How to Develop eLearning Templates for Your Content

Most course creators want to create eLearning courses at scale. But to do that, you will need to have templates. Learn how to develop those eLearning templates for your content without having to go out of your way to do so.

Step 1: Figure Out What Type of Content You Want to Build

Before you can start creating eLearning templates or a first draft, you need to know the type of eLearning content that you are trying to build. The best way to figure this out is to ask your learners.

Remember that you should already be asking your learners what their biggest challenges are. This way, you can focus on those major challenges. But you should also ask your learners what type of content they need. Do they prefer videos or something else?

Step 2: Build a Rough Draft

Once you know the biggest challenge you are going to address and the type of content to create, it’s time to create a rough draft of your first piece of content. Remember that this draft is just for the first piece of content. You want to start small. Starting small lets you use templates later on and deliver results to your learner sooner. This first piece of content should be about 10 to 15 minutes, not longer. For more information on scripting microlearning videos, check out a relevant blog post on our website. 

Step 3: Get Feedback

Now, take that rough draft and go back to your learners. Ask them for feedback. Does it address their major challenges? Do you explain things in a way they like? Is it in the format they prefer? What should you change? Our favorite way of getting learners’ feedback is by creating interactive videos with VideoAsk. 

Step 4: Build a Final Draft

Now, you take that feedback and create a final draft of your first piece of content. Once again, remember to focus on just a small piece of content. Just five to 10 minutes or so. This should only address the biggest challenge of learners.

Step 5: Duplicate

Once you have that final draft, it will become your eLearning template. To turn it into a template, duplicate your final draft. One version of it goes into your learning management system and is released to your learners. The other version becomes your template.

You can now use that template to build future content, including addressing the aspects of the major challenge you couldn’t fit into your initial content. Once you fully address that biggest challenge, you can use the template to quickly create content addressing the second-biggest challenge, and then the third-biggest, and so on.

Conclusion

Creating templates makes it significantly easier to scale up your eLearning course creation. You will be able to create content quickly, as you already have the template. To make that template, you will want to create a small piece of content and then duplicate it. To create that content, confirm that you know the biggest challenges and the type of content to create. Develop a rough draft, get feedback from your learners, and create a final draft. This is when you duplicate the content, turning one version into a template and delivering the other to your learners.