As e-learning developers, we have more tools available than ever before to help us design beautiful, interactive e-learning experiences.However, we are constantly struggling with the collaboration or project management tools to ensure that the entire team is in sync.
Got a team?Struggling everyday to share and manage resources, gather and organize feedback, create checklists for daily and long-term tasks. There are tools that are used by e-learning teams to improve communication, project management and create better courses.
In this article, I’d like to list the everyday tools that make e-learning project management easier and e-learning teams collaborate better.
FILE SHARING
We live in a world where we constantly need to exchange resources, files, share common assets.In the process of a course development, several files of large size, different media need to be exchanged with the team. This makes a file management system inevitable. The best and the mostly widely used file management tools are google drive and dropbox.
- Google Drive
Google Drive, a safe place for all your files. It supports all major file formats and enables you to access all your resources anytime, anywhere & organize them in folders and lets you share them with your collaborators. Added advantage of real time collaboration through google docs, sheets makes it a perfect choice for collaboration.
Key features : Real time collaboration, 15GB free storage, offline access and direct folder uploads from web app.
2. Dropbox
Dropbox, another file hosting service, with cloud storage; best suited for sharing large files and syncing your local folders with the cloud folders. Works great for automatic backups as well! Dropbox also recently launched paper, an easy way to collaborate on different media types, embeds, code. Its simple and makes it easy to brainstorm together.
Key features : Selective file syncing for subfolders and version control for files.
No matter what file sharing and backup system you use, having a consistent naming convention and folder structure makes it easy to read and stay organized.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Without management anyone’s life is actually a nightmare; especially when it comes to setting everyday tasks to meet long term goals.Same is the scenario with eLearning developers.While working on different modules you can easily get confused or even stuck, if everything is not at it’s right place. So organizing things well is a must.To work with a team,management is required at personal as well as project level; to achieve common goals well in time.Regular calls along with well labelled mail-list can serve the purpose to some extent but we do have beter options.
Project Management tools are plenty, the ones that I am sharing here are widely used by e-learning teams to stay organized and in sync.
3. Trello
Trello is a free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone, anywhere. It makes collaboration easy with the kanban system it follows. You can maintain all your to do or to view tasks as trello cards.These cards can be arranged into lists for clarity.
Key features : Free forever,real time collaboration, Visual UI and card’s drag and drop flexibility.
But following deadlines and managing complex projects can be messy. So in my opinion it’s a great tool for managing simple projects with small teams and also works well as a personal task manager.
4. Asana
Asana is a tool helping teams to manage and follow workflows even for complex projects.Large teams can experience the benefits better.
Key features : 3 column structure, email reminders, reports and document management.
Read a good comparison between asana & trello here to pick your choice.
5. Basecamp
Basecamp the saner, organized way to manage projects and communicate company-wide. Here your every project is a basecamp where you can chat and maintain to do lists and have a centralised schedule to keep everything and everyone syncd.Read out latest basecamp version review here.
Key features : Real time chats, automatic checkins, speed, today list, simple & intuitive design
6. Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a platform to manage and automate collaborative work.Smartsheet brings together all the benefits (and drawbacks) of spreadsheets and project management tools into one unique, powerful hybrid. Check out here for details.
Key features : Gantt charts, calendar view and reports.
PERSONAL TASK MANAGEMENT
For me, whiteboard serves well as a personal task manager, for meeting daily checklist. All the tools mentioned above for project management work great at personal level too. Some other popular tools are remember the milk and evernote.
7. Remember the Milk
Remember the Milk is a list style task management app with text centric UI.
Key features : Add due date,locations, reminders; selective sharing of lists, custom sorting and grouping; drag and drop reordering and properties change.
8. Evernote
Evernote is basically a note making app but the notes here can exist as any file type (image,text,pdf,audio,video…)not just text notes.
Key features : Drag and drop feature to add files; all file format support and visual UI.
Need for a good management system, is clear with what Fujio Cho said
“We get brilliant results from average people managing brilliant systems. Our competitors get average results from brilliant people working around broken systems.”
So choose right platform to do it right!
COURSE REVIEW
Just creating good courses is not the end, you need to know what others think about it; are they able to relate to it or not?; Is it delivering what you expected? To know all this what is required, is review.Shared excel sheets can work well but as the courses are a visual entity, plain text feedback can be cumbersome to deal with.
9. zipBoard
zipBoard is a must-have eLearning course reviewer tool for eLearning professionals who are more visual.
Key features : Capture and pinpoint the issue with images,task tracking and management,real time collaboration,JIRA & Slack integration,responsive test, uploaded SCORM version control,unlimited collaborators and review cycles.
10. Review My eLearning
Review My eLearning is another course reviewer tool to organize and track all of your comments by uploading SCORM courses.
Key features : Comment management, unlimited collaborators and review cycles,discuss comments.
Whatever tool you might end up using or already be using, it is important to ensure that everybody in the team is comfortable using it. These are just some of the popular tools that we have shared for your project management during development.
Tracy Parish has a cool list of different tools that can be used for e-learning in different phases. Do check it out, and share which ones are your favorites.
Tracy Parish has a cool list of different tools that can be used for e-learning in different phases. Do check it out, and share which ones are your favorites.
Want to take a quick look at how zipBoard works for e-learning? Check it out here
zipBoard is a review and collaboration tool for e-Learning developers and instructional designers. Just upload your SCORM file and get started. Add team members as collaborators, share feedback, iterate over multiple versions — zipBoard is the tool to make e-Learning courses better and faster.
Thanks to Ruchi Goel for her contributions for compiling this article. This was originally posted in eLearningIndustry.com
