Future-proofing your eLearning is a key step to ensuring your learning experiences and content stays relevant and flexible. The world moves fast nowadays and information changes with it at break-neck speed. The last thing you want is to spend time and effort working on a comprehensive eLearning budget and programme, only to find it goes out of date in just a few short months or years.
Luckily, there are ways and means of staying ahead of the curve and give your courses the longest shelf-life possible. Not to mention stay up to date with the latest eLearning trends. And the benefits of this just keep on coming. Future proofing eLearning courses will provide you with the agility to adapt to new technologies and learner preferences, save time on formulating new courses and (last but not least) ensure you get the maximum ROI for your L&D program. Winner!
What Does Future-Proofing eLearning Mean?
Creating comprehensive, compelling and engaging learning experiences requires a lot of time, effort and careful budgeting. In many cases, multiple teams are involved in their creation. From content and design teams to developers, along with at least a couple of rounds of testing.
Future proofing your eLearning means taking into account changes that may occur in the future and making your content as easy as possible to update. Doing this improves the longevity of the learning, as you don’t have to worry about it going out of date. It also ensures your learners stay engaged as they are given the most relevant information on a subject.
Why Is Future-Proofing eLearning Important?
Imagine you create an induction module for new hires. To begin with, it’s great! New employees can use it to quickly get up to speed with who’s who and what is what. Woohoo!
But what if that induction doesn’t get updated over time but remains in circulation? Now, your new hires have got a head full of outdated information. This can lead to slower times to productivity, awkward conversations and, in some cases, low engagement.
There are, of course, more dangerous and wide-reaching consequences depending on your businesses. Outdated compliance training, for example, can lead to hazardous and costly mistakes if employees aren’t up to speed on the latest information.
Never fear, however. We’ve put together our top tips to help you future-proof your eLearning for whatever the next few months and years might hold. Read on!
Tips For Future-Proofing eLearning
Be Aware Of Maintenance Agreements
If you’re working with an agency for bespoke or off the shelf eLearning, ask about maintenance agreements early on. Maintenance agreements will outline what elements of your courses can and can’t be changed – and at what additional costs. You should also make sure you confirm who owns the files and how you can alter them. It might be that you have the power to make simple changes yourself which could save you time and money.
When planning your eLearning budget, you should also consider future updates and training. While you might not be able to predict the future, you should anticipate future changes to ensure you don’t overspend.
Make Sure Your Files Are Open
Authoring and publishing files should be easy to open and read by people and software. This includes text files, regular HTML files and XML files. Having the know-how and tools to do this will make it much easier to make simple text updates.
Structure eLearning With The Future In Mind
Bite-sized learning as a part of a larger piece is much easier to update over time. Sometimes, changing one thing can lead to breaks in other areas, which is time-consuming and frustrating. While it is tempting to go in hard and develop very complex structures, it’s likely to come back and bite you in the future. By keeping a solid structure, you’re less likely to encounter annoying breaks later on.
What’s more, having eLearning in bite-size chunks, makes it easier to chop them up and offer them individually. This can make your eLearning go much further and be even more effective.
Avoid Time-Bound Information
Including irrelevant names and dates can leave eLearning looking outdated, which makes it hard for users to engage with. Instead, carefully assess how relevant every line of content is for your learning experience. Consider whether it’s really needed for your learners and whether it will help change their behaviours or improve their skills. If the answer is no, it can be left out.
Of course, it’s not always easy to keep content generic. With that in mind, ensure you make a note of information that might need changing over time, such as names, dates, policy names, and job titles. That way, you can easily alter it if and when it does change.
Consider Your Timing
If you want to launch a course on a process, but it isn’t properly defined yet, then it’s ideally better to wait if you want to avoid making changes or shoe-horning unexpected additional information.
Make Courses Responsive
With the right planning, you can make your eLearning courses compatible for all devices. Doing this will avoid having to create multiple iterations of the same training and allow you to roll out the content much quicker. For example, take care to avoid activities that require swiping the screen with your finger, as this would not be compatible on a desktop.
Here at DBLX, we are passionate about creating show stopping learning experiences that go the distance. If you’re looking to future-proof your eLearning strategy, our teams are on hand to help from start to finish. Get in touch today for a free creative proposal for your next eLearning initiative.