How to develop online training

You think it is a good idea to develop some online training.

Or what has more than likely happened is that your boss thinks it’s a good idea. And because he saw how easy it was at a conference, he expects it by next week also.

How to get started?

Well you have three main barriers. (Also remember that free services like facebook and skype constantly raise people’s expectations of what they do and don’t like).

Firstly, subject matter knowledge
What do you know about the subject?
If you work in dairy farming - what do you know well enough that you can confidently put in front of students wanting to learn?
Have you any experience at all of teaching or training or even of how to present things in logical order

Or, more importantly, what do you know and what state is it currently in? Are their gaps in your knowledge?

Even if you have the PhD thesis from the worlds leading expert in dairy farming, if it is on 3000 sheets of paper  - it is no use because the second barrier will affect you which is..

Development time
Assuming you have enough subject matter, it will take time to spell check it, grammar check it (British or American English) and edit it for screen use.

If you move from one software to another - each will use its own spell checking engine and of course - you know what happens when computers talk to each other - they sometimes forget things…

If you want to add games and other interaction - no one wants a game that doesn’t work, so they will all need testing too.

(Just don’t be too angry when you spot a typo right after the final publish).

Software Mastery
Some of the software you will need us expensive (maybe even very expensive) and/or has a steep learning curve to use it.
Yes there is free software out there but it produces output that looks like it was produced on free software.

Of course, you get someone else to produce the material but the risks are high - you risk letting them lose on your server or walking away with the source files.