Building Your Online Corporate Training Strategy

More companies than ever, both small and large, are considering ways in which they can introduce eLearning in their bid to boost the skills of their employees. Many companies are opting for eLearning because, when implemented correctly, it allows employees to learn in their own time. If they have access to a computer and an internet connection, they will be able to take part in online training. Of course, putting together a corporate training strategy is easier said than done. We do want to take you through the steps required. You will need to do further research, but you should get enough information to point you in the right direction.

Create a Detailed Outline

If you wish to put together a successful corporate training strategy, you need to be organized. It is important that you come up with an outline of what you wish to teach on the course. The main benefit to having a ‘plan’ is that you will be able to expand it with your key talking points. Once you know what you are talking about, it is going to be far easier for you to stay on-topic. A side-benefit of creating a detailed outline is that you will be able to determine which areas you do not have that much knowledge about. This will spur you on to do research or, better yet, get in touch with an expert who will be able to help you plan your course.

Determine the Intent of the eLearning

It is important that you know who your target audience is. You will want to know what they are planning to achieve from your teaching. In an ideal world, you will have an idea about what their experience is with the subject that you are teaching. This will ensure that you do not cover areas that they already know about. This will save time. Of course, it will also mean that you may have to explain some ‘simple’ concepts during the training course. Basically, you want to ensure that nobody on that course is going to be ‘lost’ with what you are teaching.

Focus on How You Should Deliver That Content

Yes. We live in an age of computers. Everybody and their grandmother should know how to use one. However, when you are devising your eLearning strategy, you need to assume that the person you are teaching has never used a computer before (unless you are offering an advanced computing course, that would be awkward). This is going to have an impact on how you are going to deliver the content. You want to know that whatever system you opt for is going to be ‘easy to use’ for the learner. You want them to be able to get through all the options with ease.

There are several methods that you can utilize for content delivery. We are not going to go into depth on them here. However, most courses are going to boil down to one of the following:

- Video recordings. You record videos and the learners will be able to watch them at their leisure.

- Text content

- Webinars or live seminars. These are live videos where you will be able to interact with the viewers.

In an ideal world, you will use a combination of all three techniques to deliver the best education. However, we do not live an ideal world. Video recordings are easy to digest, so most people go down that route. However, we do suggest that you combine those video recordings with some quality text content. It will help to reaffirm the points that you are covering.

Once you have determined the best way to deliver your content, you need to plan how your lesson is going to pan out. This is important as you are going to want to avoid ‘information overload’. In fact, information overload is going to just cause the employees to become bored. If this happens, they are not going to take in any information at all.

Try to break the information down into some nice ‘bitesize chunks’. Do not be afraid to split the course over multiple lessons. For the heavier subjects, this is probably going to be worth it. The only information that you should be discussing is information that is going to be completely necessary to the employees. You may want to dress this up with stories that can make the content a bit more interesting, but, for the most part, you just want to keep everything to the bare minimum.

This is one of the reasons as to why it is important that you come up with a plan at the beginning. The last thing you really want to be doing is ‘straying off topic’.

Visual Aids

Studies have shown that visual aids can really help when it comes to learning. It leads to better information retention. People can absorb the information far more easily. When you are devising your eLearning strategy, you will want to try and come up with some visual aids that you will be able to incorporate into your learning.

Group Collaboration

This is something which we see a lot in eLearning environments. Group collaboration works well. Now, since you are online, it is unlikely that everybody is going to be in the same room, learning. This is fine. You do not need that. You do, however, need to provide them with the tools that they can use to learn online. Encourage them to use social media platforms to interact with one another. You may even want to encourage them to use these platforms to give you feedback on the course, anonymously if you wish. This is because no education should be set in stone. You probably are not going to get it right straight away. It may take a while to develop your style. Feedback is going to come in very useful here.

Determining Success

Finally, you want to know how to determine success when it comes to your eLearning. We have already covered the fact that you should be soliciting feedback from your employees, but you will want to go beyond this. You may want to carry out tests to ensure that the employees have learned the information you are teaching. If they have not, you may want to consider your teaching methods. Be prepared to adapt. Adaption is the hallmark of a good online training strategy.