Article insight: Rapid e-learning can certainly design and deliver e-learning content in a quick and cost-efficient way. All you have to do is discover the best rapid e-learning strategies and tools to match the trends of L&D and employee requirements. 

Many organizations often face some difficulties when it comes to enhancing the skills of their employees. In this fast-moving world, traditional methods of training have become outdated.  Learners expect an engaging, precise, and brisk learning experience. This is where rapid e-learning steps in; it is a way of designing and delivering e-learning content swiftly and competently.

Importance of Rapid e-Learning in Education and Corporate Sectors

Rapid eLearning is a fast and effective way of e-learning content development. It helps to provide learning content to learners in the quickest and most cost-efficient way possible. Rapid eLearning is like a channel in which needless data filters out and leaves the important things. Thus, providing the learner with an excellent format that is to the point and easy to digest.

e-Learning has certainly changed the face of learning, whether it's in the education sector or the corporate world. Technology has transformed the conventional chalk-talk teaching method into one powered by technology. In many institutes, the number of students enrolling in virtual classes has witnessed exceptional growth in recent years. Policymakers are now focusing on how to drive engagement by including more eLearning solutions. For various reasons, students are forced to spend more time at home than ever before. In this situation, e-learning has certainly materialized as a mandatory resource for education. 

The corporate sector is a world of severe competition, so for corporate training, you need brisk, interactive, and functional content. Rapid e-learning helps in this situation. Its nucleus is to create quick designs, elaborate, and deliver the content of corporate training. Rapid e-learning empowers businesses to provide the needed training to their employees in an appropriate way by rolling out training courses at a faster pace. 

By complying with the basics of instructional designing, rapid eLearning is also reducing the time and cost associated with traditional eLearning. This way, the employees get the needed knowledge and enhance their skill set, improving business results.

Rapid e-Learning Differs from the Traditional e-Learning approach

Rapid e-learning makes the development and delivery of training content much faster compared to conventional e-learning courses. Rapid e-learning formats can design a course within weeks or sometimes days. Whereas e-learning courses normally take up to three months to deliver the final content. 

Rapid eLearning complies with agile project management as compared to traditional eLearning in a one-dimensional way. 

As this design improves continuously, it helps in integrating regular feedback from the SMEs. In eLearning, you can't do this, as feedback is only possible at the end, after the delivery of course material.  

When to opt for Rapid Elearning

If you have a short shelf-life content, then this is the best option.  It's not a wise thing to spend time and money on content that will be of no use in a couple of months. Rapid eLearning serves you well when you have beefy content that needs to be made brief. And importantly, if you have budget issues, go for this, as it produces quick results with less development cost. 

Advantages of Rapid eLearning: 

•  Less time to develop at a low cost. 

• It allows you to modify the content 

• The subject matter can be distributed in no time.

Cost-effective eLearning: 

Rapid eLearning courses are to the point with few interactives, so they take less time to develop and don’t cost much. And if you go for a highly interactive course, it may be a little bit costly and take time.  Cost and time mainly depend on the company’s training needs. But you can easily say that rapid eLearning can easily reduce the cost and time by almost 50%. 

Adaptability:

In today’s vigorous business domain, training content needs to be brisk and adaptable. Because of its flexibility, Rapid eLearning allows you to update and modify the content in no time. With the development of business training, needs also evolve. Rapid eLearning helps organizations to quickly respond to changing market demands and equip their workforce with the latest skills. 

Quick deployment:

If you have subject matter that needs to be disseminated very quickly, then rapid eLearning is the solution. For instance, if you want to create an eLearning course that deals with compliance policies, then rapid eLearning can certainly bring learners up to speed easily. The best thing is that some rapid eLearning courses can be created in just a few hours. E-learning authoring tools are remarkably reducing e-Learning development time. Whereas the traditional approach can take months to develop the same thing. 

Impact of rapid eLearning on an organization

Most of the time, corporate training fails to deliver the desired results because of a serious disconnect between the business’s wants and an employee’s wants.  An organization always wants a training program that focuses on achieving business goals. Whereas an employee looks for a training program that’s tailored, engaging, and accessible at any time, Rapid eLearning development meets both of these needs with ease. And this certainly can magnify the ROI on your corporate training initiatives. 

Key strategies for successful rapid e-learning: Let's have a look at some crucial strategies for creating effective, rapid e-learning content. 

Definite learning objective:

Before you start to develop any e-learning content, it's crucial to know the purpose of training. This will help you develop content that is focused and relevant, and the learners will know what they are expected to learn in the training. 

Content should cover logical areas:

Make sure that the content is aligned with the learning objectives. It should cover all rational concerns, which include evaluation, interpretation, knowledge, and application. 

Keep It Simple:

Simplicity is the key when designing rapid e-Learning content. It is better not to include complicated interactions and animations that add to the development time and are not relevant to learning objectives. Deliver information in an engaging way by using clear animations, graphics, and videos. 

Go for a graded development process: 

When you go for a systemized process, you can have a consistent and uniform rapid e-learning development process. Which includes guidelines for development, checklists, templates, review, and confirmation. 

Interactivity is important:

Adding interactive elements to your rapid e-learning content helps you capture learners' attention and improve retention. For instance, adding scenarios, quizzes, games, and simulations encourages learners to get involved and apply their knowledge. 

Conduct testing:

Finally, make sure to check the effectiveness of your rapid e-Learning content by testing and iterating. By conducting user testing and collecting feedback, you can make the required changes to upgrade the content. These were some of the crucial content development strategies. Now let's discuss the role of instructional design in the development of rapid eLearning content.

The Role of Instructional Design Models in Rapid Learning Content Development 

In simple words, instructional design is a way of developing compelling learning experiences to support training. The method includes analyzing, designing, developing, applying, and evaluating the instructional experience. The instructional design procedure allows the makers of e-learning courses to accurately recognize the skills gap and then give the relevant information that is easy to digest for the learners. This way, the e-learning courses become well-ordered and save time for L&D teams and learners as well. So, a quality instructional design will certainly have a positive impact on rapid e-learning development.

Elearning authoring tools: 

Authoring tools certainly contribute a lot to the development of eLearning content. Authoring tools have the ability to remarkably reduce e-Learning development time. It also allows you to update existing e-learning courses and improves learners' engagement. 

Types of Authoring tools: 

Power point-based authoring tools: These ones are very simple and handy with no learning curves. It allows you to develop easy digital learning assets with just a few basic interactives. These authoring tools work as plug-ins for MS PowerPoint. 

Examples: Adobe Presenter, Articulate Studio 

Desktop-Based Authoring Tools: 

Many people use these tools for e-learning design and development. They are entitled, as they must be installed on a dedicated system. They offer several attributes and are perfect for designing courses with customization and high-level interactivity. However they have a sharp learning curve compared to PowerPoint-based authoring tools.

Examples: Articulate 360, Adobe Captivate, Lectora Inspire iSpring Suite max. 26 

Cloud-Based Authoring Tools: 

You don’t have to install these tools on a particular system. These are online authoring tools. You need a license to use this one, and they are generally presented as software as a service (SaaS). A number of people can log in and work on the tool at once as they allow combined authoring. 

Examples: Articulate Rise, Lectora Online, Easygenerator. 

We have discussed types of e-learning authoring tools and their benefits. Now let's look at some of the factors you should keep in mind before you pick any authoring tool.  

Things to consider before choosing a rapid authoring tool

There was a time when authoring tools used to be complicated and needed special training. And integrating them with the learning management system was also not an easy task. Because of these reasons, the entire process was not that effective. Primitive versions of authoring tools were only used by trained instructional designers. But today, after a brief introduction, everybody can use rapid authoring tools.

No matter what type of authoring tool you pick, make sure it has: 

Strong drag-and-drop features to substitute the hard programming of interactive modules for learning activities, evaluation, and communication. 

eLearning solutions must be easy to navigate and look good, and for this, you need libraries and templates.

Agile development methodologies: 

Developing effective rapid e-learning content is not an easy task, all the e-learning professionals know this fact very well. The process of creating engaging eLearning content sometimes looks complicated and eats up a lot of time. 

In this situation, agile development methodologies can be applied to rapid e-learning projects. 

• Results of Agile in e-learning: 

• Better success rate 

• Changes can be made easily. 

• Enhanced quality 

Better success rate:

By using agile eLearning, course content is generated using small, repetitive cycles known as sprints. It centers its direction on swift prototypes, collaboration, orderly feedback, and importantly, reducing the course development time. This development process involves receiving continuous reviews and feedback from the learners. And this helps the developers make an efficient course. For instance, when an L&D team creates a course by taking regular advice from learners, the course will have an improved success rate.

Effortless incorporation of changes:

Developing an e-Learning course can take weeks or months. And in the meantime, if you plan to make some changes that are not in the planning phase, it is a bit difficult. But by incorporating Agile into e-learning, you can predict these changes earlier, and they will not come as surprise in the later stages. 

Enhanced quality: 

With agile in eLearning professionals develop the course in short iterations. Because of this, testing becomes quicker and simpler, which, as a result, improves the quality of the course. Relevance of micro-learning and mobile learning in rapid e-learning. 

The employees of this modern era are busier than ever. And they don’t have the time to update themselves. And when it comes to learning new things, they are expecting something easily accessible, swift, to the point, and readily available whenever they need it. These types of demands from new-age learners paved the path for new ways of learning. It is delivered through small nuggets of online courses referred to as microlearning. 

Microlearning courses are very short, brisk, and swift, with no defined duration needed in their delivery. Because of its shorter format and precise objective-driven nature, micro-learning has more influence, with more focus being given to a particular topic. Microlearning certainly helps in achieving employee engagement and plays a crucial part in your mobile learning strategy.

Mobile learning allows easy access to the training materials when they are most needed. Employees can easily use their smartphones to look for a solution if an issue arises. This method is very fast and convenient. Microlearning and mobile learning play a major part in rapid e-Learning. 

The future of rapid e-learning:  

There are a lot of benefits to rapid eLearning, and as the world progresses continuously, the need for efficiency and reduced costs is also growing. Rapid eLearning is a process that meets these requirements perfectly. And in the future, with better technology, acceptance of this type of process will increase. The method will certainly create and collaborate on high-quality, effective results for the learners. The future of rapid eLearning looks bright. As the demand for eLearning is growing continuously, the demand for rapid eLearning tools is also growing. 

Emerging trends in rapid e-learning development tools: 

Boost in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML): The usage of AI and ML has increased a lot in rapid eLearning development tools to make customized learning experiences and enhance the quality of the content.  

Integration of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR): To create a captivating learning experience VR and AR are being used regularly in rapid eLearning development tools. 

The growth of authoring tool suites: Authoring tool suites provide solutions for many things, like generating eLearning content and integrating quizzes and assessments. These suites cater for a thorough and methodical workflow compared to multiple individual tools.

Success Stories: 

Let's see how people have used rapid e-Learning to take their training to another level. By reading up on their success stories, you will see how rapid e-Learning helped in improving knowledge retention, participation rates, and completion rates. 

Tennis Australia wanted to train over 50 part-time and casual staff for the Australian Open in 2022. Getting ready for the world's biggest tournament was not an easy task. Assembling and training over 380 ball kids was a big challenge. It was possible only through a cross-platform training approach. Tennis Australis tossed its active training material to EdApp, and its course designers came up with diverse types of captivating courses in a few days. By using QR codes and invite links, training was dispersed. 

Now the only thing that Tennis Australis had to do was send an invite link by email or print off an effective QR code. This helped team members begin their training anywhere, anytime, and whenever they had five minutes. This case shows that when you transform training into bite-sized formats on smartphones, it's very convenient, and learners not only learn but also retain their training. 

The course designers also make good use of the game-based lesson slides to make learners feel like mini-games rather than drudgery training slides. Tennis Australia teams were able to easily swipe through training, generating elevated completion rates.  

Summing up: 

In simple words, rapid e-Learning is a method that focuses completely on the learning goals by following instructional design principles. It filters out all the irrelevant things that normally clog the e-Learning process. Rapid e-Learning strategies certainly enhance knowledge retention and reduce training time. It is the best way to have cost-effective and engaging content quickly. Need help finding the best custom e-learning solutions? We are here to help you with the perfect custom e-Learning solutions that will align you with market demands.