Training and Learning is a
continuous process in the corporate environment considering the immense
pressure to be at par with the latest developments across all industries. This
explains the increasing demand for online learning. Rapid Authoring is often
the preferred route for e-learning development to save time, effort and money
managers and cater to the ever-increasing need for customized content.
In a bid to utilize existing content, presentations created in PowerPoint can be transformed into interactive e-learning – with very little effort with the help of rapid -learning tools. Since Microsoft PowerPoint is a very popular tool, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can themselves create e-content – cutting the development time considerably. In addition to converting the entire content with ease, rapid authoring tools also help build interactivity into courses. Attractive graphics, audio as well as video can be added to the course to make it multimedia rich and hence, more impactful to the learner. And all this at a fraction of time, compared to traditional e-learning development cycle.
How to convert PowerPoint
presentation into an E-course:
- Chunk sections from the presentation to create ‘chapters’ for the e-course.
- Since an e-course is not the same as a presentation, create an e-course with 5 or less number of chapters. For detailed or extensive course material, develop multiple courses and avoid presenting the learner a lengthy course. Short courses are more effective and do not alarm or overwhelm the learners.
- For web-based e-course, keep in mind that web pages can be of any size. Therefore 2 or more slides can be consolidated into one page to decrease course length.
- Since e-courses have to be more detailed than presentation where the speaker also has a chance to explain in detail, avoid using phrases or one-word descriptions and use full sentences instead.
- The ‘notes’ section of a PowerPoint slide can be utilized to include external links, optional exercises or step-by-step detailed instructions. By giving these extra details, the learner as the choice to approach the subject in detail or skip through the basics- as per need.
- Rapid authoring tools can pick up graphics from the presentation and place them as per their assigned position on each slide.
- To make the e-course effective, it is necessary to include tests regularly through the course. A wide range of tests can be created including multiple-choice, true-false, text or numeric fill in the blank or even drag-drop picture images.
Rapid Authoring Tools like Adobe
Presenter, Presenter 09 and Presenter 09 can be used to convert PowerPoint
Presentations into E-Courses. Most e-learning developers have a keen interest
in the field of rapid e-learning and by utilizing existing material the process
of content development can definitely be more efficient.
