Here at iAM, we’re celebrating an amazing milestone. There are 500 eLearning courses now available in our Learning Library. The majority of these are our fully animated bread and butter courses, with some translated content and Microsoft courses too, courtesy of our friends at FILTERED.
Let’s wind back a little. To be completely transparent, at the time of publication, there are 369 ‘regular’ eLearning courses available. Additionally, there are extra courses that can be accessed as an extra bolt-on to a subscription: 76 translated courses, and 65 IT courses powered by FILTERED. Altogether, that takes us over the magic 500 number!
Of course, it’s taken us more than 5 years to get to this point. And you may be thinking that creating this many courses in that time is, well, easy. But we can assure you, it isn’t.
Good content that has a meaningful impact takes time. We want the content we create to not only look good, but also have lasting behavioural change on the people who take it. That’s the point of eLearning, after all.
It’d be easier (and cheaper!) to throw some stick figures together or create bland, copy-based clickthrough stuff. But our ethos at iAM Learning is to ‘Make Learning Fun’. It’s what we were created to do, after all. We’ve all taken boring courses ourselves in the past, and it’s definitely not for us. They say: “Know your enemy”, and we certainly do.
So, this blog is designed to explain all about the content creation process: how we create our eLearning content so you can see all the hard work that goes into creating those characters that bring us so much joy and help us be better people. Let’s start at the beginning and follow a course from inception to its release.
Customer Insight
It all starts with an idea. Every online training course is currently an idea brought forward by stakeholders, based on trending topics, customer needs, compliance requirements or other insights. The team discusses whether we can do this subject justice in a short course, or if it's part of a wider collection. What will the learning outcomes be? Do we have the capacity to deliver these in a timely way with our available resources? Topics are discussed and finalised in these sessions. Here’s a comment from our Customer Delight Manager, Steph Charlesworth, to explain how these insight sessions help us decide what to create.
Steph: “Ultimately, we want to be creating content that our customers want and need. Whilst we can see some major trends that will impact everyone, for me it’s the requests that customers make that are the key. Whilst we can’t make all the content that is asked for, often getting the perspective of our community means we can focus our efforts to create meaningful courses that can have an impact.”
Scoping
If a topic requires a Subject Matter Expert (SME), they’ll provide a comprehensive document with all the content and resources needed. We have a range of them available, including current and former headteachers, as well as other experts on topics like Mental Health, FCA, Cyber Security, Environment, Social & Governance (ESG), Health & Safety and Belonging, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (BEDI). The L&D team will either use this or consult relevant training materials and research, then create a scoping document which details what learning each course should include, what sequence the course should take, and which would be the most effective interaction types for this topic. They hand over this document to the Production team, who brief a Scriptwriting manager. Between them, they organise the most appropriate scriptwriter from our writing pool, and give them all the details. Timescales are set and a brief is finalised.
Creative Session
Now the topic is decided, it’s time to get our Creative team involved. Planning and research of the topic is conducted by the L&D team and Creative team, usually in a face-to-face session. They discuss potential themes or stories to follow and consider potential pitfalls in the subject matter. Blended materials (which accompany the course itself and help learners further when the course is completed) are discussed and decided upon. By the end of the meeting, the Creative team knows what to include in the course, the ideal learner for the subject is identified, and a theme/story/character set is highlighted.
Scriptwriting
Our writers have varied experience with different topics, as you’d expect. Some are experts on finance. Some have extensive experience with health and safety. We always try and match up a topic to a writer’s skill set. We can match them up together with the SME to discuss the topic and point them to resource material. Once a script has been written and researched, it’ll be reviewed by the L&D team, Scriptwriting manager, the SME and anyone else that needs to see it. There will be several rounds of revisions and reviews, then the script will go to a proofreader. Once everyone is satisfied, a script will be signed off by the Scriptwriting manager and move to the next stage in the process.
Screenplay and Directors Notes
The script is changed, often by the writers themselves, into a set of directors’ notes, which is essentially a screenplay. These directors’ notes tell an artist and animator what the characters and scenes look like and what should be happening on screen during the course. The writer knows in advance what the theme will be and has access to a huge library of images created in-house for them to choose from. They follow a mixture of their imagination and the theme/story set out before the script stage.
Art Direction & Storyboarding
It’s time to start bringing this vision to life! Using the directors’ notes from the previous stage, our graphic designers can begin putting together a storyboard, creating the characters and backgrounds requested. They turn each scene into a well-detailed and finely crafted masterpiece, almost like a comic book. Again, the artist has access to pre-existing assets which can be amended however they see fit. Each scene is sent back to the scriptwriter to check if it matches what they requested and edited or amended until everyone is satisfied. Scenes are also reviewed and signed off by the L&D team and scriptwriting manager.
Animation & Voiceover
While the storyboard is being prepared, the script is sent to a voiceover artist with any notes on tone or particular style they’d like to hear. The production manager has several VO artists available to choose from (humans only here, no AI). When the voice files are received back from the artist, they are checked by the production manager and given, along with the storyboard, to one of our animators.
From there, the animator turns the image files into, well, animation. They make the characters, backgrounds, and cameras move. They add extra details, which you may not have noticed before, all to add to the richness of the animation. The voiceover files are chopped and added into the correct place to match the storyboard, and sound effects are added from our library. Each scene is meticulously reviewed and amended, just like every other stage, until everyone is satisfied.
Build – Finalisation
We’re nearly there. The storyboard and animation files, a special ‘podcast’ version of the voiceover files, a version of the script without direction, and blended materials are brought together by the Learning Designers so that they can make the course accessible to all. Closed Captions are added to the animations, and the course designer stitches everything together, so interactive buttons take learners to the correct position in the course, and other interactivities, like drag and drop, quizzes, etc., all work.
It’s all to help give every learner a great user experience. We look at web design best practices to create simple, intuitive user experiences which are easy to navigate, and compatible with assistive technologies, like screen readers.
The completed course is reviewed by management, then sent to one of our accreditation bodies, IOSH, depending on subject matter, for approval. Once received, our production and marketing teams can upload it to the learning library and create landing pages on the website, and finally, our Customer Delight manager can update customers to its availability. Another course is born!
Creating content isn’t easy. You might even think that it’s kind of a bloated process. That may be, but it does change and evolve. Streamlining is always ongoing. There are so many different sets of skills used in the process, some of which overlap, but many don’t, and it just has to be done this way if you want courses that both look good and actually work.
Feedback and customer insight help us with this stuff, too. If we’ve made an error, and someone spots it, then tells us, we make an amend as soon as possible. Hey, we’re not perfect. If a customer tells us that they really need a specific course, well, if it’s viable for us to make, then we do our best. We’ve been known to make bespoke content, but with so many people involved in the process, that might stretch the budget of the requester. But we know it’s always worth it – that’s why we have a 99% customer retention rate.
Looking Forward
So, what’s coming up in the near future? More courses? Well, yes, but much more, too. Next year, we’ll be focusing on Keeping Children Safe In Education (KCSIE) and other school-specific content (such as Sustainability and SEND). We’re also calling next year the ‘Year of the Refresh’ and we’ll be updating some of our most popular content, as well as revisiting some of our older courses to bring them up to modern standards of animation and interactivity.
We think that this is just as important as creating ‘new’ content. Courses must be curated and updated in this way. We have already added new content for key courses like GDPR, Sexual Harassment, PPE and others when new legislation has come to light. We want to ensure the learning is correct, naturally. But we also want to be proactive with this stuff and give at least our most popular content some proper TLC so learners can have the best experience when they choose iAM Learning. Of course, we’d still love to hear your suggestions for new titles and we’ll add them to our future roadmap.
So, now you’ve seen how much effort goes into our online eLearning courses – why not check out some of our trailers? You’ll find them on our website in the content library, along with all those landing pages that we spoke about – you can find out exactly who the course is for, what behavioural changes it will bring to a learner and a short synopsis of what you can expect in the course. Check it out here: Content Library
Want to know more?
If you're keen to know more about how our content is made or about our online learning in general, why not check out our unique, engaging eLearning content, covering everything from leadership and people management to health & safety and compliance? Get started today to try iAM Learning for yourself.
