8 Advantages of Hiring an eLearning Consultant

If you’re in the process of trying to convert legacy corporate training materials into online courseware (or if you’ve already lived through it), you know that it can be an involved process.

Often, there is pressure from upper-level management to get an online training program in play, quickly. However, your existing resources don’t always have the bandwidth to accommodate this, or the skillset to ensure that your virtual training courses are tailored to your audience, are geared for knowledge retention and have well-written assessments or knowledge checks to measure employee skill mastery.

Hiring a skilled eLearning consultant is an alternative approach that can save your business time and money in the long run. Although hiring an eLearning consultant may cost you more at the onset of the project, you will quickly come to find that it was well worth the investment when you see the outcome of the virtual training courses produced.

Not convinced? Here are eight advantages of hiring an eLearning specialist over doing it on your own.

With an eLearning specialist you can:

1. Get a virtual training program up-and-running faster.

Your existing resources are already strapped for time with multiple projects to attend to. Leveraging their good thinking to develop virtual training courses from existing corporate training material will take them away from what they’re already working on. If you want to get your virtual training program live by a certain date, it’s imperative that you hire the help of a dedicated eLearning professional who can ensure you meet your deadline while also delivering virtual training courses that meet your quality standards.

2. Make sure your training material is geared for employees who learn differently.

Not everyone absorbs information at the same rate or in the same fashion. Some of your employees learn by physically doing something, some learn by listening to something, and many learn by seeing visual examples of the subject matter being presented. Your existing resources may not have a background in eLearning development, and thus, often lack the skills to design interactive eLearning course modules that appeal to a diverse audience. With the help of an eLearning consultant, you can be sure that your training materials are delivered in a way that compliments the learning style of your kinesthetic, auditory and visual learners in some way or another.

3. Ensure your virtual training program employs a blended learning strategy.

Blended learning modules are important for initial and ongoing employee engagement and knowledge retention, as most employees struggle to sustain attention and interest in training that is repetitive in nature. With an eLearning specialist in your corner, you can ensure that your corporate eLearning program transitions to an online format that still incorporates more interactive training mediums, like in-person training.

4. Transition your existing corporate training materials without a hitch.

When people are strapped for time and their attention is divided they often make small mistakes and have a tendency to overlook things. While these errors will not be the undoing of your virtual training program, they can impact the accuracy in which your staff applies the information they’ve learned to real, on-the-job scenarios. To ensure that your corporate training materials hold on to their integrity, it is often best to hire an eLearning professional who is devoted to helping you create accurate and engaging eLearning modules.

5. Streamline the regular creation of new training materials.

In some cases, you may find yourself with the need to turn out new training materials on a regular basis as you change the program, create new opportunities for learning, or evolve the training expected of your employees. You might consider training someone in-house to take care of creating your training materials. This approach, however, can lead to a choppy creation process in several ways. For example:

• The employee who creates the training programs will have an erratic work schedule, with large quantities of work to be turned out for the training modules followed by periods of inactivity when there’s nothing to be created.
• You’ll have a delay in the creation of your programs while the employee is learning how to use them
• You won’t have the option of creating several training programs at once without slowing down the process

Considering the points above, it is typically best to hire a dedicated eLearning specialist who can help your business with regular, planned eLearning development.

6. Have access to valuable training resources that you normally wouldn’t have access to.

If you go your way on eLearning development you will have to research and purchase software programs to help you create the eLearning modules and publish them to the industry file standard—SCORM. If you hire an eLearning specialist, they will bring their depth of knowledge on the matter to help you streamline this process—bringing the right tools and expertise you didn’t even know you needed to deliver the results you want.

7. Learn from the eLearning consultant you hire.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Your team can still work with your eLearning specialist to create high-quality content that is geared directly to the needs of your business and your employees. They can review the material that’s been created, check through the course, and provide valuable insights into your industry, just as you intended for the course creation process. Working with an eLearning specialist simply streamlines those efforts, creating better content across the board.

8. Smooth out the content you’ve created.

You have a distinct “voice” when you create content, as does each member of your team. If you’ve been spreading out the workload, chances are, you have a clear divide between which materials were created by which team member. Working with an eLearning specialist smooths them out, keeping the sense of levity or the seriousness you need depending on your content while still making it seem more like a coherent whole.

Hire an eLearning Consultant Today

Opting for an eLearning specialist for your eLearning development needs is one of the best ways to ensure that you get high-quality content that will allow your employees to make the most of every training session. From meeting the needs of diverse learners to breaking complicated concepts down into simple language that’s easily understood by even the newest employee in the company, eLearning specialists are here to help you create solid training programs that will truly teach your employees new concepts in a way that they will absorb. Whether you’re designing a new safety certification program or creating a program designed to show new employees the ropes, hiring an eLearning specialist is the best way to get the job done right. To hire an eLearning consultant, contact us today.