How can online reviews help improve your eLearn development process?
When developing eLearning courses ensuring a good quality course can be developed to a timeline is key. When designing an eLearning module there will usually be some form of deadline in place for when the curriculum needs to be released to learners. eLearning modules have different deadlines, some are stricter than others, but regardless, being able to reduce the time it takes to develop an eLearning module without loosing quality is a great benefit when developing any eLearning module.
The concept of online reviews is new and is feature that has greatly improved an eLearn developers ability to update and release courses effectively, below explains how and why online reviews have helped this process.
The review cycle is a key part of eLearn development, typically an eLearning course will first be designed in the form of a storyboard. A storyboard is document that the eLearn developer uses to develop an eLearning module, this lays out the look and feel of the course and contains the text, images and instructions the developer needs to make the course.
After the initial development it will then be reviewed by the client who will request changes and updates to the course. Typically reviews are done in stages in the form of an Alpha & Beta review. During the review cycle capturing and accurately communicating changes with the developer can be very tricky. To begin the client has to type out what they want changed, then the developer has to read these comments understand what the client wants changed and then locate that slide in the eLearning course.
In the past documents were created and emailed which outlined these changes, one of the biggest challenges would be locating the specific area of the eLearning course being referenced, if a page number was incorrect or had changed this would make finding the part that had to be changed difficult, on top of this enough detail would need to be provided so that the developer understood what had to be done. As a result this could lead to delays in the update process and when a course has a strict deadline this is not good.
Now with authoring tools such as Articulate Storyline 360 there is the ability to publish eLearning courses online, the client would then be able to go into the course and request changes directly on the page. The benefit to this is that it reduces a lot of guess for work the developer, no longer does the developer has to spend long amounts of timing searching for what’s being changed, instead the developer can go slide by slide, read the comments and be able to work out exactly what needs to be updated. The benefit of this is that it not only saves time during the development process but also ensures that changes are more accurately getting completed and increases the overall quality of the eLearning.
