Communicate

Important communication

If there is one element that has the power to predict an eLearning course’s success, it is communication. The reason? eLearning demands a social collaboration environment to guarantee its success. Regardless of the environment, learning is a social event. Without feedback, opinions, arguments and discussions, learning is incomplete and sometimes even obsolete!

Communication through multiple channels and formats ensure eLearning is as social as any learning environment. As digital consumers, we have added several communication platforms to our lifestyle. With apps for almost all social media, we revel in the notification signal.

If you want your learners to engage regularly with your course, then we strongly suggest providing a mobile application version of your LMS. This app will notify your learners when a new message or announcement needs to be checked out. Make sure there is always something new to read: a blog, an expert advice, message from the president and so on. Broadcasting achievements through notifications is also a great way to keep everyone engaged and in the loop. Announcements of new courses also keep things interesting. Automated communication encourages desirable behaviors.

Automate it

We all know the familiar ping of a notification. Notifications can be enabled in many ways to ensure the correct message is conveyed at the desired time. There are many types of notifications available in a learning management system. Talk to the experts in the Information Technology Department, who selected, procured and installed the LMS for your organization.

Getting to know the features and functionality of your organization’s learning portal gives you a superior advantage in administering your e-courses. Simply request for your organization’s learning management system orientation session. Take notes of all the bells and whistles of the learning portal.

Ask yourself what features you need for your course? Is it updates on course changes? Is it the grade distribution? What about the latest trends in training strategies? How will you share this information? What if you have more than a hundred learners? How would you send out multiple notifications to multiple users? Automated notifications are the best thing that happened to course administrators since the idea of mass-emails! Learn about the various types of notifications from the IT personnel and utilize them to engage and retain learners in your ongoing and upcoming e-courses. Imagine sending one message to all learners at a click of a button. Also imagine, being able to write customized notes for special situations and sending them to the categorized groups of learners.

These and the following types of notifications are great to use, in order to keep your learners in your e-course.

What types can be automated?

• Words of encouragement

  Being proactive in communicating your expectations to your learners is the key to capturing and retaining their attention. Programmed messages that encourage the learners to continue working the way they are, boosts their confidence. You can change these messages each time you send them so that they don’t look identical!

• Reminders

  Reminders of assignment deadlines and upcoming quizzes aid in easier schedule planning for the learner. Use “add a notification to calendar” feature, if available, to sync timelines with your learners’ schedule. The schedule planner will further notify when the date is close. Guide the learners with short “job-aids” that demonstrate how to use the LMS schedule planner/calendar.

• Performance reports

  Busy learners will appreciate feedback on their progress in the form of attractive graphs. Statistics that show norm-referenced results or the mean scores of peers also enable learners to modify their performance. Assure learners that their privacy will be maintained at all times. Send out messages for grades and certificates ready for viewing and claiming respectively.

• Inform about help

  Enable chat message exchange between the learner and the moderator. Inform all logged in learners that a moderator is online for assistance. Following up after a concern is addressed will motivate learners emotionally. That’s another great way to alleviate the lack of trust syndrome in an online environment.

• Meetings information

  Lastly, notify your learners of any upcoming course related meetings with the facilitators. You can also request confirmation if they will attend or not. Similarly, other learning-related events or conferences can also be announced for anyone who is interested to attend. Such notifications build credibility for your e-course.