Seward Incorporated

Over the past 10 years, Seward has had the opportunity to work in a number of developing countries around the world to assist in planning for and implementing eLearning initiatives. During that time, we’ve seen initiatives succeed and we’ve seen initiatives struggle. Based on our experience, here are some best practices that can help your initiative be successful:

1. Top-down buy-in: Very few successful eLearning initiatives start at the grass-roots level. The reality of eLearning is that, like standard training, it involves the cooperation of people across the entire organization. Human resources are required to set up and maintain the infrastructure, develop the eLearning content, and support the learner. Additionally, the learners often require some sort of incentive to participate in the eLearning. Incentives could include adhering to company policy, gaining professional development opportunities, or receiving direct payments. When it comes down to it, the only people who have the sway within any organization to mobilize enough staff and provide the necessary incentives are the people at the top. Simply put, if the top management of the organization is not on board, the initiative will fail.
2. Bottom-up enthusiasm: Just because an organization puts the infrastructure in place does not guarantee that an eLearning initiative will be successful. The necessary enthusiasm can come from a shared vision of the need for or value of eLearning, it can be generated through marketing efforts that promote eLearning, or it can be created through reward and recognitions systems put in place as the program is designed. Regardless of the source, enthusiasm for the program at all levels must exist if the program is to succeed.
   
3. Identify the goals: There are a thousand and one reasons for a Ministry of Education, University, Government, or Corporation to implement eLearning. Before you can begin designing a solution that will best fit your needs, you must first identify your goals and the standards by which you will measure your success. A few examples of goals are:
   • Ensure that everyone has access to the same high-quality training materials. (This goal is often part of an initiative to phase out the ineffective waterfall training method, whereby schools send one “master” teacher to be trained and he/she is responsible for training all the teachers at his/her school. Anecdotal evidence reveals that a very small percentage of the knowledge imparted in training actually makes it to the teachers in the field.)
   • Reduce training costs associated with bringing learners to a central location and paying for their room, board, and transportation.
4. Planning: eLearning is not a one-size-fits-all solution. To achieve success, every eLearning implementation needs to be tailored to its specific environment. When planning and designing an eLearning solution, be sure to take into account:
   • The goals of the initiative
   • The training culture within your organization
   • The technical abilities of the people involved (both the learners and the instructors)
   • The hardware, software, and network limitations
5. Training Content Creators: Long-term sustainability is one of the primary concerns of organizations as they begin to implement eLearning. Nobody wants to be reliant on expensive external vendors to produce and maintain their training. On the other hand, nobody wants to have low-quality eLearning courses cluttering up their system and degrading the success of their initiative. Training your own staff to produce high-quality and instructionally-sound eLearning content is one of the best investments you can make to support the long-term viability of the project.
6. Supporting the learner: The move from stand-up training to eLearning is a major paradigm shift, and can be a challenging and stressful experience for your learners. This is especially apparent when the learners are not particularly tech-savvy. To ensure that you don’t lose your learners and, as a result, sink your initiative, it is absolutely necessary to provide as many ways as possible for your learner to obtain support when they have questions. This support can take the form of a telephone help line, an email address of the instructor, or a website that answers questions.

Overall, there is little doubt that eLearning is a valuable tool for improving educational systems in developing countries where the infrastructure supports it. Hopefully, following these few best practices can help you avoid the pitfalls of an unsuccessful implementation.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 11:08 am and is filed under E-learning, International Education Development. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: education, eLearning, international education developement, online training, web-based instruction