How To Evaluate Your Corporate eLearning Program

How To Evaluate Your Corporate eLearning Program
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Summary: Evaluation is the real test of any L&D methodology. The same holds true for corporate eLearning or online training. This article suggests helpful tips to help organizations evaluate whether eLearning is having any effects on its employees or not.

6 Ways To Conduct A Corporate eLearning Program Evaluation

Getting an eLearning program designed and implemented for your organization is not an easy task. First, there is the need analysis, where an L&D manager has to analyze the needs of every department (every individual employee in the case of custom eLearning). Once that’s done, we come to content curation, where the L&D manager has to sift through countless pages on the internet, as well as other resources, in order to find content suitable for employees.

When this monumental task is complete, the designing comes next, where first a framework of the eLearning program or a storyboard is sketched out by an Instructional Designer, which is then brought to life in form by a Graphic Designer, of course. Then, there’s the task of finding an LMS or learning management software to easily deliver and schedule the eLearning program for each employee. Whew!

Unfortunately, the task’s not done yet. What about the evaluation? You could create the best eLearning program under the sun, but what good is it if doesn’t provide results? And how do you know whether it has succeeded or failed? Evaluation is the end-game, the most important part of a corporate eLearning program. In this article, we’ll discuss some methods to evaluate your corporate eLearning program.

1. An Online Forum

Your employees are the ones taking the eLearning courses. So, what better way to understand its flaws or drawbacks than by knowing their honest opinion? Create an online forum where employees can discuss on how to improve your eLearning program. The feedback you’ll get will be invaluable. However, make sure to have a moderator present in this online forum who can get the discussion back on track, if and when the conversations get off-topic (as they are likely to a few times).

2. A Focus Group

You could also hand-pick a few employees who’re good at analyzing things and give them a pilot test before you actually launch the eLearning course for the general employees. Get their feedback after the pilot test, or better yet prepare a set of questions for them in advance. For example, what drawbacks are evident in the eLearning program? Which part resonated with you the most? Did the eLearning program actually have learning that could be applied in real life? This method of evaluation ensures that you correct any flaws in the eLearning program before it’s actually introduced to employees.

3. Surveys Or Questionnaires

This is the most traditional method of evaluating any training program, and it has survived the test of time because it actually works. You get quantifiable data through surveys and questionnaires, which can easily be worked upon and the eLearning program is fine-tuned according to the results. Just make sure to ask the right questions, centered around the learning objectives decided upon in the need analysis, as well as the final outcome of the training.

4. Video Interviews

Sometimes a higher-up asking questions about an employee can dig up information that the said employee might not be willing to share in an online forum, or in a survey or questionnaire. Although video interviews may take up time, not all employees need to be interviewed. A well-mixed sample containing employees of various age groups, computer skills, departments, and positions should be interviewed to ensure that you gather data which is impartial, objective and accurate.

5. Assessments

Assessments are the real ‘tests’ which will tell you whether learning is taking place or not. Assessments should consist of MCQs (multiple-choice questions) as well as true-false type questions, so that it is simple enough, but designed in such a way that maximum measurable data can be accumulated. The data will tell you what each individual needs to master, and what they excel at. You could also conduct pre-assessments to evaluate employees on a sort of ‘before and after’ basis.

6. Statistics

The big one, as always, is statistics. If the graphs are not moving up or down as expected, something’s wrong. The department that is consistently performing bad, and is immune to the eLearning program requires an updated program, one which focuses on the skills lacking.

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