Over the last two decades, custom eLearning content development has provided several advantages to organizations, and most notably its capability to provide the specific learning experience that would work best for specific learner and business needs.
Through learner-centric, interactive and immersive learning designs, custom eLearning solutions have been helping learners to:
- Enjoy the self-paced learning journey that keeps them engaged.
- Go through challenges that keep them intrigued all through the learning.
- Internalize the learning and practically apply it on the job.
- Enhance their performance and deliver better results.
Challenges That L&D Teams Face
As you move further with investments on custom eLearning content development, let us look at the challenges that L&D teams face. My aim is to show how these can be addressed through the tips I offer. Here is my list of top 7 challenges:
- How to increase the efficacy of training?
- How to make the learning stick?
- How to push the acquired learning to application on the job?
- How to trigger the required behavioral change?
- How to adapt the trainings to varied learner profiles?
- How to ensure that the learning and business mandates are met?
- How to show a positive ROI?
Custom eLearning Content Development To The Rescue
Here are some effective tips to maximize your training’s impact. Using custom eLearning development will certainly help you offset or mitigate most of these challenges. Do use my tips, as Success Factors, to maximize the impact of your custom eLearning content development.
1. Pre-Planning
- Design training delivery to map to the 70:20:10 model of learning. Retain focus on formal training but do invest on social or collaborative learning as well as performance support tools.
- Increase the use of blended training delivery instead of pure ILT. This will not only save costs but offer higher flexibility to learners. You can also explore digitization of ILT training to accrue further gains such as, cost reduction and wider access.
2. Learning Designs And Learning Strategies
- Adopt strategies that make the learning stick. Use innovative learning strategies like gamification, scenario and story-based approaches rather than page turners.
- Provide Performance Support Tools or PSTs. They push the acquired learning to get applied on the job. These just-in-time aids are available to the learners at the "time of learning need".
- Use engaging formats. Opt for strategies that include interactive videos and branching scenarios that provide reinforcement and feedback.
- Adopt strategies that increase employee engagement. Go beyond the obvious approaches and mix approaches like learning portals, social learning, and microlearning in your learning strategy.
3. Development Methodology And Authoring Tools
- Adopt an AGILE development methodology in your eLearning content development.
- Keep it collaborative.
- Opt for a centralized Project Management tool for effective tracking and managing projects.
- With a profusion of options, choose an authoring tool that addresses the need of training effectively. One size does not fit all. Instead, opt for different tools to match your varied training needs.
4. Take Feedback From Learners
- During development.
- Validate the impact with learners.
- Use learner feedback to improve.
- Gather data and analytics over and above what the traditional LMS can provide.
5. Measurement And Impact Analysis
- Evaluate, measure, and validate the learning effectiveness or learnability.
- Use analytics for continuous improvement of your learning design.
