Development Process - Creation

The follow up to the Development Process –Initiation post focuses on the creation of the learning originally investigated during the first four steps of the process.  While not every project follows this process, I find that it includes the primary elements necessary for a project. 

Creation

Following the initiation stages, creation focuses on the development of actual materials to create the final product.  After the work that was done identifying the various aspects of the request in the first stage, creation includes: Content Outline, Brainstorm, Editable Draft, and Final Product.

Content Outline

The first step of the creation phase is to work with the identified SMEs to gather the appropriate materials.  These materials can be existing eLearning content or PowerPoint decks from previously held synchronous sessions, but most likely they are a jumble of presentations that have been given to leadership or decks that have been used to communicate with teams involved.  Of course, this makes the assumption that there are materials that exist and you aren’t working from scratch

Once you’ve gathered the materials from the SMEs (or sat down with them long enough), you can begin taking their rough material and making it into an outline.  The outline isn’t designed to be an outline of the finished product, but rather an outline of the current content.  The outline serves the dual purpose of limiting the scope of what’s to be included (through a confirmation with the identified stakeholders) as well as ensuring that you understand the content well enough to organize it on paper.  Likely, you’ll identify many questions and gaps in your knowledge that can be plugged before you get too far into the process.

Brainstorm

Now that you’ve organized the content into a readable format in order to limit the scope and ensure you understand it, it is time to being brainstorming about the best way to deliver the material.  Based on information gathered from the initiation stage, you work with the stakeholders, designers, valued others, and potentially even members of the potential audience group to think through how the material can best be presented.  Similar to the Delivery Medium step, you can get an idea of what people have been picturing by talking through the content, assessments, tracking, and audience. 

Based on your knowledge of learning delivery and development as well as their knowledge of the material, you can ideate about possible creative solutions used to convey the material.  Having just gone through the Content Outline stage, you’ll be able to identify with learners who knew nothing and need to have a deep understanding of the content. 

While the output of this stage is primarily an agreement on ideas and concepts, it can be helpful to have everyone on the same page as to what the final product will likely look like.  For example, there’s a big difference between a virtual synchronous class, a video, and an infographic.  Not only can you get focused on a single delivery medium, you can also ideate about the large, interactive elements within that output. 

Editable Draft

This is the part where people start arguing about storyboards (ADDIE) versus rapid prototyping (SAM).  However, we’ll focus on the desired outcome and leave the defining of what gets us there to others.  Ultimately, at the end of this step, you want to have something to share with your stakeholders that is in as editable a format as possible.

Typically, I create elements in Work, Excel, and PowerPoint during this stage.  While I may do other work in Photoshop, Illustrator or Flash to showcase some of the final look or functionality, I want to keep it simple to allow them to make changes (or make them easily myself).

Exactly what is created here depends on the output, but the focus is on communicating as clearly as possible.  If there’s a script that needs to approved, it can be written in Word, laid out in Excel, or included in the slide notes of PowerPoint.  To show the visual look and feel of a module, PowerPoint can help walk them through.  If you are using a rapid development tool, you can get your deck pretty close to final as you ultimately will have to work in PowerPoint before moving to Captivate or another tool.  If you are creating an infographic, you can move immediately to Illustrator, or you can use Excel to talk about the data, including identifying what’s missing, in order to get buy-in that this is the whole of what you need.

Once you have your materials in a format that can be shared, they go through the approval and polishing that happens with the stakeholders.  You may have them do the editing or collect their feedback and make the changes yourself – it’s up to you.  I find it greatly depends on the type of stakeholder they have proven themselves to be during the process in order to get feedback or approval from them as quickly as possible.

Final Product

Now that you have your different, approved assets including scripts, look and feel, and organization, you can begin assembling and massaging those into the final product.  Narration can be recorded, final visuals can be created, and everything can be buttoned up into a final deliverable.  Likely there is some alpha and beta testing that occurs here before the final delivery, but hopefully you have conveyed to the stakeholders that you are merely looking for final approval or identification of things that are wrong.  This really isn’t the place to discuss font sizes or other elements that will delay the final delivery.

This is a high level process, that has a bit of inherent flexibility to ensure that it can adapt to the needs of the development.  Is it perfect?  No.  For example, there’s a lot of overlap between the Delivery Medium stage and the Brainstorming stage.  However, rarely is there a development cycle that is perfectly laid out either.  Sometimes timelines dictate faster work, sometimes SMEs aren’t invested in providing feedback, sometimes there are others who work through the process with you (which can really be a blessing if you can get them to knock out things like the content outline and get you started on the right foot), but in general this process captures what I’ve found helpful for successful development along the way.