We’re in third post of our 7 part series, Rapid E-learning 101. The first two posts looked at understanding the customer’s perspective, and how to jump start you next project. Today, we’ll look at some key considerations when building your elearning courses.

When building your elearning it’s important to understand what type of course you are developing. This helps you make the right decisions about what to do and how to use your resources. Not all e-learning is created equal. There are different types of e-learning courses. Some are information-based and some are performance-based.

• Information-based courses are typically driven by regulations or compliance needs.
• Performance-based courses are focused on changes in behavior and real, measurable improvements.

Bring Value to Your Organization

You are a steward of your organization’s e-learning resources. It’s important to make the decisions that positively impact the bottom line. A first priority is to make sure that the elearning courses you build are aligned to the organization’s performance goals. Generally, you’ll always be aligned if you are focused on cost and time.

Three ways that you can bring value to your organization:

1. Cost: Focus on managing cost of projects and development time. You can also focus on the value you bring in comparison to outsourcing.
2. Time: How fast can you deliver the training? Time is money.
3. Performance: Increased performance has a direct impact on the bottom line.

Help Your Customers Find the Right Solution

Many times your customers determine that an elearning course is the right solution to meet their goals. Before investing the organization’s resources in elearning courses, it’s important to understand if the course is in fact the right solution. Ask good questions and identify clear objectives.

You serve your customers, the organization, and yourself when you help identify the best solution to their goals. There are times when training isn’t the way to get the results the customer really wants. In this case, it’s possible to save the organization money if you can help them see that an elearning course is not the right solution. You might not get the work, but you’ll be seen as a valuable contributor.

Determine What Type of Training Course You Need to Create

When you develop elearning courses, you have two options. You can use a rapid e-learning tool like the Articulate suite or you can pay for custom development. Because of this, it’s important to have a process in place to determine when to go with a rapid approach and when to go with custom development.

Many e-learning courses have no real performance goals tied to them. Their purpose is to convey information or comply with regulations. This doesn’t mean that the information’s not important. It just means the purpose of the course is to disseminate the information, and not necessarily see a performance improvement.

Rapid development tools are perfect for these types of elearning courses. You can build them built quickly. They look good and meet your customer’s goals with minimal investment.

Personally, my default position is that we use rapid e-learning tools unless we can justify using something else.

Let me explain.

The rapid e-learning tools are more than adequate to handle most elearning needs. Why not go with what costs less and is easy to implement? Unless you pay a lot extra for custom work, many vendors use some sort of xml-based template that allows them to “rapidly” build the course. They give you a standard player and navigation. You already get that with a rapid elearning tool. Why pay more for the same?

Custom development can be costly. The only way I would go past the rapid elearning tool set is if the project is performance-based and will make an impact to the organization’s bottom line. My belief is that if the customer cannot show a clear link to performance improvements, then it is my responsibility to meet their training needs with minimal cost and time commitment.

This doesn’t mean that the projects are subpar, it just means that I don’t commit expensive resources to a project that doesn’t show a return on investment. Courses that show a clear connection to changes in performance are the ones to which you want to commit your resources.

Rapid e-learning tools can help you build most of what you see in the e-learning industry. Development costs are low, the tools are easy to learn, and you can deliver a quality project rapidly.

Whichever approach you take, it’s important to think through the objectives of your e-learning course. There’s a time to use a rapid e-learning tool and there’s a time to commit more resources to custom work. Develop a process to determine when that is. You’ll be able to help your customers get a quality product at a good cost.

Next in the series, we’ll learn to build a simple project plan.