3 smart ways customers check the quality of their elearning materials
4 minute read
You think you’ve created a great corporate elearning course – but can you be sure? Quality reviews are a crucial step of any successful elearning development process. They’re the best way to confirm your course is truly meeting your project goals, creating ROI and providing an engaging, on-brand learning experience.
Read on to discover our top tips for reviewing elearning content like a pro.
Why checking the quality of your elearning materials is crucial
The review stage might seem like an easy step to miss out on when time is tight. But the risks of poor quality elements slipping through can have a hugely negative impact:
- Losing sight of the bigger picture: If you don’t check back against your original course goals, can you be sure they are still being met? Reviews give you the chance to revisit this and keep goals front and foremost in your design.
- Learners become frustrated: If links are broken or navigation isn’t intuitive, learners will quickly become less engaged (and less motivated for future courses if this is reflective of what’s to come).
- It can confuse your brand image: Digital learning courses are generally designed with brand guidelines in mind. Even the smallest of typos can reflect poorly on the quality of your brand image and make corporate elearning feel out of place amongst other internal communications.
- It can damage the L&D team’s reputation: As great as the content in your course is, a messy execution can impact how learners and stakeholders view the quality of online learning in the business as a whole.
Building a dedicated review cycle into your process is a must (however good you think you are at checking typos as you go!). To help you with this, here are 3 smart ways customers check the quality of their corporate elearning:
3 smart ways to check the quality of elearning content
1. Check beyond functionality and typos
Functionality testing (like checking links, interactions and navigation) and proofreading are the most obvious tasks when reviewing the quality of a course. But there’s more that needs checking for a truly high-quality online learning experience:
- Are your goals still being met? As a course develops and the nitty gritty of content decisions are being made it can be easy to lose sight of this. Remind all reviewers of the impact the learning needs to have. If it’s not being met, take action to fix it.
- Is the course in line with your brand and tone of voice guidelines? Check to see if the course is reflecting the quality of your brand.
- Are all learners getting the same quality experience, no matter how they’re accessing the course? View your responsive layouts to make sure the digital learning is just as good on smaller devices. Make sure any accessibility needs are being met too – for example, check that images don’t contain important text if you are catering to learners using screen readers. Take a look at this blog post for more on creating accessible elearning!
2. Test and iterate
Don’t save reviewing until the very end of a project. The most efficient process is to test early and incrementally (especially if elements will be repeated across one or more projects). This will enable you to save time by catching any errors sooner rather than later, avoiding the need to make lengthier fixes later down the line.
3. Test with real users
It’s all well and good for the L&D team to check the quality of the online learning – but actual learner feedback is often the most valuable. You might think that gamified quiz is a winning design, but ultimately it’s only the end user who can say if it’s really improving their learning experience (or actually easy to interact with!).
By gathering a focus group early on in the production process you can see if your course is genuinely going to engage learners and create impact.
In conclusion
The review stage should be an essential part of every corporate elearning author’s development cycle, no matter the size of the project. It makes the difference between hoping for the best when it comes to quality, and ensuring the best is met.
Reviewing projects is so fundamental to the success of online learning that our product research team are currently looking into ways to improve the experience. If you’re an Elucidat customer and would like to be involved let us know! And if you’re not an Elucidat customer, we’d still love to hear from you if you face challenges with ensuring your elearning is of a high quality.
Click here to join other customers in our research!
If you’re interested in learning even more about how to implement effective processes that help manage quality, see this article on managing quality at scale.
