The following is a summary of my presentation at the ElNet E-Learning Project Management Adventures Congress being held in North Sydney on June 14, 2013.

Have you ever been caught in the middle between what a project sponsor or subject matter expert (SME) wants to deliver and what you know to be good learning design? Has good e-learning practice every been thrown out the window because of someone else’s sense of urgency?

We need to appreciate the perspective of the SME, take control of the urgency and get clarity around what’s required.

Six (6) Questions To E-Learning Project Clarity

Ask the project sponsor the following six questions:

1. Are your sure the need requires a training solution? Is it really a knowledge/skill deficit? Or is it an aptitude, communication or incentive issue? In many situations, the solution needs to be a co-ordinated combination of training, communication and people management.
2. What is the nature of your content & intended learning outcomes? Is it factual, conceptual, procedural or problem-solving? The training strategies will be different, depending upon the content and learning outcomes.
3. Who is the intended audience? How computer literate are they? What is their access to a computer like? What is their experience with learning technologies and self-directedness? What is their experience and knowledge of the content? What management support is available to enable the transfer of learning into the workplace?
4. What evidence is required (if any)? Does the training solution really need to go onto a Learning Manageent System (LMS)? Are you really going to track and report sompletions? If not, then use webinars or performance support strategies such as on-demand videos.
5. What is your time/cost/quality ‘sweet spot’? If you have little time and budget, then this will impact quality. If you want top quality in a short amount of time, then this will impact budget? …and so it goes. What will you compromise and how will this affect the end user and learning outcomes?
6. How are we going to work together? Decisions will need to be made throughout the development cycle. Subject Matter Experts who stay at arms length usually end up with a solution that does not meet their expectations. The internal e-learning team has certain expertise and can support the process, but often are not the owners of the e-learning course. Refer to blog post Who Owns Corporate E-Learning Courses? Roles and Responsibilities for more information.

A HANDY RESOURCE: Click this link to download a checklist to support e-learning project task allocation between the SME, the internal e-learning team and the external e-learning provider.

How to help avoid future reactive behaviour?

Put e-learning project governance in place. Make overt the process for any e-learning project, and ensure your stakeholders follow this process. After all, this is not new practice. Processes are in place in may parts of business – all we are doing is using the same language and rigor as is expected by any CEO.

Here is a list of governance templates that you can create. Ensure the project sponsor fills out and signs off. They may need your help. That’s a good thing.

• E-Learning Project Plan Template: Include project brief, project team, resource requirements, audience parameters, reporting parameters, change management, timeframes, budget, project constraints, exclusions, document management etc.
• E-Learning Design Brief Template: Include an assessment of current training (whats working, what’s not and why), learning objectives, topics for inclusion, assessment requirements, instructional design approach, visual design, use of narration, quality management, style and function guide, output requirements etc. Include a checklist for quality control.
• E-Learning User Acceptance Test (UAT) Process Template: Ensure your testers include both subject matter experts (to check the accuracy of the content) and typical end users (to assess experience and expected learning outcomes).
• LMS Metadata Template: This helps ensure complete and accurate metadate about the course that will be entered onto the LMS.
• Closure Report Template: Include an executive summary, reason for closure, project outcomes versus objectives, project performance against time/cost/quality expectations, project issues and lessons learned, any outstanding issues, recommendations, file location.

Got any e-learning project management processes or tips  that work for you? Please leave a comment and share.

Want more? See Tom Kuhlmann’s blog post How to overcome the challenge of working with subject matter experts.

Click to download

It’s 2013 and I am still seeing poor quality e-learning courses being built by so-called ‘professional’ e-learning developers who then sell these to uninformed organisations. Common issues include:

• Poor navigation
• Poorly chunked and sequenced content
• Overwhelming use of text
• Poor attention to visual design
• Little use of scenarios to create context
• Insufficient learning activity and problem-solving practice

To help support organisations in their quest for quality e-learning, I have created a checklist that I invite you to download and use.

Please download this 3 page Checklist to Assess the Quality of an E-Learning Course.

Use this checklist to:

• Assess the quality of off-the-shelf e-learning courses before purchase
• Self-assess the quality of an e-learning course your developing
• Assess the quality of e-learning currently on your LMS

…or give it to your e-learning developer to comment on and justify their design.

Note that this checklist is not exhaustive, but is a good starting point. A more detailed  e-learning style and function guide is available to E-Learning Academy members.

Please feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to receive your thoughts and ideas about this checklist. Thank you.

When I’m asked “How do I start e-learning?”(courses, webinar, video or other), my immediate reaction in my head is “What can I say that will help this person be considered?”

What I mean is that I want to ensure a person who is new to e-learning:

a) knows what they are getting into from an effort perspective (a topic of many blog posts in the past), and

b) doesn’t think e-learning development is as simple as dumping content into a rapid authoring tool, branding it and sending it out into the world of unsuspecting learners and customers. I want the person who is new to e-learning to understand what quality looks like, and to become knowledgeable and skilled in four key areas.

Understand what quality looks like

It’s important to develop a mental model of what quality looks like, from the perspective of the target audience. Many learners these days are sophisticated consumers of multimedia. They won’t tolerate poor quality. So we need to develop a benchmark, a set of quality parameters. The E-Learning Academy has tools, resources and courses on this very topic.

Become knowledgeable and skilled in 4 key areas

If you are the sponsor of an e-learning project, it is useful to become knowledgeable in four key areas so that you can communicate and work effectively with your e-learning developer. If you are going to develop e-learning yourself, then you need to develop four key skills.

1. E-Learning Instructional Design

This skill is a subset of traditional Instructional Design (ID), because the multimedia aspects of e-learning enable additional instructional techniques compared with paper-based ID. Becoming knowledgeable in e-learning ID allows you to collaboration effectively with your e-learning developer. If you wat to become developer yourself, then be sure to network with others to develop different perspectives on how you can approach content and interactivity.

Tips: Attend workshops. Google e-learning instructional design thought leaders such as Cathy Moore and Nicole White. Get your first module, video or webinar designed and developed by a professional, and repeat the instructional approach for subsequent e-learning of the same series.

2. Visual Design Skills

Hand in hand with e-learning instructional design, visual design is pivotal to creating context, maintaining interest, reducing text burden and reinforcing narration. Additionally, ensuring a clean layout helps learners stay focused.

Tips: Read up on multimedia design, website design and online accessibility. Review online courses with colleagues and discuss your observations.

3. Multimedia Production and Authoring

Authoring tools such as Storyline, Articulate Studio, Captivate and Lectora are relatively easy to use. However, there is a big difference between knowing a tool well enough to get out of trouble, and knowing advanced techniques that really make your content fly. The better you know the tool, the easier it is for you to understand how the features can be maximised to create learning interactivity and visual interest.

Tips: Get training from an expert. Get your first efforts critiqued by an e-learning expert (I’m happy to help here). Get your first module developed by a professional, and repeat the authoring approach for subsequent e-learning of the same series.

4. E-Learning Project Management

Whether you’re working with an internal project team or with an external e-learning provider, projects can quickly unravel. Use project management techniques to scope requirements, monitor deliverables, uncover issues and keep communication transparent.

Tips:  E-Learning Academy members have access to specific e-learning project templates which can help you to quickly develop the project governance you need.

Bottom line

Before starting e-learning, be sure to do your homework. Complete and investigation and analysis to ensure your effort will be worth the return. And actively build knowledge and skills in e-learning design, development and management. Don’t be surprised if the early year or two of your strategy becomes all-consuming.

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment.

Question from a client:

We have new information to tell our clients, but we aren’t ready to make videos. We’d like to create an interim audio podcast to provide this information in a simple and accessible format. How do we do this using a PC?

There is still a role for audio podcasts on websites. Audio podcasts are arguably simpler to produce than video. Increasingly, website owners will be required to provide audio alternatives for written material to satisfy user accessibility. This can be achieved though services such as Readspeaker. However, if you don’t have this website provision, or if you prefer not to have a digitalised voice on your website, then consider creating your own audio podcast to accompany website text.

Below is a step by step process for how I create audio podcasts for website information. This post does not describe how to create a podcast series for syndication. For information on this, refer to Podcasters Emporium.

Step 1: Choose an audio file format

Audio file formats include MP3 (most popular), WAV and WMA. Ask your website or intranet manager what file format is required, any maximum file size, and whether the website/intranet has an audio player as a template option. This enables the audience to hit play/pause to listen to the audio podcast directly from your website/intranet. For examples, refer to Stanford eCorner website and Small Business Big Marketing websites.

Step 2: Script your audio podcast

The script should be conversational and easy to listen to.  Keep to simple language and short sentences. Consider your audience. If they are likely to be office workers listening from an office PC, then keep the script to one topic of 2-3 minutes duration.

Be explicit in your script to ensure the script writer, narrator and podcast producer all understand the approach being taken. Keep the audience in mind. Consider using a short music intro and outro to anchor your podcast, particularly if you intend to create multiple podcasts. This will help ready your audience for your content.

Below is an example of how I write my script (click to enlarge): 

Step 3: Record the narration

For a professional recording, choose a service such as Voiceovers On The Net. Simply choose your narrator from the website, send your script for a quote, and advise your audio file format. Having an explicit script (like the example above) helps to ensure all parties are on the same page in getting the outcome that’s required.

To create a podcast yourself, I suggest using software that will provide a better quality than the native PC Widows audio recorder (which only produces WMA files). I use Cubase by Steinberg. It’s a little fiddly to master, but it provides clear audio output in WAV, WMA and MP3 formats.

For a microphone, I use Snowball, by Blue. It is one of the best microphones on the market that plugs straight into a PC USB input i.e. it doesn’t require a separate mixer. Set up Cubase to record directly from the Snowball microphone.

Step 4: Produce the podcast

Using Cubase, I edit the audio file/s and import any music. I add any fades, adjust the base and reverb until I am happy. Then I export it as a single file for website use.

This same approach can be used to record audio files for inputting into e-learning courseware.

Related information:

Click here for information on how I make my video podcasts for YouTube and iTunes.