At a preliminary stage in planning materials you will find it useful to identify, even approxi-mately, the potential costs and issues involved. Using the headings below, note any signifi-cant areas of cost which need to be included in your planning.

At an early stage in planning for materials development, you need to consider how open learning fits into your organisation and consider the implications for the type of materials to be produced. In the specification phase of materials development (covered in Unit 2) you will be able to detail how materials will match your organisations needs. However, there needs to be a preliminary assessment of the broader issues and trends in your organisation. The purpose of this is to establish whether there are major factors which will influence the nature of the materials you plan to create. For example, if your organisation is in the proc-ess of reorganisation or if a high capacity network is being installed, these should be identi-fied as they will influence your planning and decision-making.

The following activity enables you to list any factors you feel may have an impact on the case for producing learning materials or the way in which this will be done. As a prompt, we have suggested some headings, but you may identify other factors. At this stage you should be considering anything which will influence any plans to develop materials. In the following section you will take this a stage further to consider the specific requirements the organisation has for open learning materials.

Under the headings below, note any factors affecting materials development and how these will have an impact

1. Financial
e.g. possible budget restrictions

2. Technology
e.g. upgraded system

3. Change
e.g. re-organisation

4. Collaboration
e.g. possibilities for working with publishers

5. People
e.g. likely increase/decrease in staff availableto be involved with materials development

6. Culture
e.g. is the culture of the organisation likely to be responsive/resistant to open learning material?

7. Resources
Are there existing resources which can be used? e.g. use of internal design facilities

8. Training strategy - comparison
How will development of materials fit into longer term strategic training plans? e.g. consistent with move to training focused on key business objectives

9. Existing experience
Have materials been produced before/ e.g. some experience of in-house com-puter-based training production

The activity should have enabled you to carry out a brief survey of the issues which may affect your organisation's ability to produce open learning materials and the nature or for-mat of these materials. Use the box below to identify the most important of the issues you have identified and note any action you need to take at this stage.

Two issues which may be particularly important in your plans are;

• past experience of developing learning material including open learning materials

• available resources

The following next two activities allow you to consider key experiences gained from

• previous materials development

• available resources in your organisation
  
  

Use the following spaces to record key experiences from any previous materials develop-ment. You should include both positive and negative experiences and try to extract any im-plications for future projects

Specify which resources are available in your organisation. Listed below is a short check list of facilities available in many larger organisations.

Are the following available?

2.  IT expertise

3. desktop-Publishing

4. other electronic publishing e.g. CD-ROM development

5. open learning expertise

6. subject matter expertise

7. video/audio

8. multimedia expertise

9. printing

10. editing

This unit has introduced three major issues which you need to consider at the early stages of planning materials development:

• whether to develop your own materials

• the specialist nature of open learning materials

• the requirements of your organisation and the factors which will influence materials development

These are preliminary issues, but may be critical to the overall planning and ultimate suc-cess of any materials development. Reviewing the issues and establishing a clear vision about what is to be produced and why is a foundation for the other activities you will un-dertake in this module.