The Relevancy of Rapidly Developed eLearning Content
by Dudley Molina, Founder and CEO, ePath Learning, Inc.
This article was orginally published on CLO's
Maybe the title of this article sounds like an oxymoron to you. Perhaps it is because many eLearning content developers believe that relevant content and rapid development do not go hand in hand. Some may say that well executed training must involve planning, storyboarding, a skillful instructional designer and a talented graphic artist. They may even argue that the development of an engaging course also requires a multimedia producer, a narrator, or other specialty roles that can play a part in enhancing the content. In this column, I argue that while a disciplined approach executed by skilled professionals increases the chances of successfully developing an eLearning course, a rapid development approach should be in the toolkit of every training development organization.
How do you define a “rapid development approach” for eLearning? Just as I opined in my first article, “it’s relative.” What is rapid to you may not be rapid to the next guy or gal. What is acceptable quality of the end product for your neighbor may not be acceptable to you. In fact, there are many that argue that a rapid development approach does not even produce true training content. I’m sure you recognize these issues when you hear arguments surrounding statements such as “PowerPoint presentations are not training” or “Google is the largest training program in the history of the world.” The trouble with these statements is that they are absolutes that don’t fit well in a relative world. I don’t know about you, but I have learned things from PowerPoint slides (even without the speaker’s notes), but I wouldn’t want all my training received that way. And while one can learn a lot via Google, you can’t learn everything from it and sometimes it gives wrong information. But a rapid development approach may involve PowerPoint authoring and/or search engine technology. They are two of many tools that are available for use in a rapid approach. As working adults, we need training that is accurate, timely and useful. So, I define a rapid development approach as one that results in training that meets this minimal set of requirements in the fastest time possible.
Content for corporate delivery over the web takes many shapes and forms. A course that has a longer shelf life, such as a New Hire Orientation course, may justify the use of a formal development methodology. Many people may be involved in the gathering of the content and in ensuring it represents the company accurately. Organizational culture and company ‘look and feel,’ or branding standards can be sensitive topics that take time to work out. Also, because it is a new hire’s first glimpse into your organization your development may require input from a widely represented team to help orchestrate it, like various instruments in an orchestra. Now take a very different training need. Your product management team is launching a new product where ‘time to market’ is a critical competitive advantage. Your sales team needs to be trained quickly, decreasing the time to market for that new product. Isn’t it best in this case, that your product development person, who knows the ins and outs of that particular product, be directly involved in the development of the course? There are modern eLearning development tools that enable a novice user to quickly capture their knowledge and even build an eLearning course with minimal training on the use of the tool. Online development via a browser can be collaborative, allowing multiple developers to work on the content simultaneously and developers from different companies to work together. The course content can be organized quickly and accurately to be delivered to your salespeople as soon as possible. What line managers, who need content developed fast, like about this is that as the subject matter experts they can work online with several different people in real-time and see their brain trust captured to be shared and disseminated. The point is that multiple development approaches to online learning may be appropriate for the different training needs of your organization.
In addition to speed of development, an organization may also realize reduced development cost and shorter delivery time (fewer courseware hours) as benefits of using a rapid approach for eLearning development. However, the courses may demand more motivation from learners to complete the courses, and to thoroughly review and understand the content since simple instructional strategies and less repetition are likely to be used in the eLearning course. The training your company delivers need not be full of Flash graphics, games, simulations and so on and so forth to be effective. It needs to be relevant to what learners need to learn here and now. If you haven’t already done so, add a rapid development approach supported with modern tools to your training development organization’s bag of tricks.
