Keys to consider before hiring an e-learning project

Some years ago, when online training began to consolidate as an industry at a global level and in Latin America the first high-impact implementations began to be developed, Elliott Masie, founder of The MASIE Center and the Online Learning Council highlighted the close relationship between competitiveness and virtual education.

But in addition to underlining the important role that this training modality was beginning to play in the corporate, government, social and academic sectors, the specialist pointed out that when an organization decides to implement an e-learning system, the first thing to keep in mind was that Each company or organization is unique and, as with clothing, there is no one size that fits all equally.

For this reason, it is important to consider a series of aspects of maximum importance when guaranteeing the success of projects of this nature. And in particular, know the technological approach proposed by the companies that have been identified as potential suppliers.

It is crucial to contemplate certain fundamental points, such as: if they have solid, stable technology and sufficiently contrasted with verifiable experiences; if it is a company that understands learning processes as well as technology; what is the commitment of this company with the region in which it operates; if it has a business model that makes sense for the field in which it operates; and if you are really managing knowledge.

A recent Special Report on e-learning Technologies published by the Learning Review magazine clarifies the technological characteristics to take into account when implementing e-learning projects and the factors that should be considered when selecting the product to use.

In the process of implementing an online knowledge management project, the technological factor must be considered both at the application and  database email indonesia content level. It doesn’t matter what the application is (an e-learning platform, a digital library, a knowledge manager, or an m-learning solution). There are common characteristics to take into account in this type of architecture, where users connect from a client to a server.

There are factors that we must consider especially when selecting the product to use:

Client: in general the current applications are compatible with the most used browsers (although it is surprising that some homebanking systems do not work with Firefox). If there is a predominant browser in our user community, we must be sure that the application is compatible with it. In addition, we must know what browser features should be enabled, such as cookies, javascript, applets or Flash. If our contents need Flash we must also take into account the required version.

Server: we must differentiate if the application will be installed on its own server or if the service is outsourced. In the first case, the characteristics of the server are generally imposed by the systems department, either because an existing equipment must be used, by internal policies on authorized software, or by the technical knowledge of the internal personnel who will take charge. maintenance.

Communications: In the case of implementations in corporate intranets, such as banks, bandwidth often competes directly with core business transactions. Possibly we should determine that our community uses e-learning applications or other knowledge management applications –implemented-,

at specific times. It is also important to produce content optimized in bytes to reduce data transfer, with preload characteristics (that the next screen is transferred while we see the current one), and possibly do without sounds, videos or animations, always maintaining the pedagogical objective of the content. . If SCORM scores or course completion status tracking are stored, they must be reported immediately after knowing the value.

Integrations: we may need to integrate our implementation with other internal systems. In this sense, we must analyze if the product supports specific integration capabilities, if it allows adding modules or extensions, if it gives us the possibility of modifying the source code (and in that case, do we have the programming resources in the implementation language of the product?), etc.

In conclusion, applications should not be selected only for their direct comparative characteristics, but also for how they are integrated into our technological platform and the user community. There are other factors to  Buy Leads the basket googlo it; You will be able to discover if in another store the price is lower  that influence the allocation of resources of an implementation, and it is very important to know the proportional allocation in the total effort of executing