What does it take to build an effective eLearning experience?

You’ve decided that eLearning is the best way to upskill your workforce, onboard new starters or cross-train employees to fill in labour gaps, but where do you start? Or perhaps you already have a Learning Management System (LMS) but staff aren’t engaged or uptake is low with few completing the training. What can be done to turn it around?

Firstly, know your overall goal, whether it’s a high turnover of onboarding or annual compliance training, and understand your start and endpoints.

Who are your stakeholders? It's important that decision-makers are involved in the creation, content approvals, system design and implementation but don’t lose sight of the most important people in the process, your learners. At the end of the day, it’s the learners that will need to engage with, use and progress through the eLearning so it’s critical their likely preferences, skills and needs are uppermost while key decisions on structure and content are being made. It’s ultimately the learners that will determine the success, or failure, and return on investment (ROI) of your eLearning tool.

Most importantly, keep your LMS user-friendly and intuitive as not all your learners will be tech-savvy and extensive training to even use the tool will put learners off before they’ve begun, not to mention the extra time that will be added to each course enrolment, impacting productivity and, ultimately, profits.

Design should be simple, engaging, easy to use and navigate to maximise the business impact. If it looks good and is simple or fun to use, the stages are clear and progress is obvious, learners will be keen to move forward. If it’s difficult to navigate and it’s not clear when progressing from one level to another, learners are likely to lose interest and drop out.

Build a content plan for each training module and get sign-off from the relevant stakeholders before you progress content collation, copywriting and design to avoid missing out on key stages or information and creating potential issues at the design stage.

So these are our top tips for getting off to a good start, but what are the business benefits of creating a good user experience (UX) for your learners?

The benefits of a good user experience

Better uptake: The easier your LMS is to use, the more people will engage with it and they are likely to encourage others in their team or the business to take part too.

Streamlined learning: If your LMS is easy to navigate, your learners will need less support and time to get up and running.

Faster ROI: You’ll reach your training targets more quickly so achieve a quicker return on investment.

Agile learning: With a well-designed and feature-rich LMS, your trainers can create, upload, and update course content quickly to deliver engaging and impactful training initiatives that will keep learning fun and current.

Smashed targets: Not having to battle with glitches, poor navigation, or an overly complex user interface (UI) means your learners can focus all their efforts on completing their training.

Greater knowledge: A smooth and stress-free learning experience supports better knowledge retention and a higher quality of learning.

Positive learning culture: With an easy-to-use and easy-to-navigate training system you'll build a positive culture of development and training throughout the business.

Retain talent: Investment in a well-designed and thoughtfully delivered training system means you’re more likely to retain the best talent across the business, see that talent grow to take on more responsibilities, be more productive and, ultimately, deliver positive results for your business.

Our Top 5 LMS functions

So we've convinced you that a well-designed, user-friendly elearning tool is the way ahead, but what functionality should you look for in a learning management system? Here are 5 functions to look for:

1. Intuitive interface – as we've said, this is the key to success

2. Reporting – you'll want to track course progress and exam performance, identify any issues and gain insights for management reporting and tweaking the training to improve ROI

3. Automations – are there behind-the-scenes automations to remind learners to complete training, and free up trainers and admins from other mundane, time-stealing tasks

4. Payment and subscription management – if any of your content is paid for, make sure your LMS can manage payments, discounts, coupon codes and renewals.

5. Mobile-friendliness - many LMSs are responsive to be automatically optimised for mobile learning giving more flexibility to how and when training can be completed – maybe on the commute, travelling to meetings, or even during the lunch break if that suits learners better.

   
   

Our advice is to do your homework before embarking on a new LMS or overhauling an existing system but if you’d like to take the guesswork out of it, we’d love to hear from you.

Get in touch with us today on 01737 244328 or submit the contact form below and we'll contact you.