Rapid Synchronous E-Learning Course Development

By George Piskurich

When synchronous e-learning was first introduced, it was touted as being a rapid-development technique all by itself. The hype was that you could take your current classroom programs and with practically no revisions magically change them into synchronous e-learning programs. Unfortunately, this promise wasn’t, and still isn’t, a reality.

Repurposing classroom and other activities

You can speed up development of synchronous e-learning courses by repurposing classroom activities, even if you can’t or don’t want to repurpose an entire class. The activity doesn’t even need to be part of a course that has similar content. It can be something that worked well from another course, particularly another synchronous course. One important caveat here, though: Be sure you limit your synchronous activities to fifteen minutes or less. Many classroom activities go on for 30, 60, even 90 minutes. These simply will not work in a synchronous environment and will need to be revised or rejected as possible rapid development shortcuts.

The same is true when repurposing media from a classroom to a synchronous delivery as a rapid development shortcut. You need to be very careful of time and complexity. Video pieces should seldom last more than a minute, and slides need to be as basic as possible, both so that they can be easily seen on a computer screen and to reduce time to load.

On a more simplistic level, you can “borrow” the concept for a synchronous activity from other synchronous courses. For example, if you saw a good game in a synchronous class you attended, you might borrow the concept of how it worked, even if the content and structure don’t match what you need.

If you have a top-rate synchronous software provider, they probably have demo programs with plenty of examples of activities. These might not reflect your content specifically, but the idea might be usable.

For example, your vendor is displaying a synchronous activity in which learners develop a simulated distribution process on a computerized map of the United States. As each participant adds

to the network, his or her piece is shared by the class, and discussions concerning the new addition are held in a talk box visible on everyone’s screen until the new addition is accepted or rejected by vote. While your content might have to do with marketing, you can use the concept of visual additions to your marketing plan that are discussed and then voted on to create a nationwide simulated marketing strategy.

Rapid development techniques for original synchronous development

If you need to develop your materials for a synchronous e-learning delivery from scratch, there are still plenty of other rapid development techniques you can use. The simplest of these we have already alluded to: Borrow ideas and interactions from others. Most suppliers of synchronous software have a number of synchronous programs that they use as examples when selling their products. These programs are full of good ideas that you can add to your program to increase interactivity or to save you from doing full development for such items as introductions, summaries, or quizzes. Also, you can decrease your original synchronous material development time by knowing your facilitators. If you are the only facilitator, or if you know the capabilities of the facilitator cadre, you can slim down the facilitator guide to match.

Experts as a synchronous rapid development technique.  One of the most effective rapid development techniques for synchronous e-learning development is to use experts as part of the instruction. This can be done in a number of ways, the simplest being to have the expert available on a separate phone to answer learner questions off-line. If a question is particularly relevant, the expert can signal to the instructor that there is an important concept to be discussed. Having an expert in this role means spending less time developing materials to the level at which they answer all likely questions, particularly if your facilitators are not subject matter experts.

A second way to use an expert as a rapid development technique in a synchronous delivery is to have the expert give part of the presentation. Once again, this saves you development time, but you do need to make sure that the expert stays within the boundaries of the objectives, both by discussing them with the expert ahead of time and then by monitoring the instruction. Because this is synchronous e-learning, your experts do not need to be in the same room as the synchronous facilitator. The facilitator controls the instructor interface, so the expert doesn’t need to be familiar with the software other than knowing to press the “talk” and “next slide” buttons.

This technique is a real win-win-win situation, as the expert can instruct without worrying about the mechanics of the synchronous software, the facilitator gets a break, and the developer is required to develop less, as the expert doesn’t need too detailed a facilitator guide—or sometimes none at all. You will need to create an activity or two to go with your experts’ talks for the facilitator to facilitate, and the facilitator will probably have a problem keeping the experts to your “suggested” time limit, but using experts in this way in a synchronous delivery definitely saves you development time and can be a refreshing, interesting change of pace for your learners.

Another way to use experts effectively and decrease development time is to have two of them do a discussion/debate on a particular concept or issue. Once again, material development for this type of activity is minimal and a discussion board follow-up on the issue can be an excellent summary activity that costs almost no development time at all.

Still another technique is a virtual panel discussion, with a group of experts chatting about an issue or a general concept and its ramifications. These can be structured or freeform, with or without learner questions, and focused on an objective or used as a summary/introductory activity. Because it’s synchronous and you can bring all the experts together virtually, your pool of possible candidates becomes as large as your organization. Development here consists of reminding the facilitators to do a debriefing after the discussion based on what they heard the panel members say.

No matter how you structure the use of your experts, you’ll save development time over just about any other lesson format and give your learners the benefit of other informed and often fresh ideas on the topic.

Facilitation in synchronous software as rapid development techniques

You can make use of some of the other facilities available in your synchronous software as a rapid development technique by implementing parts of a synchronous class though discussion boards and chat rooms. These work particularly well as pre- and post-class activities, or in multi-session, synchronous deliveries. This is another one of those “have the learners lead the learning” processes that decreases the amount of time you need to spend developing materials, as well as increasing learner responsibility for the learning.

The ultimate use of these techniques is a combined synchronous/asynchronous and sometime face-to- face classroom delivery process probably more familiar to our academic colleagues, and often known to them as online learning.

This article is excerpted from his latest book, Rapid Training Development (Pfeiffer, 2009).