eLearning as we all know has come a long way from its initial slide-based, less interactive form to a more complex and interactive one, with game like innovations, great graphics etc. However, custom solution isn’t the only answer always. Many organizations look for readily available, easy to deploy, low cost solutions which are available as Catalog Courses. Many eLearning service providers have their own set of Catalog courses that usually cover generic topics like, Personal development, Quality & Safety, Marketing, Finance and Marketing, Information security and various Compliance related courses that can mostly be used by any organization, irrespective of the industry. However, some of those may be too generalized and some organizations would require a few changes before using the content for training purposes.
While catalog courses lack in few aspects like, branding, meeting specifiedlearning objectives and personalization etc., it still is an economic and fast solution. So, how are such catalog courses developed? As for any eLearning course, catalog courses can be built individually (for various topics) or using authoring tools.
Why Catalog Course Companies should opt for Tool Based eLearning Development?
Catalog Courses are ready solutions for organizations looking for quick implementation, however for companies creating catalog courses, the traditional approach that is often similar to custom development can be time consuming and costly in case last minute changes are required. Opting for a Tool-based development can be quite beneficial in many ways.
Rapid Development
As the name suggests rapid authoring tools can create catalog courses faster. The pre-built templates, themes, interactions, a media library to choose from and other features allows to focus more on content gathering, creating scenarios etc. The rollout-time is considerably reduced allowing companies to develop more catalog courses in lesser time.
Easier Updates and Maintenance
While catalog courses do not need great many updates very often, however with compliance standards, safety protocols etc. changing with the changing times, courses may need modification and certain amount of maintenance. Tool-based catalog courses can be directly imported into the authoring tool, update/modified as required and be published again.
Optimum Resource Utilization
While creating catalog courses is not always an employee intensive work, tool-based development reduces the need for experts. While Subject experts are still required, the content development process can almost be handled by anyone. Hence, utilizing what is at hand, in terms of content, resources etc.
Reduced Development Cost and hence Better ROI
Apart from the initial investment, tools are low maintenance. There is no need for third-party apps, content can be made device compatible and more interactive with just a few clicks.
Tool-based development for Catalog courses also future-proofs it. In case of change in learning strategy or vast changes in content, the existing course can still be salvaged, the basic template, styles can be reused with modification, all by importing it into the authoring tool that was used to create it at the first place. This isn’t possible with simple development as the packaging varies for each technology used.
Tool-based development can increase the shelf life of Off-the-Shelf courses/ Catalog courses and improve the ROI too.
