Today I decided to catch up on some challenges, but I needed something light so I could ease myself back into the swing of things. So, I decided to tackle E-Learning Challenge #82 – Show Us How You Create Online Courses.
The Concept
The purpose of this challenge was to have us share how we create online courses. Because the interaction created was very brief, simply outlining the steps, this post will be a bit of an explanatory post.
The Method
For this challenge, I identified six steps I take when creating online courses, and made them look pretty in Storyline. Those 6 steps include (with some explanation):
- Sign a Contract – This is a critical step. You’d like to think that all of your clients are going to pay you, but signing a contract is one way of ensuring this happens. And from a client perspective, this can save their butts when it comes to non-disclosure schmutz.
- Coffee – Throughout the development process, a lot of coffee is consumed. Basically just make sure your house is stocked full of coffee (be prepared…you know snow storm? apocalypse?) or that your friendly neighbourhood cafe is open.
- Analyze the Content – This is a necessary step, because without the content, you might find yourself down a wormhole of internet articles and publications trying to figure out how to describe the cleaning process of a Burr grinder (and who wants to do that?! Not this gal!). Analyzing content allows you to identify gaps, liaise with the client accordingly, and retrieve the necessary information to do what you’ve been contracted to do. It also gives you an idea of what you may want to do in terms of media treatment.
- Develop/Author – Here you’ll be doing the heavy lifting of your course creation. You’ll likely be storyboarding the content or heading straight into authoring with a rapid prototyping model – this workflow will likely depend on that contract you signed up in step 1 (e.g. if the client doesn’t want you to ‘waste time’ storyboarding, they may want you to jump in with both feet and begin authoring in the chosen tool).
- Review Cycle – Ah. The dreaded review cycle. This is a very important component when it comes to course development. The review cycle will identify any necessary changes that must be made ahead of final delivery. Before you begin contract work, you’ll want to ensure the contract speaks to review cycle limits…because no one wants to do unlimited revisions (especially if you’re working on a fixed-price contract).
- Deliver and Invoice – A fan favourite! Delivering a course you’ve spent hours labouring over is one of the best feelings in the world. As an e-learning developer who doesn’t intend to bear children, I would liken this feeling to that of birthing a child. Mothers will slap me, but I don’t care! I applaud your hard work. Then, invoicing is just the icing on the cake, because gotta get that money, money, money…
The Result
Click here to view the full interaction.
Leave a Reply