EDU 621: Managing e-Learning

Overview

This course is for those who will manage the design, development, and deployment of e-learning throughout an organization. This course will teach you to put your knowledge of e-learning to work within an organization that can benefit from e-learning. This course is not just about managing e-learning efforts. It is a course in managing e-learning. This course is designed as an ongoing simulation with you playing the role of e-learning manager. Yes, you will have reading and writing assignments as in other courses, but here the assignments will all relate directly to your efforts to move your organization into the e-learning age.

This course assumes you understand what e-learning is, what it offers, and how to design individual e-learning courses. Unless you understand the scope of e-learning solutions possible and what e-learning can accomplish, you will not be prepared to match e-learning's potential against the needs and constraints of a particular organization. Some of the activities you are required to perform include preparing a budget, calculating return on investment (ROI), and basic project management.

This course also assumes that you want to learn to manage e-learning initiatives, not just accumulate facts about the science of management. To that end, this course requires you to manage an e-learning effort, albeit a simulated one. You will be dropped into the role of a newly hired chief learning officer at a company. Your immediate goal is to develop a plan for moving the company to e-learning. "Oh, I just have to write a term paper, right?" Far from it. Your predecessor in the job failed because he did not properly analyze and research the complexities of the corporation's need for e-learning. While preparing your report, you must deal with routine departmental duties as well as handle crises as they occur. All of these activities will require learning new skills and knowledge.

Don't expect this to be easy. This course will require a lot of original thought and hard work on your part. Remember:

• This is a management course. In management, issues are seldom as clear as you might want them to be. Leadership and judgment on your part will be necessary.
• It is a simulation. You cannot succeed in this course by reading papers written by the instructor and repeating ideas and themes found there. You must conduct your own research, analysis, and synthesis.
• This is a graduate-level course. You must deal with abstractions and generalizations, albeit in a concrete way. High-level thinking skills will be needed at every turn.

Don't worry about getting lost. You will have your predecessor's efforts to guide you-at least in what not to do. And your boss has agreed to give you guidance.

To learn effectively, you must willingly suspend disbelief and dive into the role assigned you. Only minimal acting skills are required.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Describe the benefits and limitations of e-learning.
• Identify the members of an organization who need to implement e-learning.
• Compare and contrast e-learning options based on educational, technical, and organizational considerations.
• Estimate cost and time for development of e-learning.
• Assess the organizational issues related to internationalization, infrastructure, and change.
• Write a needs assessment plan.
• Write a design document or RFP for an e-learning class.

Course Requirements

Managing e-learning efforts is a complex activity that requires a deep reservoir of knowledge, superb people skills, and ability to balance contradictory and competing project requirements. Mere intellectual knowledge is not sufficient. Nor is blind application of guidelines or dogmatic theory. Success requires sensitivity to the unique goals, culture, and history of the organization and its individual units. It requires custom tailoring solutions that fit the targeted organization (and its learners) and that can be accomplished within a limited budget and on a tight schedule.

In this course you will learn to:

• Determine the benefits and limitations of e-learning for a particular organization.
• Articulate long-term and short-term objectives for an e-learning initiative that align e-learning to business goals.
• Assess the technology and skills needed for an e-learning initiative.
• Calculate the costs and efforts for developing, hosting, and delivering e-learning.
• Develop a marketing plan to sell e-learning to the entire organization.
• Specify a train-the-trainer development program for e-learning facilitators.
• Develop an evaluation plan for an e-learning project, including ROI calculation.
• Identify when to use e-learning, conventional classroom training, and blended solutions that integrate e-learning and traditional instructional modalities.
• Locate information sources that you can trust to keep you abreast of rapid changes and future trends.

Required Texts
EDU 621 texts are available from the JIU/MBS bookstore