Moving Instructor-led Training Online

I recently read an interesting blog post from a company who is well-versed in converting instructor-led training, usually consisting of a series of PowerPoint slides, to e-learning. The issues they lament are the same ones I have encountered when faced with this task, but I think we have different philosophies and take different approaches when tasked to move instructor-led training to an online environment.

First and foremost, not all instructor-led training is suited for online environments. For example, any type of training where the learner is required to use their senses such as touch or smell will not translate well to an online environment. Secondly, objectives that were valid in an instructor-led training session may not necessarily be valid in an online environment given the choice of delivery. If the objective requires judgment and feedback from an instructor, an asynchronous web-based training module may not produce the desired results.

As the author of the post I’m referencing mentioned, there is a misconception that instructor-led training based on PowerPoint slides can be easily processed into rich, interactive training modules fit for distribution online. Clients feel it is a 1 to 1 scenario. For every static slide of text and images they submit, they’ll get 1 highly interactive e-learning slide that engages the learner. In most cases (more like 99% of the time), this isn’t true. I feel you essentially have to start from the ground up designing and developing (not converting) instructor-led training to e-learning.

It stands to reason that if instructor-led training was designed and developed, it was meant to be delivered by an instructor. The methodologies used to instruct the topic were designed and developed for the classroom, not the online environment. Moving instructor-led training to online is not impossible, but it does take time to develop. It is not instantaneous. The good news is that if the instructor-led training is soundly designed, the development lifecycle for online training will be shorter than newly created training. A bulk of the instructional design work would have already been done, it just needs some modification to take full advantage of online environments.