Management of elearning projects has matured a lot in the last few
years. As a community, we have benefited from myriad partnerships
and received a substantial injection of project management expertise
from the private sector, government and other industries. The resulting
management technique is a variation on an old discipline that I
am calling eLearning Project Management (EPM), and it will become
a growing focal point over the next year as we more closely examine
lessons from our management of elearning projects and establish
baseline techniques, methods and principles that could serve future
ones.
Where
has EPM come from? Traditional project management has involved many
techniques, methods, templates and skills that have historically
served architecture and military communities. Now I’m not saying
we become as structured as that, but we need to improve ourselves—and
our projects—in the areas of planning, reporting, communications,
risk, cost, and time management (to name a few). EPM will adapt
those for our community and give each of us (faculty, ID’s, edutechs,
and others) new working-level management tools that will help us
infuse better structure, planning and accountability into our projects.
The end results? Better management of our elearning projects, higher
returns on investment and improved teaching and learning experiences…across
the Canadian elearning community.
