E-learning development process

Hi Hannah!

If you haven't seen this article, I would recommend checking it out: Basic E-Learning Workflow And Design Process

Hi Hannah -

The items you have in your #2 item above are great! 

The only suggestion that I'd make is that you don't go too far with the visuals until you are clear on the content. If you ask the client to sign off on visuals too soon, you might find yourself making instructional sacrifices to fit the imagery, rather than have the visuals support the instruction.

While visual is important, I think it's more powerful to nail the narrative aspect, so that it's compelling. Sometimes I write the script as part of the storyboarding, then do the visual and interactive pieces to support that. Then I can identify the pain points or the context for an aha moment and tie the content in that way. 

Holly

Hi, Hannah: 

A couple of things:

1. Is someone making an actual request for elearning before you (or the ID team) determine whether or not elearning is appropriate? That could get a little weird, especially if your team says elearning isn't appropriate. You might take a look at the form the requestor uses, if indeed there is a form. Always good, at the beginning, to take a "solution-neutral" approach.

2. I don't see any mention of observing actual workers, so IDs/ process improvement folk can confirm that what stakeholders say about workers in actual true. Stakeholders, as a general rule, only kinda know what workers are going through day to day. 

3. Perhaps I missed it, but it's always good to socialize the course through various channels to learners to let them know it's coming, get buy in, and so on. So maybe a bullet around writing and delivering pre-launch communication. 

Good start on this, and thanks for sharing. --Daniel 

Thank you, Alison. Yes, I have read that article and found it very helpful, as I do with most of Nicole's work. Thanks for putting it on my radar again!

No problem ;)

Really appreciate your thoughts on this, Holly. You are so right about making instructional sacrifices to fit the agreed design. It is painful! I guess I didn't clarify what visual design looks like for our team. We don’t have anything locked down too tightly, but rather work from a range of visual elements. So what the stakeholder is signing off on is really a look and feel rather than exact imagery. I should clarify too that our team is an in-house ID team for an organisation so our visual elements are very much guided by our corporate branding.

Hi Dan, thank you for responding! 

I should clarify that our ID team is part of the training team in a large organisation, so we do often receive requests for training. People have been very excited about e-learning so this has led to requests for that solution straightaway. Hence the need for Step 2. We definitely try to approach it as neutrally as possible, as you mention. 

Being in-house IDs also means that we have access to a communications team who help us take care of socialising the course and soft launch comms. 

Your second point is one that we have not thought of doing before, but I can really see the value in it! Thank you. Do you have any tips on how to do this diplomatically when the stakeholder is the customer?

Hi, Hannah:

Regarding observing workers...I'm not sure I have any persuasive magic to making this happen. Here is what I usually say..."For me to understand this job role and the training required, I need to observe the people doing the actual work. I need to fully understand the context, the constraints they have to deal with. A supervisor, manager, or director telling me about the role is quite different than my observing it first-hand. Observing also gives me the opportunity to talk to the people we are training, get their perspective. And surely we care about that, for they are the people whose behavior we are trying to shape." (Here Hannah you could slip in any organization values like "Be human-centered" or whatever for support.)

Observing the actual work being done is so important. Managers and above don't see the many day-to-day challenges, and so discount them. 

Thank you, Daniel. Those are very sound evidence statements that most sensible stakeholders would agree with, I'm sure!