Having spent many years in the learning industry, I have seen many successful and not so successful custom eLearning content development projects. Less successful projects are typically driven by process shortcuts, mismatched expectations, and unrealistic time or cost constraints. In the real world however, we all want to be flexible, super-positive and accommodate differing needs; for this reason, my tips for successful custom eLearning content development will focus on the four golden rules for success and things to avoid at all costs.
1. Clearly Define The Roles And Set Role Expectations
Get the roles clearly defined and agreed early on. One of the biggest challenges I see is where expectations are misaligned, e.g. around the input needed from a Subject Matter Expert, and the Learning Designer. In this example, both roles are different and need to work together. The Learning Designer creates the architecture for the learning and the SME provides the content that fits within that architecture.
Avoid doing this the other way around, i.e. trying to create the architecture around the content, since this leads to information overload and ultimately boring eLearning.
2. Embrace Specialisms
The ideal project team will have separate specialists working together, pushing innovation and challenging each other on the art of the possible to achieve the best results, especially for larger projects. Separate roles achieve the right balance by working together to represent their area of specialism and to plan, prioritise and, where appropriate, decide on any compromises.
Avoid combining project roles and diluting specialisms, for example, a combined Project Manager/Learning Designer will definitely experience conflicting priorities as they will be trying to balance project constraints, time cost and scope, with creative thinking and the needs of the learner when designing the content.
3. Know How To Save Time Effectively
Yes, time constraints are a ‘given’ but some shortcuts will lead to extra work and are just not worth it. The architecture is a key starting-point in any digital learning project and so is the definition of the overall concept. Create a structure, a concept, then a short extract in wireframe format, maybe a prototype and then pause to check if it works before moving ahead to create the full programme. Then, and only then, you should consider how to save time with additional resources, reusable models and smart visual approaches.
Avoid allowing time constraints to drive shortcuts at the early stages of a project.
4. Recognise When Learning Is Not Learning And Ask The Audience
A successful custom eLearning development project can only really be deemed as successful if it works for the audience, right? This sounds obvious but the key question to ask is "What will work for the audience?" And this critical question needs to be posed to the intended learners.
Learning is something that happens in response to a particular need. It’s personal, it’s about making a change, fixing a problem, improving the status quo. It’s also something we do to improve, so we have a goal in mind, that is, to be enlightened, to understand the rationale or science behind something.
On that basis, a so-called learning initiative to enlighten the masses may not actually be a learning initiative after all. If the learning has no specific relevance for the recipients, they probably won’t learn anything. But that is what a lot of eLearning programmes try to do: They create a course for thousands of users who all have different roles and needs but have no context because the audience group is too broad for things like context-setting scenarios and examples. At Lumesse, we are big advocates of Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping approach to ensure our learning content remains focused and relevant for the intended audience. And we create resources and comms too. which is a great approach for mass enlightenment!
Avoid creating one-size-fits-all digital learning solutions for a wide audience. This may look good in terms of Return On Investment savings but the Return On Engagement and real value, the learning, will be lost.