It didn’t take long for her to open up about her issues “John, we just couldn’t afford to bring people in from all over for 4 days of instructor led training. The flights, hotel, food, materials, instructors, and most importantly time out of the field wasn’t something we could bear anymore. So we made an investment in an LMS, bought and built SCORM compliant content and after 12 months, that’s not working either. I just don’t know what else to do.”

Her issues weren’t different than many others I had heard over the years.  They all had similar complaints.

Instructor Led Training is the best, but too expensive. Yet online learning doesn’t quite do the job.

So are organizations just supposed to accept this or try do something about it?

After years of trial and error, we have come up with the most important components that must be present to get online learning to do the job and change learner behavior.

1. Assessment – A knowledge or behavioral assessment at the start of any online learning program is imperative. By doing this it gives the learner an understanding of their current state to motivate them to improve.
2. Content that Connects-Connecting with the learner through stories and examples is what makes it stick.  The earlier connection stories can be positioned the better because of learners shrinking attention spans.
3. Content that Expands – Content that expands the mind or gets the learner to think differently than he or she thinks today is paramount. This is often the hardest part for content creators, but easily the most rewarding when it comes fruition.
4. Practice and Application – Providing opportunities to allow learners to practice and apply what they learn is critical to changing behavior. There are all kinds of ways to do this, but the most important part is it’s present.
5. Social – Using social media like functionality to hold learners accountable and engaged is a powerful factor to ensure online learning actually changes behavior. News feeds, comments, sharing, are all good ideas.

All 5 of these are critical components in our ‘Getting Leadership Ready’ Online Program. Here is a an example of the learning model used to ensure knowledge transfer.

If you can relate to the challenges and frustrations shared by our client at the beginning of this article, don’t feel beholden to them.  Use each of the 5 components and a similar learning model to get different results.

Getting Leadership Ready. LearnLoft’s out of the box training approach to helping professionals understand what leadership is all about and to stand out as potential leaders. Find out more here.