Two groups of people who will be involved in any design project:
Particularly when numbers of people are involved, successful design requires sound project leadership skills.
This includes:
- Project manager, who co-ordinates the design and development process
- Instructional designer, who develops the detailed content for the course
- Graphic designer, who develops graphics needed for the course
- Desktop publisher, who lays out text
In an e-learning project, some of the skills above may be required, but others are also necessary:
- Multimedia designer, who pulls together audio and visual elements.
- Interface designer, who plans the functional layout of the screen
- Video specialist, who shoots and digitises video
- Audio specialist, who records of voiceovers, music and sound effects
- Programmer, who writes the code that makes it all work.
Of course, one person may carry out more than one of these functions and some may involve a whole team. The important thing is to make sure that each function is being done by somebody!
- the customer
- high performers
- the subject-matter expert (SME)
- representatives from the target group
The customer is the person who will take ultimate responsibility for the project. They are probably the person that has released the budget for its development, and it is quite likely that they will want to approve the final version.
Before starting any detailed design work make sure that you know what they see as the outcome of a successful project. They will probably be able to define for you performance criteria for the people undergoing the training. They may also have less obvious success criteria, such as the program being of very high quality, being groundbreaking in some way, etc.
High performers are people who can already perform the task for which you are going to design learning to a high level . They are therefore the best people to ask for information about how to carry out the task. They will be the people who know the tricks of the trade, the sorts of difficulties that can arise, etc. You should aim to talk to a number of high performers, building up an increasingly detailed picture of the performance.
The danger with high performers is that they may not be 100% technically correct, or that they follow questionable short cuts. For this reason you must check everything they say with the subject-matter expert.
The subject matter expert (SME) is the person who knows all about the subject. The customer may nominate this person, but if they do not you must make sure that they are somebody who has enough authority within the organisation to sign off your designs as technically correct. This expertise makes them a very important person in the project, but their role needs to be clearly defined.
They are seen as the subject matter expert because they have a high level of theoretical knowledge about the subject, but if they are away from the operational side of the work they may have forgotten or be out of date with current practical aspects. Occasionally the subject matter expert may also be a high performer, which is useful.
They may also be very enthusiastic about the subject. This can make them very dangerous, as they may feel that people new to the task need to know as much as they do. Their understanding of the subject may mean that they cannot see what learners find difficult.
The subject matter expert therefore needs to be used in a consultative role, as a signatory for the technical accuracy of the material. You may encounter some resistance to this more limited role. If the expert does put you under pressure to incorporate extra material, resist it by pointing out that a learner needs to focus initially on the essential aspects of the performance. Only when they are proficient should they be exposed to extra material.
Representatives from the target group
These people become increasingly important as the project develops. You will rely on them to review designs as you produce them, test programs for bugs and comment on usability and comprehensibility.
Involving people from the target group throughout the project life cycle will help you to deliver a course that is pitched at the right level and will create a buy-in from the eventual users.
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(C) Bryan Hopkins, 2005