Assessment best practices for eLearning Platform
The ultimate goal of an elearning course development team should be to create the best possible elearning platform courses they can while saving time and reducing cost.
This can only be achieved by following best practices. Here are 10 of the most effective elearning assessment best practices that will help your team get it right every time.
Define The Elearning objectives
The first step in an effective e-learning development process is learning objectives. A set of learning objectives describes what will be achieved as a result of completing a training program or instructional session.
ELearning objectives also enable trainees and instructors to determine whether specific learning requirements have been met by measuring knowledge, skill, and/or attitude changes.
Whether you’re designing an online simulation for medical technicians or establishing goals for an employee training program, it’s critical that you think about what you want participants to learn during their time with your instructional materials.
The more clearly defined and measurable your company’s elearning objectives are, the better able you are going to be able to assess training effectiveness and prepare for future growth.
Align elearning with business needs
Many businesses believe that knowledge transfer—that is, teaching employees how to do their jobs better—is key to boosting performance. But that’s not always so; often, as a business owner, you want workers to be able to do rather than just understand why they should do something.
To provide training aligned with real-world needs and expectations of today’s employers, assess workplace needs by working closely with employees in various departments.
Use employee input when designing and creating instructional content for a more impactful learning experience. After all, if learners aren’t gaining new skills or achieving greater efficiency at work after going through your elearning courses, then it doesn’t matter how much time and effort went into building them.
Integrate non-designers into the elearning design process
Just because you’re not a designer doesn’t mean you can’t be part of a elearning design process. In fact, you should be!
A lot of successful elearning training projects included non-designers, who then gave valuable feedback on what they would prefer and find effective. The more people who have their hands in a project, the better it will come out—so don’t rule yourself out. And even if you are designing but aren’t a professional designer, getting some user feedback early on will help take your designs to another level. Find a few good people (both designers and non-designers) and get them involved in testing at an early stage so that when your elearning courses are launched they will really work for your users.
Incorporating user feedback into elearning course development is especially important as more organizations move towards blended elearning approaches with less instructor contact time.
Use standards based formats in Elearning Courses wherever possible
The standards based formats such as SCORM are widely used by eLearning applications and other learning management systems. This makes life easier for both developers and end users because these formats can be used directly without having to convert them.
If you want to save time, do it properly from day one rather than wasting time creating an equivalent version for a proprietary format. Also use standards based file formats such as HTML, so that files can be viewed on all operating systems (PC or Mac).
Using interoperable formats will also help search engines like Google index your elearning course material more effectively.
Simplify, simplify, simplify Elearning Courses
The aim of an elearning assessment is to gauge how well a learner has learned a topic. That’s it! To do that, you only need to ask 1-2 questions about their understanding.
This can take one of two forms: true or false and multiple choice questions. Yes or no questions are preferred as they allow us to more easily identify where learners have gaps in their knowledge.
Multiple choice, on the other hand, are good for assessing recall and familiarity with concepts. These are both things we would like our learners to possess at varying levels—so it’s important that you know what kind of question you’re asking.
But, essentially, you only need 2-3 questions per elearning outcome.
Remember: don’t overcomplicate; keep it simple! Also be sure to include alternative methods of delivery besides click next.
For example, if an elearning assessment involves answering a series of short answer items within a quiz scenario, be sure to include detailed explanations next to each question so that learners can refer back if needed before continuing on with the rest of their assessments.
Do not assume anything from your learners–make sure each item requires some action from them so that you can better assess whether they fully understand each concept.
ELearning Agency - Elearning Platform
Customize elearning content to learner’s needs
When assessing your learning, a quick tip is to test how well learners are able to apply what they learned in your online course by asking them questions about some elearning content you covered.
If they can’t get it right, see if there was something you left out, or maybe there’s a way for you to reword or better explain it. Remember that learning occurs on multiple levels, not just through text but also through pictures and videos.
Don’t forget these elements when customizing elearning content!
Give learners a choice of path through the content
Choosing a path through content gives learners ownership over their learning experience. Make sure you have enough options (5+ are ideal) to ensure that each learner can come at a topic from a different angle if they want.
Not only will they feel more in control of their learning, but it’ll help them recall material later on down the line. It can also encourage engagement; once someone has invested time into an activity, they’re likely to see it through.
Even better, tracking which paths people take through elearning content lets you uncover patterns and generate more targeted suggestions for learners who seem stuck in certain areas. This allows you to cater future course iterations much more precisely.
Incorporate multiple forms of content delivery
Include interactivity and assessments within videos, webinars, and presentations—depending on your subject matter, you can also include these modalities within documents or other written content.
All of these formats get learners engaged with real-time learning. If they’re working through a live webinar or presentation, or watching a video that includes polls, questions, or discussions, they’ll have opportunities to pause and reflect on their learning.
And if you use well-crafted pre- and post-assessments after each module in an online course (or chapter in a book), learners will walk away with clear evidence of what they know—and what they still need to work on.
They might even take those self-reported pre-test scores back to their employer as proof of what they learned. Using a variety of platforms and types of media helps break up content, so learners aren't falling asleep during information overload; it also gives them different ways to engage with material that works for them.
Plan for ongoing measurement and refinement
Just because you have a finished product doesn’t mean it’s time to move on. You’ll want to plan for ongoing measurement and refinement of each part of your process. Set up goals, collect data, and analyze results so that you can continuously improve.
This will help ensure that you get better results in less time, with fewer resources. It also helps prevent issues like scope creep; if you have people measuring results (and expecting changes), scope creep is a lot less likely.
Scope creep often stems from good intentions—if an initiative isn’t working as well as planned, there may be pressure to give it more resources or add more features in order to fix it.
While new features might seem to solve short-term problems, over-relying on them creates long-term difficulties: feature overload leads to user overload, which leads to disengagement.
If you have an established way of tracking progress and looking at changes over time, teams are far less likely to add unnecessary (or ineffective) effort. For example, if your goal is increased completion rates among users who need 40 hours of training before they can use a specific software tool effectively but completion rates aren’t rising fast enough after six months, consider changing any one or more of these elements: User characteristics: Are users completing training primarily out of interest? Workplace motivation? Or are they mandated by human resources?
Build in opportunities for collaboration, feedback and revision
As learners work through an online course, it's critical that they receive constant and consistent feedback—and see those ideas evolve into better ones.
An example of a good opportunity for collaboration and revision might be asking learners to comment on each other's blogs or videos. By fostering these types of opportunities, you'll give them more ways to interact and improve their skills. Remember, it is always important not just how learners respond in a set time period but also how much they have improved from when they started.
For feedback on individual assignments and check their progress against previous submissions, consider using automated grading tools like intelligent auto-grading. Using an intelligent gradebook lets you see who needs help with what assignment. It will allow you to assess and track student progress throughout each module, while giving you helpful insights as well as options to support students’ learning along the way.
You may find that some of your students are struggling with certain topics or concepts so can create sections within specific lessons to provide additional support. This ensures all students are kept engaged and keep learning, regardless of whether they struggle more with some areas than others.
Conclusion
Just like in any other field, it’s important that eLearning and online training professionals remain abreast of current trends and advancements in their chosen industry.
Today’s technology is constantly changing. What worked a few years ago may not be effective today, so staying on top of trends is crucial for success. And now you have an idea of 10 of the most effective elearning assessment best practices that will help your team get it right every time.