Custom-Made vs Off-the-Shelf eLearning
Table of Contents
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed employee training. Businesses had to adapt to concepts like remote work training and eLearning materials. The global eLearning market is expected to exceed $848.12 billion by 2030 as more organizations realize the advantages of digital learning solutions in upskilling their teams.
With 87% of companies saying they have or expect to have skill gaps in the next few years, training is a priority for many. Developing an effective learning strategy starts with understanding your options and identifying the best eLearning method for your unique needs.
What Is Custom eLearning?
Custom eLearning involves designing courses to address your organization and team's learning needs. Custom eLearning course development includes content, colors, and themes unique to your business, purpose-built for your employees based on their roles and your overarching business strategy.
With custom eLearning content, you can upskill and reskill your team. eLearning content providers specialize in creating content that aligns with your objectives while leveraging tried and tested training methods, from videos to interactive courses. They will take your original content and develop it into an engaging learning experience in line with adult education best practices. The result is a bespoke learning system aimed at individuals, bringing out the best in your team and adding maximum value to your training.
What Is Off-the-Shelf eLearning?
Off-the-shelf training courses come ready-made. Off-the-shelf eLearning courses are often provided as a SCORM package that can be loaded onto a learning management system (LMS) - a platform to host and manage eLearning content. Off-the-shelf courses tend to feature more universal or generic subject matter, often covering foundational topics such as popular business software, cybersecurity best practices, basic interpersonal skills, and more.
These courses and training materials allow for the inclusion of various multimedia options, such as video and interactive elements, and are easy to access. As they deliver standardized information, they are suitable for maintaining compliance with industry training regulations and covering broad topics.
The Benefits of Custom eLearning
Custom eLearning content development allows you to adapt or modify your course material to match your needs better or stay agile during rapid business changes. Some of the many advantages of custom eLearning include:
Maintain control: You can take control of your training with customized eLearning content, designing your material to your unique mission, values, goals and objectives. Custom-tailored eLearning content gives your team access to engaging and personalized courses that promote your brand with your chosen images, colors, and logos.
Address specific needs: Custom eLearning caters to your organization's needs, and you can tailor the material to support your goals. For example, if you've identified workflow inefficiencies, you can create course material to address this requirement.
Cover unique topics: Finding off-the-shelf training material for niche topics can be challenging. With custom eLearning solutions, you can create your own where no generic options exist.
Enjoy ownership: When developing a custom eLearning course, your business often retains ownership of the license, avoiding additional content management. All your material will have your organization's branding to create a seamless employee experience.
Boost engagement: How you present the training material is entirely your choice. You can build learning mechanics that appeal to your team, like gamification, mobile learning apps, and augmented reality, to engage your team and achieve maximum impact.
Get technical: Custom material is essential if you work in a technical field or need to train your employees on intricate workflows. As you can tailor the eLearning content, you can add your industry expertise.
Identify improvement opportunities: When you have control over your learning material, you can identify areas where it's performing well, pinpoint opportunities for improvement, and make the necessary adjustments.
Increase return on investment (ROI): Custom training creates targeted learning that engages learners, encourages information recall, and boosts productivity, maximizing your training ROI.
The Benefits of Off-the-Shelf eLearning
Off-the-shelf eLearning content is straightforward. You purchase the training content you need, upload it to your LMS, and make the courses available to your team. Depending on your circumstances, it can be a helpful tool. Some of the principal advantages of off-the-shelf learning include:
Manage your budget: Off-the-shelf eLearning is cost-effective, especially if you need to train your team on foundational topics. Basic topics cover similar subject matter, so spending extra money training your team on existing topics may be unnecessary.
Train on demand: Off-the-shelf eLearning is already developed. Once you purchase it, you only need to load it onto your LMS, and your team can access their training.
Maintain industry standards: Some predesigned learning material is designed with regulatory compliance in mind. You may have to follow specific training models depending on your industry. In this case, you can use existing material instead of repeating the information in a different format.
Keep learning efficient: Many off-the-shelf eLearning content providers constantly update their offerings and provide courses that build off each other so learners can get the necessary experience with the subject.
Benefit from expertise: Subject matter experts (SMEs) create many off-the-shelf learning courses so you can deliver them to your team, confident the materials are accurate.
When to Use Custom or Off-the-Shelf eLearning
You can take a holistic approach to corporate training by integrating both learning formats. You leverage the tools at the correct times and use the most appropriate learning platform. The following tips can help you determine which type of eLearning is best for each circumstance.
When Custom eLearning Is the Right Choice
You can customize your eLearning experience to suit many applications, but some of the best use cases include:
Unique training needs: When your training needs must align with a unique organizational culture, process, or system, custom eLearning is an excellent choice. Aside from having control over the subject matter and presentation, custom material can be cost-effective, as you can reuse the components in future training modules.
Changeable content: Every time a product or organizational process changes, your training should reflect these differences. If your training content changes rapidly, custom eLearning is the perfect choice. As you own the material, you can implement changes as you need them.
Brand-specific requirements: Your training can be more impactful when accompanied by brand-specific images or videos. When you have relevant backgrounds and create scenarios pertinent to your team, they can connect with the content and better retain the information.
When Off-the-Shelf eLearning Is the Right Choice
Predesigned eLearning can be a powerful tool in the right circumstances, delivering expert learning in a user-friendly and efficient way. Some of the best use cases for off-the-shelf learning include:
Generic content: If you need eLearning content that covers generic topics such as compliance, workplace etiquette, or working with a specific operating system, off-the-shelf content is available from expert sources, eliminating the need to customize training.
Urgent training needs: Creating custom courses takes time, but off-the-shelf options are available for immediate upload to your LMS. You can make urgent training available in 24 hours or less, meeting your team's time-sensitive training needs.
Budget constraints: Off-the-shelf solutions are often more cost-effective than creating your own, which is fantastic when you have a limited training budget. You can deliver a quality learning experience designed by subject matter experts through the right provider.
Find the Most Effective eLearning Solution With Intellezy
Leveraging both eLearning types can often be the most comprehensive method of approaching training. Depending on your needs, you can choose a combination of courses best suited to your team and business goals, creating the perfect eLearning courses for broad and niche topics.
Intellezy can support organizational learning, change, and growth in an ever-changing business landscape. Our award-winning video library can help your team master mission-critical software applications and skills, from Google Workspace to communication and other soft skills. We can also support your personalized learning goals with custom eLearning development, giving your team the specific tools they need to add value to your organization.
Contact us to learn more about our approach to revolutionizing learning, and let’s discuss how we can collaborate with you to meet your training, learning, and development needs.