Information does not equate to learning. Work with an instructional designer experienced in online development. More resources, activities and interactions and less text is the key to providing stimulating and engaging content and a program which achieves learning outcomes.

Paying developers a small fortune to recreate the already rich human interface design of the Macintosh in Flash is a waste of everyone’s time and money. Use XHTML and even SVG when appropriate and keep the Flash for when you really need it. That is animation, interactions and formative assessment etc. Effective learning environments can be designed in just HTML or using any of the numerous scripting language/database combinations to provide fast, responsive or even personalised interfaces.

BigTree OnLine uses the WebDAV features of Mac OS X Server to allow contributors to work continuously and remotely on their material if necessary. This ensures all material is fresh and current and development times are vastly improved.

The ratio of development hours to learning hours can range from 10:1 right through to 100:1 for intensive media driven materials. Ironically the introduction of more sophisticated tools has increased this ratio, mainly due to developers doing far more sophisticated interactions. Whether these equate to better learning however is debatable. They certainly cost more though!

For many organisations, including universities, the skills required in an eLearning development team are spread thin or non-existent and so little more than text online is often the result. If you need to go beyond ‘text and talk’ consider working with a Custom Developer to give an objective and refreshing view and who can provide all the skills under one roof. Reduced development time and costs and an innovative product are often the result.

The average LMS comes loaded with features, it also comes loaded with constraints which you probably won’t hit until half through your project. Your choice of LMS will unfortunately define and hence limit your learning design. Some universities are now re-considering in-house development as a means to provide flexible and innovative learning design. For instance you could develop the content management system and purchase the student management system. Continuing Standards improvement and compliance is allowing more mix and match, plug and play systems.

One of the most neglected audiences in the university sector are those non-academic staff, or even academic staff, developing new skills. All the benefits of eLearning now embraced by the corporate and government sectors, such as reduced cost, travel and down time are key features of eLearning not yet realised internally by the university sector. Working with a learning and development professional, universities can provide eLearning to support career enhancement through certification programs, plus increase job satisfaction and remuneration through job related training as well as personal and professional development.