The biggest thing on the horizon is still the payment gateway which I talked about earlier. Despite being told it would be up and running by the end of August it is still in the planning stages. I have almost got it straight in my head how it might work but I have another meeting scheduled in a couple of weeks time to discuss it with all the relevant parties and they'll probably tell me I'm wrong. I'll do a more detailed post about that later.
We've had a bit of a reshuffle at work and I've got some different responsibilities and one of my colleagues has been tasked with project managing the now training portal. He probably should have been told this six months ago when I started working on it but that would have made too much sense. In these meetings we've been having there have been a lot or paper work requirements thrown up such as risk assessments and action plans.
Fair to say I am more than happy to let him "project manage" the paper work and I'll just stick to the geekery. Unfortunately, because I know the project and he doesn't, I'm probably going to have to chip in.
Some of the paper work he needs to
Action Plan: An overall plan or time line of what needs to happen. I'm thinking a Gantt Chart might come in handy.
Course Format: I need to sit my superiors down and get the ultimate OK on how I am structuring the courses. Since discovering the book module I've been converting courses to that but it has a more basic completion requirement than lessons do and I don't want to change all the courses just to have my boss decide that it's not good enough.
I also need to devise a set of rules that dictate how the course material is set out when it gets to me. The course material I have been given so far has come as Power Point presentations, the trainers have thought about what they want the slide to look like and what font they want to use and then spent time making everything look pretty. This, it turns out, is a complete waste of time because I have to strip all that formatting out before putting it into Moodle. Also, some weren't including quiz questions or were suggesting games that weren't suitable. So I need write a document that explains to them clearly what I need from them and how I want it as well as what games I can make.
Part of the course format is going to be writing the brief that customers can read before they buy the course (because I can't be bothered to write them) and also deciding what level the courses are aimed at (management, general staff, etc.).
Terminology: Currently the site is being called the Learning Portal and the courses are broken up into Lessons. My boss said she doesn't like that so we need to decide what else to call them. Ideas were tossed around to have a staff suggestion box but I think the best way of getting a result before I die of old age is if I make a list of all the terms I can think of and camp in my boss's office until she picks one.
There are probably other words on the site that some people won't like, such as calling students Learners, which need to be agreed on so I don't have to spend a week going through everything and changing every instance of the word 'forum' to 'message board'.
Proofing Process: Firstly all the information needs to be up to date and accurate, this ties into the review process. There also needs to be a process to ensure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes, this is just basic quality assurance.
If the course content comes to me meeting the course format requirements I should just be able to copy and paste it into Moodle which will cut out quite a lot of mistakes (at the moment the text was spell checked when I got it but then I had to re-write quite big chunks and introduced my own mistakes.) Once text is online changing one little spelling mistake is a bit of a job so I need to minimise the chance of them happening. For quizzes and questions (especially using HotPot) changing a spelling mistake is even more arduous so it's really important the course format rules are stuck to.
Even assuming I've done everything I can to minimise the chance of spelling mistakes the online content still has to be proofed. Luckily there is a lady in my office who is a self confessed officer in the grammar police and she works in my department so I should be able to pass the courses to her for a final proof. This proofing process needs to be given a time scale so I can predict how long it takes to put a course online.
Testing Process: The whole portal needs to be tested for bugs and usability. I already had people in the office look at it to get some feedback on how straightforward the site was to use and no one seemed to have any major problems (except not being able to create a suitable password but I already fixed that).
After I have the course format and visual style set in stone I think the site will need another round of internal testing. I might even have to sit next to people and watch them use it so I can pick up on any areas that could be improved. Then it will be on to closed testing, we'll find a bunch of people who fit into the target customer base and give them free access to the training site on the proviso that they answer a ridiculously detailed evaluation questionnaire.
When the site is ready for public consumption I think there will need to be at least six months of public beta testing. This will basically be a disclaimer and a detailed evaluation questionnaire so the site can be improved and nobody will get their panties in a major wad if something doesn't work. This initial period might contain a price discount as well.
Review Process: We recently had a situation at work with some of the companies existing online courses, someone complained that the content was out of date. Turns out the course hadn't been updated since 2008. To avoid this in the future I figure each course should be reviewed at least once a year. They'd have to be reviewed by one of our subject experts because it'll be things like new legislation and terminology that they'll need to look at. These are pretty busy people so I figure giving them assigning a month for each course to be reviewed would work.
Risk Assessment: What are the risks associated with a Moodle site? The obvious ones I can think of:
- Data protection: Student data, especially once we start taking credit card details.
- Server Crashes: Resulting in people not being able to access the course they've paid for and us losing data.
- The site being hacked: Could result in learner details being stolen, data being lost or the site being vandalised.
- Accessibility issues.
- Learners not being satisfied with the quality of course material and complaining.
Price: As I mention, the price will probably change after we've had some initial feedback but we do have to decide how much we're going to charge for these courses. Will they all be the same price? Will there be a discount for multiple purchases? How big a discount will members get?
Evaluation Questionnaire: There needs to be an evaluation questionnaire for each stage of the testing process. I need to decide what I need to know from my colleagues who I
How the forums will be used: This is one of Marketing's big concerns because they seem to think the boards will be hijacked by trouble makers who want to slag us off. I don't think it will be as bad as that but I think comments will need to be moderated. Initially I think we'll just use the News forum (which only admins and teachers can post to) to post news and updates. I've set up a couple of boards and put links in courses to try and encourage learners to share specific ideas with each other. I think this would be a good starting point as the boards can be moderated on the grounds that they are for specific conversations. I don't think they will be so popular that I won't have time to moderate them myself but if they do take off more time might have to be given to their moderation.
Backups: A backup process needs to be hammered out to make sure nothing gets lost if something explodes. Ideally this should be automated but I have yet to be able to find a way of doing it, it might be that I have to do a manual backup every Monday morning.
See? I have a lot to think about.
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