E-learning production is often a battle between time, interactivity and budget available. We have been involved in this battle way too many times to know that it is not an easy win.  In case the budget is limited we usually go for a rapid e-learning development and here is why :

Faster and cheaper development
rapid e-learning development in our world means creating course fast and easy, by using predesigned and preprogrammed templates. They can be Lectora templates, Articulate Storyline templates, Adobe Captivate templates or html5 e-learning templates or any other course authoring tool e-learning templates. Templates allow quick progress in course building because you don’ t need to think and worry about the look and feel of the e-learning course. And also the functionality is built-in, no extra programming of interactivity is needed. Basically you take the templates and copy/paste your content, like pictures, texts, videos, animations etc. and that is IT, your course is ready.

Faster instructional design
rapid e-learning development with e-learning templates means that not only the production will be faster, but also the script writing will be faster and cheaper, as the script writers will need to stick to some kind of framework. It is not always good, in case you have large budgets or dificult learning task, this maybe far from ideal, but in case the deadline is approaching fast, and the budget is small, sticking to predesigned page layouts can make the task of instructional designer easier. We usually do script writing in powerpoint, and for rapid development we have a powerpoint template available. If you want one, email me, and I will send it over.

Simple updates in the future
future updates of the course usually are easier for rapid development projects as well, because, the templates are built with a thought that anybody can add their content there. Therefore no super advanced animations or effects, or custom javascript, that  can only be updated by software developers are included.

Finally I need to note that templates work only if the end result fills its purpose, learning goals are met, and users are happy. We have worked quite a lot with e-learning templates to know that design is one of the aspects that usually lacks attention. Therefore we work really hard to ensure a modern look and functionality on all our templates, so that nobody would say that your course looks like from 1995, as it sometimes is with the templates we see on the market. Our aim is to stop ugly  and outdated e-learning production, we want to make it efficient and modern in terms of instructional and graphical design.