Creating a course from existing material

Nobody should start from scratch. Almost every organisation has presentation decks, training documents, process descriptions, handbooks, webinar recordings and expert articles. They contain the knowledge of subject experts, often built up over years. A course based on them is finished faster and is closer to practice than one written from scratch.

At the same time, existing material is rarely course-ready. Presentation slides are made for a speaker who explains them; without the speaker they are often incomprehensible. Handbooks are built for reference, not for learning. And recordings contain repetitions, digressions and questions that get in the way in a course.

First collect everything that exists on the topic and assess each item against four questions. Is it current? Is it accurate? Does it suit the audience? Are we allowed to use it, especially images, graphics and third-party text?

The most important step is reorganisation. Material usually follows the logic of its origin: the handbook’s chapters, the flow of a talk. A course follows the logic of learning: from why to what to how, with practice and checks. So first set the learning objectives and then map the material to them.

This reveals what is missing and what is superfluous. If an objective lacks an example, add one. If the material covers a topic in depth that does not matter to the audience, drop it or link to the original. A course is not a copy of the handbook but a path through it.

Language models can now reliably read material, identify topics, propose an outline and draft narration. A video becomes a transcript with timestamps, a presentation becomes a proposal for modules and slides. This saves a great deal of time on the routine work.

But AI can also add things that are not in the material or shift the emphasis. Treat every suggestion as a draft: check whether the structure fits your learning objectives, whether statements are correct and whether anything important is missing. Tools that check verifiable statements against sources and flag uncertain points rather than smoothing them over are particularly helpful.

In-house material is usually unproblematic once the rights to images and graphics are clear. Take care with slides that contain images from the internet, graphics from textbooks or other companies’ logos. What was tolerated in an internal talk can become a problem in a permanently available course.

Also check currency. A course spreads its material to many people; an outdated process or superseded legal position then does correspondingly more damage.

In Universe, you drag a presentation, PDF or text into the workshop, enter up to three web addresses or upload a video, whose audio track is extracted in the browser and transcribed with timestamps in the EU. The workshop reads the material, identifies the topics and proposes modules, slides, form of address and certificate; “Suggest topics” adds more where needed. The course is only created when you confirm. Course packages from other installations and SCORM courses can also be imported.