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By Erica, July 13, 2009 3:23 pm

I mentioned that I’m working on a fast track course that needs to get out the door by the end of next month. Considering our “year” didn’t start until the beginning of this month, it’s a crazy time line.

I believe in highly-focusing my attention and banging out work. So, that’s what I’ve done for the last three weeks. I researched, located resources and I wrote. And, I wrote for elearning. Which is an entirely different beast from classroom training. The biggest difference is there is no narrator in our courses. There’s no one to smooth out the rough edges.

All of this would be a no-brainer except I had to work with someone else on this project. Someone that is supposed to have more experience in the content, but I’m the lead because I
a) asserted myself as such
and
b) have written many elearning courses.

When we initially met to go over who was going to write what, it was all vague and sketchy but the time line was sharply in focus.

I explained the need to write as if there is no voice telling trainees what they need to know. The content must come to the screen fully formed just like Athena popping out of Zeus’s head. She was ready to go with weapons in hand and elearning content must be sufficiently together so that learners are prepared and ready to go with the content.

Time passed and I ended up writing 90% of the course and am now using my project management skills to get the content expert on staff to answer my emails and finish her content in a way that can be delivered online. Our supervisor has been mum for a variety of reasons but needs to step up and provide some leadership because I need her to do it and the course needs her to do it. Without this leadership, I feel like I’m shouting into the void and we’ll slide on the deadline. That’s unacceptable for me and for the high-profile nature of this course.

This leads me to wonder:

Was I not clear enough about needs and deadlines?

Was I not clear enough about writing style? I provided links to several elearning courses our organization has produced so that the content expert could review them to get a sense of style. I know she hasn’t reviewed any of them based on conversations we’ve had about style and possible interactions. Should I have pressed her to examine those courses?

OR, is all of this really my problem and not how someone else is behaving?

Were my expectations too high and time too short for me to be of more help on the basics? Should I have found a way to make more time to be helpful? Did I make assumptions I shouldn’t have?