To come straight to the point: no it is not difficult to make an e-learning module yourself! :-) This of course only applies if you already know what you want to say. The companies we visit often already have learning material on the shelf. Think of machine instructions, hygiene guidelines or training aimed at truck drivers, for example. These existing learning materials can be converted to e-learning and easily enriched with videos, audio read-outs and interactive images.
First of all, I'll explain that there are (very) roughly two forms of e-learning. First, there are the fancy e-learning modules that are created by e-learning designers. These e-learning designers use programs like Articulate Storyline, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Captivate. These fancy e-learning modules are often graphically beautiful and offer interactive elements all over the screen. Companies like PostNL use this for example, see the images below for an illustration.
It is clear that the above form of e-learning is not something you can do yourself. But what type of e-learning can you do yourself? Simply put: with text, videos and images you can go a long way! If you have your own course material in the form of a reader, syllabus or even a book, you can use this to create professional e-learning. Without any problems! In this second form of e-learning you make use of Learning Management Software, also called LMS. Procademy is an LMS with which you can create your own e-learning modules. In an LMS the navigation (all buttons and links) is already taken care of. You only have to enter the text, format it and add interactive elements like videos, audio files and animations.
The advantage of this form of e-learning is that you can develop a professional e-learning module yourself at low development costs. You can imagine that the development of a fancy e-learning module takes more time; it involves several months of work by an external agency (with all the associated costs). You can also easily make your own tests. You can also offer all types of questions you can think of.
Creating e-learning yourself is only easy if you have a user-friendly software. This includes both the "back" (for administrators) and the "front" (for the student). Put simply, you need to be able to develop and adapt the online training easily and the student should be able to go through it easily and in a nice flow. We find this very important in the development of Procademy. Also take a look at the movie below to learn more about the backside of Procademy to learn.
Note: this is the same video as at the top of this blog.