3 Key Things To Remember When Moving Your Training Online

The power of online training

Online training conducted via a Learning Management System (LMS), often powered by SaaS technology, is becoming increasingly popular as it provides a digital training space that both learners and trainers can engage and interact with. An LMS has two main advantages:

1. Trainers can create interactive content, deliver the materials to their learners, and track their training all in one place.
2. Learners are able to access training content anywhere, anytime

By switching your manual training to online, your organization can consolidate and optimize, adding value to your business.

3 key things to remember when moving your training online

The biggest problem when undertaking online training is keeping engagement levels high. A study by Qualtrics found that 31% of trainers faced challenges when it comes to learner engagement levels.

To overcome this hurdle, companies worldwide are embracing a learner-first training model, prioritizing the learner at the core of the learning strategy. Because when training revolves around the learner, the result is increased engagement, improved training outcomes, and ultimately, more efficient and happier workplaces for both trainers and learners.

Tip #1: Know who you’re training

This may sound like a silly suggestion at first, however, when starting to create any training, most trainers focus on choosing their tools first, rather than understanding their learners before building their training out.

A learner persona refers to the representation of a group of learners. These personas encompass both demographic (e.g., age, department, location) and psychographic (e.g., learning motivations, preferred methods) information. This approach ensures a nuanced understanding, guiding trainers to tailor methods for optimal engagement.

Though you might encounter various personas across training groups, the key isn't to craft distinct training for each individual (realistically, most of us don't have the time to do so!). Rather, the focus should be on identifying learning requirements per persona, shaping training materials with these unique needs in mind.

Tip #2: Integrate different materials and tools

Now that you’ve understood your learners and your learning goals, it’s time to select your training tools and begin designing your online training program. It's crucial to maintain a learner-centric approach throughout this process.

While LMSs offer a plethora of useful features, it's important to recognize that they're not the only training tools available. Consider incorporating various resources such as video, podcasts, predictive learning software, and even social media. Here, the versatility of authoring tools becomes evident, as most of them seamlessly integrate with SaaS LMS solutions, amplifying the training experience. This dynamic integration empowers trainers to craft a robust, well-rounded training program that aligns with the diverse needs and preferences of the learners.

When you’re designing content, there are three key principles to create learner-first training materials:

1. Make it interactive: This should be like a two-way street—the learner must be able to interact with both their training content and with their training. You want to engage your team to invest critical thinking skills so they enjoy the training more than having to read a basic manual.
2. Challenge your learners: This refers to creating content that has depth, formative assessments, and gamification, in turn, leading to engaging and powerful content. Teams that experience this type of training typically have higher knowledge retention rates.
3. Sharing and recognition opportunities: This refers to the learner being able to share their knowledge and content completion either via a certificate or results. Recognition can vastly improve the training experience and incentivize your team to do well.

Tip #3: Evaluate your training

After you’ve completed your training, it’s important to evaluate your online program so that you can improve your future training. Effective training assessment will allow you to clearly see where your training is successful and not so successful.

Training evaluation should not only be from the trainers but also the learners. Trainers should evaluate how if their learners have learned anything and applied that learning, which should be measured quantitatively (e.g. results from pre and post-assessment).

Learners should be able to gauge their understanding of the training content through their learning results, however, trainers should also provide feedback with their results so that students know how to improve for the future.

So what's the wrap?

The learner-first training model is an effective way to create an online training program that is proven to provide a powerful and meaningful training experience as it focuses on the learners themselves.

However, there is some serious groundwork in successfully implementing this model as it aims to tailor content to your learners and requires evaluation and improvement regularly—but who said success was easy?