eLearning providers: Handyman or builder?

Over the last few years the eLearning market has been flooded with various authoring tools that are available to everyone.

Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, Adapt, Lectora, Camtasia and SHIFT are just a few that can be very quickly learnt and allow anyone who is interested to publish eLearning. Well, digital content anyway.

This has created a landscape where there are fantastic opportunities for passionate eLearning specialists to break out on their own as contractors and freelancers. Clients are the ultimate winners of this explosion of options as the space becomes more competitive and less dominated by the ‘big players’.

However, this is a double edged sword.

What this current climate of opportunity and easy to use authoring tools is has generated is an environment where you have a lot of eLearning generalists who are trying to fill the roles of Instructional Designer, Digital Designer, UX Designer, QA reviewer, Project Manager, Technical Support and Creative Director.

What we have, is a space that is rich with eLearning ‘Handymen’ (or Handywomen). These are individuals who usually have a career background in one or two aspects of eLearning design and are competent enough in the other aspects to be able to produce an end product by themselves.

The benefit is that there is one person who has a holistic view of the goal and is in control of all aspects of the solutions design. The negative is that there is only one person who has a holistic view of the goal and is in control of all aspects of the solutions design.

Now before I cause mass outrage about attacking this group, I want to point out that I fall into this group too. My speciality has always been visual and interactive design, detail and analytics of eLearning while also having a solid enough understanding of Instructional Design and Project Management. I can work through a client’s needs, come up with a solution and know what will work, but an Instructional Designer or writer I am not.

This same market is also populated with eLearning companies. Organisations that exist to create eLearning solutions for their clients and are made up of teams of specialists. If I continue with my trades and building analogy, these companies are like your home builders.

A team of architects, plumbers, concretes, carpenters, sparkies, project managers and surveyors who work together to build a solid end product; your house. This allows the plumber to focus on doing the plumbing well, the carpenter to focus on building sold and proper frame, the sparkies to do the electrical work and so on. You don’t see the concreter doing electrical work and you won’t find the architect putting in the plumbing.

You wouldn’t hire a handyman to build a house? Would you?

Likewise, when eLearning companies undertake a project, each team member has a very specific focus in conceptualising, designing and delivering the solution. These teams of specialists collaborate with each other, challenge each other, validate each other and look at every aspect of the solutions from their own unique perspective.

The benefits of this is every aspect of a solutions design is being looked at from all relevant perspectives, and then having a specialist focus their efforts on what their specific contribution will be. This leads to a solutions which will deliver the best possible outcomes from all perspectives, rather than one that is great in one or two areas but only ‘good enough’ in the rest.

As the old proverb goes; two heads are better than one.

But there is a downside to being an organisation that creates eLearning. The bigger you are the less of the organisation is filled with eLearning specialists and more with business specialists. Very quickly an eLearning organisation's passion for eLearning can be watered down with a focus on how to create an end product quicker, cheaper and easier. These goals are commonly achieved at the expense of the quality and effectiveness of the solution.

The underlying message here being; when looking at eLearning companies, make sure you do your homework and ask the right questions.

The rise of these authoring tools has lead many organisations and providers to assume that just because doing something seems easy, anyone can do it well.

To those who think this way, I leave you with this closing thought:

A hammer is the simplest of tools to use, but I still find that I bend a nail or three on my handy-man DIY projects.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post, I hope you've found it insightful and it has provided you with some considerations when looking to tackle your first or next eLearning project.

If you have any questions or would like to contact me directly you can reach me via email or Twitter.