So you have a custom eLearning project ready for kick-off. After careful evaluation of eLearning development companies, you have identified the best eLearning content developer and you are eager to start the development process. The problem is you don't know exactly where to find the content for this particular custom eLearning solution. Is it in the classroom materials you previously used for this course? Or does it reside within the mind of one of your colleagues? Will you provide a high level and/or a detailed course outline and script?
Frequently,  clients have just such a challenge: where and in what form will the raw content be provided to the eLearning company? Identifying those sources is essential to accurately scope any custom eLearning solution. As we discussed in previous blogs, the instructional design and related storyboarding effort is dependent on the raw content. And, the effort required is in turn dependent on the source of that content. Raw content can be provided in many ways and may or may not require the active participation of the selected vendor:

1. Written: this may be in many forms, electronic files or hard copy only and from a variety of sources, such as:

• Courseware from a classroom course
• PPT presentations
• Marketing materials
• Technical product, system or application tutorials
• Design document and outline

2. Oral:

• Interviews and collaboration with internal subject matter experts
  
• Interviews with external subject matter experts

3.Research

4.Topic specific training or product use

5. Combination of resources

Whatever, the source for your raw content, it should be openly discussed at the scoping phase. This will enable your custom content development company to more effectively scope the project for time and cost as well as to identify the best internal resources for the project.  The more detailed and specific the raw content, the simpler the instructional design and storyboarding effort.

For example, we created a highly successful course for an application training course. Since this content was for a new product for which no technical documentation had yet been written, the course raw content was provided as actual training of the instructional designer in the use of the application, an entirely hands -on process. Since no written content was provided, the instructional design and storyboarding effort required was a high level. 

So, an experienced custom eLearning development company will work with you and the content you provide, no matter where that content may be found. But, it is critical that the client and the vendor understand what the source of that content is so that both can adequately assess the effort required to translate that into outstanding custom eLearning courseware.

KMi has 10 years of custom content development experience. Let us put that experience in action for you. Contact Margie Herron at mherron@kmionline.com for more information.

Last week we discussed some of the reasons that a robust custom online training curriculum can enhance the success of your supply chain. This week we will look at a specific business case study to understand the challenges that such a program needs to address.

Client: One of America’s largest manufacturers and distributors of health care supplies and services

Company Profile: This company ships more than 100,000 products to health care facilities around the world. With nearly 7,000 employees spread over dozens of locations, they have a long-standing investment in employee training. One of their core values is to “create an atmosphere of growth and opportunity where all employees can reach their potential,” and they have sought innovative solutions to ensure their workforce skills are constantly improving. With employee training, they have a strong need to obtain the best results in the most cost effective way. 

Company Challenges:

• Keep workers safe. The most valuable outcome of effective training is to prevent injuries in the workplace. The question for this company is: how can training be improved to reduce risk?
• Train with greater efficiency. In lean economic times, there is pressure to reduce HR and training resources. Investment in training has to have the greatest possible result for dollar spent.
• Boost training effectiveness. Offline training puts a room of learners in front of one instructor. This training is difficult to offer to everybody, especially for firms with dispersed facilities and 24/7 operation. By its nature, face-to-face training makes it difficult to ensure every worker has the proper job skills and knowledge.
• Track and document training. Training across many facilities creates a formidable bookkeeping problem. Records have to track the initial and ongoing training of every employee. And good training records are mandatory for those daunting realities of business life: regulatory compliance and liability claims.

Sound familiar? At KMi we have discovered that most of our clients who have large, complex supply chains and warehousing and distribution facilities to support their business, encounter these same challenges. Next week, we will share the solution that KMi developed to successfully overcome each of the challenges using our outstanding custom (client-specific) content development team with our robust SCORM conformant LMS platform, eLMS.  If you are facing these challenges and would like to learn more about the KMi solution, please contact Margie Herron at mherron@kmionline.com.

• eLearning is usually less expensive to produce: of course, this may be dependent on the production value and tools you use and the particular content, but, once developed, an eLearning course can be leveraged for years without additional costs.
• The user determines the pace: As a self-paced learner from way back, this is one of its most attractive benefits for me. I can move through any online training solution at my own pace and access it just when I need it. Cool! 
• The learner can move through the learning faster -- As a user, I can bypass information I already know and focus on the information that I need to know. Beats sitting in a classroom and listening to repetitive material every time!
• eLearning provides a consistent message : Many of our clients are global organizations. They need their messaging to be the same whether it is delivered in Singapore, Paris or San Francisco. And, they need it to reflect just that global diversity as well. We just produced an online customer service course. One of the key learning objectives was to establish a consistent and repeatable process for customer support across their global platform. Providing the training as web based eLearning was exactly the right format for this project.
• Implementing eLearning can provide training from any location, any time, and just in time: One of the most obvious applications of this benefit was a sales training series we did for a health system hardware provider. They recognized that their sales people had little advance time to prepare for sales calls because they had such a broad range of services and products. So we created a custom series that reps could access just prior to their sales meetings to educate and update them on products and services. It was a resounding success. 
• eLearning can be updated easily and quickly: I recall developing a series of product training courses, which were updated monthly. The course were template based and allowed for easy updating of product spec changes. This meant that the field always had the most current product information. Imagine doing that through classroom training!
• eLearning leads to increased retention and a stronger grasp on the subject: This is because of the many elements that can be combined in custom eLearning to reinforce the message, such as video, audio, quizzes, interaction, animations, virtual role plays, scenario-based decision-making. Users can also revisit material as they need. Online soft skills training is usually a content area that seems challenging, however, we have produced many highly effective manager skills training courses such as Coaching in this format. Taking advantage of the tools available can produce outstanding learning! 
• eLearning can be managed and delivered for large or small groups of students: Using a SCORM Learning Management System such as KMi's, eLMS, allows the administrators to market courses, provide pre-assessments, evaluations, surveys, reporting, success tracking, blogs and all kinds of other features to enhance the learning experience.