eLearning has been on the landscape for quite some time in one guise or another, however, over the past decade the eLearning market has experienced significant growth and there are no signs of it slowing down, with predictions indicating that the market will have an annual growth rate of 15% from 2020 to 2026.
90% of organisations are already using eLearning however since the coronavirus crisis hit, eLearning has moved higher up everyone’s agenda.
With people still furloughed and more people working remotely than ever before, we can expect to see a further surge in eLearning and perhaps a permanent change in the way people expect to learn.
With this in mind, should you build your eLearning solutions in-house or buy them from an external provider?
Whether you should build or buy your eLearning depends on whether your organisation has the technological infrastructure, the internal expertise (of online instructional design and building eLearning platforms) and the time and resources to build effective eLearning solutions.
Getting this decision wrong could harm your efforts to introduce engaging and beneficial eLearning.
For example, if you already own all of the data and have all the inside knowledge required to create some standard regulatory or compliance training, then you may decide to ‘build’ because the focus is simply about the transfer of information.
But if you want to introduce something more transformational, such as a management development programme (which pre-COVID had rarely even existed online) the better option might be to ‘buy’ because the focus here is more about behaviour change.
When it comes down to behaviour change, it isn’t sufficient to simply transfer course content from live workshops onto an eLearning platform in a bland or generic way.
For programmes that have a high element of behaviour change, the buy decision enables you to leverage the know-how and experience of highly-skilled experts who can use their extensive experience to create the most effective and engaging eLearning that actually works.
However, buyers beware, there is an abundance of new (and often dubious) learning programmes out there, so it’s crucial to make sure that you choose wisely.
As experts in the field of behaviour change, it took us more than two years of intensive research and development, as well as over a million pounds of investment, to bring our award-winning, fully blended and 100% virtual management development programme STAR® Manager to market.
STAR® Manager was constructed on the back of real advances in learning and neuroscience and the programme’s unique design makes sure it’s fun and easy to follow.
The programme has been acclaimed for its integration of subject expertise, robust instructional design and strong technology which all work together to bring alive a high-quality, innovative blended online management development programme.
Getting the human factor right is so important; we wanted to provide an incredibly flexible solution that was equal to and better than a live programme that leaders and managers could rely on to help them build their capability to develop great people and drive long-term sustained performance improvement and give their careers a boost by gaining a serious management qualification in just a few short months without any extra effort.
We also spent a great deal of time setting up and training a full-time Success Team whose sole purpose is to support our learners in having a transformational learning journey wherever they are.
So, before you decide to build or buy, ask yourself:
- Have you really got a spare two or three years to develop an eLearning solution for your organisation or could you benefit from some external expertise?
- Would your eLearning solution offer a truly bespoke experience for the learner and generate real sustainable behaviour change?
- Could you build an eLearning solution that guaranteed your learners a career-boosting qualification and plenty of opportunities for seamless upgrades?
- Have you got the time to provide technical learner support on a large scale or would you prefer to spend your time on high-value-added tasks such as building a learning culture in your organisation?
However tempting it might be to build your own eLearning solutions, always be mindful about what you’re trying to achieve and make sure that opportunities to use the technology available to you is not at the expense of the overall learning experience.
The solution is probably a mix – there will be some programmes best designed in-house and others worth buying in. Choose wisely!
If you want to see how STAR® Manager works in practice, you can request a FREE DEMO or if you’d prefer to have an informal chat about ‘How to Make eLearning Work’ do ARRANGE A CALL with a member of the Notion team or REQUEST OUR WHITE PAPER
