Meetings are an integral part of any corporate process, including developing eLearning content and courses. BUT…there’s a catch to meetings: They can be taxing on participants (mentally, physically and emotionally), and can be a drain on valuable resources. But there’s good news too: As an eLearning development professional, you can make meetings productive and yet not spend as much time as you currently do. Read on to learn how! The facts about meetings According to research cited by the Harvard Business Review, over the past 5-decades, the number of hours a week spent in meetings has increased by over 130%. Despite technological innovations that cut-down travel, improve communication and enhance collaboration, corporate America spends nearly 23-hours a week in meetings versus less than 10-hours back in the 1960s. In an eLearning development project context, you analyze requirements in meetings, firm up designs, develop learning content and interfaces, and … [Read more...] about Agile ELearning Development: Secrets of Agile meetings success
agile
Agile eLearning: A windfall against “Waterfall”
ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate), a 5-step methodology in designing eLearning courseware, is commonly used in the industry. It traces its roots to the 1950’s Waterfall methodology of software design, where the development process gradually flows from one step to another, just like a waterfall. You can’t start step 2 until you’re done with step 1, and so on. As a result of new developments in how eLearning is viewed by training professionals, and significant enhancements in supporting IT and multi-media technologies, Agile methodologies have now sprung up. Agile eLearning design and development: Promotes a “parallel” way of developing courseware, as opposed to the serial Waterfall (ADDIE) approach Endorses the use of team-work as opposed to specialist roles (Designers, Developers etc.) that worked in insulation Infuses flexibility, speed and cooperation into the development process The Agile approach, which is based on short iterative full-cycles that … [Read more...] about Agile eLearning: A windfall against “Waterfall”
Agile Project Management for ELearning Development
Nowadays, more and more eLearning project managers lean towards agile methodology. As opposed to traditional project management approaches, agile methods let you adjust your courses as you go based on the need. Agile project management is an iterative method of managing the design and development activities for eLearning projects. The best part about agile project management is that it embraces change even late in the development phase. The main difference between agile and traditional approaches is that agile method reduces complexity of a project by specifying and managing small usable chunks of the project as opposed to managing the whole project at the same time. In agile method, team members handle most of the assignments, are responsible for managing their chunk of the project, and are accountable for quality control of their piece of the project. To ensure success of any project, agile project managers are responsible for managing the team’s environment … [Read more...] about Agile Project Management for ELearning Development
