When it comes to designing curriculum-based courses, Allego offers several advantages over classroom instruction, including offline learning and a wide variety of content types.

But even the most versatile e-learning platform can’t overcome the fact that some skills and knowledge are best acquired by doing, not by listening to an instructor.

For example: although you could design “The Ultimate Guide to Overcoming Every Known Customer Objection to Our Products,” such a course would: (A) not help the reps overcome unknown objections; and (B) probably take so long that some employees would be cashing out their 401(k)s by the time they finished. Role-playing exercises might be a better learning option.

So before you start assembling content for those new instructional videos, ask yourself:

‘Is this Course Really a Good Idea?’

“Is a course the right approach? What goals and activities could it support?”

Keep in mind that a course is a guided interactive learning experience –  with multiple content items – during which a learner can explore web content, videos, slides, etc. Think of it as a playlist, with content that’s largely self-contained and viewed in a predetermined order.

Typically, courses are great for onboarding, effective messaging and product launches. Next, consider some other use cases that your course could support. Baseline training after an acquisition comes to mind immediately.

Make It Easy to Distribute

However, subject matter is only one criterion for a good Allego course.  Others include keeping content simple and concise, and also ensuring that it’s easy to share with multiple audiences.

For example, a course should be easy to navigate. The learner shouldn’t have to go into multiple channels to find what they need, or hunt down content in multiple locations. All the content they need should be instantly accessible and easy to consume. This allows learners to focus on the learning experience, not hunting and gathering.

The coursework should also be easy to share with multiple audiences at different times. It should be effortless to distribute a course to one group on Day 1, and then push out the same course to another on Day 5, for example.

A Product Launch Example

A course tied to a product launch, for example, could comprise five different parts. The first could be an executive introduction, welcoming the team to the project and outlining the curriculum, expectations, goals, and commitments. It’s a nice way to kick things off.

The next item could be a video created by the project leader, explaining the course content and assignments. If this course led to an assignment, this section would outline the topics in the course, and the ensuing assignment.

Next, a  video overview of the new product could show learners the purpose of the product, what it does, the benefits, key features, and so on.

Following that, there could be a white paper, slide, or video that contains, say, ten bullet-points that every sales rep should know about the product. The format isn’t as important, as long it contains “need to know” data and is portable (so reps can take it with them into the field).

The last component could focus on best practices – what a good product pitch looks like, for example. To create this portion of the course, you could tap one or more subject matter experts or top reps within the company to record their proven pitches. And then each learner could be assigned a task to record their own practice pitches–which would be reviewed and graded to ensure that they’re ready to hit the ground running. The entire course should then be reinforced with a Flash Drill at the end to quiz sales reps with daily exercises that the system sends on a personalized basis. Anything worth putting reps through a course on should always be followed up with reinforcement spread over time.

This is just one example of how you might construct a course, but one of Allego’s biggest strengths is that it give you so much power to create rich, varied courses that not only capture your learners’ attention, but also ensures that they’re ready to do their job effectively when they’re done.