You always hear the saying, “Why reinvent the wheel?” in education. Teachers, instructors, and students alike will take what they need from previously made content, and then regurgitate it into a custom piece of work ideal for their needs. That’s why Pinterest and sites such as TeachersPayTeachers.com are so popular. Hardly anything is original. But when it comes to eLearning, is this the best course of action?
What’s the Big Difference?
The major factor between purchasing courses already “canned” sort-of-speak is time. With pre-built solutions, you and your team will save a tremendous amount of time. You simply buy and implement it immediately. There may be some tweaking but for the most part, you get what you buy.
Now if you have the luxury of time, and are willing to wait months or even a year, then you can afford to create your own training solution or have a vendor do it for you. Other than ability and time, there are more pros than cons.
100% Customizable
Too often than not when you buy pre-built solutions there are elements of the product that you just don’t use. Or as we suggested what teachers do; you may have to tweak the course a bit to fit your specific needs. If you’re building the course yourself then you can tailor fit everything about it to fit all your needs.
You can tailor the content, interactions, layout, profiles, reporting, and metrics. It’s a 100% customizable experience. And everyone enjoys having things custom made for them. This will reduce clutter and hopefully enhance engagement.
Less Money and More Control
The cost of pre-built online courses can be very expensive. You pay for online licenses and usually per student or employee. You may be able to get a discount once you hit X amount of users, but that still means spending more. Then you have to renew access the following year in a lot of cases. It makes long-term use and the desire to grow your staff costly. Home-built solutions may cost money upfront for authoring tools, but it’s far less than buying from someone else.
There’s also much more control over your courses. You can keep trade secrets that you’ve developed throughout the years. With in-house builds, there’s less worry about copyright and ownership drama. This helps to avoid stolen intellectual property issues and corporate espionage.
Integration
When you’re building your own courses then you can pick and choose the proper eLearning authoring tools that will mesh with your LMS. You’ll want to make sure you select an authoring tool that has publishing options.
Going with a pre-built solution you have to take what they have. There’s no guarantee that it will integrate with your LMS. Also, it may not be very mobile friendly. You want to create an easy and stressless learning experience for your users. Creating your own course takes out any integration concerns.
Maintenance
With any course, some updates need to be made to content and instruction. Or maybe you’re looking to upgrade your training solutions. Regardless of what you’re looking for, it’s much easier to perform maintenance if you create your own online courses. Pre-built ones usually require you to reach out to the vendor. These actions will most likely cost money and time.
Recap
So, if you have time on your hands, then creating your own eLearning courses can help with customization, saving money, providing more control, streamline integration, and make maintenance easier.
Even having a vendor create a custom made course can be better than buying pre-built in many ways. And if you’re not sure what you’re looking for, then you can get help from instructional designers like those at ryco! The main takeaway is getting a product solution revolves around the needs of you and your learners.
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