E-learning Curve Blog at Edublogs

You’ve created your Camtasia e-learning masterpiece.

It’s a well-designed, perfectly executed, fully-featured lesson set that meets all of your learners’ needs. Now you need to get it to the people. But hold on! You’ve used one of the preset Camtasia production settings, and the output that you get on the screen doesn’t match your expectations.

It’s an unpleasant surprise.

You feel all your hard work has been for nothing. What’s worse, the clock is running, and you’ve assured your customer that their training materials is “Fantastic! No, really. It’s amazing. You’ll be really pleased.”

This is a relatively common situation e-learning developers encounter (according to people who have contacted me on this subject) so in my view, it’s worth exploring a little further: why does this occur, how can it be overcome, and how can it be prevented from happening in future projects?

The underlying reason for poorly-rendered content typically manifests itself long before a content developer clicks on the Camtasia Production Wizard ‘Finish’ button. To understand the reason, we have to look at the context: we must begin with Rapid E-Learning as an approach to developing courseware, and we must look at Camtasia as an authoring tool.

An overview of Rapid E-Learning

Traditional learning content development methods (see Figure 1) involve using subject matter experts (SMEs) working with instructional designer who, in turn, designs a learning intervention. A digital media development team then builds the interactive solution based on this design. The quality assurance team evaluates the solution against the design and test plan. This “waterfall” approach to content production can lead to long and costly design and development cycles, which can reduce the effectiveness of material with critical timelines or where content regularly changes or is updated.

Figure 1 Traditional E-Learning Content Development Model
[Click to enlarge]

Rapid E-Learning (REL) takes a different approach. While the definition of rapid e-learning differs among experts, generally it’s considered to be e-learning that can be developed quickly and inexpensively. REL uses tools and processes that decrease development time dramatically. Traditional courseware development timelines are measured in terms of months whereas REL timelines are measured in terms of days and weeks. This makes it an attractive solution for many companies. This can be a time-consuming process, even if a project runs on-time, with a minimum number of contributors (see Table 1).

Table 1 Production Logistics

In contrast, the Rapid E-Learning Approach can be defined as

the process of developing content quickly and inexpensively. REL uses tools and processes that decrease development time dramatically. Traditional courseware development timelines are measured in terms of months whereas REL timelines are measured in terms of days and weeks.

(Archibald, D. 2005)

Jennifer de Vries sees e-learning as being

…like the desktop publishing industry of 20 years ago, when desktop publishing was relegated to the one person with the big computer who knew the specialized software and laid out all of the documents. Then MS Word came along and it included many desktop publishing features, giving everyone the ability to create reasonably attractive material on a PC using this very simple software. I think rapid e-learning tools are going to transform the e-learning industry in much the same way, so that e-learning development will become more accessible to the general public.

(Fournier, J. 2005)

In essence, her opinion (which is one that I share), is that the tools used to create e-learning are at a point where they are on the cusp of a tipping point and become much more commonly used.

Figure 2. Where Rapid E-Learning Fits
[Click to enlarge]

These tools – Camtasia among them – are known as programming-free authoring tools. They are typically (though not exclusively) built for non-technical authors that don’t have programming skills. These systems are often template- or form-based and are very easy to learn and use. They are very efficient and productive tools if you need to quickly enable subject-matter experts and training professionals to develop e-learning content without knowing a programming language.

More…
___________

References:

Archibald, D. (2005). Rapid E-learning: A growing trend. Learning Circuits Magazine. [Internet] Available from: http://www.astd.org/lc Subscription required. Accessed 14th July 2006

Fournier, J. (2006). Rapid E-Learning Grows Up. Learning Circuits Magazine. [Internet] Available from: http://www.astd.org/LC/2006/1206_fournier.htm Accessed 20th July 2009

–