The Ultimate Guide to Online Training
Online training has the potential to help your organization improve efficiency, reliability, and scalability — but creating effective courses, managing delivery, and analyzing results can be daunting.
That’s why we’ve created this guide: to provide an overview of what online training is, who it benefits, and best practices for implementing it successfully.
Whether you're just beginning to investigate online training options or you already have a robust ecosystem and simply need advice or assistance, this guide has you covered.
CHAPTER 1
Types of Training That You Can Deliver Online
Employee onboarding
What is employee onboarding?
New employees have a lot to learn, from the company’s culture and policies to the day-to-day specifics of their jobs.
Many new employees experience onboarding training during their first week of work. This is a common way to integrate new hires and set them up to succeed in their roles. Companies that hire large numbers of seasonal workers or a fresh group of new graduates each spring might do onboarding for large cohorts of employees at a single time.
How to deliver onboarding training online
Moving your onboarding training online gives you enormous flexibility. You can:
- Deliver eLearning courses that introduce company culture and policies
- Create short microlearning units to guide new hires through processes like setting up their online accounts and profiles
- Provide access to a knowledge base and curated content shared by more experienced employees
Microlearning
Consisting of short, narrowly focused learning content that addresses a single concept or idea, microlearning is generally mobile-first or mobile-friendly, though some non-digital content, such as infographics and short printed texts could also be considered microlearning.
Using a learning management system (LMS) to manage and administer training makes it easy to enroll each learner in training that applies to their specific job role, as well as general training for all hires, and ensure that each worker gets the training they need.
Learning management system (LMS)
An LMS or learning management system is a platform that manages online training materials, including hosting course content and resources, enabling learners to search for, enroll in, and use content. An LMS usually includes a way for administrators to manage courses, content, enrollment, and assessment of learning.
The benefits of delivering onboarding training online
Standardized eLearning modules streamline the onboarding training that provides an introduction to your organization’s history, culture, products, and expectations.
These online training materials are easy to update and scale. You can also localize them for learners around the globe and provide all of your new hires a consistent onboarding experience. With digital onboarding, it’s smooth and easy to onboard a single hire, 100 — or thousands. Getting off to a good start no longer depends on which instructor a new hire gets or whether they can remember everything they heard in crash courses during their first days or weeks at work; they can refer back to their online training materials.
Online training also offers automated options for guiding new hires through processes like completing forms and enrolling in benefits. Automated tracking makes it easy to know who has completed the required courses and processes.
Upskilling & reskilling
What are upskilling and reskilling?
The half-life of skills is constantly shrinking. Workers need to learn new skills just to excel in their current roles, and they may need to learn additional skills to prepare for a lateral move or a promotion.
Upskilling enables workers to adapt to changes in their job roles, whether due to automation, adoption of a new software package, or a shift in how things are done.
Reskilling adds new skills to prepare workers for a promotion or lateral move, to take on new challenges within their current role, or to transfer to an entirely new role.
How to deliver upskilling and reskilling training online
Commonly, an organization uses comprehensive eLearning modules to deliver initial training. To build knowledge retention and improve skills, organizations are increasingly following up with a continuous learning strategy, usually delivered using a microlearning platform. This reinforces training and ensures retention of essential skills and facts.
The benefits of delivering upskilling and reskilling training online
Upskilling may be a response to automation of some aspects of a worker’s role. It is also used to fill skills gaps that arise as processes change, job roles evolve, or an employee takes on new challenges within their job role.
Reskilling offers workers the opportunity for personal and professional development. These employees can projects or make career-enhancing moves to a new role or a higher level.
Reskilling can also be a response to changes in an industry that result in some roles disappearing or changing dramatically; it can prepare workers for emerging roles or entirely new jobs.
Upskilling and reskilling keep workers’ skills current, anticipate future needs, and reflect an investment in employees that often pays off in longer employee retention, greater loyalty, and a more skilled, more invested workforce.
In many cases, upskilling and reskilling focus on power skills like creativity, empathy, and communication that are valuable in nearly all job roles. Organizations with strong upskilling and reskilling programs often are the same organizations that have strong learning cultures. This emphasis ensures that the company and its workforce are prepared to deal with changes and challenges.
Compliance training
What is compliance training?
Compliance training is intended to teach employees about internal organization policies or ensure that employees meet mandatory training requirements set by law, by industry regulators, or by professional licensing or certification bodies. Some regulations require that compliance training be completed at regular intervals, such as annually.
How to deliver compliance training online
Typically, learning and development teams create one or more eLearning modules to introduce mandatory skills and knowledge. In many cases, learners complete these modules — often with minor updates — on an annual basis. The organization then uses the completion data to demonstrate compliance.
Warning! It’s not enough to enroll your employees in annual training modules and ensure they complete the training. Regulators and auditors increasingly seek evidence that compliance training is effective.
For example, the U.S. Department of Justice has advised prosecutors to assess “the adequacy and effectiveness” of an organization’s compliance training when determining whether to pursue a legal claim against the organization.
We recommend pairing your initial training delivery with a strategy for building long-term knowledge retention to reduce your risk and maximize your investment in annual training.
Knowledge retention strategy
A knowledge-retention strategy extends training to include eLearning or performance support to ensure that learners remember — or retain — essential content, usually using spaced repetition. It represents a paradigm shift from conventional training where learners see content only once.
Continuous, drip-delivered microlearning is a popular and effective way to do this. It increases learners’ ability to recall and apply what they’ve learned in their comprehensive annual training modules.
The benefits of delivering compliance training online
Delivering compliance training online is highly efficient, as it ensures consistency and is easy to scale up as your organization grows. Most online training methods are easy to update as well.
Taking a two-pronged approach that uses continuous microlearning along with the initial training modules can improve training outcomes by helping to ensure compliance training. This protects your organization by reducing your liability and risk.
Workflow learning & performance support
What are workflow learning and performance support?
Workflow learning and performance support are approaches to providing on-demand knowledge that supports employee learning and performance without disrupting their workflow. Rather than sending employees to training courses or asking them to schedule time to complete hourlong (or longer) modules, the information they need is easily accessible at the moment they need it.
Workflow learning and performance support tools are generally short, narrowly focused training and reference assets, such as microlearning modules, infographics, flow charts, searchable knowledge bases, chatbot services that answer questions, and the like. While these tools might employ approaches, like microlearning, that are suited to learning a large amount of new material, that is generally not the intention of a workflow learning or performance support tool.
These tools are usually mobile-first or mobile-friendly, have robust search capabilities, and have a look and feel that reminds learners of similar tools they use to search for information in non-work contexts.
Mobile-first or mobile-friendly
Digital learning content designed and optimized for use on mobile devices, particularly smartphones and tablets, is considered mobile-first. Mobile-friendly content is designed primarily for laptop and desktop use, but also works well on mobile devices.
This approach fits brief knowledge refreshers into the employees’ workday, rather than taking them away from their jobs to engage with and complete in-depth training. In addition, it empowers learners to feel productive while still learning. It’s an approach that most workers already use — every time they Google or ask Siri for a fact or information.
How to deliver workflow learning and performance support online
The goal of performance support and workflow learning is to provide essential information without disrupting work. That requires making the information they need available in an easy-to-access, searchable knowledge base or other format, such as short microlearning modules with bite-sized information “cards” that facilitate quick reference or help that’s integrated into their software tools to provide on-demand guidance.
The benefits of delivering workflow learning and performance support online
Today’s web-savvy employees are self-directed learners accustomed to searching for and finding the information they need in the moment. Rather than sending them to a training course or requiring that they track down the one person in the organization who has the answer to their questions, you can put the knowledge they need at their fingertips.
Providing workflow learning and support resources empowers employees to access the information they need to perform a critical task and continue with their work.
Workflow learning and performance support tools improve accurate performance and boost efficiency, especially when created for infrequently-performed tasks, like completing the paperwork prior to annual reviews.
These short, focused resources generally require less time and expense to create and maintain than comprehensive courses and can be updated quickly and easily.
Are you looking to deliver one or more types of training to your learners online? Create the perfect blend of eLearning for your organization!
CHAPTER 2
Who Benefits from Online Training
Everyone benefits from online training. Whether they are employees, contractors, or vendors, individuals benefit when they increase their knowledge as it relates to their field or working for or with an organization.
Similarly, your organization benefits by building online training programs designed to increase productivity and improve performance, making room for the new initiatives, projects, and creative thinking essential to keeping your organization relevant. Building this training with a focus on the learner experience can boost engagement and improve training outcomes.
Learner Experience (LX)
Considering learner experience takes a big-picture view of training that goes beyond content and learning goals to also consider the learners’ background, prior knowledge, and environment, with the aim of providing an experience that supports learning, mastery, and retention of training content.
Online training can positively impact your organization’s training and performance challenges. Here’s how!
New hires
New hires have a lot to learn! Moving much of your onboarding training online makes life easier for everyone — especially the new employees. They can review it whenever they need to and complete it as their workday allows. That’s better than a blur of one-time exposure to what often feels like an overwhelming volume of critical content during their first few days on the job.
Onboarding
Associated with orientation of new employees during their first days or weeks on the job, onboarding training might include guiding new hires through processes like signing up for a retirement plan; providing information about company policies and culture; and providing training in basic tasks related to the job role.
With flexible online onboarding training, your workers can access specific content when it’s relevant — to get help filling out a form or check the details of their benefits, for example — rather than complete linear training in a predetermined order. You can gamify some of the onboarding so that cohorts of new hires can compete to learn the details and bond with new colleagues at the same time.
Existing employees
Turn onboarding into everboarding by making online training available on demand. Adopting an online training strategy that supports continuous learning encourages learners to stretch, upskill, and invest in their personal and professional development — all of which makes them more skilled and more invested workers.
Everboarding
Related to onboarding, everboarding is an emerging term that recognizes that learning occurs throughout an employee’s tenure at a job.
Delivering online training using a variety of approaches and platforms — microlearning to introduce terms and concepts; eLearning courses for deep study; learning plans that track supervisory confirmation of skills use, then more microlearning for review and knowledge retention — improves the ability of your workforce to respond to varied situations and provide outstanding service.
Front-line & deskless workers
When employees work on the front lines — in retail, as bank tellers, or in restaurants, for example — or they are deskless workers of another type — in warehouses, factories, retail stores, or in the field, perhaps — getting them trained can be a challenge. They are needed on the job and can’t just stop everything to take a training course.
Short online training formats like mobile-first microlearning are a lifesaver for these workers and their organizations. Workers need to invest only a few minutes a day, maybe the first five minutes of their shift or the last thing they do before taking lunch breaks. They keep their skills sharp, and they don’t have to lose hours or days of productive time to do it.
Digital training for front-line and deskless workers can cover anything and everything:
Sales professionals
Empower your sales professionals with the information they need when they need it: whether your sales reps are visiting clients or meeting virtually, they need the latest details of your new and updated products and services, including seasonal changes.
When curating content, provide a blend of eLearning courses paired with a searchable on-demand knowledge base and retention-oriented microlearning to give your team the knowledge they need to maximize every sale.
Content curation / curated content
A process of selecting content to share with learners or include in eLearning; the content is vetted for accuracy, trustworthiness, and applicability to the target audience.
Customers & partners
Your business reach extends beyond your employees to your customers and partners — this is your extended enterprise.
Offering online training opportunities to partners and clients educates them about your products and services. This allows them to leverage your products more thoroughly, becoming even more loyal to your brand — while needing less assistance from your staff. Plus, in many cases, this training can become a revenue source and profit center.
Expanding online training throughout the extended enterprise is a great way to build loyalty and long-term relationships. This training can be offered as a searchable knowledge base or a series of eLearning modules or tutorials. It’s a great way to reduce support and maintenance calls, build customer loyalty, and even generate revenue.
Does your organization need to train learners across multiple use cases and needs? Offer eLearning that positively impacts all of your learners!
CHAPTER 3
A 5-Stage Approach to Moving Training Online
When you deliver effective online training, learners do far more than complete their training — they actually retain the information, apply it on the job, and change their behavior, leading to improved performance and better business results.
This section describes a five-stage approach to moving from offering little or no online training to operating within a robust, performance-driven online training ecosystem.
eLearning / training ecosystem
An eLearning ecosystem is a complete digital learning system, including content, distribution platform(s),library or content management system, tools for creating eLearning content, and other resources, as well as the networks and pathways that facilitate communication among these components.
Stage 1: Perform a training audit
What this means
Not every organizational problem is solved by training; some are solved with performance support or by encouraging collaborative brainstorming.
That’s why we recommend performing a training audit and planning online training, performance support, and other resources in a strategic way, rather than reflexively ordering a new training course whenever a problem arises.
A training audit and strategic online training plan can identify and address all of your organization’s knowledge, performance support, upskilling, and reskilling needs in a logical and effective way.
How to implement it
We recommend calling on an external learning consultant to perform a training audit, rather than conducting one with in-house personnel.
This professional will examine your needs and any existing training, bringing an outside perspective that captures a big-picture view of your organization’s needs. By figuring out what is working and what is not and inventorying your content, the online training consultant is able to create tailored recommendations for your organization.
A professional external training auditor will create a strategic plan, which might recommend the purchase or creation of specific training materials but will also consider performance support and knowledge retention needs, include recommendations for nurturing a learning culture, and more.
While in larger organizations, the chief learning officer could conduct an audit of the organization’s training program and create a strategic plan, the outside perspective a consultant brings is often helpful, as they have the freedom to explore new solution paths due to their lack of history with the organization.
Your consultant should have deep knowledge and experience in adult learning and online training and be able to provide the big-picture view essential to creating a far-ranging strategy that will serve your organization for years to come.
Stage 2: Move from instructor-led to eLearning modules
What this means
You may currently rely on instructor-led training (ILT), either in live face-to-face sessions or video meetings, for your onboarding and compliance training and to teach product knowledge, powerskills, or any other topic.
Instructor-led training (ILT)
Synchronous learning or training that is taught by an instructor, in real time, usually with multiple learners in a physical classroom is called instructor-led training or ILT; when it occurs in a virtual classroom, it is referred to as VILT.
Converting some or all of this instruction to eLearning modules moves it from synchronous (live) training to asynchronous (anytime) learning.
How to implement it
You will most likely use an eLearning authoring tool to create online training modules. Creating eLearning content involves many steps—planning that aligns with goals and objectives and then moving into scripting, storyboarding, sourcing or creating media assets, building the courses with software, reviewing for quality assurance, and launching. It's also helpful to have a project leader who is well-versed in project management skills to lead your L&D creation team.
Your eLearning modules can contain interactivities, knowledge checks, videos, eBooks, animations, and immersive branching scenarios. Including content in a variety of formats and activities where learners can apply what they are learning provides a rich and effective learning experience.
Authoring tool
An eLearning authoring tool is a software package that makes building eLearning modules and other online training content easy and consistent, generally using templates.
Knowledge check
A knowledge check is a series of self-assessment questions presented to learners before, during, or after their training to gauge their level of knowledge and recall.
You might use an on-site or cloud-based learning management system (LMS) to house your online training modules and handle the enrolling and tracking of learners and their progress.
Learners might select training courses or be assigned, either by their managers or by training administrators, to training that is required or beneficial for people in their job role. Your LMS might support internal certifications, learning paths, career pathing, and competency management for succession planning.
Stage 3: Implement workflow learning
What this means
After bringing in new training tools to meet basic training delivery needs, some organizations realize that they can use those tools in other ways as well. At this stage of training maturity, they might look for ways to develop and support improved worker performance.
Learners in organizations at this stage of training maturity are often engaging in self-directed learning activity that takes place within the workflow, rather than relying on scheduled training sessions.
Self-directed learning
Asynchronous learning that a learner undertakes voluntarily and under their own control, choosing the time, place, means, format, and content of the learning, is called self-directed learning.
Some organizations strive to empower these learners by creating a culture and practice of continuous learning or encouraging collaborative and social learning among colleagues and teams. Or they recognize a need for refreshers and problem-solving outside of formal training courses and events and provide resources and tools to support this informal and ongoing learning.
How to implement it
Delivering learning and performance support materials in the workflow requires a different approach to reach workers and learners wherever they happen to be at the moment they need access.
Many organizations implement workflow learning using mobile training platforms and formats like microlearning that deliver short, focused lessons, rather than 30- or 60-minute training modules or webinars.
Workflow learning
Training resources that workers can use, search, and access on demand, while they are working — without going to training or stopping their work to take an eLearning course — may be referred to as workflow learning. Along with performance support, workflow learning helps employees do their jobs better, with minimal interruption.
Organizations seeking to encourage self-directed, collaborative, or social learning might provide a knowledge base, a curated content site, social and collaborative learning platforms, such as Microsoft Teams or Slack, or discussion boards.
These focused, on-demand resources also support employees’ performance by offering immediate access that reminds learners of how to do infrequent tasks and processes, ensures that they have current information when they need it, and enables them to review training content quickly.
Social learning
Formal and informal channels for learning collaboration and communal learning abound; some social learning platforms connect learners within an organization, e.g., your office’s Slack channels; others, such as LinkedIn, connect professional peers outside the company.
Stage 4: Build long-term knowledge retention
What this means
Providing easy access to the training and resource materials that learners need is a great start, but to eliminate knowledge gaps and improve on-the job performance, organizations also need to build long-term knowledge retention. Building retention requires repeated exposure to essential content over time, so that learners remember what they have learned and can recall and apply it on the job.
This stage of training maturity often entails embracing an ongoing “continuous learning” strategy, requiring a cultural shift from the conventional “annual” training approach.
How to implement it
At this stage, organizations might adopt an adaptive delivery platform for their training content, commonly known as an adaptive microlearning platform.
Adaptive training delivery recognizes that each learner has a unique combination of background knowledge and experience, as well as individual job goals and varying needs for expertise. It therefore targets unique content to each learner, a significant paradigm shift from the typical online training method of delivering the same content to all learners.
Adaptive training delivery
Usually based on AI algorithms, adaptive training deliversspecific online training content to each learner based onthat learner’s performance in training.
A goal of adaptive training delivery is increasing learner engagement: more time spent training leads to better retention and better job performance.
Adaptive microlearning delivers short, focused training content targeted to each learner. The specific lessons and activities that each learner sees will be different in every session and highly relevant to the learner.
Some adaptive delivery algorithms, like the ones in OttoLearn®, dynamically change the mix of content based on performance, recalibrating each time the learner completes a training session.
Adaptive microlearning platforms might also build engagement using gamification: applying game elements and mechanics — levels, points, increasingly difficult challenges, leaderboards, or contests — to learning content. The goal is to motivate learners to constantly improve, whether through competition with colleagues or “competing” against their own past performance.
Game-based learning
Game-based learning involves building actual game playand game elements, such as competition, a set of rules, andthe use of rewards and penalties, into training content toencourage play and measure progress and mastery.
Stage 5: Implement a performance-driven training strategy
What this means
Adopting a performance-driven training strategy is a proven way to ensure that your training is an investment, not just an expense. It means identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) that you want to improve; targeting training to those metrics; and using data to determine whether your training interventions actually improve those KPIs.
A data-informed strategy might use analytics to understand what is happening and why, to predict what might happen, or to prescribe solutions that could steer outcomes in the desired direction.
How to implement it
To implement a performance-driven strategy, you must first identify and track KPIs that impact your business success, such as sales data, customer satisfaction scores, or health and safety incidents.
Then, you need to:
To evaluate your progress, you could use a business intelligence (BI) platform, such as Microsoft PowerBI, to create dashboards and visualizations that show the KPIs and your training data, as well as any correlations between them.
Your BI platform will likely facilitate creating reports and graphs for learners’ managers or for corporate leaders as well, making it easy to illustrate any correlations between training progress and job performance.
Want to take a holistic approach to your online training initiatives? Use these five steps to deliver training focused on better performance!
CHAPTER 4
Best Practices for Effective Online Training
Effective onine training is a key element in developing and maintaining the skills of your employees — in other words, it is essential to any talent development or talent management strategy.
It can prepare your incoming employees for a successful career at your company, ensure that current employees cultivate the skills and knowledge they need to drive stellar performance, and enable you to create an upskilling and reskilling program that future-proofs your organization while reducing employee turnover.
The key is developing an efficient online training strategy and engaging, effective training materials. This section describes the best practices for doing so.
Create effective training materials
Effective eLearning materials follow best practices and entice learners to use them because they:
Meet a well-defined goal with clear, performance-based learning objectives that also bolster your company’s learning culture and foster organizational growth.
Ensure that learners understand the “why” behind the training they are doing, whether it’s to close knowledge gaps, upskill, meet certification or regulatory requirements, or learn company culture and practices.
Aim for more than information transfer by building opportunities for application of new knowledge and skills into training content; learners might practice applying their learning through simulations, scenario-based interactivities, or other active learning formats.
Create content that requires learners to actively engage with it, perhaps by playing a game, recording an audio role play, or doing a basic multiple choice knowledge check; asking learners to interact in ways that require both thought and movement are most effective.
Gamification
Adding game elements to learning content with the goal of making learning fun and engaging, gamification appeals to learners’ sense of competition and can motivate them to spend more time on training.
Include frequent knowledge-check activities, along with specific and meaningful feedback to empower learners to verify their understanding of what they are learning.
Formative feedback
When information about a learner’s progress or whether a response was correct or incorrect is provided during a training exercise or course, rather than at the end, it is called formative feedback.
Communicate with learners throughout training about their progress, how they are doing, and how much training they have left to complete.
Present materials that are scenario-based and relevant to real-life situations that learners will experience when doing the job.
Include a well-designed assessment mechanism, such as an exam or activity, that covers the entire curriculum and tests learners’ understanding of and ability to apply all topics and knowledge areas covered in the training.
Summative feedback or assessment
Providing information about a learner’s progress or whether a response was correct or incorrect — and why — at the completion of an exam or a training course is considered summative feedback. Summative feedback is often provided along with the results of a summative assessment, otherwise known as a final exam.
Present information using instructional scaffolding, so that learners can anchor and build on their learning.
Instructional scaffolding
Presenting training content in a way that leads learners from basic ideas, concepts, or terms to more advanced content, instructional scaffolding supports and guides learners as they increase their competency and deepen their knowledge.
Ensure that a broad range of learners can access and use them by following accessibility guidelines and design practices.
Best practices for online training delivery
A common approach to training delivery is offering eLearning courses on an annual basis. If updates or changes are introduced, learners receive an updated course during the next annual training cycle.
This approach is not the most effective for several reasons, chiefly:
- Learners who have already done the training one or more times are likely to skim through it quickly and can easily miss updates while still passing the annual training.
- Learners do not absorb all of the material in a complex training course during a single exposure to the content.
- Learners are likely to forget content and details of products and processes between annual reviews of the material and therefore are unable to recall it when they need it.
- The same content is delivered to every learner, without considering their prior knowledge, need for the information, or knowledge gaps.
- Organizations that do annual training experience a significant productivity dip and financial impact if large numbers of employees are required to take their training during the same month.
Alternative approaches are gaining acceptance. For example, some organizations allow learners to “test out” of annual training by showing that they know the material.
Other organizations that deliver initial training using LMS-based eLearning courses now extend learning using a continuous learning or knowledge retention campaign.
Interleaved learning
Interleaved learning presents learning content from related concepts within an exercise or problem set.
Effective training delivery strategies that seek to build retention and mastery might include these elements:
Supplementing annual comprehensive training courses with a knowledge retention strategy
This often entails delivering short activities on a regular schedule, using spaced repetition to deliver essential content often enough to build long-term knowledge retention.
Driving motivation using gamification
Gamification and game elements like levels and badges push learners to improve their performance, while elements like leaderboards and contests fuel engagement.
Ensuring relevance with adaptive delivery
Using adaptive delivery algorithms to target a unique mix of content to each learner ensures that training content is always relevant and challenging. Each learner receives content that focuses on their knowledge gaps and weak areas while avoiding redundant or irrelevant content.
Spaced repetition
Exposing learners to content or information a single time is generally not sufficient to ensure retention. Spaced repetition strategies ensure that each learner gets multiple exposures, over time, to important training content, with larger intervals between exposures as learners become more familiar with the material.
Measuring the effectiveness of your online training
Designing and delivering training is just the beginning. Measuring results and outcomes, and conducting a thorough analysis of what is working and what is not, keeps an online training program relevant.
It also helps the learning and development team ensure that the online training they create will drive improvement in key business metrics. This requires that you gather and study analytics that:
Do you want to improve the online training your organization offers? Follow our best practices for effective online training!
CHAPTER 5
An Overview of Online Training Formats
eLearning
What is eLearning?
You can deliver online training in a huge variety of formats and media. The term “eLearning module,” or just “eLearning,” is often used as a broad umbrella term to refer to any digital training or learning materials. It’s also used more narrowly to describe a self-directed digital training course that is usually an in-depth treatment of a topic and consists of several sections or chapters. That’s how we’re using it here.
The content in an eLearning course or module might be mostly text and pictures or graphics, but eLearning modules can also include embedded videos and interactive activities or knowledge checks. An eLearning module might also include one or more quizzes and a final “exam” to measure learners’ ability to correctly remember what they have just covered in the module.
Most eLearning modules are designed to be accessed using an LMS, and the modules usually conform to the SCORM standard for shareable eLearning content. SCORM-compliant eLearning works with most LMS platforms. Some eLearning modules also follow the newer xAPI standard.
SCORM
The Shareable Content Object Reference Model is a standard for creating eLearning that works with other eLearning and with most LMSs (learning management systems). SCORM compliance has become the industry default for interoperability.
xAPI
An emerging standard for learning technology, xAPI makes it possible for training administrators to collect learning analytics data from learning activities that take place outside of an LMS, using any xAPI-compatible device.
Read the article
The SCORM and xAPI standards determine what sorts of learner and engagement data training managers can collect as their learners progress through their eLearning modules.
How is it used?
An eLearning module can present in-depth content on any complex topic. These are often used for annual compliance training, where specific content or topics have to be covered, for example. Organizations use eLearning for an enormous range of content, covering many topics and training goals.
Whatever the training goal, eLearning modules are primarily used as asynchronous training — that is, each learner completes the training at their own pace and generally at a time they choose. Learners do not interact with one another within the eLearning module.
Some eLearning modules offer learners a lot of flexibility, allowing them to skip sections, review sections as often as they like, do sections in any order, retake quizzes, re-do activities to try out different responses, and more. Offering learners more control can increase their engagement, allowing them to review sections of content and improve their retention.
eLearning modules are best for:
Microlearning
What is microlearning?
Microlearning is short, focused training or performance support content. It is often delivered to learners on demand.
Microlearning can use any media format — audio, video, text, games, chatbots, or a combination. It is usually delivered in a mobile-first format so that learners can easily access and use it wherever they are, on their favorite mobile or desktop devices.
Interactive video
Interactive videos include elements that learners can engage with, for example clickable hotspots, branching paths, or built-in quizzes.
Read the article
Because each unit of microlearning covers a single concept or topic and is short, creating microlearning content can be highly efficient. The content is also easy to update, since a single micro unit can be changed or replaced far more easily than a comprehensive eLearning module. This makes microlearning an agile approach to online training that works well for many types of training content.
How is it used?
Microlearning may be used as training or as performance support. It is often part of a continuous learning strategy, where learners do short training sessions two or three times per week on a regular schedule. They may review material they learned in a longer eLearning course or instructor-led training or they might learn new content.
When they have mastered a topic, their lessons may continue on the same schedule but move on to new or more advanced content. Microlearning is a good way to provide basic information prior to a more advanced training course, to ensure that all learners start the course with knowledge of basic concepts and terms. It’s also used as a follow-up to comprehensive training. In this context, it provides spaced repetition and exposure to content and builds long-term retention.
Microlearning also stands on its own as a training approach. With its short, focused lessons, it fits easily into learners’ schedules, and it can be used to offer what is now being described as “workflow learning” — learning resources that don’t require learners to schedule training sessions because they can easily do the training in short bursts during their regular workflow.
Adaptive training delivery
What is adaptive training delivery?
All too often, online training delivers the same content to every learner. This does not account for individual learners’ differences in:
- Prior knowledge or background
- Experience
- Job-related need for more or less depth of expertise
- Knowledge gaps
- Areas of proficiency or weakness
Adaptive training delivery targets different content to each learner, depending on their progress and performance throughout training. It’s dynamic, so as the learner gains proficiency, the content mix will shift to focus on weaker areas or topics.
Adaptive delivery personalizes the learning experience and ensures that the training content that each learner gets is relevant to that learner at that time. It can eliminate knowledge gaps by focusing on a learner’s weak areas.
How is it used?
Adaptive training delivery relies on advanced algorithms to track learners’ progress, measure it against their learning goals, and deliver the content they most need to practice and master to achieve their learning goals. The most common format for adaptively delivered training is microlearning, because the units are small and easily targeted.
Paired with spaced repetition and regular training sessions, adaptive delivery can eliminate knowledge gaps by ensuring that learners frequently practice and review content in areas where their knowledge is weak. It also ensures that the learner spends time learning and reviewing only content that they need to know and do not already know.
Simulations and scenario-based training
What are simulations and scenario-based training?
Simulations present realistic situations that learners could encounter on the job and allow the learners to navigate a scenario. Usually, they let the learners practice by choosing more than one response to see what happens. In face-to-face training, this might be accomplished using role-play exercises; moving to online training allows more opportunities for learners to practice a broad variety of scenarios, over and over again.
By providing safe practice — errors have no cost or consequence — simulations allow learners to test out multiple responses and understand the possible consequences. They can practice problem-solving and think through the results of each potential response.
Simulations and other scenario-based learning are highly effective training tools because they are realistic and relevant. They provide active learning and engage learners in thinking about their options while choosing and experiencing, safely and virtually, the outcomes of their actions. When learners encounter similar situations on the job, the practice pays off as they react more smoothly and calmly.
Scenario-based training and simulations
Training that uses scenarios or simulates realistic situations, such as retail workers facing Black Friday shopping crowds or bank tellers teaching customers to use a mobile banking app, provides learners with practice working through these situations. Scenario-based training might include “branching” — the ability for a learner to choose from multiple responses or paths.
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Ideally, in scenario-based training, the instructional designer provides feedback for every response option that explains why it is or is not a recommended choice and guides the learner to the most effective response.
Instructional designers can use eLearning authoring tools to create scenarios, build complex immersive simulations in a virtual-reality tool, or create simple text-based scenarios in a document or microlearning tool.
How is it used?
Immersive simulations or branching scenarios are ideal for:
Scenarios and simulations may be incorporated into learning games, immersive or virtual reality training, eLearning courses, microlearning, and more. Mini-scenarios — only a few sentences long — can even be included in quiz questions.
Allowing learners to repeat scenarios and try out all the options builds retention while reinforcing the preferred response to each situation. Application and learning transfer are built into scenario-based learning.
What is social learning?
Social learning offers learners a way to share information, learn with peers, check their understanding, and share resources that enable them to deepen their learning and understanding.
Organizations may provide opportunities for social learning by coordinating events such as:
- Lunch and Learns
- Brainstorming or mind mapping sessions
- Ask the Expert sessions
It’s also common for learners to use and create informal social learning opportunities. People engage in social learning all the time, everywhere. These opportunities are especially likely to be found in organizations that promote continuous learning and collaboration, using:
How is it used?
Social learning works best when it occurs organically and in organizations where learning is encouraged. These organizations provide spaces for workers to interact — and managers don’t try to direct the conversation.
Social learning
Formal and informal channels for learning collaboration and communal learning abound; some social learning platforms connect learners within an organization, e.g., your office’s Slack channels; others, such as LinkedIn, connect professional peers outside the company
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Even where formal learning events are set up, discussions should be open and free so that ideas can bubble up and develop. Encouraging social learning and providing space for it both reflects and promotes a learning culture in your organization.
Social learning is an ideal way to build and spread institutional knowledge while fostering connections among workers in different roles and on different teams. Opportunities for social learning promote collaborative problem solving, innovation, and brainstorming. It’s a great way to build teams, both in-person and virtually.
Gamification
What is gamification?
Gamification is a great way to increase engagement!
Adding game elements to online training content encourages some learners to “play” — to engage with the training content more than they otherwise would. Learning and development professionals often embrace gamification because they want to increase the amount of time that learners spend interacting with the content, which is likely to improve training results.
Gamification uses game elements like competition against others or oneself, goals and rewards, feedback, or a progress meter. It layers these elements on top of your training content, for example encouraging sales team members to compete to see who can be the first to master the features and details of a new product lineup.
Gamification can make learning more fun or motivate learners to improve by challenging them to beat their previous score or claim the top spot in a team- or company-wide leaderboard contest.
How is it used?
Effective gamification taps into learners’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivators:
Gamification may be used to foster friendly competition and push learners to improve their skills; it can also help with team building, as teammates support one another to “defeat” a competing team.
The fun elements of gamification or the competition can encourage learners to spend more time than they otherwise would with fact-dense content or to learn and review concepts, terms, product details, or other content and remember it longer.
Ineffective gamification asks learners to do silly things or rewards meaningless metrics, such as awarding points for time spent rather than for accomplishing meaningful goals or improving retention or performance.
Gamification elements might be integrated into an eLearning module, or built into gamified microlearning. Gamification can also be external to the learning content. For instance, gamification elements might be connected with the delivery or tracking of the learning program in the LMS or learning record store (LRS).
Learning record store (LRS)
An LRS or learning record store is part of an xAPI ecosystem. The xAPI standard makes it possible to gather data about a huge variety of learning activities, such as viewing a video, completing an activity, or participating in a simulation; the data statements are stored in the LRS
Unsure what online training formats will benefit your organization? Let's chat about how the training you offer will play a part in your success!
CHAPTER 6
Where to Obtain Online Training Content
Every organization has different training needs — and different learning and development resources available.
Depending on the topic areas and skills your training will cover, as well as the skills and availability of a training design and development team, you might consider several options for obtaining training materials. These include developing them in-house and sourcing them from online training vendors.
Developing online training in-house
Many larger organizations have in-house learning and development (L&D) teams that create and manage the online training program. In some organizations, that department consists of a single person, who may be an instructional designer (ID) — or may have a different skill set. In others, there might be several IDs, one or more developers, a graphic artist, and other team members.
When an organization decides to move some or all training online, the L&D team might take responsibility for carrying out this transition. The team might be tasked with moving some or all of the company’s in-person instruction online or with designing and deploying a blended training approach that uses a mix of in-person and online training.
Teams that design and develop in-house training tend to focus on training materials and courses that cover tasks, information, and job roles that are specific to their organizations or use proprietary or highly specialized content.
Licensing off-the-shelf content libraries
Thousands of prepackaged courses and libraries exist. These typically cover common business topics, such as improving communication skills or how to provide effective feedback. They teach skills like using common software packages, ranging from the ubiquitous — Microsoft Office or Adobe Creative Suite — to the specialized, such as SalesForce or Articulate Storyline. Libraries of training for common compliance topics, such as harassment prevention or safety regulations, are also easy to find.
Not all off-the-shelf training products are of high quality, though. If you’re new to the online training world, we recommend working with a learning consultant who can guide you in analyzing your needs and identifying the most appropriate and highest-quality training courses or libraries for your needs.
Customized pre-packaged training
Vendors that create prepackaged training may also offer customization services. That would mean adjusting their products to your organization’s specific needs. For example, a general machinery safety course could be customized to focus on the equipment you use and any unusual features of your work environment. It might include practice scenarios that address your most common problem areas.
This option provides a “best of both worlds” situation: you avoid the expense of creating or hiring someone to create new “from scratch” training, but you still get relevant, targeted training that will be effective and engaging for your learners.
Outsourcing custom training creation
If your organization lacks an L&D team — or the team is strapped for time and resources — you might consider outsourcing to an eLearning company to create or update your training. This is a great solution if you have proprietary or highly specific content but can’t get all of the training materials you need done in-house.
Your vendor should work with your subject-matter experts (SMEs) to ensure that you get the exact online training materials you need, potentially with features you couldn’t create in-house, such as animations or interactivities. A benefit is that you won’t need to hirestaff and purchase software. Finding a great eLearning partner can allow you to expand and contract your L&D efforts with your business needs quickly and efficiently.
Do you want help sourcing your online training content? We’ll guide you through the options to help you create your ideal training program!
CHAPTER 7
Online Training Creation & Delivery Technologies
Online training content, whether eLearning modules or other training formats, is often created using a “course authoring tool,” a software package designed for this purpose.
An authoring tool generally includes templates and features that make it easy to add images, embed video, and possibly create animations, build knowledge checks, including quizzes, and design and create other types of activities.
Most authoring tools enable authors to check whether their content is accessible to all learners and to add elements, like descriptions of images and captioning for videos, that increase the accessibility of the content.
An authoring tool could also be part of another online training platform, such as your microlearning or content management platform — for instance, both SmarterU™ LMS and OttoLearn include integrated authoring tools.
Some create only one type of content — a cloud-based tool might be capable of creating content that works online, without an LMS, but might be unable to create a SCORM course that works in your LMS. When choosing an authoring tool, you need to know what type or types of training you intend to create with it.
It’s also possible to create online training content more simply, without an authoring tool. You can use a tool built into some LMS platforms to convert slide decks to SCORM-compliant eLearning courses, for example.
Learning management systems (LMS)
The LMS, or learning management system, generally hosts and delivers a broad range of online training content, including eLearning courses, curated content, discussion boards, collaborative learning platforms, knowledge bases, and more.
Most LMS platforms function as online training libraries or databases, and include additional features such as:
- Housing courses, videos, document PDFs, and curated content
- A course catalog and search engine so that learners can easily find what they are looking for
- A way to track training that learners are assigned or register for on their own, including tracking engagement, completions, and test scores
- An online learning framework that can include quizzes and a system for offering certificates or badges when a learner completes a course or curriculum
- A way for managers or admins to create and track individuals’ learning paths and progress
- Integrated course authoring tools
- Support for managing enrollment and participation in instructor-led training
- Automated reminders and notifications
- Robust certification and/or licensing modules for tracking regulatory requirements and/or career planning
- Gamification built in through contests, leaderboards, and badges
- Discussion boards for social learning
Webinar & virtual classroom platforms
Videoconferencing, webinars, and other forms of synchronous virtual learning serve many purposes: they are used for conference calls and meetings, for informal or social gatherings, and for formal learning or training. Synchronous learning means that groups of learners are present at the same time.
In some platforms, learners might be able to interact with one another and with the instructor using a variety of tools.
While any videoconferencing platform can be used as a training platform, dedicated virtual classroom platforms offer richer feature sets that may better meet the needs of formal synchronous group instruction. Most videoconferencing tools offer a chat feature and options for participants to use icons to raise their hand or indicate a yes or no response.
Virtual classroom
A virtual classroom is an online learning environment that allows for synchronous learning with an instructor and multiple learners participating simultaneously, from different locations, and generally supports considerable interaction via text chat, audio and video, shared whiteboards, and other features.
A virtual classroom platform might offer additional tools, such as breakout rooms, shared whiteboards, and a larger range of response icons and polling options, that a more business-oriented videoconferencing platform lacks. These tools enable instructors to engage learners more actively during virtual classroom sessions; some also allow instructors and learners to upload resources or assignments.
Integration with an LMS makes it smooth and seamless for learners to move between asynchronous eLearning, discussion boards, virtual classroom meetings, and other elements of a comprehensive online training course or curriculum.
Microlearning platforms
A microlearning platform delivers short, narrowly focused lessons or training sessions, often to a broad variety of mobile and desktop devices. The content might include chatbot-based conversations, text messages, videos, podcasts, games, flashcards, reference “cards” (short texts), and interactive activities.
Microlearning platforms vary in the type of content and delivery they support. Some use only a specific format, delivered using an app; others are more flexible and can integrate with your LMS and other types of online training content.
Some microlearning platforms use adaptive delivery, described earlier, to target content to each learner according to that learner’s needs.
Integration between your LMS and your microlearning platform makes it easy to design a training strategy that seamlessly moves learners from introductory microlearning material that teaches basic concepts and vocabulary, to deep learning in an eLearning course, and on to review and a knowledge retention campaign using microlearning.
Using integrated tools provides learners with a comprehensive and coherent experience that teaches, reviews, and solidifies their understanding of essential content; they might not realize that they are using several different learning tools and platforms.
Supporting supporting tools and resources
Your online training ecosystem is complex and relies on a host of technology solutions beyond the delivery systems.
Managing online training projects and contributors requires project management skills and tools to track and plan budgets, deadlines, and status. Collaborative design and development projects need a system for inviting and managing reviews and revisions and seeking team member input.
CHAPTER 8
Moving Forward with Online Training: Practical Steps and Possibilities
As we conclude this comprehensive guide to online training, it's clear that the landscape of learning and development is rapidly evolving. Online training isn't just a trend; it's becoming an essential tool for organizations looking to stay competitive and nurture their most valuable asset — their people.
Depending on the topic areas and skills your training will cover, as well as the skills and availability of a training design and development team, you might consider several options for obtaining training materials. These include developing them in-house and sourcing them from online training vendors.
These questions will help you determine the most suitable approach for your organization.
This approach allows you to test the waters, learn from experience, and make informed decisions about scaling up.
By anticipating these challenges, you can develop strategies to address them proactively.
Viewing online training as a long-term investment rather than a quick fix can help you make more strategic decisions.
Taking the next step
Time to explore online training for your organization? The next step is to start planning. Consider:
Remember, you don't have to figure everything out on your own! Experts and resources are available to help guide you through the process.
At Neovation, we've formed partnerships with numerous organizations to navigate the world of online training, and we understand that every situation is unique. If you're ready to discuss how online training could benefit your organization or have questions about how to get started, we're here to help.
Reach out for a conversation about your online training goals and challenges. Whether you're just starting to explore the possibilities or ready to take your existing program to the next level, we can support your journey.
Online training can potentially transform your organization's learning and development efforts. The right approach can lead to a more skilled, engaged, and adaptable workforce. The first step is simply deciding to explore your options.
Are you ready to take that step?
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