Finding the right elearning vendor can be extraordinarily difficult.
As a buyer, you’re exposed to a tantalizing veneer put up by the sales and marketing team that keeps you from peeking behind the curtain and getting a better idea of what you will actually get. I know because I’ve been on both sides of the table – as a buyer and a seller. I’ve seen the mistakes that buyers make in the hiring process and I’ve made plenty of them myself. I’ve seen the problems that can come up once a project gets underway and how some of them could have been avoided in hiring. Through all of this, I’ve identified some key questions that, when asked, can go a long way toward making sure you have a good experience with your learning vendor.
Key questions to ask your learning agency
In the process of hiring an agency, it is essential to try and ascertain, to the greatest extent possible, how the agency will manage critical factors that affect partnership success. To do that, I recommend exploring the lines of inquiry below. If at all possible, I would try to ask these questions of someone from their delivery teams (rather than just the sales staff) since they are in the best position to give you the specifics you may need.
1. Can you meet us where we are?
The point is to figure out what the typical starting point for them is and to see how that lines up with where you are in the process. Do they expect you to hand them a neat outline? If so, do you have one? If not, can they work without one? If you need help exploring the problem a little and further clarifying the goals, do they do that? I would be looking for evidence that they are not so in love with their own process that they cannot flex it to suit almost any situation. I would be looking for evidence that, as a matter of standard procedure, they take the time to deeply explore the problems you are trying to solve, why it is important to the business, and what may be hard for your learner populations.
2. What will I need to provide you for you to get started?
It is rare that we start projects with subject matter that is documented in a single place that is neat, well organized, and complete. It usually is scattered amongst a bunch of PowerPoints, PDFs, and in the heads of various subject matter experts. Try to find out what they typically receive from clients, how that aligns with what you have, and if not, whether they are able to adapt. My own perspective is that the less I have to do before engaging an agency, the more I can concentrate on other things. I happen to think this is one of the main value-adds that a good instructional designer can offer.
3. What work will be required of me during this process?
Will you or someone at the firm have to come up with ideas for instructional strategies? Write content? Create storyboards? Even produce PowerPoints? I will have enough work coordinating reviews, aligning stakeholders, and overseeing the project without also having to do the writing. Besides, instructional design by definition is the act of identifying optimal learning activities and creating the instruction. If someone on my end has to do that, what am I actually paying for?
4. How will my project be staffed?
This is the most important line of questioning. Key sub-questions include: What roles will there be on my project team? How will team members be assigned to the team? Which roles will be W2 employees vs. 1099 contractors? Which role will have final decision-making authority? What is the decision-maker’s background? I would look for a project lead who is a full-time W2 employee, has been with the company for a long time — preferably having moved up into the role — who has run many projects similar to mine, and who has a background in instructional design.
5. How do you manage mid-project changes?
What is their attitude about changes? How much discretion will you, the sponsor, have to alter course at various points? What constitutes a big change versus a small change? Changes are an inevitable part of every single project. When you begin a project, neither you nor the agency have all the information needed to make every decision. From my perspective, the ideal way of dealing with changes that could affect scope is to approach the issue with a “let’s see how we can get this done” attitude — first exploring whether you can take from some other part of the solution in order to accommodate the new one.
Bonus questions:
6. What tools will you be using?
If they use a proprietary tool, that means you will have no choice but to work with the same agency if you need to make updates. For interactive elearning, I’d look for an agency that uses Articulate’s Storyline — it has become standard, has been around for a long time, and courses built in Storyline will work with virtually any LMS.
7. Do you use templates and if so, how do you use them?
Some agencies have a menu of instructional activities that you choose from. Some are so templated that all you basically do is draft some text and drop it into the template. I strongly believe that if you want a person to learn from your instruction, the teaching strategy has to closely align with the specific learning objective. I would never hire a firm that uses templated instructional activities.
8. Do you use AI and if so, how do you use it?
AI has introduced three big factors that need to be managed: attribution, accuracy, and quality. When you use AI to generate content from open sources, it is pulling from a broad set of data, some of which may be proprietary or of suspect credibility. As the buyer, it is very important to understand how your elearning agency intends to use AI on your project. I would be most comfortable if they were using AI in small spots throughout the project to save time and not leaning on it too heavily to generate content based on data from the internet.
