It happens every day. Someone realizes they need training for their staff. It could be for onboarding, to support a new product or customer, to reduce errors, to increase revenue, or to meet regulatory requirements.

 

So they hit the Internet and search things like: create a online course; develop online training courses; instructional design training courses; create online training course; or create online learning courses.

 

They get a couple million results and take a look at the first few pages, but it makes them more confused than ever. What are they missing?

 

Usually, it’s a basic understanding of what it takes to create online learning courses.

 

You’re an expert at your job. You’ve mastered the vocabulary, variables and workflow. But e-learning is a whole new job with its own language and processes. And unless your job is to create online learning courses, you may feel like a traveler in a new country who doesn’t speak the language.

 

But you still need training for your team, so where to you start in your quest to develop online training courses?

 

Step one is to understand the process to create a online course. That will help you begin to speak the language, and understand what you’ll need and who can help.

 

Steps to Create an Online Course:

 

1. Needs assessment: Conduct a needs assessment to fully understand your training requirements.

2. Source materials evaluation: Evaluate any material such as classroom training presentations or student manuals, technical spec sheets, processes and procedures and workflow documents—anything that will help you fully understand what the training needs to cover.

3. SME knowledge: Talk to your subject matter experts so you can incorporate their knowledge into the training.

4. Instructional design: Develop the instructional framework the training will use to teach the material.

5. Instructional assets: Write a script and produce a storyboard of the training; gather or produce photos, illustrations, videos, audio and any other design assets to be used in the course.

6. Build: Use an e-learning authoring tool to create the screens and incorporate all of the instructional assets.

7. Publish and check: Produce the final version of your course and perform a quality assurance check.

8. Review and update: Monitor the effectiveness of your program and enhance or update it as needed.​

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That’s lesson #1 in learning to develop online training courses. Hopefully it will help you begin to tackle the challenge to develop online training courses.