Often, content creation for learning platform is, especially in the beginning, very much in the hands of HR or few of the platform's superadmins. However, it is worth expanding and rolling it out to others in the organization as well so that trainings can be produced more quickly and the workload related to the platform does not become too heavy for any individual employee.
This blog post shares tips on how to get employees involved in creating content for the learning platform, and offers examples of guidelines for content creators.
First, make sure that all the employees know that the organization has a learning platform and that they understand what its purpose is. Clearly define what the platform is meant to be used for, such as onboarding and maintaining the training register.
Show the content creators that they are allowed to use time for creating content. Make roles and responsibilities clear: who creates courses and on what topics; who tracks completions, whether it's course admins or supervisors; who updates the course contents. Clear responsibilities and expectations encourage content creation and support building a learning culture.
Create shared practices and guidelines for content creation – from course design and implementation to publishing. This helps to produce higher-quality learning experiences, clarifies the work and responsibilities of content creators and additionally, makes the platform easier to maintain.
Shared practices may include for example:
Shared practices can be documented in a common course and easily shared with all content creators.
Offer training on content creation: how to produce a good online course, how does the platform work, how to use tasks as part of the learning experience and so on. This makes the work of content creators easier, lowers the threshold for creating courses, and ensures higher course quality. Completing an onboarding course or path for content creators may also serve as a prerequisite for producing courses.
Encourage and reward content creators for their work. You can for example grant them competencies related to online course production to motivate the employees and bring visibility into their skills.
Competencies and competence matrix also make it easier to identify the right people for creating trainings: you can search for employees who have both subject matter expertise and online course production skills.
An example of competence related to online course production.
Make the shared practices and guidelines available to content creators for example by forming a course or learning path of them.
Below is an example of a learning path for the organization's content creators. The user receives competencies of online course production by completing the path's steps.
The path could include steps such as:
An example of content creator's learning path.
Delegating content production with the organization requires raising awareness of the learning platform, clarifying roles and responsibilities, creating common practices, and instructing and encouraging the content creators. When these elements are in place, content creation becomes easier, courses get produced faster, and the organization's skills are developed more efficiently.