Content Building Approach for Tech Companies

Creating online trainings or content building for technology companies is a challenging task. The stakeholders involved in designing content for tech companies may consist of one or more technical teams, engineers, subject matter experts, instructional designers, graphic designers, project managers, external consultants and internal or external quality check instructors. One has to work with a large team or with two or more teams at a time. Since there are multiple stakeholders that would contribute to the given project and shape the final content delivery, a successful interaction and communication among various stakeholders is very crucial to make such an elearning project successful at the end.

Day to day clear communication and coordination needs to be established among various stakeholders. SMEs need to work closely with the instructional designers and graphic designers to convert the raw content into well-planned and presented interactive web-based modules or Web-based Trainings (WBTs). If the stakeholders are working from different locations, the team needs to use better project management strategies and communication channels. Microsoft Teams is one of the best software that can ensure a wonderful communication and coordination among the stakeholders. In addition, Sharepoint like content management system is also very useful in the development. The elearning team must learn and know how to make the best use of these software.

The next important point is about the experience of the Subject Matter Experts and Instructional Designers in designing such technical online courses. If the SMEs and IDs working in your team have already got sound experience in building technology-based online courses, you can create effective online courses in less time and budget. Many times, it is essential to train or orient both SMEs and IDs to work in a team and set certain processes that can help all the team members complete their tasks efficiently. Instructional designers need to know or learn about the software, its flow, its interface, limitations etc. It is also essential to inform the SMEs about the whole process. Many times, subject matter experts (SMEs) assume that the instructional designers already know the technology, but often the instructional designers do not know the specific technology and they end up creating below-average elearning experiences that eventually don’t benefit the end-users. So it is very essential that before introducing a project, the project leaders should provide sufficient information (to the designers) related to the source content and the technology for which the online training is going to be created.

Generally, the IDs who have undergone the complete process of designing courses for Technology companies can design faster and more accurately than other non-experienced IDs. So the IDs who have learned about different technologies and who know how certain technologies function can develop technology related content faster and make such an elearning project successful. If non-experienced IDs are selected for technology-based course design, it may take time, exceed budgets and often it may end up in creating an online course that won’t deliver any learning for its learners.

The most important aspect of any technology-based course creation is the course design. While designing a technology-based course, it is essential to look into questions like who are the end learners of this course?, what technical backgrounds do they come from?, are there ‘basic’ and ‘advanced’ learners?, are we going to create online courses for certain releases or all the releases?, how many times a year do we need to deliver such online courses?, do we just need to deliver the courses to the learners without testing their performance?, what level of interactivity will the proposed online training has? and many such questions need to be taken into consideration.