Top 5 Reasons Why eLearning Projects Fail

Top 5 Reasons Why eLearning Projects Fail
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Summary: Before reaching any conclusion on why an eLearning project failed, it is important to understand the reasons first. This article will help you identify those 5 mistakes that can lead a project to its failure.

Why eLearning Projects Fail? Here Are The Top 5 Reasons

Rapidly developing technologies and the emergence of new fields of human activity present a problem in the modern business world. New employees have to be trained quickly and efficiently to deal with any tasks or responsibilities their positions might carry. Sometimes even veteran employees need to be retrained if they want to remain valuable assets to their companies.

eLearning seems like an ideal solution for this type of problem. Your employees can sit at their computer at home a few hours every day, and in a week or two they will have acquired a new set of skills. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, it usually does not work out this way, and in most cases for similar reasons.

One big part of the problem is that companies fail to identify the reasons why their eLearning projects fail and are often too quick to attribute the failure of their projects to the laziness of their employees or to the fact that some people simply belong to another technological era, one that is long gone.

Almost everybody could probably mention at least a few benefits of eLearning, but a very small number of people have an insight into why these projects actually fail. To help you identify and potentially rectify the problem areas in your eLearning projects, we have identified the top 5 mistakes that most commonly lead to failures.

1. You Failed To Look At The Big Picture

People often tend to skip thinking about the broader implications of their long-term goals. Looking at the “big picture” doesn’t mean fantasizing about X possible outcomes of a certain strategy, but rather focusing on how small goals correlate to one another in order to form a certain path for your strategy. It is not zooming out on details but rather putting them in perspective in order to define your training goals more effectively.

The problem is often hidden in the lack of understanding of how certain content enables your employees to perform better at their job. If there is anything that you are not 100% sure is necessary, examine it in detail and try to determine whether it helps you achieve your long-term goals.

You can utilize simple project management software to make sure that you stay focused on the end objectives of your course in order to devise more effective learning strategies.

2. The Goals For The Course Weren’t Set Before The Initiation Phase

Closely defining the goals for your course early on is important for many reasons, some of which are mentioned above. Well defined goals act as a key element in the success of any strategy.

If you want to stop your training course from being a failure or a waste of time and resources, it would be wise on your part to define course objectives in the initial development phases. And it will be highly preferable before you even think of the content your employees will have to study.

Implementing easy-to-use project management software can make it a lot easier to clearly define your goals early on. This will also give the course attendees a clear picture of what they can expect of themselves after the completion of the course.

3. You Failed To Understand The Learner

Another crucial factor in developing an effective eLearning course is how well you understand the people taking the course as a target audience of your course. It is of utmost importance that you do not develop a course just to make one. Instead, you must make an effort to understand your learners and their learning environment if you want to facilitate the actual learning.

Of course, it is not necessary to focus on individual learners, since it is probably impossible in larger groups. But try to understand your learners as a group and as your target audience. eLearning courses are still too rigid and fail to adapt to the learners, which is why we still need to work on tailoring the content to fit the learners.

4. How Communication Gap Impacts The Overall Progress Of The Project

Lack of communication between the developers of the course, clients, and end users is probably one of the most jarring problems in the eLearning industry. What you need to do is make sure that the communication is uninterrupted and clear throughout every development phase until the end of the project.

Failing to understand the needs of your client from the very start, or the aforementioned learning environment of end users, can render your entire course useless to the client and will probably lead them turning it down. Once again, a simple project management software tool can help facilitate better communication by making it easy to define what the goal of the entire project is.

5. How You Failed To Come Up With An Instructional Strategy

Failing to properly define your instructional strategy at the very start of the course development will most likely doom your entire course. Leading to totally missing all the major goals of the course strategy. A good instructional strategy is not only important, it is the very foundation upon which the rest of the course is going to be built on.

If you want to succeed as an Instructional Designer, you must make sure that you are constantly innovating to make your courses more interactive and your learners engaged in the subject. You must also develop specific strategies for specific types of content.

In The End…

While eLearning is a revolutionary tool for acquiring knowledge and skill, as it transcends time and space, it is still far from perfect. This is one of the reasons why you must be incredibly careful when developing a learning course or choosing the person who would develop it for you.

Take note of these 5 common mistakes that make eLearning courses fail and look for them next time you are working on a new training course. To make this easier, you can integrate a simple project management tool to make sure you stay on track and develop a truly effective learning course.