What is the benefit of off the shelf elearning courses?
Off the shelf elearning courses are ready to go. They can be downloaded and deployed often in seconds. If you already have a Learning Management System (LMS) or Learning Experience Platform (LXP) the courses can be quickly and easily integrated into your platform and deployed across your company with limited fuss.
Unlike custom development, off the shelf courses can be used with no additional development time and are ready to solve a learning content problem that you have immediately.
Why buy off the shelf elearning courses?
Custom development takes time and can be expensive. An off the shelf library provides significant cost savings and you can deploy a huge content library in hours, often minutes. There is a wide range of content libraries available including very specific sector libraries like the AnalyiSport Data Football Library.
If you are looking to deploy elearning within your organisation then off the shelf courses can be an excellent part of your overall learning strategy, allowing you to quickly and effectively get content out to your employees without the need to create your own courses.
Courses have often already been used by a number of customers and therefore have gone through a rigorous testing and QA process – something that you will benefit from.
You will also be able to speak to existing customers and read through reviews to see if the particular course library and off the shelf courses are aligned with your own learning objectives.
Cost Effectiveness
Off the shelf courses eliminate the need for content creation, instructional design and interactive development. This is a significant development if you are the start of the process.
You may have a specific requirement that is unique to your business that a content library doesn’t cover – but off the shelf courses may well cover the vast majority of your content requirements.
Using off the shelf courses can help if you are working with a reduced training budget and need to allocate training to other areas of your business.
Content Expertise
Off the shelf courses are often created using content created by subject matter experts. This can often provide access to new content areas and also high quality content in new industries and sectors.
The use of off the shelf content also allows you to access content areas that might prove too expensive in a custom project – the off shelf course may allow you a cost effective way to access new expert content.
Quality Assurance
Developing custom elearning is expensive and is time consuming. One of the overlooked parts of the process is quality assurance, reviewing each stage of the development process takes time.
This time is needed not only by the development team but also your own internal team who need to check the content, graphics, interactive and final project product.
Off the shelf courses have already been reviewed and checked, they have also been used by other customers and you benefit from other customers using the courses.
Reliable suppliers will also have a process for development courses that reduces the number of errors that you are likely to encounter when completing a course.
There is no guarantee that each course will be 100% error free but the advantage of using off the shelf courses and also a course library is that any issues are often identified and resolved quickly.
There will be multiple customers using the course and the supplier will want to get the issue resolved and back on the platform quickly.
Lower development costs compared to custom development
Custom development involves a highly skilled team including developers, writers, graphic designers, programmers, instructional designers, animators and more. The use of off the shelf courses reduces the costs associated with the development of custom courses.
Off the shelf courses and their deployment also reduces the time and resources needed to get elearning courses into the organisation. It does take pressure off your elearning team and allows them to focus on key elearning projects.
If you have an elearning team that are creating content they can be working on company specific projects as opposed to content that can be easily bought off the shelf.
Time Efficiency
Off the shelf courses allow for quick implementation of courses across your implementation. Regardless of whether you have an LMS/LXP or don’t have one, you can still be up and running in hours, often minutes.
There are providers of course libraries like OpenSesame who provide access to off the shelf courses via the website, meaning that you don’t need an LMS or LXP and you can be deploying pre-built courses in minutes.
If you do have an LMS or LXP then the implementation of off the shelf courses is relatively easy. At Real Projects we have an easy download including files that you integrate into your platform and you will be able to deploy courses across your employees quickly and easily.
Off the shelf courses avoid lengthy development cycles that often accompany custom elearning projects. You’ll be able to select the courses that you require and deploy them after you’ve arranged terms with your suppliers.
There will often be a requirement for custom elearning even if you have off the shelf courses but if you are trying to utilise high quality content, you’ll be able to access a wide range of courses quickly.
Scale
Regardless of whether you are new to elearning course or if you already have courses in place off the shelf courses are able to cater to organisations of various sizes. You can add just a few courses to several thousands.
The advantage is that they allow for easy scaling and often some basic customisation is often available as well!
If your organisation is based across a number of locations then being able to scale quickly and deploy the courses across these locations is also a huge benefit.
Content and topic areas covered
There are now a wide range of topic areas covered by off the shelf courses. You’ll be able to find compliance, soft skills and technical skills in a number of off the shelf libraries and you will also now find more specialist courses like football courses and content for sectors like oil and gas, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.
The main off the shelf course companies also provide a roadmap and this outlines up and coming courses for the coming year allowing you to plan and know what courses are coming online.
A number of companies also actively speak to customers about what their needs are and build this into their roadmap. You can have an input into what new courses are coming online.
With thousands of courses available it can be possible to find content to meet your requirements.
Return on investment (ROI)
Off the shelf courses can be considerably cheaper when compared to the cost of developing your own courses with reduced development costs and time. If effectively deployed the courses can lead to increased productivity and performance if they are part of your learning and development plan.
Often courses are aligned with organisational goals and objectives, but increasingly course content is now provided to allow learners to learn on their own time and provide content that is not just linked to their job role. Courses can be provided to support other learning areas and are not just compliance courses soft skills and job role content.
Conclusion
Off the shelf courses can provide a cost effective way to deploy learning content quickly and effectively across your organisation. There is a wide range of content available in multiple languages at various price points and it can be deployed across various platforms.
The content can be up and running within hours so you have the opportunity to plug any content gaps that you have and/or have an elearning content solution up and running without the need to start your own custom development team.
If you don’t have the technical infrastructure, cloud tools also allow you to have instant access to content and the administration and report capabilities to manage content and reporting functionality.
If you are interested in off the shelf content and would like to find out more about more, please contact us at hello@realprojects.co.uk
