Adherence to Standards in the Development of E-Learning Programs.

During the evolution of any knowledge-sharing endeavor, the target audience has an expectation of commonality between their own constructs and a set of standard operating practices learned from their educational experience. Standards, whether dictated or de facto, help us in our daily lives. It is a foregone conclusion, when travelers rent a car in a country halfway around the world, they will use the brake pedal and steering wheel just as they would with their own car. This simple expectation is all because of standards. The user expects the experience to be similar across different products in the same category or class. Computer-based courseware faces similar challenges, as many different design teams have created their own products that train a multitude of different subjects. The most prolific are the more high-tech disciplines of the military, aerospace, and medical fields. Even though these disparate fields have vastly different learning and distribution needs, the learners expect a common interface protocol that appears familiar and reflective of their previous computer-based training (CBT) experience. This commonality is dictated by the role of standards, guidelines, and specifications. Too often though, there are many independent courseware developers who operate on their own accord and do not adhere to the published industry standards or specifications. This can create frustrations for the end user or learning management system (LMS) provider. Each discipline uses its own set of standards, but e-learning programs in the aerospace industry are governed by the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) and sharable content object reference model (SCORM) published industry standards. Each standard was created to fulfill the needs of a burgeoning e-learning industry focused on training the personnel of a rapidly evolving, high-tech aerospace and military industry. Discussion In the early 1990s, the U.S. Government realized e-learning programs were difficult to manage because of the different techniques used by the early e-learning developers. In 1997, the U.S. Department of Defense and the White House Office of Science and Technology created the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative (Jones, 2002). The ADL network was formed to enable anywhere/anytime access to quality learning. Within the ADL initiative, the AICC was formed from an international association of technology-based training professionals. The AICC continues to develop guidelines for the delivery and evaluation of CBT (including web-based) programs, and related training technologies for the aerospace industry. The AICC specifications, although initially designed for aviation, are currently more general purpose in nature so e-learning suppliers can spread their efforts across multiple projects. As a result, the AICC specifications have broad acceptance and relevance to aviation and non-aviation developers. Providing more detailed standards and specifications, the SCORM was created to manage the development of e-learning programs, especially when addressing learning management cross-platform concerns. As with any set of industry standards, developers have differing views. Generally, standards are created to homogenize an industry, resulting in consistent user expectations and smooth operation. The protagonists respect the work of these standardization committees and realize, even though adhering to these standards may cause additional development cycles, the benefits result in a smooth implementation process and more satisfied customers. In opposition, some antagonists (Robson, 2000) generally feel any industry standard stifles creativity and innovation, regardless of benefits. Often, the victim of this disregard is the end user. For confusing wayfaring (navigation), crashes, broken links, jumbled content, poor writing, and unloadable graphics are just a few of the problems that cause confusion and distrust from the user perspective. …