Big Question - January 2007

It's been a while, but I figure I'd get back in the swing with the Learning Circuits blog's Big Question:

What are the trade offs between quality learning programs and rapid e-learning and how do you decide?

Since I've pretty much only done the "rapid" approach, it's tough to make the comparison. However, our company just recently launched a new online product (not e-learning related), and it's been a HUGE hit. I bring this up because they had been working on it for over 6 months, and went through many alpha and beta tests to make sure everything was great, prior to going live. When MY team has been tasked with an eLearning project, we might get a week or two... starting with nothing and ending with a finished product.

Currently, we've got five learning modules that need to be online by March 1st... which actually means a week before March 1st, so the higher-ups can approve them. My job is basically to make sure they're not TOTALLY boring... as there's no way I could brainstorm and implement anything great, cool, and engaging with just 1 and 1/2 weeks per module.

So I guess that's the real difference. Rapid development doesn't allow for "beta tests", or innovation. By the time I research some cool, new ActionScript class that will make the module interactive, it's time to move on to the next module.