Some tips about implementing e-learning initiatives

Recently, I commented on this topic for someone, and that made me look around for some help, couldn’t find any canned (and free!) listing of things to do/avoid during implementing e-learning initiatives in a developing country like India which has low bandwidth availability, large number of languages to be supported, and in general a low availability of e-learning case studies. Here is my attempt at a brief note to help such implementations (this is extremely brief!):

Here are some points to keep in mind at the outset of planning and implementation:

1. Depending on bandwidth, course content should be created so that it utilizes least amount of bandwidth, think about a caching server located at each site to cache the content which will improve response time. This is critical if there are multiple sites connected via VPN (and hence bandwith availability for e-learning can be quite less, and content launches typically consume large bandwith if not planned correctly).
2. The content you create (and LMS that you use) should be localized; sooner or later you will need it. Check the support of the tools you use (LMS, LCMS, content authoring tools), as well as make sure the content you create is either globalized or is created in a way where creating seperate version for a language manually is easy (think of pictures and animations without text for example).
3. Do you need to create content that requires multiple authors or single author is enough? That puts requirements on your content creation tools. Multi-author generated content requires collaboration across authors and you might need authoring environment that supports such scenarios. Single author is easy, but if your authors are truely distributed, it may not work out.
4. Especially for multi-site deployments, there are  two models to use
   1. All training and content is common, shared across all sites seamlessly and by default, without any control on hiding any content from any site. This is suitable for cases when e-learning initiative is to manage online training only and sites are only recepients of the training and not creators, and there is no notion of local training.
   2. Each site has its mini-LMS within the LMS, where some content (and other details) are local and some are shared explicitly by administrators of the site with other (some or all) sites. This allows most flexibility. For example: instructor led training are mostly local (because of costs involved in travel to attend them) but they can be tracked using the same system and remain hidden to other sites. LMS vendors call it domains or groups.
5. If you require online training delivered through instructors (virtual classroom, like WebEx, Microsoft Livemeeting), you should make sure such an option is available within your budget, and integrates well with your LMS. These integration can be tricky at times.
6. Make sure your content is standards-compliant, but more importantly, works with the LMS you have chosen. Self-created contents are painful to make them work with a given LMS vendor and care must be taken at the beginning to pick right standards and interoperable pieces.
7. If you outsource content creation (it is always a good idea to do so if you have significant amount to create since it is highly specialized activity), so it will be good to understand the technologies, process and subject matter expertise of those guys, as well as what LCMS they plan to use. Custom-created content and their working with LMS are  biggest painpoint in any e-learning initiative.

 

Here are some articles you may find useful to go through. These are from ASTD (Americal Society of Training and Development) learning site: http://www.learningcircuits.org, this site is a great resource by the way.

 

Buy Versus Build: A Battle of Needs http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/jan2002/elearn.html

Evaluating E-Learning Developers http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/dec2002/elearn.html

Managing the E in E-Learning http://www.learningcircuits.org/2002/nov2002/elearn.html

E-Learning Maintenance Strategies — Why You Need One

 

Driving Higher Ed Institutions to an Enterprise Approach

Pitfalls of LMS Implementations

 

Basics Of CMS Implementation

 

Another way of learning is to to get a peek into what other problems you might encounter and what to look out for, it will be good to look for LMS case studies, almost all LMS vendors have some case studies and success stories (ASTD has also listed some); however, since these are mostly vendor written, they may hide more than they will reveal, so it is good only for starting point.

http://www.moodle.com is a great open source LMS, there are tons of open source CMS out there, so if you are on shoe-string budget and have some techies in-house, exploring all open-source solution may be a good idea.

Overall, e-learning initiative design and implementation is a complex activity, hopefully this writeup helps somewhat. drop me a note if you need any help and I will try to write more.

Collecting the list of organizations involved with education

Here is a list of major organizations in this area, do let me know if there are others I should add here:

• http://www.wiproapplyingthoughtinschools.com/ - Azim Premji Foundation’s work with education.
• http://www.pratham.org/ - Pratham works in the area of education.
• http://www.aksharafoundation.org/about_us.html - Akshara foundation, Banglore-based, involved in primary education, is a part of Pratham Education Initiative.
• http://www.smilefoundationindia.org/aboutus.htm - Smile foundation, involved in health and education

And here are some directory of NGOs, not particularly good I must say:

• http://www.idealist.org/
• http://indianngos.com/

I will keep this list updated, and if you know of other major NGOs in the area or directories, do let me know.

Most efficient way of impacting primary and secondary education in India

While discussing/thinking about e-shiksha, I also started thinking about what is the most efficient way in which someone can provide value to primary and secondary education in India. Here are some of the typical ways in which impact can be made:

• Support some students around you, monetarily or otherwise
• Work with an NGO
• Start your own NGO
• Help NGOs to be more effective

I got introduced to some sites in Seattle who do the last one: help NGOs be more efficient by provide them help with their business plans, fund-raising, campaigns etc. NGO to help NGO seems an interesting concept and organizations like http://www.netimpact.org/ and http://www.indianngos.com/about.htm want to make a difference. Maybe this is indeed the most efficient way of helping the cause, but it still remains to be seen how much Indian NGOs are actually leveraging such organizations, and how much of Indian industry leaders are willing to chip in.

e-shiksha learning portal is too good, and too unused

I am getting more involved in Shiksha in general and e-shiksha in particular. Got a look at their site, thanks to the account my sister has (who is a teacher and hence she can have an account). It is indeed a very good site, but sadly, very underutilized. I guess it is a chicken-and-egg problem, since there aren’t many users, collaborative content in blogs and forums aren;t really there, hence it is not useful for users to visit them and post more. I also started talking to Mr. Narinder Bhatia who is program manager for this initiative in CII, and I agreed to act as their ambassador to get more people come to this site and use it, and many other ideas on how to improve the site usage. Overall, I was interested enough to go out and create a network site (http://shiksha.ning.com) which I plan to use as the place where interested people like me can meet and evangelize this initiative. If you wish to be part of this and help increase this awareness, please visit the site, and become a member on the site as well as on the mailing list. also, let me know what you think of this whole effort.

Shiksha for the masses

An interesting post on venturewoods about e-learning+social-networking: elearning for all. Seems to be a good idea, and good thing is that all the technology requirements for such a venture is available. However, that sets me thinking: can such a technology be deployed to make the masses learn things? In such cases, I always try to look for 2020 vision of our president (soon to be ex-), and I found about http://www.eshikshaindia.in/, a portal for e-learning exclusively for teachers, built using open-source technologies. This also turned up president’s speech on the occasion of its inaugration (here), which, as usual, is pretty insightful and refers to his 2020 vision. He again talks about the gap between people being churned out of the universities and people who are employable. It is scary to note that there are about 10 million youths injected into the employment market every year (7 million 10/10+2 passout looking for a job, 3 million after higher studies).
What are we doing to bridge the gap of employability as well as creating enough opportunities at this rate? What do you think can be done?

Giving Back to Society

I had a long post on venturewoods about what can be the effective means of creating a non-profit which will help in solving some problems (like education) and still can sustain itself without depending too much on fund-raising and corporate sponsorship. You can read it here. It was good to see people do want to do things in that area, there were lots of comments. I will be interested in hearing from you how you would like to contribute in such an area which will make a difference, what your way of going about it would be. If all goes well, I expect to spawn this into a seperate blog/mailing-list soon.