Earlier this month, Tom Kuhlmann talked about 10 things to do before your eLearning course goes live. His post makes great sense but what really caught my attention was the statement he began with.
“It’s amazing how fresh eyes can find things you might have overlooked during production. So, before launching your elearning course, it’s a good idea to have others review it. You want to discover any hidden issues before the big launch.”
This is true. A review by a separate review team/individuals is very important for any eLearning course.
Michael Allen in his guide to eLearning talks about ‘successive approximation’. He opines ISD or ADDIE are flawed waterfall process models that assume each stage output to be complete and perfect –impossible with eLearning. He further says ‘Iterations Make Geniuses’ as he leads to the Successive Approximation model of development.
It is important for all involved with eLearning development to understand and appreciate that effective eLearning courses need an iterative process to create them. The more you iterate, the closer you get to an ideal learning solution.
March 24th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
May be now it is time when ‘Agile Methodology’ should be adopted for content development projects!
March 24th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Where I used to work, we called it the Second-Set of Eyes (SSE) rule. Each writer/editor was supposed to pass off the deliverable for review before anything went live. It was amazing how often we missed little stupid things. This is an essential function.
March 24th, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I agree, having a completely different set of people reviewing the content is essential. From what I understand of this model, the more times you actually go through the complete process of design>creation>evaluation, the closer you get to a ‘perfect’ course. So after the course has been independently evaluated, you re-design, re-create, then re-evaluate again… Obviously you accept the course at some point.
March 25th, 2010 at 3:59 am
Great post. I have experienced this first hand and no matter how hard you try to look for issues, nothing can replace fresh eyes.
Ajay
March 25th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
Ankur, yes Agile should help. Though I am not sure if it means the same as ’successive approximation’.
Melissa, I love the term SSEs.
August 18th, 2011 at 2:53 am
Far be it for me to scorch someone’s work but I have spotted the lack of something I see as oversight. I may have misundestood or have a different perspective. However, to my mind, and it was the mention of ADDIE that brought it to mind, I think there should be an Implementation stage between Creation and Evaluation.
Why do I think that? Aside from the content, there’s the issue of ensuring it operates in the environments it needs to. I’m talking about software versions, server loads, cross-browser issues, security issues – the technical details of the technology used.
Say you’ve a heavy reliance on video. You need to ensure the server can support the demands that it will face. Too much institutional elearning falls over because the resources weren’t there to test it to failure.
September 13th, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Hi, Amit;
I think your diagram is backward. In the world of Behavioral Psychology, where the term Successive Approximation originated, SA means reinforcing behaviors that are closer and closer to the target behavior (in a smaller and smaller range).
I believe that even in the sense that you’re using it, you’re still wanting to get closer and closer to a specific target, not further and further as your diagram shows, so the diagram should more properly spiral _in_, not out.
March 2nd, 2012 at 8:14 pm
Unless I’m missing something, I agree with Amy. The diagram depicts a movement away from center and seems to contradict the SA concept.
One question: Do you believe that this method may be used for designing traditional classroom learning, or is it restricted to eLearning?