How do you go about setting up an elearning course@?
August 14, 2013 3:43 PM Subscribe
How could a company set up an online e-learning type training course? How much might it cost, and what would be needed in terms of resources to make it happen - would it need to be developed by a specialist company or in-house? I'm in the UK - more details inside!
So I work for a regulatory body - it'll out me to be specific, but let's say we regulate any cake that's allowed to be on sale in the UK. Companies first submit their recipe, and we will advise them on it including specific rules on alcohol content, fat content, type of sugar, racially offensive icing designs etc. Then they need to submit the finished cake to us which we will assess against the recipe and test for deliciousness, and they're allowed to sell it. Many people outside the cake world don't know that cakes have to be regulated, and baking companies don't always know the rules they need to abide by, so our job is to try and explain these to them and work with them to modify the recipes and cakes so that the supermarkets will sell them. We run a training course for bakers, and many find it useful. We have a person in charge of training, but he is away at the moment.
The issue is that some bakers are too busy, or too small, or too far away to attend our courses. Often, it's those who can't attend which would benefit most - new bakeries don't always understand the timeframes we need, and we are aiming to move into approving cakes for sale in Europe. A couple of years ago, I took an online training course with - let's call it The Sugar Council - that went into how things worked from the bakery side, and I foudn this very useful - particularly because I could fit it around my work. It involved some short lessons or videos, and a quiz at the end of each chapter which let me know how I did. We produce an e-newsletter twice a year which has a similar online magazine/workbook format, which made me wonder whether it's practical for us.
I've often thought that we could run a successful course of this type and promote it to those who can't spare a day or the trainfare to come down in person. A promotion is coming up soon, and I'd like to bring up this idea in my interview presentation - not just to look clever, but because I think it would make a huge difference in terms of improving relations with bakers without them having to sacrifice resources at their end. The issue is that I don't know how this could be done on the practical side. Would it be costly? although we have an IT department here, they are mainly concerned with practical issues such as making sure our system and equipment runs - so would this be something that we'd need to employ someone to make, or is there a way to do it that's straightforward enough for the non-technical staff to put together. i am not an IT person or a website designer so I don't know how we'd do this in practical terms.
I'd really like to suggest this and then be able to follow it up with a 'this is how it would work, this is what it might cost, could we charge for it?' rather than just the idea, so any information welcome!
So I work for a regulatory body - it'll out me to be specific, but let's say we regulate any cake that's allowed to be on sale in the UK. Companies first submit their recipe, and we will advise them on it including specific rules on alcohol content, fat content, type of sugar, racially offensive icing designs etc. Then they need to submit the finished cake to us which we will assess against the recipe and test for deliciousness, and they're allowed to sell it. Many people outside the cake world don't know that cakes have to be regulated, and baking companies don't always know the rules they need to abide by, so our job is to try and explain these to them and work with them to modify the recipes and cakes so that the supermarkets will sell them. We run a training course for bakers, and many find it useful. We have a person in charge of training, but he is away at the moment.
The issue is that some bakers are too busy, or too small, or too far away to attend our courses. Often, it's those who can't attend which would benefit most - new bakeries don't always understand the timeframes we need, and we are aiming to move into approving cakes for sale in Europe. A couple of years ago, I took an online training course with - let's call it The Sugar Council - that went into how things worked from the bakery side, and I foudn this very useful - particularly because I could fit it around my work. It involved some short lessons or videos, and a quiz at the end of each chapter which let me know how I did. We produce an e-newsletter twice a year which has a similar online magazine/workbook format, which made me wonder whether it's practical for us.
I've often thought that we could run a successful course of this type and promote it to those who can't spare a day or the trainfare to come down in person. A promotion is coming up soon, and I'd like to bring up this idea in my interview presentation - not just to look clever, but because I think it would make a huge difference in terms of improving relations with bakers without them having to sacrifice resources at their end. The issue is that I don't know how this could be done on the practical side. Would it be costly? although we have an IT department here, they are mainly concerned with practical issues such as making sure our system and equipment runs - so would this be something that we'd need to employ someone to make, or is there a way to do it that's straightforward enough for the non-technical staff to put together. i am not an IT person or a website designer so I don't know how we'd do this in practical terms.
I'd really like to suggest this and then be able to follow it up with a 'this is how it would work, this is what it might cost, could we charge for it?' rather than just the idea, so any information welcome!
If your course is relatively simple and informal, there's no reason you can't do it all yourself with a little bit of preparation. I develop a fair amount of elearning stuff, in a variety of formats, ranging from very simple to fairly complex.
What kind of course materials do you want to create? If you're looking for a Powerpoint analog for the web with audio, there are a couple of neat tools that will let you take a Powerpoint presentation, add an audio track, and embed quizzes and surveys. I use Adobe Presenter for this, but there's a similar product called Articulate Presenter which is probably about the same. These products are designed to be used with very little training or experience - if you know Powerpoint, you can use these.
If you need something more complicated, you can use Adobe Captivate - this is especially suitable for teaching students how to use one aspect or another of a computer, as you can build screen captures and animations for demonstrations and simulations of how a program works.
If you don't need to keep track of who's taken the course, or quiz or survey responses, tools like these are really all you need. You can publish the output on any web server - it's HTML and Flash (which means it won't run on iPads, unfortunately).
If you do need to keep track of who's taken the course, and how they've done on quizzes and surveys, you'll need some sort of LMS. I would not recommend Moodle if this is your first exposure to LMSs. I haven't worked with CourseSites, so I can't speak to that, but I'm sure there are quite a few free LMS-lite tools out there. I've worked quite a bit with Adobe Connect, which is available as a cloud-hosted solution and can be fairly inexpensive for limited numbers of users. You can use all of the aforementioned tools in conjunction with Connect or other LMSs, or any other tools that generate SCORM or AICC-compliant content. SCORM and AICC are the two big LMS content APIs for scoring and reporting. Fortunately, you generally don't have to know much about these APIs in most cases. For example, if you're using Presenter to publish content to your Connect service, you basically press a button and it's done!
On the lower end, you can just record screen captures and audio and put them on YouTube! That's certainly suitable for content where you're not interested in user tracking, if that content is simple enough.
Feel free to memail me if you have more specific questions, if you like.
posted by me & my monkey at 4:12 PM on August 14, 2013
What kind of course materials do you want to create? If you're looking for a Powerpoint analog for the web with audio, there are a couple of neat tools that will let you take a Powerpoint presentation, add an audio track, and embed quizzes and surveys. I use Adobe Presenter for this, but there's a similar product called Articulate Presenter which is probably about the same. These products are designed to be used with very little training or experience - if you know Powerpoint, you can use these.
If you need something more complicated, you can use Adobe Captivate - this is especially suitable for teaching students how to use one aspect or another of a computer, as you can build screen captures and animations for demonstrations and simulations of how a program works.
If you don't need to keep track of who's taken the course, or quiz or survey responses, tools like these are really all you need. You can publish the output on any web server - it's HTML and Flash (which means it won't run on iPads, unfortunately).
If you do need to keep track of who's taken the course, and how they've done on quizzes and surveys, you'll need some sort of LMS. I would not recommend Moodle if this is your first exposure to LMSs. I haven't worked with CourseSites, so I can't speak to that, but I'm sure there are quite a few free LMS-lite tools out there. I've worked quite a bit with Adobe Connect, which is available as a cloud-hosted solution and can be fairly inexpensive for limited numbers of users. You can use all of the aforementioned tools in conjunction with Connect or other LMSs, or any other tools that generate SCORM or AICC-compliant content. SCORM and AICC are the two big LMS content APIs for scoring and reporting. Fortunately, you generally don't have to know much about these APIs in most cases. For example, if you're using Presenter to publish content to your Connect service, you basically press a button and it's done!
On the lower end, you can just record screen captures and audio and put them on YouTube! That's certainly suitable for content where you're not interested in user tracking, if that content is simple enough.
Feel free to memail me if you have more specific questions, if you like.
posted by me & my monkey at 4:12 PM on August 14, 2013
I did a course a bit like what you describe in Australia.
The course designer clearly had access to minimally competent web skills, and had developed a workflow to suit them, but it wasn't super-pretty or usable.
I'd give your local university a call and get advice from their e-learning centre about where you could cheaply and easily host a course of the type you have. I wouldn't bother with colleges of Further Education or whatever, buecasue those are generally much more poorly resourced, and you're likely to get a "don't know" answer.
posted by singingfish at 4:12 PM on August 14, 2013
The course designer clearly had access to minimally competent web skills, and had developed a workflow to suit them, but it wasn't super-pretty or usable.
I'd give your local university a call and get advice from their e-learning centre about where you could cheaply and easily host a course of the type you have. I wouldn't bother with colleges of Further Education or whatever, buecasue those are generally much more poorly resourced, and you're likely to get a "don't know" answer.
posted by singingfish at 4:12 PM on August 14, 2013
I think your best first step would be to consult with someone who does this type of work day in, day out. "Instructional Designer" or "Web Based Trainer" are probably the search terms you'd want to use to find that person. They'll know the right questions to ask you to help you make an informed decision.
I wouldn't recommend foisting this on your IT department without doing at least that initial consult first. There are potentially a lot of moving pieces to keep track of -- the instructional design; content development; asset management; technical implementation; quality assurance; hosting; user support. These things don't have to be crazy-makingly complex, but if you've not done them before, there will be a lot of trial-and-error (and expense).
posted by nacho fries at 4:30 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
I wouldn't recommend foisting this on your IT department without doing at least that initial consult first. There are potentially a lot of moving pieces to keep track of -- the instructional design; content development; asset management; technical implementation; quality assurance; hosting; user support. These things don't have to be crazy-makingly complex, but if you've not done them before, there will be a lot of trial-and-error (and expense).
posted by nacho fries at 4:30 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
It's actually quite a bit more complicated than you might think. For example, an experienced course designer--one who knows the tools, and has done it before--would need a day to put together 15 minutes of live instruction time into an online format. A day of training? You're talking a month dedicated to this project, three months if you're not spending every waking moment on it.
The tools I heard quoted here in the U.S. were Adobe Captivate 6 and ePath Learning software, used in conjunction.
Would it be costly?
Yes. These need subscriptions, not to mention the money to train (there are programs here for Captivate, for instance).
Basically, if you proposed this project, you are volunteering the time of the trainer and that of I.T.--time which I assure you they do not have. I mean, who would learn the software? Even if you hire out (which if you go ahead is what you should do) then the trainer has to spend the time working with the consultant to put this thing together. And for who? A few bakers? (And when would THEY take it? Over how long a period of time?) If they don't number at least a thousand, within--let's say three years--it would be a waste of resources.
Plus, on top of that, maintenance. User interaction.
There's a reason there are nonprofits whose entire goal is making and maintaining online courses.
In sum: trendy but a major pain in the ass. Do not recommend.
posted by tooloudinhere at 4:49 PM on August 14, 2013
The tools I heard quoted here in the U.S. were Adobe Captivate 6 and ePath Learning software, used in conjunction.
Would it be costly?
Yes. These need subscriptions, not to mention the money to train (there are programs here for Captivate, for instance).
Basically, if you proposed this project, you are volunteering the time of the trainer and that of I.T.--time which I assure you they do not have. I mean, who would learn the software? Even if you hire out (which if you go ahead is what you should do) then the trainer has to spend the time working with the consultant to put this thing together. And for who? A few bakers? (And when would THEY take it? Over how long a period of time?) If they don't number at least a thousand, within--let's say three years--it would be a waste of resources.
Plus, on top of that, maintenance. User interaction.
There's a reason there are nonprofits whose entire goal is making and maintaining online courses.
In sum: trendy but a major pain in the ass. Do not recommend.
posted by tooloudinhere at 4:49 PM on August 14, 2013
I don't really agree with the negative comments. It sounds like what you have would fit well into ane existing elearning platform (e.g. a Moodle deployment). It's just a matter of if that's available to you at reasonable cost. Otherwise you're going to spend between a couple of weeks to a couple of months cobbling something together yourself.
I have a friend working on a new product in this space that fits the thing you describe, but it's in the very early stages and will not be available in the UK for the forseeable future.
posted by singingfish at 5:15 PM on August 14, 2013
I have a friend working on a new product in this space that fits the thing you describe, but it's in the very early stages and will not be available in the UK for the forseeable future.
posted by singingfish at 5:15 PM on August 14, 2013
I developed an online course for teachers in Ireland several years ago, for an organisation that does not specialize in online courses, with little to no previous experience other than college projects (I was working as a general technical support/digital media support person), so it's definitely doable.
We used Moodle to manage the actual enrollment and course management aspects and hand coded most of the course content in HTML/CSS with some PHP with flash video (though nowadays you'd just use youtube) and a few flash elements for some interactive content. As long as your material is well prepared ahead of time, and you could get a willing (and reasonably experienced with using a CMS/LMS like Moodle) person on your IT team to be a dedicated resource for a few weeks to handle the coding and integration you could handle it in house. Your available resources will inform whether or not that's the way to go or whether it's best to contract out.
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:25 PM on August 14, 2013
We used Moodle to manage the actual enrollment and course management aspects and hand coded most of the course content in HTML/CSS with some PHP with flash video (though nowadays you'd just use youtube) and a few flash elements for some interactive content. As long as your material is well prepared ahead of time, and you could get a willing (and reasonably experienced with using a CMS/LMS like Moodle) person on your IT team to be a dedicated resource for a few weeks to handle the coding and integration you could handle it in house. Your available resources will inform whether or not that's the way to go or whether it's best to contract out.
posted by TwoWordReview at 5:25 PM on August 14, 2013
I run an LMS and manage a couple of e-learning designers in a large nonprofit org. I've built a lot of courses on a lot of topics.
This can be a massive PITA or not, depending upon how complex you want to get.
Time, Effort and Knowledge
The general industry benchmark is 40-80 hours of development for an hour of instruction (anybody who's doing it in a day is not counting a big part of their process!). This includes time to analyze the content and structure it into a course, write assessments, and actually create the course. Converting from an existing live call can be both easier and more difficult, depending on how the class is structured. If you are going to produce videos, that adds more time and complexity.
If you don't have experience doing instructional or course design, there is more that goes into a well-developed course than you may think. If you are a good communicator you may be able to produce a decent result, but you'll get much better quality with someone who understands different ways to present different kinds of topics, write quality assessment questions, etc.
You can use a PowerPoint-based tool such as Articulate Studio or iSpring to convert an existing PPT deck into an online format. This isn't going to be a terribly fabulous or robust course, and it may be confusing if the slide deck is missing key activities or explanations from the training. The content will need to be written and perhaps resequenced to be effective.
Tools
If you are going to do this in house, stay away from Adobe Captivate. Just so not worth it. Articulate Studio (not Storyline) is PowerPoint-based and relatively easy to use and fairly robust. It is not cheap (~$1500US). iSpring is less expensive, but also a good PowerPoint converter (I think more like $300-400US - I haven't looked at it in a while) . There are others, but I don't recommend them.
Tracking
Do you need to track who has completed the training? If not, you can output to HTML and just put it on a website where people can access it. If so, you need a database backend. The industry standard is a Learning Management System, but that can be a lot more bells and whistles than you need. Articulate also offers a lightweight, could-based LMS you can access on a subscription basis. Scorm Cloud is also a good option for a lightweight LMS.
If you need/want to charge for the course, then you also have to work out some sort of e-commerce platform.
Savings
E-Learning saves money when it prevents travel expenses, when content can be condensed into a much shorter training time, or when many people need to take the course.
On the whole, I think you'll get a better outcome if you engage someone who knows what they are doing with this, but this can be done if you have someone in your organization who is a good writer, has good visual design skills and some tech-savvy-ness.
On preview: Moodle is WAY more rigamarole than you need. I'd avoid.
posted by jeoc at 5:27 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
This can be a massive PITA or not, depending upon how complex you want to get.
Time, Effort and Knowledge
The general industry benchmark is 40-80 hours of development for an hour of instruction (anybody who's doing it in a day is not counting a big part of their process!). This includes time to analyze the content and structure it into a course, write assessments, and actually create the course. Converting from an existing live call can be both easier and more difficult, depending on how the class is structured. If you are going to produce videos, that adds more time and complexity.
If you don't have experience doing instructional or course design, there is more that goes into a well-developed course than you may think. If you are a good communicator you may be able to produce a decent result, but you'll get much better quality with someone who understands different ways to present different kinds of topics, write quality assessment questions, etc.
You can use a PowerPoint-based tool such as Articulate Studio or iSpring to convert an existing PPT deck into an online format. This isn't going to be a terribly fabulous or robust course, and it may be confusing if the slide deck is missing key activities or explanations from the training. The content will need to be written and perhaps resequenced to be effective.
Tools
If you are going to do this in house, stay away from Adobe Captivate. Just so not worth it. Articulate Studio (not Storyline) is PowerPoint-based and relatively easy to use and fairly robust. It is not cheap (~$1500US). iSpring is less expensive, but also a good PowerPoint converter (I think more like $300-400US - I haven't looked at it in a while) . There are others, but I don't recommend them.
Tracking
Do you need to track who has completed the training? If not, you can output to HTML and just put it on a website where people can access it. If so, you need a database backend. The industry standard is a Learning Management System, but that can be a lot more bells and whistles than you need. Articulate also offers a lightweight, could-based LMS you can access on a subscription basis. Scorm Cloud is also a good option for a lightweight LMS.
If you need/want to charge for the course, then you also have to work out some sort of e-commerce platform.
Savings
E-Learning saves money when it prevents travel expenses, when content can be condensed into a much shorter training time, or when many people need to take the course.
On the whole, I think you'll get a better outcome if you engage someone who knows what they are doing with this, but this can be done if you have someone in your organization who is a good writer, has good visual design skills and some tech-savvy-ness.
On preview: Moodle is WAY more rigamarole than you need. I'd avoid.
posted by jeoc at 5:27 PM on August 14, 2013 [1 favorite]
If you go with Google Apps, e.g. uploading videos to google drive, a Google Site, etc. you might want to look into Flubaroo, which adds basic grading/testing to Google Spreadsheets.
The whole point of an LMS is (if someone else is hosting it), is that it should reduce the barriers to entry for regular content experts to put together materials and tests (btw, CourseSites is Blackboard which is a big player in this area). Instructional designers often have a lot to offer, but if you already have an in-person course and an idea how it should all go, then you can get something adequate online without necessarily involving them.
The key issue is tracking. If you don't need it in any systematic way, then there are lots of tools to put together quizzes and presentations online. If you do need it, then an LMS will probably make life easier. It can also integrate discussions, testing and content.
posted by idb at 7:39 AM on August 15, 2013
The whole point of an LMS is (if someone else is hosting it), is that it should reduce the barriers to entry for regular content experts to put together materials and tests (btw, CourseSites is Blackboard which is a big player in this area). Instructional designers often have a lot to offer, but if you already have an in-person course and an idea how it should all go, then you can get something adequate online without necessarily involving them.
The key issue is tracking. If you don't need it in any systematic way, then there are lots of tools to put together quizzes and presentations online. If you do need it, then an LMS will probably make life easier. It can also integrate discussions, testing and content.
posted by idb at 7:39 AM on August 15, 2013
Most of my job is centered around Moodle right now, and honestly if you don't need to do online assessment, it's overkill for what you want.
The low barrier to entry would be to publish any training materials online. If a good part comes from an in person training, could you do short video clips of those and make a YouTube channel?
posted by advicepig at 8:28 AM on August 15, 2013 [1 favorite]
The low barrier to entry would be to publish any training materials online. If a good part comes from an in person training, could you do short video clips of those and make a YouTube channel?
posted by advicepig at 8:28 AM on August 15, 2013 [1 favorite]
Unless you need to keep records of attendance, tests taken and certification expiration, I would think that elearning is not worth the effort.
I would make a nice PDF that outlines the process, and then does a step by step of the process. If the website is particularly confusing, adjunct that with a screen shot step by step, or a video demonstration of how to make the website work. (Or the paper forms, as the case may be.)
posted by gjc at 9:58 AM on August 15, 2013
I would make a nice PDF that outlines the process, and then does a step by step of the process. If the website is particularly confusing, adjunct that with a screen shot step by step, or a video demonstration of how to make the website work. (Or the paper forms, as the case may be.)
posted by gjc at 9:58 AM on August 15, 2013
Google Docs? Quiz given via surveymonkey? Powerpoint Presentation? Heck, WordPress can be used as a LMS with the right plug-in :) Plenty of ways to do this one. What's easiest depends on your resources and your skillset :)
posted by chrisinseoul at 9:22 PM on August 15, 2013
posted by chrisinseoul at 9:22 PM on August 15, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
If this were the US, I'd suggest partnering with a local college and using their LMS (most have one these days).
posted by idb at 3:54 PM on August 14, 2013