If you have checked my Linkedin profile , you must be knowing that I have positioned myself as an e-learning consultant now. One of my recent efforts have been towards helping the e-learning division in a top-notch medical institution solve their problems. The e-learning division has a team of graphic designers and flash developers who help in e-learning development.
In its endeavour to promote education and networking, the medical institution has been publishing e-learning material in their portal and LMS. Currently they have been able to publish only recorded CME sessions. This medical institution wants to publish large number of e-learning programs apart from CME sessions in their LMS. Let’s review this medical institution’s objective, challenges and how templatized e-learning content might help them solve their problems.
Objective
A medical institution wants to increase publication of e-learning programs within the organization while cutting short their development timelines and meeting their desired quality criteria.
Challenges
The major challenge here is producing instructionally sound e-learning material and achieving consistency in e-learning programs.
Reasons?
- The e-learning division is small and comprises of graphic designers and flash developers who have no clue about the subject they are dealing with.
- There are quite a few departments and quite a few SMEs who provide medical content in the form of PowerPoint presentations which are not self-contained.
- The SMEs produce e-learning content in their own style.
Solution – What’s Ruled Out
- Use of Rapid E-learning tools – because the medical institution already is investing in flash development and graphic design and do not want to try out anything new.
- Hiring Instructional Designers – the medical institution does not want to hire more people.
- Training the e-learning division - time, effort, money will be huge. Success rates low (the e-learning division wants to be involved only in graphic design, flash development and publishing activities)
Possible Solution
- Set a process for e-learning content development.
- Create standardized PowerPoint templates for creating instructionally sound e-learning content. Templates must enable creation of instructionally sound content. Templates must be designed in such a fashion that SMEs have less pain filling the template with subject matter.
- Provide SMEs with quality checklists and guidelines that helps them meet quality criteria and also evaluate the quality of their PowerPoint presentations.
- Train SMEs to use the templates, checklists and guidelines and create instructionally sound PowerPoint presentations.
Benefits
Training will help :
- SMEs understand Instructional Design basics.
- Help SMEs use templates and checklists and work well.
Templates will :
- Help achieve consistency in e-learning programs across the organization.
- Help achieve desired quality criteria.
- Speed up the e-learning development process.
From a designer’s perspective, templates are boring and cause monotonous work. From an organization’s perspective, templates help them a great deal.
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