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Jannik Weichert
Managing Director
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E-learning can be a great way to advance your career, but it can also be a challenge to stay motivated and organized when you're not sitting in a traditional classroom. In this blog, we share six e-learning tips that will help you make your online learning efforts successful. From finding ways to stay motivated to organizing your schedule and materials, these strategies will help you succeed on your e-learning journey.
It's no secret that involving leaders in your training programs — be it senior management, department heads, or other managers — has a positive impact on the success of your learning and development projects.
However, when we talk to various L&D leaders in different industries, we find a similar problem over and over again: When it comes to establishing a learning culture or introducing a new (e) learning program, some managers could be described as quite reluctant and less enthusiastic. First of all, not every person is open to change. But it is also the case that some managers are not the biggest fans of continuous learning programs that reserve part of employees' working time for learning. After all, they need their direct employees to complete current, mostly urgent tasks, right?
If a leader can't see the benefits of your learning program, they certainly won't endorse it. Simply stressing how important learning is for employee wellbeing and development (and therefore for the company's long-term success) may not be enough. Try to show them what comes out of it for them.
Here are 4 eLearning Strategy tips to convince your manager:
Highlight the benefits of learning insights Just as a manager's insights help you identify skill gaps and design learning paths accordingly, managers can also benefit from your learning programs. By actively participating in the learning process, managers can obtain important information about their direct employees, such as their strengths and opportunities for improvement, their work ethics, or their way of dealing with challenges. When you use an e-learning platform, you are likely to receive a wide range of data about the various learners. By analyzing this data, you can provide your managers with information that ultimately makes their leadership role easier: Which worker has which skills? And how do these skills develop over time?
Nowadays, being a manager doesn't just mean being “the boss” and letting people work for you. Being a manager and therefore a team leader — regardless of how many members this team has — also means being a mentor. Try to show your managers what course offerings you offer to help them fulfill this mentoring role. Also give them the opportunity to continue their education in other areas where they would like to improve (be it leadership, Soft Skills or even hard skill courses).
One thing people in management positions probably don't have is a lot of time available. Your schedule is usually already jam-packed. To convince them to still actively participate in your learning programs, you should make sure that the effort required to get started is as low as possible. If you want to involve leaders in the process of setting learning goals, think about providing them with appropriate templates and methods.
Try to make sure they have the exact tools and materials they need to easily get involved. It doesn't matter whether you simply provide relevant resources on your intranet site first or a LMS system use.
Actively managing the development of a team member is a time-consuming task. But it's probably the one with the most leverage for your company that an executive can do. So you could think about rewarding your employees for their efforts. Everyone likes to be praised. You could create a platform to promote great internal learning efforts and learning programs. Give managers the opportunity to set an example for the entire company. If it's right for you, you can even award trophies. Whatever type of incentive you choose, make sure it's visible.
Choosing the right learning platform has an impact on how much your employees enjoy using it and how effectively they use it. Even though this area actually deserves its own blog article and it is difficult to find the “right” e-learning platform, we can give you some food for thought here:
Don't get me wrong, learning always has something to do with theory, and, aside from my personal criticism, theory is actually a good thing because it allows you to understand complex issues on a much deeper level. But learning is more than that.
You've probably heard of the 10,000-hour rule: The 10,000-hour rule states that you have to practice around 10,000 hours to get close to perfection and master your own subject. In most cases, you won't master your subject if you only learn theoretically. Learning also requires hands-on experience. But as in schools and universities, e-learning offers you a huge course catalog with theoretical topics; practice is often sought in vain here.
This learning pyramid by Micheal Simmons shows that learning consists not only of passive teaching methods (lecture, reading, audiovisual material, demonstration), but also of participatory teaching methods (discussion, practical action, teaching others):
And since teaching is at the end of the spectrum, Seneca said it best:”As we teach, we learn“.
Remember that learners feel the urge to discuss their opinions and provide feedback. Unfortunately, most e-learning platforms only use passive teaching methods, which results in a lower average length of stay. This issue can be addressed by including cohort-based learning and discussion boards. These tactics are really important factors in keeping what you've learned.
Content types that ensure engagement have a significant impact on the effectiveness of learning progress. In short, learner engagement means learners' involvement in your education courses; it is also an indicator of a successful learning experience.
The spectrum of engagement in e-learning ranges from absolutely no involvement (also known as a passive learning process) to a high level of commitment (also known as learner-centered teaching). In your company, you can use motivation to learn boost by you
As you know by now, e-learning gives you the opportunity to make your content appealing and interactive. When you gamification Integrate with your platform and have an appealing user interface, this results in a better learning experience for users. Here are a few examples of gamification elements:
The more appealing the content is, the better learners remember the information. And when your employees enjoy learning, they are better able to remember and apply the concepts.
This is probably the most important thing that distinguishes a good learning platform from a great learning platform: Make sure not only that your educational content is still relevant and timely, but also that it is tailored to the needs of your employees and their current skills and knowledge.
Let's be honest: Learning to check off a box or attend a mandatory continuing education requirement won't make any difference. As mentioned earlier, most e-learning platforms still lack personalization. The content delivered is often the same for all learners. But these one-size-fits-all solutions simply won't catch on in the world of education. To make your training more efficient, you need to provide your employees with the right content at the right time, when they need it. Your learning platform should have recommended and mandatory courses based on your employees' previous activities to provide clear “next steps.”
Because everyone learns differently, you should use multimedia content. So break the monotony of just reading. Instead, incorporate video and audio elements, meaningful, realistic graphics, and more into your courses. Your learners will absorb content faster if the materials are tailored to them and their learning style.
These 6 quick e-learning tips were an introduction to the world of e-learning for companies, but there is so much more to discover. After the pandemic, companies are facing much bigger challenges than before. In the new market dominated by applicants, you must react decisively with measures to attract and retain talent and prepare your company for a shortage of skilled workers in the future. The question is how you can (effectively) attract, retain and develop talent. And how can e-learning help with that?
In our Guideline “Digitalizing Continuing Education” find all the answers!
edyoucated is funded by leading research institutions such as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).
