Converting ILT Courses to Online Learning – Why & How?

“I was better because I spent time sharpening my axe.” – ANON

Training and development lets you improve your employee performance and achieve your business goals. Any organization that invests in its employee development efforts experiences increased retention rate, improved job performance, loyal and engaged employees, higher productivity, reduced accidents, satisfied customers, and new inventions. But, how do you ensure your employees are trained on a regular basis? How do you build a culture of continuous learning within your organization? Are there any feasible and effective methods of training that are beneficial both to the employee and the company?

Well, there are many methods of training including technology-based learning, simulators, on-the-job training, coaching/mentoring, group discussions, role playing, tutorials, games, outdoor training, videos, and case studies; and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Today, I am going to discuss the most popular technology-enabled learning method, eLearning that is widely adopted by most of the organizations, worldwide. We will also see how you can get started easily with eLearning development and implementation in your organization.

Why choose eLearning?

Hunting for the right trainers is a daunting task:

With eLearning, you don’t have to worry about arranging for a training manager who can train your employees whenever required. The same online training program can be used for both the existing and new employees.

Training globally dispersed workforce incurs huge travel costs:

For organizations with a globally dispersed workforce, sending trainers to each location can be a costly affair. In case of eLearning, you can translate the same course into multiple languages and rollout the training to employees located in different countries. Also, the employees have the added advantage of learning in their native languages.

Frequent reinforcement of training not a viable solution:

If an organization intends to update the knowledge and skills of its employees, then refresher training would be the best option. But, arranging a classroom training session for any little update can be a time-consuming and an overwhelming task, both for the employee and the employer. With eLearning, you can easily update training content and keep your workforce’s learning current.

Difficult to train employees who are on the move:

Sales plays the most crucial part in the growth of a company. And, if you have sales personnel who have to meet customers for finalizing deals, then updating these personnel on product updates is very important. Also, they should have quick access to the training content to refresh their memories with knowledge gained at previous instances. Under these circumstances, nothing can beat eLearning in the form of small learning nuggets.

Now let’s see how to get started with ILT to eLearning conversion.

• Collect all your existing ILT content. Collect all your training materials available in any format including hard copies, PPTs, video files, etc. in one place. By doing so, you can quickly get started with the eLearning development.
• Try creating a curriculum for your training so that it’s easy and the training is worthwhile. It is always better to develop training programs that cover a topic extensively. This helps the learner understand the concept better and it is also easy to get SMEs who work on the project at a go.
• Instructional Treatment for the content by adding learning objectives, assessments, and certification. Any training program that has measurable outcomes is considered highly impactful. So, try to inculcate the right learning objectives and add summative assessments at the end of the course. And most importantly, have a certification program in place because it helps boost the morale of the employees.
• Figure out a person who has subject knowledge – The SME. Having an SME will help you in creating factually correct course content. SMEs are also useful in clarifying subject-related doubts and are ideal sources for getting good ideas about presenting the content in a logical and structured way.
• Identify people who are ready to learn the authoring tools for online delivery. Once you have the content and the SME in place, try to figure out people who can learn the courseware development tools and get started with developing the online courses. If you don’t find anybody in-house, you can decide to outsource your eLearning development requirement. But, ensure that you get all the details about your outsourcing eLearning vendor as hiring a wrong company could get you into great trouble.
• Check out for the eLearning development software tool that is easy to get started. There are many authoring tools in the market for your eLearning development requirements. And, most of these tools require minimum to no-programming knowledge for converting your ILT materials to online learning courses. Some of the popular tools used by most of the companies are Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, Lectora Inspire, and Articulate Studio, to name a few.

• Assign a project manager who can plan and communicate with the SME and online course designers and developers. It is very important that you have a project manager in place who can manage your eLearning project right from content collection to online course development and delivery on the learning management platform. This will help in the smooth launch of eLearning courses.
• Arrange for a Learning Management System through which you can easily deliver the training. The LMS will help you not only deliver your online courses to learners but also manage and evaluate their

I guess you are now ready to start off with online learning development and implementation in your organization. If you have any other quick and easy ways of getting started with eLearning implementation, please share your views.