July 2025 eLearning Challenge: Hiking Safety & Survival Techniques

Hiking unites the best of both worlds—challenging exercise in the beauty of the great outdoors. Hikers head to Caballero County Parks to enjoy 8,500 acres of natural resources, including an extensive trail system with climbs for all experience levels.

Hiking can be more demanding than walking around the neighborhood, however. Environmental factors like heat and sun exposure, paired with a trail’s duration and difficulty, challenge even the most seasoned hikers. Caballero County is located in the foothills of a mountain range with very hot and dry summers. During this summer’s hiking season, county park rangers have noted a significant uptick in calls for assistance on the trails.

Rangers have triaged hikers who hit trails that were too long or too difficult in hot conditions and, as a result, found themselves in sticky situations—stricken with exhaustion, dehydration, and heat-related illnesses. The risk for dehydration skyrockets for hikers who pursue strenuous activity in hot conditions. According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, hikers may lose 2-3 quarts of fluid per hour when out on the trail. Most critically, hikers who are unprepared for high temperatures and sun may face life-threatening heat exhaustion and heat stroke if not treated quickly.

🌟 Challenge Sponsor

This month’s challenge is proudly sponsored by Maestro, the creators of the Mighty plugin for Rise 360—a powerful tool that enhances interactivity and learner engagement inside your Rise courses.

For this month’s challenge, we’re encouraging participants to create a mobile-optimized solution in Rise 360, incorporating the Mighty plugin to elevate the learner experience.

✅ The Challenge

Hiking safely involves much more than picking out the right pair of boots and gear. Health hazards such as overexertion, dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke place hikers in physical danger while out on the Caballero County Parks trails. Hikers are largely on their own and out of direct communication when in the expanse of the park system, and rangers may take hours to reach them when emergency assistance is needed. Park rangers want to empower hikers to find the right trail for their ability levels and prepare for environmental conditions by carrying enough potable water and mitigating heat and sun exposure.

You are an instructional designer working for Caballero County, partnering with park rangers to create a mobile-friendly eLearning course that assists hikers on the trails. The course will be available via QR codes placed strategically around the park on signage at the Welcome Center, on trail markers, and on maps.

After completing your course, learners will be able to complete one or more of the following objectives:

Select a park trail that is appropriate for their fitness level and seasonal conditions.
Determine if they are displaying symptoms of dehydration, heat exhaustion, and/or heat stroke.
Engage in treating self and/or other hikers experiencing dehydration, heat exhaustion, and/or heat stroke following the proper protocols.
Estimate the adequate amount of water to carry on a hike based on hike duration and other environmental conditions (heat, sun, climb difficulty, etc.).
Decide when to take breaks and even when to turn back in order to avoid overexertion and other illnesses.

📋 Requirements & Constraints

As you design and develop your course, keep the following requirements and constraints in mind:

Authoring Tools & Interactivity: While you’re welcome to use any eLearning authoring tool, we encourage you to use Rise 360, along with the Mighty plugin, to create your solution.

If you’re new to Mighty, you can sign up for a free trial and watch the video below to get up and running with Mighty inside Rise.

Here are some ideas for incorporating interactivity (and Mighty) into your project:

Incorporate reverse hotspots (using the Mighty plug-in) on an image of a trail or a park map to identify areas to cool off or seek shelter.
Include a reflection block (using the Mighty plug-in) to ask hikers to make a list of essential items they are carrying, why they are choosing a certain trail within the park, etc.
Build a scenario-based interaction where the learner assesses a hiker for symptoms of dehydration, heat stroke, or heat exhaustion.
Show an array of trail options within Caballero County Parks in a Process block, and modify it using the Mighty plug-in.
Create a knowledge check or quiz to determine which of the main trails are the right fit for beginner, intermediate, or advanced hikers. Give learners feedback as they respond to each question and tailor the outcome with a recommendation of the best trail for them.

Examples: If you want to see how others have used the Mighty plugin to customize their Rise 360 courses, check out these projects from our eLearning Examples Library:

Visual Design: You are free to design the course in any way you’d like; however, it should demonstrate good visual design best practices with a cohesive and consistent use of font, colors, images, and graphics. If you’re new to visual design, check out this playlist of videos to help you get started.

🎨 Style Guide

To help in the design of your eLearning course, you can view and download the client style guide and brand assets below. You are free to use these to design a branded course template or create your own design. /

Caballero_StyleGuide_NEW.pdf Caballero_Assets_NEW.zip

📑 Reference Materials

As you design and develop your course, you can create your own content from scratch or source your content from the following references:

🏆 Submission Guidelines & Contest Rules

Once you're done building your course, submit it by commenting below and sharing a link to your finished project. If you’re using Articulate Storyline or Rise, you can publish and share a link from Articulate Review or on the web using Google Cloud. Along with a link to your published course, share a few words explaining your design decisions, challenges, inspiration, etc.

Your submission must be posted no later than Friday, August 1st, at 11:59 PM ET. This month’s prize winner will receive:

A $100 Amazon Gift Card
One-Year License to the Mighty plugin for Rise 360, courtesy of Maestro

The winner will be selected based on the submission that makes the most effective use of Rise 360 and the Mighty plugin to create an engaging, interactive, and well-designed learning experience.

You can learn more about the contest rules and criteria here.

📢 Share Your Work & Get Seen

Want to get more eyes on your submission and inspire others in the community? Here are a few ways to spotlight your work:

Writing a Blog Post: If you happen to have a blog or online portfolio, write a post about your submission and share it on social media. Make sure to link to it in the comments below for others to see!
Record a Video: If you want to share how you went about designing your submission, record and share a screen recording video (via Loom, Camtasia, SnagIt, or YouTube) to showcase and explain your process. And, of course, don't forget to share a link to it in the comments below!
Share on Social Media: If you’re active on LinkedIn, Twitter, or another social media platform, create a post to share your submission. If possible, make sure to link back to this page and tag The eLearning Designer’s Academy on LinkedIn or Twitter in your post.

New to sharing your work? Check out this quick guide to working out loud and see how it can help you build visibility, confidence, and connections in your career.

💬 Give & Get Feedback

After you've shared your submission, make sure to review what others have submitted and provide constructive feedback. Remember, the monthly challenges (and this community as a whole) are meant to provide an inclusive and supportive environment. As you provide feedback, make sure to keep our Code of Conduct in mind.

As you work to develop your project, also consider sharing your work-in-progress for community feedback in our Get Feedback space here.

🎉 Challenge Recap, Submissions & Winner

Congrats to this month’s eLearning challenge winner, @Zainab Fawzul, for her winning submission: The Trail is Ready, Are you? 🎉

What we (and the folks at Maestro) loved was how far Zainab pushed the limits of what’s possible within Rise. The level of detail, technical complexity, and consistent design all made for a standout submission.

Check out all of the submissions for this month’s eLearning challenge:

🙋‍♂️ New to the Design Challenges?

If you're new to the eLearning challenges, check out this post to learn how they work.