Are you exploring the ins and outs of how to create an e-learning platform? If so you’ll already understand the many exciting benefits e-learning can deliver to your business. As an experienced B2B website design agency we’re no stranger to building complex resources like e-learning platforms, which means you can relax, collaborate with experts, and create something powerful that might just change the face of your company for the better, forever. Read on to find out how to bring all the many benefits of tailored online learning to your world.
What is e-learning?
So what, exactly, is e-learning? The phrase simply describes the many ways you can consume knowledge and information online. It’s sometimes also called digital learning or electronic learning and covers a multitude of exciting resources, from straight courses and modules to Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and other innovative ways. As a whole it’s designed to engage people with the knowledge they need to maximise their performance and effectiveness at work.
The best way to deliver all this inspiring magic is via e-learning platforms. The method of learning they provide is flexible and fast, highly effective, exciting, and can be done anytime, anywhere in the world. Maybe best of all, it means your people develop a consistent approach and mindset that dovetails perfectly with the company goals, brand and values. And that’s the type of consistency that adds up to a lot more than the sum of its parts.
E-learning Platform Features
Here are some of the primary features that every great e-learning platform should provide.
- An enjoyable, user-friendly and intuitive learning interface to help people learn quickly and well, and help the knowledge stick
- Responsive design, so your platform works across every type of device, small screen to desktop
- Varied learning resources to cater for your employees’ different learning styles. Some people prefer to learn by reading, some by experiencing or doing, some are visual learners, others are auditory, or kinaesthetic. There are all sorts of different definitions, but the overall idea is to provide ways to learn that everyone will respond positively to and enjoy
- Automated learning paths let people keep track of their progression through the training, inspiring them to carry on and do even better
- Effective reporting and administration matters. You’ll need to be able to derive reports from the system really easily to do the best job of course updates, learner communications and so on
- Because one of the best ways to learn is often via collaboration, you need to build in collaboration capabilities
- Course creation tools are essential and they have to be easy for you to use, since you’ll want to populate your platform with appealing courses and resources
- Scalability is important too. You need your e-learning platform to grow along with your business, add more employees, and provide a wider variety of courses – which may involve many more learners are also more tutors
- Your business might have unique capabilities or needs of its own that you need to incorporate into your tailored e-learning platform design, something else we’ll be happy to help with
How to Build an e-learning Platform
What are the steps you need to take to build an e-learning platform? There’s a specific set of actions to take when you want to make a great job of it, which we’ve laid down below for you. Here’s some guidance around the steps businesses and organisations should take in order to implement their own e-learning resource successfully.
Identify the Target Audience
Before you can design an e-learning resource, you need to know exactly who you’re creating it for. It’s an audience thing, and the needs of your audience – as well as the business itself - will directly affect the end result. This involves your tutor as well as your learners, of course, and the first step is to pin down their technical capabilities. You’ll need to understand which physical devices they will be using to access resources, and you’ll want to take into account the three main types of learning people are likely to bring to the party.
The three main learning styles that need to be supported are Auditory, Visual and Tactile. Because, in the real world, most of us prefer to learn via a blend of all three, every learning style matters. It’s also about variety. It’s more fun, therefore easier, to learn when you’re constantly inspired by different ways of consuming knowledge.
Define the Business Goals
In order to figure out what learning resources to provide your people with, you’ll need to identify and then clearly define the goals you want the business to achieve. Timely communications and comprehensive training are just two of the things to bear in mind that can support business goals in all sorts of ways. You’ll also want to take a good look at the costs and savings involved, maybe in the form of a formal cost-benefit analysis. Your goals might cluster around future growth, focus on beating a particular competitor, or be all about keeping valuable employees you don’t want to lose. Once you’ve defined why you want your people to learn, and what you’re aiming for as a result of their knowledge, the design process becomes clearer.
Identify Key Features of the Learning Platform
Now you know who will use and manage your platform and have worked out the goals that it must support, you can get busy defining and listing the features required to get where you want to be. This is where current platforms come in really handy. There’s no real need to reinvent the wheel if there’s an e-learning platform already out there that’d suit your purposes perfectly. Check out a collection of them, jot down the features that make sense in your context, and create a list of physical attributes to build into your plan.
Choose the Right e-learning Platform Development Partner
At this stage you’re ready to collaborate with the right organisation to get the thing actually built. There are so many benefits to partnering with an organisation experienced in building and implementing excellent e-learning solutions, in other words a partner like us. With our support the project will move through each stage smoothly and professionally, you’ll be able to sign things off at specific stages, the whole process will be clear and transparent, and it’ll save you a fortune compared to trying to DIY or use a partner without the right experience.
Create a Prototype/ MVP
It makes perfect sense to establish a proper prototype to test. That’s just one of the many processes and procedures we put in place to ensure a quality design and build from start to finish. In our opinion it’s crazy to proceed without a prototype of the e-learning platform that can be tested by real users, those who will be actually learning on the platform and supporting learners. And that means everyone from course creators and administrators to the students themselves. We never under-estimate the abilities of users to notice when things could work better, spot mistakes, and suggest sensible changes to enhance the entire project. Better still when people have been involved, they’ll value the resulting platform even more.
Design and Implement Courses
Together we’ve built a tough, flexible, strong e-learning platform skeleton. Now you need to flesh it out. It’s time to design and implement the training courses and learning resources you’ve identified, the ones that’ll support the business goals you’ve dedicated yourselves to. Think carefully and creatively about the kind of content that will do the best job. You’ll probably decide on a fresh and exciting blend of interactive learning via video, VR, AR, written content, quizzes, collaborations, and tests.
Then there’s the future to plan. Will you incentivise the learning? Will you reward success? What extra e-learning content will you need to add as time passes, to keep your platform up to date, and will you want to retire any of it if it goes out of date?
And if you need any additional support, your local web design agency in Oxford are on hand to help.
Learn more about e-learning platforms
Now you know how to design and implement a hugely beneficial e-learning platform. If you’d like our support or want to know more, get in touch. At Intuitiv projects like this are second nature, so we’re perfectly placed to make the best possible job of it. Walk this way for superb B2B website development
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