All The Online Courses - Where Do They All Come From?

You may have the world’s most sophisticated learning management system and enough bandwidth to run a cable TV network, but without content that will satisfy the learning needs of your organisation, on time and to budget, you’ve got yourself a pretty embarrassing white elephant. In this chapter, I attempt to explain how to fill the content void, making an informed selection between in-house development, having the work done for you outside or buying off-the-shelf.

In, out or off?

So you’ve forked out half a million dollars for your Saba Turbo Convertible learning management system. You’ve even got it to work with your lightening fast ATM network, driven by a server farm containing more Suns than the known universe. It connects to your mountainous PeopleSoft database so you now know more about your employees than they would dare tell their analysts. The MegaCorp Virtual University is a reality.

But do they come? Do they hell? Would you consider a visit to a real, bricks and mortar university if it had no teachers and no courses, other than to admire the architecture? Of course not. You have infrastructure, but like the man said ‘content is king’. Populating your virtual university with content – not just any old content, but the sort any self-respecting corporate citizen would really want to use – is the only way to populate it with people. Unfortunately, the right content can prove frustratingly elusive.

So, anxious that the most ambitious training project your organisation has ever embarked upon is approaching its first anniversary and has yet to yield a cent of return on its investment, you ponder your three choices - in, out or off? Will it be in-house development, out-sourcing to external contractors or an off-the-shelf purchase?