Consider the five aspects outlined in this blog before initiatinge-learning development.
Before you decide to adopt e-learning to train employees in your organization, there are many aspects you need to consider. The groundwork must be strong before you develop e-learning. This is because implementing e-learning is a costly proposition and you can ensure a better ROI from it, provided your organization and employees are able to make the best use of it.
In this blog, we will discuss five aspects you must consider before developing e-learning for your organization.
1. Readiness for online training
How ready is your organization for e-learning? Is your management open to the idea of online training? Are your employees ready to embrace the new way of training? Are they ready to learn in a self-paced mode which e-learning entails?
Know that organizational readiness includes infrastructure, specific training objectives, employee inclination, trainer support and guidance, and informed leadership. To gauge how well your organization will adopt this new mode, it is important to assess e-learning readiness.
According to Samantha Chapnick, creator of Research Dog’s eLearning Readiness Assessment, there are 7 important readiness factors you must consider, before implementing e-learning. Read about those factors here.
The lack of readiness in any of these factors does not mean you put your plans for e-learning implementation on hold;rather, you should deal with the resistance in the right manner to ensure e-learning success. For this, you should help managers and leaders to connect and engage with employees on discussions concerning e-learning.
2. Clearly defined organizational training goals and objectives
Before implementing e-learning, it is important to ensure that the training goals and objectives of the organization are clearly defined. This is because the goals and learning objectives have an impact on the course design and the content you choose for training.
To clearly define the goals, be sure of:
- What you want to achieve
- How you will achieve it
- How it will benefit the organization
Speaking with management to get their inputs and identifying the performance gaps that need to be filled will help you define the goals. Once you list the goals, check whether they can be attained. They should be measurable so that you can set criteria to measure the success of your online training program.
3. Information and skill sets employees need
Identify the skills employees need to develop and the existing skills they need to update. Conducting task analysis and skill assessments will help you identify the areas of improvement. Through this, you will be able to identify skills related to the tasks and responsibilities of the job which employees need to be trained on.
To avoid cognitive overload, you must ensure employees get only that information they require to perform their jobs effectively. For this, you should distinguish between what information is necessary and what can be ignored.
The content you choose for online training must be related to the organizational goals and of value to employees.
4. Motivating factors to encourage employees
Before developing e-learning, you must identify the motivating factors that will encourage employees to embrace e-learning and participate in the online training process. You have to identify the intrinsic motivating factors that will urge employees to improve and achieve their objectives.
5. Provision of support to employees
All your employees may not have the same level of technical skills to handle online learning. Some of them may find it difficult to understand the online modules. In such cases, prior to e-learning development, you should assess whether you have the tools and resources to provide these individuals the required support to benefit from online training. You should be able to provide support through emails, FAQs, or even through one-on-one mentoring.
Check on these five aspects to assess if your e-learning development initiative will succeed and benefit your organization.
