Perhaps the mystery and hyperbole that surrounds so many new technology based solutions is inevitable. Perhaps people are intimidated by the “newness” and fear investing on the “bleeding” edge.  Perhaps they have had their fingers burned in the past. A cynic might even argue that there are vested interests in the form of specialist consultants who like to inflate the complexity and risk of developing technology heavy solutions and make a buck or three on the way through!

eLearning has suffered from its fair share of bluff and bluster in its formative years and maybe in those times when the market was in its “early adopter” phase some of those labels were true. However there have been tremendous strides in recent years in the eLearning space and the market is accelerating fast as organisations realise how practical it has become to deploy eLearning content rapidly and affordably within organisations, both messages that resonate in today’s marketplace, still rattled by the GFC.

Conventional wisdom dictates that eLearning is time consuming to deliver, that it’s technically complex and above all expensive to develop. It argues you need to find tried and trusted and expensive consultants to create your content and deliver and host your online courses. Maybe in the past but this is no longer true.

Witness the development and success of B Online Learning’s eLearning Design Essentials course (EDE). The course has been designed to bring together the technical aspects of eLearning with the principles of adult learning. Let’s take a closer look at why the EDE is proving so hot for not just Australians but global clients as well.

Why everyone is choosing professional development?

Why an eLearning Course?

Our aim is to dispel the myth of eLearning and place it in the hands of subject matter experts and workplace teams. Almost any program currently being delivered as face to face programs can easily be converted to eLearning. In fact the need for “bells and whistles” and complicated, expensive eLearning extravaganzas is what was stifling the uptake of eLearning.

There is however a need for this type of eLearning, but we believe that in the majority of cases of eLearning being delivered in organisations today, such as induction and compliance programs, can be easily developed in house with a rapid approach to eLearning and some assistance and advice up front from eLearning experts such as B Online Learning.

However the difference with the EDE is it is not just about designing and developing an eLearning course. Many people do not understand how the different technologies combine to create an eLearning environment and what is actually necessary to deliver a successful eLearning program. We get questions all the time like; what does a Learning Management System or LMS do? Do I need an LMS? So we explore, in the course, the different eLearning technologies such as LMS, authoring tools, social networking and collaboration, and webinars and also give advice on what to look for when purchasing this technology.

But having invested all time, energy and money into developing the eLearning program, delivering it successfully is the final step and one that is often overlooked. Establishing a change management program, evaluating what worked and what didnt for continuous improvement and building a network that will support and drive the program are just some factors that need to be considered.

Individuals and organisations want flexibility with their eLearning. They don’t want to be locked into providers that have access to their intellectual property, don’t allow their courses to be used with other systems, and not be able to take their courses to other providers in the future. So developing eLearning in house or with a provider who gives clients all the source material, is an attractive option.

Organisations are realising they can reduce their energy use and carbon footprint by providing an eco-friendly alternative to traditional classroom-based training. Green eLearning can bring training to organisations’ desktops without the trainer cost, travel time and facility hire associated with traditional learning and classroom based training.

What are the success factors of the course?

For an eLearning program to be successful it must be collaborative, engaging and interactive. Our courses focus on motivating learners to engage with others in an online collaborative model using latest technologies. Because people learn from one another, our programs aim to connect learners with experts, colleagues and professional peers, both in and outside their organisation.

By adapting activities from the traditional classroom and adding imaginative ideas that take advantage of the unique online technologies, you can create eLearning courses that will excite and engage students. And, by including a variety of interactive eLearning experiences, you should be able to improve retention rates, increase learner participation, achieve your learning objectives, develop online learning communities, and ensure that your online courses engage learners, regardless of the course topic.

To effectively meet the needs of diverse learners, the eLearning environment that you create needs to be:

• Engaging – engagement is more important than content
• Learner Focused – let the students guide their learning
• Collaborative – the students learn from their peers.

eLearning is a different way of learning from the traditional workshop approach. Many people, including training and learning managers, express concerns about how eLearning will meet the needs of their learners. The most effective program, for both traditional and eLearning, is one designed to take all learning styles into account. Our eLearning Design Essentials course shows you how to use various eLearning techniques to accommodate multiple learning styles.

Who can take the course, and how might it be applied in the workplace?

The course is designed for training program developers, HR professionals, training co-ordinators, instructional designers, workplace trainers, IT professionals and teachers who wish to develop, design and deliver courses via eLearning.

This course does not teach you how to be trainers or teachers. It already assumes that you have some experience and skills in a face-to-face situation. This course helps you to evaluate and transfer your existing skills to the online environment, and to develop new strategies for facilitating online learning. During the course learners will be taken through the benefits and merits of eLearning so they can see how this applies to their workplace and how it would enhance their business processes. Some organisations are putting a few of their team members through the course so they get to design and develop an eLearning course that is currently being delivered in the workplace in a face to face capacity, such as the organisation’s Induction Program. Students can then go back to the workplace and subsequently design and develop new and existing programs in an eLearning format.

For further information or to enrol in the eLearning Design Essentials workshop please visit our webpage.

Support is all about the mindset of the supporter, the information they provide, the ease of access to that information and willingness to share information. It’s also the people providing the support that make that support both seamless and beneficial. Now let’s get a little more specific and talk about software support and break this up between LMS and authoring tools.

Learning Management Systems

A Learning Management System is basically a large database that has two faces:

• The public face that serves out learning interventions, in a user friendly website setting, based on the parameters set by the administrators and L&D professionals
• The other side, the actual LMS coal face where the truth is held and the data is mined to provide reporting, continuous improvement, gap analysis and training pathways

Supporting a system with such potential for variation at both ends of the spectrum from users to administrators requires some very specific skill sets amongst the support staff themselves. Primarily because it is virtually impossible to publish supporting documentation that covers all potential system configurations and or customisations that make the LMS work for any given set of business requirements (And for LMS’s every set of business requirements is unique).

The people supporting systems such as this need to have a specific skill profile, which should look a little like this and is also what we model our own Birch Learning Platform support team on:

• Approachable – Given that you will be building a relationship with these people over time, the fact that they are approachable and amiable cannot be discounted.
• Knowledgeable – They should know what they are talking about and be able to provide advice on the spot, even if that advice is “I cannot tell what the issue is without testing but I will get back to you when I do know and that will take X minutes/hours”
• Honest – In an attempt to sound knowledgeable, I find that support staff will often just go with a scripted response (The most common in my experiences is “The problem is with your content not the LMS”) Quite often by asking some simple questions the actual problem can be found and remedied. How does this relate to honesty? The support person should be honest enough to admit the issue might be with their system or their level of knowledge
• Detailed – When an issue is found and fixed the details of the fix should be provided along with the how why when where of the original problem. All of this should also be recorded in the records of the provider and shared across all of the users of the software if issue and fix were universal
• Accessible – Finally it’s no good having great support staff if you have to wait up till midnight to call or message them. If the provider doesn’t have support in the local timezone you should think long and hard before signing up
• Accountable – All great support is underpinned by a solid and realistic service level agreement. This agreement should not only outline solution timelines but also guidelines for continuous information sharing and initial contact times as well

Authoring Tools

So if that is software support for an LMS, at least from a support provider’s role description point of view, what should the support of a content authoring tool look like?

In short it should be more about the sharing of expertise and resources than the solving of problems. Even though bugs do appear in software applications, so long as you have access to a global community of users, the answer is usually only a forum post away. (Even though not all forums are created equal as seen in this forum post shared by Tom Kuhlmann).

Articulate certainly took this a step further with the creation of their own user community to provide this type of support, however the Articulate model took the community much further. Articulate also provides:

• Training – From a global team of partners delivering a Certified program through multiple channels (face to face, client onsite or virtually ) to tutorials (blog posts and video ) on most of the application functions.
• Feedback – From both the articulate support team and the wider community
• Resources – Free templates, icons, images and most importantly ideas
• Community – It might sound strange to say that a community provides support but that is exactly what eLearning Heros does, everyone involved in the community is indoctrinated in the wider community values of sharing, support and applauding the ideas and creative energy of other community members through a range of functions such the monthly eLearning challenge (Check out this month’s challenge here )
• Experts – Articulate formed a global team of leading expert eLearning developers and designers to contribute to the community. They are all over social media which makes them accessible to all and run community events in cities around the world. Here are a few you can find on twitter – Tom Kuhlmann, David Anderson,  Trina Rimmer, Nicole Legault, Alison LaMotte, Nicola Appel. We have our own eLearning Hero at B Online Learning – Matt Guyan.

So not all support is created equal, and it really is your call as to what your expectations are around support. But once you have truly experienced the superior level you will never want to go back.