Prioritise Course Build

Oct 25, 2016

Gemma Greenwood
By Gemma Greenwood

Hi there,

In our company we have usually built eLearning courses on a first come first serve basis, which up until now has worked well. This however needs to change as the number of courses that need to be built is growing and we need to come up with a prioritization process or checklist to identify which courses should get built first and which can wait.

At the moment I have the following:

  • Is this course required for a conference/new software release date?
  • How many people need to take this course?
  • Is this a brand new course or updates/revamp an already existing course?
  • How often is the skill/behaviour that this course will teach/learn them be performed?

And this is all I have at the moment which will help up prioritise which course should be built first - what do you guys have in place?

Thanks

Gemma

3 Replies
Ulises Musseb
over 7 years ago10/25/16 at 7:39 pm (UTC)

The number one question I ask is "Why do you think that an online course the right tool for what you want to accomplish?". At some point in my organization, it was thought that an online course was the solution to pretty much every problem. Some people want to use the LMS as a communication or dissemination tool.

We now have a formal intake process where we start with questions like the one above, but also ask other questions, such as:

  1. Does a course on this topic already exist? We've found that there have been overlap in course content.
  2. Will a job aid or other performance support media will suffice?
  3. What's the longevity of the course? Will it require reassignment, updates?
  4. Do you need to trace attendance, measure knowledge, do they need a test? This question is to determine if the purpose of the project is to provide information or teach something.

Also, when asking about the target audience, please have people be very specific about who "everybody" is. A lot of people claim that "everybody" should take the course, and I've come to learn that there are many different types of "everybody".

The questions you ask should determine the clear objective and purpose of the project, if an online course is an adequate way of meeting those objectives, and if the usefulness, impact and longevity of the course is worth the effort.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.