If you were disappointed with rapid e-learning tools in the past, it's worth taking a second look. We've seen some subtle enhancements and twist-the-box thinking that have had a dramatic impact.

Still seeking a definition

The conversation about a definition of rapid e-learning was worn out almost before it began. Overnight, developer tools that existing users know take months to master had rebranded themselves as "rapid e-learning" tools.

Unfortunately, until there is consensus, all commentary addressing the topic has to weigh in. Therefore, according to Learning Circuits, the term "rapid e-learning" encompasses tools that automate the creation of e-learning or convert PowerPoint slide decks into web-based learning content. These tools are relatively easy-to-learn, as well as easy-to-use. The average knowledge worker should be able to master the core features of a rapid e-learning tool in less than a day, with some basic training.

Ironically, the conversation on defining rapid e-learning most likely won"t subside soon because rapid e-learning tools are evolving to meet the market need. The core problem is one of supply and demand.

The content glut

Nearly a year ago, Tony O'Driscoll, a key learning strategist for IBM, told an attentive crowd at ASTD Charlotte that the codified information base of the world is expected to double every 11 hours by the year 2010. As this crescendo of content reaches critical mass, so does the demand for better insight into this information. To more rapidly distribute this new knowledge, workplace learning professionals (WLPs) need to transition from flat content (such as text) to dynamic, rich content that conveys meaning through fewer words and evokes more engaging mental stimulation.

Rapid e-learning tools and technologies are uniquely poised to address the need for wholesale distribution of knowledge for millions of communicators because, by their very design, they are familiar, easy-to-use, and increasingly affordable, at least the products that survive market forces will be affordable. But the adoption of rapid e-learning is still in its infancy. By most estimates, we are just passing the early adopter stage, moving toward adoption by an early majority. Most estimates, however, are based on the notion that rapid e-learning"s primary value is in addressing learning problems, rather than as a communication alternative for flat content. If the latter premise holds true, the demand for rapid e-learning technology may far surpass expectations.

Rapid e-learning pioneer Jennifer DeVries has an apt analogy: "I see rapid e-learning like the desktop publishing industry of 20 years ago, when desktop publishing was relegated to the one person with the big computer who knew the specialized software and laid out all of the documents. Then MS Word came along and it included many desktop publishing features, giving everyone the ability to create reasonably attractive material on a PC using this very simple software. I think rapid e-learning tools are going to transform the e-learning industry in much the same way, so that e-learning development will become more accessible to the general public."

Imagine a future in which anyone in your office has the power to create dynamic learning content in just a few minutes, post it to the intranet, and make it available in nearly the same amount of time that it takes to post a memo.

The future is here

One of the biggest challenges with accepting rapid e-learning as a content area is that many people, including many of us who frequently use rapid e-learning tools, don't fully understand the depth of possibilities within the tools.

According to Silke Fleischer, product manager for Adobe Captivate, "People just don't know that they can do these things. There's still a lack of awareness that anybody can create Flash-based content without knowing Flash. We see it all the time, people really don't know what Captivate is. Once they see it, they're blown away."

On the one hand, it's easy to dismiss Silke's comments as marketing rhetoric. And while she's certainly doing her job by trying to position Captivate in the best light possible, she's also got a very valid point.

Using any of the top contenders in the rapid e-learning space, developers can quickly create more visually appealing content that learners can interact with, and through which WLPs can track their selections, collect their answers, and generally gather customer (or learner, or prospect) intelligence. Developers can do this with core web technologies, too, if they know what they're doing. Rapid e-learning not only flattens the content development curve, it also has the potential to bring the world of business intelligence closer to mere mortals like you and me. Indeed, the question often asked is "Can everything be done via rapid e-learning tools?" The answer: "Not everything, but more than you think."

Rapid e-learning is being used successfully to address a broad range of training problems from simple knowledge transfer courses to robust simulations and interactive assessments. The market is starting to see practitioners leverage the toolsets to go beyond what was once possible, including

• using Captivate to throw together a podcast in minutes

• using PowerPoint as the dynamic branching engine before porting content through Articulate Presenter

• replacing traditional tools with rapid e-learning tools to enhance designer creativity

• using rapid e-learning tools on traditional projects to produce initial prototypes and get early (and high-level) stakeholder buy-in.

Smarter tools, smarter users

Most practitioners agree that when Adobe acquired Macromedia, Captivate was slow, tired, and overworked. Developers knew they had to save often and keep files small. One developer confessed that she even had to revert to a non-rapid approach to design because she couldn't afford the time lost in recovering from crashes. Since then, however, the Captivate development team has overcome key performance problems. Although it took some time to release under the Adobe brand, the latest version of Captivate is more stable, and it includes some subtle enhancements that developers can leverage for big gains. Chief among these improvements is branching technology, which on the surface appears anemic, but when it is leveraged correctly it can dramatically improve the interaction experience.

In addition, Articulate (the other major force in the rapid e-learning niche), recently released Engage, a product that introduces a new category of visually dynamic content. Engage won a Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award even before it was released because it creates visually engaging, instructionally smart interactions in just minutes. Engage is a great example of the paradigm shift in the rapid e-learning sector, tools geared toward raising the bar on design, not just addressing the time-to-learner issue.

The best news isn't really in what the tool vendors are doing, but rather in how designers and developers are succeeding in leveraging those tools. Jason Peterson of Accenture, for example, uses an approach that leverages Microsoft PowerPoint, Articulate Presenter and Quizmaker, Adobe Captivate, and NextUp's TextAloud to create online competency modules, as well as demonstrations and simulations. Increasingly, developers are not settling for a single rapid e-learning tool, but rather, combining them to produce the results we need. As Peterson's example illustrates, practitioners are bundling the tools, templates, media, and usage instructions together as frameworks so that co-workers and partners can leverage these solution sets to solve similar problems.

For instance, my company has been using rapid e-learning tools to create content snippets that could then be blended into more traditional e-learning frameworks, such as Dreamweaver templates. DeVries and her colleagues at Blue Streak Learning have been blending rapid e-learning in the other direction; they're using Flash content in a Captivate course to add functionality that can't be created in Captivate. "Captivate is the shell, and we create Flash objects to insert in it." While DeVries (and many others) wouldn't consider that a pure rapid e-learning product, more and more of these types of solutions are under development because people are looking for faster, cheaper, better ways to solve their problems and they aren't concerned about the categories or brandings of the tools.

Of course, developers have always used a mix of tools to produce results. The paradigm shift is that the people creating these innovative solutions aren't developers, in many cases, they aren't instructional designers either.

Who is using rapid e-learning

Jack Makhlouf, vice president of customer learning for Articulate, says that two camps have been the primary drivers behind the rapid e-learning market: workplace learning professionals and sales representatives. "Because training departments don't always have enough resources and have a backlog of training, they found an avenue through which they could serve their audience. Rapid e-learning is easy-to-use and easy-to-develop, and developers could put it in the hands of subject matter experts outside of learning and development." For the WLP, the biggest windfall has been serving the many requests that they couldn't serve in the past.

Makhlouf adds that the sales and marketing groups drove early adoption of rapid e-learning. Unable to get what they needed out of the often overworked learning and development team, these groups were accustomed to coming up with information solutions on their own. When they saw that they could adopt rapid e-learning tools and produce product and sales training quickly, they quickly jumped on the bandwagon.

However, the early promise of rapid e-learning was that it would put the power to create e-learning into the hands of subject matter experts. While that promise has certainly been fulfilled in many cases, the key stakeholder is seldom a pure SME. They are, instead, what is typically referred to as a "content owner." Content owners are usually the individuals within the organization who have the highest incentive to communicate ideas or concepts, such as product or marketing managers.

As WLPs found they could meet more demand and sales and marketing groups realized they could create their own learning, many decided to partner. What has emerged is a model in which the instructional designer serves as a content expert and the SME leverages that expertise to produce better learning content.

The model of the SME as e-learning developer seems to be going strong. Increasingly, though, this model is being usurped by a more collaborative model that capitalizes on the SME's strengths while avoiding some of the pitfalls. For example, William Horton Consulting found that in many cases, the best way to work with SMEs was to create a workflow, or framework, that could be used in a team approach to create the overall solution. Putting too much on the SMEs plate was ineffective because the SMEs didn't have the appropriate level of competency in learning.

According to Kit Horton, "The first thought was that SMEs would be able to participate more heavily in the process. We would provide them with PowerPoint templates to fill in, and we wouldn't have to do much work on the back end. Well, that didn't work. Subject matter experts many times don't know how to teach; they just know their subject. We found that a better solution was to craft a sort of questionnaire for them to complete. All they had to do was supply information that they had been asked for; they did not have to think much about how that would be presented to the learner. We then funneled all the information in these questionnaires to people who use templates."

Increasingly, we're seeing partnerships between SMEs and instructional designers to produce more effective solutions with rapid e-learning tools. According to DeVries, "The SMEs may produce the source content, in PowerPoint or Office format"but that base material gets greatly enhanced when a professional instructional designer adds interactions and edits the material." DeVries goes on to underscore client education as one of the critical success factors. "I think one of the keys to making this work is to help people understand the value that an instructional design professional brings to the team just as we understand the value that a web professional brings to a professional website."