If you’re a small to mid-sized company, it is likely that you do not have a dedicated L&D team to take care of your in-house learning requirements. Chances are that you’re using YouTube or catalogue eLearning services to cater to generic training and managing the rest through mentorship or personal training.
There are
several benefits to this. It keeps cost low and, also, providing personal support
helps connect with employees. There are several drawbacks to this
approach as well.
– It hinders growth. As the organisation expands, the training process doesn’t evolve to cater to the expanding needs.
– It encourages the ‘small-company’ mindset. Both the employees and the trainers continue to feel that we’re a small company.
– It makes assessment and keeping learning records subjective.
On the other hand, building a full-fledged L&D team may be out of budget for the organisation of your size.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can start with a small team, simple processes and gradually build it into a substantial team. So, how do we make the start?
Here are some ideas for you to think about:
L&D Team Building
Start small. Very small. Just hire one team member. This person will be called the instructional developer. He or she can don multiple hats. This person will write content, build it using some authoring tool and deploy it. Your other internal staff can act as subject matter expects who can work with this writer/developer to provide required source material. Yes, there may be a challenge with respect to the look & feel of the courses, as they haven’t passed through graphic design. But then, hey, you’ve got to start somewhere.
Slowly, but surely, you can add more people to your team. Of course, ensure that the next person you hire is a graphic designer!
Authoring Tools
Many authoring tools have made hard-coding of eLearning redundant. Today, few develop handmade courses. Even eLearning companies have pre-developed custom-engines that contains dozens of templates, and they use these engines based on your requirements. It may look like custom-made, but a large part of it is simply assembled.
Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to go for authoring tools Some of industry leading tools are Articulate Storyline, Lectora, Captivate, and others.
There are some key differences and benefits to each of these, yet at the fundamental level, almost all authoring tools behave the same way and produce similar outputs. So you really do not have to worry much at this stage. Get the one that your developer is most comfortable with and that fits within your budget.
LMS
Learning Management System, LMS for short, is an integral part of any eLearning setup. You will need an LMS where you publish courses, keep learner information and track their progress and completion of training activities. Of course, there are LMSes available that are super expensive and branded. You don’t need all that. You need something functional. There is Moodle that can be installed on your server for free. Moodle is an open source LMS and can start working with minimal configuration. You an also go for paid LMS services that are cost-effective. Do some searching around on the web and check out the ones that meet your budget.
Analytics
All LMSes come with various reports. Some are in-built and some need to be customised, thus leading to additional cost. Whilst choosing your LMS, pay attention to the in-built reporting formats and chose the ones that suits your organisational needs. This way you don’t have to spend additional money and time to create the report you need.
Catalogue Courses
Many standardised eLearning courses are already built by eLearning companies and available for your immediate consumption. Compliance courses, leadership content, sales and marketing, finance, etc., are some examples of this pre-built titles.
Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, etc. have thousands of courses on such generic topics. Before you build your courses in-house, search these sites and if the required title is already available, and if yes, pick from there. You might even be able to link them into your LMS so that they can be tracked, monitored and records kept in-house. Build in-house only if they are not already available or the content is proprietary or is unique to your company.
Building an in-house eLearning team is not as challenging as it used to be earlier. You can easily build one with minimal effort and cost, and begin your eLearning journey with minimal time or investment.
Reach out to us for more information to start or continue your journey. Best wishes.
Email: hello@pedasys.co.in
Phone: +91-89394-30185
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