TC Custom Courseware Development Service

Custom Courseware – Winning Factors and a good Return on Investment

A month ago, we received an unusual (but not infrequent) request from a reputed Bank to recreate their e-learning courses from its SCORM file. No other files that went into making the course were available with the Bank. The vendor who had created it some years ago was not available.

Terminology Simplified – E-learning Courses, SCORM Files and Course files

SCORM is the industry standard for e-learning courseware creation. It is an acronym, the full form of which I haven’t mastered despite coming from an acronym-loving Tech world and having worked in the training industry for over 15 years (do ask Jai Google). Suffice to understand that Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are built such that they can ‘talk’ seamlessly to a SCORM course, so that when a user is accessing the course, the LMS is able to capture user-specific course interactions. There are various SCORM standards (check here), but an old standard – SCORM 1.2 (created in 2001) – has been the most widely adopted one despite there being many other latter releases.

An e-learning course is built using multiple file types – graphic files, audio files, video files and some other types. The course may also include special quiz or test slides which are built using special packages. Such packages are called Authoring Tools. Authoring Tools not only ‘stitch’ all these files together, but also help you include special instructions like sequential or conditional navigation amongst the slides, grading of the tests that are inserted in the course and interface instructions with the LMS on user behaviour. When an LMS records that a user A has completed the course, it is because the Authoring Tool has incorporated the logic in the SCORM to tell the LMS as to when a user’s access is to be considered ‘Complete’.

All of the above functions (and many more), the Authoring Tool incorporates into the package and generates what is called a SCORM package.

If any change has to be made in the course, the files that make up the course have to be changed and then the Authoring Tool has to generate the SCORM file again. One cannot reverse engineer a SCORM Course in a simple way!   

If you are building courseware for your organisation or getting it developed by a vendor, there are a number of ancillary factors that you might want to weigh before assigning the responsibility beyond the act of designing and developing the course.

  1. File Storage Capability – A typical e-learning course of a duration of an hour usually constitutes 50–60 slides. This can require more than 100+ files (audio, graphic, image, text, Storyboard, content, etc.) if one is planning each slide minutely. An e-learning course is not unlike a software program with its constituent files. The files need to be stored carefully either by the Client or the vendor. Clients (especially in non-tech industries) are not geared to maintain such repositories of files. Hence, the vendor should have the capability to maintain the files at its end.
  2. Version control – Only maintaining the file may not be adequate in a swift changing domain (especially in TC’s domain of BFSI), where the course is impacted by changes in regulations, market trends, technology, etc. It is also important to be able to maintain versions, rollbacks to be made and other complexity. The fun starts if the Client requires the course in multiple languages (take a look at some of the programs we have designed for the Financial Inclusion domain); the challenges increase exponentially.
  3. Process Orientation – A process-orientation for change management is a subtle software engineering aspect that impacts e-learning courseware management. Does your vendor have a defined Change Control mechanism, where there is proper impact analysis, effort and time estimation and cost submission? This makes the difference between a smooth upgrade and a chaotic release process. And keep in mind that if this is not handled properly, be ready to face some rather irritated user departments who are not amused at having to complete courses twice due to a rollback.
  4. Continuity of Resources – You ask to have a change done in the course. But the voice-over who recorded the original course is nowhere to be found. If you relied on an internal ‘sweet-voiced’ employee, he/she has moved on. If your vendor has recorded it with a Voice artist, that artist might not be available any more. AI-generated voice overs are now available, but has your vendor mastered the ‘programming’ to be done to the voices to ensure they don’t sound bland soulless read-outs? The vendor should have good, long-standing relationships with the required resources so that costs for changes are predictable.
  5. The Right Authoring Tool – You need a compliance course developed and you are recommended a bespoke programmed e-learning course development or an authoring tool which gives you multiple features, but requiring specialised knowledge of how to ‘program’ it in. Is the cost-benefit worth it? Use high-end auth tools for high-end (i.e. Level 3 and Level 4) courses. If your vendor disappears from the radar, would your team be able to just purchase the Auth tool license and make the critical changes you need?

There are many other factors which go into deciding on technology and methodology choices for custom courseware development. When your vendor suggests some approaches, take a hard look at whether the costs that you bear will deliver the Return on Investments (RoI) for the medium and long term; not just for year 1, but for year 2 to year 10.

Large organisations have dedicated L&D technical teams to manage the content. But even these are not geared to follow the processes that software houses do. And even large organisations need their courses to breathe, grow, change, evolve over a period of time.

Case Study – The life cycle of a Compliance Course with a Top Rating Agency

Our client asked us to create the Anti-Money Laundering compliance course as a custom course in 2020. The picture is self-explanatory. With times, designs change, user experiences change and here they are, requesting for a complete re-design of the course with some upgrades in content too. We believe they have had a good RoI on their investment in this course and have maintained the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) well in control.

Features of TrainingCentral’s Custom Courseware offering

  • Developed by professionals with over 15 years’ experience in online learning.
  • Course content safely retained in Sharepoint repository for future updates.
  • Created in iSpring Suite, the most versatile course development software.
  • Multi-lingual variants as per your requirements.
  • Specilised in BFSI Content Creation.

Custom Courseware Projects delivered by TrainingCentral Solutions

Iconic, Transformational, Path-breaking… These are some of the adjectives which would not be unfair to describe some of assignments that Clients have sought TC’s support in. From the first training program for the country’s Self-Help Group (SHG) program from NABARD to working with a leading financial institution CSR to create a Certification in Financial Inclusion (Gram Shakti), our capabilities have been challenged. And we have delivered successfully!

Some of the stellar work that TrainingCentral has done is in the area of Financial Inclusion. This encompasses a number of applications – Financial Literacy, Self-help groups, Joint Liability Groups, Corporate Social Responsibility and so on. The challenge in developing courseware for this sector are (i) understanding the target audience and (ii) language of delivery. Given below is a table to indicate some of the cornerstone projects –

Cornerstone Projects delivered by TrainingCentral

About TrainingCentral Solutions

TrainingCentral Solutions Private Limited (TC) is a product and solution provider in training. Custom courseware is just one of the solutions. We create our own e-learning courses (self-paced courseware), tests and certifications and maintain them through upgrades and enhancements. Visit our website https://www.trainingcentral.co.in for more details. Or reach out to us at contact@trainingcentral.co.in or +91-84339-94860 if you have any inquiries.

  • TrainingCentral uses iSpring Suite (disclaimer – we also resell the software in India – check the URL of iSpring Solutions here) for all its products. We are unabashed fans of the application, and it has been growing from strength to strength. We also resell their LMS (iSpring Learn) which has been winning awards internationally and are also getting to be the choice of LMSes for SME to large Indian corporates. Reach out to us at contact@trainingcentral.co.in for an inquiry or mail sonal.navalkar@trainingcentral.co.in for a demo of either iSpring Suite or iSpring Learn.
  • If you want to test the package you have received from your vendor is SCORM-compliant, upload it onto the SCORM Cloud portal (click here to access). This is a facility provided by Rustici Software for testing SCORM packages for their compliance to the standards.
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