Recognizable?
“Could you make a short e-learning on our new policy?” That sounds easy. You open SharePoint, find five versions of the same document, ask three colleagues for input, and get six opinions back. Meanwhile, the process has already changed. Sound familiar?
For many L&D teams and trainers, this is the reality. And creating a simple e-learning often takes much more time than expected.
You are not the only one
According to research by Chapman Alliance, it takes an average of 79 hours to develop 1 hour of e-learning. Yep, nine full working days – for one hour of training. And that’s for basic e-learning (Level 1), with no interactive video or simulations.
Why is it taking so long?
These are the biggest time-consumers, according to Chapman.
| Activity | Average time (per hour of training) |
| Instructional design | 10.9 hours |
| Storyboarding | 9.0 hours |
| Content retrieval & structuring | 8.7 hours |
| Review rounds with SMEs | 5.6 hours |
| Technical formatting & testing | 5+ hours |
And that does not include waiting time, revision rounds and collecting the right documents in different folders.
What you really want: speed, without compromising on quality
You want to be able to move quickly, without spending weeks rewriting texts or endlessly coordinating with subject matter experts. The knowledge is already there, in manuals, policies, presentations and minutes, but it is not directly usable as training.
Until now.
At Collow, we’ve developed a new feature that’s going to help you:
Training generation with RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation).
Sounds technical, but what it does is super simple AND powerful:
- We link Collow to your knowledge resources (such as SharePoint, Confluence or Google Drive).
- Our AI extracts the relevant information from that.
- And automatically converts it into an e-learning module.
So you no longer have to do it yourself:
- Looking up and sifting through documents;
- Structure information;
- Intros, test questions or training framework to set up;
- Copy and paste from documents and write yourself.
Our AI does that – at lightning speed and based on your own knowledge.
You edit, add any interactive forms of work, and voila: your training is ready.
What does it provide?
💡 Time savings
What used to take 79 hours can now be accomplished within a day.
🧠 Make better use of existing knowledge
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Make use of your organization’s knowledge hidden in countless presentations, Word documents and manuals.
🚀 Scalable & consistent
Use the same knowledge resource for multiple modules, in multiple languages.
What does such an e-learning look like?
To properly understand what role AI plays and what outputs to expect, it is important to agree on the definition of an “e-learning.
Briefly, we distinguish three levels of e-learning.
Level 1 - Basic e-learning
- Text, images, video, a closing test.
- Often linear, click-through content.
- Think: PowerPoint as an e-learning module.
We can fully automate the creation of that kind of e-learning with AI.
Level 2 - Interactive e-learning
- More interactive forms of work such as scenarios, practical assignments, video with questions.
- More involvement, but also more work.
Trainers and L&D professionals can add their creative value here. AI supports with case generation and interactive quiz questions.
Level 3 - advanced e-learning
- Simulations, gamification, avatars, storytelling.
- Expensive, intensive, and only needed for complex skills.
This form is actually not comparable to a “regular” e-learning and takes considerably more time to create, averaging 490 hours per hour of e-learning. AI can also play a role here, although it is not yet fully automated. You can think here, for example, of an interactive conversation with an AI avatar to train conversational skills.
See Collow in action
Wondering how this works with your own internal documentation? We’d love to show you the power of AI by converting your own content to e-learning with Collow Creator.
- Schedule a demo
- Upload your own content (manual, process description, PowerPoint)
- Receive a customized e-learning module, automatically generated
PS: AI does not take over your work, it gives you time back.
So you can focus on what really adds value: interaction, depth and didactics. We previously wrote this blog about that.
