Course Timeline is Too Long

Perhaps you have put too much into the course. Trying to please a client or employer by cramming too much information into the course can be an issue. The course becomes too long to handle in the time frame allowed. Don’t let your employer or client convince you to include every little detail in the course, as this will water down the course and make it less effective. Spend the time getting in what crucial for the learner. Keep your modules to a maximum of 20 minutes and split large modules accordingly.

Boring Courses

This can be caused by trying to keep the content too corporate. eLearning need to have a bit of humour in it to engage the learners. That said, you don’t have to make this a comedy show, no, just use enough humour that learners will enjoy doing it. If you can say something in fewer words, then do that; don’t put in loads of text just to justify having loads of content.

The Material is Not Relevant to the Learner

Your content, the material that your learners will use must be relevant. All too often designers create content based on other courses they have seen or read about in an article. Remember that your course must have the “What’s In It For Me WIIFM” factor to keep your learners engaged. If they are not getting something out of the course then they will become bored and the retention rate of the materials learned will be very low.

Presenting materials to a learner that is too advanced for their development is also another issue to watch for. As an example, I have three HACCP Food & Safety Courses, which are aligned with three different learners and their departments. Even if I roll out the three courses to all employees in the kitchen, it would not work because employees in levels 1 & 2, would never get the opportunity to work with the level 3 materials in a practical way unless the became restaurant managers.

Mismatched Styles for Your Target Audience

There are several things that go into making up the “style” of a course. Things like the graphics, colour scheme, writing style, and narrative tone all come into play.  Obviously, these are details that need to be discussed with the client or employer before to beginning work on the project. The thing is, these decisions not only need to play well with each other, but they need to be aligned with the company’s culture.

It is critical that you align your course. Some businesses have a young-spirited, free-wheeling’ sort of vibe going on, while others may be more conservative in their approach. One company might want their courses to be edgier and push the boundaries to resonate with their employee attitudes, meanwhile, others may prefer playing things much closer to their chest. It’s critical that you align the style of the course with your target audience, or else you may alienate them right from the starting block.

The Course is Too Passive

If your courses just include they learner reading or listening to content then they will lose interest in the learning supplied. If the learner is told what to do over and over, then, they will eventually just switch off.

You need to remember what Benjamin Franklin said “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” This holds true in life and in your eLearning course as well. Why? Because as humans we remember very little of what we hear because it alone is not sufficient to keep us interested, but when someone shows us how to do something we remember a lot more, but, when you involve the learner they remember and retain the most information.

So taking the opportunity to interact with your learner is so critical. Use opportunities where learners can interact cognitively will see the best results in your courses.

Lack of Stakeholder Buy-In

To have stakeholder buy-in, you must have every stakeholder involved in the project. Stakeholders are the key to a successful project start, development, completion and rollout. Stakeholders are the links that will enable you to find funding for the project, communicate what is required and ensure that the learners use the training in their departments.

You will need to involve stakeholders at the concept level, review cycles and revisions and finally sign off of the final project. Make sure that you are working with the right stakeholders, for instance, you would need to make sure that a senior manager or VP that is involved in a lot of travelling then it may not be possible for them to be involved in the review cycles of the project.

To ensure that you are getting buy-in from the stakeholders, it is important to include all of them in the process, allow them to have some ownership of the project, however small that role may be.

Conclusion

While these are just a handful of the things that can go wrong, they do represent some of the major considerations. Addressing and discussing these issues with the appropriate audience, prior to the start of course development, could mean major success. Not only for you but for all those involved.

If you’re not engaged with the course, then your audience won’t be either. Good research and stakeholder buy-in are critical to your project success. The inclusion of all stakeholders, learners themselves is required for all projects.