Agile e-learning

Back in June, I posted about the Three Tiers in the  Content Pyramid, a model I borrowed from Nick Shackleton-Jones of the BBC. The pyramid shows how high-end e-content can integrate with rapid content and user-generated content within an overall strategy working from both the bottom up and the top down:

At the eLearning Network's July Showcase, a presentation I attended by Nicola Foster of Information Transfer, made me question whether the boundaries between the three tiers of the pyramid are all that distinct. Nicola's proposition was that, while rapid content development had its merits, much more important was agile development.

Nicola defined agility as a combination of strength, co-ordination, responsiveness, speed and balance - qualities that could be applied successfully to e-content development. Organisations need agility to respond sensitively to each unique situation, making use of professional specialist help wherever it can be usefully applied, balancing different content forms within blended solutions, and using the right tools for each job. Quality and speed are not absolutes - you need the right speed and the right production values for the task in hand.

That means the three tiers will often overlap:

• professional developers can use rapid tools
• subject experts and generalist trainers can play a key role in high-end content development and as contributors to bottom-up initiatives
• users can make use of rapid tools to generate content from a bottom-up perspective

Agile development is about getting the right content to the right people in a timely fashion. And Nicola misquoted Darwin to make the point:

"It's not the fastest of the e-learning that survives, not the flashiest, but the most agile."