Forum Discussion
eLearning Development Process
Hi everyone!
I'm a newbie, and in dire need of some help. I struggle a lot with development, mostly because I don't have a proper development process.
How do you all go about this? What does a typical eLearning development process look like? Can you share your process?
Hi Daniel! Thanks for posting your question here! Building an e-learning course from start to finish can feel super daunting at first. So you're not alone! There are different ways to approach this, but I typically follow this process: 8 Simple Steps for Creating Online Training. That article gives a common step-by-step overview. Another thing that's helped me to develop useful e-learning is to clearly communicate with the subject matter expert (SME). I created a few free resources to help guide that conversation and to make sure everyone is on the same page: Make Working with SMEs a Breeze with These 3 Downloads. I hope that helps!
Daniel, welcome to the eLearning world! It's a wonderful career. You ask a very important question which, fortunately, has some great resources. The Articulate website has many great resources, such as this page. Look at the Learn menu here on the Community site for even more. In general, many people follow ADDIE or other similar models for course development. Whatever you follow, the key is to understand the learners and their needs and use your chosen medium (eLearning) to the best of its capacity. For most learning, that means more than text and images but pushing the effort up the Bloom's scale to higher-level thinking and engagement with the learner. It's also means knowing what your tool can do, which is where this Community comes in. Attend the webinars, go through the tutorials and guides, etc. It's great to draft a course and share it with the Community here, if you can, to get lots of feedback on how something might be done.
Thanks for sharing Dave and Sarah! Appreciate it 👍
Most of these resources do give us an overall idea. But, I'm looking for something more specific to "eLearning Development", a process which focusses only on eLearning Development.
My new year resolution was to improve my Development process and skills this year. But, I'm still searching for that awesome resource. Do share if you come across or know any such resource :)
Thanks!
Hi Daniel, is there something specific you are looking for? The resources Dave and Sarah linked to are useful for eLearning development. Are you looking for something like a task list?
Instructional Designers spend years honing their skills, and it's not something where you can read just one resource and know everything you need to know. So maybe you're struggling with estimating your course length? Or maybe you'd like to see a project plan or task list (of sorts) for building courses?
If you're looking for something that says (for example) "first, write all the text, then gather all the images..." I think that resource doesn't exist, as everyone has a slightly different approach. A Google search for "eLearning Development Process" will provide you with lots of articles to read, and some may point to books or other, more in-depth resources that will help with what you need.
