You have thought about rolling out your own in-company training? But big authoring tools seem complicated and expensive? Looks like we have got the perfect solution for you!
Create eLearning content in PowerPoint
With PowerPoint, which is already installed on many systems, you have a powerful tool at hand. In combination with eLearning software, you are able to create your very own eLearning courses and conduct pieces of training from A to Z. eLearning software allows you to provide learning content in an appealing manner, track the learning success and allow social interaction among trainers and participants. Additionally, you can certify your trainees’ skills, which includes employees, partners, and customers. This way, eLearning has become easier than ever before.
This article describes:
- how to utilize PowerPoint to set up learning content
- how to convert your content into a full-fledged online course
- how to carry out certification
PowerPoint for course creation
To begin with, PowerPoint is all you need to gather the entire learning content that you need for a full-fledged online course. Should you already have a PowerPoint presentation e.g. used in face-to-face training, you can directly convert it into a course (as described in the next passage). You can also embed slides in a course. This works similar to an ebook, where content can be browsed directly from within your course.
Elements of an online training created with PowerPoint.
PowerPoint as your authoring tool
Gather all relevant information in a to-be-converted PowerPoint presentation. Always keep in mind not to overload your slides with information. There is a very practical reason for this: Your slides will get resized e.g. when accessing your course via a smartphone. The smaller the texts on the slides are, the harder it is to read. Should it be necessary to include a large amount of text in a single learning step, just put it into the notes field directly below your PowerPoint slide? Here you will find an exemplary screenshot.
Notes from your PowerPoint presentation will be imported as well and appear directly beneath the corresponding slide. There you can edit, format, and adjust the text as necessary, using the integrated WYSIWYG editor. The slides can be rearranged, visually highlighted, and arranged in modules (also called chapters).
How to convert PowerPoint into eLearning with Coursepath
Any presentation you have designed and added notes to, you can upload to Coursepath, a very easy-to-use eLearning system. Let the system convert it into a course for you! The video below shows how to do it and what the result looks like.
To start this process, go to your academy and click on the green button in the upper right corner, labeled “Import course”. In case you do not have an academy yet, you can quickly create one here: Create academy.
If you want to upload your notes, make sure to tick the box “Add speaker notes“. Finally, click on the blue button „Upload presentation“. The rest is done by Coursepath and it will only take a few moments, as shown here in this video:
Your course is online
Coursepath has created a course for you. You can repeat this process and create an academy with multiple courses this way. Afterwards, you could even create course programs composed of different courses, which participants run through in a completely automated way.
PowerPoint slides as interactive content in your course
Should you want to add more interactive content to your course, just create a presentation and upload it to your course. You can choose to display it in the built-in document viewer, which is comparable to an ebook viewer. Here’s an example:
Tip: For presentations used for additional purposes (e.g. marketing) alongside training, upload the material on SlideShare. Now you can embed the SlideShare presentation in your course, using an iframe. Not only in your training but also on your website, this iframe can easily be embedded, as shown above.
Certify your participants’ skills
Working and learning towards a certificate can be a good incentive to increase participants’ motivation to complete the course. To create such a certificate you can use PowerPoint again. Create a new file and choose the preferred orientation, landscape, or portrait. You can now layout and (re-)design your certificate in your very own style. Add individual fonts, colors and images. Additionally, you can add system tags as needed:
- Participant Name {name}
- Organization {company}
- Course Name {course}
- Course Subtitle {subtitle}
- Score {score}
- Trainer {teacher}
- Date {date}
These {tags} will be converted to the corresponding value, as shown in the image below.
Upload your certificate file under “Setup” > “Certificate layout”. This is what a certificate could look like:
An example of a certificate created in PowerPoint.
Example course based on PowerPoint
Here you will find a course that has been created using a PowerPoint presentation:
Invite participants to your course
Last but not least, invite participants. This can be done using an Excel or CSV file. Should you only have a few participants, you could also invite them one by one. Should you have many participants, an Excel file might be faster.
Create your own eLearning course with Coursepath.
