Top 10 Strategies for a Successful E-Learning Project

By Mark Steiner

Today’s wide blend of technologies enables an extraordinary range of cognitive, affective, and social enhancements of learning capabilities. Advances in collaborative learning and experiential simulation enable a variety of guided and inquiry-based learning that cross the barriers of distance and time. Through a mixture of instructional media, learners and educators can experience synchronous and asynchronous interactions.

This article focuses primarily on asynchronous learning, specifically constructing self-paced e-learning courses, though these strategies could be applied to a variety of learning design and development situations. Designing and developing robust, effective e-learning is not easy. Many tasks, roles, and tools are required to complete the process successfully. Here are 10 of the fundamentals critical to success.

1. Educate the client on the fundamentals of e-learning. Regardless of a client’s level of e-learning awareness or sophistication, an educational process must occur. This is true whether it is an internal or external client. Even among experienced professionals within this industry, individuals undoubtedly have varying nomenclature regarding roles, processes, and tools. It is essential to educate your client on roles, processes, tools, options, costs, feasibility, and consequences to ensure all parties are operating on similar assumptions and guidelines. You and your client should approach the endeavor as a partnership. Assist your client in realizing what an integral part it is to the process. Build trust with your client by providing it with sensible, honest, pragmatic expertise. However, don’t be afraid to exert control and don’t be afraid to say no. Remember it’s your responsibility to set and control the client’s expectations.
2. Determine the actualtraining need or gap. If training is not the solution to the problem, you are guaranteed to fail. It is doubtful either you or your client desire such an outcome. To help ensure determination of the actual deficiency, perform a thorough analysis, working closely with your client. Begin your analysis with what your client thinks is wrong, then dig deeper, utilizing your previous experiences, education, and intuition. There are a variety of resources that can assist individuals and organizations in enhancing and strengthening their analysis process.
3. Define your process and communicate it, focusing on key review points in the cycle. The design and development of e-learning is often a complicated collision of ideas, tools, roles, people, technology, and desired outcomes. You and your client want predictable results. A well-defined, reliable process is the clearest way to get the desired results. What activities are to occur? When will they occur? Which ones must be completed before other activities can begin? It is important to make your client aware of its responsibilities: specifically inputs, review cycles, and corresponding impacts.
4. Identify all key project personnel and define and communicate their roles. Now that a process has been identified and we know what will happen when, we need to know who will be doing the “whats.” Roles may include buyer, acceptor, reviewer, program lead, project lead, subject matter experts, instructional designer, developer, graphic artist, animator, audio/video specialist, etc. Regardless of the size of your company or project, roles must be filled. Maybe it’s the case that some individuals will be wearing multiple hats, but someone has to fill all of the necessary roles. It is essential to establish who signs off on what items at the beginning of the project. Also, it’s best to have a single point of contact for acceptance. Acceptance by committee is too often slow, painful, and expensive.
5. Perform a comprehensive and realistic analysis regarding the technical needs and specifications of the project. Examine your client’s technical infrastructure. This often means working closely with IT. Does it have a learning management system (LMS)? What standards does it use for tracking? How many users? How media-rich will the e-learning be? Are there limits regarding high-bandwidth media? What kind of network transfer rates can be expected? What are past examples it considers successful?
6. Perform a thorough analysis regarding the content of the e-learning and the specific instructional treatments. Set realistic goals for the program. Most teams usually don’t have a James Cameron Avatarbudget, but regardless of cost constraints, strive to make interactions meaningful, engaging, and relevant, mimicking the desired end behaviors. Clicking the Next button to continue is notconsidered meaningful interactivity. Creating engaging e-learning is hard work. Align the learning objectives with instructional themes, rehearsals, evaluations, and remediations that have been selected during the design.
7. Specifically define your deliverables. How else do you know when you’re done? There are a variety of questions regarding the project scope that must be answered during the analysis and design phases: How much research and instructional design is required? What is the course structure? How many types and amounts of interactions? How many types and amounts of media? How many types and amounts of rehearsals? How many types and amounts of evaluations? Also, if it’s a blended project, keep in mind any potential collateral materials such as job aids, administrator’s and users guides, duplication costs, etc.
8. Acquire an intimate knowledge of your development tools. Obtain or develop experts in key areas such as: project management, instructional design, graphic design, e-learning authoring tools, Web infrastructure, audio/video, SCORM and related standards, and newer methods such as mlearning and using social media. All of these areas are critical to the success of your project. If your team cannot adequately cover all areas, consider contracting outside resources that will both perform the required work andteach your team to be self-sufficient.
9. In addition to the purely technical considerations of an e-learning project, also consider the unique aspects of interface design and media types and sizes when designing e-learning. Employing a graphic designer to create an effective interface, with custom buttons and eye-pleasing color schemes and assets is worth the expense. First impressions are critical to the learners and the e-learning product you are producing reflects the company and organization it is supporting. It’s a shame to see programs that have wonderful instructional design, but the 5 to 10 percent of the budget that should have been spent on a professional graphics talent was omitted. Other items to consider are the use of proper color palettes; your choice of file formats for graphics, audio, animation, and video; file-naming conventions and directory structures.
10. Test your application early and often, from both a user and technical perspective. Don’t wait until two days before delivery to test your application in the actual environment it will be delivered. The concept of testing your application cannot be overemphasized. Hopefully, during the technical analysis phase, course components and requirements were aligned with the delivery environment. Still, testing should be done early and often to ensure operability and minimize unpleasant surprises. Also, from a human factors engineering (or usability) standpoint, test your application with learners. Don’t wait until you are out of time and money to find out if you have a flawed design. Test prototype versions of your program which contain key sample interactions, interfaces, and navigation schemes with actual learners early and often.

In summary, creating e-learning is complicated: project management, instructional design, interface design, Web design, a bevy of authoring tools and languages, 2-D and 3-D animations, audio, video, internet, intranet, extranet, browsers, plug-ins, SCORM and AICC standards, and oh, yes. . .changing learners’ behaviors and ensuring client satisfaction. Whether you have a large team or a small team or whether you are corporate or academic, keep these tips in mind to find a scalable, repeatable process that works for you.

Mark Steiner is president of learning solutions firm mark steiner, inc. Visit www.marksteinerinc.com for more information.

via trainingmag.com

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