Everyone loves e-learning, everyone wants it, and you, as the beleaguered personnel developer, are supposed to make it happen. You have very little time to create your training and onboarding courses, which is why we're giving you a few tips on how to optimize your time management with blink.it.
Tick - Tock - time is running out!
When it comes to designing digital training courses for employees in your own organization, the biggest pain point for many personnel developers is probably the factor of time. And there's simply not enough of it. Far too little. Or none at all: no time for needs assessments and topic analyses, no time for the course structure concept, no time for selecting evaluation methods, and certainly no time for creating high-quality course content.
The pressure to keep up with increasing demands while meeting the needs of employees can be overwhelming. We know this dilemma in personnel development, which is why we have designed the blink.it LMS for simple usability without compromising on high-quality functionality. If you want to know how we've solved this problem for our clients, feel free to arrange a free initial consultation through the following button:
We want you to be able to do your job comfortably, and we've got a few suggestions that will save you time in course creation.
More musts - less fluff
The top priority in time-saving course creation is a clear definition of the respective course objective:
Who is supposed to take the course?
Which skill is to be learned through the course?
What goal are you pursuing in your role as a personnel developer?
When compiling the individual learning content, always ask yourself whether it contributes to the goal and is relevant for the participants.
Also consider what prior knowledge you can assume from the participants so that you don't present learning content that they already master effortlessly. This could lead to boredom at the beginning of the course, which you must avoid if you want to keep your learners engaged until the end of the course.
Even if you incorporate gamification elements like a quiz into the learning content, they should directly align with the learning objective. Pure entertainment is nice to have, but you should always remember that creating these course elements will cost you some time.
The thing about didactics
The science of learning and teaching is an expertise that really cannot be assumed from every personnel developer. Professional trainers and coaches spend years acquiring and fine-tuning didactic knowledge and applying it to their educational content.
We know from some of our clients that they don't have a clear idea or experience of how to structure a training course and fear even tackling the topic at all. And then course creation gets repeatedly postponed because there is simply never enough time to deal with it calmly. Or "off-the-shelf courses" are purchased that are not perfectly tailored to your target group, perform significantly worse in learning success compared to self-designed courses, and consume a lot of your budget's money.
Here are two good options for how to quickly get started with course creation and overcome the panic of the "blank page":
1. Don't make it too complicated: You don't have to win any awards with your courses. Sure, it would be nice if you could present didactically sophisticated courses. But if you're not well-versed in didactics and simply don't have the time to acquire that knowledge, then just stick to a kind of manual for your course structure:
Introduction: Explain to the participants what the course is about, what they will learn, what to expect in the course, and why they need this knowledge.
Learning steps: Create a list of the individual steps that lead to the achievement of the goal. Imagine you're following a recipe: You would peel the onions before cutting them, right? First, gather all the individual steps in a brainstorming session, group them into chapters, and then arrange them in a logical order.
Goal achieved: Bring all learning strands together at the end of the course and provide a summary of what exactly has been learned and what benefits or applications the acquired knowledge offers.
2. Use the blink.it blueprint: The blueprint is a blank course template that already includes a course outline. You will find a short guide on how to use the blueprint, as well as a brief explanation of the content for each individual learning unit (the so-called “Blinks”). The template is applicable for all types of course topics: You just have to fill the Blinks with content, and then you can rearrange or supplement them as you like.
A shared job is half the time
In the blink.it app, you can upload or create various multimedia content for each learning unit and spruce it up with gamification elements. With drag-and-drop functions and user-friendly editors, you can quickly add, edit, and organize content without wasting valuable time.
"That's all well and good," we hear you saying now, "but where do I get all this fabulous learning content in a short time? Should I bite the bullet or what?"
The answer is: Just get the material from your colleagues! In blink.it, it's possible to set up multiple people as admins of a course. As soon as you know what learning content you need for a course, ask the experts in your company to provide you with the material or to upload it directly into the course themselves.
Maybe they already have finished presentations, illustrations, or even videos that they can simply make available to you for uploading. If not, they would definitely take significantly less time to create such learning content than you would because you would first have to dive into the respective topic. And why become the all-encompassing jack of all trades when you already have the entire farm represented in the company?
So: No panic about the learning content! There are probably already quite a few useful files available in your company that you can assemble appropriately for your course.
Fortunately, you never stop learning
And the same goes for course creation: Your course participants can leave comments and questions for the respective course leader in each learning unit within the blink.it app. From their remarks, you can see what you can improve in this course or what you need to pay attention to in future courses.
The blink.it app also offers smart settings for each learning unit, such as scheduled Blink releases, which allows you to determine the automated course progression in advance. You can comfortably track the learning progress of the course participants in your dashboard and see how your pre-set course progression works for them. Your courses will quickly improve, and you will learn in no time how to proceed in creation to meet the needs of your employees so that they achieve their learning objectives.
So you see: Even if you have very little time available for creating digital training or onboarding courses, you just need a few tricks and tips to quickly set a lot in motion. It would be a shame if no training could be offered in your company due to a lack of time because the development of employees is certainly one of the reasons you chose this beautiful job at some point.
We hope this article has helped you and wish you lots of fun and success in creating your courses - ideally without time pressure!
