Tips for Developing ELearning In-House

By: Justin Ferriman • June 26, 2014
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devIf your organization is in need of course development, then you generally have two options: create the material in-house, or outsource the development to another firm.

There is not a clear-cut answer as to which you should choose as it is dependent on a variety of factors.

That said, I have found that many organizations will first try to keep content development and management in-house to leverage their current workforce. This usually means that one employee receives an extra job responsibility in addition to what they already are doing on a day-to-day basis.

This is a recipe for disaster.

Using In-House Staff

If you are not interested in hiring an outside firm, then taking the project in-house is perfectly acceptable. To get the most out of this approach, you will be best served to designate (or hire) a full-time employee – possible more – with the sole responsibility of elearning design and development.

What people fail to realize is that elearning implementations are never a one-time deal. Sure, you’ll get more for your investment using elearning, but creating a course and letting it go stale can be just as detrimental than no elearning program at all.

Creating and delivering the courses is just the start, it also needs to be correctly maintained, monitored, and modified over time in order to remain relevant.

Even if you hire an outside firm to create your elearning, then you will still need to have identified employees to continuing managing the courses after they have been created and deployed.

It is probably in your best interest to hire an employee anyhow to take part in the project with the consultants. This way once the project is done you won’t need to hire them again to re-do the material, and you’ll have someone on staff that has knowledge of the project from start to finish.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter