Attention all agencies working with elearning: here’s your holiday reading list.
If there’s one lesson 2021 taught healthcare agencies, it’s that training and communication is in a state of change. If you don’t pay attention, you might miss the best way to reach out to your staff to educate them.
If you’re used to offering remote training to their staff, that’s great. It means there are more resources out there for managers like you who feel comfortable with elearning. If it’s new to you, it’s OK too, because there’s a wealth of intriguing information out there to help you reach your team.
Lucky for you, we’ve sorted through this year’s tips from the Talance team of experts and put them into one easy-to-access place. Here’s your chance to catch up and make the most of your online education program and ace remote training for the year ahead.
[Keep up on tips like these, as well as insights and analysis on elearning with Talance’s newsletters.]
Scheduling Your Program
1. Create learning cohorts for your program
Scheduling is at the core of any remote training program. When you’re ready to offer your course to your staff or other participants, think about their schedules too. A helpful strategy is to divide up the program year and your participants into rotating cohorts.
Some reasons for creating learning cohorts are:
- Managing big groups of participants. This is helpful in case you have the capacity for handling 25 students at once, but 250 would be too many to manage.
- Grouping people together to guide them through a learning path. This is common when learners begin with basic knowledge and advance to more intensive learning.
- Providing learning opportunities throughout the year. Your agency’s hiring schedule might change depending on funding, the season, and other factors that mean people will enter your program at differing times.
2. Set a schedule for completing coursework
Setting a schedule is a good way to make sure everyone completes their work on time. It also will help you have enough time to address questions, check assignments, and make updates.
Here are some tips for setting a helpful schedule:
- Before the course begins, add time to your calendar for administrative duties. For instance, every other day works well.
- Set expectations upfront by telling learners when course assignments are due.
- Send regular updates and reminders to keep participants on track.
Managing Virtual Learners
3. Set a schedule for yourself and participants
Developing a structure is important for yourself and for the learners. Setting a schedule is a good way to make sure everyone completes their work on time. It also will help you have enough time to address questions, check assignments, and make updates.
Here are some tips for setting a helpful schedule:
- Before the course begins, add time into your calendar for administrative duties. Every other day works well.
- Set expectations upfront by telling learners when course assignments are due.
- Send regular updates and reminders to keep participants on track.
4. Get learners participating right away
It’s easy to disappear in a virtual classroom because no one is watching your chair. Prevent this from happening by setting the tone for participation. Ask remote learners to log in early, tell them to introduce themselves to others, and encourage questions frequently to keep the course lively.
Here are some ways to ask for feedback from participants, including:
- A forum designed for general thoughts
- A survey at the end of the course
- Polls throughout the training. For example, ask how relevant they think information is or how long it took them to complete a module.
- Asking for thumbs-up or thumbs-down emojis on your team chat channel
- Direct questions about how the material relates to their work
Read more about ways to build participation in remote training here.
Optimize Learning Materials
5. Chunk material for easy learning
The average person can stay focused and engaged for 45 to 60 minutes before they need a break. Think about the meetings you’ve attended, and how long you’ve been able to sit in your seat without your mind wandering or needing to stretch your legs. The same applies to virtual classroom settings.
The most effective online lessons are broken into chunks to make it easy to work through them. Building modules of 30 minutes to 45 minutes are a good guideline to keep people motivated.
6. Use a variety of formats for your learning materials
By relying on a single format (video, audio, reading materials, etc), you’re potentially limiting people’s access to your course. Besides the fact that not everyone learns the same way, presenting your course in multiple formats is also more inclusive. Someone with visual impairments may rely on audio presentations while someone whose home environment is loud may prefer transcripts. And giving them the possibility to choose ensures that both can get the same information.
7. Translate your online learning to different languages
Accessibility for online learning is not just about mobility or physical disabilities. If your staff is culturally diverse, English may not be everyone’s native language. In this case, they may struggle to work through online learning and the program’s results will suffer. Not to mention the low morale learners may face as the training becomes more challenging.
Preparing Your Team for Online Learning
8. At the beginning of a course, send every learner an orientation quiz to see how much they know about elearning.
Ask participants to rate themselves in these areas:
- Comfort taking an online course
- Uploading and downloading files
- Researching information online
- Sending and receiving e-mails
- Participating in discussion forums and message boards
- Experience using video conference tools (Zoom, Skype, Google Meet)
9. Onboard online learners
Welcome participants into your program. Onboarding online learners is a lot like onboarding regular learners, except easier. You can begin by distributing the resources as a folder for students to download and review. This folder includes:
- Course requirements
- An evaluation calendar
- Educational resources (PDFs, videos, slide presentations, and more)
- Logins and credentials for any program you’ll provide (your LMS, company email, etc)
- Guides or tutorials for the software
- Contact information for instructors and admin staff
10. Give plenty of time to get ready
Give your team enough time to familiarize themselves with the tools and the content they’ll be learning. For this, you’ll want to send the resources at least a week before the course is set to begin.
Tracking Metrics
11. Measure course participation
As an agency, leveraging data from course participation can save you time and resources so your team can focus on your main goals. The trick is to be systematic about it and know how to interpret the types of data that your learning system provides. Also make sure that monitoring progress and behavior is part of your performance and progress reports.
12. Collect satisfaction ratings
A learner satisfaction survey, even a simple one, can help you gather data on how much your participants value the training. Higher satisfaction equals higher engagement and success overall.
Some basic satisfaction questions you can add to your evaluations are:
- The facilitator answered all my questions.
- How would you rate your experience in this course?
- Which parts of the training are most useful in your job?
Learn more specifics in 10 Training Metrics to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Remote Training Program.
