Enhance Your Learners' Online Training Experience
In this ever-changing world, it is a necessity to keep updating yourself, your knowledge, and your intellect, to keep up with this perpetual evolution. This is exactly why an LMS plays a massive role for working professionals today, and why organizations are trying their best to make the learning experience a rather effective and enjoyable one for their employees. The learners' comfort, interests, and convenience are a few factors to consider here in this case. However, this is the era of umpteenth distractions, and there are always other issues that may hinder the journey of learning. Keeping learner focus and interest intact is key, while also catering to their comfort and other conveniences. Although eLearning and LMSs today come with many features that drive not just the learners' growth but also their engagement and involvement with a course, there are still some ways the whole learning experience can become more fruitful. Here are 5 ways to create a great online training experience for your learners:
1. Know Your Learners
Half the job is already done if the creators know exactly what the learners are looking for in the training experience. Their goals, outcomes, and ambitions, all have a large impact on what the course content should be. However, the content is not the only focal point. The way the content is presented, the layouts, the quiz patterns, and other factors, all have a significant impact on the learners' interest and retention of the course. Their strengths and weaknesses should also be taken into consideration while creating courses. Understanding them, coining solutions for them and personalizing the content based on their pain points is the way to keep them engaged throughout.
2. Define A Purpose For The Activity And Build Your Training Around That Purpose
“What’s in it for us?” If the training program can correctly answer this question for the learner, the course creators have already won. The learner needs to feel like they will gain something from this course, and it’s not just beneficial for their work-life but also their life outside work. Creating an engaging training experience for learners does not only mean designing relevant courses. It also means appealing to your learners’ sense of purpose and contributing to their goals. In other words, adopt a learner-centric approach for your training.
3. Make It Interactive And Relatable
An online course isn’t very effective if it does not include interactive elements. To keep learners interested throughout, constant interaction and feedback are needed. Not including any interaction will not only affect the course program adversely but also the training experience. Some simple and powerful forms of interaction include short quizzes, multiple-choice questions, polls, and quick drag-and-drop activities. Adding these elements after the completion of a chapter or module can significantly pique the learners' interest and have them coming for more.
4. Introduce A Microlearning Approach
Traditional methods of education may have worked back in school, but they certainly don’t work when a working professional is trying to enhance their skillsets and knowledge with an LMS. Here, introducing a microlearning approach is an ideal solution, where the content is broken down into bite-sized information, eliminating unnecessary topics and saving time and energy. The aim is to put the information across in the most effective and interesting ways that guarantee understanding and retention. To implement the same, one needs to come up with formats for microlearning first. And, for that to happen, you first need to understand the audience and their requirements. Secondly, one needs to ensure that the size of the content is concise and there is more use of multimedia elements. Videos, infographics, rich gamification, emails, podcasts, and quizzes are some effective ways to incorporate microlearning into your online training.
5. Use Personalized Online Courses And Learning Paths
Creating personalized learning paths for learners helps them predict the course of the program, hence plan their step forward. Every employee/learner is different and unique and their courses should be as well. By personalizing their course content and path, they also get clarity on their goals. To have a bigger impact on the employees, they need to make them feel at home with the ways they are educated. Learning is personal and subjective to each individual and “one-size-fits-all” is not the correct approach to choose when it comes to learning. Adding personalized features can help employees track their goals, jot down their strengths and work on their weaknesses. This will not only boost their confidence but also keep them engaged in the training program.
Winding Up
Creating a perfect online learning experience for everyone is not the easiest task, but attending to and paying attention to the learners' requirements can do the deed. One of the major challenges faced while creating a successful online training program is keeping the learner engaged throughout the whole process. Creating personalized and unique content while listing down the goals and advantages of taking the course can give the learner better outcomes. Keeping the course relevant to the learners’ needs, while keeping flexibility, accessibility and other factors consistent lays the perfect foundation for learning.
