Blended Learning Engine Design & Development
Role: Learning Strategist & Instructional Designer
Company: Aesthetic Technologies, Kolkata • Duration: June 2003 to January 2004
Introduction
I had started my career in 2003 with Aesthetic Technologies, currently called Omnivera Learning Solutions, a multimedia and eLearning service provider in Kolkata, India and this was one of my earlier projects. In India, between 2002-05, the use of multimedia in designing various instructional design solutions, gradually but steadily gathered momentum. Availability of an expert and all the learners at the same venue was expensive and involved travel and other logistical challenges. It made Virtual Instructor-led Training (vILT) an overall cheaper, yet immersive solution when compared to a traditional classroom training. Therefore, our clients across various industries too started choosing vILTs over Instructor-led Trainings (ILTs).
However, with the small set-up, it was becoming difficult for us to meet the huge demand of producing similar solutions, faster, in different languages, with different content and for different clients. Therefore, it made business sense for us to design a product that could be replicated across industries. We built eNreach, a blended learning engine that could be produced faster, easier and cheaper and was scalable and customizable for the clients. Thus, this project had two parts:
Designing and developing the reusable blended learning engine
Designing and developing various learning solutions for our clients based on the reusable framework
Note: For the purpose of this portfolio, I will first share an overview of the first layer, which is the processes and procedures of how we designed and developed the blended learning engine. Then provide an overview of the second layer, which is the development process of how we used the engine in multiple client projects.
I had a dual role in this project:
Defining the product scope and designing the product features, based on my learner experience design expertise and strategizing the selling points for our clients.
Providing design inputs and developmental support as an Instructional Designer, who would use the product to create learning solutions for our clients.
Approach
Due to my diverse background, I had realized very early in my career, how some of the basic design principles were applicable in education design as well. The best products and solutions fall somewhere at the intersection of feasibility, desirability and viability. In fact, for education design, I would break the desirability pod further into:
Learning objective: What is the outcome of the learning?
Learner desirability: Why does the outcome matter?
Learner engagement: How to use various interaction techniques and engagement tools to engage the learner and achieve the desired outcome?
In this case, based on our feasibility, desirability and viability respectively, we finalized the following:
Feasibility of the format & delivery mode
Since we had multimedia and programming expertise in the team, we decided to build an immersive blended learning engine and deliver them in CDs and DVDs for each of our clients. During those days, specially in India, CDs and DVDs were the only medium to deliver high quality multimedia content because the Internet was slower and smart phones were not a thing yet.
Desirability of the basic design elements
Based on our research of the past and existing ILT projects and discussions with client representatives, we defined the three broad learner experiences that could cumulatively solve a learning problem - Listening, Interaction and Clarification. The Listen, Interact and Clarify modes were designed to create a more immersive learner experience, via a virtual and pre-recorded instructor-led learning solution. The objective was to reinstate the learning at different stages of the learning process and improve comprehension, retention and application of the learning through learner interaction. Also, we designed the new product to replicate it in multiple languages and addressed the issue of unavailability of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and Instructors by using scripted instructions that could be role-played by in-house actors.
Business and Client viability
This product was a great blend of our strength as a team, our mission as a company and our commitment to our clients. The new design was:
Efficient: Since we were a small team, designing a simple and reusable blended learning engine, significantly reduced the development time for each client project and increased our efficiency.
Profitable: For a small team like us, time was money. We made the production process seamless and faster by using templates, script libraries and latest video editing technologies to insert Instructor annotations in the video during post production. All these had reduced our man-hours per project, making production much more profitable for the business.
Scalable: We designed the product with a scope for creating flexible menu items, keeping just the root folder intact. This made it easily scalable for a minimum cost.
Customizable: The product could be easily branded and packaged based on the client’s preferences. Just replacing the background images and color schemes could re-brand the product, while the CDs and DVDs were packaged accordingly. The entire product package included CD and DVD covers, pamphlets, leaflets, decals and stickers, depending on the client's requirement.
eNreach Development Process
This video illustrates the development process of how we used the blended learning engine in multiple client projects.
eNreach Demo
Challenges
Empathizing with the user and identifying and understanding the key pain points
Just like any other product, we had to keep people at the core of our product thinking:
Understanding the right people problems
Adopting a human-centered approach to solving those complex problems
And generating user/learner empathy…
Were essential to designing an effective user experience.
However, in this case, it was very difficult to achieve those objectives because of the complexity of the problem and multiple layers of the project:
We had to think of the business problem and design a solution that could be replicated across industries using minimum resources and earning maximum profit for the company.
We had to also design for the Instructional Designers and Developers who would later use the product to create learning solutions for a wide range of clients.
Lastly, but in no way the least, we had to be cognizant of the common yet, unique learning problems faced by each of our existing and potential clients.
We re-defined the feasibility-desirability-viability model to find a design solution to our problem. Working towards meeting the following criteria helped us design a solution that made business sense to the company as well as provided the desired learning outcome to our clients:
Feasibility of the format & delivery mode
Desirability of the basic design elements
Business and Client viability
Cross-communicating with all the users and stakeholders
We were a team of musicians, programmers, artists, project managers, writers, photographers and so on, with a diverse background in Film, Advertising and IT. We all wanted a solution that could be easily produced by us and meet our business objectives and client requirements. To be able to design a solution that catered to all our needs, it was important to reach a common ground on several occasions. That is where timely and effective communication took precedence over decision-making.
To make the most of our diverse perspectives and opinions, it was important for us to collaborate and communicate our ideas to our clients and seek feedback. The gap between incremental improvement and innovation-at-scale was huge. But at every step of the way, effective communication was the key. As the Learning Strategist, the scope of my work included:
Interpreting and integrating the product design ideas that were generated.
Visualizing the learner experiences to communicate the effectiveness of the product to all stakeholders.
Impact
eNreach made a huge and positive business impact on the company and it's clients. Though we created a very robust and scalable solution but over time, we realized that the biggest challenge was its distribution format. As the Internet evolved, it became hard to market a DVD/CD based product to the clients. So we had to create a parallel suite of web products that conformed to the same Instructional Design philosophies of eNreach. Thus, over time, it lead the way to an entire new product line called eNlight. eNlight was the umbrella brand under which we offered our entire blended learning solution. It was a SCORM compliant solution that was competing with the best in the industry at that time. It was an integrated learning solution comprising the following products:
eNreach: Offline vILT or facilitator-led training solution
eNlive: Online synchronous learning solution
eNcircle: Knowledge management solution
eNable: Learning management solution
eNcounter: Online assessment and evaluation solution
These blended learning solutions were built to encompass the benefits of the blended approach of technology assisted learning and keep it flexible for what was required for a particular client. Though the entire product was integrated, it was designed for a flexible implementation approach to enable our clients to derive maximum value from it. The fact that each client had different requirement and how easy it was for us to mould the structure to cater to each of our client's requirements, testified the design of this product. Within just a few years, eNreach had a prestigious and varied clientele from across India:
