4 Key Challenges of eLearning and Ways to Mitigate Them for Hassle-Free Corporate Training

Regardless of the profession and the role an employee plays, it is imperative to keep the employees up-to-date on the organization’s new products, policies, and procedures to help them remain competitive. But, when you consider some of the factors such as the cost, schedule allotted, and training the employees who are geographically spread out, you would realize how difficult it is to impart training. An eLearning program through which the employees can take up training at their own pace and in their free time could be a solution to these problems. But not to forget, eLearning comes with lots of challenges that have to be addressed while delivering it seamlessly. Read the blog for common challenges associated with eLearning and sure-shot solutions to overcome them.

Key Challenges and Solutions to Designing Learner-Centric eLearning

Challenge 1: Lack of awareness

One of the major challenges of eLearning is that the employees or the learners are unaware of the effectiveness of eLearning. They might feel that eLearning is not as effective as classroom training and that the trainees would miss the opportunity for face-to-face interaction.

Solution:

Promote eLearning: Promoting eLearning could be an effective way to initiate an eLearning program. Arrange for the marketing campaign and use it as a base for creating awareness among the audience. Other ways could be through publishing eBooks, blogs, and even through hosting an event on eLearning.
Develop the communication: Developing effective communication among the audience could be another approach to creating awareness. Your audience would quickly accept eLearning once they get to know what eLearning is all about and how it could be beneficial to them.

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Challenge 2: Motivating learners

Motivating learners is one of the common challenges faced by eLearning developers. When you deploy the course and leave the learners to their devices, chances are that the learners may not take up the eLearning course effectively as they would do in classroom training. Hence the challenge is – how can you motivate your learners and present a good learning experience to them?

Solution:

Stimulate learner’s curiosity: You need to motivate your learners at the beginning of the course itself, so as to keep them engaged throughout the course. For this, you may ask the learners some thought-provoking questions. Ask them to describe a situation or use some surprising statements that would help the learners take up the course with great zeal and enthusiasm.

Set clear objectives: Explain to the learners in brief what they will learn after taking the course and how the course would benefit them. For example, you might explain that after completion of the module, they will be able to identify and respond to various security threats that occur at the workplace.

Create a scenario or tell a story: Scenarios and stories are considered to be powerful tools in motivating your learners because when the learners find something relevant to their profession and experience, they would surely want to know and take up the course.

Challenge 3: Course content:

Now, when the learner is on board with the eLearning course, it is time that the content of the course needs to be focused on. A well-designed course depends upon the content of the course. Most of the time, the content received from the client is unstructured and difficult to comprehend. You may receive content that does not contain enough information to be covered under a certain topic.

Solution:

Involve the SME: One way to overcome this challenge is to involve the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the eLearning project. A Subject Matter Expert is proficient in various subjects and guides the instructional designers on the content received. They ensure that the content is accurate and has no gaps. This way, the SMEs would greatly help solve the problems faced regarding the content.

Challenge 4: Evaluating effectiveness

One of the common challenges in eLearning could be to evaluate whether your course has the intended impact on the learners. How do you determine that your course is attaining its goal of meeting the learning requirements of the employees or trainees?

Solution:

This challenge could be mitigated by incorporating effective eLearning assessments in the form of quizzes and puzzles in your course. Publishing the course through an LMS helps keep track of the learner’s activities and progress. It also provides the scores and results of the assessments taken by the learners.

All set to jumpstart eLearning in your organization? Well, using your existing classroom training material can be a smart and convenient move. Watch this video to explore 5 reasons to convert instructor-led training (ILT) to eLearning.

Bottom Line

Designing learner-centric eLearning requires well-thought action plans and sound application of instructional design (ID) strategies. Not only that, an agile project management process and seamless coordination between multiple stakeholders like subject matter experts, the production team, and the instructional designers is a crucial and essential aspect. And facing challenges in the due course is obvious. Hope this blog helps you mitigate certain common challenges that you might have been facing on your eLearning journey.  All set to design impactful eLearning courses that ensure memorable learning experiences. Get your hands on this eBook on rapid eLearning design for quick rollout. Grab your copy now and rock the show!