Five modules for somebody else's client. Thirty more after that.

The problem belonged to a company we had never met

TechReq had a client whose executives were hiring engineers and could not tell a strong technical CV from a weak one.

So TechReq were brought in to teach them, and TechReq ran that as instructor-led training. Their client wanted it as eLearning, self-paced, for internal staff.

TechReq found us through the website and got in touch. No tender, no introduction. What they handed over was PDFs. That was the whole brief.

Converting classroom training is not a formatting job

A PDF from a classroom course is not a course. It is the handout that supported a person talking.

The teaching was in the room. Half of what made the session work was an instructor reading faces and slowing down, and none of that survives in the file you get sent.

So the work was not turning five PDFs into five modules. It was working out what the instructor had been doing that the document never recorded, and building something that did that job without them.

Five modules. Twenty five slides each.

The quizzes went inside the content, not after it

The obvious build puts the questions at the end. We put them between the content slides.

The reason is specific to this audience. These were working recruiters fitting training around a day of calls. A question at the end of twenty five slides tests whether they remember slide four. A question after slide four tests whether they understood slide four, and it catches them before they have built the next four slides on a misunderstanding.

Learners could not move past a slide until they had finished it. That is a heavier hand than we usually recommend and it was right here, because the content was sequential. You cannot judge a technical CV before you know what the roles are called.

Multiple choice and true or false. Custom characters and illustrations, built to the end client's brand rather than TechReq's, because the end client was the audience. Articulate Storyline 3, SCORM compliant, responsive.

What happened next is the part worth reading

The end client asked TechReq to put them in direct contact with us.

That is TechReq's decision and their credit, not ours. They made the introduction rather than protecting the relationship, which most intermediaries would not have done.

Since then we have produced thirty more modules for that client. And after going through the original five, they hired over a hundred technical professionals for their partners.

What we would tell someone in the same position

What we would tell someone sitting on a pile of classroom decks

Do not send the deck and ask for a quote on converting it. You will get a price for turning slides into slides. Ask instead what the instructor used to do in the room that the deck does not show, and get that written down before anybody starts building. It is usually one afternoon of somebody's time and it changes the entire result. And be suspicious of any conversion that keeps your slide count exactly. If a vendor's proposal always matches your input, they are formatting, not designing.