Learning and Development managers
and e-learning developers often utilize rapid authoring tools to online learning
courses to suit the increasing need of the corporate learners and make it
available through online learning management systems. This saves time, moneys
and most importantly - effort.
It is important that we realize
that knowledge resides within the organization – we need to extract it quickly
and convert it to technology-enabled format. PowerPoint Presentations can be
transformed into online learning courses – with very little effort with the
help of rapid authoring tools. Microsoft PowerPoint as a learning tool is very
popular and almost everyone is familiar with it. Knowledge managers or SubjectMatter Experts (SME) can provide the base content using PowerPoint and this can
then be quickly transformed into e-content for corporate online learning management systems.
Steps for converting a PowerPoint
presentation into an online learning course:
- Segregate sections from the presentation to create
‘chapters’ for the e- learning course
- Do not create a course with too many chapters. If the
course is too lengthy, it is better to create multiple courses. Creating a
lengthy course with a rapid authoring tool defeats the purpose of quickly
creating e-content. It also fails to make appropriate impact on the
learners.
- Each chapter of the e-course should then be
constructed appropriately – with text as well as graphics.
- Keeping the e-format in mind, phrases or one-word
descriptions should not be used. Since e-courses are mostly self-paced, complete
sentences need to be used to describe concepts well.
- External links, resources or additional study
material can be given in the ‘notes’ section at the bottom of the PPT
slide. The same can be made interactive with rapid authoring tools, using
effects like ‘click to reveal’ or ‘drop-downs’. Not only do they make the
courses interactive, they also help reduce on-screen text and learners get
to choose and access as per their need.
- Tools within PowerPoint can be utilized to create
impactful Graphics. Graphs, Tables and Images can be used to make the
content more powerful as well as reduce on-screen text. Rapid authoring
tools can automatically pick up graphics and place them as per the design
of the e-learning course.
- In addition to building interactivities as well as graphics,
Rapid authoring tools can also be utilized to create tests and evaluations
quickly. SMEs can create questions in the form of multiple–choice or
true-false exercises in the notes section of the PowerPoint presentation.
From here, the e-learning developers can take up the questions and convert
them into e-format by utilizing rapid authoring tools.
Thus the online
learning courses created are graphically rich, interactive and also help the
learning managers evaluate the learners. Out of the Rapid Authoring Tools thatare popular in the learning industry, many of them can help e-learning
developers to convert PowerPoint Presentations into E-Learning Courses –
including Adobe Presenter, Lectora Integrator and Presenter 09.