10 Tips That Make It Easy to Shift In-Person Training to a Rise 360 Course

Do you need to transition training from in-person to online fast? Maybe you’re trying to reach a broader audience, reduce course costs, help people learn where and when they like, or expand how you offer training. Whatever the reason, Rise 360 is a great solution! This web-based authoring app makes course creation simple. All you have to do is stack prebuilt modular blocks and then customize them to make them your own.

The building process in Rise 360 is easy, and thankfully the transformation process can be as well. With these design and development tips, you’ll be able to take your collection of in-person PowerPoint decks and speaker notes and morph them into engaging e-learning courses that meet—and even exceed—your original learning goals.

1. Start with the easy fixes

Some information takes less effort to move into e-learning than others. So if you’re in a time crunch and need a few quick wins, it’s good to know what kinds of in-person content are easiest to move online. That way you can prioritize courses that can be transformed fast.

Not sure how to identify those quick shifts? Look at your content. If it’s easy to explain with text, images, video, and interactions, it’s simple to move into Rise 360. But what about a course that’s heavy on audience interaction or guided hands-on practice? It’s still possible to shift it to e-learning. But it does require re-envisioning how learners engage with the content so it works as a self-paced, individual learning experience. It might be better to save that course for when you have more time for the transformation process.

2. Use your existing slides to establish the course structure

Looking at a new, blank screen can sometimes make your brain go blank as well. But with Rise 360, you can often kickstart your course outline using the framework from your in-person slide deck.

As you’re thinking about structure, it’s important to know how Rise 360 courses are organized.

• Blocks are the smallest component you’ll work with. They’re prebuilt layouts and interactions that you customize to make your own. Check out this link to see all the block options you have.
• You’ll stack blocks together in lessons. Think of lessons like chapters in a book.
• If you have a lot of lessons, sections help you cluster similar ones together.

What’s great is that the framework of in-class slide decks often maps well to these three Rise 360 structures. Your next steps then depend on content density.

• Each slide covers a lot of information: If you have them, use section slide titles as your Rise 360 sections. Next, take the titles from your remaining slides and make them each a lesson. Finally, build out those lessons by taking each slide’s subtopics and converting them to one or more blocks.
• Each slide covers a small amount of information: Try using the deck section titles as your Rise 360 lessons, and shift the content from each slide to one or more blocks within them. 

And remember, whichever approach you use, these guidelines aren’t hard and fast rules—just pointers to get the first draft of your course mapped out.

3. Make block templates for custom layouts you’ll use regularly

Once you’ve settled on your lessons, you’ll need to start building them. In a PowerPoint deck you use slide layouts to display your content. In Rise 360, your content is displayed in blocks instead. 

The default block designs work perfectly in most situations. But sometimes you’ll want a specific look and feel that requires a bit of customization. Maybe you want to use a custom color for all the quotes in your course. Or perhaps you like how several blocks together can display the resources at the end of each lesson. Thankfully, you don’t have to start from scratch each time. Instead, create a block template to save your custom design so it can be used again with just a click—within this course or in any future ones you or your team members create.

4. Rework facilitator notes for copy

You already have a good starting point for your e-learning course copy—the slide speaker notes or facilitator guide from your in-person training. You can repurpose that text so the content is still engaging, even without a live facilitator. In a previous tip you used your slide deck to map out your lessons. Now, add in the corresponding speaking notes for the lessons and blocks you created.

As you do this, you may need to tweak the text or content order. That’s because what works well in a live class with a facilitator may need slightly different wording or flow to resonate in a self-paced course. So put yourself in the shoes of learners exploring this information on their own to spot areas for adjustment.

Also look for ways to trim the copy to just the core information your learners need. Less fluff means it’ll be easier for learners to remember the course information that matters most. And they’ll appreciate brevity if they take the course on their phone or are checking it out between other tasks.

5. Use video to capture facilitator stories

Live facilitators are often terrific at sharing stories that illustrate how the content applies in real life. And you don’t have to lose that when you shift to e-learning. Instead, use video to capture those examples and narratives and include them in your course. This can be as simple as recording the facilitator on camera. Or, if you’ve got great slides that help the story come to life, combine them with the presenter’s audio to make a video.

6. Reuse existing images and graphics as course illustrations

While Rise 360 gives you access to a massive library of photos and illustrations, you can also repurpose existing artwork from the original training. Pull individual graphics from your deck, or export entire slides as images and reuse them in your Rise 360 course. And if an image needs a bit of cropping to look perfect in your block, you can do that right within Rise 360.

7. Turn discussion topics into interactions

In-person classes often use discussions to deepen people’s understanding. They’re a chance for learners to apply their new knowledge or explore how it relates to real-world scenarios. While your first instinct when shifting to e-learning might be to remove them entirely, there is another option—transforming discussions into reflection questions or knowledge check interactions. While these are more independent activities, they still provide a similar opportunity for critical thinking.

8. Weave in resources throughout the course

It’s not uncommon to give learners additional resources at the end of an in-person class—usually information that’s related to the course but was cut for time or is just a nice-to-know additional detail. 

In Rise 360, you can sprinkle those resources throughout the course instead. For instance, you could add resource links directly in your course copy or use an attachment block to include a downloadable job aid. With this approach, learners have access to that additional information right when they need it, instead of at the end of a workbook or handout, where the context is missing.

9. Consider your assessment options

You’re probably used to seeing e-learning courses end with a quiz. And if that’s something your project needs, Rise 360 makes it easy to create. But just because e-learning courses often conclude with an assessment doesn’t mean they have to.

If your in-person class didn’t have a test at the end, you might not need one here either. As long as leaving one out doesn’t take away from the learning experience or get in the way of a regulatory requirement, that’s one less thing you need to create. And no need to worry that your LMS won’t know a learner finished the course without a test. In Rise 360, you can also mark a course as complete once a learner views a set percentage of the content.

10. Invite others to help

The previous tips can do a lot to simplify this transformation. But if you’re still feeling there’s more on your plate than you can take on alone, there are easy ways to bring in help.

With the collaboration features in Rise 360, you can invite other Articulate 360 Teams subscribers to work on your course with you. Speed up production by dividing the content among team members and building multiple lessons simultaneously. Or, if you’re personally pressed for time, invite a subject matter expert or facilitator to take the first crack at moving your course content into Rise 360. Then go in and polish the work they started.

Wrap-Up

With Rise 360 and these insider tips, shifting content from an in-person course to an effective e-learning experience is easy, even if it’s your first time doing it.

Looking for even more transformation tricks? Wondering what other projects could benefit from this shift as well? Check out these articles to find out more:

• Converting Instructor-Led Training into E-Learning with Rise 360
• 3 Tips for Quickly Converting Instructor-Led Training into E-Learning
• 7 Documents You Can Replace with Rise 360 Courses

While these ten tips cover techniques that have made these conversions easier for me, there are tons of other ways you can speed up this process. If you have any additional recommendations, be sure to add them to the comments below.

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