When customers invest in custom or bespoke eLearning they expect it to be remarkably distinct from off-the-shelf learning content. The customization should be evident in the content treatment approach, solution framework, visual design, as well as relevance of learning for the target audience. Over the years, experience on varied projects and different customers have led me to believe that focusing on the following points leads to successful custom eLearning development.
1. Listen To Your Customer
Can’t really emphasize this enough! Engage in discussions with project sponsors and stakeholders to understand the need for training. Don’t just go with the explicit reasons! Dig deep and probe to understand the underlying need for the training. Establish how it will change the learner skills or behaviors and what should be its business impact. Responses to these questions should then reflect directly in the solution design. As consultants, we should be able to guide the customers to opt for the most appropriate solution.
2. Understand The Audience's Preferences
Spend some time of the design phase talking to end users, and where it’s not possible, float questionnaires to understand the profile of the target audience, such as their geographies, cultural preferences, organization’s work and learning culture, whether it is conservative or modern workforce, the breakup of audience groups, that is Gen X, Y, and Millennials, their overall comfort with new trends in eLearning. Reflect this understanding in content presentation and engagement strategies.
3. Involve Different Learning Groups And Stakeholders During Early Phases Of Development
In hindsight, I find the best projects are the ones that have involved and committed stakeholders. Interact early in the project to set expectations about involvement required from Subject Matter Experts and key stakeholders, and communicate regularly during development to avoid surprises. There is wealth of knowledge locked in their minds that can be unlocked in course of regular discussions! It definitely adds value to the training and creates a truly custom content. Parallely, involve various development teams, such as visual design, usability, programming, and QA during course design to facilitate successful and efficient custom development.
4. Design Solutions That Will Promote Best User Adoption
Analyze the work culture and user preferences to understand which kind of eLearning will best deliver the desired business impact. The evolving trends provide Instructional Designers with a wide range of options, such as iPDFs, videos, interactive videos, business simulations, micro modules on mobiles, and game-based learning to choose from, instead of traditional WBTs.
5. Make Learning A Seamless Experience For The Learners
A good custom design should be transparent to the learner. All the Instructional Design theories, models, and course development templates that we implement during course design and development should help creating an engaging learning framework that it invisible to the learner. The learner should focus only on content and the learning experience.
6. Make The Learning Relevant
Invest time in talking to Subject Matter Experts and Role Experts to gather real life examples, experiences, and mistakes and build them into the training content to make the training engaging and relevant for the learners. It helps making the theoretical content come alive for the learners.
7. Make Content Learner-Centric Not Content-Centric
We’ve all interacted with Subject Matter Experts who are passionate about their content domain, that is, the theory, the processes, the systems, and want the learners to know it all! However, as course developers we need to continually evaluate what learners need to know to perform successfully on their jobs. Sift between the essential and good-to-know information. The learning should focus on what learners need to know to perform efficiently.
8. Interactive Vs. Engaging Content Design
One sharp contrast between off-the-shelf and custom learning is the level of engagement for the learners. Custom eLearning is not merely interactive, involving lots of clicks and drag and drops; instead it includes well-designed interactivities that encourage recall, reflection, analysis, and decision making.
As you would have noticed, most of the above guidelines need to be acted upon during the Analysis and Design phases of course development in discussion with all stakeholders. "Well begun is half done" definitely holds true for smooth and successful custom eLearning development.