Key Factors To Consider For Your eLearning Project
Statistics and data play a huge role in eLearning projects. They help us to understand who we're making our courses for, what language and terminology to use, and what tone of voice to utilize. Additionally, data can be used when creating reports and communicating with managers which allows them to see how effective eLearning is within their organization. As more companies embrace eLearning as a method of professional development, it's important to consider using statistics to improve eLearning efforts within organizations and businesses. This article explores the areas where stats are most beneficial in regards to creating great eLearning courses.
3 Ways To Use Statistics For eLearning Projects
Understand Who You Are Creating Your Course For
The first thing you need to do is define who your learners are. This will allow you to target key aspects of their needs. Maybe they're marketers looking to improve their English language skills in order to sell products on a global market. Or, maybe they're employees hoping that your online course can help them advance within your company. Whatever it may be, make sure you understand who your audience is and what they want from your eLearning courses. If you don't know who your audience is, how can you create a course for them?
Understanding Audience Behavior
The goal of any eLearning course is to drive behavior change. You need to create an engaging experience for the user and make it as simple as possible for them to learn from. The medium with which you share your training, website, or platform matters a lot because different learners prefer different ways of consuming information.
There is a range of stats to consider when creating your eLearning courses. Knowing where your audience lives, for example, will help you create content that's relevant to them and their location. Demographics also play a huge role in course design and can give you clues about which direction to take your course. One important thing to keep in mind is that statistics are likely to change over time. Be sure to cross-reference different data sets from various sources so you get a true representation of your audience.
Tone And Voice
When creating an eLearning course, you’ll want to make sure that it fits in with your company’s existing tone and voice. These aspects will affect everything from the length of sentences to the complexity of terminology, so it pays to sit down and work out what you want your brand's tone and voice to be before writing anything. When possible, sit in on training sessions or go on a tour of various departments; if no such thing is available at your organization, look for videos or articles that showcase your brand's personality and emulate them as closely as possible. If that's not available either, consider finding similar companies with tones and voices that suit you best—and then model those.
Decide On Your Statistics Before Starting A Project
Statistics can play a huge role in eLearning, but they're not always necessary. In fact, when beginning a project, it's a good idea to ask yourself if you really need stats at all. Will they be helpful or interesting? Would they even be needed? If so, which ones would be best for your audience? These are all questions to ask yourself before diving into statistics. You don't want to put unnecessary information in your course and risk turning off learners—or worse, boring them with numbers.
It takes an enormous amount of time and concentrated effort to choose the right statistics for your eLearning projects and make them as relevant, useful, and applicable as possible. This is not a project you should go into without careful consideration and research. You don't want to spend hours or days tracking down information on the wrong topics, and then realize that they're no good later on in the process. You need to know what your goals are so you can put all of your time into those topics and tips that will help you achieve a great module or program.
Final thoughts
Ultimately, you may have to factor other elements into your choice as well, depending on what kind of eLearning project you're working on. For example, you could look for something that allows for 3D multi-sensory design and exploration of concepts based on the context of industry practice—there's even a template that supports touchscreen input. Sometimes a simple interface is best, especially if it's not the primary place where eLearning is being delivered or if the learning that's taking place requires some degree of extra information like statistics or graphs.