How to Rapidly Deliver vILT Courses

Developing new learning programs and transitioning traditional instructor-led training to virtual instructor-led training (vILT) has been a challenge during COVID-19 restrictions. Many organizations have been forced to evolve into virtual work and learning environments to stay on track, while also furloughing or laying off a portion of their L&D department. This has sent many L&D leaders scrambling to develop and deploy leadership and manager training at breakneck speed and, oftentimes, with limited L&D resources on hand.

At the same time, you may have already been offering a successful in-person, instructor-led course that learners have found engaging and valuable. So now the problem becomes figuring out how to replicate not only asynchronous learning material but also integrate virtual instructor-led training that aligns with the success you’ve already achieved.

There are a few ways to address these challenges, including leveraging off-the-shelf courses. This is a good time to review and refresh your learning strategy to explore new opportunities and options for your programs. Before you begin, here are some tips to help you deploy training quickly and efficiently.

Tips for Migrating to vILT

The good news is that the majority of content you already have in your repository can be migrated to an eLearning environment and used as part of your vILT program. The key is to start with a migration strategy to properly assess existing content, map vILT to learning objectives, and address the ideal modality to achieve learning success.

Here’s a brief overview of the steps towards creating vILT programs.

Start with your learners. The decisions you make with regards to learning tools, modalities, and content presentation will have a direct impact on learning outcomes. Traditional in-person programs that rely heavily on static (read boring) slide presentations are becoming out-moded during a time of great learning innovation. Learners are eager to learn in many modalities, including: microlearning, video and animations, mobile learning, and even game-based learning. When considering your desired learning outcomes, start by asking “what if” questions and explore the potential of immersive learning tools. Like, “What if someone could practice leading a team meeting and learn how to speak with compassion?”

Divide and conquer the content. First of all, you may not need as much content as you have in your repository. Simply digitizing handouts as PDFs may not be the most effective way to leverage your learning content and worse yet, it can lead to a data dump, information overload, and poor learner satisfaction. Some content will require instructor-guided training (performance feedback, synchronous assessments, etc.), while others won’t (fact sheets). Auditing your current learning program will give you insight into what you have on hand and also help to identify gaps, or existing problems that can diminish your learning returns.

Determine eLearning versus vILT. Begin by sorting each program’s content into categories and determine a) What should be eLearning, b) What needs to be vILT, and c) What can be removed. Why is this important and recommended? Reducing seat time during vILT is greatly appreciated by both instructors and learners. So moving PDFs into eLearning and away from vILT does the job. As well, there are a number of high-engagement learning tools that you can take advantage of. For example, using interactive assessments in place of static quizzes. Or providing an immersive business scenario to identify behaviors to be learned and give learners a space to practice. And let’s not overlook amazing technologies such as VR and AR for creating virtual learning experiences. This is a huge subject to unpack, but if you’re interested, check out this article.

Address the sage on the stage. While you’re busy converting ILT to vILT, consider creating an interactive environment and encouraging peer-to-peer and social learning strategies. This can include building in video, multimedia, text chats, surveys, and breakout groups as part of the vILT program. Shake things up and help your learners learn from each other rather than being reliant solely on a single source of information—your sage. Collaboration and communication are key to maintaining a long-term learning strategy by creating a culture of learning where information sharing and mentoring are simply part of the daily work activities.

Get vILT Migration Support

One option for quickly developing and deploying vILT programs is to seek outside talent support. While you can achieve results with your internal team, you may want to consider staff augmentation services to increase team capacity and capabilities. Agile talent vendors can connect you with plenty of learning consultants, such as eLearning strategists, instructional designers, graphic designers, and LMS administrators to help you convert static material into highly engaging and interactive eLearning modules. Together they can enhance your team and integrate into your learning strategy to provide the right amount of support at the right time.

Leverage Off-the-Shelf vILT Courses

When you need a learning program quickly, built by learning experts, instructional designers, and learning strategists, you’re guaranteed to get a highly engaging program. This is obviously the most efficient way to launch a program quickly. Even better, many content vendors have stepped up their game to ensure that these programs are built around the needs of the adult learner, supporting absorption and retention. These off-the-shelf solutions are ideal not only for quick deployment, but also for cost-prohibitive budgets. While custom content development is a best-in-class solution, ready-made learning modules can be quite budget friendly. As well, they can be adapted for use over and over, realizing more value as time goes by.

If you’re interested in learning more about the kinds of off-the-shelf vILT programs available for leadership and manager training, check out CoreAcademy—an open-enrollment program with dozens of available courses.

Originally published on the CoreAxis blog.