What NOT To Do When Transitioning From Traditional Training To Corporate eLearning

What NOT To Do When Transitioning From Traditional Training To Corporate eLearning
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Summary: A transition from traditional training to eLearning requires thorough preparation. Organizations that fail to garner results from such a transition suffer from a lack of preparation. In this article, we’ll discuss what you should NOT do if you want your transition to succeed.

Transitioning From Traditional Training To Corporate eLearning? 6 Things You Should Avoid

eLearning has been proven to be much advantageous than traditional training methods, specifically classroom training, and has improved many a company’s profit margin and on-the-job productivity. This has led to many companies transitioning from traditional training methods to corporate eLearning and still does. However, such a radical change requires thorough preparation, and those organizations that fail to garner results from eLearning after such a transition suffer so from a lack of preparation. In this article, we’ll discuss what you should NOT do if you want your organization’s transition to succeed. Let’s go.

1. Transitioning Without A Training Needs Analysis

A Training Needs Analysis is the first step before you can even begin to build an effective eLearning program. A Training Needs Analysis will help evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of your traditional program, help determine the skills and qualities employees lack, and also help understand how eLearning will help improve the performance and productivity of the employees by imparting said skills and qualities in them. The whole point of an L&D transition is to bridge gaps that the previous training strategy was unable to, and that cannot be done without a thorough analysis.

2. Transitioning Without Sufficient Research

Transitioning without sufficient research is one of the biggest reasons organizations fail in their transition to eLearning. The learning tool, as well as the Learning Management System (LMS), are the most important elements to choose when setting up your corporate eLearning program, and this is where things can get iffy. It is understandable that most organizations want to set up their eLearning program as quickly as possible, but getting the wrong tool or LMS can be disastrous. It means that you may choose a tool or LMS that might not suit your organization, or may not have modern features you essentially require. Thus, it is best to either research thoroughly on the internet and read reviews before choosing eLearning tools, or simply ask an eLearning solutions provider or vendor for their recommendation. You’ll probably need an eLearning solutions provider anyway, and they are professionals with in-depth knowledge about the latest trends and intricacies of eLearning, so that might be the right thing to do.

3. Not Re-Evaluating Your Training Objectives Time-To-Time

It’s no secret that your training objectives will change from time-to-time. With the pace at which technologies are changing, training objectives may change yearly. You first need to re-evaluate your training objectives when you transition from traditional training to eLearning, and then as and when the need arises. eLearning will also provide heaps of measurable data, which can be analyzed to determine when training objectives need to be changed.

4. Not Building A Proper eLearning Team

Setting up a corporate eLearning program is by no means an easy task. It requires an effective L&D team with an L&D manager who’ll oversee the whole transition in addition to the whole functioning of the program later, and several experienced eLearning professionals including Instructional Designers (IDs) as well as Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who’ll create eLearning modules from scratch. Without such a team, it becomes very hard for your corporate eLearning program to be a success.

5. Trying To Implement A One-Size-Fits-All Strategy

This is a fatal mistake too many organizations make in order to cut costs. Each individual employee in your organization has different needs and work responsibilities that your online training must accommodate. Trying to supply all your employees with the same, or similar type of eLearning course will accomplish nothing. It will render your whole corporate eLearning program a failure. The whole point of an eLearning program is to be able to deliver targeted training content to every member of your team. There are eLearning strategies such as adaptive learning, which you can implement to ensure that each employee gets personalized learning through your eLearning program.

6. Using Traditional Training Content In eLearning

That, unfortunately, is not how eLearning works. You can’t just copy and paste content being used in traditional training methods to an eLearning module and expect everything to go fine and dandy. eLearning employs the use of images, videos, interactivities, infographics, game-dynamics as well as countless other design strategies to ensure that learners stay engaged throughout the course. Even if you’re importing content from traditional training, make sure that is supplicated with the above-mentioned design strategies and is broken into easily digestible chunks. Create short, 5-minute modules to engage learners and increase their retention. This eLearning strategy is known as microlearning.

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Originally published at cblpro.com.