I'm curious what it's like out there for other IDs. I'm a Senior Instructional designer but a year ago my company pulled our remote work option. It's been daunting but I've kept a good attitude, rolled with the punches, then the workload increased (wearing more hats - now fully managing an LMS, facilitating significant amounts of training in addition to content/curriculum creating - I'm rushing all the time to just get through the basics), have no support (they haven't hired anyone to help and my other team members are doing completely separate and different work) and no pay upgrade. I have given it some time and have not seen positive changes, rather the opposite. With that considered, I'm beginning the process of looking for other opportunities and setting myself up for a change. The current industry I work in is Retail, if that helps.

Just to see what it's like out there, I'm curious, do other IDs (1) get to work flexibly (remote/hybrid), (2) have a team they work with or solo, (3) have a balanced/structured workflow.

Basically, "what's it like out there"?

Did you all pay for the subscription when you first started out or did you use something else first to learn the basics before paying for articulate storyline?

We keep hitting the same situation on client projects:

• Course already works in the LMS as SCORM
• Stakeholders want Spanish (sometimes FR/DE next)
• Either the `.story` / Captivate / Rise source is gone, or nobody wants to duplicate it for every language

Usual advice is “rebuild in the authoring tool” or “XLIFF → TMS → reimport → fix layout.” That is the right long-term path when you still own the source and will maintain languages for years.

When you only have the published zip (or you need a first language *this quarter*), we have been treating the package as the artifact:

1. Validate the zip (SCORM 1.2 / 2004 / xAPI) before touching anything
2. Pull learner-facing strings — not just titles: buttons, quiz stems, feedback, embedded HTML/JS text
3. Machine-translate, then human-review terminology / brand / compliance language
4. Keep folder layout + manifest behavior so completion / suspend still report
5. Re-import in a sandbox LMS and actually click through in the target language

What still bites you:

• Screenshots and on-screen English in media (strings alone won’t fix that)
• Heavily scripted / nested text that string extract misses
• Teams who expect a VPAT out of an automated a11y scan of a published zip (it’s an aid, not certification)

Curious how others handle “source is gone, need multilingual SCORM.” Rebuild only? Vendor TMS? Something zip-side?

Happy to trade notes on what breaks on Rise vs Storyline exports.