I just took a snap poll on how long it takes me to create an eLearning course. The highest response was three to four weeks. Three to four weeks ?!?!? In the comments: if I'm creating interactivity ... if I'm branching scenarios ... if I'm using special effects ... if I'm scripting voiceover ... Listen. No one cares about your interactive, especially effected, professionally voiced over branched scenarios. If your stakeholder's team is missing their KPIs, ignorant of new policies, or making unforced performance errors, they don't have a month to wait around for you to get your act together. A month is a third of a quarter. If you take a quarter to deliver a course, they'll need another quarter to implement and measure its impact. Now you're saying they need to wait two full reporting periods to perceive any real value from you. This leads to one of three conclusions: 1. You need that much time to figure out how to do your job 2. You are more interested in fulfilling your own design vision than solving business problems 3. You're charging a price for a single course that can carry you for a quarter And then we wonder why businesses see L&D as a cost center.
Teresa Potter
11mo
There’s a lot of solid pushback in the comments already, so I don’t feel like to need to repeat just how weird I think this take is. I can’t help but wonder though: how long did it take the SMEs to pull together the content? In my experience, it is never less than 3-4 weeks for anything substantial. I also lead a discussion in our ATD chapter last week about ID in real life where we talked about all the conflicting priorities that L&D teams are often asked to handle. One that really stuck out to me is how much *hand holding IDs who are internal to a company have to do to manage stakeholders who think that training is the solution to a management or leadership problem. I realized that stuff takes up so much time, and it is never accounted for in business goals. I would argue THAT is why businesses see L&D as a cost center. *I think this term could be interchangeable with ass-kissing many days. Choose your favorite. (This is very much why I left internal ID work to work for myself. I want to make cool stuff, not waste time on internal politics and then be the first job cut when the business sees any financial struggles.)
Warren Kemp
11mo
if you want a quick win delivered asap and it isn't going to be used time and time again then I would counter Elearning isn't the solution. It's f2f or zoom training getting the message across quickly. If its learning that people can tap into and reuse and its going to be evergreen then 3-4 weeks seems quick! One has to know the what and why. Its a bit like a business driving down their time to hire with it having a negative impact on attrition rates. Its not the time to hire that's the issue its the hiring/hirers.
Laurie Michaud
11mo
Defining the scope, completing a needs analysis, and gathering information from SMEs takes time. So do alpha, beta, and gold reviews - all standard in the design process. Often, legal review is required. Can we put out a micro video or a short VYOND quickly? Absolutely. Building quality Elearning content that actually makes an impact requires time. If a client proposed building an extensive, multi-module Elearning course in a matter of weeks, it’s a sure sign they don’t know what they are talking about, especially if there are multiple stakeholders who must review it. Developing quality content requires time. Developing meaningful assessments takes time - though now there are tools to make it go faster. Of course there are quick fixes that can go out to address urgent needs. You say learners don’t care about cool design elements, storytelling, and interaction, but I disagree. Creative courses I designed for top financial clients, pharma clients, and an ivy league university have won rave reviews and made powerful impacts. In my opinion, learners hate boring, poorly written page-turners. Putting an SOP into a scorm file or importing a PowerPoint into Storyline can be done quickly but it’s not training and it’s not effective.
Jamie Sheppard
11mo
Wow, the comments on this one, this needs to be a docuseries… I have worked in a business before, identified a gap in knowledge, linked it to a business metric. It still took L&D 6 months to provide content on this topic. In the meantime, we sent an email to users to fill that knowledge gap. I think your point is completely valid. Quality takes time, but if you’re building content in your own image instead of solving problems for your stakeholders then you’re on the wrong train.
This is an interesting thing to measure, given the different skill levels, work environments, levels of resources, etc, I could create a course in an hour, but who cares if it hasn't gone through the process of being vetted through the proper channels? I think I can confidently say (as a long-time ID instructor) that most people do not use JavaScript. Most people are NOT trying to be "fancy." I darn sure can tell you that most people are not even attempting to include scenarios, let alone branching. And most people don't want to wallow in content weeks just for kicks (or to pay for the quarter. Huh?). We want the project to finish too! I don't believe you can set the bar unless you know the constraints under which they are working. Yes, let's talk about efficiency, but everyone needs to implement practices in their environment within their own given constraints. Putting a specific day count around it is not it. Maybe something like, of a full project, design and development should take 20% of the time (I would ignore that too!) And just to stir the pot more since that's we are doing here - if you can create a course in the blink of an eye, it probably didn't need to be a course in the first place.
Tom Foulkes
11mo
I mean, I think it’s a bit unfair to pin this all on L&D. Often the stakeholders timelines for reviews and input are a lot more challenging. We can go as fast or as slow as them. One really great way round this is to launch a much shorter temporary solution in the short term that can hit key points quickly while you work out the larger programme or training. This can also give you some insights to inform your final course. To your point, these are requests in response to real issues, so need solving properly. If that can be done through a targeted comms piece, great. If not, it’s not worth rushing something that only does half the job (or not even that)!
Christa Novelli
11mo
The other aspect is that I would expect instructional designers to be working a minimum of 2-3 projects simultaneously, so it isn’t just one deliverable taking a month while they do nothing else. They’re switching between SME reviews, content design and development, and (depending on level and role) potentially other tasks like teaching classes (for a generalist like a Learning Specialist) and providing stakeholder consults on business needs or similar.
Sherry Michaels
11mo
Yeah. No. We normally get modules out faster, it’s true. But we work closely with our SMEs to pinpoint why we’re training, what we’re training, and what they should expect people to be able to do as a result of the training. All that can take far less than 3-4 months. What adds the time is the SME review time. Human foibles of SMEs, hard disk crashes on SME drives, consensus among SMEs. So we have a timeline every project which we present every kick off meeting. Everyone agrees on the timeline. And real life happens to the SMEs. So my whole exercise here is to point out that we are in a very human business. If everyone does their part as we all expect we will, development time is as you would expect. Project management of these projects is very little different than project management of any other project. It’s the variables that always cause the issues. And hard rules that cast developers in the light as laggards taking too long and being politically insensitive isn’t accurate.
Not every elearning project is a five-minute compliance course designed to check a participation box, or a free how-to guide on assembling big-box furniture. For example, some initiatives support mission-critical deployments of custom processes, where instructional design timelines are dictated by coordinated development sprints and narrow training windows set at a future deployment date. New mission-critical processes demand high performance outcomes, and often require best-in-class elearning courses blended with other methods to avoid employee downtime. Another example, when a client’s customers are paying a premium for training, expectations rise: they want satisfied learners, measurable outcomes, and engaging, scenario-based content. This may include embedded assessments, polished remediation paths, and performance-focused design -- not something that can or should be cobbled together in a few days in the name of rapid development or go-to-market. And let’s not forget the complexity of instruction when the content involves biochemistry, engineering, analytics, or medicine. Expertise takes time to translate into meaningful elearning. So yes, while rapid development has its place, it shouldn’t be the universal standard.