In e-learning too, content is king

With the advent of Internet, companies all over the world have scrambled to provide online corporate learning programs. Training and development managers often try to incorporate as many courses as possible to their training platforms. It has never been easier to offer access to thousands of videos, lessons and e-learning content, all at a fairly reasonable cost and accessible at the click of a mouse.

So, what’s the problem? In the rush to add more and more courses to their Learning Management Systems (LMS), many companies have neglected the quality of the content. With hundreds of courses at their disposal, but with no consistent classification and not tailored to the interests of employees, the latter can feel overwhelmed and unmotivated. Some online training providers offer as many as 7,000 courses. However, quantity has never been synonymous with quality, and this is also the case with corporate learning.

When confronted with such a bewildering array of e-learning content, we have to give priority to quality over everything else. One of the main tasks of training and development leaders in the 21st century is the selection of the most appropriate courses for each of their departments and employees. Organizations’ LMSs must be better and more useful than Google or YouTube, where employees can access millions of lessons and tutorials of their own accord. As has often been said about the film industry and journalism, in e-learning too content is ‘king’.

If you want to offer your employees the most appropriate content, you first have to identify their interests and needs. Then you can check what courses are likely to help them grow personally and professionally and that will really motivate them. And, finally, identify and select quality content that will be useful, practical and applicable to real life. This is the only way to ensure that your employees will not only complete the course (which only 30% of workers do, according to a study by the consultant Forrester Research), but that they can also improve themselves and grow together with the company.