The global lockdown has accelerated the move to eLearning. Almost all learning institutions have either done it or are planning on it. The benefits are many: it's time saving, flexible, cost-effective and much more. Here's a step-by-step plan to consider when starting your journey to eLearning:
Without digital material, there is no eLearning. This stage is where you gather all the existing course material in your repertoire and prepare it for conversion to eLearning. Conversion is a great opportunity for you to rethink your training material – you must carefully review it and look out for any inaccurate or outdated information. Good instructional design suggests that eLearning outcomes are achieved with multi-media courses; so consider how much text can become visual (graphics, animation or videos) or just discard it altogether to yield more digestible content. Once your material has been prepared, the fun part follows: creating the eLearning. There are three ways you can approach this:
1. Find an eLearning company to do it
Using the services of a specialist comes with many perks. Besides providing content and reviewing of the eLearning before sign off, your involvement in the conversion process is minimal – they do all they hard work. They have all the know-how on creating eLearning that follows the principles of instructional design; almost guaranteeing quality material that it will be engaging and effective. This does, however, tend to be costly and take long.
With online platforms such as Udemy and LinkedIn Learning, you can learn to do virtually anything. Why not learn to create your own eLearning? You can set up an in-house eLearning production team to handle all your organisation’s eLearning content needs. This is a cost effective solution that gives your staff the opportunity to expand their skill set. The downside is that this is a steep learning curve; hours of training will have to be committed to achieve what a professional eLearning creator can produce. Until staff can get to a professional level, the quality of the eLearning material will suffer.
This is the only viable option. It involves outsourcing a good eLearning company to train your team members. To ensure consistency, the company can build templates and provide guidance on instructional design to ensure that your content is high quality, dynamic and professional. This also have the advantages of option 1 and 2.
After converting your training, you will need a platform where this new material will be conveyed: a Learning management system or eLearning platform. The first and most important thing to consider when choosing a vendor is whether they can provide good support. Any Tom, Dick and Harry can resell an LMS and learn just enough to provide basic support. You will need a provider that knows their system inside-out and can give support on the most complex issues you may have. They should be able to modify the system to your organisation’s needs and integrate systems that you may already have in place.
A good LMS must accommodate blended learning. This means it should be capable of eLearning as well as a virtual classroom or webinar style training functionality (think of Zoom or Teams).
People are resistant to change, especially when it’s sudden – this is just how humans are wired. You can defy nature by phasing eLearning into your organisation gradually. You can shorten contact training sessions and ask learners to refer to the material on the LMS. Over time, their contact classes can be handled by the LMS as well as through webinar-style classes.
So, to sum it up, converting your eLearning can be done in three ways: paying a company specialising in eLearning, learning to do it in-house or approaching a company to train your staff. The latter is the best way to go about it: your staff learns more and the content they produce is consistent and professional. When choosing an LMS make sure that the vendor is knowledgeable of the system and is able to integrate your existing systems. Lastly, phase your eLearning in gradually. This is your one-way ticket to a successful eLearning journey. To start yours, contact us for a consultation.
Sound Idea Digital creates eLearning and develops learning management systems and eLearning Platforms.
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