Do you have an important business topic that you want everyone to understand? Using an eLearning course is a great way to distribute information with a decent question and answer challenge, but there are right and wrong ways to design an eLearning course. If you've noticed people speeding through the courses or aren't sure how to properly gauge learning engagement, here's an overview of how the worst eLearning courses are breezed through:
Click Next To Win
Some courses have no major challenge to progression. They're for information purposes only; an eLearning course for someone who truly wants to learn something in an interactive way. The information is there for people who want to read, but you need something to pin down a learning requirement.
No matter how interesting the contents might be, some people will simply skip ahead without looking at all. The best way to combat course skipping is to make sure that quizzes never give a free pass to the next area.
In some cases, a course will allow a person to skip ahead after failing a few times. This is helpful when self-esteem for young people or people in an emotionally stressful situation (recovering victims, addicts, etc), but for corporate eLearning attendants who need to review new policies en masse, there is no skipping.
Google The Answers
This works for eLearning courses and--to the greater detriment of society--many college courses. If a test, worksheet, or eLearning course already exists, it's too easy to just grab a few key words to search for the answer on Google or any major search engine such as Bing or Yahoo.
For this reason, try to avoid purchasing an already existing eLearning course. Some topics such as sexual harassment, information security, or client confidentiality may be the same across most businesses, but that doesn't mean you can't have a tailored course.
Test out an eLearning course yourself. Don't just paraphrase the general contents of the course; grab 3 or 4 words at a time, then surround the words with quotation marks for your search. You may find a huge amount of blogs with the questions added, almost in the exact order as the eLearning quiz.
The biggest problem with this is knowing whether your course is original beforehand. You'll need a sample, or at least a guarantee of originality to get your money back or a new course made. Speak with a corporate eLearning course designer to discuss how courses can be made to tailor your unique business environment and take time to understand the care and creativity that goes into their work.
