Emerging technologies & challenges in e-Learning content creation: Global resourcing to rescue

The dynamics of e-Learning Industry have recently witnessed swift changes due to emergence of new technologies in recent past. Delivery platforms are seeing a paradigm shift from desktops to mobiles & tablet computers, operating systems are transiting from Windows to Android and iOS, programming tools maturing from Adobe Flash to HTML 5, Rapid Authoring tools are also going through a metamorphosis and so on so forth.

The emergence of new technologies requires the organizations to quickly arrange for skilled workforce that can develop quality e-Learning content on the new platforms to satisfy the Learners’ needs. Off-the-Shelf e-Learning content publishers, technology-driven training providers, and everybody in the e-Learning space is under pressure to maintain the pace of content design & development on the new platforms at the same cost.

Unfortunately, the supply of competent manpower always lags behind the pace of the new technology adoption, and such is the case with e-Learning technologies as well. Added to the woes are the rising costs of infrastructure, talent war for skilled manpower and the competition to deliver high quality content at a lower cost.

Here comes the use of global resourcing to rescue. Several leading e-Learning organizations in competitive markets like United States, Canada, and Europe etc. have chosen to utilize the globally available resources and selectively outsourced the e-Learning content development (in full or in parts) to partners beyond their geographies. This helps them to bridge the resources gap required to create high quality e-Learning solutions to their customers (at the costs lower than their geographies and at a speed appreciated by their customers).

While outsourcing and off-shoring have been a buzz word for more than a decade, they are now hot in the list of e-Learning honchos as well. Based on our experience, here are some reasons why organizations choose to partner with e-Learning vendors across the world:

Functional Specialization

The design and development or maintenance of e-learning library requires multiple talents to work together. It requires a team of Instructional Designers, Content Writers, Graphics Designers, Flash Animators, Localization Experts, Software Programmers, Project Manager, Voice-over experts etc. It needs no argument that creating such a varied pool of resources can eat up large budgets for any organization.

Global e-Learning Service providers like G-Cube offer functionally distributed teams which consist of skilled experts as opposed to multi-tasking generalists.

Quality Check and Analysis

e-Learning content requires meticulous quality reviews before it is offered to the learners. It has to go through multi-layered quality checks like –check for functional correctness, instructional design, localization, content and media mapping etc.

You may have good internal SME’s or Instructional Designers to design and develop content, but investing their time in quality checks may not be the most appropriate use of their time. Here a globally distributed team can take care of this function for you at fraction of the cost, and more importantly free up your resources for things they are good at.

Cost of Production

Organizations which are located beyond developed geographies like US, and Europe have relatively low cost of infrastructure and manpower. This brings down their direct expenses and they are able to pass on this benefit to their clients resulting in direct savings to the clients.

While distributing work across global team does add project management costs, and at times quality control costs as well, but overall an organization is able to save substantial amount of money in medium to long term.

The Bottom Line

If you are looking to speed up the design and development of content in your organization, you may like to attend the Brandon Hall webinar on this topic where you can listen to some real-world case studies about the organizations that have benefited from global outsourcing / off-shoring services.

Disclaimer: This Brandon Hall webinar is sponsored by G-Cube.