Transition an ILT course to eLearning

Nov 12, 2013

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know about my background, I'm the person "who explains stuff well" that became the trainer, so I don't have a formal education in Instructional Design.

I recently developed a course for my company's latest software release.  The technology is new for us, so the software is evolving as well as the course.  In spite of the course not being complete, I've been told I need to start work on an eLearning version ASAP.   Management isn't looking for perfection, they just want "something" out there just to say we have an elearning course.  The expectation is that is till be a gradual rollout of modules.  I need help developing a project plan outlining the transition process.

Does anyone have any tips or documents you've used?  Let me know if you need more details.  Thanks!

Renee

5 Replies
Gayla Keesee

Renee,

Have you looked at the old tutorials for Articulate Studio '09 on Building a Better course? The tutorials take a traditional PowerPoint deck and create 3 different courses getting more and more contextual/scenario-based as they went. I learned a lot about course development as I went through the short tutorials. Hope this helps.

http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/courses/about-the-quot-building-better-courses-quot-tutorials.aspx

Sarah Redmond

Hi Renee,

I was in the same boat as you a few years back, and I started with a training needs analysis which can be done in a number of different ways but at it's core I started with a survey - training that has to be done (compliance, get that out of the way first), job-specific (how to do their current job, do that second) then development training for their "next" role. This gave me the list of modules to create and their relative importance, then for each module I did a card sorting exercise - write words, phrases, ideas about the topic down on different cards, then group them in to similar areas and structure the modules around this (often you'll find a module splits in two or three with relative level of expertise). Once this is done, write learning objectives for each module so that as you are writing, you stick to a focus and as people are testing, they can say whether you did or didn't hit the expected mark, then be free and create!

Keep the first iteration simple and go back to it as your skills and confidence improve, and keep checking in with the Articulate community, it's a wealth of information and support!

Hope this helps,

Sarah.

Elizabeth Israel

A few things you may want to think about doing:

Use Camtasia to record step-by-step demos based on the tasks that need to be accomplished.  These should be kept short and be task specific as to how somebody is actually going to use them on their job.

Ask people who are going to be impacted by the software implementation what are their top 3 productivity challenges?  Create a SME taskforce with people who have a great deal of experience as well as those still learning and some newbies.  Use them to ensure your tasks/demos are hitting the mark. 

Use Articulate to show case studies, integrate the demos, have challenges where the participant needs to select what the next step(s) would be and/or if there is an issue how they would resolve the issue.  I always say you don't have to build the Taj Mahal when a Yurt will do.  The most important things to remember about instructional design imo are the following:

Your audience - what do they need to get out of it/what do they need to be able to do?

Short, sweet, and to the point - training should not be a one-time only activity

Engage the user - use people from the field to get "real life" scenarios

Ari Avivi

Elizabeth,

One other thing to remember is that it is okay to be boring.  You will get bored with the simple interactions and designs very quickly and will feel that you want to do something more challenging, and exciting.  The thing that I have to force myself to remember over and over again is this.

"I am the only person who will do this module more than once"

If I would have taken this mantra to heart when i first started designing I would have put out way more product much faster and from and end user point of view they would have been incredibly happy.

just my 25 cents worth of advice

r.e.

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