Understand what eLearning is … so what exactly is ‘eLearning’?
The ‘E’ stands for electronic. Basically, eLearning is education that is delivered via online or digital technology. This includes computers, tablets, and smartphones.
eLearning courses can include a variety of different components such as audio recordings, videos and instructional videos, written content, presentations, quizzes, surveys, games, discussion groups, and more.
While most educational institutions are offering online courses these days, more and more businesses are also utilising eLearning to help with their training. That’s because it offers consistency and over time saves a great deal of time and money. Even individuals are converting their expertise into online courses to share their knowledge and teach others. For this reason, delivering courses online has expanded rapidly in recent years. No surprise really when you can reach so many people for much less expense than traditional face to face training.
What makes good or bad eLearning?
Best practices:
- Analyse your audience
- Target a behaviour
- Optimise learner experience
- Keep it media-rich; photos, videos, audios etc.
- Focus on ‘need-to-know’ information
- Address all levels of audience
- Use different components to keep it fun and interesting
- Marry it with some interactive face to face training or online forums/chat rooms for peer engagement.
Bad practices:
- Reliance on lists
- Pretending a recorded webcast is an online training
- Low learner interaction
- Include videos that are too long or extended face to face presentation recordings
- Using a PowerPoint presentation
- Promoting a course as eLearning but sending students a pdf with an online quiz.
Understand what eLearning is and how to deliver your online courses
Because online courses are interactive with many elements, these modules require a special system to be able to deliver the course, allowing for interpretation of your learners’ interactions and involvement. Traditional web pages do not have the capacity to read the more complicated interactive elements, such as quizzes and scenarios.
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a special online system that is designed just for delivering online courses and can interact with the learner in a way to report to you all the information you need. Want to know whether your learner has finished their quiz and if they passed? An LMS will do that. Need to know when your learner last logged in to their account? An LMS can help with that. What about how many learners you have and what courses they like most? Yep, an LMS also does that, along with heaps more.
There are literally hundreds of different LMS options to choose from, and they all vary in price, size, capabilities and functionality. They can also get very expensive.
But fear not, for the small business or individual there is always a solution and we can help guide you with the options that are affordable.
We hope that has clarified any misconceptions about eLearning. If you’ve got a great course you have been mulling over in your head and want to chat about how that might look online, don’t hesitate in calling me for a chat. Or if you’ve been thinking about streamlining your training or induction processes then give me a call. I’ll gladly give you a free consultation appointment to chat about your options and whether eLearning is right for you.