Vendor/contractor selection and contracting
Most institutions find they need to contract with vendors and contractors for one or more phases of the project. This may range from actually contracting out the entire project management for building an e-learning environment to keeping it in-house but looking for an LMS vendor or a CMS vendor.
There are many reasons you might choose to outsource some or all of your e-learning project needs. According to an EDUCAUSE center for Applied Research (ECAR) survey (2002), higher education institutions indicated operating efficiencies and lack of in-house skills as the primary reasons to outsource. These are also the main reasons why corporations and government entities outsource. As illustrated in Figure 4.2, additional reasons were cost savings and access to innovative services.
Key consideration for selecting vendors and outsourcing
Selecting a vendor or contracting for outsourced services should be carefully considered in e-learning, as you will likely be stuck with your selection for a minimum of five years. Most e-learning environments take 12-18 months to complete the technical implementation. Simultaneously, it takes approximately two years to make sure faculty, staff, developers designers, and administrators are trained and able to use the system. Then you need to actually use the system in production for a couple of years to work out best practices and see if it meets your needs. So any commitment you make at this stage may be, in effect, at least a five-year commitment. It is not to be taken lightly.