How To Create Effective eLearning Assessments To Measure Online Training
Many organizations aren’t concerned about evaluating their online training programs, as if offering their employees online training courses is enough. Well, it isn’t; without measuring training outcomes it is impossible to know whether your workforce has been trained effectively in order to boost their performance levels and increase productivity. In this article, I will share 7 great tips on how to create eLearning assessments to measure the effectiveness of corporate training, so that you can be able to determine whether your online training deliverable was successful or needs to be improved.
1. Create Different eLearning Assessments For Different people
One of the main goals of any online training program is to cater a wide range of training needs; after all, your employees not only have different professional backgrounds and educational history but also have different expectations and needs, based upon their position within the company. This is why you need to create separate series of eLearning assessments for different target groups, such as the management department, the sales department, the customer service, and so on. Of course, you will also need to have a list of eLearning assessments which all of your employees need to complete, as these will provide you with valuable feedback about, for example, how your employees feel about your online training strategy, what issues they face during their daily work routine, how they would like these issues to be resolved, etc.
2. Be Concise
For eLearning assessments to be effective, that is to offer you the right data about your online training strategy, they need to be clear and aligned with goals and objectives of the online training course. Make sure that you leave no room for misunderstandings; the more specific and concise your questions are, the more effective will be the eLearning assessment process. In addition, that every question is not only properly worded to avoid confusion, but also short; very long sentences frustrate employees and make it more likely to provide false information.
3. Use Variety
Following a learner-centered approach for your eLearning assessments will help you address different learning needs. Don’t be stingy with variety; choose the right authoring tools and provide various types of questions in your quizzes, such as multiple choice questions, true/false questions, yes/no questions, etc., and various multimedia elements such as audio, video, and visuals. Variety of methods and tools will significantly enhance the eLearning assessment experience, as it ensures that all of your employees’ learning needs, will be successfully accommodated.
4. Focus On Performance Assessments
As almost every online training program’s main goal is to improve employees' performance and productivity, focusing on performance assessments will help you get into the essence of online training. It's not difficult to develop performance assessments: Just use performance goals and create two different eLearning assessment sets; prior to and after the online training. By contrasting performance results prior and after online training, you will be able to determine whether the abilities and skills of your employees have been developed, and therefore whether your online training strategy was effective.
5. Create eLearning Assessments To Measure Employees’ Reaction To The Online Training Program
You may already know that creating an emotional connection between an online training course and its audience increases the effectiveness of the online training course, as the learning process is significantly facilitated when the employee feels positive towards it. This is why it would be a mistake to ignore how your corporate audience feels about their online training experience; ensuring that their reaction is positive will immediately add more value to your online training course. Measuring your employees’ reaction means basically asking them for feedback; create eLearning assessments that will give you answers about whether your audience liked or disliked the methods and tools you have used, whether they found the online tests and quizzes clear, whether they enjoyed the eLearning games you have included, and so on. You can also gather valuable information by asking them to point out specific questions or topics they found difficult or unclear. To ensure that this type of eLearning assessments is really effective, consider making the feedback results anonymous.
6. Use Previous Feedback As eLearning Assessment Material
Speaking of feedback, a clever way to create eLearning assessment material is to use feedback from previous eLearning assessments. Knowing what did work and what didn’t before will significantly help you form new, enriched questions and quizzes to measure your online training’s success. The results from analyzing previous feedback from eLearning will inspire you to keep improving the efficiency of your online training program, as now you will know exactly what to avoid or what kind of methods and tools are not welcomed by your employees. Avoiding the same mistakes will offer your online training strategy the flexibility it needs to become truly effective.
7. Analyze eLearning Assessment Results
Last but not least, in order to effectively measure the effectiveness of your online training you need to evaluate your eLearning assessments’ results. How to do that? Time to take advantage of your Learning Management System; most Learning Management Systems can track eLearning assessment results and offer you valuable information about your corporate learners’ participation, progress, success, or failure, and performance difficulties. Once you have gathered the information, it is up to you to summarize the eLearning assessments’ reports you need and analyze them to evaluate the whole process. This will help you acquire a complete picture of the issues you need to address in order to improve your online training strategy in the future. In some fortunate cases, you may see results that prove that your methods are right; however, most of the time, you will discover that your employees aren’t exactly in sync with your organization’s needs, or even that the expectations of your audience aren’t in sync with your online training course objectives. This should not discourage you. On the contrary; the collected data will help you understand how to move forward and improve your online training program.
eLearning assessments are a great way to measure the effectiveness of your online training strategy. Consider using them often, as they can really help you pinpoint the deficiencies of your current methods and generate improved and more successful online training solutions.
Now that you know how to use eLearning assessment to measure online training, you may be interested in learning more about evaluating your eLearning deliverable. Read the article eLearning Course Evaluation: The Ultimate Guide For eLearning Professionals and find out how to assess the effectiveness of your eLearning course in order to keep improving it and offer your audience a powerful and memorable eLearning experience.
