Lessons Learned in the E-learning Trenches was the topic of our September 16 meeting. As part of my on-going quest to keep current with Web trends, I tapped into my social media network (LinkedIn) for some Web 2.0 insight into the topic. I received several responses (the complete discussion is available here), but the following piece (from Milo Dodds via the eLearning Guild) was the best of the lot.
- You only have so much time and so many resources at your disposal. Look at what is most important to your clients and make those your priority projects. Not every project needs learning developed for it, so don’t get bogged down with little meaningless projects unless you’ve taken care of the important ones first.
- What is your core competency? You might find that your internal resources ought to be focused on managing the client relationship. That might mean you outsource the design and development of some aspects.
- Get your source files from any vendor you work with. Don’t ever let a vendor control the content. You own the content and therefore you should own the source files. Never–ever–let them own those files. If you decide to use a different vendor then you’re not stuck with a vendor that doesn’t work for you. Don’t believe them when they tell you that their templates are proprietary. If that’s the case, then tell them not to use their templates. The templates are just a wrapper…that’s it. The content source files are yours.
- Standardize on your authoring tools, systems and design/development process with accessibility in mind. I think smaller companies actually have a great advantage over large companies when it comes to this.
- Learn about Human Performance Technology and apply it to all of your projects. No point in creating content when it might not be the answer to your client’s problem.
- Try not to go over three review cycles with your clients/learners.
- Develop an internal portfolio of previously developed projects that you can show new clients to help set their expectations: “With this much budget and this much time, this is what you can expect.”
- Don’t agree to a budget or a timeline without having some stipulations. If they miss their deliverable dates to you then you won’t have enough time to give them back what they need to meet their final deadline. Same holds true with scope creep. Manage the relationship and expectations or else you will go mad otherwise.
- Cross-train your internal team to expand their capabilities. It’s rare that you are going to find someone who can do everything really well. I can see at least four types of people (roles) involved in the process: project/program manager, instructional designer, content developer and a registration registrar. Have roles that are close to each other cross train…for example have your PMs do some of the analysis work, have some of your IDs do some development work, have your developers create offerings in your LMS….this is critical for when team members need to take vacations and time off….plus the team will work better with each other when they know what it takes to perform the work.
- Do not forget to have FUN! Seriously…in order to be creative and really enjoy what you’re doing you need to look at ways to have fun in what you’re doing. Otherwise you will burn out and so will others around you.