ELearning is becoming an increasingly common tool in business, particularly when training or increasing the skill sets of employees. Through eLearning, employees have access to all of the information they need, they can digest it in their own way, and then take part in fair assessments to assess their knowledge. What’s more, this all takes place in the minimum amount of time possible, while being optimally efficient.
1. Organise Your Course, and Share This with Your Employees
You should aim to make your course as structured and organised as possible. This promotes the course’s success in two ways. Firstly, it is easier to understand and digest, and so your employee will gain a better understanding. Secondly, if you share this structure – the content, assessment, and activities that will take place with your employees, they will be able to focus on what they’re doing, rather than worrying about what will come next. And thus, they will take in a lot more.
2. Take Regular Breaks
No doubt you have a lot of content you’re hoping to get through during your eLearning course. This is completely understandable. However, trying to power through it all by making your employees take the course for hours at a time is counter-productive. Allowing frequent breaks gives your employees time to absorb the last lot of information, and recalibrate, leaving them feeling less stressed, and ready to go.
3. Allow Time for Following Exploration
Rather than a strict step by step eLearning programme, some employees benefit from being able to ick and choose which modules they will go though in a day. They have the freedom to go back over topics they struggle with, and get a general idea of something new. This is an adult way of learning that respects your employee’s freedom to make choices about their development.
4. Take Advantage of Bite-Size Learning
If you have limited time available, then it is entirely possible to cut the word count right down, and provide quick resources on a specific topic, that will develop one particular skill. If your employees don’t have time for a full course, or even if they want to be able to access some key elements of the course later, bite-size activities or material can be very helpful.
5. Use Online Resources to Improve Your Course
Your eLearning programme needs to be well written to be effective. Your employees should be able to understand every single idea, and all concepts and subjects should be presented as clearly and simply as possible. This improves the chances of your employees being able to retain the information you want them to. To make sure your online course is accurate and visually appealing use several online sources that can help you. The best part is that some of these resources are actually free, and you can take advantage of amazing assistance, without it costing you anything.
To make sure your writing is clear and concise, there’s the Hemingway App, or Pro Writing Aid which can pick up on grammar errors, or common mistakes in your writing to make it a lot stronger. To ensure your eLearning course is sufficiently clear, there’s the Readability Score, which is able to analyse how complex your writing is, so you can alter it to suit your audience. To make sure your course is attractive and visually appealing, you can incorporate images and infographics that are incredibly simple to make with Canva.com or Piktochart. Making your own images also protects your from any accusations of plagiarism, which is a relief for many businesses.
6. Capture Your Audiences Curiosity
By using visual aids like infographics, you naturally attract you employees attention and draw them in to the eLearning course. Continue with this engagement by incorporating scenario questions that they need to really think about, and that they can apply their new knowledge to, rather than a simple, but slightly less exciting, memory test.
7. Make the Course Relatable
The eLearning course should be meaningful for your employees and something that they can relate to, as this will help them really retain what they’ve learnt without trying. If they can project the course onto one of their own experiences, then they can clearly see why the course is applicable, and when to use this new knowledge.
There are many ways to create engaging and appealing eLearning Content, and following these tips will get anyone on the right path towards providing interesting and relevant online courses for their employees, that will have a positive impact n knowledge and skill development.
Author: Gloria Kopp – Web Content Writer and elearning Consultant and editor at Bigassignments. She is also a regular contributor to such websites as HuffingtonPost, Engadget, etc.
