eLearning Authoring Processes: Past & Present

Over the course of nearly a decade and 350+ projects, iPOV has had ample opportunity to try different ways to author eLearning materials. In that time, we have also witnessed the evolution of the field and seen the introduction of a host of new technologies, strategies and methods. This is a short summary of our take on that history - and where we think eLearning authoring should be going.

The Past: Instructional Design

In the beginning (or at least at the beginning of the professionalization of the field) there emerged a strong consensus around fundamental principles of instructional design. For the most part, these principles pushed trainers and course developers to adopt a customer-centered approach. It was not enough to write long manuals or craft classroom presentations. You needed to have a plan to make sure that they actually achieved a useful objective. The most common model used for creating instructional materials is the ADDIE Model. The acronym stands for the 5 phases contained in the model:

• Analyze - analyze learner characteristics, task to be learned, etc.
• Design - develop learning objectives, choose an instructional approach
• Develop - create instructional or training materials
• Implement - deliver or distribute the instructional materials
• Evaluate - make sure the materials achieved the desired goals

The intent is to make sure that the process begins with a thorough understanding of the learner's needs, objectives and capabilities. The first two phases of the ADDIE process are a discipline to force that to happen. There is an underlying assumption that the development process will be lengthy and expensive. It is critical, therefore, that it be targeted correctly from the outset. There may only be time and money to do it once, so the designer must plan very carefully.

From a functional perspective, instructional design approach relies heavily on the skills of a dedicated eLearning designer. This is typically an instructional designer or technical writer, possibly supported by a graphics specialist. The designer interviews the subject matter expert (SME), probably many times, and uses the fruits of those sessions to create the teaching/elearning documents. In this model, the SME doesn't require any production or software skills because the designer will do the work. Typically, the designer will have a battery of techniques and software tools at their disposal. They will be adept at moving information from one tool to another to craft an effective learning deliverable. Often, their development environment will be highly personalized and idiosyncratic. In the hands of a skilled designer, the instructional design process can produce impressive quality and detail. However, it can also be frustratingly slow (e.g., see our humor section). The need to repeatedly check with the SME and the highly customized nature of the production process make this a classic 'craft' activity.

In many ways, instructional design is a victim of the implementation technologies that existed at the time of its introduction. The originators chose design principles that were revolutionary at the time. but imposed time-consuming and expensive procedures. In particular, it emphasized the division of labor between the subject expert and the instructional designer - this made repetitive edit cycles a virtual certainty.

The Present: Rapid Authoring

A few years ago, a new approach started to emerge. The idea of rapid-authoring appeared in a new generation of sophisticated and easy-to-use eLearning design software. The idea is to make software that is so well-structured and user-friendly that it can guide the subject matter expert (SME) to author high-quality eLearning materials with little or no help from an instructional designer. In effect, the goal was to cut out the middleman. If the SME could author materials directly, there is no need for repetitive interviews or conferences. This offers the promise of dramatic cost and time savings.

The new generation of rapid-authoring eLearning software includes products from the biggest names in software development: Adobe Captivate Adobe Connect Apple Keynote Articulate Studio Flypaper Microsoft PowerPoint Lectora Raptivity

Not only are these products very user-friendly, they contain a host of well-considered design templates. If a SME is a novice at course design, they can just pick a suitable template and follow it. Rapid authoring is a huge step forward for speed of production. However, they still have limitations and drawbacks:

• Software tools and templates make it easy for SMEs to gloss over learner needs and behaviors. It is easy to naively publish eLearning content that omits the important early discipline of the ADDIE approach.
• By decentralizing the design process to a broad collection of experts, it is hard to maintain consistency. The rapid authoring tools and templates will make sure that the courseware looks the same, but that doesn't mean that the teaching messages will be consistent or coherent.
• Some SMEs are poor writers or they may be disinterested in communication. A rapid authoring tool won't make them good courseware developers.

The most reasonable way to overcome these limitations is to retain the participation of instructional designers. The designers remain essential to achieving thoroughness and consistency. This means that some of the theoretical time and cost savings may not be realized in practice.

Bottom Line: No Free Lunch

The field of eLearning development advanced tremendously with the instructional design and rapid authoring innovations. However, projects are still very challenging. In particular, there is a lingering tradeoff between cost and consistency. A well-managed instructional design effort should produce a consistent eLearning approach, but at a high cost. An aggressive rapid-authoring approach will spread the work to the SMEs and reduce cost, but consistency is the likely casualty.

This backdrop sets up iPOV's decade-long effort to find and validate a better alternative. We believe that our reliance on video for knowledge capture and our system of standard transformations (see blog items on visual and content transformations) constitutes a new compromise with both low cost and highly consistent output.