How to Build Online Courses Without an L&D Team
- LMSPortals
- 2 hours ago
- 8 min read
Most organizations want to deliver training that looks professional, works smoothly, and actually helps people learn. The problem is that many do not have an internal learning and development team to design and build courses. This creates a familiar bottleneck. You have the knowledge inside your company, but you lack the resources to turn it into structured online learning.
The good news is that you no longer need a full instructional design department to launch quality digital training. With the right platform and the right tools, you can build, manage, and scale online courses using the expertise you already have.
This guide walks through practical strategies for creating online courses without an L&D team, the common challenges to avoid, and how LMS Portals makes it possible with built in course authoring, multi tenant management, and custom SCORM development services.
Why Companies Struggle Without an L&D Team
Before exploring tools and workflows, it helps to understand the core challenges companies face when they try to create training on their own.
1. Knowledge is scattered
Most organizations have experts who know how things work, but their knowledge is spread across departments. Turning that knowledge into course modules requires structure, consistency, and process.
2. Limited time
Subject matter experts rarely have time to learn complex instructional design software or build courses from scratch.
3. No standard for course quality
Without an L&D team, training often gets built ad hoc. Different authors use different formats, tools, and design styles. The result is a mix of inconsistent experiences.
4. Technical barriers
Creating SCORM compliant content usually requires specialized tools and design expertise. Not every team has access to these or knows how to use them effectively.
5. Difficulty scaling training across audiences
Many organizations need to train employees, partners, customers, and vendors. Delivering training to all those groups often requires separate portals, reporting, and administrative controls.
These challenges used to make online learning impractical without a formal training team. Today, platforms like LMS Portals eliminate that barrier.
The Solution: Tools That Do the Heavy Lifting
The fastest path to creating courses without an L&D team is using an LMS that simplifies the work. Instead of forcing your team to learn professional design software, you give them tools that let them build courses directly from the knowledge they already have.
This is where LMS Portals stands out.
What LMS Portals Offers
LMS Portals is a multi-tenant learning management system built for organizations that want flexibility, simplicity, and power in one place. It provides everything you need to create, deliver, and manage online learning without relying on an internal L&D department.
Below are the core capabilities that matter most for teams building training without instructional designers.
1. An Embedded Course Authoring Tool
The built in course authoring tool is one of the biggest advantages of LMS Portals. Instead of switching between multiple applications or outsourcing development, you can create complete courses inside the platform.
What the course authoring tool allows you to do
Upload existing content
You can turn the tools you already use into course material. PDFs, videos, slide decks, audio files, and documents can all be uploaded and arranged as course modules.
Build lessons with drag and drop simplicity
The interface is designed for non technical users. You can structure lessons, add sections, insert media, and organize content without knowing anything about design software.
Add quizzes and assessments
Create multiple choice questions, true or false checks, open response prompts, and more. Assessments can be tied to completion rules and certificates.
Include multimedia
Drop in videos, images, animations, and audio without worrying about file conversions or formatting issues.
Pull from templates
Reusable templates help your team maintain a consistent look and feel across courses, even when different people are authoring them.
For teams without instructional designers, the authoring tool turns subject matter experts into course creators. All they need is the knowledge. The platform handles the presentation.
2. Multi Tenant LMS for Training Multiple Audiences
One reason companies delay building online training is because they serve different groups. Employees need one kind of material, customers need another, partners need something else entirely.
A traditional LMS forces you to mix all those groups into one environment. This creates security issues, reporting confusion, and management headaches.
LMS Portals solves this with a full multi-tenant architecture.
What multi tenancy means for you
You can spin up separate, private learning portals for each audience
Each portal can have its own branding, admins, learners, enrollment rules, and course catalog.
You manage everything from a central dashboard
Create, clone, or delete portals as needed. Assign administrators. Distribute courses across portals or keep them private.
Each audience sees only what they need
Customers do not see employee training. Vendors do not see partner certification courses. Everyone has a clean, focused experience.
Portal level reporting gives you clarity
Track progress, engagement, and completions separately for each group.
This structure is especially valuable for companies that want to sell training, support customers with onboarding courses, or manage distributed teams.
3. Custom SCORM Course Development Services
Some training projects need more than what a simple authoring tool can provide. You may require complex branching scenarios, interactive simulations, compliance driven formats, or professionally designed learning experiences.
LMS Portals offers custom SCORM development services to fill this gap.
What custom SCORM development includes
Instructional design support
Experts help structure your content, define learning objectives, and design an experience that fits your goals.
Full SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004 packaging
Courses are built in industry standard formats that work across any compliant LMS.
Custom multimedia and interaction design
Animations, clickable workflows, scenario based training, video overlays, and more.
Brand aligned design
Colors, styles, tone, and visual elements that match your organization.
Ongoing updates
If your processes change, you can request modifications without rebuilding the entire course.
This service is ideal for organizations that want professional training assets but do not want to hire or build an L&D team internally.
How to Build Online Courses Without an L&D Team
With the right tools, you can create training that is polished, consistent, and aligned with your goals, even without dedicated instructional designers.
Below is a simple step by step process that works for almost any type of course.
Step 1: Identify What People Actually Need to Learn
Start with the problems you need to solve.
Examples:
Employees need to learn how to use a new system.
Customers need onboarding support to reduce support tickets.
Partners need certification to sell your product.
Vendors need compliance training.
Avoid the trap of creating content first. Identify the need, then shape the course around it.
Ask three questions:
What do learners need to understand?
What behaviors do they need to perform?
What mistakes do you want to prevent?
Your answers become the backbone of the course outline.
Step 2: Turn Subject Matter Experts into Course Contributors
You already have the knowledge inside your organization. Capture it.
Ways to extract information from experts:
Short recorded interviews
Screen recordings of workflows
Existing documents, slide decks, and cheat sheets
Process walkthroughs
FAQs from your support team
Take this raw material and organize it into modules.
For example:
Introduction
Key concepts
Procedure or workflow
Common mistakes
Assessment
Resources
The goal is clarity, not perfection. The authoring tool will handle structure and presentation.
Step 3: Build the Course Using the Embedded Authoring Tool
This is where LMS Portals helps you move quickly.
Upload your content.
Arrange modules in a logical order.
Insert videos, images, or documents.
Add an assessment to confirm understanding.
Add completion rules.
Publish the course.
The platform eliminates the complexity that normally slows down course creation.
Step 4: Use Portals to Target Your Audience
Once the course is ready, decide who needs it. With LMS Portals, you can assign the course to one portal or share it across many.
Examples of how companies use this:
A software company creates a portal for each large client with customized onboarding courses.
A consulting firm sells training to multiple organizations, each with its own portal and branding.
A manufacturer trains distributors in separate portals to track certifications.
This structure keeps your training clean, organized, and scalable.
Step 5: Add Professional SCORM Courses When Needed
If you have a course that needs professional polish or advanced interactions, this is where the custom SCORM development service comes in.
You hand off:
Your content
Your process
Your videos or documents
Your preferred style
You get back a fully packaged SCORM course ready for upload.
This hybrid approach gives you speed for everyday training and professional quality for complex topics.
Step 6: Monitor Results and Update Regularly
Training is not a one time activity. Use built in reporting to track:
Average test scores
Drop off points
Time spent per module
Learner feedback
This helps you refine courses over time.
When a process changes or new information is needed, simply update the course inside the authoring tool. Updates take minutes, not weeks.
The Benefits of Building Courses Without an L&D Team
By combining expert knowledge with easy to use tools, companies gain significant advantages.
1. Faster course development
Your team can create courses in days instead of months.
2. Lower costs
No instructional design hires. No expensive authoring software.
3. Consistency across training
Templates and structured authoring keep everything uniform.
4. Real time updates
You can modify content instantly as your business evolves.
5. Scalability across audiences
Multi tenant portals let you grow training programs without chaos.
6. Ability to blend simple courses with professional SCORM elements
Every course gets the level of polish it needs.
Real World Examples of What This Looks Like
Here are a few typical use cases.
A SaaS company onboarding new customers
They build short video based modules using the embedded authoring tool. They create a dedicated portal for each enterprise client. They track adoption and product usage improvements.
A manufacturing company training field technicians
They record experts explaining procedures. They package advanced safety simulations using custom SCORM development. They manage all training through separate portals by region.
A professional services firm selling training
They use portals to deliver branded learning environments for each client. They build most courses internally and outsource one or two premium courses each year.
These examples show that you can build a complete training ecosystem without building an internal L&D department.
Why LMS Portals Is Built for Teams Without L&D Resources
Every feature of LMS Portals supports organizations that need training but do not have formal instructional design teams.
The embedded authoring tool makes course creation fast and simple.
The multi tenant LMS architecture solves the challenge of training different audiences.
Custom SCORM development services give you access to professional design when needed.
Centralized reporting keeps everything transparent.
Administrative controls help you scale without losing control.
This combination lets your organization move from idea to training delivery in a fraction of the time that traditional methods require.
Final Thoughts
You do not need a full learning and development team to build effective online courses. You need the right platform, a structured approach, and access to expert support when things get complex.
LMS Portals gives you all three.
You can build courses directly from your internal expertise, roll out private portals for each audience you serve, and elevate your training with custom SCORM courses whenever you need them.
Your people already have the knowledge. LMS Portals helps you turn that knowledge into learning that works.
About LMS Portals
At LMS Portals, we provide our clients and partners with a mobile-responsive, SaaS-based, multi-tenant learning management system that allows you to launch a dedicated training environment (a portal) for each of your unique audiences.
The system includes built-in, SCORM-compliant rapid course development software that provides a drag and drop engine to enable most anyone to build engaging courses quickly and easily.
We also offer a complete library of ready-made courses, covering most every aspect of corporate training and employee development.
If you choose to, you can create Learning Paths to deliver courses in a logical progression and add structure to your training program. The system also supports Virtual Instructor-Led Training (VILT) and provides tools for social learning.
Together, these features make LMS Portals the ideal SaaS-based eLearning platform for our clients and our Reseller partners.
Contact us today to get started or visit our Partner Program pages