Identifying the online training needs of your employees is key to making your eLearning program a success. It may sound obvious, but targeted, responsive management of your LMS offering really makes all the difference.
So what should you be looking at in order to discover what your staff need for fruitful eLearning experiences? Let’s look at ten things you can do to boost your understanding.
Run Surveys To Gather Feedback
Strong LMS results require great content, and the best way to uncover whether your courses are consistently hitting the right note is to directly gather feedback from your learners.
Your Learning Management System should provide a few routes to do this from your dashboard. First and foremost, utilise the survey features included with most LMS software packages. This can appear as a quick check-box quiz that users can use to rate a module or course upon completion. Your LMS should collect all that data and offer a few ways to drill down into it. You can set custom questions, and you want to be asking questions that, for example, reveal how easy it was to follow a course or whether participants felt it was too long or too brief.
Collecting feedback as soon as a learner completes a course has the added benefit of it being fresh in their minds – and likely truthful!
There are other ways to gather feedback without asking too much of your learners too. Simple star ratings against modules will likely garner a decent volume of reactions you can evaluate.
Log Top Topics On Discussion Boards and FAQs
Your folks will likely have questions if they’re having trouble on their eLearning paths, and discussion boards are usually the first places they’ll hit up to source answers from peers or admins. Take the time to register busy forums to see if users are highlighting glitches or confusing elements hindering their progress.
Frequently Asked Questions will also reveal what is unclear to your learners. A swift response to possibly simple issues will better serve your learners needs and, in the end, those of your business.
Identify The Assessments Your Learners Fail Most At
Failing assessments or courses isn’t necessarily the fault of the learner, but may have something to do with the course content itself. Your LMS dashboard should offer a way to closely examine passes, fails and how and where this is happening. If you drill down this data and see an assessment with a noticeably low pass rate, you’ve got an issue with that module or course.
Opening a forum topic to get feedback about that course should give you answers you’re looking for, or you may want to have your trainers open a video workshop to run through issues people are having. It could be that you have a course failing to hold everyone’s attention and needs an injection of fun, or that it’s not even relevant to your business anymore, and you could actually ditch it.
Take Special Notice of Onboarding Assessment Results
Onboarding new staff is a critical time for both a company and the individuals involved. It’s the moment where an LMS can support recruits transitioning from another company culture or even another industry entirely. Poor assessment results in this area overall, may mean your onboarding courses could benefit from being broken down into microlearning units, or may lack supporting resources.
From an individual perspective, it could indicate that you need a trainer or admin to sit down in person and decide whether someone has been placed in the correct role and would thrive in another part of your operations.
Ask Directly Via Messenger
Don’t forget your Learning Management System is an excellent tool for direct communication with your learners as well as a way to disseminate information widely. We recommend reaching out frequently via messenger to see how people are doing and what else they may need for a more rewarding eLearning experience. Not everyone will instinctively speak up if there’s an issue. Aside from this, regular contact to check in is a good idea to boost confidence in your company and your consideration for staff wellbeing.
Stay Updated With Industry Training Standards and Programs
eLearning is a constantly evolving sector offering dynamic ways to train your workforce, but it does need to dovetail with your desired business outcomes.
Whatever industry you operate in it’ll have global or local training standards, and staying abreast of these will put you in good stead when it comes to the competition. If your online courses and modules reflect new developments in the field, your training program will appear relevant and necessary to your learners. Your workforce all have individual career goals and will be more inclined to engage with an LMS that supports their progression. Offering a reward in the form of certification, or qualification where possible, is a great way to build a talented workforce and demonstrates your company is committed to creating a forward-looking workplace culture.
Keep an Eye On Tracking, Reporting And Monitor Trends
Don’t drop the ball when it comes to regular tracking and reporting. Learning Management Systems all come with robust features for this but ignoring them can lead to training issues becoming more complex than they need to be. Monitor general trends in online training engagement, assessment results, and uncompleted modules to nip any problems in the bud early.
The numbers in your dashboard are the first indicator that you may not be meeting the needs of some teams or individuals!
Understand Which Training Items Learners Are Self-Initiating
Another interesting data set you can look at to identify your learners needs is which training units your employees seem to be self-initiating more enthusiastically than others.
Asking why these eLearning courses are more appealing will help you meet learners needs more positively across the board. If you have a popular course, identify why it’s a winning formula. Is it happening through peer-to-peer recommendation through top ratings? Is this because the course is clearer and shorter than most? Does it contain more entertaining gamification elements? Or is it simply because one course offers certification over another?
Try to spot trending courses, put them under the microscope and then put that knowledge into practice in other areas where uptake is lower.
Identify Learners That Aren’t Performing As Well As Others
We’ve already touched on the importance of identifying which assessments or units your learners are failing in significant numbers, but it’s important to understand why eLearning may be a struggle for some individuals.
The reason may not be academic, and the woes of a struggling learner could be a simple fix in terms of presentation. Some learners have access requirements or preferences you could meet by simply changing the format. For example, offering online training in another language could dramatically improve results for an individual who is more comfortable with new information in their mother tongue; and a good LMS can automate that for you at the touch of a button. An employee who is hearing impaired may be having a tough time with a video unit. The addition of subtitles there is going to make a world of difference.
Additionally, recognise that some folks do fine with more traditional text-based formats, while others respond far more positively to in-person video or live web-cam instruction. Available time can also be a factor for falling behind with eLearning.
Extremely busy employees may only have short periods with which to engage with their eLearning. Offering microlearning options or mobile-based, fun games to complete may solve the problem.
Empower Trainers To Build A Rapport With Learners Beyond Automation
While your Learning Management System offers many great educational options, automation and software-based guidance, there’s nothing like person-to-person support. Your LMS administrators and L&D team should be encouraged to build a great rapport with learners and to understand when to step in to help directly.
Chat-bots and resource libraries can and do work brilliantly in answering some queries. However, direct messaging and live chat features open channels for connection with colleagues and trainers. This fosters some essential stuff such as social learning, affirmation and encouragement, course troubleshooting or even alternative learning paths that may work better for a particular employee.
An LMS offers a world of possibility to everyone in your employ, so optimise the human element where it’s needed and you’ll have a strong recipe for excellent online learning outcomes.