Who Does What and Why in an eLearning Team

An eLearning project is a team effort. It is impossible to produce quality learning experiences without the right people in the right places. So, it is important to understand the roles and corresponding skills that constitute an eLearning team.

Here is what the team on an eLearning project looks like:

Project Sponsors are the key stakeholders who owns the project. They generally have a clear vision of the “big picture”, or the final eLearning outcomes. Thus, they take early initiative and provide overall direction to the entire team. At Artha Learning, these would be typically clients, who approach us with their education needs and want those to be addressed with a eLearning solution.

Subject Matter Experts (SME) essentially have an authority over the content to be covered in the eLearning. They are the links that help identify content for the target audience. During an eLearning project lifecycle, SMEs are the knowledge banks that instructional designers leverage to gain a deeper understanding of the educational content. When working on highly technical or industry-specific topics, SME guidance becomes even more crucial to both the IDs and the overall project.

Project Managers are in charge of the effective running of the project on a daily basis. Their planning and execution skills ensure successful execution of the project lifecycle. In addition, PM’s must maintain good rapport with the team members while ensuring  timely deliveries of the intermediate milestones. They must also be always moving ahead toward the project deadline date. A strong PM  handles the various challenges that arise at a personal and team level while successfully steering ahead towards on-time completion of a project.

Instructional Designers apply their sound knowledge of instructional design principles, learning styles and learning theories to transform the content identified by the SME into an effective blueprint of the eLearning to be developed. To this, they also add the right dose of interactivities, animations, quizzes and various other interesting elements to engage the learners further, thus ensuring a successful and applicable knowledge transfer.

eLearning Architect and Developers work together to bring the “big picture” vision to final fruition. They convert blueprints provided by instructional designers into a tangible eLearning product, using eLearning authoring tools like Articulate 360, Articulate Rise, Lectora, Captivate, Camtasia, and Adapt.

Multimedia Designers add further engagement to the eLearning project by using a variety of graphic tools to create immersive and interactive graphics that support the educational content with visually enhanced and aesthetically appealing eLearning modules.

Voice Talents add a supporting layer of comprehension by describing the animations and adding value to the scenarios through narration. Professional narration not only adds value for the auditory learners, but also adds to the overall engagement of a well-built eLearning module.

Finally, the  QA specialist. QA reviews the eLearning for content, clarity, consistency, graphics, language, appropriate references and accessibility. A thorough review ensures lesser further revisions and leads to the final delivery of a quality product to the client.

You may skip one or more of these roles, or add them up to a single person for smaller projects. On the other hand, larger and complicated projects may even require other roles such as: game designer, accessibility expert or, animator. While every eLearning project is unique in its requirements, all projects will require some or all of these roles and skills.