Due to the corona virus, in-person appointments are still frequently canceled – now educators need to act quickly! We show five quick and easy ways to create content for your online training without in-person attendance.

1. Digitize Workshops and Live Coaching

Let’s start directly with the content that poses the greatest challenge for many trainers: How can you really bring your “live” content into an online training session? Often, tools can only do one thing or the other: Either create learning content or plan live sessions (for example, Go2Webinar). However, there is a simple trick that works very well with blink.it:

Use a provider for digital meetings, for example Zoom. In the free version of Zoom, you can manage up to 100 participants, conduct 40-minute group meetings, and record your meetings – which is very practical since you can also provide the recordings later in the course.

Integrate the link to the digital meeting room directly into a learning unit, so that your participants can access it at the right moment. Of course, you could also send the link to the meeting via email. By embedding it directly in the online training, your participants have all the information at a glance, and nothing can get lost. This makes it clearer for your participants (and for you).

Example: This is how easy it is to create a digital meeting room in online training. // Source: blink.it

2. Materials that are (still) not digital:

Perhaps you use classic manuals, information sheets, or sketches for your training. To offer these materials in online training, you can usually digitize them easily with your smartphone:

In the app store, there is a huge selection of scanner apps that allow you to convert all kinds of documents directly on your smartphone into images or PDFs. Some apps even have a special mode for whiteboards to digitally secure notes or diagrams.

You can find a selection of scanner apps here: The best scanner apps for Android and iOS – surely there is one that suits your needs.

3. Materials in PDF or Word format

Do you already have your documents as PDFs or in Word document format? Wonderful, because these formats can be integrated directly into almost all modern LMS or learning platforms or attached as a download for your participants.

However, with Word materials (.doc/.docx), you should note that an Office program is required to open them. But almost every device, whether laptop or smartphone, has a PDF reader. Therefore, you should convert Word documents to PDFs.

Large PDFs, such as manuals with many pages and topics, should be split into several learning units to avoid overwhelming your participants. You can, for example, split the PDF with Adobe Reader – or if you need to do it really quickly, simply take screenshots of the pages and use the images as individual learning units.

4. PowerPoint Presentations

Do you have a PowerPoint presentation that you deliver “live” at the beginning of your training? Or does a presentation accompany your entire training? Then use this presentation also for creating your online training:

In modern learning systems like blink.it, you can upload PowerPoint presentations easily as a learning unit. Here too, if there are many slides with different topics, divide the content for your online training.

If explanations from you are also needed for the presentation, record your screen, for example with CAMTASIA or Screencastify, while you play the presentation. Speak over a headset or the microphone on your laptop to add appropriate “live explanations.” You then upload the finished recording with audio commentary to your course – ideally divided into several short videos of 2-5 minutes each.

5. Impulses, Exercises, and Short Explanations

You can quickly and easily record small impulses for exercises or explanations for tasks as short videos. You don’t need a large studio: your smartphone is sufficient. If you want even better quality, we recommend the smallest studio in the world – consisting of a tripod, phone holder, light, and microphone.

With the smallest studio in the world, you can easily create short videos for online training with your smartphone.

Tip: You can download the list of all components for the smallest studio in the world as a PDF here: Purchase recommendation: The blink.it Kit for Videos on Smartphone

Record your impulses and explanations just as you normally would convey them to your participants in person. The videos do not need to be perfect! According to a study by TechSmith, a good sound and informative content are crucial for explanatory videos. You can find more tips on how to create good explanatory videos for your online training in the article on the Video Study.

As you can see, digitizing learning content for online training is not that difficult. With a scanner app, a meeting tool like Zoom, and blink.it as a platform, you can create and transform your learning content into online training in no time, which also work entirely without in-person events!