Did You Ask These Questions Before Designing Your Online Training Module - Workology

Did You Ask These Questions Before Designing Your Online Training Module - Workology Create Training Modules that Matter Online trainers tend to spend many sleepless nights creating and perfecting the contents of their training modules. From wrestling with the design to incorporating appealing images, they do it all. After investing so much time and effort in creating the course, every online trainer deserves to get rewarded with amazing responses from the learners. But, that doesn’t happen too frequently as this report suggests.  Quite demotivating for a trainer. Isn’t it? Don’t worry, though. It’s not a problem with your skills as a trainer. Rather, it’s about the rising expectations of the learner. After all, the elearning industry is growing at a staggering pace and is expected to clock $240 billion by 2023 which simply means more competition. With a bit of “extra” effort, you can deliver exactly what learners expect from a training courses. Want to know how? Simply ask yourself these questions. Read on. 1. What are your goals? The goals you set when you begin developing a training module will shape the entire process. So, if you want good results, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish. To do this, you must first find the common issues that are limiting the performance of your students. Who needs your help and how do you intend to address their issues? Once you understand which areas need some more work, it will be easy to choose the right learning management system and create an appropriate strategy. 2. What skills do your students need to develop? Even though you may have identified all the issues that are affecting your productivity as a teacher, you still need to determine which skills your students are lacking to properly address those issues. For example, if you have highly qualified professionals in your class, they often lack the soft skills that would allow them to communicate with their subordinates more efficiently. Whatever the case may be, you have to enable your students to learn the right skills that will make them more effective in real world situations.         3. Can we measure the success of the module? You need to have a clear and quantifiable outcome in mind when setting up your online training module. This will allow you to quickly determine when your trainees have absorbed all the information and are ready to apply their new skills. It helps to have several smaller milestones along the way, so that you can accurately gauge their progress throughout the training course. The most important thing is to have the ability to tell whether your students’ performance has improved as a result of the training you’ve implemented.   4. What are the primary metrics to focus on? When trying to measure the success of a training module, it’s important to identify the key analytics that that will best portray the positive changes in performance. You can use tests throughout the course to measure the learners’ progress and perform post-training interviews to see how well they have retained the new information. Will you measure speed and overall workload? Will you be looking at their ability to communicate and think laterally? Will you give them practical tests of skill in real-world scenarios? These are just some of the things that you can think about to keep track of your learners’ progress. You need to know what metrics you should be looking at to accurately determine the success of the training module. 5. What’s your students’ motivation to attend this training? In an ideal world, the prospect of improving oneself as a professional would be enough motivation for everyone, but things rarely go as smoothly as we want them to. There are many ways to motivate your students, but you need to understand them first. You need to tell them in no uncertain terms that the training they go through will have an impact on their life. The more skillful they become, the more they will be able to achieve and this will provide them with new opportunities for advancement. Of course, small rewards and acknowledgements are great ways to boost motivation. You can also foster a competitive spirit by offering prizes to those who perform best.     6. Is your class ready for this type of training? If you suddenly throw your students into the deep end, you may find that not everyone is ready to even start training. This is why you need to get some feedback from them and find a way to present all the benefits of your training module and to them. Show them how easy and convenient it is to learn using a good learning management system to ease them into it.     Making things sound more interesting and showing people that there is a clear value in the training you want them to undertake will do wonders for their motivation. It’s important to ensure that everyone is onboard with the training and that they understand all the benefits it will offer before you make the first step. 7. How can we help those that struggle? There will always be those students who have a difficult time getting used to a Cloud-based LMS, as well as those who simply can’t keep up the pace. For example, some people might be visual learners and have trouble with predominantly text-based courses. You need to identify these people and find a way to help them out. Some one-on-one time with a more experienced fellow student will often do the trick, but things like a QA session over Skype or sending them a few useful links can also work. Whatever you do, it’s important that you have some sort of support in place for those who experience problems and can’t follow your online training module effectively.   Create Training Modules that Matter It’s never a good idea to just jump into a new online training module without considering all the factors mentioned above. Luckily, it’s not too difficult to set some goals, identify skill gaps, find a good learning management system and create a good training strategy. Make sure you motivate your students and show them the benefits and you’ll quickly win them over.