The Growing Importance of an eLearning Content Developer in Modern Workplace Training

 Digital​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ learning is no longer a mere back-office activity helping out other departments. In fact, it has now become a factor that affects directly a company’s turnover, people productivity, and turnover of employees. The more companies commit to learning strategies that can be scaled up, the more the need for a highly skilled eLearning content developer will continue to increase.

Statista states that the worldwide eLearning industry should cross the mark of US$400 billion by 2028. At the same time, Workplace Learning Report by LinkedIn points out that companies that put learning first are more likely to keep employees and enhance internal mobility.

Nevertheless, tech alone is not what makes learning impacting. The actual value is in the way learning experiences are crafted. That is why the one who has a lot of experience in creating e-learning content comes in use.

During a recent decade, I have been a partner in the development of organizations and skills of people working in the banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), health care, manufacturing, and IT areas. One of the major issues keeps reappearing in the corporate learning portfolios is that businesses don't give enough weight to content quality when it comes to the effectiveness of learning.

To put it simply, a modern eLearning approach wins when content is well-matched with business results, learner behavior, and actual work situations.

What Does an eLearning Content Developer Do?

eLearning content developers are the ones who conceptualize, design, and put together digital learning experiences primarily for employees, but possibly also for customers or partners. Creating slides or adding visuals are only small parts of their job.

A good developer brings together instructional theory, the psychology of learners, understanding of business, and technical skills.

They are usually in charge of:

• Planning course layout and learning progression
• Producing interactive teaching tools
• Making test and quiz items
• Composing scripts and materials geared towards learners
• Employing eLearning software such as Articulate Storyline or Adobe Captivate
• Checking for mobile readiness and accessibility
• Insert multimedia pieces
• Ensure that content meets compliance or business objectives

In corporate settings, content creators also work with SMEs, HR executives, auditors, and education planners.

Why Businesses Are Investing More in eLearning Content Development

Lots of businesses switched to online learning during the pandemic. But quite a few firms realized that just transferring classroom content to a virtual environment didn’t really enhance the effectiveness of learning.

In one of our collaborations with a client from the global manufacturing sector, they simply converted a lot of their PowerPoint presentations into eLearning courses. At first, the completion rates looked fine. However, the scores on the assessments stayed low.

The problem was not the platform. It was the content formulation.

The teaching lacked interactivity, for example, and was not able to lead employees to the real application of knowledge in situations that actually happened at their workplace. When we changed the modules to having scenarios branched out and giving examples based on roles, assessment scores significantly improved within the next quarter.

The point here is that this example reflects an overall industry trend.

Brandon Hall Group’s research indicates that companies with well-formulated learning plans are getting more bang for their buck in terms of employees' performance and flexibility of their operations.

Companies are directing the role of an eLearning content developer in a way that it is able to witness and reflect business-related tangible changes.

Key Skills Every eLearning Content Developer Needs

Instructional Design Expertise

They should keep in mind the ways in which adults learn best.

One of the aims of decent digital learning is retention and further application along with the learner’s engagement. When lack of knowledge in instructional design is seen, the course often ends up being an info dump and therefore, ineffective.

Among many things, formats such as ADDIE and Bloom’s Taxonomy are important as they help to lay out the learning in a coherent way.

Storytelling and Scenario Building

Today, learners would like to get knowledge from real-life situations rather than from theoretical explanations.

Scenario-based training is particularly effective in sales, leadership, compliance, and customer service.

We have, for instance, a BFSI client to whom we gave help. The compliance violations kept going up in spite of the fact that the trainees had undergone the trainings and had even passed the tests. The modules offered originally relied very heavily on policy explanations.

Compliance scores at the client got much better after the introduction of scenarios that portray real customers and decision-making situations.

Stories evoke emotions and enhance memory.

Technical Skills

Along with having the instructional design skills, an eLearning content developer is also expected to know the ins and outs of authoring software and other eLearning technologies.

Some of the tools in the list of the most commonly used are:

• Articulate Storyline
• Adobe Captivate
• Lectora
• Camtasia
• Vyond
• LMS platforms

Mastering software tools, though, is only one part of the story. A number of organizations, for example, concentrate so much on animation and visual effects that learning outcomes get ignored.

What the best developers do is to strike a balance between being creative and reinventing the wheel to bring the best educational value to end-users.

Data Interpretation

It is not a secret that L&D teams nowadays make more use of data and analytics.

Being an eLearning content developer should be able to interpret data about things like learner engagement, course completion rates, and test results.

This kind of data is quite beneficial as it allows us to keep refining our content plans for the future.

The Shift Toward Personalized Learning Experiences

In the past, training with a one-size-fits-all approach was the norm. Well, that doesn’t fly anymore (except in very rare cases).

Now, employees are craving personalized experiences that are on a par with entertainment platforms like Netflix or Spotify. Learning, in general, needs to be customized in terms of the person’s job, their competence levels and the gaps found in their performances.

Thanks to this, the adaptive learning content has gained to a great extent in importance for the companies.

Through an adaptive learning content developer, an experienced one, learning pathways can be arranged so that they respond to the learner’s behavior. They may also include:

• Personalised recommendations
• Microlearning modules
• Role-based scenarios
• Interactive assessments
• Gamified learning journeys

According to Deloitte by some distance, personalized learning is a much better way to get learners engaged with the material and memorizing knowledge than the static training approach, which is a one-size-fits-all designed.

Despite being a very promising way to deliver more targeted approaches to help learners meet their different challenges, personalization also comes with hard-to-avoid issues.

Providing customized learning routes means that more discussion and planning with SMEs is required. Besides, content development may also have to be revisited regularly. Business, therefore, ought to understand that on the one hand, personalization is powerful in giving effectiveness but on the other, complexity of production is heightened.

Common Mistakes Organizations Make

Treating eLearning as Content Conversion

One mistake that I come across quite often is the assumption that the material used in a face-to-face classroom could be done online just by uploading it.

Mere presentation slides cannot be said to be equivalent to complete learning experiences.

So, what digital learning requires is the interaction, pacing, reinforcement, and contextual relevance, which makes the whole experience different and continuous.

Ignoring Learner Behavior

Many learning designers create learning units based on not what employees have to do in their work but what the managers want them to hear.

That will inevitably result in the learners being overloaded with information.

What is more, effective developers rather direct attention at the information that is clear and can be applied, as opposed to presenting too much.

Overusing Visual Effects

Animations and graphics are undoubtedly useful tools to make learning more attractive, but if these resources are overused, it might be the case that learners get distracted.

In one case of working together in the healthcare sector, the heavily animated training modules were simplified into a more straightforward look that focused on scenarios. This was a major factor behind the increase in the learner satisfaction scores because, at the same time, employees also found the content much easier to go through.

In essence, good design helps learning. Good design in fact should not overshadow learning.

How AI Is Changing the Role of an eLearning Content Developer

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing learning development workflows.

Now there are AI tools that help with:

• Script generation
• Voiceovers
• Translation
• Quiz creation
• Content summarization
• Personalized recommendations

However, human expert knowledge is still indispensable.

Of course, AI has the ability to speed up the production process. What it still cannot do, though, is to completely replace instructional judgment, aligning with a business, and the storytelling that has the right context.

The most effective learning teams harness AI for producing efficiently while reserving strategic learning decisions to humans.

The reason this balance is necessary is that poor-quality AI-generated learning can harm learner trust and engagement.

The Business Impact of High-Quality eLearning Content

Digitally-delivered, well-crafted learning results in positively quantifiable gains for a business.

Business entities generally witness advances in their:

• Speed of getting employees up to the required level
• Compliance with regulations
• Sales capability
• Standard of customer service
• Amount of knowledge retained
• Scope of training extended

Thanks to digital delivery models, according to IBM, employees who are well-trained can considerably increase their productivity while lowering the cost of training.

Still, it all comes down to quality of execution.

Those organizations who pool their resources for experienced learning professionals tend to get much stronger outcomes over the long term most of the time when compared to companies that produce content at speed alone.

Choosing the Right eLearning Content Development Approach

In general, companies have 3 ways from which to pick:

In-House Development

This provides the company with greater control over internal processes but needs allocated resources plus taking into account that it would also call for specialized skills.

Outsourcing to Learning Partners

Majority of companies outsource since external teams bring not only scalability but also fresh skills and broader knowledge.

This approach is especially effective when the enterprise is undergoing a wide-ranging transformation.

Hybrid Models

There are some companies that still keep their internal teams for strategy while outsourcing the development part.

According to my understanding, hybrid models usually yield the best harmony between business alignment and efficiency of production.

The necessary selection varies with factors such as budget, learning maturity, timelines, and the level of content complexity.

Final Thoughts

Once, the position of an elearning content developer was low on the priority list. That has now changed considerably.

Most businesses no longer see digital learning as an option that they can afford not to take. Rather, they have come to regard it as a tool for workforce transformation and business agility.

But just throwing money at the technology will give them nothing. Successful learning programs are the result of a chain that includes good content design, the learner-centered experiences, and business-aligned measurable goals.

Highly proficient developers are those who master instructional knowledge, have a good understanding of the business, can think creatively as well as analytically — in a data-driven manner.

As jobs keep changing and new skills need to be learned very quickly, those businesses which make the investment in quality learning content will always be the best positioned for agility, talent retention, and ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌performance.