In the last issue, I talked about how to make instructor-led PowerPoint presentations more interactive. Now I'll offer a few concrete tips on when and why you might want to create an online course out of your PowerPoint presentation.

I asked the subscribers of the WBTOLL-L e-mail list (Web-based Training, OnLine Learning) if they had any experience doing this. The replies I received fell within this range:

A… It was easily accomplished and was received very successfully.

Z… Online learning takes years of experience, is not the same as instructor-led training, and it would be foolish to attempt such a thing.

When many people think of online learning, they immediately imagine a high-budget production that requires a great deal of new design techniques, technical execution, and time. It can be that. But it doesn't have to be.

The secret to successful online learning is to keep trying to answer these four questions:

We all want to improve the quality of our instruction. What if we were given a huge budget by management and told to go develop the best online training there is? In that case, our primary motivation for training online would probably be:

Instructional improvement

• Allow people to participate from their desktops.
• Make the learning self-paced.
• Make the training more interactive.
• Allow more personalized interactions with a Subject Matter Expert (SME) than a classroom allows.
• Make the course more entertaining (notice I put this last).

I've heard of a few cases like this, at least over the short term while a particular company is flush with cash. More often, our primary motivation is less noble, but more pressing:

Training logistics

• Provide training to participants around the world at a time that is convenient to them, perhaps even in their language.
• Create the capacity to train thousands of participants at the same moment.
• Save the enormous travel and downtime costs of bringing everyone to a central location.
• Provide training by simulation instead of practicing with expensive or dangerous equipment.
• Train to criterion as a substitute for paper tests and automatically track enrollment and results (such as safety training).
• Cut costs, cut costs, cut costs.

These motivations have to do with making training more convenient, more affordable, more manageable, or even safer.

If your primary motivation to go online comes from the training logistics category, does this mean training quality will be compromised? That depends on two things: the quality of your current training and how well you can incorporate the instructional improvement objectives as secondary motivations.

One of the great advantages of Web-based training is that it can be a work in progress. You can start simply, as long as you have satisfied yourself that you are slightly ahead of the game in terms of your instructional and logistic goals. As you acquire more technical skills and the software you need, or convince management to give you a development budget when they realize the potential of online training, you can continue to improve the course.

Professional training societies get the largest turnout at meetings that involve the topic of instructional technologies. Most trainers are eager to get a better idea of what is involved in online training, but it is daunting. Many are afraid of the high technology, and therefore high expense, that they think must be involved. If you can afford to hire a contractor or more staff to develop glitzy courses, more power to you. If you can't, you still may be able to find ways to benefit from taking courses online.

There can also be a big benefit for you personally: as you get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of simple online courses, you get a much better idea of how you would proceed in a more ambitious project, regardless of whether you hire it, assign it, or do it yourself.

I would like to hear your thoughts. Please e-mail me at nhild@attglobal.net.

Winter 2000
Volume 3, # 1