Reusing content with a click of the mouse – trainers working with blended learning can benefit from this advantage. With online courses, you can save a lot of time: Copy and recycle individual modules or even entire courses with just a few clicks. In this article, you will learn our best practices on the topic of reusability of online courses!
Save Time with Blended Learning
The challenge: You want to give a course that you designed quite similarly a few years ago. Now you are looking for the documents from back then and trying to remember which components you used for the course. This costs time and nerves.
With the use of online courses, this work is eliminated. Here, you can find and copy individual components easily with suitable software – and the framework for the new training is ready! You might still need to make a few minor adjustments, depending on how many contents are still current.
Find and duplicate files and content within seconds: This core function of digital tools is a clear advantage over traditional face-to-face training. The analog world, unlike the digital one, is bound by time and location.
This does not mean that you should do without traditional live training. Face-to-face communication also has its own advantages that digital devices cannot fulfill. With the concept of blended learning, you combine both forms of learning and gain all the benefits for yourself.
Blended Learning = Presence + E-Learning
You can find quite a bit about the term blended learning on our blog. The idea behind it is that trainers and coaches additionally support their participants through e-learning, in addition to traditional live training (presence). The linking of both creates many advantages for all parties involved compared to using a single learning format.
For example, we recently asked trainer Normen Ulbrich in the blog what excites him about the concept of blended learning. His answer: At the beginning, you need a certain portfolio of online content – later, you can easily copy and rearrange it. Even if a module fell short during a live training, Normen can integrate this into his online academy without any effort.
All Advantages of Blended Learning for Trainers at a Glance:
You gain reusability
You gain media diversity
You gain a new revenue stream
You gain new customer groups
You gain measurability
You gain a unique selling proposition
You gain flexibility
Blended Learning is to Trainers What the Spice Rack is to Chefs
To create a new course for new customers, as a trainer, you can copy and reuse any online content or even entire courses from your inventory. The entire training thus becomes a kind of spice rack that keeps filling up, with which you create new dishes.
Blended learning is the spice rack for trainers: Through the digital storage of content, trainers have a whole range of components over time that they can rearrange.
Utilizing Recurring Patterns of Training
Getting to know each other – Introducing – Deepening – Transfer? You probably structure your training mostly according to similar patterns:
At the beginning, there is usually a personal greeting and a joint introduction.
Then follows a learning phase, in which you first deal with introductory content until you can finally delve deeper into the topic.
And towards the end of the training, you probably want to summarize the content with your participants and ensure the transfer into practice. Perhaps you also use a kind of final exam in your training.
However you design your training – some elements repeat and give you as a trainer a very personal touch and a distinctive feature.
Tip for Implementation: Create Course Templates
You can use these patterns with blended learning to save time: Create a template once for your online support and then use it again and again. For the template, you can leave out the contents and instead write short placeholder texts about what you want to do at this point in the training.
An example of a course template for training with blink.it: This way you can use the framework repeatedly and save time for other things.
This leaves a professional, well-structured impression on your participants and your clients. And at the same time, you save a lot of time.
Tip for Implementation: Copy and Adjust Content
Trainers are also familiar with this situation: You have a new training with new participants, but some content is so essential that you use it repeatedly. In the e-learning phase, the digital storage and copy function benefits you here again.
For instance, if you always start with a personal greeting and introduction of yourself, you can shoot a single video and use it repeatedly. If you want to adapt the greeting to your new participants, you can also save time here and add a few lines above the video.
Example of an Individual Greeting Text Above the Reused Selfie Video:
Welcome to our online support for the training "Better Meetings"! Before our meeting on September 10th, I would like to briefly introduce myself. Please watch the short video and then introduce yourself in the comments so that I can get to know you as well. I am looking forward to our training!
Even when copying and reusing individual content, participants and clients will primarily notice one thing: That you use high-quality content at the right time. Whether and when you have used this content before is only relevant to you.
This is How It Works with blink.it
Of course, reusing complete courses and individual contents is also quite simple with blink.it. The online platform is designed in such a way that you as a trainer can work with it as effectively as possible.
Let’s conclude with a small game: Take five minutes to think about which structural patterns you consistently use in your training or coaching. Then, in another five minutes, sketch a similar course template like the one below, arranging the individual components in the correct order:
Have fun saving time!
