In today’s highly competitive and increasingly complex global economy, corporate eLearning and training has reached a new level of importance to ensure that your employees are prepared to face these new challenges. As a market, corporate eLearning and training is poised to increase by $38 billion during over the next four years, growing at a CAGR of more than 11% during this period.
However, any company that has delved into employee learning and development is likely to have experienced the challenges associated with creating relevant and engaging learning content. Today’s workers (especially younger employees) have developed high standards and specific expectations when it comes to learning and training strategies. To be successful, corporate learning executives must understand and adhere to audience expectations in order to derive the highest possible value from their training programs.
The eLearning Approach to Corporate Training
In years past, the only real corporate training option available to most companies was through in-person, classroom-based training sessions. This approach was, however, expensive in that it called for travel costs and on-site instructor fees, as well as the printing and distribution of learning and training materials. In addition, classroom-based training has a major element of inconvenience in that in requires the employees to gather at the same location, sometimes for extended periods of time.
More recently, online learning, also known as “eLearning” has emerged as a preferred method for corporate eLearning and training. eLearning refers to the use of electronic technologies (the Internet, primarily) to drive and support training programs.
The core technology that supports all types of eLearning programs is a Learning Management System, or “LMS”. An LMS is the application that is used to build, deliver, manage, and track corporate training programs.
Utilizing the LMS Portals Platform for Creating eLearning Content
LMS Portals provides our clients and partners with a cloud-based, multi-tenant learning management system that allows you to launch and manage multiple, private eLearning environments (portals) all from a centralized administrative console. Each portal you launch can be branded for that training audience and includes supporting tools for user onboarding, collaboration, analytics, and more.
LMS Portals also includes powerful tools for creating eLearning content using your existing learning, training, and marketing materials.
The process for creating eLearning content within the LMS Portals platform (from a best practices perspective) is as follows:
Define Your Course Goals
The first step in building any type of eLearning course is in defining the goals and objectives of the course. Knowing the desired outcome will allow you to then work backwards to create a course designed to achieve your stated goals.
Know Your Audience
The second step is in getting to know your training audience, including their learning styles and current level of skills and knowledge. This understanding should be heavily considered as you acquire training materials and consider the structure of the course.
Structure the Course
The structure of an eLearning course has taken on increased importance in recent years as the concept of microlearning (breaking learning efforts into bite-sized chunks) has become the norm. Learner expectations now dictate that courses be structured in such a way that will allow them to conduct their training activities in multiple smaller efforts and “digest” that information before moving on to the next section.
Gather Your Training Materials
Once you have structured your course into logical sections and lessons, you can gather the training materials to include, such as videos, PDFs, documents, images, and more. The LMS Portals platform allows you to re-purpose most any of your existing learning materials, thus decreasing your development costs and minimizing your delivery time for the course.
Invite Users
When you course is live, you can leverage the multiple ways in which LMS Portals allows you to invite and onboard your learners. The platform includes an invitation system as well as allowing users to register themselves from the portal.
Track and Report On Usage and Success
LMS Portals offers a robust analytics and reporting engine to track and deliver reports regarding user engagement, progress, and success. The ongoing review of this information can help you to decide when and where to revise your program and courses to ensure long-term success.
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