Just a couple of ideas regarding obstacles to offshore outsourcing eLearning projects. Not comprehensive by any stretch, merely a starting point…
Cultural differences: These differences may range from subtle to obvious. Some cultures shy away from any confrontation which means that your experts may not challenge you when you make a suggestion that is obviously incorrect or at the very least non-optimal. Cultural differences can also become a major issue if you are working with a team from a not native English speaking country. Even in cases where the project managers are English-speaking this may not be the case for the majority of the back office techies. This may impact the quality of your final product as spelling and grammatical errors may easily be missed.
Intellectual property protection: Some of the offshore suppliers are based in countries where the right to intellectual property is not very well enforced or understood. You could very well end up with a situation where your training is sold to another competitor.
Time difference: Are you able to work in the time zone where your vendor is based? For most eLearning project rapid feedback in real time is an added advantage that speeds up development time.
Transfer of content: How large is the files that you will be working with? Is it possible to transfer content to the web during the development phase or will CD’s be sent to and from the vendor. What is the cost/time involved with that?
5/30/2007
5/29/2007
Offshore eLearning development
As you can tell I have also been a little tardy in posting new entries in my blog. Although I wish I had more time to post entries I am also grateful that work has been keeping me busy. I am lucky that each project and each client’s needs are unique, so boredom is not an issue.
The uniqueness of custom development is actually the reason for this post. I was recently informed by a potential client that they have decided to use an eLearning vendor that has extensive resources available offshore. In fact the primarily development would be done offshore with project management on the US side. The primary driver is naturally the development cost/price per man hour.
Offshore development has been around for some time now and I’m sure you heard of this and maybe your company has tried it. What has your experience been? In my past life I actually worked for a software development company that used Indian offshore resources. Our experience was mixed. The price was great, but project management was very difficult. I suspect the main reason for the negative experience with project management was due to cultural differences and a lack of quality testing on the Indian side. Although the projects were a little cheaper than doing it locally we battled to meet deadlines and the project inevitable cost more than we initially scoped both in terms of offshore time/cost as well as US project management time/cost. I have heard similar stories from other folks and especially from smaller eLearning vendors that have outsourced segments of a project.
Don’t get me wrong I think that offshore development outsourcing can and is successful, but it requires a lot of thought, planning and process management to ensure a successful outcome. It is also A LOT easier if you have a blue print of what you want and you simply want the offshore company to develop based on that blueprint/storyboard/use case. The potential customer that I mentioned is actually entering the eLearning space for the first time and developing a new product. They are not 100% sure what the end product will look like and what the features and functionalities will be. This will surely add more pressure on the eLearning development company managing the offshore team.
What are your thoughts? Would you/have you tried using offshore resources for custom eLearning development? How would you rate the experience?
The uniqueness of custom development is actually the reason for this post. I was recently informed by a potential client that they have decided to use an eLearning vendor that has extensive resources available offshore. In fact the primarily development would be done offshore with project management on the US side. The primary driver is naturally the development cost/price per man hour.
Offshore development has been around for some time now and I’m sure you heard of this and maybe your company has tried it. What has your experience been? In my past life I actually worked for a software development company that used Indian offshore resources. Our experience was mixed. The price was great, but project management was very difficult. I suspect the main reason for the negative experience with project management was due to cultural differences and a lack of quality testing on the Indian side. Although the projects were a little cheaper than doing it locally we battled to meet deadlines and the project inevitable cost more than we initially scoped both in terms of offshore time/cost as well as US project management time/cost. I have heard similar stories from other folks and especially from smaller eLearning vendors that have outsourced segments of a project.
Don’t get me wrong I think that offshore development outsourcing can and is successful, but it requires a lot of thought, planning and process management to ensure a successful outcome. It is also A LOT easier if you have a blue print of what you want and you simply want the offshore company to develop based on that blueprint/storyboard/use case. The potential customer that I mentioned is actually entering the eLearning space for the first time and developing a new product. They are not 100% sure what the end product will look like and what the features and functionalities will be. This will surely add more pressure on the eLearning development company managing the offshore team.
What are your thoughts? Would you/have you tried using offshore resources for custom eLearning development? How would you rate the experience?
4/24/2007
Rapid eLearning tools
The debate continues about personal learning environments and the use of rapid eLearning development tools. With the amount of information that is now available more and more people are developing learning content. Many people argue that much of this content is not very good.
I say that there is a place for rapid eLearning content as long as the developer/creator puts thought into what the objectives are for the content. There are many cases where information is time sensitive and it needs to be put out tomorrow. In that case there literally isn't time to develop a 'nice' looking interactive course and it doesn't make sense to hire an eLearning development company. Develop content that is easy to digest i.e. short, sweet and simple. However, if your objective is to share the content with a large audience and create a core training course then it would be a good idea to hire a professional company to assist you.
My only concern is whether the 'decentralization' of content development will eventually lead to information overload and repetition. Do large organizations need to have a central strategy for the development of learning/training content or should we allow the users to filter through the useless/bad content and get to the useful stuff? Do people in corporate America have the time to do that filtering?
I say that there is a place for rapid eLearning content as long as the developer/creator puts thought into what the objectives are for the content. There are many cases where information is time sensitive and it needs to be put out tomorrow. In that case there literally isn't time to develop a 'nice' looking interactive course and it doesn't make sense to hire an eLearning development company. Develop content that is easy to digest i.e. short, sweet and simple. However, if your objective is to share the content with a large audience and create a core training course then it would be a good idea to hire a professional company to assist you.
My only concern is whether the 'decentralization' of content development will eventually lead to information overload and repetition. Do large organizations need to have a central strategy for the development of learning/training content or should we allow the users to filter through the useless/bad content and get to the useful stuff? Do people in corporate America have the time to do that filtering?
Your favorite blogs
I need your help! I am busy updating my blogs and adding them to my Google reader. I would like to know what blogs you're reading. Although I am obviously interested in training/elearning related blogs any other interesting blogs would be appreciated.
4/09/2007
You only have three minutes
I’ve been thinking about the Freakonomics blog post where people gave their ideas about why they do and don’t comment on blogs. In my initial post I just mentioned a few of the main reasons that I found interesting, but I hadn’t had time to really think about the implications of these reasons, not only for blogs but also for learning in general.
Having had a few weeks to think about two things really jump out at me, specifically related to how these reasons for not commenting impact the effectiveness of any training. I would argue that looking at why people do or don’t engage in a blog, may give us a fair indication of what people are or aren’t looking for in online training. Many eLearning applications are developed to engage the users so what lessons can we learn from people looking at blogs. Granted the two are fairly different in that reading a blog is part of informal learning, whereas some eLearning courses are required learning. Be that as it may we can still gleam something about what intrigues the cyber junkie and what rouses their interest or squashes their interactive juices.
The first is the fairly obvious and consistent reason for not commenting which is a lack of time. This is a VERY important factor to consider when developing online courses. DON’T try to develop these monstrous courses/modules that take hours to complete, people will become bored and they WILL move on!
How this for a great comment on the fixed cost of time:
“First is the fixed cost.. it just took me 3 minutes to register with Wordpress and that’s a long time for the internet age.” Matt W.
3 minutes! You better have something that is captivating to keep this guys attention!
The second aspect of commenting/not commenting that stood out for me was tone and expertise of the blog author. Check out these comments:
“It is not that I never have the desire, I just usually find myself far less articulate than the author of the blog that I am reading. For that reason I figure that there is no need for me to take away from what they have written with a seemingly un-intelligible response. I feel that there are far too many of these types of responses in blogs and I usually do not wish to be part of it.” Takshaka
“I choose weblogs authored by people much more knowledgeable than myself, written on topics I’d like to understand better. To think I would have something of substance to contribute, leaving a comment through this one-to-many broadcasting technology environment, would be hubris.” Dixie
I concede that people inclination to respond in written format on a blog authored by a blog may be different to engaging in online course, but there is certainly something to be gleaned from this comment. Tone is an essential part of a training course and bloggers comments on the experts should be taken into consideration. Not only have studies shown that simple language is easier to digest, but striking a tone of equality may get people to engage and absorb more of the information… By now my 3 minutes are up and you have probably moved on by now. If not, stay tuned.
Having had a few weeks to think about two things really jump out at me, specifically related to how these reasons for not commenting impact the effectiveness of any training. I would argue that looking at why people do or don’t engage in a blog, may give us a fair indication of what people are or aren’t looking for in online training. Many eLearning applications are developed to engage the users so what lessons can we learn from people looking at blogs. Granted the two are fairly different in that reading a blog is part of informal learning, whereas some eLearning courses are required learning. Be that as it may we can still gleam something about what intrigues the cyber junkie and what rouses their interest or squashes their interactive juices.
The first is the fairly obvious and consistent reason for not commenting which is a lack of time. This is a VERY important factor to consider when developing online courses. DON’T try to develop these monstrous courses/modules that take hours to complete, people will become bored and they WILL move on!
How this for a great comment on the fixed cost of time:
“First is the fixed cost.. it just took me 3 minutes to register with Wordpress and that’s a long time for the internet age.” Matt W.
3 minutes! You better have something that is captivating to keep this guys attention!
The second aspect of commenting/not commenting that stood out for me was tone and expertise of the blog author. Check out these comments:
“It is not that I never have the desire, I just usually find myself far less articulate than the author of the blog that I am reading. For that reason I figure that there is no need for me to take away from what they have written with a seemingly un-intelligible response. I feel that there are far too many of these types of responses in blogs and I usually do not wish to be part of it.” Takshaka
“I choose weblogs authored by people much more knowledgeable than myself, written on topics I’d like to understand better. To think I would have something of substance to contribute, leaving a comment through this one-to-many broadcasting technology environment, would be hubris.” Dixie
I concede that people inclination to respond in written format on a blog authored by a blog may be different to engaging in online course, but there is certainly something to be gleaned from this comment. Tone is an essential part of a training course and bloggers comments on the experts should be taken into consideration. Not only have studies shown that simple language is easier to digest, but striking a tone of equality may get people to engage and absorb more of the information… By now my 3 minutes are up and you have probably moved on by now. If not, stay tuned.
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