Lambda Solutions e-Learning 2.0 Online Training and Moodle Experts

• If you want to see a terrific blog site on rapid eLearning, visit The Rapid E-Learning Blog
• If you would like to read an excerpt of Bersin and Associates research, read Making Rapid E-Learning Work
• As background to the traditional approach to eLearning development, consider reading Instructional Design in Elearning

According to Josh Bersin in his article, Making Rapid eLearning Work, "rapid eLearning is emerging as the fastest-growing category in online training." It is web-based training that is often developed in weeks instead of months and is generally authored by an internal Subject Matter Expert (SME). This approach is not intended to replace traditional eLearning or a blended classroom approach but rather a new methodology to meet specific business needs.

What is the traditional eLearning development process?

Most eLearning is produced using the waterfall approach. A subject matter expert explains the content to an instructional designer who develops a design document and project plan, who passes it on to the web-developer to build the interactivities and HTML pages and finally a QA engineer tests the course. After a few iterations between the client and the eLearning group an online course is produced.

What is the rapid eLearning development process?

In Jennifer De Vries' article, Rapid eLearning: Groundbreaking New Research, those companies creating eLearning content using rapid methods share the following criteria. Ms. De Vries explained that "most methods are an intersection between knowledge management and eLearning. Knowledge management uses collaborative technologies to encourage subject matter experts to share their knowledge and eLearning delivers skills and knowledge in a methodical way."

Rapid eLearning is defined by the following criteria:

• Courseware can be developed in less than 3 weeks
• Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are the primary development resource
• A well-known tool such as PowerPoint or user-friendly templates form the starting point for the courseware
• Simple assessment, feedback and tracking are provided
• Media elements can be added to enhance learning such as voice
• Learning modules can be completed within an hour or less
• Synchronous (scheduled or live) and asynchronous (self-paced) can be utilized

Why adopt a rapid eLearning Development approach?

The simplest way to answer this question is to consider the business impact of time. As an example, consider the loss of revenue if traditional eLearning development cycles were used to update sales employees on new features of a software product if that product had already been launched. The training cycle would have come too late!

Key reasons for adopting rapid eLearning development include:

• developing content with a short "shelf-life," or
• meeting the needs of organizations with smaller training budgets, and smaller teams
• maximizing the time and talent of internal subject-matter experts (SMEs such as, HR managers, sales managers, product managers) to provide key content for a course.

Two key questions need to be answered here

• Can I meet the business need by building the content fast enough?
• Will the content to be current and relevant long enough to justify the investment? (Can we measure the ROI?)

Under which circumstances is it best to use a rapid eLearning development process?

Critical to the success of rapid eLearning development is knowing when to use this approach over traditional methods. To provide some greater insight into how the three categories of eLearning serve differing needs consider the table below.

Lambda's commitment to rapid eLearning development

Lambda is fully engaged in developing rapid eLearning training. We make use of our own templating tools and Moodle to supply all of the basics for our clients to move towards greater independence in creating rapid eLearning courses by themselves.

Read the following interview with ACL Director of Sales Operations, Fiona Van Antwerp to see how we produced courses in a fraction of the time.

Lambda recognizes the positive potential impact this approach brings to its clients, and we are looking forward to keeping you abreast of our research and development in this emerging area. More exciting updates to follow!

A recent contract with ACL illustrates our on-going commitment to serve our clientele with the most appropriate methodology in online training. ACL (Business Assurance Analytics) works closely with the internal and external audit communities to provide monitoring and analytic technology solutions required to assess data integrity and transaction compliance. Fiona Van Antwerp, Director of Sales Operations was kind enough to answer our questions.

What business need did ACL have to meet by using rapid eLearning development?

Our challenge was based on the fact that there was only one trainer with a sales group of 70 people. Sales employees were being hired at different times and couldn't really wait for a classroom-training course to be offered. We also had a great deal of content to communicate and yet still needed our content experts, who were being used to facilitate in the classroom back on the operation side. We found that eLearning allowed our new employees and existing employees the flexibility they needed to learn at their own pace. We also needed to have a means to test our employees to ensure that they did the training and that they could apply the content.

Was the content considered time-sensitive?

Yes, both in terms of new content that we had to deliver and also because we hired people based on organizational needs at differing times during the year so it had to get to them in a timely way.

Did you rely on using a Subject Matter Expert (SME's) to produce the content for the course?

Yes, we did and as a result of using a rapid eLearning approach we could better utilize our SME's time. Efficiencies are created in terms of producing online training and in putting our experts back into the operational side of the business as quickly as possible.

How much sitting time would an employee take in going through the course/module?

Half an hour has been the general rule with content created into smaller logical modules.

Was the content originally created in PowerPoint slides?

Yes it was because our SME's used Power-Point to deliver the content.

Before

After

How quickly was Lambda able to turn your projects around?

Once the template was created, we have been able to use it again and again for subsequent courses. Our sales reps are now familiar with the layout of our courses, which means that they can access new information more rapidly.

We found that as a result of using the rapid eLearning approach that we are spending roughly a third of the time from start to finish. That means all members of the team including content creation from the SME, Lambda development time and our administration are roughly cut by a full third.

That does not mean that all courses are cookie cutter and certainly we do different activities for each course, but the instructional design is pre-done and that's the aspect that I like.

As a more tangible way to get to know our associates, and the expertise they bring to your projects, please meet Andrew Chow, Project Architect. Andrew has been with Lambda for approximately one year and has been a quick study, already becoming our certified Moodle trainer.

Andrew launched his career at Ontario Hydro with a degree in Engineering Physics and worked for ten years as a research engineer. His focus was in energy utilization and showing industrial and commercial customers how to conserve energy and how to use electricity to improve their process efficiency. Most significant in Andrew's education and experience has been his process engineering expertise. At its essence, Andrew is trained to observe processes, document them, and then finds ways to improve efficiencies.

Since Andrew's return from Ontario to be closer to family, Andrew has been involved in developing web applications, and in the last ten years has been creating curriculum and teaching web development and programming. Andrew is very knowledgeable in HTML, JavaScript, PHP, AJAX, ASP, XML, SQL and .NET

Just have a look at Andrew's passport! When his is not plugging away at his keyboard, he can be found traveling Europe, the Maritimes, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and the list will go on...

To contact Andrew Chow, email andrew@lambdasolutions.net.