19 Feb What are off-the-shelf eLearning courses?

Off-the-shelf eLearning modules are pre-built courses that are available for purchase and immediate rollout by organisations. Each online course covers a particular content area and is designed to be relevant to diverse groups of learners. The full suite of courses is combined into a course catalogue. These course catalogues are generally sold on a licence basis. This allows organisations to make the courses available to their staff. However, some organisations may choose to licence courses individually to address a specific learning need. When delivered through their Learning Management System (LMS) the organisation can track progression and completion of the courses.

One of the benefits of utilising pre-built eLearning courses is that it allows organisations to quickly deliver digital learning content throughout the entire organisation or to individual departments and teams where a learning need is identified. Another benefit allows L&D teams to utilise courses from an online course catalogue to build larger learning programmes. One example of this is where online management modules are utilised alongside face-to-face training to create a bespoke, blended management development programme. Another typical use is in the development of a company induction programme. Online course catalogues frequently contain modules that are required for staff onboarding. By selecting the modules that are relevant to your organisation and your people you can quickly build up an online induction programme that can be rolled out not only quickly but cost effectively.

Off-the-shelf eLearning course catalogues have been used by large organisations for some time. However, their use is suitable for both large and smaller workforces. All sizes of organisation can benefit from using online course catalogues where they may not otherwise have the budget to create custom eLearning courses for their team. Digital learning providers often are able to supply learning technology to support course rollout where it is not currently available.

Access to the library of online training courses is licenced through an annual charge, based on the number of staff in the organisation. Libraries are updated with new courses being released and made available throughout the year to client organisations.

eLearning catalogues are typically fully compliant (SCORM, AICC, xAPI) and ready to use in your existing LMS. If required, off-the-shelf courses can be customised to your organisation’s requirements. This could be as simple as having your company logo and branding reflected. However, there can be  opportunities to have the content tailored exactly to your learning needs.

The availability of off-the-shelf digital courses can mean a significant win for organisations of all sizes. Sourcing a library of digital courses offers organisations a cost effective way to roll out corporate eLearning to their people. With digital learning courses available to use right out-of-the-box, organisations don’t have to compromise on quality or invest significantly to develop customised content. They can simply licence a high quality off-the-shelf eLearning catalogue.