The eLearning industry is extremely vast today, and for each topic or domain, we have tonnes of courses. The market is saturated with new resources that are being added constantly. However, it is not great news for all the creators, as the competition is getting tough and it has become more difficult than ever to create content for courses. As a creator, it becomes more and more difficult to create content that is different from all others.
With this, it becomes a tough choice whether to buy or create courses for your audience. With this article, we will analyze how you should determine whether to buy or create content for the audience and how to do that.
Create content
Creating content means whatever resources you are providing to your audience ah to be created from scratch. When implemented accurately, the course can benefit your audience and provide you credibility.
It means you have full authority over customizing your courses and making them suit your audience’s requirements. You can maintain the tone and theme of your content when you are preparing it from scratch.
When you are creating eLearning courses, you must take care of the topics you are building your courses around. When you are picking general topics it will lead you to extreme competition but when you choose topics from your niche, you set aside the competition because it is a subject that you can provide deep and intriguing insights on the topic.
Make sure you are providing your audience with quality content and adding value to their lives.
Buy the content
It is acquiring content from a third party and it is a completely different procedure than creating content. If you are having a time crunch or are deprived of the required resources, this might be the best solution for you.
If you are dealing with a topic or niche for which the content is readily available and also abundant, it is the right choice to buy the content. But obviously, you have to dig deep, if you want good quality resources you must find the experts in the field
It also lessens the workload that you have to bear and it will help you focus on more important things than that. You can focus more on team building and help your employees get upskilled with the resources you will be providing.
There are many types of ready-to-use content that you can access and distribute to your audience. Let us talk about them in brief and see what will be the best option that you can choose among many:
1. Open online courses
Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, provide free online courses to the audience. But, the accessibility for these courses has decreased over time and they provide only a few resources now.
2. Open educational resources
Another platform for free resources is open educational resources. This comprises all sorts of content that you might require for building your educational course. You can build a presentation, podcast, or an entire course from the platform.
3. Open courseware
It is a subdomain of OER and herein you can find full fledge courses but mostly those are for higher education.
Different universities provide resources on this platform; the resources are arranged in a much more systematic manner, which makes the resources much more accessible to the common audience. You just have to keep in mind that you are following the license for the required resource.
Which type of content I should choose?
Every company has a different requirement for content, and it is important to recognize your content requirements based on the services you provide. When you are starting, it might be difficult for you to decide what form of content will work for you and how you will source the content.
Here are some of the parameters that you must take care of:
1. Topic to create content
The first step to determining the sourcing of your content is to determine what your eLearning course topic is. Is your course topic generic or unique? If you find your course topic to be generic you can find various free resources on the internet that you may utilize to build your course.
2. Consider your experience
Let’s be straight and admit content curation is not everyone’s task and it is important that you analyze your capabilities for the same. If you are an experienced employee, it won’t be difficult for you to create content. But if you lack experience, you should consider taking content from third-party resources.
It is no issue if you are a beginner, you can outsource your content and focus on other things like building your brand, curating the right audience, etc.
3. Time is an important factor
Before curating the resources for your course, you must understand time is an important factor. If you have an urgent requirement for content to make your courses, you can go for the paid content, but if you have enough time to curate and execute original content, you may go with that. Having less time and preparing resources in that way makes you more prone to making mistakes.
Your content curation greatly depends on the time you have on hand.
4. Outsourcing is feasible for you?
Selecting content can also be a daunting task, it is important to know what resources to pick and how to utilize them to build an engaging course. If you are outsourcing content, you must know how to curate the resources to make them sensible and useful.
Let’s wrap it up!
You must provide value to your audience, whether you purchase content or create it from scratch. Your audience must learn from the resources you are providing them and forward them when they find them useful.
For any service that you are proving to your audience, quality content is essential. Your goal should be curating unique content that should stand out from your competitors.
In this competitive market when your audience has numerous options, it is important t to prove your importance and value with unique and useful content.
Happy content curating!
