The Mechanics of eLearning Content Development

Do you think that you are fully equipped for harnessing the wild horse called eLearning and tame it to do your bidding? Are you confident that you'll be able to make the best use of eLearning as a learning medium for your organization?

Yes or No?

If your answer is anything but a strongly defined “Yes”, you should continue reading. Most of us, even those who have worked in remote proximity of eLearning content developers, would vacillate between a “May Be” and a “No,” while making a judgment about our ability to do eLearning content design and development.

The reason is not that we don’t understand eLearning as a medium. Most of us have been exposed to eLearning in one or the other form, and we know what it is all about. Unfortunately, what doesn’t come easy is the mechanics of eLearning content development. If you’ve not worked in a good eLearning setup, the issue that you face is natural as eLearning content development is the output of a team.

Let us understand the eLearning content development process by looking at the roles; the different stakeholders play in creation of e-Content.

The first ingredient in eLearning content is the content itself. If I ask you whether you could write a book on Hydraulics, there is a high probability that you will refuse to do so. This is so because you don’t consider yourself an expert on the subject. However, if you were a Hydraulics engineer who is an expert at Hydraulics, you probably would be happy to write one (if, of course, you are adequately compensated for your effort.) Thus, an SME is the point of origination for content.

Unfortunately, the eLearning medium requires this content to be processed before it can be served to the learners. Thus, eLearning development is a process that requires continuous supervision, management, and evaluation. There are three factors, which make the eLearning content development process different and important from the process of content creation for ILTs or Instructor led Trainings.

Factor 1 – Technology
Remember that eLearning content is carried to the learner through technology, and technology speaks a different language. It requires that the content’s format changes and that it is able to communicate with the programs that run in the background, so that it reaches the audience in the right form.

Factor 2 – Audience’s Behavior
The audience for the eLearning content is different! They are not tied down by the mores…they don’t have any hang-ups about trashing the content without giving it a fair try. And, what is worse is that we don’t have any means of finding out whether or not the audience liked the content. Thus, eLearning content creation process has to ensure that the content is “accepted by the audience in the future.”

Factor 3 – Skills
The skills required to design and develop eLearning content are varied. This of course, is an outcome of factor 2. We want to create content that appeals to the audience, and so we incorporate media and interactivity in the content. Thus, we require media designers and programmers to be an integral part of the eLearning content development process.

Let us look at the generic eLearning content development process.

An eLearning project begins with the identification of the need. The project begins with the typical analyses, which mark the beginning of any training cycle. In practice, the project is held together by the Project Manager, an entity revered (and also feared,) by the entire team; and it is executed by the team.

The central figure in the project lifecycle is the instructional designer. The instructional design is the person, who takes the raw content from the Subject Matter Expert, and converts it into what the industry calls a storyboard or a script. The storyboard document is the final output of the Instructional Designer, who has sweated through the design phase to ensure that whatever is visualized in the document would meet the needs of the audience.

You may wonder what this document called the storyboard contains. It contains:

1. The description of all the graphics/animations/videos that will be displayed on the screen.
2. The entire text (verbatim) that will be displayed on the screen.
3. The complete audio transcript that will be played through the course in form of voiceovers or sound effects.
4. The description of the interactivity that the learner will experience as he or she goes through the course.

Thus, the Instructional Designer (or the Content Developer) becomes the director of the eLearning experience that the prospective audience will go through.

After this document is ready, it is sent to the programming team and the media team. These two teams work on two different areas. Recall the first two factors that we listed at the beginning of this article, which were “Technology” and “Audience Behavior”.

Both these teams work towards making the content audience-friendly as well as technology-friendly. The programming team makes the content navigable and interactive. They also ensure that if technological requirements outlined for a course are met then the eLearning content will be displayed and executed without any problem. Interactivity makes the content interesting for the audience as well. The media team on the other hand improves the aesthetics, the retention, and the instructional value of the content, thus, retaining the audience’s interest and helping them learn faster and better.

The output of the Media Designer’s efforts comes in various media forms. These are called, “graphics”, “animations”, “videos” and so on. The programmer’s output is called “interactivity” or “functionality.” However, it is the storyboard that tells the media designer exactly what he or she has to create. Similarly, the instructions about the functionality that has to be built in the course are provided in the storyboard document.

The Media Designer thus provides the graphics, animations, or videos to the Programmer, who then incorporates them into the final course content; based on the information given in the storyboard.

After the eLearning content is integrated, it is tested before being made available to the learner.

Are you wondering what the Project Manager does all this while?

Well, eLearning content development is a high-energy process, where different process stakeholders work together. In order to keep the mechanics tuned and working without stress or friction, the Project Manager takes care of the scheduling, the follow-up, the client interaction, the administrative requirements, the budget, and many other such requirements!

In practice the process incorporate many different types of reviews at different stages, and various other documents are created to ensure that the content enjoys the learner’s affection. The above sketch of the process however, is sufficient to bring out the importance of the different stakeholders and how they work together to bring eLearning content to life!

Author: Shafali R. Anand