By now, most people know what elearning means. But when I ask people what the elearning they’ve studied was like, I get a surprising variety of responses. The basic definition of elearning is a formal learning experience delivered to the learner’s computer via the Internet. However, elearning can take a variety of disparate forms within […]
A Wireframe is Worth a Thousand Words
I facilitate an elearning instructional design (ID) practicum for a local university and one of the assignments is to document the ID of the course the participants develop. I cannot provide any I’ve created as an example for the participants in the practicum because all of the ID documentation I’ve created is confidential and proprietary […]
What’s Missing from Your Instructional Design Documentation?
I managed instructional designers for over a decade and I have been facilitating an elearning instructional design (ID) practicum for a local university the past few years. Over the course of my career, I have reviewed many ID documents spanning the range of quality from excellent to poor. It’s common to find even good instructional […]
RIP Corporate MOOC
One of the emerging forms of elearning in recent years is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Introduced by institutions of higher learning, some of the most well-known MOOCs are Coursera, edX, and Udacity. “Massive” refers to the large number of students who enroll in these courses, commonly numbering in the tens of thousands and […]
Elearning Modalities
A model that categorizes elearning into modalities is useful when developing new curricula. You can use it to analyze a proposed curriculum and determining what types(s) of courseware to develop. You can also use it to clearly communicate what type(s) of courseware an elearning course uses when the curriculum is put into production. There is […]
Revising Curricula
I published a series of articles about quality assurance (QA) developing educational programs. However, QA doesn’t end after a curriculum is put into production. To continuously improve the curriculum, you need to conduct periodic revisions. Even if a curriculum were error-free when it was launched—and this is a hypothetical scenario because it never is—it would […]
Identifying Elearning Costs
Estimating the cost of elearning is critical before embarking on a new elearning program. To make decisions about the program, management not only needs to know how much it will cost to develop the elearning, they also need to know what the cost of production will be. So this article addresses the distinction between development […]
Creating a Test Plan for Elearning Development
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” is an old adage that applies to quality assurance (QA) in elearning development. For many elearning projects, QA amounts to testing the courseware after it’s developed with little forethought given to how the testing would be conducted. Subsequently, these projects often release courseware replete with […]
End-to-End Courseware Quality Assurance
Quality assurance (QA) is the testing activity performed after development of courseware is complete and before putting the courseware into production, right? Wrong! Done well, QA begins early in the development project and continues indefinitely while the courseware is in production. “Evaluation” is how ADDIE refers to QA and, as you can see in this […]
The Best Approach for Managing an Elearning Development Project
What is the best approach for managing an elearning development project? If you answered with your favorite project management approach, the approach your employer usually uses, the project management approach getting the most buzz in the trade rags, or ADDIE, you’re wrong. The correct answer is: it depends. An approach that would work well for […]