Reasons Why Traditional eLearning Needs To Go

Organizations using conventional eLearning probably spend more time on delivering the teaching than evaluating its efficiencies and success.

FREMONT, CA: Today technology has helped education experts and researches in making exceptional enhancements in the industry of eLearning. Once widespread in the 90s, the traditional eLearning approach still dominates the learning space. Some eLearning providers continue to put their clients through incredibly tedious digital training and ignore the opportunities that are offered to make it an engaging activity.

Traditional eLearning goes back to the process where employers send PDFs to the workforce and brand the practice as eLearning. Most staff using conventional eLearning methods has come across experiences leading to a dreary experience.

In a frantic attempt to add an interactive touch to their eLearning process, some providers have added extra features to their courses. Furthermore, the providers claim that the lessons are engaging and their learners are still submitted to the old text-heavy material. The issue eventually begs for a question: if a resource is nearly impossible to learn from, then can it even be called eLearning?

Drawbacks of Traditional eLearning

Here are a few reasons why traditional eLearning needs an overhaul.

Poor Retention Rates

Providers of conventional eLearning training are still failing to surmount a huge pitfall of the instruction process—the forgetting curve. The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve theory states that one can lose up to 90% of new knowledge within a week. Given that employers want learners to remember the training and trigger behavioral alteration that boosts productivity; short-term learning is not their chief goal. Traditional eLearning offers nothing but a tick-box exercise, which once is over, is forgotten about.

Passive and Uninvolved

Good interactive eLearning actively teaches and acts as a guiding hand leading learners through the course while grabbing their attention and engaging along the instruction way. Poor eLearning does none of this and submissively presents students with pages of dull, dry information, leaving pupils bored and equally overwhelmed. For instance, the difference is similar to learning from a teacher, whose attention is solely on the individual and learning by reading a leaflet. The tutor leads the way but places the learner in the driving seat. The higher level of involvement is the key to a better learning experience.

Monotonous

Clicking or browsing through pages of text becomes tedious very quickly, leaving students much more prone to being distracted by their phones, emails, or colleagues. eLearning should be engaging and diverse throughout to keep learners on their toes. Additionally, the instruction should also stop them from becoming diverted.

Lack of Assessment

The organizations using conventional eLearning probably spend more time on delivering the teaching than evaluating the efficiencies and success. Even, as usual, eLearning can successfully communicate a few facts all through the course, the majority of information will be forgotten not long after, without a long-lasting effect.

The road after efficient eLearning should look something like the below points:

• Knowledge: The learner upon completing the course knows all the information.

• Skill: Students should be able to execute what they learned from the training.

• Attitude: The practice has influenced them to do the right thing, which is worthwhile.

• Confidence: The student needs to have the confidence when applying the teaching.

• Commitment: The learner should be able to carry any given task.

Inflexible and Unresponsive

Most things today are available at the fingertips, and more people are doing things on-the-go. Likewise, eLearning needs to become readily accessible anywhere and on any device, as no person would want to be restricted to completing a course exclusively on a desktop. If the learning process fails to meet the needs of a modern workforce, the engagement will also be a failure.

Organizations should be moving beyond the ticking boxes and implementing eLearning that has legitimate meaning behind it. The learning should overall engage the learner, provoke thoughts and significantly create a long-lasting affirmative behavioral transformation.