Learning through electronic media and modern IT devices is getting increasingly important and reshaping the way we approach traditional studying methods. New eLearning models are emerging year after year, turning it into one of the fastest growing industries globally.
According to the report, the eLearning market will grow to $325 billion by 2025. It’s not a surprise bearing in mind the benefits of this studying technique:
- Every dollar invested in eLearning results in $30 productivity-wise.
- eLearning is generally shorter than classroom training by up to 25-60%.
You cannot, however, join the eLearning game unprepared and expect it to function flawlessly by itself. On the contrary, it takes a good plan to get the most out of it, so keep reading our article to learn seven major elements of a good eLearning development strategy.
- Think About the Curriculum
The first thing you need to think about here is how to design a curriculum so as to match the needs and requirements of the participants.
Try to learn as much as possible about participants. Consider their employment history, academic background, and think about language skills, professional goals, etc. All those details will help you to adapt and create a better curriculum.
At the same time, it is important to answer a number of additional questions:
- Where do participants come from and do you need to coordinate between various time zones?
- Is everyone ready to follow lectures in English or do you need to go multilingual?
- Do you have the right staff to do the whole work or do you need external support?
- Consider Assessment and Certification
The next step toward creating a solid eLearning strategy is to consider the issues of assessment and certification. There is a whole bunch of issues to think about here, so be patient and answer each question with due diligence. Here’s what you need to determine:
- Are you designing a single course or only a part of a bigger eLearning program?
- How do you want to plan and organize the learners’ pathway?
- How can you encourage participation and boost retention?
- Who is in charge of the certification process?
Keep in mind that all these parts of the strategy depend on the nature of your business and your field of expertise, so you might need to improvise on some occasions. However, these are general principles of eLearning strategizing that apply to almost every situation.
- How to Design a Course
The next question is how to design a credible course and ensure a flawless studying experience for the participants. Generally speaking, course designers are facing two options here: buy a generic off the shelf toolkit or find/create a unique and highly customized eLearning course on their own.
We never recommend the first solution unless you are really designing a simple course for amateurs and first-time users. Off the shelf eLearning software offers you a “one size fits all” solution that rarely ever fulfills the requirements of experienced course administrators.
On the other side, professional eLearning tools give you a broad scope of quality features. Although complex, they are also highly intuitive and don’t force you to spend too much time figuring out different functions.
If you want full control over the process, you can test tools such as Udemy or WizIQ. We also recommend eLearning beginners to consult with uk.bestessays.com and write my paper for possible content creation ideas and other course-related suggestions.
- Review and approval
The reviewing process is usually a pain point of the eLearning program because it demands a studious approach in order to reach the highest level of credibility. As the main course organizer, we advise you to supervise this process single-handedly and avoid improvisations.
You will, of course, need external assistance to help you assess and analyze individual candidates, but you should stay in charge of the overall candidate assessment and approve the results before publishing.
- Hire a Manager to Handle Administration
You are in charge of this eLearning course, but you can do it all by yourself. The best option is to appoint a course manager who will be in charge of administrative duties and keep an eye on all rules and procedures. It must be a reliable individual with enough authority to take charge whenever necessary and point out possible flaws of shortcomings in the process.
If you are a kind of person who likes to keep everything under control, you can still choose to do this single-handedly, but don’t forget to consider the scaling issue. While this eLearning course may be the only one you are organizing at the moment, who says you are not going to grow soon?
If there is any chance of growing and developing, you should build a more flexible system with managers, assistants, reviewers, and editors who will help you to build a more powerful eLearning unit.
- Maintenance and Audits
Responsible eLearning course developers don’t just create a course and leave it like that for a long time. This would be a huge mistake, so you must think about regular maintenance and program audits.
Let’s say that your course takes three months to complete. In such circumstances, you could run it four times a year and then end the cycle to conduct the audit. What you should do is look for possible changes and try to improve the curriculum.
Besides that, changes don’t have to revolve around the curriculum only since you can also analyze technical details and tools, test hyperlinks, improve course templates, and do many other things to make the program better.
- Evaluate the Course
Evaluation is the last element you should add to the eLearning course strategy. You don’t whether your program runs successfully or not if you don’t analyze the results. Generally speaking, you should always be looking for these two parameters:
- Return on investments: Does it pay off to organize and administer this course? Do you really earn money this way?
- Educational outcomes: Are course participants satisfied with the results and can they apply the knowledge to real-world situations?
- Conclusion
Before launching an eLearning project, you need to prepare for it and understand even the smallest aspects of the process because it’s the only way to create a perfect program for your target group. Be careful not to miss out on something and make sure to design a top-level studying plan.
In this article, we explained to you seven key elements of the eLearning development strategy. Keep our tips in mind and let us know in comments if you have any questions – we would be glad to answer you!