Now what? So you’ve decided to take your training online. There is an audience eager to access your expertise, you’ve narrowed down your topics, you’ve have identified your target audience, and you’ve even selected an authoring tool. Now what? Despite the common assumption, developing a successful eLearning course is not as simple as transferring your Powerpoints to an online environment. However, it’s not rocket science either. The secrets to eLearning success lie in between purposeful planning and engaging interaction.

Every day more companies are opting to convert their classroom material to digital courses. Fitting for modern learner needs, eLearning allows a continued education option for those who want to train anywhere, anytime or master a subject at their own pace. Also, by going digital, companies cut down training costs as the recurring instructor fee and logistical costs are shelved off. If you are one of these companies eager to convert your classroom training to eLearning, you must first understand what mistakes to avoid early on. Certainly avoiding them alone won’t be enough to guarantee great results from day one. However, they will guide you in establishing a strong foundation.

Elearning is widely used by companies to facilitate continued education among employees. It saves costs as well as allowing workers to learn on their own time and at their own pace. As we all know, an excellent instructor not only offers in-person interaction but has a way of conveying the information to keep students interested. If the instructor is to be removed from the learning experience, then the most important thing to consider is how you will maintain the quality of delivery and engagement despite this change in dynamic. Without an instructor guiding through slides, how can you bring the content to life? Without the classroom discussion, how can you introduce examples to further develop points? It’s important to keep this challenge in mind as it will help you navigate the decisions ahead. Luckily, once considered, it will help you create a new dynamic in which students will eagerly breeze through the course.

Looking at websites of some of the biggest companies in the world (think Apple and Google), you’ll see they’ve come a long way regarding web and graphic design. From the days of cramming in as much content as possible, we’ve entered an era where every line, image, color, and call-to-action is well researched and tested to grab your attention, keep you engaged and make you take action.

So, you have completed your eLearning course or module, and you are ready for learners to begin learning from it. Does this mean that you can move onto the next project and forget about the existing one? Absolutely not! If you think of eLearning Designers as project managers, you begin to see that there are specific ways in which to interact with already created courses. There are essential questions to ask, features to check, and maintenance windows to update in any existing course.

Every job position should be viewed in its entirety, from the hiring process to retirement (or resignation/firing). Organizations must provide the circumstances and resources necessary to develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities of their employees every step of the way. This point of view helps organizations set their employees up for success, and has the added benefit of improving employee retention and engagement.

If you could change just one thing about your company that would increase employee productivity by over 200%, would you do it? Yes, of course, you would! But you’re probably thinking that such a change would be infeasible or incredibly complicated in order to have that kind of impact, right? You would be mistaken. It turns out, all you need to do is more of what you’re already doing: training and developing your employees.

The role of the SME is often not given enough importance – but the fact is that without a good SME who can work with you to effectively convey the content that is needed, your eLearning module is doomed!