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Designing Your Own Online Training
by Mark Bowden, Founder & Director
Right now we are seeing growth in online training like it has never seen before and the trend is set to continue to rise dramatically into the future.
But if you are thinking of a Learning Management Program for your business, what are the things to consider when it comes to designing your own training, how do you go about creating training, can you create training without e-learning skills and what are the options available?
Iโll try to address these points to help you to choose the training course creation route for your company.
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“E-learning takes 40% to 60% less employee time than traditional learning”
Designing Courses
As an instructional designer, Iโve always favoured the traditional e-learning route and used an external programme to create interactive e-learning. From an e-learning course perspective, designed well using video, interaction, variables, java and a whole host of tools, traditional e-learning will always yield the best results.
There are a few reasons for creating better more engaging learning and that is to do exactly that. Making them engaging and not just another boring tick-box exercise will certainly give a better result from a learning perspective. Where the information is skipped through poorly designed training, the likelihood of a decent learning outcome can be poor.
When itโs not the most interesting subject in the world, compliance for example, it is important to make the learner interact with the program. This might be through voiceover, creating clickable content, video and asking and quizzing the learner. Absorbing information is always better when the learner has to think for themselves, interact and be tested.
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Creating e-learning using this way takes quite a lot more skill and may involve engaging an instructional designer to create learning to fit your company, or finding an LMS provider that carries interactive learning in their standard content that fits the requirements you need.
Classic tools for the creation of interactive e-learning are Storyline and Adobe Captivate. Both require some time and effort to learn but there is a whole internet of help and guidance to quickly get a new user some of the basic skills needed to create interactive learning. Articulate is a big player in course creation. They have 9+ million course assets with an ever-growing library of templates to get started.
As HR and learning professionals get to know and work with these types of programs more, the training courses they produce will get better.
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What is Scorm files?
Generally, courses created this way, are published in Scorm or xapi format, which is a publication format uploaded to an LMS, that allows the learner to drop in and out of a course with the LMS being able to remember where the learner left off. This makes longer interactive courses where the subject requires multiple modules and makes them more manageable for the learner, enabling them to complete them over a period of time.
Pass rate criteria can talk to an LMS too, which reports completion of a course or can report back, questions asked or a pathway taken through a course in xapi published format. Indeed the information that can be gained from a course can be quite extensive.
The other methods for creating and delivering online training are through the use of a course authoring tool, directly built into an LMS. Most of the better LMSs will have this option, with varying degree of features that you can add.
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Adding Interactive Content
Some use external plugins such as H5P, which allows more options to create courses using drag and drop, various quiz creation tools, videos including linking to YouTube-type content, interactive video, document upload and classic word-type content creation.
The skill is to create a variety of content so the learner still has to engage to some degree. Most LMS platforms will have options to lock down content, such as making the learner watch an entire video and or to set passing marks in tests.
The option many businesses are looking for when they are considering an LMS is the option of blended learning. Blended learning might be a mixture of online modules combined with on-the-job training, or external courses the learner may need to attend, but blended together gives them the requirements needed to pass the course.
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Blended Learning Method
Blended learning options might also include assignment work that a learner must complete outside the platform, and upload as evidence of completion. It could have a setting in the LMS that requires an instructor to mark or comment on work uploaded, as part of a course curriculum or assignment.
The type of how you intend to create and use courses is a very important factor to consider before you choose your LMS and this, together with many other factors we will discuss in our other guides will help you make a more informed decision.
One huge consideration when it comes to different types of LMSโs is the use of Scorm and xapi published content.
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And finally…
New types of platforms such as Thinkific, Teachable, Skillshub and similar LMS sites that have appeared in the recent few years, allow for unlimited users which is cheaper, but the option to upload real e-learning content published in scorm and xapi is not possible.
Expert LMS can allow for own content course creation, scorm and xapi. Learners start from ยฃ2 per month.ย
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