Building a Course Plan
Gather your existing resources
Filling in the gaps in learning resources
Create and edit your Micro-Learning Course
Let us assume you are trying to convert your New Employee Induction Program into a micro-learning
course that can easily be served via the platform of choice for your new hires. You may want your
new learners to be able to take the Induction Course via their Laptops or their Smartphones. Either
way having a clear list of topics you want to cover in their Induction program, the preferred
sequence of covering those programs, identifying which program can be self-paced and which require
an online Zoom or MS Teams session is the first step.
If you already have a defined structure for your Induction Program that you have followed in the
pre-eLearning days, then your job is largely done. If not, then here is a suggested list of topics
you may want to cover.
Note: The example above is for a typical New Employee Induction program. A similar approach may be
adopted for other programs too, such as Sales Training, Franchisee On-boarding, Product Training for
Support teams etc.
Now that you have the exhaustive list of topics you want to cover, the next step is to identify the
model of imparting the training for each of the items in the list of topics. Your options are
Completely Self-Paced eLearning, In-person classroom session, Online LIVE session or Hybrid.
Finally estimate the approximate time you expect the learners to spend while undergoing each of the
course. Your typical Course Plan may end up looking something like this:
S. No. | Topic | Duration (Minutes) | Delivery Model |
---|---|---|---|
1. | Company Overview | 30 | eLearning |
2. | Core Values | 60 | eLearning |
3. | Message from the CEO / MD | 15 | Online LIVE (Zoom) |
4. | Company Solutions (Products and Services) | 90 | Hybrid |
5. | Key Personnel | 15 | eLearning |
6. | Reporting Structure | 15 | eLearning |
Now that your Course Plan is ready, it is time to assess your content readiness for conducting your Course. Start by taking a stock and gathering your existing resources.
If you have been conducting your course as an ILT (Instructor Led Training) model in the traditional Classroom, then you may already have pre-existing presentations (PPTs) for most of the topics in your course. Occasionally this material may also be in alternate formats such as Word Documents, PDFs and Images. Let us now put together the list of your resources in a table/XL spreadsheet to have a consolidated view of your content readiness. Remember, at times the content may not be comprehensive and may need touch-ups and addition when moving to the eLearning model. In extreme cases where the entire session was traditionally conducted impromptu and in-person you may not have any material at all. Record all of this too. Once done your learning resources table may look something like this:
S. No. | Topic | Current Resources | Comprehensive? | Content Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | Company Overview | PPT | Yes | - |
2. | Core Values | PPT | Yes | - |
3. | Message from the CEO / MD | Video | Yes | - |
4. | Company Solutions (Products and Services) | PPT | No | PPT Updates |
5. | Key Personnel | PPT | No | PPT Updates |
6. | Reporting Structure | Word | Yes | PPT version |
7. | Understanding Clients | SCORM pkg. | Yes | - |
8. | Objection Handling | xAPI pkg. | Yes | - |
9. | Leave Policy | None | No | PPT |
Note that each time your existing content is in a format other than PPT, Video, SCORM or TinCan package, you must identify that as a gap. It is critical to ensure that all base learning content is in either of the above stated formats for you to build a high-quality eLearning.
Now that you have the laundry list of resources in the structure suggested above, it is easy to sift out
the content gaps. Make a shorter table with only the content gaps. Identify the resource in your team or
your extended organization who can help fill in the gaps. For the pre-existing content in PPT format
that needs touch-up and updates the gaps can be filled in very rapidly. Allocate suitable tasks to the
respective team members with a suggested timeline to get those changes done.
The tricky part will be the topics where no content exists or content exists in long formats like Word
docs, PDF documents or Images. The approach to building eLearning Courses from scratch and from non PPT
format are slightly different. Let us see how you can address both of these.
A good place to start organizing your content is by logically structuring content into Course, Modules and Topics. This will help you deploy the content as microlearning modules and make it easy on the learner by reducing the cognitive load. When you do that, your table will look like this:
S. No. | Module | Topic | Current Resources | Comprehensive? | Content Gap |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. | Introduction to the company | Company Overview | PPT | Yes | - |
2. | Core Values | PPT | Yes | - | |
3. | Message from the CEO / MD | Video | Yes | - | |
4. | The People | Company Solutions (Products and Services) | PPT | No | PPT Updates |
5. | Key Personnel | PPT | No | PPT Updates | |
6. | Reporting Structure | Word | Yes | PPT version | |
7. | Our Clients | Understanding Clients | SCORM pkg. | Yes | - |
8. | Objection Handling | xAPI pkg. | Yes | - | |
9. | Leave Policy | None | No | PPT |
Organizing the content into a multilevel structure is useful for reusing and repurposing topics for
courses that you will build in the future. In addition, making updates to the content will be a less
expensive process as you can retain the modules/topics that do not need to be updated as they are, and
focus on updating only the necessary topics.
A good tool you could use while building the course is the much acclaimed learning theory - Bloom’s
taxonomy – which categorizes learning levels based on the learning process. It can be used for
constructing learning objectives based on what is expected of the learner at the end of the course. It
also helps keep the content and assessment consistent with the learning objectives of the course.
When there is no pre-existing content you will have to plan the design first and then the development. Delivery is the final step however you will have to take a decision on the delivery format prior to the design phase. This is because deciding whether you want the delivery to be instructor led or not, in a live classroom or self-paced will be crucial for your content strategy. All these decisions will have to be taken prior to the design phase and strengthened during the design phase.
To start with understand your audience profile and their learning environment. In the example we discussed, the course was planned for new employees who would be learning remotely. Having this knowledge leads us to understand that employees could be accessing content using different devices, using a blended learning model may be more effective and the sessions should have more activities than a live classroom would typically have.
Once you have the design ready you will need to start developing the learning content.
When you complete development of the learning content, you will be ready to give it the final shape as a micro-learning course and deploy it to the LMS.
Since the process of designing, developing, and delivering large amounts of training content requires professionals, some companies do invest in L&D teams. However, if your company does not have an L&D team or e-learning professionals, you can use the content development services offered by PlayAblo. Just drop us a note and we will reach out to you shortly.
PlayAblo provides you multiple options to ensure that you can create beautiful
micro-learning courses for your learners. While PlayAblo provides support for
ready-made xAPI and SCORM packages it also helps you create mobile friendly
eLearning courses right from PPTs, video content or just plain text.
In addition to the above you will occasionally also want to update your courses to edit existing
content
to include the changes since the last update. The edit maybe in terms of addition, updates or
deletion.
This video tutorial also covers the following:
Note: In case your existing content is a one large PPT with all topics covered then you must break that PPT down into smaller presentations. Each presentation should cover individual topics so they can be setup as a separate micro-learning module that can be tracked and measured.
Building a Course Plan
Gather your existing resources
Filling in the gaps in learning resources
Create and edit your Micro-Learning Course