I created an Instructor Led course for a company last year. They turned over the eLearning conversion of it to someone else while I began another ILT course. A few months later, I was asked to review the first course for accuracy (as I created the original content) and I was left speechless – The developer had done no conversion at all!
Essentially, the eLearning “designer” took all of the content and plonked it directly into the eLearning development tool: Large blank text fields to enter paragraphs of information -with none of the discussion and feedback the classroom provides. Instructor talking points appearing one by one alongside Powerpoint images in an onscreen snooze-fest. Applied group activities turned into individual large blocks of text to read (or skip over…). I was speechless, but it certainly wasn’t the first time that I had seen this – it’s a technologically archaic method that companies regularly used a decade and more ago. Dump whatever information you have into a program and bingo! elearning.
A true conversion requires determining how the learning outcomes within the ILT can be addressed in an elearning environment, and then creating new experiences for engagement, reflection and application, etc. within the new context. Seldom, if ever, do classroom experiences translate to eLearning – the entire course needs rethinking and redesigning. Otherwise you have a disaster on your hands!
It’s challenging to recreate a course that relied heavily on group activities, presentations, live demonstrations and samples. All of these activities need to be rethought and presented in engaging ways – and always with the final question in mind: What does the learner need to be able to DO at the end of this course?
It isn’t enough to describe what they need to know – you have to ask “what is it they need to do with that information?”
Keep the above in mind when you are converting an ILT or business presentation to eLearning, and even when updating a current eLearning course. Especially if it is a few years old – or if an “old school” designer (or merely a developer) created the course!
Oh, and that converted version of my ILT course? Needed a complete revision.