Have we built measurable content, events, and interactivity for the material that transcends prevalent web standards?

Is the module intuitive and easy to navigate?

Can your employees relate to the module? Does it accurately reflect their experiences in the workplace?

Does the module reinforce the correct information upon both successful and incorrect completion?

What is the retention value of the module? Have we presented this in a way that people will remember going forward?

The most accurate way to measure the success of eLearning is by studying behavior or incident reports over the longer term.

• To be sure, short-term retention of the information can be studied using module quiz/test results. However, the advantage of digital allows for more sophisticated approaches to measuring overall comprehension of the training effort.
• Where certification is desired, modules can be designed not to let the learner move on until they have passed a test.
• Periodic reminders of the important points covered in training are important. Consider unusual ways to reinforce your message.

Whether using multimedia, HTML, it is important to stick to clean design and have a consistent interface for your users.

• Try to stick to a common interface for your training modules. It should be simple and intuitive.
• The interface should get out of the way of the content. The goal is to have learners absorbing content, not clicking the UI.
• Display a list of the modules of your course at the end of each lesson, identify which have been passed and which have not.

Whether you're training people for technical tasks, how to safely do their jobs, or how to interact with customers, you need your learning result to actually create a change in the workplace vs grading well on a test.

• Introduce learning from new experiences.
• Utilize “problem solving” and scenario based learning. A learner possessing low problem solving skills will only be able to solve problems with a low challenge. Solving problems will increase the learner’s skills. To keep learners motivated, the challenge has to increase as the learner’s skills increase.
• Create a “baseline” to establish what you want or expect your learners to know at a minimum. How can you grade the effectiveness of your new training efforts without having an established baseline?

An all to common error occurs when stakeholders write or develop new training efforts from a limited view or without their own empirical knowledge of the realities their employees actually live with on a day to day basis. This approach can lead to the creation of an anemic learning module at best or actually be a waste of time, money and efficiencies.

• best in class businesses that validate their training, actually benefit immediately by gaining insight into factors that may be causing poor performance and/or changes that have been introduced by processes, workflows or shifts in management over time and under the “business radar”.
• Only 48% of best in class do this.
• It opens new doors to alerts and actions that can be introduced to help measure and monitor behaviors you’re trying to develop or remove in the workplace.

How content is displayed on a web page does not necessarily represent how the content is organized and structured to the viewer. Formatting tools and proper editing will make for a better and easier to understand learning experience.

• Don’t just bold titles and headers—use the correct ‘styles’ to organize and treat different levels of headings: H1, H2, H3, H4 or (A) Head, (B) Head, (C) Head etc.
• Don’t use hyphens or other characters to manually mark up lists—use the bulleted or numbered list styles.
• Don’t use tables to style content—unless you are presenting an actual table of data.
• Don’t use colored, highlighted or underlined text to make passages stand out—use bold for importance, italic for emphasis, and blockquote for call-outs or quotes.