Friday, April 27, 2012

Managing an E-Learning Project


Most rapid e learning teams comprise of 5-10 members, with at the most, 3 members involved in a single project.
From whatever experience I have, the Subject matter expert is usually someone who has little idea about the e learning aspect of the project. Therefore, it calls for some (standardized) efforts to manage your e learning project, and make it clear to your SME on the expectations from both sides.
The way of managing an e-learning project heavily depends on your way of working methodology. But here are some tips to build your own project plan – 
 Chunk It Up!
From getting a request to providing the e learning output, try and identify the key deliverables, and each deliverable can make a project phase.
You may also need to provide a sample storyboard to make your SME understand what to expect out of a storyboard.
By When?
Moving aside all the `It Depends’ factors, here is a rough estimate. Learning pedagogy recommends that you don’t plan for a course lasting more than 40 mins. The ideal time is 20 minutes.




For making a 30 min course (average), you might have to spend a week for initial discussion and storyboarding, and three weeks for building a course. Further review and iterations might go on for 2 weeks. So , most probably, your e learning project for a single module will span for 1.5 months.

The success, of course, lies in continuous improvement. Run a project plan and re visit it after the completion of a project, and see where you can improve.

Happy project planning!

2 comments:

  1. I love your Scientific Description! Hilarious :))
    Coming back to this post, I am surprised to see the project execution time (1.5 hrs) suggested cos we design (everything till the final SBing) 2 hrs of e-learning within 20 days. Then, the development takes 15 days. This is the ideal standard we have set; however, there are slippages/deviations in real projects due various reasons such as content complexity etc..
    Is there a way a designer can figure out the correct duration for the completion of a project such that the standard time could me met? They say that one-hr. of learning typically has 90 screens but how does one go about it...

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    Replies
    1. Hey Suchandra. Did you mean 1.5 mnths?
      Yes, in cases where the e learning process is detailed and has a separate story boarding wing, things may take a longer time, because the output is very neat and clean.
      With rapid e learning, we have a singly person doing it all, and it has to be `rapid'. :)
      Let me try this logic with the 90 screens - Will it be possible for you tell the average time taken for 1 screen?

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