A key event for anyone involved in Learning and Development, and a useful event to attend for the following reasons:

• Networking opportunities
• The chance to speak with representatives from key vendors
• To attend useful seminars

I attended the following useful seminars at the event, which covered a variety of topics on projects from a variety of sectors as can be seen from the list below:

• Owen Rose, Managing Partner, Actean Learning to Take Risks breaking the boundaries of compliance training with Channel 4
• Emily Cox and Sue Rennoldson, Instructional Designers, Willow DNA Creating the complete learning ecosystem – designing effective learning programmes that blend the best of formal and informal learning
• Vix Samways, Training Manager, Anglia Ruskin University/Silke Prodinger-Leong, Client Services Manager, Lynda.com Plan, Promote and Play – a reflection on the implementation of an online development tool into a large organisation
• David Freedman, Associate Director, Huthwaite Implementing a behaviour change: global success model
• Lucy Hodge, Instructional Design Consultant, Walkgrove Diagnostic Assessment
• Samatha Yates, Instructional Designer, Unicorn Training Group A guide to branching scenarios
• Richard Law, Head of Learning Solutions, Cuerdan Consulting ‘Storyboarding as a quality process – not just a document’

Richard’s presentation providing an insight into managing the process of eLearning projects and including information gained from his experience acquired from working on these types of projects over many years.

One particularly interesting area for me was the presentation on storyboarding by Richard Law. Richard broke down the type of clients you may get for eLearning projects which he placed in the following categories:

• I’ve been told to use eLearning
• I want eLearning and I know exactly what I want
• I know I need eLearning but I have no idea how to proceed

These categories highlight how different clients may begin the process of commissioning eLearning and how they either will be very unsure about what they want or they will have much more specific ideas of what they want.(Which may or may not necessarily be best route to take, without advice from instructional designers and other eLearning specialists). This also demonstrates just how each eLearning project can begin in very different ways.

Most importantly and perhaps the most interesting aspect of this presentation, Richard then provided advice and information on the process he uses to manage eLearning projects. Richard uses a variety of stages in his system to ensure that as much as possible each eLearning project achieves the following:

• Aligns to the clients requirements
• Meets and hopefully exceeds the clients expectations
• Is kept on track and is successfully completed

This process includes the following key development stages:

• Statement of Work
• Content analysis check
• Strawboard
• Content
• Design
• Storyboard
• Prototype
• Film script
• Alpha (Internal review)
• Beta (Synthetic Audio)
• Audio script
• Final development