We are trying to develop content for elearning.

Here are the options we are looking at:

Option1:
- License "student guides" from professional material developers/software companies themselves. (problem we are running into is software companies are not licensing student/instructor material to elearning companies and professional content developers are not developing material for areas where we want to offer training).
- Have trainers give/develop content for the LMS/LCMS.

Option2:
- Make product "user guides" be the main reading material.
- Have "student exercises" (handouts) developed by either trainers or professional content developers
- Have trainers give/develop content for the LMS/LCMS.

As of now cjhnces of option1 look bleak. Hence we are assessing the cost and risk of Option2.

quote:

one of the biggest mistakes that happens in elearning is that the content is developed by trainers and not instructional designers.

That's basically true, but it's more specific than that. What happens is that people continue to decide that e-learning is the solution when they haven't even identified what the performance gap is, what the desired outcomes are, what learning activities are most appropriate for acheiving the desired outcomes, etc. A skilled instructional designer begins with analysis that leads eventually to appropriate delivery solutions. You're picking a delivery solution before you even know what needs to truly be delivered to address a particular issue. For example - are you even sure that whatever it is is a training issue in the first place?

The reason I asked about the skill level of your trainers is that many good learning facilitators pick up quickly on good instructional design practices. In other words - you might not have as much of a learning curve.... but that's not guaranteed. Some people are not adept at analysis, design, development, etc. Just because someone has a camera, it doesn't make them Ansel Adams.

Ours is a startup wanting to sell training courses, so we don't have the opportunity to do needs analysis like a company trying to determine training for inhouse employees. We have published a survey and got a decent response. All indications are that elearning will be the most accepted and cost effective way to deliver the training in the areas we want to engage in.

Mr. Trainer -- Creating e-learning and hoping to market and sell it off-the-shelf to customers is even more of a reason to ensure you have excellent instructional design. I'm not sure how you're going to get excellent instructional design from people who do not know instructional design. Whether something is generic OTS or made-to-order, you want the learning to have impact. Content dumps with pretty pictures does not equal learning. I'm assuming you want to have some sort of marketing edge that makes people want to buy your products and helps them see how your product matches their business goals? I'm very interested to understand how that is possible when the people creating the learning products do not know about design and development of said products.

Here's the main issue I see. It sounds as though you want your company to create this stuff and be able to sell it without having appropriate team members on board. Why would you expect a group of mostly instructional designers to tell you that you do not need instructional designers on your staff?

And here's the bottom line -- it's your company. Run it how you wish and see what works. I'd be very interested to know how it goes.

If you are in the business of selling training, then your products have to deliver on the desired learning outcomes in a way that is better, faster, cheaper, or more satisfying than the products of your competitors.

You can achieve learning outcomes in many different ways, but getting instructional designers engaged is one way of ensuring you have some kind of consistent quality in your products.

If your start-up is to be a "training company" then one of the core competencies you need to develop is the ability to leverage instructional design. That doesn't mean you have to have those resources in-house, but it does mean you have to have someone in-house with enough instructional design expertise to interact with and manage any outsourced expertise you might use.

Godfrey Parkin