Good content makes a course engaging – The biggest myth of employee training

MOOC MOOC everywhere, not a course retained.

Well, it’s nothing but true because studies show that the average completion rate of online courses is less than 10%.

There are thousands of eLearning courses in the world focussing on every possible industry and niche. Such low retention rates can only mean that there is a collective misconception about the idea of what consists of an “engaging” online course.

Here are a few factors that might be responsible for the failure of your eLearning course.

 It’s good content, ONLY.

Imagine you are a kid again and you have been asked to pick a school of your choice. You have two options.

Both schools teach the same subjects, impart the same knowledge with the same quality of educators.

School 1: Teaches with the help of colorful books written in the style of comic dialogue. These books are enacted and discussed in class and all the students are involved in those discussions.

School 2: Uses thick, black-ink books which are read and explained by the teacher and all the students make notes.

It’s not a difficult decision to make here. Mostly, you will be inclined towards School 1 simply because it’s “more fun”.

The same thing happens with the development of eLearning courses. The course developers work really hard, employ SMEs, research every topic thoroughly and produce the entire course. Now, even though it is the most authentic, accurate and high-quality content, the way it interacts with the learners is a crucial property of online courses.

It lacks Interactivity

When a person signs up for an online course, be it for a high school subject or corporate business development training, they require study material that stimulates their minds.

Presenting a lot of complex information without enough interactive exercises can, ironically, prove to be more distracting for the learners because they fail to keep attention on the lesson.

This is why, adding practical examples, exercises, quizzes, questions and even demonstrations for certain topics is rather necessary. To ensure not just better retention of knowledge but also constant interaction among learners is crucial for the success of an eLearning course.

In a setting where an educator is responsible for teaching, the lessons are made interactive simply because the class becomes a discussion ground which keeps people on their toes, involved and focussed.

But when a person chooses online learning, they lack the interactive environment because of isolation. Ans, compensating for that lack of interaction through course design should be one of the top priorities of eLearning content developers.

It lacks engagement

Boredom can be easily considered one of the biggest reasons why learners quit courses or skip classes. One example of boring means of learning can be the traditional, older methods where mainly text was used to teach in classes.

But we have progressed technologically enough to have way more engaging methods of learning. Video content, animations, descriptive images, gamification, etc, are some of the ways to build learner involvement.

In fact, videos and gamified courses are becoming extremely popular for corporate training, thanks to their effectiveness and you can easily compare eLearning content providers’ courses for grasping the best practices for course creation.

Lastly,

The most important thing to keep in mind while developing an eLearning course is to keep the content target learner-centric and relevant. Good content is vital for the success of your course but the way you present that content is even more important.