|
While many e-learning developers do a good job focusing their attention on the design process, they often neglect the real needs of the organization, customers, and learner.
This means that the course might not deliver the results you want it to. As a e-learning professional, your job is to produce meaningful business results. You do this by balancing the needs of everyone involved--the organization, the customer, and the learner—by leveraging e-learning technology. The following are four key questions to help guide the development of your e-learning courses. 1. What does my organization need? 2. What does my customer need? 3. What do the learners need? 4. How do I leverage the tools and technology? Customer's Learner's It is All About Results Identifying desired results and creating a course that helps you meet them is key. This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many courses fail to deliver valuable results because they are not aligned to the organization’s real goals. Many go wrong by measuring success by the number of participants or the mere fact that the course was delivered. You don’t want to make that mistake. Instead, you want to measure your success by how you contribute to the organization’s success. For example, if the organization measures success by increased sales, then you need to measure success by increased sales. What Does My Customer Need? Most e-learning professionals want to build exciting, fun, and engaging courses. Accordingly, this next statement might be considered blasphemous to many people who design e-learning. Don’t start your project focused on the learner’s needs. Your primary goal is to satisfy your customer. In an ideal world, you build e-learning courses that are perfectly aligned with the customer AND learner needs. However, when push comes to shove, you need to focus on pleasing your customer first. Your customer is trying to meet specific objectives. Your goal is to help them design a course that meets those objectives. Once you know what the customer needs, you’ll be able to build a course that engages the learner. Don’t start your project focused on the learner’s needs. Your primary goal is to satisfy your customer. |
Online Education