Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?

You better close your ears if you work in IT because you probably won't like this concept; I'm all for taking the complexity out of what we do.  If you're a fan of the knowledge is power school of thought then move on, this won't work for you.  Working in Learning Technologies does not actually give you an immediate right to ramp up the complexity to make others feel they don't belong, further there's actually a responsibility to do quite the reverse.

Once upon a time anything remotely IT needed to be fiercely guarded as a secret.  We can relate to this in the training and L&D fields because the traditional 'teacher' role was somewhat like this.  The teacher was the holder of knowledge and generously shared little bits of this with students who then became enlightened gradually over time.  If you rebelled at all against the teacher then the knowledge was withheld and you were left behind.  Teachers were very much the owners of their own world and the knowledge was the key to the power, after all how could you teach when students could know what you know?  Or perish the thought what if they actually knew more about certain things?

The funny thing is, the evolution of the internet (to web and then cloud perhaps?) has followed a similar way.  Once upon a time you went on to the internet to find something out from a certified expert who was never wrong.  It really was a one way push of information, the only revolution was the size and scale of the environment.  My first 'wow' moment came on the internet when talking in a teaching chat room in the early 90s (yes it was around then); it was the 'interaction' between myself and someone thousands of miles (yes, pre-kilometer days) away and sharing of ideas that really showed the potential of the internet.  Later, we grasped this concept with the birth of web 2.0 - just a nice way of saying that the internet was no longer a one-way street to learning.  The internet is now less of an information store (although of course it stores more than ever before) it's now somewhere we can all contribute because no one person knows everything and everyone brings something to the table.  That's the same with learning all-round of course, no single person can hold all the knowledge or have had all the experiences that others can learn from.  Good teachers don't have one-way conversations with their students, good e-learning isn't just clicking and reading; it's all about the collaboration and sharing.

So if it's all about the collaboration and sharing then we all need to be able to communicate in both directions.  That means removing as many barriers as we can and language is one of those.  Yes, you can chat with users from other non-English speaking countries (hey, you can even translate my blog if you want to) through the web and tools that exist, but it's more than just the strict use of language, it's the nuances and the abbreviations that are often used to keep a layer of mystique or to separate those that know from those that don't.  Sound familiar?  I'm ex-Navy, I remember before I joined the Navy hearing Navy people speak to each other was entertaining - the words were familiar but they made little sense in what is colloquially known as "Jack Speak".  Of course you throw in to the mix a record number of TLAs (three letter abbreviations of course!) and you have a new language.  The danger of course is that when you speak with non-Navy folk that they simply don't get what you're trying to say or the message you're putting across (or perhaps more dangerously, they think they do but get the wrong meaning).  In the world of technologies this means keeping things at a level of simplicity that most trainers and L&D folks are comfortable with.

Learning Technologies combines both elements of the technical - IT and learning.  So it's doubly important that we talk in language that makes sense to both those not in the learning world, those not in the IT world and those on a totally different world altogether (oh yes, there are a fair few of those too).  What I'm trying to encourage here is that if you work in learning technologies, then try and talk to people in way they can grasp.  There's an old adage that states if you can't explain something in simple terms you don't understand it well enough.  Maybe that's the key, understand your own world in the simplest terms and then you'll probably find your understanding is actually increased. 

Finally if you want to talk to someone who understands you, then speak in a language that others understand.  Of course if you want to hold the knowledge, then do as you will, but don't be surprised if it turns out you don't know as much as those that wanted to learn from you in the earn.

What is Pervasive Learning?

Steve Rayson the General Manager for City and Guilds Kineo (Kineo Pacific is part of the group) was in Wellington today delivering an interesting and engaging presentation breakfast on emerging trends in e-learning, luckily for me I was able to attend and get some learning insights from the session (of course it would have been even luckier if I hadn't had to get up at 4.30am in order to make it there!).  There was some really good and interesting points around the way social learning was taking us and how we could leverage that in our work with learners, but the phrase that really stuck with me was pervasive learning.  So now I'm sitting on my flight back to the big smoke and thinking about how that connects to our learning and what we do.

Whilst giving credit to Charles Jenning's 70/20/10 rule and the more recent 33/33/33 rule, it's clear if nothing else that pervasive learning is probably a better way of putting it.  There's no really easy way to measure how much of learning is truly informal as most informal learning is so informal that most of it goes unmeasured, I'll probably get sued for saying this but I suspect 70% is more a gut feel than anything scientific, but the key point is that whether it's 33% (yes, I wondered where the 1% went too) or 70% of learning that's informal, learning goes beyond what we learn in the classroom or on our online module; it's pervasive - it's everywhere and we simply never stop learning.  If I wanted to define Pervasive Learning in its simplest way I would say it's that learning is in everything we do.  An old colleague of mine in the Navy used to say 'everyday is a school day' as a twist on 'you learn something new everyday'; maybe it's more like you are a learning machine and you learn constantly whether you want to or not - constant learning maybe.

I know lots of people out there hate the term 'learners' and prefer to think of staff or users, after all learning is something of a misnomer in many ways and what people learn or don't learn can be difficult to measure and account for at the best of times, but perhaps if learning is pervasive so are learners.  That doesn't mean that you're suddenly not safe from your learners showing up in the middle of the night at your door (disclaimer: you may not be, I don't know who've you upset, I was talking generally) but that essentially we are all learners in just about everything we do.  Once you start thinking like that, it means that rather than limiting your opportunity to deliver learning in the 10% world you just gained immediate access to the larger share.

So given there's a lot of potential to this extra learning opportunity, the obvious question is how do we go about delivering in this space?  Since pervasive learning is about the way we learn beyond the formal learning, we need to embrace a solution that goes beyond the formal environment traditionally used in training.  One of the biggest keys to succeeding in this space is being able to provide the environment for learners to learn beyond what the formal training has delivered.  Think of this if you will as the university of life.  I went to university (hard to believe I know) and learned a lot, but I learned a lot about life, relationships, learning itself, beer and some physics and computing thrown in for luck (yes, I studied some geeky stuff back then).  Even younger education and high school, the children learn all about key subjects like sciences, language and mathematics, but they also learn far more about society, conformity and humanity.  Good schools and universities provide the right environment for this to occur.  I've taught in some good schools and some that weren't so good and the key difference wasn't actually the pupils or the teachers, it was the environment.  You need to accept that social learning isn't a gimmicky thing that we do on computers, it's the way we actually learn - it's just learning from and with others and why wouldn't you want that to occur?

Creating the right environment for learning is actually not just a nice to have, it's essential if you want your learning to be pervasive.  Just how do you go about achieving this?  Well, the answer is in the total environment of course, that means learning spaces that are conducive to good learning, but from an 'e' perspective you can achieve this through the use of social media tools and opening up your system somewhat.  If you're organisation has a block on LinkedIn, YouTube, Google +, Twitter and Facebook then you may have to look at other ways of achieving this.  Your LMS may have social learning tools built in, start thinking more about those tools as setting your environment - forums don't necessarily have to be strictly controlled or assessable - they can work very nicely as a social sharing environment.  You could also look beyond your LMS and consider a social learning platform like the excellent Mahara (Open Source) that plugs nicely into Totara LMS I might add!  Whereas an LMS tends to be organisation centric, a social learning platform is more learner centred and that's pretty much the key to pervasive learning.  If your system tends to allow the sites I mentioned above through then rather than trying to discourage their use you could provide a gateway to them with suggested areas of interest.  In fact you could use your forums to discuss good areas and that in itself will open up for others to make suggestions too.

How will we track this more pervasive form of learning?  Another blog and another time but analytics are going to play a part :)

Losing and Winning with Technology

In my role a bit of travel is necessary and often that means a quick trip across the Tasman like last Friday where I was working with the excellent people at Toll Group on their Totara LMS upgrade and launch.  The day started early - a 6.30am flight usually means a 3.30am get up and that may not be the strongest point of my day!  Anyway, when you get to the airport and find out the 'computer's down' it's usually a bad sign and Friday was no different.  I was there early and skipped through (the advantage of frequent flyers) without too much hassle but the queue was already backing up and needless to say the flight got delayed two hours.

A great meeting (albeit with a slightly delayed start) was derailed slightly (another mixing of transport metaphors) upon leaving the taxi.  I left the taxi but my iPhone 5 did not.  Instead it decided to continue to circle around Melbourne before going permanently into a state of hiding that I have little hope it will come out of.  Amazingly I still managed to check in and (after another delay of course) got my flight and eventually got home a mere 22 hours or so after I started.  The reliance on technology for both airlines and business users has become immense - but even in the face of delays and frustrations I have to ask is this a bad thing?

Firstly, the 'manual way' of checking every passenger on to a flight is extremely time consuming and this was clearly proved on Friday for me.  To get everyone through in the same amount of time as normal would have taken about three times as many staff.  In this sense the technology to achieve this wins hands down, but it does emphasise one of the ways in which we win or lose in technology; have a backup.  This isn't just for technology of course, but in the learning technology world it pays to plan for the worst and hope for the best and not just rely on lady luck.  For example, if I'm giving a keynote or presenting I'll have more than one delivery method raring to go - so perhaps your learning has the same type of fall back.  One way we achieve this with an LMS is to make sure that we only host with top notch providers like Catalyst IT or Andragogic - their systems 'go down' like everyone elses but they always have backups, redundancy and the type of 'up-time' that doesn't leave you stranded.

My phone was a different kind of loss though.  My initial reaction was one of panic that I suggest most modern smartphone users can relate to - we have come to rely on them so heavily for everything from my Air New Zealand mPass ap (no the flight out was with another airline I'll not mention... although you'd think it was their first time) to my calendar, email, Skype and even notes.  The great news was that I sat down and opened my MacBook Air (yes, bit of an Apple fan, you can substitute some Android and even Windows type thing if it works for you) and went online and things started to get better.  I click on the 'find my iphone' ap and I'm already registering it lost with the appropriate notifications if someone's daft enough to try and use it.  I make phone calls through Skype to the police, taxi company and boss!  I can even send text messages on the phone that is no longer in my possession (iMessage).  I tell Telecom to bar my phone (although the security on it should do that anyway) and I'm already feeling a bit more in control.

The next day I grab a new sim card for the paltry sum of $5 and slip it into my old iPhone 4 (yeah, that hurt a bit) and connect to my computer and restore what my phone was like give or take a faster processor and a bit more screen size!  Okay two more phone calls to Telecom to help them understand their own un-barring process and here I am fully back up and running and waiting for the okay to buy the latest model to replace the one I gifted someone else.

The point?  Again it's not just the initial reliance on technology at play here, but the technology that I lost as easily as I could have lost any personal organiser (remember the Filofax?) was essentially replaced almost immediately.  Again it's a backup plan - don't put all your eggs in one technological basket and risk a scrambled mess.  Ideally you'll have other forms of communication that will allow you to overcome loss of your phone and notify people, but what about system issues or learning objects that won't work?  I like the way in Totara I can let people in 'courses' know what's going on, backup and restore data and even get time machine working (another technological error earlier in the year) on the database to bring me back to where I was.

Don't underestimate the usefulness of Cloud based computing either.  Once upon a time if your computer crashed or your floppy drive (yay, remember them!) corrupted you felt damn near suicidal - now there's almost no excuses for relying on the hardware in your office/home.  I use Cloud based back-ups and sync to make sure that the notes I was making in Friday's meeting on both computer and phone could be retrieved not only from them, but any internet ready machine with the passwords.  One of my personal favourite tools is the ever-so-simple Evernote - but I also like simple cloud based storage like Box or Dropbox.  I use Box (the company says so) with a background sync - what that means in simple terms is I save everything locally and then it saves it in the cloud for me.  That way I get the best of both worlds in a system that has everything immediately at hand and doesn't rely on internet connection when I'm out and about, but keeps everything safe and up-to-date.

Bringing this all back to learning and the advantages of having your LMS cloud based are obvious.  Client-end LMS's are hopefully fairly well done for as they simply place too much reliance on physically being in a certain place (and that's kind of against what an LMS is for isn't it?).  But saying your LMS is cloud based is only half the story - your content should be too - and if your servers have redundancy built in you'll be able to access learning even when the worst occurs.

Now... at least I see the 5s is out now :)

You get what you give

The old adage that you get what you give holds pretty well true for your learning management system (LMS) and e-learning in general.  I hear pretty often that your LMS is just a tool - but it's actually a bit more than that - it's a system (obviously, it's in the acronym).  A tool implies something simpler, you may have to calibrate a tool, but the skill is then all in the user of said tool.  A system is different and the setup can be extensive; in fact if you want to really get the most out of your learning you need to invest a lot in your system (no, I'm not talking financially here - time, effort and sometimes blood, sweat and tears).

I've touched on this before around configuring your system.  You can use it fully out the box and go do your task but that only really works if you want an 'out the box' look and feel and default functionality.  Of course if you're using a simple Cloud-based LMS that is really just a launch and track platform then it won't take much set up initially... I could say more here, but I'll let you be the judge of how good your current system is!  In Totara LMS I like to spend the best part of a day setting up the system to run the way our clients want - that usually means we have to have key stakeholders and interested parties on-board too and I like to run something we call the configuration workshop to pull that together.  Believe it or not the configuration of an LMS is a big deal; you should set the hierarchical structures, the roles and definitions, the workflows, the templates, the menus, the reporting, the language, permissions, menus, blocks, theme (colours, fonts, design etc), learning structures etc etc.

The same is true when you set up your e-learning course.  Maybe you write your course in a third-party rapid platform like Captivate or Articulate Storyline, or maybe someone makes it for you, but when you bring it in to your LMS you can just have it as the 'course' and leave it as is... or you can use your LMS to actually get more out of it.  In the same way as configuring your system before you get going is necessary and sets the tone for the learning the setup of the course itself can have a huge impact - in fact if you want to get beyond the 10 of the 70, 20, 10 model you need to realise that it's actually essential.  Yes have your learning objects and your super-swish wow pieces, but don't forget simple things like setting up a course forum, feedback and even simple choices so the course starts to become interactive.  If you set your course up this way the interactions don't require you the trainer to be across them all or to be the fountain of all knowledge.  Try posing a question and let the learners answer it collaboratively.  Most MOOCs are not about the awesome content but about the interactions, this is tapping into informal learning, even if your organisation is very formal and regulated.

Once you get past the initial set-up of the course you can let it run and run and reap the rewards you invested in set-up... or you can continue to invest and continually get higher return on investment.  To me this is the difference between being a competent teacher and a great teacher.  Good teachers spend time setting and planning their lessons, great teachers do this but realise the need to constantly update and stay on the pulse of what their students are doing.  This doesn't mean a constant rewrite or churn of material, but asking the right questions and posing challenges along the way.  When something new comes up, why wouldn't you bring it to the attention of your learners and provoke debate about it.  I used to use the news, articles and even what was happening in pop music and soap operas when I was a teacher - the most powerful tool you can have is relevance (and it sure helps to stay up to date).

The last part of your investment comes in the way you conclude 'stuff'.  In an LMS this means getting the closure correct for reporting and automated updates to things like competencies, certificates and badges (Open Badges anyone?).  For your learning that means the follow up with things like getting feedback and making sure learners get the 'well done' messages/badges they have earned and are properly recognised in their learning plans etc.

The thing is you don't have to do any of that.  You can just buy a bit of e-learning and stick it on your simplistic launch and track LMS.  You'll still be able to track compliance... just don't expect a huge return on that type of investment.  If you really want to succeed though you have to be prepared to put in some work - the rewards will be worth it.

5 Ways to Have an Epic Fail in e-Learning

If something's worth doing badly it's worth doing really badly.  You don't just want to create a so-so piece of e-learning and regret the missed opportunity of creating something truly awful - with a lack of thought and by ploughing good money after bad you can probably aim lower still.  Here's the way to make sure it's a resounding failure:

Squeeze the budget to the Nth Degree
So there's an old adage that get what you pay for.  I like to modify this slightly and add the words 'at best' to that statement, because if you're lucky (or you picked the right vendor) you'll get the e-learning you planned for (and may even be pleasantly surprised by the outcomes).  But one sure way to make it fail is to take the original quote from the provider and then trim it violently.  Most vendors will have some options that they can cut out, in my previous post on the 'cost of e-learning' you'll see there's various gold, silver, bronze type options that they can cut.  By cutting budget you'll likely see a drop in interaction (more page turning, less doing), less content in total (less screens), less animation/graphical niceties or worse still a drop out of any instructional design so you get a pretty but empty display piece.  This is bad enough if you're doing a bulk of modules, but if this is a single piece or your impact piece you've blown it if you've squeezed too much.  Cutting the budget in half is a pretty big cut down but as an e-learning provider I can understand that sometimes the budget is what the budget is, but cutting it down to 25% or less is a sure fire way of failing with style.


Don't provide access to anyone in your organisation
Make sure that your e-learning vendor (or even internal designer) doesn't get to speak to the SMEs (subject matter experts).  Give them some documentation or better still an old and inaccurate Powerpoint presentation to work off and let them get on with it.  You'll get something at the end for sure, only it won't be or feel like the end, instead it will feel like the beginning of it as you repeatedly have to make changes to the content and design to match what is actually required.  There are jobs that work well in a vacuum but frankly, e-learning design isn't one of them.  If you can't manage complete isolation, try giving them and SME then taking that one away and providing a different one (preferably from a different part of the organisation with different knowledge) to keep them on their toes.  If you can create a string of wrong people it can be even more devastating and disruptive than no-one at all.

Do it all in-house without the right tools or personnel
All this newfangled e-learning nonsense is actually really simple right?  You don't need to pay a vendor tens of thousands of dollars to sort out what your internal team can do for free!  Particularly when they are experienced in the subject matter and one of them used to even do some training once - or perhaps you have trainers, surely they can make e-learning?  It's hard enough even if you have a team and have purchased one of the excellent tools for rapid e-learning development like Articulate Storyline (read my article on Rapid or Rabid e-learning), but without these it's just not really going to fly.  Add in the fact that the people you get to do this probably have other 'real' jobs to do as well and your e-learning piece is likely to be a real dog's breakfast if it gets completed at all.  Better still get one inadequate under tooled person and just like in the example above make sure they hand the project over half-way through to do something more important (particularly if you discover by some lucky way that the first is any good), remember we're aiming for epic on the fail side of things.

Make all the key decisions without advice
e-Learning is a pretty specialised area of the training, education and learning fields, but don't let that discourage you.  If you truly want to make a hash of it you can avoid all the advice proffered by the e-learning vendor and your internal trainers and even SMEs to get something that fits your needs exactly.  The other people that are definitely worth ignoring are IT - if you can find a way to make the object almost entirely incompatible with your internal systems you can notch the failure up another level.  Remember there's a good deal of difference in getting what you want and getting what you need, make sure you are fully hands on at every design stage, every decision right down to the colours, graphics and even layout of every item on the screen.  Your team and the vendor will love the big screwdriver approach as micromanagement has always been incredibly popular with the minions.  Of course you reserve the right to be totally disappointed with the outputs that have your dirty fingerprints all over it, no point in having double standards and not using both of them!

Make no decisions at all
At the opposite end of the spectrum but equally as destructive is the complete hands-off approach.  It's not just about providing no decision making to keep the vendor/designer on their toes, but also provide no initial guidance, no help at the scoping stage, no input on anything throughout the entire design and build.  Just like too much control, none at all will confuse the team as they're going to be working in the dark throughout.  Again, just like above you reserve the right to turn from not interested to highly critical at the end - who was leading this mess of an output?  Why why why?  Perfectly reasonable when designing really bad e-learning.

Finally, it should be noted that actually there are a gazillion ways to really mess this sort of thing up and I've only touched on a few; I'm sure there are others that can cause some pretty catastrophic outcomes too - perhaps pouring money in without any clue can be as dangerous as cutting the budget, but I guess it would probably at least look pretty.  Of course, you shouldn't actually take this as a challenge to produce the worst possible e-learning you can!

Everything begins with an e

I remember many years ago running an e-learning centre for the Navy and having vendors come in and show their wares.  Sometimes these were large international organisations from America or Europe coming all the way to New Zealand for a demonstration of their World leading modules, systems or simulators.  I can remember being amazed that despite the high-level learning technologies these organisations were selling that they invariably delivered stilted presentations using Powerpoint at best.  It further amazed me that often they didn't even know their own product particularly well and certainly not from a true user perspective.  Then again, I've been to e-learning conferences and software simulation centres and seen the same thing - it's weird but why in the world of learning technologies do we regularly see the 'talk' but rarely the walk that should accompany it.

I work remotely and not out of a CBD office.  There's a reason for this; principally because it suits me to do so, but actually it's far more efficient for both myself and my company.  It's also a good example of walking the walk; we preach about systems that allow learning, communication and management remotely - about how you can access 24/7 and link up with communities, share resources, collaborate and learn without the requirement of physical proximity provided by an old-fashioned office environment.  I have a car and a motorbike too so I can get to the CBD when needed, but the dog likes it when I stay at home too :)

I've had it with paper and dedicated my office to be paper free other than a single doodle pad that sits by the computer.  I could claim this was trying to save the trees or some noble pursuit but the truth is simply that I lose bits of paper - all that filing and whatnot is not my strong point.  I take notes via a cool and free little tool called Evernote (hey, I even draft this blog in Evernote) which I can access off my laptop, phone and pad anywhere and share with others if I choose to.  It automatically files everything for me which is good as I just noted I wasn't so good at this.  I switched my clunky old widescreen laptop to a Macbook Air not just because it looked sexy (though it does) but because I wanted to be portable and instant enough to show up at meetings and take notes, share stuff that I've got to and give demonstrations when necessary.  I use cloud based storage like Box and Dropbox to share stuff, Totara LMS for learning and the like, a wiki site to share things with my team (yes emailing attachments is not the way).  

What's the drive for all this 'e' stuff.  It's not just because of the fact it's electronic; we're talking about higher efficiency and effectiveness I strongly believe.  The reason why I'm sharing this in The Nth Degree blog today is that it struck me that this is similar to e-learning.  The e is the mechanism but it's not actually the driving force for why e-learning is what it is; we're talking about higher efficiency and effectiveness I strongly believe.  If you read some of my previous entries (please, somebody read them!) you'll see that I'm not just about good looking e-learning, I believe in the collaborative and interactive nature of good e-learning.  I also believe in a blend where the right tool gets used for the right job and I believe in continuous improvement and always searching for new and better ways to do things.

Back to my original point, there's nothing wrong with Powerpoint (or Prezi which I prefer) or any other tools that you use to present; but there's something wrong if your presentation doesn't capture the very essence of what you're presenting.  Presentations should be enthusiastically delivered and supported with showing what you have and demonstrating its capability.

Finally whilst everything begins with an e, so does e-learning, but you should note that neither ends with an e or consists of only e's.  It's the nature and the environment, e-learning should always be primarily about learning (and the same could arguably be said about everything else!).

The cost of e-learning?

So the most often asked question (even if not audibly asked) when it comes to your e-learning solution is 'how much will it cost?'.  It's like the baby elephant in the room at the start of your first exploratory discussions between L&D people and the e-learning service provider that grows to a full-scale mammoth by the time you've scoped out the project and need to know just what your solutions are likely to set you back.

The answer from most vendors is usually a 'it depends' or my personal favourite 'it's like asking how long is a piece of string'.  Fair enough, e-learning can be exactly like that, you can have short and simple pieces or long and complicated, highly interactive 3D widgets with virtual reality. 

In the learning technologies world, I've been able to put together a price-guide document because, well, the technologies are a wee bit simpler when it comes to pricing.  In our case we usually work with open source technologies so there's no per-user licensing on your LMS, but there are hosting costs and some integration type costs if you want to go down that road and they have standard-ish costs depending on what is being integrated or set-up.  The training, the consultancy etc come in packages around time and materials and they're pretty standard.  It means I can offer up clients a total Totara LMS solution for anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000 (and more!) but it's usually pretty visible and people generally 'get it'.

The solutions or 'content' is more complex because essentially the vast majority of what we're talking about here is a bespoke solution.  That means the e-learning you get at the end of it is designed solely for you rather than being purchased off the shelf (anyone remember the phrase COTS - commercially off the shelf?).  There are a gazillion variables that go into producing e-learning from the cost and quality of your graphic design, to your animations, video work, themes and overall design, platforms, technologies, interactions etc.  The one that is probably most important is often missed from a lot of vendors and buyers - the instructional design or ID work that goes into the end product; maybe it's just taken as a given (but hey, I'd want to talk about it and not assume...).

So I know there's big studies in the US around what e-learning should cost; here's my mini-guide on what I think (note this is Nigel, I not Kineo official pricing please!) you should be looking to spend depending on your needs and wants.  All are based on a single piece of e-learning of average length (let's call that half an hour of e-learning for the sake of arguement).

Cheap Solution; so we do it all in-house the cost is just time.  Oh and any stock images.  And perhaps quality.  Really this depends on who you have working for you and what they can do and how long it takes them (and their salary of course!).  Chances are you may not have the insider you want here and need to go outside - and whether this is the cheapest option or not is highly debatable - but it often looks that way to organisations!

Light Solution; I call it light because that's essentially what we're talking about here; often light on ID, light on graphical design or originality and certainly a light interactive approach.  Your asking someone to convert your Powerpoint or take your docs and make them e-learning on a very tight budget you'll get this type solution.  It's going to cost you very little in the big scheme of things, bring your little wallet and expect to pay $1,000 to $5,000 for a piece here.  For those of you already baulking that we went into the thousands at the lightest end you best not read on, it's important to realise that e-learning is not super cheap (but it does provide excellent ROI).

Bronze Solution; So if you want to move up and get a serious piece of e-learning this is where we hit the higher quality solutions (and the smart amongst you will have already noted that bronze is the cheaper metal!).  In this case we're talking actual e-learning with a higher degree of 'swish' about it generally than the light in.  I would expect a decent bronze solution to still have plenty of ID work going in to it (yes.. storyboards...) and expect decent graphical schemes, some interactions and things for the learner to do (not just watch or click next).  It may even contain some minor animations but probably more likely short video snippets and static graphics.  Some providers will do this in a 'rapid' way and keep your costs down - sometimes this can still spiral into the expensive regions.  I would expect to pay from around $5,000 to $20,000 for something that fits this description.  I know it's quite a range but the $5k end is for a swish and more learning-filled version of the light solution, but even if you have well-done page turning with custom graphics and good design you're probably not far off the higher end of the scale.

Silver Solution; For me the next level of solution is all about the interaction of the material.  Bronze is generally still fairly simplistic in design but as we move up we've now got a greater ID input and more things to do in the learning.  Problem is that more to do means more cost because it's the interactions that really take the time to put together.  The graphics again could notch up to the degree that your own characters better represent your organisation, there are far more likely to be some animated pieces into the solution and/or professional video.  The cost for a silver solution expect to open up your cheque book a little more to the tune of $10,000 to $30,000 per piece.  Yes I know it overlaps the last, but this is far from an exact science you know - I'm just trying to get the picture across for you!

Gold Solutions; So before you started reading this is what you thought you wanted right?  Highly interactive custom design, high-end ID work that you can show off and people go 'wow' as well as hitting all the learning marks and actually having an impact on the way your organisation does its business.  This is the type of solution that meets the aims, tracks everything you need done and is fun too (please make your solutions fun people).  What will it set you back?  I'm guessing you'll pay $30,000 to $50,000 for it and if you have the sort of budgets that allow for that you won't regret it either if it's done the way it should be.

Diamond Solutions; Gold may be rare but it's also soft - if you need something hard invest in diamonds!  I'm just being a bit silly but there's plenty of room to wiggle here - there really are higher end solutions than gold - often they're not about the interaction, the ID or the graphics but about some other aim you have.  If your work is 3D for example or requires extensive gamification or some alternate type VR world then forget about the previous costs and trade in elusive gems.  Once upon a time it looked like 3D was a big player in the e-learning world but the costs are generally so high for true 3D that most are steered away from it beyond engineering type applications.  It's also harder to find 3D vendors of educational materials as it's a hard skill-set to have on-board.  I remember once when I was running the Navy e-learning centre that we did a full 3D walkthrough familiarisation training piece of a Navy warship.  It was awesome and if we had been external would have cost a fortune in development - we were approached by someone in the Royal Navy in the UK about doing something similar for their new warships and if I remember rightly we were talking in the hundreds of thousands (sterling!).  There is almost no upper limit on your spending here depending on what you want and are prepared to pay for.

Economies of scale; yes good news guys is that it gets cheaper the more you have done from most suppliers!  A single piece may cost you $30,000 but 10 pieces may cost you only $15,000 if you are using some re-usable bits and pieces like graphic or design screens.  It's not unreasonable that you get some significant savings this way due to the way the e-learning producer is able to re-use things along the way.  If you're looking above 2 or 3 pieces expect to see discounts that grow the more you have done - but get that sorted before you start out or you could end up being each piece one at a time at premium costs.

In summary I've attempted to answer the piece of string question; somewhere between a few thousand and hundreds of them is your answer - when you ask for your e-learning the key is to have some understanding of why it costs that much and how they justify the costs involved.  As a final final here you need to be very careful when getting work done and specifying what is to be done - if not it's entirely possible to pay for gold and end up coming up 'light'!

Wanna talk content... drop me a line by finding me on the 'about me' bit at the top :)