To create a successful online course, many people must collaborate to manage and implement numerous tasks. This can be an overwhelming prospect, but taking time to strategize about the people, processes, and values involved with the course is well worth the time investment.

Staff or external consultants may handle the roles of project manager, project sponsor, and instructional designer. The subject matter experts (SMEs) are likely to be members of your association. For an association, especially an individual membership organization, a good working relationship with these member experts is crucial.

Encourage active participation from the SMEs. With a clear idea of what is expected of them, they are in a better position to be realistic about how long it will take to accomplish the work.

The staff is highly motivated to create a positive member experience in developing a course, not only for the sake of the course but because the expertise of the SMEs speaks to the competence and character of the entire association. At the end of the of the online course development process, members should feel impressed in the abilities of their association and its staff.

Process and People

Several keys conversations with speakers are essential in creating a successful member experience and online course product.

Steps to success:

• Conduct a kickoff conversation with all people involved in the course project, to discuss how to get things done (i.e., process) and what's important (i.e., values)
• Evaluate the success of the kickoff conversation.
• Conduct individual and group check-in conversations.
• Create and maintain motivation.
• Evaluate progress.
• Celebrate success.

Typical or possible roles with an online course project include:

• Subject-matter experts: The people who bring the content expertise.
• Course sponsor: The person (usually an organizational representative) who funds the course.
• Instructional designer: The person who designs the course and makes the learning more effective, efficient, and enjoyable. E-learning software specialists may collaborate with an instructional designer.
• Project manager: The person who coordinates and organizes the course project. The course sponsor may serve in this role as well.

A Conversation to Set the Stage

The kickoff conversation aligns the speakers and all the other team members to a mutual understanding of the learning objectives for the course and production objectives.

Format. If the course sponsor seeks a particular delivery format or structure, the kickoff conversation is the time to be clear about it. State, for example, that the objective is to produce an asynchronous course that is a slide presentation with engagement or knowledge checks about every four slides, and the speaker's voice synched with the slides.

Learning objectives. Have a preliminary conversation about learning objectives. What specifically, do the experts and the course sponsor want learners to know or be able to do after taking the course? Articulate these learning objectives back to the group to arrive at a consensus. Note any disagreement or hesitancy about the learning objectives. Use your judgement to address discrepancies during the conversation, if the discrepancies are significant, or later, if the discrepancies are relatively insignificant.

An example of a significant discrepancy is that one team member thinks that including history and background content is important, while another team member does not believe this content gets to the core of what learners need to know or be able to perform. Address this by engaging the group in a creative conversation. Share the history and background outside of the course product, as a resource, for example. Determine with the group whether content is "nice to know" or "critical to know" to assist the dialog. If you decide to address learning objective discrepancies later, note this for the participants so they know that the plan is to resolve the discrepancies.

Engage the SMEs in dialog by asking how the content that accomplishes the learning objectives will fit within the format. The course sponsor can discuss total course length, based on business intelligence, and the instructional designer can discuss number of slides, based on industry standards. As a guideline, a 60-minute presentation should have no more than 50 slides.

Tools and process. This point in the conversation is a good time for the instructional designer to weigh in on the process that he or she recommends to use to produce the course. Everyone involved must know what this process is and, more importantly, see it as reasonable and agree to it. In some conversations, silence can mean consent. However, this approach cannot be relied on in this conversation, especially if people are on a phone conference. Participants must actively agree to evidence their motivation for the work to develop the course.

Listen carefully and ask probing questions to determine that all are on the same page with the learning objectives, format for the final course, and the process that will be used to achieve this outcome.

Schedule. Along with process for accomplishing the course, the kickoff conversation is a good time to discuss timeframes. Encourage active participation from the SMEs. With a clear idea of what is expected of them, they are in a better position to be realistic about how long it will take to accomplish the work. Carefully note vacations and other obligations so that, together, you and the experts arrive at achievable timeframes.

As part of the conversation, share the work that the instructional designer and course sponsor will accomplish after receiving draft materials from experts. This gives everyone involved the big picture on tasks that must be accomplished. The objective is to give an overview. The project plan can be shared in a document from the project manager after the conversation. A successful conversation has occurred when the course has been shaped by the active participation of the content experts, guided within parameters set by instructional designer, course sponsor, and project manager.

Continued collaboration. End the conversation by encouraging all on the team to, at any point in the project, question or disagree with a process or expectation. This is normal group dynamics. Set the expectation that it is normal and give the path to take when problems or disagreements arise. Who is the person on the team to contact? Usually it is either the project manager or the project sponsor. It is most efficient to have a conversation with this one person so that a strategy can be agreed upon to address the issue. Ask your experts to surface concerns with this one person as a first step. Many times the issues can be resolved at this phase, avoiding a distraction for the other experts.

Motivation. Maintaining positive motivation for the duration of the creation of the online course is critical. All team members want to feel valued and do their best work. The job of the instructional designer, course sponsor, and project manager is to create this environment. Each team member can feel proud of the final product. Find and highlight signs of progress to include work accomplished by the agreed upon deadline. Messages should be concise and positive. As the course development winds to a close, be thoughtful about ways to celebrate a job well done.