Is e-learning something I can do?

In what will probably be the final post in my series of questions most frequently asked by learning professionals, I tackle the question ‘Is e-learning something I can do?’ As has been the case with all of these posts, the answer very much depends on what type of e-learning you are talking about:
Facilitating virtual classroom sessions
Generally speaking, if you’re confident facilitating in a physical classroom then there’s no reason whatsoever, other than fear of the unknown, why you should’t do the same in an online environment. There are differences, of course, not least the lack of feedback in terms of  body language from participants, but you do get used to this. In my experience, most classroom facilitators benefit from some coaching to help them get used to teaching online, but this should not take too long. My answer would be somewhat different if you had no classroom experience, because clearly you would first have to become comfortable with facilitation as a general skill, quite separately from any issues related to the technology. Onlignment publish a free virtual classroom facilitator’s guide.
Creating e-learning tutorials
This is a tough one. Hard experience has taught me that only career specialists (in other words those who do this for a living) should go near the development of high-end e-learning content. By ‘high end’ I mean very professional-looking, multimedia-rich or interactively-complex materials. To develop this stuff you typically need a variety of specialities, including project management, learning design, graphics and, on occasions, audio-visual specialists and software engineers. If you want to do this for a living, you’re going to have to choose your speciality and really work at building your craft skills over many years.
On the other hand, most of the e-learning content that is needed in an organisation does not need to be high-end – it just needs to be good enough to do the job. This quick and simple ‘rapid e-learning’ can be designed and developed by some generalist learning professionals. Which ones? Well, I’d say those who (1) like making things, (2) can write clearly, (3) are well organised and (4) can devote serious blocks of time. If that doesn’t sound like you, keep clear and concentrate instead on working productively with those who are better suited to the job than you are.
Creating other forms of digital online content
My standard position on this is that every learning professional should have at least some content creation skills, although I do waver on this from time to time. What I mean is being able to put together a slide show (perhaps even add a narration), create a quick demo of a piece of software, create and edit still images, write a simple how-to guide, put together a quiz, perhaps shoot a simple video. In fact, many of these tasks are becoming life skills and most children take to them easily. For a guide to creating rapid e-learning and all forms of digital content, see Onlignment’s Digital learning content: A designer’s guide.
Facilitating collaborative online learning
More modern, informal learning approaches put the trainer as the ‘guide on the side’ rather than the ‘sage on the stage’. These days a great deal of that guiding is going to be online, using web sites, forums, wikis, blogs and all sorts of communities of practice. You may find yourself called upon to be a coach, moderator, curator, champion and, like everyone else, a contributor. If you’re used to being the centre of attention you may find this hard, but I reckon most learning people adapt to this role without too much difficulty.
So, I think that makes my answer a qualified ‘yes’, at least for most people. You can do e-learning, but you have to be prepared to put the effort in. You could just stick your head in the sand and hope it goes away, but in one form or another online learning (like online everything else) is here to stay.

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