To design effective training with online courses, you need not only time and suitable tools but also practice. Christine Eybe from the successful training institute “Team Lösungsmanagement” shares her experiences from creating 100 online courses with blink.it in the interview. Learn in the article how online courses became a lifesaver during the Corona crisis and get three valuable tips for newcomers.

About the person: Christine Eybe has been the owner of Team Lösungsmanagement (TLM) since 1996 and, together with her team, offers training, coaching, and workshops for international corporations and German companies. Since 2003, she has been working online and is responsible for blended learning and the implementation of TLM blink.it courses.

Ms. Eybe, the training institute Team Lösungsmanagement has been around for 20 years. Two years ago, you started creating your own online courses with blink.it in addition to face-to-face courses. What did you hope to achieve with online courses?

We use online courses to enable modern, sustainable, and individually tailored learning based on the needs of the participants. We want to offer coaching modules for self-reflection, implement individualized learning with needs-based content, and extend learning phases through pre- and post-work.

The goal is to increase the implementation and sustainability of our offerings through guided online impulses. And we want to enable self-directed, time- and location-independent learning.

To what extent have these hopes been fulfilled?

My hopes have all been fulfilled! Contacts and participants are thrilled. We received very good feedback from the first course onward. The only thing I still had to learn was that self-direction in group discussions does not happen automatically. We constantly need to provide targeted impulses – but then that works wonderfully too!

Why did you specifically choose blink.it as a platform?

Thank you, blink.it! We waited so long for this. Since 2003, I’ve tried various tools and became increasingly frustrated. A colleague then pointed me to blink.it in 2017, and I am thrilled. I find it visually appealing, and it’s genius how self-explanatory everything is. My life has been absolutely made easier at the online front because of this.

I would also like to commend the blink.it team here. From the first sales conversation to quick help with technical issues, everyone was responsive, super nice, and absolutely competent.

What is the distribution of roles at TLM for the online courses? Who creates the courses, and how personally involved are you?

You caught me there – I should have involved many more employees in the course creation long ago, but I enjoy doing it myself so much. I create the basic framework and quickly involve the trainer, whom I then also make the administrator directly. Together, we share the support of the group and do our best to provide all participants with a successful and motivating learning experience.

100 courses in two years is quite a lot! How did the creation of the 99th course differ from that of the first and second courses?

I must honestly admit that it was not the smartest idea to start with Videoscribe and Powtoon, along with several other tools, in parallel to blink.it. I was still floundering with the first two courses and had a slight nervous crisis because there was so much to learn. But everything fell into place very quickly. Not least because blink.it is so user-friendly.

What topics do you think are particularly suitable for online courses?

We mainly work in the field of blended learning, and for that, blink.it is suitable for each of my topics. It enhances every training and offers absolute added value. It is particularly helpful in multi-year talent or trainee programs involving many trainers and internal and external contacts. In blink.it, all relevant information is clearly and at a glance available to all involved – it has become a real knowledge management system for us.

You mentioned in the preliminary discussion that blink.it has helped you a lot during this time without face-to-face training. What could you achieve with blink.it at TLM during the crisis?

Blink.it saved me! Before the crisis, we used blink.it as a blended learning component in about 10% of our training. Now it's 90% of the training. In March, we transformed an ongoing leadership program into a purely online course with blink.it. I created a trial course for our clients and also an exchange course for our trainers. This allowed us to easily share knowledge and learn together. It was particularly helpful that I could create content and courses infection-free even during the absolute lockdown. This kept me busy, and I didn’t have to think about cancellations of face-to-face training...

Which aspects of blink.it helped you the most?

The user-friendly handling is very important. Furthermore, I am also thrilled with the statistical evaluations. This allows me to support participants individually and to set the right impulse at the right moment.

Not least because of the current crisis, many educators are now relying on online offerings. What three tips would you like to give trainers from your experience with 100 courses who are starting with blink.it?

1. It is sensible to create a trial course on the requested topic in the acquisition process for clients who do not yet know blink.it. This helped me convince many clients to enhance the remote live training online with blink.it.

Reading tip: You can read more about trial courses for customer acquisition in the article “How to sell more online courses with a demo course.”

2. My tip is blended learning: I find it most helpful to combine blink.it with face-to-face training and virtual training, e.g., via MS Teams. This way, participants can work in blink.it whenever they want, wherever they want, and for as long as they want. In the moderated live sessions, we then discuss and deepen what we learned practically, moderate the exchange among participants, and motivate further work in blink.it.

Reading tip: You can learn more about the combination of online courses and virtual presence in the article “What is virtual blended learning?”

3. I think it's important to put in the effort: From details like beautiful and meaningful preview images to varied content, even those created with Powtoon. As a service, we always provide participants with documents for download. It is also very important to respond immediately to participant comments and support them with learning impulses personally.

Reading tip: You can find more about engaging design of online courses in the article “In 4 Steps from Boring Online Courses to Successful Highlights.”

Test blink.it

Your Admin Demo

Do you want to successfully start your own online courses for training and coaching? Then schedule a free blink.it demo now!

Request your free admin demo now

Do you have questions about blink.it or about this article?

Feel free to write to us if you have questions about the product or specifically about this article. Our marketing team is available to you by email or will forward your request to a suitable Blinkie 😊