What’s better McDonald’s or home cooked food? Well, initially McDonald’s may sound more appealing. It costs less, requires less effort, and yet tastes good. But after two weeks, we will realize the health benefits and better taste of home-cooked food. It’s the same thing when we have to choose between pre-built e-learning courses and custom made content.
Pre-built courses may be less costly and more convenient, but implementing custom learning has a broad range of advantages. Here are just a few of them.
You know best. You know your requirements and the specific outcomes you desire. You know your industry. You know your audience. The pre-built training courses may be relevant to your industry, but may not be in sync with your organization’s objectives and vision. Taking pre-built courses off the shelf that cannot be adapted to your specific company will not create competitive advantage. Using pre-built courses for training can make sense if it is a generic topic. But courses like business procedures or new employee onboarding are tied to your organization and its precise structure.
Scenarios can be customized. Customized courses provide the option of customizing the scenarios based on industry specific examples. These scenarios enable the learners to realize the direct impact of the choices they make. This goes a long way towards knowledge retention. Generic scenarios may not motivate the learners to the level that customized courses will.
Convey the brand image of the organization effectively. Pre-built courses may not convey the specific brand image of the organization. Custom created content development provides options like fonts, colors, designs, and images in line with the brand image.
Less cost on maintenance and license fees. Pre-built courses require investment in monthly license fees, periodic maintenance, and royalty costs. But custom built courses do not require funding on those aspects. The only costs involved are the initial developmental costs. In the long term, the initial investment balances out and will prove more cost effective and beneficial over pre-built courses.
Making updates is convenient. Courses dealing with new product descriptions and protocols need frequent updating. If it is created in-house, it is easy to update as and when required. There is no dependence on a third party.
It is easy to create assessment and feedback tools that align with the organization goal. Assessments and feedback help determine the success of any e-learning. With custom built courses and development, there is freedom to create meaningful assessment questions that actually help determine how effective the learning was to the learners.
In a nutshell, custom made content offers the opportunity to create courses that are relevant and in line with the organization’s vision. This, in turn, boosts the motivation and engagement of the learner. Pre-built courses require organizations to fit the standards that are already there. But in custom learning and training, the entire playing field is yours to experiment with and create scenarios specific to your company.
You may want to consider combining the best of both worlds, by using the pre-built structure for generic courses and using custom content to for learning that uniquely captures the organization’s competitive advantages.
At Designing Digitally, Inc., our custom e-learning services are a one-stop shop for all your learning needs. The services are attuned to the precise needs of each client.
Call us to talk about your custom content needs.
