How To Measure The Effectiveness Of Your Online Training Program?
by Abdul Aziz Mondal Job & Career Published on: 06 April 2022 Last Updated on: 23 September 2023
Online training is not a new concept. It’s just that after the COVID-19 pandemic, online training became more pervasive and acceptable by many organizations. Until then, its mere use was restricted to only the education sector. As offices began to shut down, companies began to change their mode of training as well. After all, learning should never stop.
Online training permits employees to have a similar experience as they would have felt in a physical classroom. The majority of information is delivered live by an online instructor. The lectures can also be pre-recorded and stored in the online digital library. The employees can access the eLearning material at their convenience.
They have the ability and opportunity to ask questions to acquire a greater understanding of the topic and to clarify concepts they have not completely grasped. With online training, community forums can be created where employees can share their experiences and knowledge.
Online training thus, has the potential to solve a plethora of problems. But it is not an easy task. There are issues related to engagement, retention, creativity, etc., that need to be addressed. It also needs to be ensured that online training is feasible to track, assess and maintain records of employees’ performance regularly.
Let us try to understand why measuring the effectiveness of your online training program is important?
Importance of an effective online training program
An online training program aims to deliver quality eLearning content to online learners. It requires a lot of planning, R&D, and time. You can measure the effectiveness by knowing the response of the learner. If the online training program is effective, employees or learners will stick to you for the long haul.
Here is how you can measure the effectiveness of an online training program:
1. ‘Engagement’ in an Online Training Program:
Most of the employees feel disengaged, meaning they are checked out, sleepwalking through the day, or getting trained for the sake of certification.
If they are disengaged, you can hardly expect them to perform well. Their theoretical knowledge may get enhanced but would be unable to implement it in a real-life scenario.
Such engagement-related issues can be resolved using online training assessments, gamification features to develop intrinsic motivation to learn, and also making use of videos, animations, and other learning tools to grasp employees’ attention. Social learning tools can also be incorporated to provide a space for networking, collaboration, and interaction. Engagement is a crucial factor when it comes to online ethics training.
2. Learning outcomes
Learning outcomes should be in sync with the learning objectives of the online training program. For instance, if you are a software and IT company, then make sure that by choosing a particular eLearning course, the employee can impart excellent skills in coding, cyber security management, and so on.
Unless the eLearning course fulfills the purpose, it won’t be considered effective.
An LMS software company like Docebo can be very useful in providing the best solutions for online training.
3. Knowledge transfer
Online training programs shouldn’t be considered effective if employees are not able to implement the acquired knowledge in the real life. For example, an employee undergoing sales training needs to have a piece of comprehensive knowledge of the product or service he’s going to sell.
Any miscommunication or insufficient knowledge transfer to the customer may end up dropping the revenues of your company. As the training progresses, they are expected to exhibit their skills properly.
4. Behavioral change
Behavioral change is another parameter to understanding the effectiveness of an online training program. Behavioral changes can be observed through the following:
- Are employees applying the knowledge and skills they received through training?
- Are employees accessing the eLearning course material stored in the online digital library?
- How many times has eLearning content been accessed?
- Are employees accessing the online training tutorial videos for revision?
- Are employees taking part actively and sincerely in the discussion forums?
- Are employees taking frequent assessments despite low or high scores?
Behavioral changes help you to understand the breaks, barriers, and boundaries in online training.
5. Completion
The effectiveness of an eLearning program can also be measured by looking at how many employees have started a course and completed it. The higher the completion rate, the higher will be the effectiveness of the online training program.
If the employees are procrastinating their training, means either they are disengaged or disinterested in the online training. You must try to unearth the causes behind such delays.
Maybe the eLearning content seems to be boring, or the online instructors aren’t delivering lectures well. The user interface, no mobile accessibility option, and poor translation can also be the potential reasons for delays.
6. Response
The response of employees to eLearning courses is another parameter to know online training programs’ effectiveness. You can compute this by checking if employees are enrolling or signing up for eLearning courses or not.
If you do not see them signing up for the eLearning course, it could mean that they could not find the course they are looking for, don’t know how to enroll and register, or maybe don’t recognize the need for a particular course.
Another way of measuring the response is through surveys. You can drop feedback forms in employees’ mailbox to know whether they are satisfied with the services or not. This is very important and needs to be looked upon every time a new employee enrolls in your course.
7. Assessments
No training is complete without testing the employee’s knowledge. Once he completes the eLearning course, you can conduct online training assessments, where a variety of techniques can be used to assess employees.
For example, quizzes, survey-based questions, multiple choice-based questions, true or false, etc. You can also use branching scenario-based assessments to test the practical knowledge of employees.
8. Retention
Online training programs should not just aim at providing the necessary skills and knowledge but also aim that knowledge disseminated is retained by them for a longer period.
Otherwise, there is no point in spending huge money and time on content creation that cannot be stored in employees’ brains.
Knowledge retention is a sign that the learning techniques used by the company are fulfilling the purpose.
9. Cost-effectiveness
An online training program’s effectiveness can also be measured by the cost incurred to develop the eLearning courses and the outcomes produced by it. If your expenditure is high but unable to bring desired results, then such an investment is not cost-effective.
Thus, measuring the cost to performance ratio can truly help you determine the effectiveness of an online training program.
Conclusion
An effective online training program can meet desired goals, provide easy access to the eLearning training program, ramp up your company’s revenue, bring behavioral changes (like increased concentration and engagement), and better learner satisfaction.
As technology advances, more parameters and techniques can be developed to measure the effectiveness of online training programs. You can create your own KPIs (key performance indicators) also.
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