FAQs

Don’t worry! If you have the subject matter expertise (e.g. picking and packing procedures in your warehouse) and know what learning outcomes you’re looking for, we can take care of the rest. And if you don’t have ready access to an expert, we can help you find someone.

Our multi-disciplinary team includes scriptwriters, designers, illustrators, video producers, programmers, translators, voiceover artists, and project managers.

We can hand-hold you through the entire process so that you get what you need, whether that be corporate training, safety training, full online courses or something else.

In almost all cases – yes. While we’d love you to use our own Learning Management System, Coursebeam, we can usually create e-learning content to work with your existing system.

To ensure maximum learner engagement and compatibility with different types of LMS, we use the industry-leading Articulate Storyline as our default authoring tool.

Yes! We’re a multi-national, multilingual business based in the UK (Midlands) and Barcelona. In partnership with AST Language Services – a top-rated translation agency in Nottingham – we can produce true multilingual courses.

Unlike many other e-learning providers who claim to offer multilingual solutions, we don’t simply cut and paste the English version through Google Translate.

AST Language Services has an exemplary reputation, and by working with them we can ensure that your e-learning in French, German, Spanish or any other language is as nuanced to that market as the English version is.

Good question! It always pays to thoroughly check out any potential online training providers before embarking on a project with them. Please take a look at our About page and judge for yourself!

Not necessarily. It’s different in each case – as is the delivery of the material. Online training material that is all text tends to be boring – but so is listening to an audio narrator for 40 minutes.

This is why we strongly recommend that your online training provider uses original video content. It needn’t be as expensive as you might think.

Having video intros to your course – and each topic in it – can make a real difference to learner engagement. We’d be happy to show you some stats that illustrate this.

We have an established video production partner (Colab Creation) with whom we work very closely to create video content for e-learning – whether it is simple ‘talking heads’ clips or location footage from your workplace.

That doesn’t need to be the case. Multiple choice questions can be very effective in assessing higher-order skills if they are written correctly – for example, without having distractor responses which are obviously wrong.

We have years of experience of writing e-learning module assessments and can help devise challenging multiple-choice content that would be very hard for a non-learner to outwit.

More in this blog post

As we’re in the business of selling our own Coursebeam LMS, you’d think we’d say Coursebeam, right? Well, not always. The truth is that there is no single ‘best’ learning platform. The requirements vary so much across sectors that it’s much better to ask the question: which platform (and supplier) is best for us?

To illustrate the point, contrast the requirements of a manufacturing SME with 50 employees and those of a University with 20,000 students and staff. In the latter case, the requirements are focused on supporting the delivery of academic modules to campus-based students, with some hybrid and remote delivery too. Systems have to offer functionality around assignment submission, including automated plagiarism checks and integration with lecture capture systems.

These features are largely irrelevant to a manufacturing SME, who will generally be looking to host and track compliance-related self-study e-learning courses for their staff, with the ability for managers and HR to view reports on progress.

In some cases, a key requirement might be the ability to sell and manage subscriptions to courses. Platforms that are intended primarily for workplace training may be excellent in some respects but lack this functionality.

If you think you may need customisation and/or integration with other systems, you should ask prospective suppliers how flexible they are in this respect. It tends to be the case in this sector that the larger a vendor becomes, the less flexible they become as well, trying to keep their platform essentially the same for all users.

That’s not how we operate. We move mountains for clients to help them get exactly what they want.

Generally – but not always. We’ve been working in e-learning since the 90s, and in that time we’ve seen many much-hyped technical innovations go from Next Big Thing to forgotten relics. (Laserdisc, anyone?) This gives us a sense of perspective, along with our collective 40 years spent working on e-learning in Higher Education.

We’re in the business of selling e-learning systems and services such as training courses – but we don’t believe that this approach works in all situations. In the workplace, a hybrid combination of face-to-face delivery and ‘pure’ e-learning is generally still the best bet. (Note: our Coursebeam LMS allows you to manage your programme of face-to-face training as well as your e-learning provision.)

To be effective, self-study e-learning courses (whether off-the-shelf or bespoke to an organisation) need to adhere to our 10 golden rules:

• Break courses down into manageable modules (20-30 minutes of study time) in order to engage learners.
• Set out your key Learning Outcomes and ensure your script maps onto them.
• Take into account the fact that your learners will have different preferred learning styles – and that, on average, 20% will be neurodiverse.
• Assess against the learning outcomes.
• If you assess something, cover it in the course.
• Design with accessibility in mind.
• Graphic design and illustration should be consistent, of a professional standard, and appropriate to the audience.
• Courses should always be proofread before launch.
• AI can be helpful in the initial stage of content creation but text generated should always be checked, especially where courses involve legislative compliance.
• Personalising courses with original video (for instance, brief topic introductions) can be a great way to make courses more engaging.

E-learning can be highly effective when it comes to delivering important information to large groups of people – quickly. That could be:

• Training a large cohort of new seasonal staff to perform a specific task.
• Ensuring an entire workforce is brought up to speed with new workplace regulations/compliance. New in-house policies pertaining to diversity, for example, can quickly be disseminated, too.
• Onboarding new starters over a number of weeks.
• Augmenting traditional classroom learning methods in an efficient, cost-effective way.
• Replacing traditional classroom learning to save costs.
• Upskilling staff to improve performance (such as better packing techniques to reduce returns).

There are additional benefits. With face-to-face learning, for example, it can be hard to know who – if anyone – is paying attention. The powerful tracking and reporting functionality that e-learning solutions offer means that you have a much clearer picture of your people’s competences.

Also, with a bespoke e-learning programme that you own, you only pay once – and you get to serve an infinite number of people. This is incredibly attractive when HR departments or programme managers are struggling with budget cuts and still have training requirements to meet.

e-learning, also known as online learning or digital learning experiences, is akin to providing your employees with a virtual classroom accessible via computers or mobile devices. It offers flexibility as your team can access courses anytime, anywhere.

This can be a great solution for remote or busy employees. However, it’s crucial to be aware that reliance on technology may pose challenges for some individuals. Technical issues, such as slow internet or software glitches, could disrupt the learning process. On top of that, self-motivation and time management are essential for success in e-learning.

Face-to-face learning is the traditional approach to learning, where employees physically attend classroom training sessions. It allows for immediate interaction with trainers and fellow learners, fostering engagement and collaboration.

However, it often requires a fixed schedule and can be costlier due to travel and venue expenses. Additionally, it may not be feasible during situations like Covid when physical gatherings are limited.

Hybrid delivery combines elements of both e-learning and face-to-face learning. This approach offers flexibility by allowing employees to learn online and engage in in-person sessions when necessary. It’s like having the best of both worlds. However, it does require some technological coordination, with systems that can deal with both (such as Coursebeam.)

Ultimately, the choice between these methods will depend on your organisation’s specific needs, employee preferences, and available resources.

As a manager, the key benefit you get from rolling out an e-learning programme is the ability to view reports which don’t just show that an employee has attended a training workshop on a topic (which tells you nothing about their understanding of the subject). Rather, you can see that they have completed a course on the topic and achieved the pass mark in the end-of-course assessment.

If the topic relates to legislative compliance, then if there is an issue with that employee, that record can become a critical piece of evidence.