Demand for online training or eLearning courses is growing at a faster pace than ever. The technologies are changing quickly, and the courses need to be updated continuously to keep it relevant with changing times. Moreover, you also need to introduce new courses frequently to meet demand for new courses and beat the competition. Thus, it becomes very crucial for any online training service provider to develop strategies to develop appealing eLearning courses quickly and cost effectively.
In this article, I will discuss four techniques to develop effective online IT training courses which captivate online audience without costing you a fortune.
Repurpose Old Content
As an eLearning service provider, you might have a lot of valuable assets which may seem to be obsolete or irrelevant. However, if you look at them closely, you will find that a majority of the contents are still relevant if the statistics are updated and by changing few tools or technology resources. You can use old tutorials, resources sections, forum questions and answers, customer service responses, website blogs, etc. to create new content quickly and cost effectively. For instance, take an old website blog, do some research on the same topic and update the data, statistics and related tools and create infographics with updated data. You now have brand new infographics without spending a lot of time in brainstorming or idea generation etc. You can scale the repurposing of the old content by developing a process and content development calendar.
Develop a Theme
Make lots of effort in creating an eLearning theme which is unique to your style and the organization. The color combination of the theme must be related to your brand colors, and overall theme should clearly depict your vision for the eLearning courses. It requires significant efforts to develop a unique theme as you need to take care of several issues such as color combination, the structure of the content, impact on the audience, interactive elements, etc. However, once you have prepared the theme, you can replicate it to develop all new courses. Thus, when you want to develop a new course, utilize the same theme and make minor alterations to match the new course. Thus, you don’t have to worry about the structuring your course and creating a new conceptual framework every time you develop a new course.
Therefore, the course production can be managed efficiently with the help of a theme and standard framework. Moreover, you can also hire an agency to develop content for you without compromising on the quality or look & feel of the course. Using the standard theme, the agency will have a fair idea about the outcomes expected from them. It also helps when new employees join the content development team. They will quickly get an idea of what needs to be done as soon they have access to a few old courses and the theme.
Make Use Authoring tools
There are hundreds of eLearning authoring tools available that can significantly reduce the time and efforts on developing an eLearning course in the technology domain. They have a standard set of objects, interaction elements and media library that can help you design regular IT online training sessions out of the box. Research various eLearning management systems that cater to your industry and technology and use their free demo or training sessions to understand the repository of assets which can be useful to your business. The eLearning management systems also provide set of tools that foster collaboration. Thus, with the help of such systems, your team can easily collaborate internally as well as with contractors and agencies.
Grab Attention using Stock Photos
Get images designed from graphic designers may be quite painful and expensive. You can save a lot of efforts in graphic designing by using stock images websites. You can either take a subscription of paid sites such as Shutter Stock or iStock or research for free stock sites that provide royalty free images. For many sites, you can download as many images as you want just by providing appropriate credits. Similarly, there are several sites where you can create infographics effortlessly. Use these sites and tools tool meet your image designing needs.
Conclusion
Using tips mentioned in the article, you can create a clutter-free, effective eLearning course in IT domain without hassles. It is advisable to set up the content development process to standardized your course production. It saves a great amount of time and resources in producing quality content.
Do you have any ideas which can help in creating eLearning courses more efficiently? Please share them in comments.
David Harred is a technology writer and trainer with an extensive experience in IT Asset Management Training. He is passionate technology and seeks to solve business challenges using new tools. He has also cleared software asset management certification exam and likes to share the experiences with IT professionals.
