It has been a while since any of my employers kept good metrics on projects. I wish they would as it might help them see how much time goes into a project and some of the dependencies. Waiting until the last minute to have the audio recorded doesn’t give me enough time to get it into the course and have everything synched up. And sometimes, I think that I spend as much time making edits and revisions to courses after they have been programmed as I do with the initial programming task.

But, back to the point of Tom’s post. I think that the LMS is the biggest enemy of spreading out learning over the course of a year. Everyone wants a course, quiz, and the ability to report numbers of courses created and completed. There are some skills that I can learn today and apply every day. But most courses include content that is not used every day.

How many companies have rolled out a new travel software and required all employees to take the associated training? The employees who travel frequently will be able to benefit from the training, but other employees who may only travel one or two times a year will likely go months before they need to use the system. When you are developing the system and related training, you need to plan for the smaller, “How Do I…?” questions that employees will have. Making them log into the corporate LMS, sign up for the course, and complete 10 lessons in search for their answer is not the right solution. A better solution would be to have a brief introduction course in the LMS and a more robust help system outside the LMS that includes tuitorials for individual tasks and frequently asked questions.

The discussion points that relate to development ratios using rapid tools are a bit subjective to me. I agree that a 33:1 ratio could be accomplished by a competent user given agreed upon content and a previously established expectation of the final deliverable. The problem that I struggle with is that clients want “rapid” pricing but expect the deliverable to be “sexy” and rich with media attributes that drive up labor costs and subsequently price. I think someone else alluded to this in their earlier post.

My question is what (if any) are some models for establishing reliable, repeatable, and profitable frameworks using Articulate (and the like) that can be price competitive and recognize a lower development ratio. (I know, I’m not asking for much;-))

@Tom and @everyone:
Tom, what a great post on learning as a process because it started a great thread on the design side of rapid e-learning development. I look forward to your next post that will address what Chris and others wrote above.

For simple PPT conversion to OLT, a 30 minute course ratio is about 40:1 and that includes conference calls, e-mail messages, and two revision cycles. One week for a 30 minute course… straight conversion, no instructional design.

So, a 60 minute course, a straight conversion into Articulate Studio, no ISD, is about 80 hours.

The Levels of e-Learning (Level I through Level 5) are a great reference point. For consultants/freelancers/subcontractors, the Levels help us manage the client’s expectations.

Maybe, Tom, you straddle two worlds: Selling a rapid development tool and supporting the community of users… yet, emphasizing that rapid development does not mean rapid instructional design.

However, the point I really wanted to make is “Kudos” on the reminder that learning is a process. I hope you can plan future posts on effective assessments and evaluations (immediate, 3 months, 6 months, a year)…. especially with all that we can now design and develop in the newly upgraded Quizmaker ‘09.

I tend to base my design and development time more on the times published by the military, the E-Learning Guild, and I like what Karl Kapp has done in his book Winning E-Learning Proposals. These sources tend to categorize development as levels of interactivity which I believe are more accurate. Check out http://www.nwlink.com/~Donclark/hrd/costs.html for a summary of several approaches.

And finally, why am I spending all this time and money working on a degree in Instructional Design if perspective employers will be conducting their recruiting efforts at the zoo??

When I look at the value of the tools, I always assume about the same time for the ID and content development with the real savings in the production of the course after the content is developed.

As for the 33:1 ratio, this is for the conversion of just PPTs an “already developed course” –and that course originally took 34:1 to complete.

I take this to mean just redoing the graphic design and flow of the course–not to include ANY media (or am I reading it wrong)

Bryan states that to add audio, some vide, test questions and 20% interactivity it takes 220:1

I do believe this figure is closer to the real time it takes to create what we call “basic” ISD nowadays. The problem with this figure is that many managers don’t believe that it takes that long to create “basic” eLearning.

Yes – eLearn software is a tool. It does not replace the need for good holistic instructional design or training needs analysis. For any learning to effective, whether class-based or self-paced, you need to use a variety of methods. At my last job, the induction was 100% eLearn and people HATED it. There were three key problems: no follow up, no practical activities and no socialisation. Here is an example of how we mixed it up a little:

1) eLearn: Booking meetings
2) Follow up task: Book the office camera, and a meeting with the studio OHS officer, and a marketing team member and a meeting room all using outlook
3) eLearn: OHS module (part 1: Risks & hazards)
4) Task: Photograph potential risks & hazards in the office using office camera
5) eLearn: Our electronic policies
6) Meeting: Marketing Team rep: learn where to load pictures on our drives and about our documentation standards.
7) Task: Produce a document that met our documentation standards with the photos they took and fill out an OHS hazards & risk form
Meeting: Meet with the OHS officer to discuss their findings and show them the document

We used this methodology throughout their trainig. We had great feedback from both management and participants. And they actually remembered stuff and applied on job (who knew!!).

Cheers!

One of the biggest things I have been experiencing is that it is not only my job to build courses but also to load all courses onto the LMS. My courses, built with articulate, work every time. Each time I load a new course from an external provider we can spend more of my & their time trying to debug it than the course originally took to build. And for what? A fancy navigation system? Furthermore it blows out their deadlines because debugging is something very hard to predict in terms of time lines.

That’s as good reason as any I think to use rapid tools.