Let’s be honest, even those of us with the best intentions have considered re-gifting at some point in our lives. We may even be guilty of doing it. While re-gifting may have been taboo in the past, the opposite is true when it comes to content. Re-gifting eLearning content is one of the best gifts a content creator could receive. It’s equivalent to being given more time and a pre-determined path to success.
Commonly, organizations are faced with the challenge of having enough time to create new content. Re-gifting, or repurposing, existing eLearning content is an excellent way to overcome this challenge. By breathing new life into old content, you’ll have a head start on the creation process and substantially improve productivity and reduce development time.
Before you run off to start repurposing your eLearning content, take 2 minutes to read these best practices and other tips to transform your existing content into fresh, engaging content that is relevant to your current audience.
Inventory Your Existing Content and eLearning Assets
First, you’ll need to take stock of all the eLearning content you have, as well as the tools you have access to before you can repurpose your content. This includes all eLearning authoring tools. After you’ve collected all your assets, you should select which materials and individual learning objects you can re-use or want to repurpose. Next, it’s time to create your action plan. This should be a detailed plan that will help you determine which additional resources are required.
Use an Intuitive eLearning Authoring Tool
The right authoring tool allows you to easily reuse your work, not recreate it. Leverage the content you already have and don’t waste time rebuilding modules, assessments and other course items. Better yet, a responsive authoring tool allows you to create a master layout of your eLearning course and the system will automatically adjust the content and other elements based on the type of device being used to access the eLearning content.
Make It Easily Digestible
Today’s learners don’t always have time for lengthy lessons when all they need is some essential information for the task at hand. It’s often a good practice to keep your newly repurposed eLearning lessons, videos, assessments, etc… to no more than five minutes. These microlearning options give learners the opportunity to quickly find answers, assimilate the information and apply what they’ve learned. It also allows learners the chance to focus on a specific topic as the need arises or at a time most convenient for them.
As an additional tip, don’t repurpose your entire course all in one place, but rather break it down into smaller bite-sized lessons or mini-courses. This helps with knowledge retention and is much easier to update and modernize in the future. Then, consider doing the reverse – take your microlearning snippets and combine them together to create a larger offering such as an e-book.
Make Sure It’s Cohesive
A major drawback of repurposing eLearning content is that you run the risk of ending up with a final product that feels jumbled and disorganized. When various materials are pulled from different sources, many of the components don’t always match or flow well together, such as color themes, voice or tone. When this occurs, be sure to examine the work as a whole and make adjustments to ensure the final product looks and sounds cohesive.
One way to avoid incohesive content is to always keep the bigger picture in mind. Think through in advance how the pieces should come together to satisfy an end goal. This is a common practice in blended learning programs.
A Final Point
Repurposing eLearning content can save organizations a huge amount of time and money and improve inefficiencies. What makes it possible is that the content can be sliced and diced as individual learning objects. They can then be tagged and stored to be conveniently reused whenever needed for creating additional eLearning content. This can all be accomplished with an eLearning authoring tool and is yet another reason to use an interactive and responsive authoring tool such as knowbly™.
While re-gifting may still be frowned upon by many, you can always re-gift eLearning content – it’s the gift that keeps on giving!