Deriving the Best out of E-learning Outsourcing: Creating Impactful Courseware

With the growing popularity and success of e-learning in the corporate circles, the need for high-quality course-ware development is ever-increasing. Many organizations thus prefer the route of developing their course-ware through external resources in order to keep up with the pace of demand and restrictive time-lines. But the quintessential question that they have to ask themselves is how will it impact the quality of the course-ware?

G-Cube works with many organizations, assisting them to develop e-courses for their varying needs. Looking into our rich and varied experience, we bring forth some ways that the e-learning vendor can ensure content quality – considering large volumes and strict timelines.

1. Prepare for effective SME interactions: Gathering knowledge that will flow on to content creation is the first step of e-learning development. For any e-learning vendor, interaction with SMEs is often the first and most crucial step.

• For SMEs within the client organization, time and availability can be charted out early in the content development process.
• For external SMEs, a clear indication of time required for interactions and input needs to be charted out.
  To derive the most out of the time allocated for SME interactions, prepare and share questions in advance. This gives experts the time and opportunity to prepare before they start giving their input.
• Restrict taking inputs beyond the requirement of the course, as it will be an unnecessary waste of time.

2. Developing custom content through efficient Process Flow: A robust project management process ensures that all timelines will be adhered to while delivering the standards of content quality.

• Client expectations out of the e-learning solution should reflect clearly in the tasks and responsibilities to be undertaken by the vendor.
• Most e-learning vendors have in-house capabilities to render end-to-end content development including Instructional Design, Graphics, IT and so on. Structure their roles and responsibilities within the process flow to ensure that the output is streamlined.
• Client reviews at multiple levels should be built in within the process flow to ensure quality of output.

3. Two-way communication: The channels of communication between the client and vendor need to be open throughout the course of content development.

• Client input is needed at various levels of content development. A pre-assigned team with decision-making capabilities needs to be available at the client-end to provide quick and regular feedback.
• Presentations or documents shared at the storyboarding level can double-up to provide insightful client feedback. Track changes and comments can be inserted on MS Word Documents to include client remarks. The ‘notes’ section of a PPT can similarly be utilized to gather client feedback.

4. In-house quality testing: At the end of the day, it is stringent testing is what ensures the quality of the course content.

• The content-quality should be tested in-house by the e-learning developer at two levels – Linguistic and Technical.
• Linguistic quality checks should ensure that the course is grammatically correct and aligns to the specific cultural needs of the learner group. It should also check for correct-use of technical terminology and the overall tone that the course adopts.
• The IT team should check all technical aspects of the course and ensure that all elements of the course were working without a hitch. The course should also be compatible to the platform of delivery – web, mobile or both.

5. Utilizing existing content: When time is a constraint, rapid authoring tools can be utilized to re-furbish existing content within the client organizations and make it e-learning compliant. Presentations and other documents that have been a part of the classroom curriculum can rapidly be transformed into e-courses.

• In addition to custom content, rapid content development can help develop quality content which is SCORM complaint and is thus ready for e-learning consumption.
• The source documents are obtained from the client end and thus are complaint with the expected standards of content quality.

If you are looking for innovative solutions in e-learning content development, which are once impactful and cost-effective, mail us at in**@gc**********.net. It will be our pleasure to share with you our experiences and work towards developing the best solution for you.