Name: Gregory
Posts by Gregory Sales:
- Make people aware of the eLearning while it is under development.
- Let them know who will use it.
- Explain how it will benefit them and their organization.
- Communicate the release date.
- Celebrate the implementation of the training.
- Follow-up with the periodic announcements and reports.
- Publish articles in newsletters that are distributed to learners.
- Place posters around the office that announce the eLearning.
- Display information about the eLearning project in common areas.
- Send out e-mail announcements that broadcast the training opportunity.
- Develop special web pages that serve as teasers. They can provide progress reports and sample lessons for the training.
- Conduct an official “ribbon cutting” ceremony or open house and invite prominent individuals as your guests of honor.
- QA Round 1-The Developers: Developers test the software to ensure that it is fully functional and error-free before a module is made available for others to review. Even the most thorough developer testing the software will not discover all the errors in the module. Sometimes this happens because she is “too close” to the project and fails to see an error because she has been looking at it too long.
- QA Round 2-The Instructional Designers: Once the developers complete their testing, the instructional designers begin their review of the software. While they will continue to look for operational errors, the primary goal of this round of testing is to verify completeness and accuracy. To accomplish this, the instructional designers compare the eLearning program to the detailed design document.
- QA Round 3-The Client Team: When the development team believes all functional and content errors are found and resolved, the client team should now take a look. The focus of their review is to make sure that the content is accurately presented, that the assets support the content as intended, and the assessments are working as needed. The client team must focus on four things while reviewing content: content errors; omissions; sequencing problems related to the content treatment and presentation; and operational errors that were missed in the previous testing.
- How will your instruction be delivered?
- What are the dominant characteristics of your lesson design? Does it require lots of animation, video, and audio?
- Does it contain high levels of interactivity and require tracking larger volumes of learner statistics?
- Who will be responsible for authoring and maintaining the eLearning and what programs have they worked with? What is their skill level?
- What other systems must the eLearning “communicate” with inside your organization?
- Information Treatments: Presenting content and directions, including sequencing the presentation of instructional text, graphics, narration, informational audio, and video.
- Orientation Strategies: Communicating to learners their location within the software. Strategies include the use of headers, subheaders, icons, colors, and page numbers.
- Navigation Techniques: Establishing functions that allow learners to move from place to place in the software, including menus, buttons, and links.
- Aesthetics Elements: Representing appropriate culture, mood, status, and attitude, through the use of colors, images, sounds, and font styles.
- Featured Tools: Providing support devices, including such things as bookmarks, notepads, and calculators.
- Adaptive Designs: Strategies to modify the presentation of the instruction to better accommodate the unique characteristics of a learner of category of learners.
- Learner Management: Strategies for directing learners to the appropriate areas of study based on job requirements or patterns of performance.
- Record Keeping/Security: Techniques for tracking time on tasks, items presented, responses, scores, options selected, progress, and limiting access to this information based on established criteria.
- Reporting: Methods for customizing and filing individual and/or group reports (electronically or in print) to the learner, as well as the organization.
- Administration: Features for adding or deleting students and for modifying instructional requirements, such as mastery criteria.
- It allows the eLearning developers and clients to verify the logic and flow of the design before production begins.
- It provides an easy means for the subject matter expert to review the content and make edits prior to production, thereby controlling cost.
- It serves as a “blueprint,” which can be archived for reference if modification becomes necessary in the future.
- Learner characteristics: Knowledge of your training audience can dramatically affect your e-learning design. Some of the questions you need to answer are: How similar or different are the learners? What are their ages, genders, skills, and aptitudes? Do they have prior knowledge that will influence how they approach the training? What will motivate them to participate and to do well in the training?
- Scope and nature of the content: Knowledge about the content, requirements for content presentation, practice activities, learner feedback, and learner assessment all influence how you design the training. Some of the questions you need to answer are: At what level should the instruction begin? What learning outcomes are needed? Is there a hierarchical order to the information? What must the learner do to demonstrate that he or she has learned?
- Learning environment: Knowledge of the conditions under which your e-learning solutions will be used can radically influence how you design the e-learning. Some of the questions you need to answer about the learning environment are: Is it quiet? Is there the potential for frequent interruptions? What level of security is available to protect equipment?
- Delivery system: You will need to consider computer capabilities, network connections, the nature of the database where records will be stored, the availability of mentors for learners, existing resources or potential job aids, and many other issues. By asking questions that relate to the entire system, you can determine how to best design and integrate e-learning into the training.
- Project constraint: Knowledge of the project’s resource limitations will determine the parameters for development of your training. Some of the questions you need to answer are: What is the budget? When must the training be available for use? How many people will be signing-off at the project milestones, and who are they? What is the availability of the subject matter experts to review design documents?
Don’t Forget to Market Your Elearning Product
February 16th, 2011
Lifecycle of an eLearning Product
Q: What one word best describes the Marketing Stage of eLearning?
A: Overlooked.
It is not surprising that a core team consisting largely of trainers and developers focuses primarily on aspects of design, development, and delivery. However, if you want your eLearning product to be used, you need to let people know about it and build their expectations about what it will do for them. The benefits gained from marketing your eLearning are well worth the effort. So, announce the eLearning to management and captivate your learners’ attention. It will dramatically increase use of your eLearning product.
Marketing is just as important for internal eLearning as for those intended for customers or vendors. The idea behind eLearning marketing is simple. It should increase use by accomplishing six things:
Your pre-release marketing activities prepare learners for the eLearning. These activities raise learner awareness, establish expectations about how learners will benefit, foster anticipation, and increase their perceived value of the eLearning product.
Having a launch ceremony or celebration when the eLearning program is released can be a powerful marketing tool. It is an effective way to recognize the contributions of those who worked hard to make the eLearning a reality. Also, it emphasizes the important of the program—and motivates learners to participate in using it.
Follow-up, or post-release, marketing keeps the momentum going and extends the life of the eLearning. An article in a newsletter reporting the launch of the eLearning, periodic e-mail messages updating the status of the completion rate, or posted reminders encouraging compliance with the training can all reinforce the importance placed on the product by your organization. Each communication can heighten learners’ awareness of the program and encourage participation.
In total, these marketing activities elevate the eLearning experience from that of an isolated set of training events to an integral part of your work environment. When you invest even the minimum in marketing, you can reap significant benefits. This effort drastically enhances the perception of, and participation in, your eLearning product.
You can use these common forms of internal marketing to build interest in and anticipation for your eLearning:
You need to market your eLearning, regardless of whether it’s for a relatively small, local group of learners, or for every employee in a global corporation. Your eLearning will thrive because of it. Marketing should never be overlooked.
What are your experiences with marketing your eLearning product? Leave a comment!
Test Your Way to a High-Quality eLearning Product
November 23rd, 2010Lifecycle of an eLearning Product
In my last post, I wrote about the Development Phase of an eLearning product. This is when your team actually creates the eLearning product. The Development Stage is extremely intense and demanding for team members on both the development and client side. In addition to implementing the design, all team members must be involved in several levels of quality assurance testing (the process of eliminating errors in the eLearning product).
Quality assurance (QA) tests are conducted throughout the development stage. QA is an ongoing process, and it is absolutely critical to your release of a high-quality product. QA has one fundamental goal: ensure the eLearning is free of both operational and content errors, including omissions.
Several different rounds of QA testing are conducted throughout the development process. Each round takes advantage of the strengths of the various team members. The different rounds of QA, the team members involved, and the purpose of each round are described below.
Your eLearning team may need to complete their testing several times as errors are discovered, resolved, and the fixes are validated. Following this, your team should be confident that the product is tested internally to the fullest extent possible.
What are your experiences with QA testing? Leave a comment!
Developing a Successful eLearning Product
July 30th, 2009In my last post, I wrote about the necessity of a detail design document that captures the smallest details of the project and how they interrelate. The creation phase concludes with the eLearning product development.
The work you do during analysis and design takes shape during the development stage. This is when your team actually creates the eLearning product. The Development Stage is extremely intense and demanding for team members on both the development and client side.
Using the detail design document as a guide, your development team produces or secures all of the media assets (such as graphics, photographs, animations, narrations, sound effects, and video). Then, the developer uses the authoring tool to assemble and present the assets. Of course, the authoring must also incorporate all the required navigation, orientation, interaction, management, record keeping, and administrative features. In some cases, some of these feature may also be part of the learning management system (LMS) used to launch and document the outcomes of training. All this is thoroughly specified in the detail design document.
Prior to development, people new to eLearning seldom value the amount of analysis and design work that is undertaken during a project. However, once development begins, it is all justified and appreciated. The effort put forth in determining learner motivation, preferences for graphic styles, prior experience with eLearning, and countless other details, begins to pay off. Why? Because the development team has the information they need to create an eLearning product they know will be effective.
All of the tough decisions are made during the analysis and design stages. Once it has been reviewed and approved by the subject matter experts (SMEs), the detail design document becomes a “recipe book” that the production team will follow. For example, using the specified naming convention provided in the documentation by the instructional designer, the graphic artist labels and stores newly created images. In turn, the developer referring to the documentation quickly identifies the correct graphic file he or she needs for a particular module. Then, following the documentation, he or she can integrate the asset at the correct location in the program begin authored.
Because everyone is following the same directions (the detail design document) this work is accomplished with a minimum effort and a high degree of confidence. The detail design document expedites production by being a common source with all the details needed by the production team. These details range from the sequencing of presentation elements to performance tracking requirements, audio scripts, and the file formats needed to export data.
Authoring is the use of development tools to create eLearning products. There are many different tools on the market. Selection of specific development tools should be guided by a few basic questions:
Both development tools and developers have their limitations. When your team is designing a lesson, you need to keep these limitations in mind. Otherwise, your vision may exceed your reach.
>View samples of projects developed by Seward Inc.
Writing Successful Detail Design Documents for eLearning
June 16th, 2009
Flickr: jimforsberg
In my last post, I wrote about the importance of conducting a front-end analysis for eLearning products. So, what is next in the eLearning creation phase? Design—most importantly the writing of the detail design document.
A detail design document is necessary before eLearning development can begin. This document must capture the smallest details of the project and communicate how they interrelate with the specificity required to guide production of the eLearning software.
The detail design document must communicate the following:
Of course, there are many aspects of an eLearning application that are not as obvious to learners as the instructional presentation. These must also be clearly documented in the detail design document. They include the following:
The detail design document serves several other purposes in addition to its primary role of guiding development. These include the following:
Creation of a sound detail design document is an essential component of an eLearning product’s lifecycle. Failure to do an adequate job at this point in the process will almost certainly result in cost overruns, missed or inappropriately covered content, and ineffective training.
At Seward Inc., we created the e-Prep tool to help our clients start the eLearning design process and define their e-learning needs. You can also use it to explore your needs.
The Key to Successful E-learning: Front-End Analysis
April 2nd, 2009
Flickr: Techne
In my last post, I talked about the lifecycle of an e-learning product with its phases of creation, delivery, and support. So, what goes into the creation phase? It begins with analysis, moves into design and development, and concludes with testing. I want to focus on a crucial stage that is often overlooked, and sometimes even neglected—analysis. Until you’ve conducted an analysis, you’re just guessing about what the best training and education solution will be.
Let’s review a basic point: training is developed to address a need. When new employees are joining your organization, you need to train them. When a new product is released, you need to tell people about it. When new procedures are implemented, your employees need to learn them. Unfortunately, not all of your organization’s problems are solved with training. Other issues, such as the volume of work, quality of raw materials, age of equipment or labor concerns, can create problems that training cannot solve.
When a problem is identified in your organization, someone within your organization must conduct a needs assessment to determine whether the problem can be solved through training. If you determine that training is a viable option, an instructional designer should conduct additional investigations. Collectively, this series of analyses is called a “front-end analysis.”
The purpose of a front-end analysis is to determine the most effective method for addressing the learning need. Until these analyses are completed it is impossible to know what the best solution will be. Often, clients (the people for whom the training is developed) have a training concept in mind long before the front-end analysis begins. The clients may want a computer-based solution that can also be used as a sales tool. Or, perhaps they may want an online lesson, which employees can access from offices around the world. Whatever their desire, in these cases the instructional designer is forced to try to design the best solution possible given the delivery method of this client is imposing—usually not the most effective approach.
The front-end analysis stage examines the following five areas:
When implemented properly, your front-end analysis will guide you to the most appropriate method for delivering your training. Furthermore, it will establish a number of parameters that will guide the production process. Findings of the front-end analysis are captured in a high-level description of your proposed solution. This document can be used to obtain consensus among stakeholders before the more costly design and development tasks are undertaken.
At Seward Inc., we created the e-Prep tool to help our clients start the front-end analysis process and define their e-learning needs. You can also use it to explore your needs.
E-learning Provides Effective Training Option in Tough Economic Times
February 18th, 2009Lifecycle of an E-learning Product
E-learning, also called online learning and web-based instruction, has long been a great solution for keeping the workforce trained at a low cost per pupil cost. Companies, government agencies, and higher education institutions, which are now facing very strained budgets, are looking to e-learning to train and educate workers. Recently, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) announced a goal to have 25 percent of all MnSCU credits earned through online courses by 2015. The initiative is meant to expand access, increase technology skills, provide excellent course content, and maximize efficiency and use of taxpayer resources.
Research indicates that this initiative is on the right track—well-designed, web-based instruction is just as effective, and often more effective, than classroom instruction. A Department of Defense report found that web-based instruction is 19% more effective than classroom instruction for teaching declarative knowledge when web-based trainees are provided with control, in long courses, and when trainees practice the training material and receive feedback during training.
With this renewed focus on e-learning as a solution to education needs in a tight economy, I thought it would be useful to share information about the e-learning development process and how it contributes to a well-designed product. I first presented a development model—Lifecycle of an E-learning Product—in my book A Quick Guide to E-learning. I created this model to provide guidance to organizations wanting to develop high-quality e-learning and online instruction. The lifecycle consists of seven stages, grouped into three phases, and has tasks associated with each stage. Often organizations focus all of their energies on the development of e-learning. They assume that once the product is completed everything else will take care of itself—an unwise path. Educating organizations about the lifecycle is part of every e-learning project Seward Inc. undertakes.
I want to share with you the three general phases of development and how the seven stages fit into them.
The Lifecycle of an E-learning Product: Phases of Creation, Delivery, and Support
E-learning costs money—and nobody likes to see money wasted, especially in this tough business climate. So, with rare exception, e-learning products are developed for long-term use. However, based on my observations, organizations that fund e-learning development seldom have a clear idea of what a product’s expected life span will be. Further, they are even less likely to understand the stages of its lifecycle and how their efforts at various stages can extend the life span of an e-learning program.The lifecycle of an e-learning product is comprised of three general phases, with seven stages that involve specific tasks. Each stage represents an essential part of the product’s natural evolution. Neglecting to address any of these seven stages could negatively impact the success and quality of your e-learning.
The three phases of the lifecycle are:
Creation
This is the first phase. It consists of Analysis, Design, and Development. The creation phase has one primary goal: the creation of the most effective and useful product for the given situation.
Delivery
This is the second phase. It consists of Marketing and Dissemination. The delivery phase has two primary goals: to get the intended audience interested in the e-learning product and to get the product distributed to the learners.
Support
This is the final phase. It consists of Implementation and Revision/Retirement. The support phase has one goal: to keep the e-learning product in use, and optimally effective, for as long as possible.
In my next four blog posts, I will share insights about each stage in the lifecycle and the tasks that go into creating the e-learning product.
