Developing eLearning content is a time-consuming undertaking. Studies show, it can take up to 118 hours to develop just one hour of eLearning content, and that’s when you are working with templates. It’s true: content development isn’t easy.
Not everyone has that kind of time. Modern businesses, whose core function is not developing training content most definitely don’t have that kind of time to invest in the task.
Even with the availability of cutting edge content development tools, time remains a known constraint that prevents businesses from investing in custom training content. With that said, the importance and effectiveness of custom content cannot be undermined.
If you are also facing this dilemma, this article is for you. In the following sections, we will outline some simple ways that you can employ to speed up your training content development cycles.
Without wasting more time, let’s jump right into it:
Collaborate With The Pros
Outsourcing elearning content development is a known way of obtaining quality training content without compromising on quality.
However, as with everything else, when training content development does not compromise on quality and is quick, it is expensive. Many businesses cannot afford the kind of investment involved in working with eLearning content providers.
There is an easy, yet often overlooked workaround to this problem- partial outsourcing.
Instead of outsourcing the development of all your training content, only outsource the time-consuming chunks to eLearning vendors. In the meantime, have your internal teams work on the rest of the training content.
While this undertaking would require some extra effort to ensure the final product offers a seamless training experience to your learners, if done right, the final product will be worth the extra effort.
Facilitate Efficient Internal Collaboration
For the in house part of your development process, make sure you have the right collaboration tools to empower your development team with efficient collaboration.
Collaboration tools like Trello and Slack are great at ensuring seamless communication within teams. These are especially important now that remote work and distributed teams are becoming increasingly common in the business landscape.
Even if all your resources work out of the same office, expecting them to collaborate effectively without the right tools might lead to a lot of disappointment down the line.
Reuse and Recycle
Many modules and lessons within a training program can be used for other training programs with little tweaks. Reusing such training content assets is a great way to save precious time and money.
Similarly, there may be many training modules in your existing content bank that can be reused for your new training programs.
Thus, it is wise to analyze your current content repository to identify such content assets before you jump into the development process.
Choose Your Tools Carefully
Content authoring tools have come a long way since their inception. Modern ones come loaded with features that are designed to speed up the content development and deployment process. The best tools are capable of supporting the whole development process, from prototyping to deployment. Many tools also offer features that support the maintenance and updating of training content in a quick and easy to execute manner.
Look for tools that offer features like instant publishing and come loaded with prebuilt themes and templates that will help you quickly develop engaging training content without having to spend hours coding interactivities or designing interfaces.
It is also important to ensure your whole development team is using the same authoring tool. This will help you avoid time wasted in switching between tools and technologies in different stages of the development process.
Conclusion
There you have it, four uncomplicated ways to reduce the development time of your training content, without necessarily sacrificing the quality of the final product.
Did we miss out on any strategies that you have employed at your organization? Share them with us in the comment section.
