An Introduction to Rapid eLearning

What is Rapid eLearning?

A new term was derived by the eLearning industry in the year 2004: Rapid eLearning. To make it simple, Rapid eLearning contain 3 unique characteristics: 1) Content authoring should be simple and web based. 2) In order to minimize the time from content authoring to content publishing, the subject matter experts (SME) must take the primary role instead of the instructional designers. 3) Each learning/training organization must have a content sharing platform/database.

Here are some common factors of Rapid eLearning:
- Common web authoring software like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, and Flash are not being used. Instead, SME use web based authoring tools/platforms to generate digital contents. These contents will then be delivered to the learners as html, flash and other media formats via the web.
- SME needs minimum trainings from using these authoring tools/platforms.
- The learning contents are in smaller “chunks” usually, say, less than 30 minutes of studying time for each “chunk”. Then the course creator will “assemble” these “chunks” into a self contained courseware. These chunks can be viewed as learning objects.
- The learning materials can be delivered in synchronous, asynchronous and mixed mode learning environments.
- The contents must be learner centric instead of the “instructor feeding” style.
- Each content module must have a clear theme which allows the module to be presented as a stand alone learning object thus the production time for each of these objects can be “pumped out” on a efficient time basis.

Why Rapid eLearning?

In the new millennium, production cycles in most of the industries are shortened. Enterprise and institutions are constantly facing changes in the surrounding environment such as new product demands (e.g. Oracle acquires PeopleSoft ), new government polices (War against Terror), new market competitions (China joins WTO), new diseases (SARS) new technologies (Blog) etc. The entire chain of learning is reacting to these changes in a faster and faster pace. eLearning in general is playing an more and more important role in our society. In order to deliver the most accurate, the most up-to-date, the most high quality knowledge to the learners, us educators must restructure the traditional ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) model, and come up with a new solution. Thus Rapid eLearning was born. Where do we go from here depends on how our learners respond to the change of the world.