eLearning is like the proverbial Prometheus’ Fire. It will deliver great good for your employees, improve engagement and increase knowledge assimilation. As an L&D leader, you should avoid the following mistakes to help maximize its effectiveness.

1. Digitizing traditional offline or using existing traditional content: Traditional content such as long videos, lengthy documents and classroom training techniques are not symbiotic with eLearning. Content will have to be created and designed to be engaging, and interactive.
2. Not creating mobile friendly courses: While this is a must for on field sales force, it is important to roll out mlearning for all employees. Employees spend a lot of time on their mobiles and it is imperative to make learning as informal and accessible as possible, even outside the work place.
3. No effective assessment tools: Putting out the most engaging and interesting course, with no way to assess your learners, is a waste of your and the learners’ time. Put out quizzes and exams for each section, and the entire course. These tests should be short and fun. Use Images, videos and blurbs as part of the assessment to improve engagement.
4. No feedback mechanism for the learner:  Learning is a two-way street, the higher the engagement with the learner, the more the learning. One of the primary reasons for drop-off in engagement is the lack of an effective feedback mechanism for the learner to express her views on the course. Listen to what your audience is saying and act on them.
5. Unclear learning objectives: Why have you set this course up, what do you want your audience to gather, is this course to increase knowledge, boost productivity or develop objection handling skills? If you are unclear of the outcome of the course, your learner will be even more unclear. Lay down objectives at the beginning and design the course to fulfill these objectives. Gather feedback and conduct assessments at regular intervals to modify the course.
6. Clunky and complicated UI/UX: So, you deployed the latest and most expensive Learning Management System (LMS) in town, but the adoption rates are low and dropping. This might be because its to complicated to navigate. Always approach eLearning from the learners’ point of view, not the creators.  The simpler and more intuitive the UI, the better the chances of learners engaging with it.

By  Venkataraman Ananthakrishnan, Head- Online and Global Business at QuoDeck