The people that make eLearning happen

I thought I’d offer an overview of the hugely diverse specialists who are typically involved in modern eLearning practice.

In part, this is what makes eLearning exciting – we get to work with talent from all walks of life. It is also what makes eLearning projects challenging, and the reason why solid project management skills are always and essential ingredient. 

• Subject matter expert

Someone who knows the subject matter well. This person is often already employed by your organization. They are often an experienced face-to-face trainer, or someone who knows an aspect of your work well enough to train others on what needs to be done for a particular project. There are times when an SME, as they are called, need only be involved for a limited time. This is the case when the subject matter is fairly comprehensible by a non-expert, e.g., sales techniques. But when the subject matter is specialized (e.g, the way a company-specific process is carried out or the way a particular piece of industrial equipment works), the SME will need to spend considerable amounts of time with the instructional designer. 

• Instructional designer

Someone who can sit down with the SME and go through any existing content, ask questions and make suggestions that will lead to the often-needed content updating and restructuring. This person will also set learning goals and connect them to business goals, and further analyze everything into learning objects. They will design the user experience, including interactivities, and they will propose ways of measuring knowledge acquisition. They will also brief and monitor artists, voice actors, graphic designers and software developers to make sure the result achieves its goals. Careful! A trainer or subject matter expert is not an instructional designer, no matter how good they are at their job!  

• Illustrators and animators

The people who will make your eLearning offering visually attractive. But that’s not all; under the instructional designer’s guidance and by adding their own expertise to the mixture, they will give your learning experience correct visual structure. This is more than ‘looking nice’. This directly impacts engagement and comprehension. The human eye and brain work process visuals in specific ways. It’s not enough for a visual to be ‘pretty’. It has to be designed in a way that provides our specific audience with an effective learning experience.

• Voice actors

If you’re using narration, you need to employ the services of a voice actor and a recording studio. Do not cut corners here by getting someone from the company who has a ‘nice voice’ to do this. Too many eLearning efforts have been ruined by poor voice-over, as the experience becomes dull, or confusing, or even stressful. Think back to your own learning experiences – have any teachers or professors been more pleasant to listen to? Easier to comprehend?  What about others who spoke in a heavy accent, or too fast, or were too dull in their delivery? Who do you consider more effective?  

• Developers

They will put everything together and they will deliver a digital component which is compliant with whatever protocol your LMS uses (SCORM, xAPI, etc.) and, above all, brings out the subject matter expert’s and the instructional designer’s vision. How much development time is needed, and whether you can get by with ready-made templates or whether you will need ninja-level programming skills will be determined by the design document. This is put together by the instructional designer (see above) with contributions by the SME. When developers get their hands on the design document, you should already know how much effort they will have to put in.  

• Project manager

This is the person who will make sure everyone works together smoothly and on schedule.

At CCS, we prefer our instructional designers to take on this role. A good instructional designer knows what everyone has to do, and can put together a realistic and reliable schedule. They can foresee difficulties and plan alternative courses of action. 
 

CCS has all of the specialists above (and more!) working together under one roof.

Want to know more details? Let’s talk! 🙂