Success of any eLearning project is directly related to the understanding between the different parties involved. Through sharing information and open and honest communication. This understanding considers the stakeholders, their knowledge, skills, experiences, preferences and environment, and adjusts itself around these to attain the best relationship and result.
B Online Learning have aligned our development approach around 2 concepts – Direct and Consultative. These provide our clients with a solution that best suits their knowledge, skills, experience, budget and environment that ultimately means the solution matches client expectations. Let me clarify what each term means:
- Direct – the content is designed and built based on the clients stated requirements, the developer uses their experience to adapt existing concepts to suit the content being built ie. the developer makes the call about interactivity or screen layout as they develop.
- Consultative – all aspects of the content build are noted, considered, discussed and agreed upon prior to and during development ie. the client at all times has the final say in any development decisions before they are implemented.
Here are some examples of projects using both models to further illustrate the concept.
Direct Project
A direct approach is where the content to be developed into eLearning is known and understood by the client and/or a client side SME. They may already have a storyboard or the content is already in an easy to convert format. Also, the look and feel and the degree to which the information is to be redesigned to be interactive can be discussed and agreed prior to the commencement of work. Typically this approach suits an information push out project.
Of course, things can change during development and because of this we anchor all development in an iterative review model that keeps the client informed and provides them with specific feedback windows. Typically the stages are:
- Visual design concept and interactive concepts
- Review and feedback from client
- First full review of the whole course end to end
- Review and feedback from client
- Second review of the whole course end to end (and sign off on external media scripting, e.g. professional voiceover)
- Review and feedback from client
- Final review and sign off
Consultative Project
The consultative approach uses the same model, however it overlays a significant amount more client consultation and discussion to commence the project and throughout the development process. Projects of a considerable scale (10+ content modules), content projects where the actual content is unknown or partially understood by the project stakeholders and projects that require a considerable investment in purpose built media elements such as video production, gamification or on screen animation usually work best as a consultative project. Typically this approach suits a project aligned to increased performance goals.
B Online Learning considers factors to actively partner with the client to discuss, workshop, uncover, document and subsequently advise the client on the best way forward. For instance, when running a consultative project we commence the project with a workshop that is designed to gather the requirements for the content to be built and to inform the clients project team of knowledge gaps that may be present and commence brainstorming the solution.
We believe very strongly that even though everyone and every project will be different, we can still provide the best experience and solution possible by providing a Direct or Consultative experience that can truly exceed expectations.
Interested in our content development solutions? Please contact us here.