7 Follow-Up Tips To Gather eLearning Feedback After Online Training

7 Follow-Up Tips To Gather eLearning Feedback After Online Training
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Summary: Are you struggling to identify areas of improvement for your online training course? Do you want to know if employees are getting the most from your online training experience? In this article, I’ll share 7 tips to help you gather follow-up eLearning feedback after online training.

How To Gather eLearning Feedback After Online Training

You think your online training course is conveying the key takeaways and achieving organizational objectives. But how you can be certain that it’s improving on-the-job performance and productivity? The answer is to gather eLearning feedback after the fact and provide ongoing support to your remote workforce. This article looks at 5 inexpensive and actionable follow-up tips you can employ to gather eLearning feedback after online training.

1. Form Peer Groups

At the end of the online training, place each participant in a peer group to discuss the skills learned from the online training. Ask each peer group to identify the skills they will commit to applying in their daily work. Schedule a follow-up session with the organization’s management and encourage them to take an active role in the online training as well as in the meetings. These groups allow you to pinpoint online training gaps through ongoing discussions, instead of relying solely on LMS data. As such, employees feel like they’re an important part of the process, which makes them more likely to engage in the online training experience.

2. Ask Each Participant To Send A Summary

When lessons from online training are not reinforced, employees are likely to forget them. However, you can ask every participant in the online training to make a summary of what he or she learned from the online training, highlighting two of the most important key points. Round up the eLearning feedback from each participant and post it in a prominent location where every employee can read it. This allows everyone to benefit from the recaps and discover ideas or concepts they may have overlooked. As such, this is a great way to facilitate knowledge sharing while gathering eLearning feedback. You can determine what employees took away from the online training course and what they missed. Then re-evaluate your online training strategy to see how you can improve retention and knowledge comprehension. For example, none of the employees remembered how to perform the sales process from start to finish. Thus, you may want to take a closer look at the relevant online training simulations or modules to find the trouble areas.

3. Monitor Post Online Training Productivity

After every online training session, monitor the productivity of every participant, then share the statistics on the organization's central platform. This will help the participants look back at the online training and see if they are applying the lessons. For example, the online training was on increasing customer acquisition through targeted marketing activities. Thus, you can report on how many clients have been added to the organization’s database and list the participants who acquired them. This way, you will identify the under-performers and determine the best course of action to help them improve.

4. Send Out A Post-Course Pop Quiz

Several weeks after the online training course, send out a quiz to the participants to assess how well they remember the online training. The best way to ensure you identify the participants who still recall the lessons is to make it a pop-quiz. Post the results on the central platform and give a reward for the best answers. It can be a free answer or multiple-choice answers quiz. However, some of the participants may have the notes and might look to them for answers. So, it is important to take a more holistic approach and look into their productivity to assess who applied the lessons.

5. Assess Employees’ Skill Sets

Ask each participant to list the skills they found useful in online training, and how they have applied it in their daily tasks. It is through the eLearning feedback after online training that you will be able to assess the effectiveness of the online training and whether there is a need for further evaluation. You can also invite them to participate in an online simulation or a serious game to test their real-world application. For example, an online training simulation that requires communication and problem-solving skills to diffuse a workplace conflict.

6. Conduct Social Media Polls

Social media is not only a place to provide relevant resources and facilitate peer-to-peer interactions. It also gives you the chance to collect relevant eLearning feedback through informal polls. Post targeted questions that employees can quickly answer to share their opinions and concerns. They can leave a comment to clarify their response if they choose to do so. For example, they rated the latest compliance simulation a "5" on the satisfaction scale. But comments reveal that more realistic characters and dialogue would bring it up to "10".

7. Host A Live eLearning Feedback Event

Live events are a great way to get more direct eLearning feedback from your employees after the fact. You can use a video conferencing tool or social media site to host the eLearning feedback session. Be sure to give them a general overview of what you’ll discuss during the event, and how they’re expected to participate. For example, the next event covers the customer service online training course that was recently added to the LMS, and the attendees are welcome to express their opinions and feelings about the design of the online training course, as well as the level of interactivity. You can even make it a monthly gathering, so that employees know when and how to voice their concerns. For instance, managers will host a live eLearning feedback event on the first Monday of every month. This gives employees time to formulate their questions beforehand and compile notes.

Post-training follow-ups ensure that employees are able to apply the skills and knowledge they learned in the real world, as well as identify aspects of your online training program that may be falling short. Which allows you to continually improve your strategy so that it always aligns with organizational goals and outcomes.

Another great way to gather eLearning feedback is by adding fun and games to the mix, especially in mandatory online training courses, such as in compliance training. Read the article 8 Tips To Use Compliance Online Training Gamification To Collect Feedback to learn how to use compliance online training gamification to collect feedback for your corporate eLearning program.