So, how can you save development time with eLearning automation? Traditionally, L&D teams use dedicated resources and tools for course development.

For each course, an SME creates content and the course is created by an eLearning developer using many available authoring tools. One disadvantage of this method is the time spent on non-value-adding, repetitive, mundane tasks.

Research has shown that while a learning manager spends 20% of the time on content creation, more than 60% of the time is spent on course authoring, and a mere 5% is spent on strategy and storyboard.

This not only affects the timeline for rollout and the budget, but it also takes a toll on the effectiveness of the eLearning courses.

Where are you wasting time?

# Time, tools and competencies

Most of the times, the learning manager or Instructional Designer is at the mercy of the tool and the developer for keeping the timelines and creating the content.

Hence, more often than not, the final course is a trade-off between the actual requirement and practicalities, because of the limitations caused by time, the tool, and the competencies of the developer.

# The learning curve

Also, the learning curve for acquiring course development skills with currently available tools is steep, and hence, many of the learning strategists shy away from ever acquiring these.

# Updates

Additionally, to update a course, the team has to go through the same workflow again, which more often than not makes updates very infrequent than the real-life needs.

1. Spend time on your eLearning strategy, not on eLearning development

Ideally, to make your courses more effective, and to get the best results, you should be spending more time on your strategy and on creating a storyboard than anything else.

This will give you more time to gather enough data and information to create targeted courses. Longer time to create the strategy gives more opportunities for dialogue and, this way, you can weed out unnecessary flab.

This not only increases the course’s effectiveness but also helps to make the course more interesting and engaging.

2. Work out your eLearning strategy around eLearning automation

# Automated authoring tools

Today, automation tools, like Wizcabin can help you bring down the time taken to develop eLearning to a large extent. Choose automated eLearning authoring tools that help you spend less time on course authoring, designing, and related development activities.

This would ensure you have more time to spend on your strategy and content planning.

3. Choose tools that provide reusable assets

Create your own asset libraries. This would help tremendously while developing your courses and would also help you reduce time and money spend on the actual development process.

Once you have the right tools at hand, you should be able to plan your eLearning development process around automation.

Understand your learners’ needs and plan the learning paths according to the requirements. Create and plan assessments that ensure learning retention.

4. Analyze time spent on each task

Automation tools and a good asset library would reduce your development time from 60% to 15%. This would enable you to spend 40% of your time on developing eLearning strategy, planning assessments and creating the storyboard.

With the right authoring tools and libraries, you will not be spending too much time on updates and personalization either. Also, there is not much to learn about course authoring when you are using automated eLearning tools.

This way, the learning manager or the Instructional Designer/herself can act as the course developer, reducing required resources, cost, and time.

Steps that could dramatically reduce your course authoring time

# Content creation

Use tools that help you create content that is easy to convert to other formats. Many authoring tools support document imports, where you can directly import MS word files and PowerPoint files.

Wizcabin allows you to import content documents and convert them into a storyboard. Wizcabin would automatically convert the storyboard into an interactive eLearning course saving you a lot of time designing and developing slides.

# eLearning strategy

Plan your learning strategy keeping your learners in mind. Create a master strategy document that can be reused.

# Storyboard

Creating storyboards using PowerPoint or MS Word templates takes a long time. Use automation tools that allow content import, and automated storyboard conversion.

# eLearning development

Choose tools that provide automated eLearning course creation and easy updates.

The benefits of eLearning automation

# Reduced development time

Most of the development process can now be automated. This helps you save time spent on the development process and frees up resources to focus more on strategy and assessments

# Reduced cost

Automation can cut down your cost for development dramatically. Once the development process is automated, that budget can be saved for other activities. In addition, the additional cost incurred for updating the courses can also be brought down considerably.

# Rapid eLearning roll-out

Automation can bring down the whole eLearning process time to half or even lesser. This saves a lot of resources and can help you roll-out more courses at a rapid pace.

 1st published at eLearning Industry