There are many factors to consider before diving into eLearning design. You might mull over general questions, such as: How long will it take to have relatable content created? What type of media will learners be most receptive to? How can we utilize project team members most effectively? While such general questions can be crucial to successful project completion, likely the best place to begin is with a dedicated focus on your learner. Personalized eLearning that accommodates various competencies and learning styles requires a consideration that caters wholeheartedly to specific learner needs.

For instance, you might begin by considering your learner’s weekly schedule and daily frustrations. Or, you might ask: How frequently will learners use the information I need to provide? Asking user-focused questions like these before you begin the design process ensures an empathetic approach—resulting in training that’s far more engaging than more broad programs, often designed without the learner in mind.

Put them first

No matter the service you provide, an in-depth focus on the end-user is an enormously important tool at your disposal. This is no different in the world of learning design. Any sort of learning should begin with a dedicated focus on the learner, but with eLearning, targeted engagement is everything. Virtual learning requires that you do your absolute best to keep the learner’s attention, by understanding their work environment and incorporating modularized or digestible courses, virtual activities, games, and reinforcements. Of course, the goal doesn’t change just because the setting does.

Open your tool kit

An essential part of the learning design process requires learner involvement as early as possible, such as by conducting interviews to fully understand skill levels, demographics, schedules, and working relationships. Early consideration of the learner ensures a human-centered approach. One example of this is the creation of learner personas.

Creating a learner persona allows you to personalize training for each learner or learning group, which results in more thoughtful habits that can be continuously re-aligned for consistency. This sort of personalized learning offers a more curated and customized learner-first approach resulting in an overall more efficient workforce in the long term. Once documented and shared across your team, learner personas can be implemented into the eLearning design process and used as reliable guideposts every step of the way.

Another useful tool is an empathy map, which should also be created early in the design process. Creating an empathy map can help you design training around specific learner priorities as they relate to over-arching workgroups. This tool can be used to categorize the results of learner interviews and survey responses, as well as any notes taken at the beginning of a project. Empathy mapping can also be extremely meaningful in helping to identify knowledge gaps that may require further training.

Empathy maps offer a great place to begin if you find it difficult to fully build out learner personas. Additionally, empathy mapping is like a guideline to measure every step of your design process against, which also helps you not make assumptions about what a learner might say, think, do, or feel. It’s important to remember, however, that empathy maps can change as new challenges and realizations arise throughout the eLearning development.

Apply a competency-based framework

While it’s crucial to begin the design process with a firm understanding of the learner, there’s also business goals to consider. This is where a competency-based framework comes into play, which can provide an overview of learner performance across an organization, as well as generically define expectations against which learners can be tested. A standard competency-based framework might involve the determination of role responsibilities, functional expectations, core values, conduct standards, and general behaviors across teams. It can help determine the best way to assess learners and allow you to meet them where they are.

A competency-based framework can also help create learner journeys dependent on up-to-date knowledge and training goals. Often, a personalized learner journey includes steps related to motivation, such as encouraging rewards for progress and effort. Furthermore, you can achieve real behavior change if you present opportunities for learners to apply their newfound knowledge on the job and with continuous support and reinforcements. In addition, you can stay engaged with the learner and feel confident in their competencies by developing options for mobile and social learning. You might also provide guides for management around how to follow up for continued mentoring after training has completed.

Measure learning outcomes

To ensure measurable outcomes, it’s important to develop actionable learning objectives from the very beginning of the design process so you know what to measure. Measurement of outcomes directly apply to the behavior change you want to see in the learner and can be assessed from the output of their work.

Another critical element to measure the learning programs against are key performance indicators (KPIs), which—similar to a competency-based framework—are also aligned to business goals. KPIs are metrics that help teams monitor and analyze patterns in overall company health and make adjustments as needed to reinforce learning through ongoing support.

SMART KPIs are determined by particular business objectives. They’re specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. Building SMART KPIs involves gauging strategic objectives, defining what success looks like for your learning organization and the learners with regard to those objectives, and determining the best ways to measure that success.

Another thing to consider when developing SMART KPIs is whether you’ll use an alternative or value-based approach. In general, KPIs offer a targeted tool for communications across an organization that keep leadership in the loop as they progress toward specific business goals.

To sum it up

Challenges are inevitable in the learning and development world. Before you begin development, you should consider all available tools in your tool kit—the most crucial being your understanding of the learner. Your learner should always be at the center of the design process because without them, you risk creating flat and unengaging materials, which in turn results in learning that isn’t intuitive or considerate to the learner’s needs.

Just as in-person classes require finesse and care in their design, so do virtual varieties of the same. We want our eLearning to be well-received, adaptable, and engaging—and the only way to get there is with a user-focused methodology from the very start.

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