FEATURE
Partnering with Colleges and Universities for E-learning Strategy

Elearning content developers in the business world are discovering that they can reap multiple benefits by tapping into the rich and variedn expertise of college and university-level educators.
Winter 2005
By Maureen Betses

If you have considered working with a college or university to design your e-learning program, consider these guidelines.

Why Partner?
The greatest value of working with a college or university is the strength and depth of the content your subject matter experts provide. Building your program based on the unique insights and innovative ideas from renowned experts in their fields yields rich, credible content. This source material has been thoroughly researched and vetted, which saves time — a considerable advantage as you start to create your e-learning program.

Another benefit to partnering appears when you begin to market your new program internally. Tapping a trusted, well-known expert as your resource lends credibility, and an affiliation with a respected academic institution can enhance the perception of your programs within your organization. Ultimately, this will raise the level of interest among your users and help speed adoption.

Finally, professors and instructors often bring tremendous enthusiasm for extending their ideas and research to new audiences. Their engagement in the learning process can inject new energy into the process of developing the content for your program. These experts are usually very willing to help, and can provide excellent feedback on your materials, which will help create a top-quality offering.

Acting as Translators: From Theory to Practice
While it might seem that working with an academic institution will provide you with ample ready-made content for your e-learning program, you will still be responsible for much of the content development. Professors and instructors are typically brilliant lecturers with deep knowledge in their area of expertise, but they package and deliver their content to a completely different audience than corporate trainers do. Your effort will be needed to package their concepts into a successful e-learning program.

“We think of ourselves as translators,” says Sara Cummins, executive producer and design architect, Harvard Business School Publishing eLearning. “We take the world-renowned content from the professor we’re working with and mold it into a digestible, yet engaging format that managers can apply within their jobs right away.”

There is often quite a large gap between the broad concepts a professor introduces in a lecture or article and the specific, applicable knowledge a person needs to be successful in their day-to-day job. While a professor may be the subject matter expert, you are the learning and development expert within your organization. When working with a professor, examine his or her content from your audience’s point of view. How can you take the author’s framework and present it in a meaningful, useful format? Such thinking should lead your program design and content development effort.

The way content is packaged for presentation in class is often very different than what’s needed for an elearning course, where interactivity and tools must replace a dynamic lecture or classroom discussion. For example, the managers using our e-learning products are pressed for time. They need tools and easily accessible, packaged information grounded in real-world examples. Translating management concepts into programs that include tools such as assessments, worksheets, quizzes, and case scenarios has helped meet the needs of the trainer.

It’s also important to consider the level of your audience and how it may differ from the student audience an expert has experience teaching. Business training materials need to address audiences at many levels, including many with considerable experience. It's important to present concepts in a manner that assumes a certain level of understanding and is geared toward reinforcing and refining critical leadership skills. This pragmatic approach allows important concepts uncovered through academic research to be applied within the context of an individual’s personal career experience.

The Search for the Subject Matter Expert
A perfect subject matter expert match for your audience, topic and timeline can make all the difference in the effectiveness of your collaboration. Here are a series of questions to consider as you navigate the path to expert selection:

What have they published? When an expert has already published content in a more action-oriented, packaged form, it can speed the process, while more abstract concepts will take longer to translate into a powerful e-learning component. If you find a source who has published material with a clear framework, and the content is a match with your audience, then your search is over – you’ve found your expert.

For Leadership Training, we collaborated with Michael Watkins, the author of leading management books including The First 90 Days, and a subject matter expert who instinctively knows how to present his concepts in a practical way that resonates with business audiences.

“As we examined what Michael had published, in particular a workbook that put the concepts from his book Right from the Start into a practice-based format, we realized that he had great synergies with what we envisioned for a product we were developing – not just with the content, but also in the way he thought to package it,” adds Sara Cummins. “Michael continues to be one of our top experts.”

Are they interested in new teaching methods? Professors who are already embracing online education, multimedia and related methods will have had some exposure to building content suited to e-learning programs, as well as an interest in experimenting with new technologies.

How busy is their schedule? The best experts are typically time constrained, so scheduling is typically the hardest part of this process. Confirm up front that the expert has the time to give to a project of this nature. A busy lecture, research or book promotion schedule might preclude your first-choice expert from committing time to advise you on a program. If scheduling becomes a problem, consider that younger faculty members often have more flexibility. They may lack industry name recognition but have the research, content and time to be a very valuable resource.
Do you know anyone who has worked with them? If you know that a professor you’re considering as your expert has worked on this sort of project before, a quick call to someone involved on the project can provide clues on what to expect of the experience. Doing some checking early in the process can keep you focused on the experts who are the best fit for your program.

Helpful Tips on the Process
Based on eleven years of successful collaborations, here are some ideas to help make the path along your e-learning content partnership as smooth as possible.

Build a realistic timeline. Allow time for unexpected changes from your expert, as well as from your organization. It can be helpful to have an expert who understands the world of program/software development, where the development process can be unpredictable despite the best planning.

Set clear expectations with your expert. Giving your expert a precise picture of what the end result will be helps set the tone for the conversations you have throughout the content development process. Show them an existing e-learning program to help them envision what you are working toward. This will save time for everyone involved and minimize surprises down the road.

Long-term relationships equal great results. Finding that first expert is often the most challenging. Once you’ve established a strong working relationship with an expert, the process gets simpler, as you can reference your past experience to the new experts you approach. Long-standing relationships allow you to short-cut to the content development as expectations are already understood. The result is more time to brainstorm, get creative and hone the content; resulting in an even more powerful program.

We maintain long-standing relationships with many of our subject matter experts. For example, our collaboration with Linda Hill goes back ten years to when she provided input for our very first e-learning products. Linda is currently reviewing several modules for a new program we’re developing for first-time managers. We know that working with her will again be a great experience with a positive result.
Remember the basics. Be consistently respectful of your expert’s time. Communicate in their preferred method, whether through email, an assistant or in person. If possible, have one person on your team be the point person to make it less confusing for the expert and allow for more continuity and relationship building. Streamlining communication can also minimize your margin for error. Finally, don’t forget to say thank you.

Make the most of the affiliation. If the college you’re considering partnering with is known for a certain area of expertise or teaching style, be sure to showcase that within your program. HBSP’s Case in Point product came from customer demand as well as interest in applying aspects of Harvard Business School’s case-based method in a corporate training environment. Our close affiliation has helped us deliver compelling and unique elearning programs to our audiences.

Maureen Betses is vice president, higher education and e-learning, at Harvard Business School Publishing, www.elearning.hbsp.org.

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