Everyone thinks e-learning is great, everyone wants to have it, and you, as a hard-pressed HR developer, are expected to make it happen. Yet you have very little time to create your training and onboarding courses, which is why we're giving you a few tips here on how you can optimize your time management with blink.it.
Tick - Tock - time is running out!
When it comes to designing digital training courses for in-house employees, the biggest pain for many HR developers is probably the factor of time. Namely, too little of it. Far too little. Or even none at all: no time for needs and topic analyses, no time for the concept of the course structure, no time for selecting assessment 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 HR development and have therefore designed the blink.it LMS for the simplest operation, without sacrificing high-quality functionality. If you would like to learn how we solved this problem for our customers, feel free to schedule a free initial consultation using the button below:
We want you to be able to do your job comfortably, and have a few suggestions here that will save you time during course creation.
More must-have - less nice-to-have
The golden rule for time-saving course creation is a clear definition of the respective course objective:
Who is supposed to complete the course?
What skill should be learned through the course?
What goal are you pursuing in your role as an HR developer?
When putting together the individual learning content, always ask yourself if it contributes to the goal and is relevant to the course participants.
Especially in company-wide learning projects, a clean goal definition not only saves time but also prevents time-consuming feedback loops. When learning objectives, the target group, and success criteria are clear from the start, you reduce coordination efforts and avoid subsequent content revisions.
Also, consider what prior knowledge you can assume the course participants have, so you don't present them with learning content they already know inside out. This could cause boredom right at the beginning of the course, which you absolutely must avoid if you want to keep your learners engaged until the end of the course.
Even if you incorporate gamification elements, such as a quiz, into the learning content, they should be directly aligned 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 with didactics
The science of learning and teaching is an expertise that really cannot be expected from every HR developer. Professional trainers and coaches spend years acquiring, refining, and applying didactical knowledge to their educational content.
We know from some of our customers that they have no clear idea or experience on how to structure a training course, and actually dread even tackling the topic in the first place. And then course creation gets postponed again and again because there is simply never enough time to deal with it in peace. Or "off-the-shelf courses" are bought, which are not perfectly tailored to your target group, perform significantly worse in terms of learning success compared to self-designed courses, and, above all, swallow up a large part of your budget.
Here are two good ways how you can quickly start creating courses 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. Of course, it would be nice if you could present didactically sophisticated courses. But if you don't know enough about didactics and simply don't have the time to acquire this knowledge, then just stick to a kind of instruction manual for the structure of your course:
Introduction: Explain to the course participants what the course is about, what they will learn, what to expect, and why they need this knowledge.
Learning steps: Create a list of the individual steps that lead to learning the goal. Imagine you are following a cooking recipe: in it, you would also peel the onions before cutting them, right? First, gather all individual steps in a brainstorming session, group them into chapters, and then put them into a logical order.
Goal achieved: Bring all learning threads together at the end of the course and provide a summary of what exactly was learned and what advantages or application possibilities the acquired knowledge brings.
2. Use the blink.it Blueprint: The Blueprint is a blank course template that already contains a course outline. Inside, you will find short instructions on how to use the Blueprint, as well as a brief explanation of the content in each individual learning unit (the so-called "Blinks"). The template can be used for all types of course topics: You simply fill the Blinks with content, and then you can rearrange or supplement them as you like.
A job shared is half the time
In the blink.it app, you can upload various multimedia contents for each learning unit or create them within the app and spice them up with gamification elements. With drag-and-drop features and user-friendly editors, you can add, edit, and organize content in no time at all without wasting valuable time.
"That's all well and good," we hear you say now, "but where do I get all this fabulous learning content in such a short time? Am I supposed to pull it out of thin air or what?"
The answer is: Just get the material from your colleagues! In blink.it, it is 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 to the course themselves.
Maybe they already have finished presentations, illustrations, or even videos that they can easily make available for you to upload. If not, they would definitely need significantly less time than you to create such learning content from scratch, because you would first have to dive deep into each respective topic. And why try to be a jack-of-all-trades when you already have the whole farm represented in the company?
So: Don't panic about the learning content! Presumably, there are already quite a lot of useful files in your company that you can assemble suitably for your course.
Fortunately, one never stops learning
And this also applies to course creation: Your course participants can leave comments and questions for the respective course instructor in every learning unit in the blink.it app. From their remarks, you can see what you can still improve about 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 release, through which you can determine the automated course flow in advance. You can conveniently track the learning progress of the course participants in your dashboard and read from it how your pre-set course flow is working for them. Your courses will quickly become better and better, and in a short time, you will learn how to proceed with the creation to respond to the needs of your employees so that they achieve their learning goal.
Conclusion
Efficient course creation is no coincidence, but the result of clear goals, pragmatic didactics, and intelligent system support.
Even with limited time resources, you can develop high-quality training and onboarding courses if you concentrate on the essentials: clear learning objectives, simple structures, and utilizing existing expertise within the company.
Instead of perfectionism, you need a functioning process. When content is structured logically, tasks are distributed sensibly, and technical possibilities are used consistently, time pressure turns into productive implementation – and individual courses turn into a sustainable learning strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
How can you save time when creating online courses?
Time can be saved primarily through clearly defined learning objectives, a simple course structure, and consistent concentration on relevant content. Existing materials and reusable course templates further reduce the effort.
Why are clear learning objectives important for efficient course creation?
Clear learning objectives help to only include content that actually contributes to the desired result. This avoids unnecessary content, feedback loops, and subsequent revisions.
How can an online course be structured without extensive knowledge of didactics?
A simple structure consists of an introduction with the learning objective and benefits, logically consecutive learning steps, and a conclusion that summarizes the most important content and application possibilities.
How can colleagues support course creation?
Subject matter experts in the company can contribute existing presentations, videos, documents, or other knowledge. When multiple people can work together on a course, content creation is distributed among those who already possess the respective expertise.
How does a learning platform help with time-saving course creation?
A learning platform can centrally organize course content, provide reusable structures, and automate processes such as the scheduled release of content. This reduces the administrative effort involved in creating and running online courses.
