the analyst’s corner
Champions’ mealtime
Seriously improving the quality of your e-learning 00 Standfirst
David Perring breakfast of Champions!” A
His words were a condensed version of a quote from Ken Blanchard, the leadership guru, who actually said “Feedback is the breakfast —and the lunch, dinner, and midnight snack—of Champions!” And the thrust of that quote was that no world- class performer ever develops their talents without meaningful feedback on their performance. Now, what triggered the quote were conversations
about how to create more effective e-learning content and how essential learner engagement is for success. What struck me was how low feedback featured in the quest for better content. Not just from stakeholders, but from anyone, and heaven forbid, especially the learners themselves.
While there is no doubting the expertise of those presenters etc, there is a blind-spot that a lack of feedback can create. Not only for how effective content is, but more importantly, what would make it better. So, my big questions for you are:
n Who do you gather feedback from? n How do you gather it? n What aspects of your e-learning do you get feedback about? Now, we could end it there, because even beginning to pull answers to these questions is a massive first step. Naturally there is always the temptation to just look to our sponsors for feedback. After all, they tend to pay our salaries, and commission or provide the recommendations for
series of conferences and events over the past month prompted me to remember a good colleague of mine, who used to say “Feedback is the
the next project. In reality this is the bare minimum. What we see, as analysts, is that higher performing e-learning teams actually go to their learners not just with a post-course assessment but they engage learners at the design and development stages as well. That way they know that the approach ticks all the boxes with the audience. In the simplest form it ensures learners get what they need, presented in the best format, with the easiest access, when they need it and with the structures that will bring it to life. Getting broad feedback is always helpful. But, if you want to objectively raise the quality of your e-learning materials you probably need to be getting specific feedback too, about: n Learning design – the structure of the learning content, levels of interactivity, pacing, approach to reinforcement and assessment and integration into wider learning support resources.
n Graphical and media impact – the professionalism and appearance of the content, its layout, use of sound and media richness and the appropriate use of media.
n Ease of use – the overall intuitiveness of the learning, its navigation, quality of instructions, clarity of iconography, progress tracking and consistency of navigation.
n Language style and tone – the solution’s use of language, its reading ease, pitch, tone and style.
n Overall learning experience – the level of engagement created by the e-learning, its effectiveness and overall impact on the learner. The big but, though, is that gathering feedback isn’t enough, especially if you are on the journey of continuous improvement and on a quest for quality. While feedback might be the breakfast of
champions, there are two more things that are critical. First is acting on that feedback, and second is measuring and monitoring the effect of the changes you made, to see if it’s made things better. That’s the difference between potentially being a champion and being a total legend.
Legends not only think about gathering feedback, they also think about analysis, benchmarking, diagnosis, prioritisation, action planning, execution, measurement and monitoring. They instigate a process not of managing feedback, but of continuous improvement. So, do you have a process for continuous improvement? If you consistently use external partners to develop your content, you will instantly be able to recognise how seriously they take you, by the quality of continuously improvement processes they use with your projects. If you are not at least going through a project
closure process that includes improving the development process and content, then you probably should start to demand that now. It raises standards and increases the quality of the partnership with the content developers and the quality of their ideas. If you mainly use internal development teams and
So, if you want to deliver great e-learning – you’d better start getting their feedback and start to act on it
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subject matter experts (SMEs) as your development resource, then it’s potentially even more critical. That’s because it is a fantastic way of fostering a community of excellence and promoting best practices, by holding up a mirror to what people think about materials, setting benchmarks, recognising opportunities and creating a roadmap for making it better. Either way, quality improvement always begins with the customer. So, if you want to deliver great e-learning – you’d better start getting their feedback and start to act on it. Ultimately, if you don’t have a process to help you continuously raise quality, you’re very unlikely to.
David Perring is director of research at Elearnity @DavidPerring
e.learning age september 2014
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