Best Practices in Online Learning Development

Target Audience

Instructional Designers, Developers, Authors, Project Managers

Class Format

Workshop

Product Focus

TotalLCMS, SumTotal 7.x Outliner, ToolBook

Workshop Description

The SumTotal product suite offers numerous tools for authoring online learning. However, tools alone do not guarantee that online courses will be successful. SumTotal Systems leverages the design expertise of award-winning online learning instructional designers, as well as the experience of its project managers, graphic designers and authoring team members to produce the Best Practices in Online Learning Development.

Most seasoned developers are “seasoned” because they learned things the hard way. With the Best Practices workshop, your team can leverage the tools and hard-won experience of these professionals - without the false steps and rework new teams encounter.

In this 2-day workshop new development teams – and even teams of seasoned developers coming together for the first time – may* learn how to:

• Describe the phases of online learning development and key tasks included in each.
• Plan a project using industry-proven tools.
• Manage online learning development.
• Develop a workflow based on the specific authoring environment, tools, and team composition.
• Leverage reusable learning strategies to streamline development and QA time.
• Determine best practices for designing content.
• Identify the best templates or flows to support the content types.
• Design courseware for interaction.
• Employ the tools available in the industry.
• Perform risk assessments.
• Write a design report to focus development efforts.
• Create a test plan.
• Deploy online learning with confidence.

Advanced Development Teams

• Learn to use TotalLCMS to resolve your specific development challenges.
• Create custom templates.
• Refine your workflow to leverage TotalLCMS rapid-development capabilities.

*The workshop can include all of these items and more. Actual focus of the workshop is dependent on the needs of the organization and teams. Prior to the workshop, the consultant will meet with key members of the team to determine the challenges they face, characteristics of the development environment, and level of skill of the team.

After the workshop, the consultant will develop a customized CD-ROM that contains soft copies of proven online learning development project plans, checklists, instructional flows, workflows, sign-off sheets and more. Where appropriate, these tools will be customized to meet the team’s specific development needs.

Class Length

2 days

Prerequisites

Appropriate authoring course for TotalLCMS, SumTotal 7.x Outliner, or ToolBook is helpful in putting design and management theory into practice.

Best Practices in Online Learning Development

Due to the nature of this workshop, it is not delivered in publicly available classes. To find out more, or to schedule a private workshop, please contact your sales representative or call 1-800-448-6543 for information.