Quick Tips to Boost Your e-Learning ROI

Quick Tips to Boost Your e-Learning ROI
Summary: “An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage.” This quote by Jack Welch, the former Chairman & CEO of GE, is a perfect summary of why e-Learning is so important. Companies all over have turned to online training—with great success. IBM created an e-Learning program for managers and discovered that participants learned nearly five times more material through e-Learning—without increasing time spent training. That’s incredible ROI!

Take your e-Learning even further with these 4 tips to boost your e-Learning ROI!

1. Teach Real-World Skills

Creating e-Learning that aligns to actual organizational objectives and teaches employees how to achieve those objects is the ultimate good investment. Talk to your subject matter expert (SME) to find out what your learners really need to know, and then focus your course on that. Haven’t worked with any SMEs before? Don’t worry—they’re not that scary. Here’s how to maximize your time with the experts:

  • Getting to Know Your Subject Matter Experts

2. Design with Authority

First impressions matter in e-Learning. If your learners dismiss your course at first glance due to cheesy stock photos or bad typography, it’s a waste of everyone’s time and lowers your ROI. A professional looking course imparts authority—and knowledge—with every meaningful graphic and carefully edited content block.

Learn more about first impressions in this article: The Halo Effect: First Impressions for e-Learning, and take a look at these posts for more design tips:

  • The Essentials of e-Learning Course Design
  • The Essentials of Typography for e-Learning
  • Free Design Resources for Your e-Learning

3. Get User Feedback

Beta testing is extremely useful when designing e-Learning for maximum ROI. Asking a small group of leaners to evaluate your course before the official company-wide rollout can help you identify problem areas and fix them ahead of time. You might discover that question 5 on page 10, which made perfect sense in your head, is confusing your learners. Wouldn’t you rather fix that now, before the whole company takes the course and everyone gets question 5 wrong?

Take a look at these articles for more tips on getting feedback and evaluations on your course:

  • How to Evaluate Your Online Training Course
  • How to Create the Best e-Learning Courses from User Testing

4. Encourage Social Learning

Keep the learning going long past the “Submit Test” button. E-Learning that gets employees talking has better return on investment because sharing and discussing thoughts and reactions to the training increases knowledge retention. For the most ROI, deploy your learning through a social LMS that enables you to track informal and formal learning. You can even do a test run for free with a 30-day trial of CourseMill® Wave! For more social learning information, check out these articles:

  • Social Learning for Online Training
  • What Makes Good e-Learning, m-Learning and Social Learning Content?
  • Thursday’s Trending e-Learning Topic: Social Learning

For more resources and ideas for creating the most effective e-Learning, subscribe to the Lectora® e-Learning Blog.