The global e-learning market is thriving and is expected to be worth $275.10 Billion by 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5%. And there’s good reason why it’s expanding so quickly. E-learning offers many benefits to employees and organizations alike:
- It allows learners and instructors to access learning content 24/7.
- It’s greener and more cost-effective, especially for larger organizations and scaling organizations.
- It caters to different types of learners at all levels across an organization.
- It’s proven to be an effective content delivery medium for knowledge and learning retention.
Even with all the benefits that come with e-learning courses, there are a few do’s and don’ts you’ll want to consider as you begin revamping or creating your e-learning courses, particularly if you want them to be effective.
Do’s
Recognize a Business Need for Your Courses
When building your e-learning courses, make sure they’re aligned with your organization’s strategies, initiatives, and goals. This is the best way to gain executive buy-in and funding for developing and promoting your courses. And it’s also a great way to promote the real-life benefits of your courses to your employees. For instance, if marketing employees understand how a course will help them develop more targeted marketing materials that will land more customers for your business, they’ll be more interested in taking the course. Ultimately, you won’t have e-learning courses for long if they aren’t being funded and if no one is taking them.
Leverage the Appropriate Technology
Be sure to select course authoring tools that are best suited for the course materials you want to create. Most of the time these tools are already available in your Learning Management System (LMS). You’ll want to make sure your authoring tools have all the functionality and features you’ll need. For example, if you know you’re going to create a lot of video content in your courses, select an authoring tool that allows you to easily capture and edit video content. Some authoring tools have more advanced features and capabilities while others only offer basic templates and graphics.
Set Clear Learning Objectives
When creating your courses, remember to set clear learning objectives so you can gather and analyze valuable learning metrics for your courses later. Determine if you want the learner to retain practical knowledge, develop a skill, or something else. For instance, while including video content with people talking will help learners understand certain communications skills, it will not ensure they understand how to execute a certain task in a business platform. For that, you might want to have the learner execute the task inside the module instead. Clear learning objectives help your learners understand what they’re expected to learn and help you assess whether they’ve truly learned something.
Include Assessments and Quizzes
To keep your learners engaged, consistently test their knowledge in your courses. When learners know they’ll be tested or quizzed, they’re much more likely to pay attention during a course. Even if you only include a one-question quiz at the end of a brief video, be sure to include some type of assessment for every course.
[Tune in tomorrow for the don’ts for creating e-learning courses tomorrow.]