to design an eLearning course. You'll soon find this questioning technique become more natural to you, as you become more accustomed to looking at the big picture.

You might also like to check out our handy eLearning course design checklist, to help you design online courses that your audience will love.

For more in-depth discussion of online course design, look closer at what makes a good online course design, in terms of the fascinating science behind the design process.

One question to ask before creating an online course

We live in a digital world and that fact encouraged many businesses to bring in an LMS to facilitate training and education within the organization. However, just bringing in a program isn’t enough to get your employees excited about logging in. There has to be more to it than just being present.

If the only time your workers log in to the LMS is to take required training, you aren’t getting the full value out of the program. While education in required areas is important and should be made a priority, this isn’t encouraging employees to dig deeper. In fact, it could leave them less enthusiastic about the system.

To get your users excited about your LMS, you need to entice them and clearly demonstrate the value beyond ensuring compliance with certain policies. So, how do you peak their interest? Here are some tips to get you started.

Understand the Importance of Professional Development

The first step to increasing the use of your LMS is to understand how important that system really is, and not just in the context of your company. We all know that skilled workers improve your bottom line, but providing opportunities to grow professionally helps your staff too, in more ways than one.

Yes, additional training can give them the tools to be more productive during work hours, but that isn’t the only benefit. In most cases, your best and brightest crave challenges and are looking for support as they reach for their goals. And failing to provide employee development opportunities leads to early exits from your company.

High achievers want to learn and grow, and an LMS can be an ideal vehicle. You just have to make sure it is accessible and offers courses that excite your employees. And that means looking past mandatory training into something more comprehensive.

Even if you have a plethora of courses, you aren’t getting the full value of you LMS if you limit who can take what.  Often, managers only open training to individuals working in a particular job category, figuring it’s wise to limit access based on theoretical relevance to their current duties.

However, by opening up the full catalog to the entire organization, you may see something surprising.

Interest in a course isn’t always cut along job titles. For example, an executive assistant may appreciate a greater understanding of technical or scientific aspects of the department, as they are often tasked with taking meeting notes, compiling reports, creating presentations, and other similar support work.

If they don’t understand the subject, their effectiveness is limited. And, when faced with an option to alleviate their confusion and improve their understanding of the nature of the business, many will take advantage of the opportunity.

Similarly, there may be employees throughout the company who would like the opportunity to move up the ranks or change departments to follow an interest. By giving them access to everything your LMS has to offer, you’re encouraging them to explore new areas of knowledge or careers. And that may be the ideal inspiration to help them move forward.

So, if a current IT employee is interested in project management, why not let them give a Project Management for Information Technology course a try? They’ll get to learn more about a subject of interest and your company benefits from having an enthusiastic employee with more knowledge.

Did you know that word-of-mouth marketing is considered one of the most effective approaches for connecting with customers? If so, did you realize you can use the same principles to increase interest in your LMS?

Once your LMS has the right offerings, finding a few cheerleaders to help spread the word can be an effective method to get people logging in. And, when you choose employees from all levels within your company to do the talking, you might reach the largest percentage of your workers.

In many cases, management informs employees about options like LMS, they don’t necessarily discuss it. However, an employee that is excited about online learning won’t just send out an email to their co-workers telling them to try it; they’ll TALK about it with them.

They’ll sell the benefits, explain the system, and encourage people to explore the courses themselves. From a marketing perspective, this is hard to beat. And it’s a technique you can use to bring people to the LMS.

Then, once other people start getting excited about the opportunities, they’ll talk about it too.

You can begin this process by looking for your current top users of the system or those who’ve expressed an interest in learning more about their positions or the organization. Make sure they get a chance to have a great experience and encourage them to spread the word once they’ve gotten their hands dirty a few times.

If your go-to move is an email that doesn’t say more than “here’s a link to the LMS” and provides login information, it shouldn’t be a surprise people aren’t flocking to the site. You need to sell the LMS as a great opportunity. And that isn’t necessarily hard to do.

Start by keeping emails concise, but use more personal language to connect with your employees. Let them know the system is “ready for you” and that it will “help you learn and grow as a professional.”

The word “you” is especially powerful here, as it lets them feel as though you are speaking directly to them.

Feel free to include employee testimonials, such as some created by your cheerleaders. This helps other workers see that people just like them value the LMS, and it will encourage them to take a look.

Using some of the tips above, you can dramatically increase the interest in your LMS, allowing both your company and your employees reap the benefits of these great offerings. So, take the time to talk it up right, gather your cheerleaders, and make sure every knows the sky’s the limit when it comes to training opportunities.

Does your organisation have a proper social media policy in place?

Whether you like it or not, the way in which your employees use Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels can have an impact on the professional and ethical reputation of your organisation. It can also lead to serious legal ramifications and security risks for the company. To avoid these kinds of situations from occurring, it’s vital for all businesses to have a strong social media policy in place, outlining guidelines and expected behaviour from their employees.

Here are three ways your organisation will benefit from a good social media policy.

The primary function of your social media policy is to protect the reputation of your company.

These days, with much of our life being documented online, there is a thinner line between what’s private and public. Many people include details of their occupation and employer on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, meaning anything that is posted on social media could be seen to reflect that company’s organisational values. While this might not be true, or even fair, if the content contains sensitive or confidential information about your workplace, it presents a serious risk for both employees and their employers.

A social media policy helps to define what’s appropriate for staff to post about their company on social media channels. Having clearly defined guidelines means employees know the difference between what’s appropriate and not appropriate to discuss on social media.

“Generally, the policy will state that employees shouldn't write anything they wouldn’t want splashed across the public media,” says Mark Henricks, in an article for Entrepreneur. Keeping this framework in mind can help protect both staff and the organisation, as in the case of the Secret Service above.

Social media presents significant potential for risk when it comes to posting sensitive or confidential company information, which can lead to serious legal consequences for both staff and employers. In today’s workforce, social media policies are no longer a simple ‘nice to have’ detail – they have become a very necessary legal policy document.

By having a social media policy in place, you can remove any confusion about legal issues. A good social media policy will:

Clearly spell out which social media use in the workplace is acceptable and which is not

Include information on what’s considered confidential or private company information

Explain the consequences of going against the rules of this policy

As an employer, you’re doing the right thing by educating staff in this area. And most employees will appreciate having clear guidelines about what the organisation considers public information.

Rich Nadworny, Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, explains: “social policies won’t stop all poor behavior. But they will cause some people to pause and think before they act socially.” Stopping to think before making a careless Facebook post or Tweet could be the difference between keeping your job or from getting fired and drawn into a serious legal dispute.

Now that we’ve talked about the more serious aspects of social media, it’s important to also realise its potential for bringing positive attention to your company. Using social media in the right way can raise more awareness of your organisation and what it does. And your social media policy will help you do this!

A good social media policy will contain clear guidelines to help employees understand ways they can use social media to help achieve company goals. Encourage staff to share good news stories and company wins across social media channels. You should feel comfortable that employees know what’s considered confidential or sensitive information, as it’s outlined in your policy document.

Your social media policy should also contain details of your company’s social spokesperson, so all staff know who to direct enquiries or concerns from these channels. You don’t want employees to be fielding these questions themselves – firstly, it’s not part of their job description, and secondly, they probably aren’t best equipped to handle these enquiries in the public eye.

For more help creating a social media policy for your organisation, take a look at this short one-hour course on Developing a Social Media Policy. This eLearning course is useful for anyone wanting to know more about protecting their business and employees while using social media. You’ll also receive a free social media policy example for you to download at the end.

Looking to develop your UX skills and gain a better understanding of user experience?

If you’re a UX designer, you’ll know how important it is to keep your design skills up-to-date and relevant to the industry. One of the best ways to continually develop your knowledge and skills is through eLearning, with loads of great training courses for UX designers available online.

Whether you want to learn more about user profiling and personas, or explore the world of mobile app design, you’re sure to find an online course that fits your objective. To get you started, here’s our pick of the bunch – a selection of 5 of the best eLearning courses for UX designers.

Kicking off the list of online courses, UX Design for Web Developers is a good starting place for understanding the principles and best practices of user experience.

Presented through video, this is a course for web developers who are looking to develop a deeper understanding of user experience – including why we need UX and how UX came to be. You’ll learn more about tools and techniques you can use to create better user experiences and interactive web design.

As you explore UX methodologies, you’ll develop the fundamental skills for designing a mobile-friendly website and structuring a website content strategy. Learn how to:

Build a website structure, keeping in check user flows and sitemaps

Exploit wireframes and build a solid one for responsive web design

Get to grips with UX best practices and incorporate them in your web design

Learn how to build a clickable wireframe prototype to enhance responsiveness

Upon completion of the course, you’ll have a finished website plan, ready for user testing and feedback.

UX Design Techniques: Creating Scenarios and Storyboards

This one is probably best for people who are already working in a UX design role, and who already have a good understanding of user experience best practice.

The Creating Scenarios and Storyboards course offers an in-depth look at the importance of scenarios and storyboarding to UX design. Both of these elements are vital for web designers, as they allow the designer to see how things will play out in a real environment.

Through this eLearning course, you’ll learn how to write scenarios and create engaging visual storyboards. These skills will help you map out ideas about what users need to complete day-to-day tasks and workflow, making your website designs far more effective and user-friendly.

Mobile UX Design Process: Create a Successful App

Want to know how to create apps? This course will give you the mobile app design skills you need to succeed in the competitive world of UX.

With Mobile UX Design Process, you’ll be adding a highly valued skill to your CV, enabling you to prototype, generate and test apps directly on your phone. Throughout the course, you’ll gain an understanding of what makes a positive mobile experience for users.

You’ll create a native iOS App, starting from the ideation process, moving on to drawing ideas and wireframing a basic concept. You’ll explore adding new elements and complex interactions to reach the result and experience you’re looking for.

Another from the UX Design Techniques series, the Creating Personas course will show you how to create for the users you care about most. Personas are used in UX to help establish a picture of the exact customer you’re designing for. This way, your whole team will have the same person and goal in sight, as they develop the site, app or product.

This course challenges you to think about who you are developing for and exactly how they will use your design. You’ll be shown how to collate and interpret user data from site visits and interactions, to create effective personas.

By taking the time to learn how to work with personas, you’ll be able to improve your UX skills, and design in a way that’s far more coherent and focused.

Building and Maintaining Your UX Design Portfolio

Last, but not least – we’ll leave you with this cool course. Because while it’s obviously vital to keep developing your skills in UX design, it’s also important to know how to showcase these skills.

With the Building and Maintaining Your UX Design Portfolio course, you’ll learn how to make sure your portfolio stands out from the competition. You’ll be shown all the different elements that combine to make a strong UX portfolio and how to incorporate storytelling into your presentations.

Worried that you don’t even have a portfolio to begin with? Don’t worry, this course will help you get started on that, with tips for creating your first portfolio – even if you're new to a UX role and are just starting out in your career!

In recent weeks, we’ve seen various countries across the world affected by major cyber attacks involving ransomware. The ransomware, believed to be a malicious computer virus known as Petya, has wreaked havoc on more than 200,000 organizations in over 150 countries – including companies, universities, government agencies and hospitals across Britain, Spain, Portugal, Russia and Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Helsinki-based cybersecurity company F-Secure, called the series of attacks "the biggest ransomware outbreak in history."

Now, this global ransomware attack has hit Australia, disrupting the operations of a number of Australian businesses – including the Cadbury chocolate factory in Hobart.

With companies worldwide scrambling to recover from corporate chaos, Australian business owners and leaders are no doubt worried about how ransomware could affect their own organisation. If you’re in this position, it’s important to understand how this form of cyber threat works and think about how you can protect your business, well before anything goes wrong.

Being prepared, and taking precautions against the risk of ransomware, will help you minimise the threat of cyber attacks on your company. Here’s what you need to know about ransomware, how it works, and steps you can take to protect your organisation.

Ransomware, such as the Petya virus, is a type of malicious software that has the ability to freeze or shut down computers – from an individual’s personal laptop computer, to the servers of a whole organisation.

You might be wondering how your computer can become infected with a virus like this? Well, to gain access to a company’s system, the malware virus needs to be downloaded onto a device within the network. To make this happen, the virus is generally hidden in an email, in the form of a link or attachment, that can be clicked on and opened by unknowing employees. When the link or attachment is accidentally opened, the virus is immediately downloaded to the system, freezing computers, taking out servers and locking up company files.

Once this has happened, hackers and cyber criminals have a way to extort money from companies or individuals. After gaining control of a system, they demand a ransom in return for decrypting the virus and unlocking computers. Pretty scary stuff, right?

The past month has shown us that it’s critical for business owners to pay serious attention to cyber security and the risk of ransomware attacks.

As the internet and the real world have become increasingly intertwined, our businesses and lives have become increasingly vulnerable to cyber criminals. Any company or organisation that depends on daily access to important data for business operations – and can’t afford to have those operations disrupted – should be worried about ransomware.

It's not only large multinational corporations, government agencies and big business that are at threat of cyber attacks. As individuals, we are also at risk of being targeted. So even if you’re not a business owner, or CEO, read on for some important tips for protecting yourself against ransomware.

How Can I Protect My Company Against Ransomware?

One of the best defenses against ransomware is to back up important data daily. This way, even if your company's computers and servers do get hacked and locked, you can't be forced to pay for access to important business data.

The director of the Australian Centre for Cyber Security at UNSW, Professor Jill Slay, recommends companies “update all Windows systems if not updated and make sure all critical files are backed up.”

"Just be really careful to back up, update Windows and applications, do not open unexpected attachments to emails – this is what we should be doing anyway – and install antivirus software if you do not have it already," Slay advises.

Jason Tanz, site director at Wired, agrees and recommends backing up your files remotely, or to the cloud.

“Make sure you're backing up your files every day, and that means on a hard drive that is not connected to the internet," Tanz says. Because ransomware is only an effective threat when there’s no other record of the files being held for ransom. As Tanz says, “if you have all your files backed up, it leaves those using ransomware against you without any power whatsoever."

Removing this power is an important step in reducing the threat of ransomware. As well as backing up data, help employees to be aware of the risks of opening suspicious emails, and clicking on links and attachments within emails. Be particularly wary of compressed or ZIP files, as these attachments are often used to hide malware viruses. And always install software updates as soon as they are available. Antivirus programs can also go a long way in stopping ransomware from being downloaded onto computers.

By taking these precautions, you can protect yourself and your business from malicious ransomware and the risk of cyber attack. Being prepared, and taking proactive steps for increased cyber security, really is your best line of defense.

How to protect your business against ransomware

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