Rapid e-learning process development for working with SMEs (624) Home : Annual Conference 2014

Rapid e-learning process development for working with SMEs (624)

Public Group Active 6 years, 11 months ago

Mon, Sep 1 2014, 3:10pm – 4:10pm

Description

In April 2013, a team of one e-learning technologist and five subject matter experts were tasked with developing a brand new suite of online resources, to be launched at the start of the next academic year. After identifying twelve key content areas, the team was left with the question of how to achieve the design and development of all these resources in such a short time frame.

The newly appointed e-learning technologist had arrived after working for five years in a similar team at a different institution. In the old team, the SMEs were used to working on e-learning content and had been doing so for a number of years. The development process had grown organically; it was implicit, it was fluid, and it worked.

The new team had no experience of working on creating e-learning materials, and it soon became clear that some work was needed upfront to identify an explicit development process that would enable the e-learning technologist to get the most out of the team.

The e-learning technologist and the SMEs had to learn to ride together; both parties had valuable expertise to bring to the project, and in order for the project to be a success it was essential that this expertise was maximised from both sides.

The resulting process was based on an ADDIE model, designed to ensure the quality of the resulting resources with flexibility built in to maximise contributions from a diverse range of people with different working styles. It had built-in review points to monitor progress, ensure each individual resource was meeting its established learning objectives, and maintain cohesion and consistency across the whole programme.

This session will:

discuss some of the challenges faced when working with SMEs (10 minutes)
outline the development process that was devised, highlight the key success factors of the process (15 minutes)
explore some of the limitations of the process, and how it is being honed and expanded to work with SMEs from beyond the team (5 minutes)

The session will be of interest to e-learning technologists working with subject matter experts. There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion throughout the session; participants will have the chance to share common issues that they have when working with SMEs and discuss methods and processes they can implement to overcome these challenges.