Are you working on a small budget while creating custom content for your elearning course? That can make things a bit more tough. But despite the challenge, there are a couple of tips that you can use in order to stick to the development cost that was given to you.
It does not always apply that that more expensive the course is, the more effective it will be. If you are ingenious enough, you can stick to the budget given to you and still provide the best elearning course to meet your objectives.
Here are 5 techniques that will help you accomplish this budget challenge.
- Utilize existing content. You may have to create custom content but even then, you can still make use of any existing content that you have. Look into your archives or that of your client. They may have content that you can use as is or with a bit of enhancement. You can even save by cutting back on research time – at least if you can find relevant information in any manual, brochure or marketing materials already existing. Some developers can save a lot because it removes the necessity of hiring a content developer.
- Create elearning templates. If you do not have one yet, you are encouraged to create templates. Not only will this save you a lot of time in the future, it will also save you on development costs. You can reuse this template and simply change the custom content as it applies to your client or new elearning course. Now the template is ideally something that you should create separately but if you are already committed to a project, you can probably use an existing course that you have and work from there. In the future, you can use the same template and just change it to improve as you go along.
- Find authoring tools to shorten the development time. The great thing about technology is you can find tools that will help you create courses a lot faster. You do not have to create them from scratch anymore. Some tools, for instance, already has built in learning management systems that has the software that you need to complete your course. Since most of these a web-based, you do not really have to pay much to use them. Examples of these authoring tools include Adobe Captivate 8, or Elucidat. Do your research to find the perfect tool that will suit help you meet your objectives.
- Use links to provide sources of supplemental learning. Spoonfeeding is no longer the norm. You need to encourage your learners to take the lead when it comes to their learning. That means you do not have to give them everything in your course. Use links from authority sites so learners can seek out more information. That way, the custom content that you have to create does not have to be lengthy – thus will not take too much time to create.
- Know what to outsource, and what to do yourself. Now hiring may seem like deviating from your efforts to be more cost-efficient as you create your custom content. However, there are tasks that will actually save you more money if you ask an expert to do it for you. For instance, let us assume you are creating content that is unfamiliar to you and you have no way of getting enough information from your client. You may want to hire a researcher that is familiar with the topic so you can save a lot of time on research and you can create the course a lot faster. This expert can provide you with the right content and data resources in half the time. Of course, there are tasks that you can probably do yourself. If you need some narratives done on the elearning course, you can do the voice over yourself – or ask a team member to do it for you. This will help save you both time and money in recording any narration that you will need.
Creating custom content may seem like an expensive project because you are practically coming up with new material. However, if you follow these 5 steps, you can create content that will probably save you a lot of money – not just in this project but your future courses as well. You do not need a lot of money to create high quality content. You just have to understand how you can use available tools, talent and resources well.
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