Ever see that fabulous 80s movie with Elizabeth Shue, Adventures in Babysitting? If you haven’t, I highly advise it for a little nostalgic humor. If you have, then I’m sure you’ve had days, weeks, even months like that. Truly, every industry and job has its ups and downs. But to put mine in to perspective, here’s a little comparison.

Remember when Chris’ friend calls her from the bus station after her failed attempt to run away? I would equate that to a few of our developers who didn’t like options present for creating online courses and tried to chase down alternatives. When those didn’t work out quite the way they expected, though we had tried to provide warnings and advice along the way, we got the call to come help.

On the way to the bus station in downtown Chicago, Chris and the kids wind up on the side of the interstate with a flat tire and no spare. That’s kind of like us running around to get the keys and our coat and try to go help, but on the way figuring out that no one has the time or money upfront to solve this little course creation problem.

Thankfully, there’s this nice tow truck driver passing by who’ll stop to help out. He’s kind of like one of my team members who can help us create a nifty authoring tool, but it’s going to take some elbow grease. Instead of driving like a madman to some house and then running in with a gun, my guy is running off to get married and take a honeymoon.

When Chris and the kids get freaked out by the gunfire, they go to get in her car, but wind up carjacked by a ring of thieves. Given all of the other current course developments on our plate, this is kind of like the prescriptive learning feature we’re trying to push out. It’s a cool way of directing specific course content to be displayed based upon profile information and/or questions answered. Before we can get to any other project though, we’ve got a gang full of heavy hitters pressing us to get this completed.

Now on the run from the carjacking ring, Chris and the kids wind up in a blues club. Now, she does a pretty good job of singing on the fly, but I’m not that good. In fact, you’ll remember my ealier posting about eLearning Program Evaluation. That’s kinda like singing about where we’ve been and what we’ve been through. Too bad it’s not as enjoyable. In the past few weeks, I’ve gotten a crash course in Kaplans Balanced Scorecard, but still couldn’t really tell you squat about it (other than it’s a way to divide evaluation areas into major categories) and split out all of our evaluation areas into individual questions that indicate which subheading and Kaplan category it falls under as well as what sources provided the answer to the question.

In the end, everything works out for Chris. She finds out her boyfriend is a cheater, but realizes she doesn’t need him. She even gets her car fixed and everyone makes it home safe. I’m sure my team will emerge from our latest adventures a little banged up and bruised, but successful.