How to make effective and profitable e-Learning training with limited budgets

Is your e-Learning training budget limited? Optimize it by following these six simple steps.

How to make effective and profitable e-Learning training with limited budgets

Is your e-Learning training budget limited? Optimize it by following these six simple steps.

If your budget for e-Learning training is tight, do you have to forget developing projects in this area? Absolutely not!

One of the biggest obstacles in planning the online training programs lies in respecting the budget: are you an excellent project manager who constantly monitors that no one (educational designers, graphic designers, computer scientists) exceeds the assigned limits? Please find here some suggestions to help optimizing your budget, without losing the quality of learning.

1. Backward Design

Before focusing yourself in the planning and development activities, adopt an unconventional method of thinking: think backwards! Define immediately what’s the final result you want to achieve. If you do not, you risk spending unnecessary energy and money in developing components that you will never need.
In order for you to correctly define the result you want to achieve, it is essential to conduct a needs analysis to understand which skills and theoretical/practical knowledge students must and want develop. Of course, this has a cost. But how much would it cost not to do it?
This way you will be able to define learning objectives and you will be able to focus on the most critical design elements. Furthermore, you will be able to better define on the first shot the LMS functions best suited to your needs.

2. Repurpose Existing e-Learning Materials

Collate all the training materials used in the past in classroom courses, workshops or e-Learning. Evaluate if any of these materials can be used in the new online training program. Be careful not to consider obsolete materials and do not try adapting the new training to existing content.

3. Create Materials Yourself

If you entrust the development of the e-Learning course to an Instructional Designer you can rely on the experience of the professional in creating effective e-Learning courses. On the other hand, design costs will rise.
Do you know that today many authoring tools are accessible to everyone and easy to use, allowing you to personally design your e-Learning courses by creating videos, voice recordings or interactive quizzes? High quality tools are certainly not free of charge, but they are a good investment that will be recovered in a short time.

4. Make Use Of e-Learning Templates

The design quality of an e-Learning course influences students' motivation and commitment to complete the program, thus determining its effectiveness.
In this regard, you can use e-Learning models that help you create a well-structured e-Learning course. These models help you save time and money by making sure you have built a fluent and effective course.

5. Encourage Further Learning And Collaboration

Encourage students to independently seek educational materials that interest them (eg books, online videos and speeches, or free seminars) beyond those offered by the standard course. With this objective, open a discussion forum where students can share knowledge and experience, so that everyone can provide added value to the course. This type of informal study can support and strengthen the objectives of the planned training, with benefits both for the quality of the students' training experience and for your budget.

6. Find The Right Balance

Thanks to the tips seen so far, find the right balance in the allocation of the budget asking yourself: which are the marginal elements on which I can save and what are the crucial elements on which to focus the budget?

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