Limbic Learning

Review: Elearnity paper

05 February 2010

Review: Elearnity report

Keith Landsborough has a read through The Shifting E-learning Authoring Landscape, the first of a series of three Core Insights papers from Elearnity. Find out more...

Elearnity released a free Core Insights paper with a press release on Wednesday 27th January, perfectly timed to coincide with David Wilson giving a talk at Learning Technologies 2010, which kicked off that very same day.

The Shifting E-learning Authoring Landscape is the first of three papers intended to summarise current trends in courseware development - and as the name suggests provide some insight. So how does it fare?

In summary I found the first half of this paper a bit weak, suffering from a lack of real-world case-studies, solid data, and examples to back up many claims. Luckily the second half picked up, with some notable highlights:

• The realisation that tools and approaches that allow you to say 'yes' more often leads to more e-learning... which then leads to needing a proper e-learning strategy
• The e-Learning Authoring Strategies section, which contains some useful summary tables and an elegant little diagram capturing e-learning strategies

Coming back to the first half of the paper, there were many things I'd like to comment on, but to keep things simple I've picked just three.

1. £20k/ hour for 'traditional' e-learning

Where does this figure come from? If it's from the research then a spread of actual figures would be helpful, so too what was being delivered as part of that £20k/ hour cost. There are two thoughts about this figure:

• The figure is correct: then it's not one used as an average cost by the vendors I know (and that's a fair few!) otherwise they would not be in business anymore.
  
  £20k/ hour may crop up if it's an organisation new to e-learning and a lot of support work is needed, possibly LMS work, or customisation of a vendor's engine to deliver functionality based on client wishes (not necessarily needs), or a 'rich' media solution is wanted, and so on. But as an average? No way. The reasons are endless.

• The figure is wrong: this seems likely. I would say since 2005 at the latest such a cost per hour hasn't been the norm. In fact a drop of £1k to £2k per year from then has been a trend. However, until raw data is given it's hard to know just how £20k/ hour was the result.

2. Media richness above instructional integrity

The report states: "Many e-learning groups [are] still putting media richness ahead of instructional integrity". Not completely clear on who the 'groups' are here, but I assume vendors.

The loss of effectively designed content is not a good thing, and there's certainly a lot of e-learning out there that relies on gimmicks and animation - but the real issues here are procurement (select a vendor who knows their stuff) and budget control (ensure the solution uses media/assets within your budget). As it is a procurement issue, it would be helpful if Elearnity were to cite who is apparently culpable of what.

It's fair to say that media rich and instructional integrity can sit happily together when done well - it's just that the media rich (when done effectively, that is) is up the luxury scale, and so up the time and cost scale.

3. 'Complex' project management

Far too much focus was placed on project management slowing everything up, and very little comment on the mindset behind rapid approaches that allow light touch project management. Agile was mentioned, but more in the sense of nimble than a methodology.

There are numerous benefits for an organisation engaging a vendor who provides a rapid model of e-learning; here are just a few from different areas of the e-learning cycle:

• Development: the authoring tool itself has a constrained amount of functionality (albeit customisable to an extent). Bespoke has no constraints. Simply put, the luxury 'ceiling' of the tool naturally limits development costs
• Design: constrained to well known, fixed functionality - again, limiting the ability to add to time and cost
• Content production process: content is developed straight into the tools because they're already developed - cutting time, providing clearer expectations of the finished product, and replacing storyboarding/ script approaches
• Testing: the tool should be robust, and well tested - potential 'bugs' from bespoke development are eliminated. Testing now focuses on content alone, which based on the content production process is minimal

The nature of the rapid model provides a constraint on project scope and an inherent simplification of traditional stages of production. This simply allows light project management to come out in the wash. It's worth pointing out that this rapid model would work with any tried and tested vendor engine - naturally the commonality of an off-the-shelf tool would then be lost. The constraint then is with the organisation: to ensure that fit-for-purpose scope is both understood and accepted by their team.

Final thoughts

Two things stuck out as missing from here: quiz/ assessment engines, and wikis. There was an opening comment that web 2.0 technologies hadn't been included as the focus was on courseware type solutions, but without doubt the nature of a wiki (an easy editable set of online pages) surely is the bottom rung of an in-house rapid authoring tool. Get people to write content into the wiki, have a simple 'filter' that QAs it, and then connect your people with it. One idea to drive initial use could be to implement a simple pedagogy around the wiki and quiz questions (scenario based, say), followed by a final assessment (if you have to) - then that's rapid e-learning at it's most, well, rapid.

One other point I'd make: the paper missed a theme that I hear a lot, namely that there's a tendency to believe that rapid e-learning is simply the usual bespoke (using a customised 'engine' from the vendor) done in 3 weeks. This rapid expectation is not always tempered by rapid e-learning's place on the luxury / time/ cost chart. As you can see below, adopting a customised engine is inherently longer/ costlier than a rapid tool.

Some possible supporting evidence that rapid results are expected from the not-so-rapid more customised approaches may well be in this work and salary review by Blue Eskimo covering the learning and technology sector. When asked "Do you regularly work longer hours than you are paid for?" nearly 40% of 500 respondents claimed to work at least 10 hours or more per week overtime. Maybe some of the solutions being delivered aren't actually rapid e-learning, more like traditional on steroids.

The Shifting E-learning Authoring Landscape provides a light touch on things, with a final section that's certainly worth reading if you're considering e-learning or rapid e-learning in your organisation.

It'll be interesting to see how the other two Core Insight papers pan out. Hopefully focused on the more practical guidelines hinted at by the end of this one.

Download Elearnity's The Shifting E-learning Authoring Landscape