Is There A Secret Formula To Transform ILT To An eLearning Curriculum?

Is There A Secret Formula To Transform ILT To An eLearning Curriculum?
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Summary: Wondering if there’s a secret formula to transform your Instructor-Led Training program into an eLearning curriculum? This article gives you an insight into what you need to do for successful transformation to online training.

5 Ways To Transform ILT To An eLearning Curriculum

Learning is not a one-time event; instead, it’s a continuous process that involves both formal and informal methods. That probably explains why several organizations prefer transforming their traditional Instructor-Led Training (ILT) programs to an eLearning curriculum – all the different lessons and activities on a particular topic can be grouped together and arranged according to their complexity levels in an eLearning curriculum.

Many of you out there involved in Learning and Development might wonder if there is any formula that can be quickly applied to transform ILT to an eLearning curriculum. Unfortunately, there is none! But what we can do is let you in on the secrets to an effective transformation of ILT to eLearning curriculums.

1. Analyze The Learning Outcomes

Have you zeroed in on the learning outcomes of the online training program? Deciding the learning objectives requires careful planning and needs to take care of analyzing learners’ requirements and also include inputs from the SMEs.

When you are transforming multiple ILT sessions into an eLearning curriculum (a set of related online modules), it is essential to understand if there were any prerequisites to attend these ILT programs. If yes, think about how you plan to handle this aspect online. You might have to consider including an online refresher training to cover the prerequisites and roll it out as part of the eLearning curriculum. The real value in training comes only when your learners are able to achieve the objectives of the course.

Here’s an example. One of our clients, a contract research organization wanted to convert its five-day new hire training program, which was entirely instructor-led, to a three-day classroom training followed by two days of online training. By transforming part of the ILT to eLearning, the organization was able to cut down on the time and money spent on classroom training.

2. Gather And Assess The Existing ILT Content

The resources used in your ILT program could be:

  • PowerPoint decks
  • Videos
  • Manuals
  • Case studies
  • Worksheets
  • Evaluation forms
  • Tests/Quizzes

Assess the quality of these resources. Simply publishing a PPT as an online course may not work, as the instructor is unavailable to plug learning gaps. It’s not about conversion, it’s about transformation, and that would involve adding additional slides in the eLearning to address knowledge gaps that would have been otherwise taken care of by the instructor in an ILT.

3. Organize The ILT Content

When you are transforming ILT into an eLearning curriculum, you might want to organize the existing content in increasing order of complexity. For example, you can build an eLearning curriculum that starts from the basics of a training topic and moves on to more complex topics.

Also, when you organize the ILT content, you might be able to take a better decision on whether you would want to transform all the content in the ILT to eLearning or would want to leverage blended learning to teach higher-order thinking skills or critical problem-solving in the classroom and teach the rest of the content through an eLearning curriculum.

4. Decide The Right Strategy For Learning Activities And Assessments

In the good old classroom training, you have an instructor who takes care of ensuring information is delivered effectively to learners, and the PPT deck serves as a reference material for the instructor. Now if you were to simply convert this PowerPoint presentation used by the SME to an eLearning course, it would fail to strike a chord with the learners as there would be gaps that only an instructor can fill. It is essential to understand that your eLearning course might require additional content to plug in these learning gaps.

Also, since not all activities used in the classroom can be converted to online learning, you need to decide the right strategy – both instructional as well as visual to rework on activities that are part of classroom training and make them suitable for online learning.

For instance, handouts used in the classroom to get learners to answer a few questions based on the topic that was covered can be converted to a simple quiz, drag and drop, or crossword puzzle included as a formative assessment in online training.

You might also want to plan for assessments; both during and after training. Formative and summative assessments can be implemented effortlessly in an eLearning course. You might want to consider using microlearning to beat the forgetting curve by offering periodic reinforcement of training and providing just-in-time training.

5. Choose The Right Authoring Tool

It would certainly help to stay aware of the authoring tools that can be used to transform ILT to eLearning curriculums. Let’s say you have multiple PowerPoint decks used in classroom training that are instructionally sound, have the right images, and include slides for knowledge checks and an assessment. Using an authoring tool like iSpring can help you quickly convert PPTs to eLearning courses.

Also, if you have an in-house team who can put together instructionally sound storyboards, you can get an eLearning partner to proceed with rapid eLearning development. This would help you transform your ILT content into an eLearning curriculum within a short period of time.

Lectora Inspire, Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, and dominKnow Flow/Claro are some of the other authoring tools you can leverage. These authoring tools can also help you add interactive elements to your eLearning courses, design interesting online assessments, and provide effective feedback.

There is no one formula that can be applied to instantly transform ILT into an eLearning curriculum. Depending on the type of training and the content, you can cut down ILT time by 20%-80%. All that it requires is some careful planning, and you can go ahead with in-house conversion or outsource the task to an eLearning vendor.