My Aunt Marie was one of those tall, saucy French women who dressed in clingy black turtlenecks and lots of scarves. To the French, she used to tell me, it doesn’t really matter what you say, but how you say it. If you’re feeling a little overwhelmed trying to manage your first e-Learning project, take some advice from Aunt Marie. To be a good e-Learning project manager, half the battle is to sound like one. Put one word in front of the other, and soon you’ll be talking your way through any e-Learning door.
In my experience there are four key areas that differentiate an e-Learning project from traditional projects. These are the traits that separate “the men from the boys” in project management (or as my Aunt would say, “Ze men from ze boyz.”). Each of these areas has its own vocabulary and nuances.
First put the “soft” in software
Obviously, the biggest difference between traditional training and e-Learning is the “e.” Network and IT people are very fussy about the things they’ll allow on their servers. E-Learning project managers need to use their people-pleasing softskills to involve their IT people in all aspects of the project.
How do you “involve” IT people? Start by inviting your webmaster or network administrator to every project meeting. From kickoff to final delivery, let the guys with the gadgets in on the process. Get their feedback on your plans, your designs, and most importantly, your technical specs. Better yet, try dedicating an IT person to the project. Even if you can’t actually task someone from outside your department, you can always appoint someone your IT “expert.” Circulate this person’s phone number and email address and make sure you show all project plans and design documents to him or her.
Before you talk to the techies, though, you’ll need some of these common technology phrases:
The Back End is the part of an online program that tracks users, administers content, performs security, and integrates the course with the network infrastructure. For the non-technical Project Manager, developing the back end of the program will mean working closely with your IT department to ensure the system you develop will coexist with your organization’s IT infrastructure. Like the haunches of a horse, the back end of an e-Learning program is the strongest part — the strongest and the most likely to give your e-Learning project a swift kick in the budget and timeline if you don’t pay attention to this critical element.
The Front End is the part of an the program the user sees and interacts with. This is the “look and feel” of the program and consists of the screen design, navigation buttons, colors, font selection, and graphics. It is easy to get carried away with the wide variety of choices. You may find your first-time development team will try to use every tool, color and graphic they can get their hands on — so guide their enthusiasm or the “face” your program presents to the users could have all the subtlety of Tammy Faye Baker or Marilyn Manson.
The Alpha is the first crudely-assembled, barely-functioning version of a Webbased training (WBT) course or other e-Learning program. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. The term stems from the early days of computer-based training (CBT) when most learning objects and term papers were bought and sold by fraternities.
The Beta is the first release of an e-Learning program that users are allowed to see. It is not as crude as an Alpha, nor as polished as a Final, but it has enough going for it to get feedback from end users.
A Final release means one of the first fully-assembled versions of the program that is theoretically ready for prime time. Final releases usually go through several more rounds of changes until they become “Final-Final” or “Golden Final” releases. To avoid an endless series of “final releases” create a list of acceptance requirements early in the project. List the specific criteria that the program must meet to be considered “done.”
Next, give good graphics
Whether you’re working with outside vendors or just leaning on your in-house graphic talent, when an e-Learning project is far enough along to actually start looking like e-Learning, it’s usually too late to make changes to the interface.
To keep from having to redo interface graphics, get the design approved early in the process. Allow at least a week in your project plan to circulate the designs to everyone on the team so you can come to consensus.
But most importantly, when it comes to look and feel, always get the bankers (those who are funding the project) involved early. Show your bankers the designs early in the process and they’ll likely just ask for something a little “brighter.” Wait until well into the project and you’ll suddenly face a long list of complaints as well as a loss of your credibility. To talk about graphics, start by sprinkling the colors “mauve,” “mustard,” and “cyan” into your vocabulary, then add these colorful phrases:
A GIF is a graphical file format for displaying images in the browser window. There are two accepted pronunciations of the word GIF. One camp insists on pronouncing it with a hard “g”. The other uses a soft G as in “Jiff” (you know, the peanut butter brand.) It doesn’t matter which pronunciation you favor as long as you arrogantly defend whichever one you choose.
JPG (pronounced jay-peg) is the other common file format for displaying images. There is only one accepted pronunciation of the word, but various levels of quality. The highest-quality JPG’s look great, but make large file sizes (and thus long download times). Lower quality JPG’s look bad, but are very lean and download quickly. The right mix is usually between 40% and 60% compression.
Web-safe colors are the 216 colors that all browsers can display correctly and consistently. Although not as important with the latest browsers and graphics cards, basing your designs on web-safe colors gives you a kind of “belt and suspenders” redundancy protection against glaring display differences between browsers.
Then, match the interactivity to the learning environment
Whenever you have a mismatch between the instructional design and the technical or training environment, you’ve got trouble. As you’re shaping the content of your e-Learning, don’t design it for some abstract interactive experience. Think about the specific learning experience. Will students take the training alone at their everyday computer or will they have to go to a special training computer? Will they be working in groups of three sharing a computer? Will all of them get to use the mouse or only the mouse-hog of the group? The closer you come to shaping content for the actual experience, the more on-target your training will be.
During this phase of the project, you will come across these common phrases:
Metrics are items that can be measured or compared in order to evaluate the success or failure of a project. Test scores, sales volume, error rates, safety incidents, retention rates, travel costs — anything you can measure before and after the training can be a useful metric. Learning objectives should be linked to relevant metrics to be sure the training is accomplishing a worthwhile goal. Before converting to the metrics system in the mid-1970’s, English and American project managers relied on shillings and “learning-fortnights” to measure training.
Pacing elements are visual indicators that tell users how much more e-Learning they have to endure. The most common form of pacing element is the page indicator, as in “Page 7 of 325.” On the other end of the spectrum are tools as elaborate as course maps that learners can use to navigate the course.
Slide Show is a derogatory term for any e-Learning course that is not as interactive or engaging as is should be. See also “page-turner” and “snooze fest.”
Finally, give good meeting
Although any kind of training project is liable to get bogged down in meetings, software projects seem particularly prone to endless debate on minute details. (Should we say “Click the button” or “Click
ON the button”?)
In the e-Learning world, these words and phrases are sure to crop up in every meeting:
Taking a discussion offline is one of the most powerful image-boosting phrases you can use. Offering to table a discussion until later implies that you have respect for everyone’s time. Using the word “offline” implies that you at one time had a laser printer with a green LED that would turn on and off depending on whether or not the printer was ready to begin printing. All together, this phrase makes it seem like you are a good time-manager and technically savvy. E-Learning meetings can often get bogged down in minute technical details. If you’ve got the whole team assembled for a project update, detailed discussions about network encoding protocols (for example)
should be taken offline.
Budget is a polite, slightly more sophisticated way of referring to money, cash, or price. Vendors never demand more money, they always “request additional budget.” Notice the word contains the root “budge,” meaning to change or move (usually reluctantly). Take the root meaning to heart and guard your budget dollars like they’re your own.
Facilitate means to make things easier. Use this word often when the actual doer of a task is ambiguous or the actual worth of the task is questionable. When you facilitate something, you help it to be accomplished and you get the credit for it regardless of how important the task is or how distant your connection to the actual doer. For example, if you facilitate a meeting, you don’t actually contribute important ideas or solutions to the discussion. You do, however, get credit for the ultimate solution simply by inviting the right people to the meeting, bringing the right treats, and scheduling “bio-breaks.”
There are many more e-Learning words and phrases you could learn to help polish your act before you take it on the road. But keep in mind, my Aunt Marie only knows ten words of English. With her thick Parisian accent and feigned helplessness, she only needs ten words to talk her way into any club in New York. With a basic technology vocabulary and the right attitude, you can talk your way into any e-Learning conference room.
