6 Essential Elements for eLearning Success

Many articles have been writen to try and share with you the essentials elements that lead to eLearning success. As educational technology and strategies progress, learners become more advanced and proactive in learning. New rules and methods are constantly being tested and implemented to make sure that eLearning is succesful and that learners achieve their personal and professional goals. In this article, we’ll share with you 6 elements that are must-haves for eLearning success. Let’s see which ones of these you are familiar with and which you need to read up on.

eLearning is increasingly becoming the normative way to learn and manage knowledge. A core benefit of online training is that it is not an isolated learning process. eLearning is a social learning phenomenon. It is considered to be successful when learners participate, collaborate and co-create new knowledge based on the concepts covered in the eLearning course.

What are the key elements that make eLearning a socio-emotional learning success that motivates and triggers innovation?

How many of these have you experienced as a learner or witnessed as a trainer?

Honesty

A sense of safety and trust is mandatory for confiding and sharing emotions and opinions in an online learning environment. When learners post their messages, they trust that the posting space is open to multiple perspectives and that no comments are incorrect.

All participants posting their messages must feel that honest and sincere feedback will be given by peers and instructors. In order to be honest, honest opinions need to be shared. This includes hard–to–hear constructive criticism which, when presented respectfully, earns trust and faith in the learning environment. This factor is critical to developing persistent online learning communities.

Responsiveness

eLearning community members need to be reminded to respond to posts, comments, discussions and questions in a timely manner. Participants should be able to rely on each other, especially when it comes to group projects. When unable to respond to a comment on time, learners should be comfortable to share their personal reasons for being tardy. This human life element adds a layer of understanding between learners.

Trainers and course facilitators are also expected to respond to posts in a manner that conforms to communication norms and intervention protocols. Responsive interaction is one of the main activities in an online course.

Relevance

Learners should be advised to frequently share their personal and professional experiences related to the learning material. Drawing upon real-life experiences and defining how to make new knowledge useful for future situations is one of the benefits of collaboration in an eLearning environment. It is also the first step of group brainstorming.

Identifying new knowledge relevance to real life is an important element that leads to continued engagement with the learning materials.

Respect

Each individual in the eLearning environment needs to feel respected, and this is instilled by the course facilitator.

The tone of dialogue used when the trainer introduces themselves sets a standard for subsequent communications. When trainers use a polite and gentle tone, learners reflect back when composing their own messages. When trainers inhibit undesirable tone and messages, learners reflect back by correcting themselves and understanding their communication protocols.
The best way to achieve respect within the eLearning community is to have all members create a list of rules. The finalized list needs to be adhered to solemnly at all times. This act becomes the root cause of further respectful practices.

Openness

The direct product of honesty and respect is an online learning environment of openness. In an open learning environment, learners feel free to share their opinion without fearing judgement. Learners should not have any inhibitions when sharing their personal insights with peers. Neither should they fear being penalized in the form of grades by the instructor.

Also, in an open learning environment, learners know that their open and straight forward attitude will only lead to positive outcomes.

Empowerment

Empowerment is the feeling of intellectual and cognitive growth after a learning experience. These are those “a-ha” moments one experiences when they put peer opinion and personal experience together to understand a pattern. A truly constructive training environment is empowering. It places the responsibility of learning on the learners and lets them decide how to learn and where to apply their new knowledge.

This freedom yields greater creativity to form, share, apply and implement ideas that lead to empowerment. Learners discover the ability to interact with their new knowledge and are curious to receive more.

Empowerment in a learner encourages life-long learning. The course instructor can aid the learner to be more conscious of the feeling of empowerment in order to reap its benefits.

eLearning success depends on the degree of collaboration and the quality of mentoring available to the learners. Quality learning can only occur if both learners and trainers are informed about important aspects of the process and best practices.

Implement these elements for eLearning success in your Learning and Talent Development platform and develop a survey based on these: ask your learners and trainers about the degree to which they have demonstrated each element during the learning and teaching process respectively.

Embedding collaboration values like these will help enhance discussions and online collaboration for both the learner and the instructor.