First and foremost, let's make sure the learning need is for a TEL course. Take a look at the "Training Types" flow chart. Could the course be taught effectively by some other delivery method, for example, as a Job Aid, as a Cybercast, etc.?
Answer these important questions:
- Has the course been taught in a classroom setting?
- Is the course rich in content?
- Will your audience for this course be many and regionally dispersed?
- Is the content of the course organized in modules/lessons?
- Can the exercises in the course be done asynchronously (self-paced)?
- Does this course need to be taught frequently?
If you have answered yes to the questions above, TEL would be an excellent delivery tool for the course and the TEL Team would love to help you with the process from beginning to the delivery and final evaluation of the course.
There are two methods to getting your course into TEL:
- We are finding that some subject-matter experts (SMEs) do not have the time to devote to redeveloping their course for
TEL delivery. It sounds easy enough to just take the PowerPoint slides from your classroom course and publish them to
Adobe Connect. This is not at all the case! The course will need to be redeveloped from a web and instructional design
standpoint. This can take time to do effectively.
If this is the case, the TEL Team can take your materials and prototype a TEL course for you. We will involve you as much as possible in the course design and development. We will take care of aligning your lesson objectives with content and assessments. We will make, or develop new, student practice exercises for web, asynchronous delivery. We will ensure the course has a high level of interactivity and that it will be accurate and Section 508 compliant. We will assist you in scheduling and holding any synchronous events (Adobe® Meeting™) if you are using a blended-learning strategy for your course.
- For the SME's that want full control over the design and development of their TEL course, they will be required
to attend a 4-day instructor-led course on using the course-development software, Adobe® Presenter™, in order to obtain a
license for the PowerPoint® Plug-in. The plug-in will add functionality to PowerPoint so the course developer can add
narration, add assessments, add Flash® animations, etc. to the course. See the TEL
Process Flow Diagram for further information on the process and requirements to design and develop your TEL course.
The completed course will need to be reviewed by 2 technical reviewers and theTEL Team. For this scenario, we also have a
"TEL Developer's Toolbox" that has
links to important information/best practices for developing a course for web delivery. The Instructional Design Document
(IDD) and course outline, next paragraph, must be reviewed by the TEL team early in the course-development process.
For either instance above, we do require the SME to complete an IDD and Course Outline for the course and submit it to the TEL Program Lead, Tj Lane (tjlane@usgs.gov). The IDD document is an overview of your TEL course. It is an important document, as well as the Course Outline, for you and our TEL Team.
- For more information on Instructional Design, download the Word version of the IDD.
- To access the Instructional Design Outline, download the Word version of the Course Outline.
