Speaker 1: Welcome to the presentation on, How to Design an Online Course, Fast and Within Budgets. In the presentation, we will look at a roadmap to designing online courses quickly. We will also learn how to leverage existing content, while using rapid authoring tools. We will also look, at how to ensure effective project management so that courses are designed and developed within the stipulated time. Let's begin by looking at some of the myths associated with rapid e-learning. It is a common myth, that rapid e-learning can devalue learners' experience with poor quality e-learning. The reality is that poor quality e-learning is, due to lack of creativity and effort by the developer and not because of the tools or method employed. Another myth is that courses cannot be interactive when developed using rapid authoring tools. However, thanks to enhanced features provided by rapid authoring tools, we can create powerful interactive courses at low cost and in a short time frame. We just need to know how to use them. Before developing a course, we need to chalk out a road path that can guide us during the process. Let's see what one needs to do to develop a roadmap. As a first step towards developing a roadmap, we must analyze the target audience for the course. The course design depends on the profile of the target audience. Knowing the audience for whom we are designing e-learning courses is the first step towards developing rapid e-learning. The second step in chalking out the roadmap is to know the learner's geographic area. This helps us define the language in which the course needs to be developed and the cultural sensibilities that need to be kept in mind in the course content. The next step is to understand the learner's specific job responsibilities within their organization. This will help us to identify the learning objectives for the target audience. Learner's prior knowledge determines the level of training. An expert learner does not need the same level of training support as novices do. Similarly, we also need to access how comfortable and willing the target group are in operating computers. Courses will need to be designed keeping these aspects in mind. Taking online courses requires some basic infrastructure requirements such as network, bandwidth and access to computers that organizations need to provide for their employees. If there are any limitations with respect to the infrastructure, these factors need to be kept in mind while designing courses. Design of a course matters a lot. We need to create an unforgettable experience making learners feel worth spending their time on the course. We need to attract the attention of the learner and get him to engage with the course by capturing their attention. Therefore, courses need to be visually rich and inviting. Once you have established the roadmap for the course, we need to take stock of the available content and figure out how it can be used in the course. Most organizations already have instructionally rich training material in the form of PPTs, handouts, manuals, movies, videos and more. Instead of developing the content from scratch, organizations can convert their existing ILT material into e-learning. This approach can be time-saving. All we have to do is to identify existing content and convert them to e-learning using rapid authoring tools such as Articulate, Lectera or Captivate. After identifying the content, we need to evaluate it to check if the content is suitable for e-learning. We need to evaluate the content to check for its clarity, accuracy and adequacy for the purpose of including interactions and feedback. We also need to check if the existing content is instructionally sound and has a good flow that supports easy retention. With a well-developed content, we can focus on instructional approach, interactivities, the kind of treatment we can give to the content in order to help learners learn and retain knowledge. Once we have content in place, we will need to choose a rapid authoring toolhole that best helps present the content catering to our individual needs. Let's look at some of the features of rapid authoring tools. Rapid authoring tools refer to the development of e-learning in a short time, easily, and at low cost. Some of the authoring tools widely used for the purpose are Articulate, Lectera and Captivate. You can create interactivities like slideshows, rollovers, click-on tabs, hotspots at low cost in short time frame using these authoring tools. Rapid authoring tools are easy to use and do not require any programming knowledge. They are particularly beneficial in e-learning projects that require delivering the content to large audiences using minimal resources. Rapid authoring tools are ideal when we have to train sales staff frequently on new products or if we want to quickly inform employees about policy changes in the organization. Rapid authoring tools have multiple publishing options where we can publish courses to PCs, mobiles and tablets without the need for complicated programming expertise. Let's look at some of the tips you consider to convert your PowerPoint training material into an engaging e-learning. If we have training material in the form of PowerPoint, then we can convert them into e-learning courses easily using PowerPoint plug-in authoring tools. To produce an engaging and interesting e-learning course, you can add interactivities and assessments to the course with these tools. These tools will also enable you to publish your course in HTML format, which makes the course run on mobile and tablet devices. No project can succeed without effective project management. Let's examine why effective project management is required in rapid e-learning projects. As you know the e-learning projects are complex and involve working with a lot of details and dealing with a lot of people. Effective project management is essential to rapidly create and deploy e-learning projects globally. It helps in meeting the project deadlines. Effective project planning helps us stay in line with the project objectives and provides a good start. It ensures the project with expected quality and within the given budget and time frame. Let's briefly review what we have seen in the presentation. Rapid e-learning approach does not compromise on the quality of e-learning courses, though they are developed in lesser time and costs. We just need to develop a good roadmap to successfully accomplish the project goals. We can repurpose existing content capitalizing on the features provided by rapid authoring tools for faster e-learning at lower costs. Before we embark on using the rapid e-learning approach, we need to make sure that the L&D team has the skills to develop successful rapid e-learning. It might be cost effective to outsource the project to an external vendor. To read articles on similar topic, please visit blog.comlabindia.com.

Speaker 2: Thank you for your time.