Hiring an eLearning consultant can be an expensive and inefficient way to launch an eLearning program. When the program goes live and the consultant goes away, most of the skills go too, leaving the organization to maintain or grow an online learning program with inadequate skills in-house. Alternately, some organizations chose to hire a full-time, experienced person to launch and manage a new program. This can be quite expensive; and these skills are currently in high demand so finding the right candidate can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience.
Building online courses requires different skills than creating traditional content. We have found that the most successful organizations have staff members capable of transitioning to online deployment and management. So if you have talented people without the skills necessary the obvious solution is to provide skills training to your existing staff. And the ideal way to teach new skills is to do it online. Now is not the venue to revisit the many benefits of online learning like convenience, flexibility, reduced cost in travel, etc. But providing online training to your staff who will launch and manage a successful eLearning program makes all the sense in the world. Because these training workshops are facilitated by industry experts, you get the benefit of both “consulting” and training in one program.