Custom eLearning development is a well-structured process that involves several distinct stages. The objective is to create an online learning experience that is tailored to the specific needs of an organization or a set of learners. This development process comprises several steps, from analyzing learning requirements to the final rollout and beyond. Here are the nine stages of the custom eLearning development process:
1. Needs Analysis: This first phase involves understanding the learning requirements, audience demographics, and desired outcomes. It’s essential to clarify what learners need to know or do differently after completing the eLearning program.
2. Instructional Design Strategy: During this stage, instructional designers choose the appropriate instructional strategy. They decide on pedagogical approaches, learning theories, and delivery methods that will best facilitate knowledge transfer and retention.
3. Content Collection and Curation: Here, subject matter experts provide relevant content that instructional designers curate and align with learning objectives. This includes selecting accurate information from existing resources or creating new content where gaps exist.
4. Storyboarding: A storyboard is created as a visual blueprint of the eLearning course. It maps out each screen or segment, including text, interactions, media elements, and navigation.
5. Graphic Design and Media Production: Graphic designers and media developers create visual assets like graphics, animations, videos, and interactive elements based on the storyboard to engage learners and enhance the learning experience.
6. Development: eLearning developers use authoring tools to transform storyboards and media elements into functional courses. They integrate content with technology, ensuring that interactive elements operate correctly.
7. Quality Assurance and Testing: The course is rigorously tested for functionality, usability, accessibility issues, as well as content accuracy – this involves multiple stages of revisions and quality checks to ensure error-free operation across various devices and platforms.
8. Pilot Run: Before a full-scale rollout, a pilot run with select learners helps gather feedback on the eLearning experience, which can be used to make additional refinements.
9. Launch and Evaluation: Finally, the course is launched for the intended audience. Its impact is assessed through analytics and feedback mechanisms against learning objectives defined at the outset of the project for continuous improvement.
These stages may overlap or be revisited as needed since eLearning development is rarely a linear process – it requires agility for making adjustments based on ongoing insights from analytics and user feedback.