Custom e-learning course development. What is it?
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to training employees. Each organization has its own learning needs, and what kind of knowledge your employees are looking for can vary. That’s where custom e-learning course development can help.
Custom e-learning course development refers to the process of creating tailored learning content to meet the various learning needs throughout your organization. There are several ways to carry this process out. You could involve an instructional designer to create custom content, or you can empower your in-house subject matter experts to create it themselves.
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At Easygenerator, we recommend the latter — an approach known as Employee-generated Learning (EGL). Enabling your subject matter experts to create custom content for their peers comes with several added benefits, which we’ll cover in more detail later.
How to custom your eLearning course development
Here’s a generic process to go about custom e-learning course development and design:
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Discover
Have a detailed conversation with your key stakeholders or even learners to understand their performance or learning context, goals, and gaps.
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Analyse
Classify the needs as Cognitive, Behavioral, and Social Needs. This will aid in further designing the learning content accordingly.
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Design
Create a rough storyboard that works like a blueprint of the course. It clearly indicates the outline, the flow, design, and technical elements that would go into the course.
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Validate
Get your stakeholders to review and confirm the plan before you delve deep into content creation.
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Develop
Start authoring the first draft of the content along with visual elements using an authoring tool.
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Test
Get your team to review the content for language and UX across devices while you may ask your stakeholders for technical accuracy.
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Publish and Maintain
You can publish your custom e-learning module on the cloud or platform of your choice. You would update or refresh the content in case of any future changes.
Don’t forget to check out the top 5 e-learning examples to enhance learner engagement.
Benefits of custom e-learning course development
Designing custom eLearning courses is actually one of the best practices in e-learning and comes with many advantages, including:
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Personalized learning experiences
Unlike generic, off-the-shelf content, custom e-learning courses are designed with your employees’ unique needs in mind. That means they stand to benefit from a more personalized learning experience that fulfills their knowledge gaps more accurately.
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Better learner motivation and engagement
With more specific learning objectives targeting your organization’s unique needs, learners don’t have to wonder what value they’ll be getting out of the content. They’ll be more likely to have a meaningful and relevant learning experience, which would increase their motivation to engage.
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Time and cost savings
While off-the-shelf content may seem like the timeliest and cheapest solution, it can also lead to more costs down the line. Providing tailored e-learning from the start allows your learners to access the exact knowledge from the beginning, reducing the need for follow-up content. And, when e-learning is created in-house using a user-friendly authoring tool, you can keep content up to date over time. This prevents the need to create entirely new courses on the same subject all over again, saving you both time and money in the long run.