eLearning Experts That Need To Be Part Of Your eLearning Development Team
Despite the fact that professionals are increasingly required to be multi-skilled in today's world of work, effective eLearning cannot be produced in silo, as it demands the professional input of personnel from numerous specializations.
Although every eLearning project is unique in its size, objectives, and deliverables, there are 14 key roles that—if employed effectively—will ensure that your eLearning outputs are as high a quality as possible.
The roles and responsibilities highlighted below are not exhaustive, as there are multiple other experts that could be involved depending on the industry, topic type, and structure of your organization. However, the aim of this article is to provide a general overview so that organizations have a strong starting point for eLearning project planning.
1. Focus Group
Your focus group is a collection of individuals who are ‘most like’ your prospective learner group. In short, they are to act like the ‘testing and consultation’ group. Use this collection of replica target learners to find out what their needs and preferences are to help you inform the training design, delivery, and support mechanisms that you will develop, and provide you real-life valid feedback about the eLearning before, during, and after the development.
2. Project Manager
The Project Manager will oversee the entire project from end to end, and ensure that all parties are engaged at the right time and kept to task, cost, and deadline deliverables.
3. Subject Matter Experts
Subject Matter Experts are specialists in your course topic(s). They should be qualified in the course topic, have a significant number of years experience in the field, and they should be able to prove that their industry knowledge is up to date. They are to be consulted with by the curriculum developers and provide subject matter content, where required, to ensure that your course content is accurate and complete.
4. Workforce Development Strategist
This role will ensure that the training to be developed meets the strategic objectives of the organization, fills your current and future skill gaps, addresses the job roles and career progression pathways of your staff, and that all of this ties back into the way that the training needs to be designed and delivered for optimum experience and knowledge acquisition.
5. eLearning Consultant
Your eLearning consultant will ensure that the training design and delivery is highly engaging, meets the principles of adult learning and contains the appropriate mix of mediums. They also work as a conduit between the manager of the curriculum developers and LMS developers to ensure that the marriage between education and technology is an effective, seamless, and enjoyable experience.
6. Curriculum Developers
Your curriculum developers should be qualified in education design at some level, as designing training requires more than just ‘putting some content together’. They must understand adult learning theory and training design principles, as well have a thorough understanding of teaching and training.
They are responsible for all education content creation, course design and development in consultation with the Subject Matter Experts. In short, the lesson plans, course plans, all learning resources, handouts, slides, and video scripts are to be created by your curriculum developers.
7. Graphic Designer
Engaging and standardized visual presentation of your resources and learning experience is critical. It’s not just about aesthetics and branding, but also about enabling learning. Your graphic designer is responsible for the presentation of learning resources, creating your style guide, designing the training resources templates, slide templates, creating course images, logos, sales page designs, and LMS design.
8. Training Administrators
Your training administrators are one of the few roles that will be involved from the beginning of the project, as well as long after the completion of the training development phase. They are there to manage the basic daily administration of eLearning and the learners who are taking it. Their tasks could include formatting, editing, uploading of resources and documents, file management, managing learner enrollments, and daily learner admin support.
9. LMS Developers
LMS stands for ‘Learning Management System’, and is the portal where your eLearning courses will be hosted and accessed by your learners. There are many out there, and your eLearning consultant should advise you which ones would be most suitable for you based on your unique organizational requirements. The LMS developer's role is primarily to set up, build, and customize the online learning platform, load the training material and connect it to payment platforms, marketing software, and other essential digital integrations.
10. Professional Film Crew
Whilst it’s not essential to produce a Hollywood production for great eLearning delivery, good audio-visual quality will enhance the learning experience, and as such, hiring a professional film crew is well worth the investment if you have the budget. Ensure your crew is fully equipped with high-spec audio and visual gear, and mobile studio with green screen for onsite, offsite, and studio recording.
11. Video Editor
Once all of your eLearning videos are produced, they will need to be to cut, edited, and may require your company logo’s, footers, call-outs, and animations added to them before being produced in the appropriate file size for your platform. Hiring a professional video editor can save you a lot of time by doing this for you.
12. Copy Editor
You may wish to hire the services of a copy editor to help you create the sales copy or descriptions of your online courses. This is less important if your courses are internal only. However, if you intend to sell your courses publicly then your sales copy will be very important in fully explaining your course offerings and maximising your sales conversions.
13. Trainers, Presenters, Voice-Over Artists
Just as you require an expert trainer to deliver your training in face to face programs, you also require trainers for your eLearning programs. Their role is to present and deliver training on camera, and also be available for student support. If you are delivering accredited training, there will be very specific requirements and qualifications that your trainers will need to have in order to compliantly deliver your content. If your training is not accredited, then you may be able to replace your trainer with voice-over artists or professional speakers.
14. Quality Assurance Officer
This person will ensure that the online courses deliver upon all of the learning outcomes in their final format, that any industry compliance requirements are met, any training package requirements are met—if it is accredited training, that learner feedback processes are in place, and regular reviews are conducted for ongoing updates and continuous improvement.
Are there any other eLearning experts that you'd need on your team?
