Creating eLearning using an authoring tool can take many hours. The actual development time can vary. Once you have a storyboard or even a general idea of what needs to be created, many hours can be spent working through the development process.
If there are stakeholders, SMEs and other interested parties that need to review, sign off or agree on the direction of the development, this can add time to the overall build.
There are a couple of ways to approach the development of an eLearning project built in an authoring tool.
We are going to explore 2 x ways and see the differences.
You can then decide which approach to follow. We know which approach we like.
You could either build each slide meticulously one by one. Spend a lot of time on each slide, perfect the timing, object positioning, design, formatting etc., before moving on to the following slides.
Or, you could build each slide quickly, including the main objects and text, not worrying too much about the timing and/or positioning, formatting etc. This allows you to build a working project with interactivity in a timely manner. You can also test the end to end experience faster, ensuring the functionality and interactivity works. If this is then agreed and signed off, you can then go back and focus on the look and feel, and the finer details like the positioning of assets, timing and colours.
Building a first draft focusing on interactivity and functionality allows you to get the end-to-end experience, early reviews, agreed and reviewed faster, with a caveat that design and fine tuning will happen once the mechanics and overall experience has been agreed.
Would you rather have the whole project finished, albeit not tidy and formatted, vs having half of the project completed but looking slick and neat?
You will be tempted to fine tune as you go, but we do promise you this is a longer way of developing.
Once we have the basic objects, placeholders and interactivity complete, we can go back and focus on the finer details.
Hope this helps, substance before style.