From its very beginning, the e-learning industry has been caught in a never-ending debate about the right degree of complexity in authoring tools. Should they be closer to the rapid authoring paradigm (usable without much training even by subject-matter experts) or should they be powerful and flexible (closer to development tools for web designers)?
What if you could combine the two? In this article, we explain how we built a two-sided authoring tool that lets different types of users work on the same course using different interfaces tailored to their needs and expertise.
Before we begin, let’s look at the status quo. Some may argue that traditional authoring tools are actually split into those primarily aimed at instructional designers (IDs) and those aimed at subject-matter experts (SMEs).
The reality, however, is that many instructional designers end up developing directly in Flash or HTML, often with some proprietary templates. On the other hand, most subject-matter experts rarely author e-learning unless they absolutely have to.
Finally, when subject-matter experts do participate in these projects through collaboration with instructional designers, they run into a complex, time-consuming, and annoying process which essentially consists of emailing annotations on storyboards back-and-forth, with lengthy turnaround times and frequent mistakes.
Why do things work this way? Primarily because traditional tools have been designed with abstractions that are ill suited to this workflow.
Can we do better?
To design a product that provides a great experience for all its users, it’s generally a good idea to start from real use cases and use those to derive the underlying first principles.
For online course development, the use cases we want to understand are the tasks the various stakeholders — instructional designers, subject-matter experts, testers, lawyers, reviewers, and managers — need to perform. Once core concepts have been discovered and developed, one can design the product accordingly.
One example of how stakeholders might be involved in course development is:
- After a kick-off discussion of the project, goals, timelines, and audience, the subject-matter expert provides a first draft of the content (as a Word document or perhaps as an old e-learning course).
- The instructional designer takes this content and puts in place a basic structure of units, assessments, and any adaptive learning patterns. They will also propose specification for illustrations and other additional media like voiceover.
- The subject-matter expert reviews the content and starts iterating on both lessons and assessments. Most of the time, this means editing the text to make it clearer and more accurate.
- Once the core content is finalized, the instructional designer coordinates the contracting and incorporation of illustrations, voiceover, and other media.
- If appropriate, after a final review of the single language version by the subject-matter expert, they or the instructional designer may contract translations (internally or externally) if the project requires them.
- The instructional designer incorporates the translations into the course, making it multi-lingual.
- The subject-matter expert together with experts who speak the local language review the translations side-by-side with the original and make final edits.
- On an ongoing basis, the subject-matter expert ensures that the content is kept up to date and adjusts it to reflect changes in the underlying topic, such as training manuals, product specifications, and internal or external policies and regulations.
What does this workflow mean when designing a platform to create, manage, deliver, and analyze online courses? To start with, any such product could benefit from specialised interfaces for each of the roles that take part in the course creation process.
For example, although giving subject-matter experts independence in authoring courses is important, we have found that in practice, most of our customers who rely on them to create and maintain courses still need help with services around the production of courses — illustrations, voiceover, and translations coordination and incorporation.
To coordinate such workflows, our Course Platform reflects the fact that at nearly every stage of course development, the balance of work shifts back and forth between instructional designers and subject-matter experts. In addition to supporting this seesaw, we are designing our platform to also assist other stakeholders, for example those who provide feedback and legal approval.
The Better Course Platform currently offers two different interfaces for editing courses: one tailored to our in-house instructional designers (we call them Course Producers) who need access to the full range of functionality (for example adaptive learning controls) and one tailored to the subject-matter experts at our customers who want a simple, easy-to-learn interface to edit the content of lessons and assessments.
We designed our platform to facilitate this two-sided authoring process. In practice, this means that we provide a collaborative interface for course creation, where each stakeholder uses an interface designed to suit their own needs and expertise.
In particular, we believe the key efficiency/effectiveness gain happens by removing “artificial” obstacles that waste subject-matter experts’ time (for example commenting on storyboards instead of editing content directly) but at the same time, not forcing them to manage things far away from their expertise and interests like illustrations or voice-over.
Going forward, we are excited to extend this concept and provide custom interfaces for other participants in the process: illustrators, translators, voice-over artists, reviewers, testers, lawyers, or project managers. Stay tuned.
