Course Development Process
To avoid rework and speed development time for your new course, there are several points where your instructional designer/developer will require your approval. It is the subject matter expert's responsibility to get any additional input or from other stakeholders and to communicate that feedback into a single cohesive set of instructions or questions. Each visual theme or styleguide, each narration script, and every paragraph and quiz question can have infinite variations. The designer can explore all presented, but it will slow the project considerably. Once a stage of development has concluded returning to a previous stage may cause cascading problems that will have to be resolved or that may not be discovered until much later.
Generally, the subject expert can expect to provide feedback on versions of all of the following. These approvals do not prohibit making changes. Discovery and re-evaluation if encouraged. However, your designer will use the approvals to guide their follow-up work. A requested change to a previous agreement and approval may indicate the project should be taken back to a phase of analysis and evaluation of purpose or readiness.
Deliverables and Acceptance Points
- Course learning objectives
- Course style guide typically including colors, fonts, graphics, and navigation
- Storyboarding of instructional strategies
- Assessment plans
- Prototypes - often starting with basic outline of course to complex animations or interactives
- Animations, interactive elements. and practice activities
- Narration scripts
- Raw video resources
- Final video production
- Assessment/s
- Course in its entirety
All items are given final approval by the Subject Expert after feedback of prior versions.
Post Production
- Course title
- Course description
- Other course settings
Schedule
An on-demand course can take between 2-12 months or more from establishment of learning objectives to publishing. Your instructional designer/developer may have multiple projects and be working with other talent. Your learners will benefit from more time analyzing and developing faster, more impactful instruction. It takes time to make a course short and powerful rather than long and forgetable.
As the subject expert, you can ensure time on your schedule to meet with the instructional designer and to review materials and provide feedback as soon as possible. Your instructional designer/developer has experience working on many training projects and has received education and training on the most efficient and effective processes. Their suggestions are valuable. Talk to your project manager if you are concerned about lack of progress on a course.
Instructional Design development models can vary by project. Google more information on these commonly used processes:
- ADDIE - The most formal, and thorough structure for course development that includes distinct phases for time spent in analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.
- Backward design - Defining the structure of the instruction and assessment first and then fitting content and activities to fit that end.
- SAM - Relying upon early ideas, a quick protype is created to base all development.
The type of development model used does not determine the speed of development. All development models require some iterations. The choice in development model should be based on the clarity and cohesiveness of the stakeholder's vision, the development team's experience, and the instructional designer's insight into the complexity or simplicity of the instruction, the needs of the audience, and the needs of the stakeholders.
See also pages on Training Design Standards, Project Roles, and Approvals and Roll-Out