ATOL Articles

Experts in eLearning and Online Training

Written by Jackie Stapleton | 18 November 2020 5:15:00 AM

We've had an online training business since 2013. When it comes to elearning, we know what we're doing.

Yes, We are Experts in Online Training!

I wanted to share with you all a light bulb moment that I had recently. Have you ever been so focused on one thing that you are completely oblivious to everything else going on around you?

And it might happen within your own business because you're extremely focused and you fail to see what's going on around you. I’m talking about positive stuff here – it doesn’t always have to be negative!

This is what I realised – Auditor Training Online are not just experts on all things auditing, management systems, ISO standards and consulting! We are experts in online training as well! That's what we do.

We haven't just decided to quickly slap something together this year. We've been delivering online training since 2013. We've already gone through our challenges, but of course we still face some challenges – We learn every day. Because we've had an online training business since 2013, we know what we're doing. We've learnt the hard way!

When we launched our first courses in 2013, they were PowerPoint. That's all there was back then!

The challenge was finding a suitable Learning Management System (LMS) as this space was still quite new, we're actually still using the same LMS we started off with. While it has provided us with its own challenges, they too are continually updating and improving their platform.

What has changed is the platform we build our courses in, before adding into the LMS. So initially as I mentioned, we had nice simple PowerPoint that you could click through and answer some questions at the end. This was simple and easy for our students to use. The feedback was always to have more interaction, video and audio – we knew that we had to make a change.

We found a new platform that we could build our courses in which included the interaction, audio and video that our students wanted. We transitioned our courses to this new program, and it was amazing! However, it brought along its own challenges. It seems we went too far the other way now! We went from simple to far too complex!

To build our courses, it was essentially like coding. There were too many things that could go wrong – you’d fix one thing and then it would cause something else to break. So here we were thinking how smart we were, but then we went the other way.

Now we're moving back to somewhere in the middle. We have gone back to a simpler build process – we've kept that interaction, a modern clean look, and it's not boring like in the old days!

So that's been our challenge and we are continually learning about what platforms work well, both for us to build in and provides an engaging learning experience for our community.

We've had an online training business since 2013, we know what we're doing. We've learnt the hard way!

I actually see this a lot in the businesses that I audit, it is very similar to when you're building your own management system. Your own systems within your business can become overly complex. I understand why – you are trying to ensure that what you are building is a big, robust system that meets all of these requirements and the system ends up just being a little too ‘over the top’, its still conforming with requirements, however it’s just too complex.

This means that you are not always following processes, workers get confused and you are not always doing everything that you say in your complex system.

I find over time when you start using the system, that's when you realize and recognize the areas you can improve and streamline. This is a natural process and I love seeing this process in businesses that I visit – seeing them learn and grow and improve.

This is exactly what we have been through here at Auditor Training Online with our course platforms. We have had the seven years since 2013 to learn and improve; and we continue to improve.

Now, I’ll get back to my original ‘light bulb’ moment - not only can you come to us for your management system training, your business systems training, or training to become an auditor. You can come to us for anything to do with online training. We are experts in this too!

In fact, I have many colleagues come to me asking about our online platforms and processes. It’s something that I love to share too!

We have an awesome team of online course developers and instructional designers that know their stuff, so we have a lot of experts available.

We'd love to hear from you with any questions that you have!

Note – this is an excerpt from the Auditor Training Online Facebook Live, view the video here.