As an e-learning specialist, we often get asked the question. Hey, can you just turn this into an elearning course? We then either get an existing course book or a powerpoint with all kinds of slides. The question then is whether we can put that in the LMS for a while so that employees or customers can review this online. In this article, we will address this question and our answer that we want to explore the essence of the problem first.
If you've been into online courses for a while and you've worked with many LMSs, authoring tools, and e-learning solutions, you've probably heard this before. Can you just turn this into an e-learning course. We have already put the content in a powerpoint. Or this one, here's our course book. Can you just put that in the LMS.
Very nice, of course, that they have already sorted everything out for you. But a good e-learning course requires more than just content. In fact, you might even wonder if an e-learning course is the solution. Perhaps the problem that the requester wants to solve with an e-learning course would be much better solved in a different way.
As a recipient of the question and as an e-learning specialist, it is therefore important that you do not immediately convert the powerpoint or course book. First, investigate what the problem actually is and what exactly causes the problem. Cathy Moore has written a great practical book called Map It, in which she discusses this approach.
An e-learning course in a company often aims to change something. For example, batteries and ink cartridges are thrown into a special waste bin. An e-learning course on what to do and why it's important is of course good, but it won't change behavior. At least not alone. In this case, investigate whether waste bins, for example, are in clear and easily accessible places. If these are 100 meters away from, for example, the printer, your success will be a lot smaller than if that bin is next to them. The e-learning course will be able to offer you support. A piece of text won't help then. A nice video in documentary form might help. Show people why it helps and what they do it for. But don't just do this with a course.
For example, we recently set up an e-learning course in our own platform TheLearning LAB for online casinos, showing how to recognize gambling addiction. Very good, of course. But this e-learning course is only part of the entire program.
