Time for Quality

This is probably the seventeenth draft of my response to the Learning Circuits Blog’s question of the month for January 2007. I have to stop somewhere and let normal life continue.

What are the trade offs between quality eLearning programs and rapid eLearning and how do you decide?

What is a quality eLearning program? Quality in e-learning does not mean the use of complex simulations, rich animations, extensive scenarios, adrenaline pumping games, and such. These are but features of the program. Quality in e-learning is something that delivers what the learning objectives necessitate, what the content merits, and what the learner needs. It is about the nature of the learner's experience with the learning product.

Are the learning objectives completely application oriented? Then you probably need simulations. Is the content abstruse? You probably need interesting scenarios and animations. Are the learners easily bored when it comes to learning? A game might be in order. Do the learners learn in short bursts? Then small pithy performance support tools may be the need of the hour (or minute). And these are connections you will not trade off against anything, including cost and time.

On the other hand, if the learners are self-motivated and understand the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) factor of the learning, then you probably can use a very straightforward text-based tutorial approach.

Once the learning strategies are discussed and decided, rapid eLearning kicks in. And rapid eLearning is not the absence of all of the above features. It means a structured, tools-and-templates-based approach to delivering the functionalities for these features. It entails automating the repetitive aspects of design and development, so that creation time is reduced and more time is spent on the conceptualization of the learning product.

So is there a question of a trade off at all?

Moreover, by definition, you don’t take more time (or money, for that matter) than is necessary. And what is necessary is quality. Trade off? What trade off?

And notwithstanding the learning strategies defined, if a sponsor still insists on an unrealistic level of rapid development, please work with them to tone down the brief – in terms of the learning objectives, the content coverage, and learner expectations.

If I go by the literal definitions of the question, quality is for the learner; rapid development is for the sponsor and the developer. Who do we trade for who?

Two thoughts from my earlier drafts that I just am not able to let go of:

1. Can you actually trade off quality with anything? Can someone consciously develop a program that is suspect in quality?
2. And as I was discussing with a colleague yesterday, I hope this question does not come up when we discuss school education. If cost starts competing with quality in education, then in a bad economic year, a country (or state or district) will probably close down all its schools. You can well imagine the consequences of that.