Working with contractors for e-learning content

While working with contractors for the building and delivery of e-learning content is much the same as working with any other external provider at UCL (with associated HR and Finance procedures), there are a few aspects that you may want to ensure are covered:

• Please note that Digital Education does not support complex contractor-developed content. The nature of the content developed (such as SCORM or similar) and the level of time and expertise required both mean that full support is unfeasible. Moodle already offers a lot of flexible functionality and tools to develop content and course flow, and we are happy to discuss and support you if you want to develop your Moodle course further, or talk about your options. You can email digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk if you'd like to start a conversation. 

• If contracting for delivery of 'stand-alone' or 'packaged' e-learning such as SCORM (https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/x/SIRGAg) or Articulate Storyline items, you should ensure that these NOT use Flash Player (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash) to display as this format is unusable for mobile devices and has an official end-of-life in 2020. Ask instead for HTML5 compatible packages.

• If developing stand alone packages as described above, you should also ask for final delivery of a copy of the original project files used to create the packages. Without these there is no way to update content, or re-publish in a different format - and even with the project files this may require specialist expertise. 

• Please ensure that any developments are properly documented and have a handover document. Unless you are intending to keep a developer on-hand indefinitely, you will have to support the final product with regards to students and other staff - be it a single e-learning package/activity or a full Moodle course. In either case, if what has been developed is complex, having some degree of understanding, or at least a document to be able to hand over to a later developer, is likely to be invaluable.