Converting Instructor-Led Classes to Self-Paced Online Courses
All experienced instructional designers have worked on projects that involve converting instructor-led classes to self-paced courses or interactive HTML SCORM courses. When working on such conversion projects, you may have realized that the project is not as simple as it sounds. This is mainly because instructor-led classes are written to be facilitated and delivered by an expert instructor. Hence, when it needs to be converted to self-paced courses, it needs to be written and presented in a way that is suited for the new delivery medium.
The only exception is when the instructor who has been expertly delivering the courses records the courses in a professional manner and deploys them for consumption as self-paced courses. However, if the instructor is not available to do the recording and the courses must be updated by a team of instructional designers, here are some tips that will help you avoid delays and quality issues that you may encounter when you work on such projects.
You can view the video below or read the blog post explaining the same content as the video.
Tip 1: Use a Defined Checklist for Self-Paced Courses
As Instructional Designers, we regularly manage projects related to converting one format of training to another. So, it makes sense to have a checklist of items that such special projects need. Most Instructional Design teams do have a checklist or Project Management template for new courses that are developed. However, they tend to miss out on having a special checklist for such conversion projects. As a result, such projects encounter some roadblocks, such as:
- A mid-way realization that a lot of slides need to be reworked to suit the new delivery format
- Support from a graphic resource is needed more than initially assumed
- The need to update a few slides to align with the latest trends, software releases, or best practices
Hence, at Check N Click, based on our years of experience in managing different types of projects, we follow a special checklist depending on the nature of the project. We recommend you do the same based on your team culture, resources, and tools at your disposal.
Tip 2: Treat the Self-Paced Courses as If You Are Starting New Courses
Treating the projects as new courses can help you to have the right mindset and keep focus on analyzing and reading the course content before jumping into development. The time required to analyze content will be minimal compared to starting a new course because all your source content is already in one logical package, which is in the form of a complete course.
Analyzing and examining the content of a course before converting can help you identify the amount and nature of edits needed to make effective self-paced courses. These edits typically relate to:
- Revising slide designs and layouts
- Removing instructor notes and hints
- Writing an audio narrative transcript for the slides – if the course needs to be recorded by a professional audio artist and not an instructor
Tip 3: Be a Consultant to the Trainer Who Is Converting the Courses
Even if you have an instructor who can quickly record the instructor-led classes and make videos, consider reviewing the deck or slides once before the instructor records the class. This is because your small instructional-design-based consultations can help to improve the quality of the course. For example, during a classroom or virtual instructor-led delivery of a course, the instructor can make up for a slide that has minimal content on the screen.
However, when the course is being delivered as a video, you may need to add some visuals or more content on the slides, to help learners stay on pace with the delivery speed of the instructor. This is important because, during a live class, the learner may ask a query to the instructor. However, in self-paced courses, the instructor is not available to clarify any doubts that the learner may have. Hence, it is important to review the slides of the courses before they are being recorded by the instructor.
Tip 4: Deleting Content and Slides Related to In-Class Activities
Most courses that are delivered online do have some content related to interactions, discussions, or activities that an instructor manages during delivery. So, during your conversion, make sure that you remove such slides or content.
If I had to recommend one tip from these four that you must implement, then it would be:
Tip: Use a defined checklist for such conversion projects.
This is because it will address the common changes that need to be made to instructor-led classes of your organization. Each company manages their projects in a slightly different manner compared to its peers. Hence, you must focus on customizing these tips and preparing a checklist that is best suited for your organizational needs.
Tip 5: Revisit the Instructor Notes and Ensure The Scripts Sound More User-Friendly
At Check N Click, we’ve been writing instructor-led classes with detailed explanations of the on-slide content in the Notes section of the PowerPoint file. This PowerPoint file is then converted to a student guide and the detailed notes help the students recall the lessons. In addition, the notes are also helpful for instructors to ramp up on the training. This is important because a typical instructor teaches multiple classes. So, detailed notes help them to recall the key topics before teaching in a live session.
So, if you also write instructor-led classes in a similar manner, ensure that during conversion to self paced online courses, you make such edits to the Notes text that it’s easy to learn about the topics with the voice narration. That is, edit your notes and write your voice narration for the self-paced course such that:
- The students should be able to understand most concepts from the course by just listening to the audio
- The narration is easy to read
- The narration and the on-slide content should teach the same information. That is, all the key points included in the narration must be included on the slide as well, so that when going through the self-paced course, the visual and auditory instructions are in sync.
To conclude, our recommendation is: Do not ignore the management of such projects or carry them out without a guided process in place. This is because:
- More students are demanding and favoring self-paced learning
- Self-paced courses help you minimize costs related to training delivery
- Finally, due to the changed environment, more courses will be developed for self-paced delivery. Hence, to be aligned with the trends and demands, it makes sense to use the good quality content from your existing training library, and deliver it to meet the current demands.
We hope these tips have been helpful. Stay tuned for more free content and tips from us. Thanks for watching this video or reading the blog.
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Summary of All Tips for Converting an Instructor-led Course to a Self-paced eLearning Course.
