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Aaron Kapaun

By: Aaron Kapaun on May 5th, 2016

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Best Practices for Online Learning

Workforce & Human Capital | Professional Development & Education | Change Management

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With trends ever increasing in online education it’s important to ask if your organization is using eLearning Best Practices.  While eLearning is continuously evolving, some of the foundations of teaching and learning remain constant, yet it’s important to make sure you are also keeping up with new trends in the market of digital learning. Making sure your organization is following the Best Practices in online education will increase learner retention and customer satisfaction.  Here are Five Best Practices to help learner success: 

Communication

Clear and concise communication is key.  Professionals are busy trying to balance schedules between work and learning so it’s very important to set clear expectations.  Learners want to know what it is they are expected to know and be able to do by the end of a session.  By keeping instructions short and to the point you will excel the efficiency rate and improve learner attentiveness. 

Right Person – Right Place

ELearning coaches and/or trainers need to know their material and present it in easily digestible amounts.  This means it’s important to have the right person leading the course or training. While some SME’s are the most knowledgeable in their area, they may not be the best person to run a training or write instructions.  The same can be said for coaches and trainers.  While they may be excellent at keeping people engaged, if they don’t have the experience and content knowledge to back things up, it can be challenging if and when difficult questions are asked.  Having the right person in the right place is crucial to making the most impactful learner experience. 

Formative and Summative Assessment

Whether the training be a course offering for credit or a systems training, it’s important to assess your learners so you can better help them along to success.  Provide some kind of formative assessment that informs the instructor and learner of their current understanding of the material.  This can be an open dialogue or a more traditional written question, but have something ready to get the ball rolling, break the ice and better understand your learners.  Next, plan some ‘check-in’ points that allow trainer and learner alike to see how things are going.  It’s always good to ask questions in order to gather information rather than just plowing through everything hoping that the information sticks.  Finally, it’s important to have some kind summative assessment for the overall experience that can measure growth.   This will help recap everything and bring closure to the session.

Follow up on current trends in your industry

Trends are constantly changing, especially in the fast paced era of digital learning and if you’re not keeping up with the times, you will likely be missing out.  Some of the newest trends in eLearning such as Interactive Videos and wearable technology, also known as mobile learning, are the future of Online learning and are only continuing to grow.  Additionally, the improvement of HTML5 technology is tearing down existing traditional flash-oriented eLearning and stepping into the future of the digital age.  Considering the massive growth in online learning that has taken place in the past five years, organizations will need to tool up quickly to make sure they are keeping up with the times.  Take time to assess the status of your current courses and processes and start planning for the future.  While it’s impractical to meet all of these trends at once, key in on what your learners need and want to help guide the best direction to move forward. 

Evaluate

Reflection is important so be sure to take time and reflect how things went.  Too often we only focus on the negative or what didn’t go well and miss the bigger point of what was successful and, more importantly, ‘why.’  Examining what did go well is a progressive educational stance rather than always playing defense.  That’s not to say you should ignore the components that weren’t a success.  Instead compare everything and see if there are ways to improve the things that need improving by incorporating successful components of training.  Lastly, don’t wait to reflect.  It’s best to do so quickly while the information and experience is fresh in your memory.  This will hopefully motivate you to always look forward rather than always looking behind.