Without a doubt, rapid e-learning is the most significant development in e-learning in recent years.

With its ability to develop content in days and weeks, and at a fraction of the price of more traditional approaches, it has returned massive benefits for the organisations that have started to deploy it. But the full implications of rapid e-learning are only now starting to be understood. What those early adopters have grasped, in both the corporate and the supplier space, is the change that is going to happen in the elearning industry.

So, why is there such a stir about rapid elearning? And why is there also so much confusion? And how will it change the industry?

The stir has been created by two fundamental changes; one in the tools and the other in the method of producing e-learning.

What has developed in the tools? It’s simple – they’ve become simpler and more user-friendly. Years ago you would need niche expertise to create content and a host of other specialist skills – now much of that expertise is embedded in the tool. Think of it like a digital camera – you don’t need to worry about the lighting, focus and shutter speed because they are all automated.

By becoming increasingly WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), e-learning is simpler to develop and much more immediate. This immediacy has had a transformational effect on how the tools are used. They proactively compress the time it takes to deliver solutions by looking to compress the entire project cycle.

For example, in traditional courseware development, process time is wasted wading through documents and a reviewer has to visualise an outcome before they ever see a tangible product. In a rapid development process, the outcome is reviewed as it is developed in the tool. Changes are made immediately in situ and the materials grow at your finger tips.

But tools alone don’t guarantee a rapid outcome, they enable one. If you don’t compress the entire production and deployment cycle, you’ll still create a slow outcome. Smart organisations are starting to compress all the phases of development. One of the underlying changes in achieving this is a ‘right first time’ mentality. For example, it is no longer enough to have a subject matter expert (SME); you need a subject matter authority (SMA), ie an SME who has the authority to make final decisions on the content included.

The developer works hand-in-glove with the SMA to create and review the development through a cycle of continuous improvement – sign-offs are continuous and final.

The skills of the traditional e-learning team also get compressed. They are evolving, so there is no longer a separate script writer, instructional designer, graphics artists and programmer. These roles need to be combined into a single instructional developer, who is central to harnessing the tools to create engaging learning solutions. And these learning solutions are also shrinking in size, from hourlong courses into bite-sized, brain-digestible chunks of 15 to 20 minutes.

So why is there so much confusion around what rapid e-learning is? And why are there so many detractors? In the main, the confusion has been created because rapid is often wrongly translated to mean “developed by a novice” and therefore of low quality. In successful organisations, this is a fraction of the whole story. And this misinterpretation also misaligns ultra-rapid tools like podcasts, expert webcasts, virtual classrooms, PowerPoint-focussed tools and blogs into the arena of formal training courseware. They are not the same thing and they have to be managed in different ways to be effective.

What impact will rapid e-learning have on the world of learning industry? In its purest form it’s about producing more for less, with a wider range of skills producing a wider range of outputs. As the ‘rapid philosophy’ starts to grow, traditional producers will inevitably have to change. In a world in which skills become commoditised, the pace of business increases and the economic climate becomes ever more challenging – speed will become even more of the essence – and less time means less money, which, in turn, will mean more rapid e-learning. Even if the main content suppliers don’t all rush to become rapid development houses, they will have to shorten their processes if they are to survive.

For corporates, if rapid isn’t part of your methodology, perhaps some of its underlying thinking should be. At its heart, rapid e-learning is about efficiency and effectiveness, and that is a combination that few can choose to ignore.

David Perring is principal analyst at elearnity. He can be contacted on + 44 (0) 20 7917 1870 or at davidp@elearnity.com

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