5 Common eLearning Mistakes To Avoid!

Properly implemented, an eLearning program can help with the development of employee skills, boosting employee engagement, and career development. However, eLearning is not a “silver bullet”. Just creating eLearning programs isn’t enough to increase employee engagement, and foster more effective learning.

To properly engage with employees, eLearning lessons must be well-designed – and must avoid these common eLearning mistakes!

1. Too Much To Learn – Too Quickly!

Information overload is real – especially when you’re onboarding new employees. To be sure, eLearning programs offer an effective corporate training solution, especially when compared to in-class instruction, and other materials like corporate handbooks.

However, you should avoid making employees take too many eLearning courses at once – especially because they will likely be performing their regular, day-to-day duties while undergoing training.

When using an eLearning system, one of the biggest benefits is that employees can undergo training on their own time. So encourage this, especially among new hires! Set a reasonable schedule for the completion of eLearning content – such as 1-2 courses per week – then let them set their own schedule and pace of learning.

2. Unfocused, Unclear Content

To be effective, your eLearnings must have a clearly-defined audience, and a clearly-defined purpose. If you cannot define both the audience and purpose for an eLearning course, it’s probably going to be unfocused, unclear, and ineffective.

Ideally, you’ll define both your audience and purpose before the creation of an eLearning course. For example, if you’re in human resources management, and you’re interested in creating an eLearning training program for sexual harassment, what might the audience and purpose be?

The audience would be new employees, or any employee who has not already received the training. That’s good – knowing this helps you tailor the material to a more specific audience.

The purpose would be to educate these employees – not just on sexual harassment and the workplace, but on your specific policies.

Knowing both the audience and purpose of this course, you can quickly and easily understand what kind of content to include. This makes it easier to create effective eLearning content, and engage with employees.

3. Lack Of Interactivity

The entire point of using an eLearning system is to make interactive, engaging content. If you choose to create an eLearning that’s entirely text-based, for example, you may as well just be handing out a binder full of information!

Interactivity is an incredibly powerful learning tool. Interactive learning has been proven to increase information retention, and aid in student engagement.

Advanced eLearning tools like Schoox allow you to create truly interactive courses. Using quizzes, video content, built-in games, and other interactive media, you can truly engage with your employees, and create a more effective learning experience.

4. Using Only Generic “Off-The-Shelf” eLearnings

At Schoox, we offer a wide variety of pre-built “off-the-shelf” eLearning content – from personal development skills, to safety, productivity, and more.

These pre-built eLearning programs are effective tools – but they’re not always the right choice for your organization. If you work in a highly-specialized industry, generic eLearning solutions are probably not the right choice for engaging with your employees.

A great eLearning solution will include both generic, widely-applicable courses, as well as industry and corporate-focused eLearnings. If you don’t take the time to create your own custom eLearnings, your employees may become bored and unfocused – and feel as if their time is being wasted.

5. Failure To Provide Feedback Options

There’s no such thing as perfection. You can always improve your eLearning courses – so you should make it easy for employees to provide feedback! You can get feedback in a variety of ways.

For example, if you use social media at work, such as Yammer, you could ask employees to share their feelings about your current eLearning systems, and give you critical feedback that can help you improve.

Alternatively, you could schedule interviews with employees who have used your eLearning system and get in-depth feedback. You could even observe new employees who have begun using your eLearning software, and see if you can gain any valuable insights from their behavior!

No matter what approach you take, you should always be ready to listen to employee feedback about eLearning programs – it’s the best way to improve!

Follow These Tips For More Effective Employee Education!

Whether you’re using Schoox or any other advanced eLearning platform, these tips are sure to help you engage with your employees more effectively, and provide better educational tools.