Suggestions To Create A Stress-Free eLearning Setting
This is how you create a stress-free eLearning environment for overwhelmed employees
Have you heard of the seven-minute silence? It’s a theory that after seven minutes of any conversation there is a moment of awkward silence. What about the seven year itch? The supposed moment when couples question their marriage bond? Here’s a new one: the seven-minute route. It’s supposedly about how long everyone can focus on a task before they get distracted by their phone. Whether the “holy number seven” has any meaning, it remains clear that employees are often disturbed by their devices. Here are 6 tips to help you create a stress-free eLearning environment where you can stay focused despite the beeps and hums.
Take the stress out of your eLearning experiences
1. Leave room to make room
The feeling of being overwhelmed does not only come from our “pocket bosses”. Digital distraction is just one of the things that tire us out. Add to this the long commute, domestic duties and a rough economy. Many of us support growing children and aging parents at the same time. It’s all too much. Yet these overworked workers still need additional training to secure their finances. Give them the time to do it. It makes a difference when you allow your corporate learners to learn at their own pace. You can plan your course assignments around home and office assignments. Fixed study times add to the pressure they are already exposed to and can lead to dropout. Breaks between the learning units also create space for acquired knowledge to seep away and to be incorporated into long-term memory.
2. Segmented studies
Divide your online training content into small, easily consumable parts in the same way. This gives them bits that are more easily picked up and retrieved, which makes distributed learning easier. To ensure that everything isn’t lost between sessions, incorporate tactical repetitions. You don’t want to patronize your employees, but you need to loop through key learning materials.
It is also helpful to make it easier to navigate your online training course. Your corporate learners have enough small (and not quite so small) fears in their daily lives. Make learning easier for them by providing plenty of reference materials. Design your online training with fast cross-reference systems, including glossaries, clear tables of contents and offline links. It is essential for offline learning.
3. Let them guide you
Allowing corporate learners to control their own learning is encouraging. It gives them a sense of autonomy and achievement, and boosts their self-confidence. Online training should be a student-driven endeavor, and you can encourage it. Make searches easier by letting them flip through their study material. Facilitate one-word searches and long-tail searches so they can find exactly what they need without asking for help. If they need help, build in automated options like chatbots and online discussions. Add a character to the course to guide you through the course. The character can be a virtual librarian or a fellow student so the staff can still feel like they are doing it themselves. Leave the duration of the online training open so that they can last as long as they need it.
4. Tense your learning muscles
Flexibility is the most important aspect in creating a stress-free eLearning environment. Employees who look after elderly parents, small children or disabled relatives need a lot of free time. By letting them devise a schedule to work from home a few times a week, their feeling of overwhelming decreases drastically. Bring this aspect into your studies. Create the online training course in a cross-platform format. Design it to work equally well on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and even smartwatches. Also, make offline learning easier so that you don’t have to be constantly connected to the internet. That way, no matter where they are or what they’re doing, they can learn in fragments. The convenience increases the likelihood that they will graduate.
5. Offer personalized online training pathways
In traditional learning, learners have to go from start to finish. In an online training course for adult learners, this is not always necessary. There are topics they are already familiar with, through their work or previous online training. You may want a refresher or targeted online training for a specific skill assessment. Make your online training content fluid so that it can skip certain topics or start at the end and work your way forward. Similarly, incorporate different study options to accommodate different learning preferences. Text-based learners will want to read important parts. Visual learners prefer videos, infographics, and charts. Interactive learners work better with gamification. At some point, all apprentices in companies want audio clips so that they can learn passively while working, driving or exercising. Let them mix and match a combination that works for them.
6. Create a supportive eLearning corporate culture
Encourage employees to share their opinions and concerns so they know how important their contributions are. Set up a social media group where they can collaborate and share challenging training topics. Overworked employees look for permanent support to accompany them through difficult times. Therefore, a supportive eLearning corporate culture is essential to give them the boost they need. They can even develop a peer-based coaching program that allows them to share information and tips, or a learner-created library that facilitates feedback and provides just-in-time support when they run into problems in the workplace.
Overstrained learners in companies do not necessarily shy away from higher education. In fact, many take online training courses to find new jobs and positions that will lower their stress levels. However, you need to work with their “revision”. Otherwise, they will not receive anything from the online training. Let them learn at their own pace. Break the online training course into smaller sections that can be accessed across multiple devices, with or without an internet connection. Provide an animated character to help out when needed and provide plenty of self-accessible references.
Conclusion
Another way to get overworked employees excited about training is through a live event. Read article 6 Secrets to Hosting Leadership Development Webinars and Events for Remote Workers for tips on how to host successful online training workshops to hone in-house talent.
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