10 tips to improve the effectiveness of digital training
With the end of the emergency is time to sum up what this experience has taught us in relation to eLearning and figure out what we can take with us: here they are our ten tips to improve the effectiveness of digital training.
1. Set clear and achievable, but challenging learning objectives
The Training Need Analysis is crucial to understand the starting point for any training program, digital or not. Moving from the status quo, it is possible to set learning objectives, in terms of know, know-how and know-how-to-be, that you want to achieve. These need to be tuned on students’ possibilities, but still push them out of their comfort zone.
2. Spend some time for Instructional Design
Instructional Design is the key to every training process success: after the Training Need Analysis and the definition of learning objectives, it comprehends the creation of a customised program for the specific target audience, based on background, level of digital literacy, level of education, habits.
3. Alternate synchronous and asynchronous training
Training can be synchronous or “live” (face to face or webinars), to be held in a specific time and place, or asynchronous, self-paced that can be accessed anytime from everywhere. When building the instructional plan, it is fundamental to understand which modality is the more suitable for each topic and alternate them to optimise time and resources.
4. Build short sessions or training pills
People’s attention span, especially for digital natives, dropped down in the last years, making it fundamental to build short and complete programs. We are talking about microlearning, a modular structure that deplois repetition from different points of view to help to fix information in long-term memory.
5. Use different types of content on the screen
With the spread of video lessons and webinars, where students are forces to follow long sessions of synchronous training, it becomes crucial to introduce variety to keep their attention level high and avoid “blackout” moments in the middle parts. For this goal, it can be useful to alternate the type of content on the screen: a shot of the instructor, a presentation, a screencast, infographics.
6. Insert interactive activities
In particular with distance learning, it is fundamental for the student to be directly involved in the instructional process to avoid distractions and loss of motivation. Inserting interactive activities, such as practice exercises to be carried out alone or in a group, can help to turn students into actors of the process and, at the same time, to fix information in the memory thanks to the re-use in real life situations.
7. Provide for assessments e middle-term tests during the process
In training a common mistake is to set test only at the end of the process, but then potential negative results come in a moment when it is not possible to intervene to improve things anymore. Provide for middle-term tests can help to collect insights into your students and implement changes to adapt the instructional plan to the real needs of learners.
8. Monitor the process and students’ progresses
Whichever the chosen modalities for the instructional plan, it is fundamental to keep under control all the elements that compose it and all the actions performed by students, to promptly solve possible critical situations. For this purpose, it can be useful to use a Learning Management System (LMS) to track accesses, behaviour and results of each student and centralise materials, activities and learning resources.
9. Invest in long-term infrastructure and content
In the last few months face-to-face training has rapidly turned into distance training, often making use of emergency solutions. The main risk, in this case, is to spend time and money to set up infrastructure that can turn out to be not so sustainable or effective in the long term. It is necessary, on the contrary, take time to evaluate all the alternatives and invest in sustainable solutions that guarantee a return on the investment.
10. If you don’t have the required skills in house, rely on experts
Training, especially distance training, requires instructional skills but also technical ones, that cannot be improvised by non experts. To guarantee the return on investment and effectiveness of the program, it is necessary to rely on a team of experts that is able, without any waste, to build customised solutions and make the user able to autonomously manage it.
These ten tips, to be examined in depth one by one, represent a great starting point to plan the introduction of distance learning in the company.
Our team is always available for consultancy and to answer any questions. Write us an email to info@quiddis.com and follow the following articles to learn more about eLearning!