The program I work on consists of over 150 hours of eLearning material. It is a combination of modules, exams, videos, and documents. I've found out that an accrediting body wants us to PRINT and send a "hard-copy" of our curriculum documentation. From my rough estimates this would total about 5000-10000 pieces of paper. I'm guessing they won't actually read the hard copy since we are giving them access to our LMS from the learner view, but they are insisting that we still produce the printed out form.
I know we can print some semblance of a word doc to represent the content in our modules, but that it sometimes looks pretty messy and isn't representative of the course itself. Does anyone have any solid arguments / data that could help convince this group that hard-copy versions are not what they want?
No solid arguments/data but if what they want is curriculum documentation, then they probably don't want a hard copy version of the actual training either.
I would expect curriculum documentation to include learning objectives and a list of resources and assessments, but not the actual resources or assessments. So given your "combination of modules, exams, videos, and documents", I would expect a document that showed how they worked together to meet the learning objectives.
Or at least that has been my experience with accrediting bodies.
So not to discourage you, but this may not be a battle you can win... ask me how I know. Unfortunately we discovered over the years that for many sectors, the auditors have a handbook that cannot be deviated from.... they have very little discretion. For example, in one area of the Financial industry we literally had to print everything and maintain generational copies in the same hard copy format!
From my experience, what they usually want to see is the words..... often they could care less about the images (unless charts/graphs), interactions, characters,, etc. They need to see the actual words to satisfy that certain content areas are covered; often with specifically required phrases/key words. I mention this, because if forced to go down the hard copy path, you may need to "only" produce transcripts, not a paper version of the course with branching etc.
So.... if all they need is the words perhaps you can check out transcription services?
Hope this info helps if you can't get them to see reason. Good luck.
2 Replies
Hi Matthew
No solid arguments/data but if what they want is curriculum documentation, then they probably don't want a hard copy version of the actual training either.
I would expect curriculum documentation to include learning objectives and a list of resources and assessments, but not the actual resources or assessments. So given your "combination of modules, exams, videos, and documents", I would expect a document that showed how they worked together to meet the learning objectives.
Or at least that has been my experience with accrediting bodies.
Good luck with the accreditation.
Hi Matthew,
So not to discourage you, but this may not be a battle you can win... ask me how I know. Unfortunately we discovered over the years that for many sectors, the auditors have a handbook that cannot be deviated from.... they have very little discretion. For example, in one area of the Financial industry we literally had to print everything and maintain generational copies in the same hard copy format!
From my experience, what they usually want to see is the words..... often they could care less about the images (unless charts/graphs), interactions, characters,, etc. They need to see the actual words to satisfy that certain content areas are covered; often with specifically required phrases/key words. I mention this, because if forced to go down the hard copy path, you may need to "only" produce transcripts, not a paper version of the course with branching etc.
So.... if all they need is the words perhaps you can check out transcription services?
Hope this info helps if you can't get them to see reason. Good luck.
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