Online Learning for Tough Times:
Keys to Rapid Development
By Ed Mayberry

Organizations face tight budgets, downsizing, and outsourcing. In response, online learning product developers must be able to improve their effectiveness by leveraging rapid development concepts. Here’s an overview of rapid development, and how you can optimize rapid prototyping for online learning.

Consider the following situation: The VP of human resources wants you to develop online learning materials for a new employee annual review (AR) process for 2,500 employees located in six countries. The AR project team developed a number of materials for a new Website, but management agrees that there should be an online learning course, with all AR-related training materials accessible via the LMS in two months. You only have a three-person project team, and you must convert a 16-week development process into a six-week rapid development process. 

Rapid development (RD) refers to the development of online learning using the shortest possible schedule without sacrificing quality. In short, the goal of RD is to develop online learning better, faster, and cheaper. Rapid development for online learning blends instructional design, project management, and prototyping to expedite online learning development.

Unfortunately, the development of online learning solutions is not an exact science. Each product has different requirements, and each process has flaws. However, it’s your job to remove all non-value added process steps. Key skills in doing so include the ability to understand new content, quickly evaluate needs, prioritize requirements, and eliminate any activity that doesn’t add value to the final product.

Start with the basics

As you start your project, take inventory of what you have to work with in terms of people, time, and materials. For example, during your meeting with HR you should identify your project team, discuss access to quality subject matter experts (SMEs), clearly define the finished product, identify key stakeholders, and clarify due dates.

First things first: Get a calendar and count the number of working days. Then, quickly assess the usability and quality of the available content. In a best case situation, you will need to edit, chunk, and apply a learning strategy to well-developed content. In a worst case situation, the content is still being developed. 

Once you have a clear idea of what you have to work with, line-up and contact project team members. At this time, set up SME interviews and schedule team meetings. Ask your team members to identify any vacations or time off and map their availability against your schedule. Remember, each project wastes valuable time during the initial set-up phase, so make certain you have action items and due dates from the start. In addition, SMEs are usually difficult to schedule; you may need to gather their input via telephone interviews and email.

Next, determine what development steps will require the most time and identify several ways to minimize them but maintain quality. To do that, meet with your project team and brainstorm alternatives. Afterward, you can structure content using a combination of instructional design, project management, and prototyping principles.

Trust your own judgment

So far, it sounds like most any project, right? But, here’s where things start to speed up. Traditional instructional design involves a number of phases that take several weeks:

• needs assessment to identify the training problem, its cause, and possible solutions
• media analysis to identify the best way to deliver materials
• a design document to map out entry-level and prerequisite skills and learning objectives, which will resolve the training problem.

Typically, a design document is the result of the needs and media analysis paired with use of instructional design principles. Unfortunately, the painstakingly crafted detailed design document frequently is disregarded or, when used in the development process, is modified by the project team. All too often, the final product bears little resemblance to what the instructional designer expected to see. Therefore, time and effort can be diverted from a detailed design document and put towards the development of a charter document. (Don’t’ get me wrong, instructional design has evolved from proven concepts, and I don’t advocate disregarding its principles. However, it’s necessary to look at ways to make instructional design for online learning more efficient without losing quality.)

A clear, concise charter document, which blends some instructional design and project management practices, is a powerful and practical rapid development tool. It provides high-level due dates and review points in one or two pages, as well as an outline of module content. It's best to use accepted project management constraint categories to develop the charter document:

• scope, which identifies the project deliverables, what the project includes, and a brief description of what it does not include
• time, which can be identified using a high-level project schedule
• resources, which refers to your project team and materials. 

In addition, you should still build the charter based on a fast needs assessment. There’s little time for extensive interviews or evaluation of feedback, though. The meter is running, and your biggest enemy is time. Also, be sure to determine the allowed budget―even if nothing is stated by management. Think of what you need, and use an educated guess to determine how much it will cost. And, it goes without saying, you should always be aware of effective ways to reduce development costs. Often, this equates to minimizing the number of people on the project or doing more with less.

When making decisions so quickly, it's easy to start questioning them. Keep in mind that your client, the person paying the bills, considers you the expert in this area. As the expert, you need to educate yourself about the content, prioritize needs, and delete everything that isn’t value added. Consider your organization’s needs, and make your best guess at a practical solution that is balanced with budget, learner needs, and client expectations. Most important, don’t waste time second guessing yourself.

Develop a no-bells prototype

Now it’s time to build your prototype. Allow your team a maximum of two days, using content documents, to develop a rapid prototype of the finished product. Develop the prototype with a user-friendly shareable tool, such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Keep this version simple and straightforward, saving all the bells and whistles (and most of the creative effort) for the final product.

Use your prototype to bounce around ideas before you move into final development. Have the client review it for content accuracy, usability, and so forth. When your customer approves the prototype, you’re ready to move into the final development process.

Rapid prototyping is a risky way of completing a project because the planning process is often cut short―and lack of planning can result in rework. However, if you have access to quality content and are able to clearly define your problem, list the learning objectives, and provide a charter document that defines the deliverable, odds for success are in your favor.