How Effective Is Your Online Training Software

Learning through online training software in an organization is a constant activity. However, it is important to implement training as well as assess it on a continuous basis. There are many ways to ascertain how effective online training software is across an organization. With the right kind of LMS and various interactivities incorporated within the content, there is a lot that can be measured.

• A good and effective LMS has the online training software that should be able to track user data and give inputs on the courses started, finished or left mid-way. Modern LMSs are also equipped to ascertain the learners’ activity within a course and point out sections in the course where the learner spent more time or skipped altogether. This provides a guide to the learners’ preferred learning styles and can help chart a more personalized learning plan for him or her to increase the effectiveness of training. 

• Informal assessments like quizzes and short tests are commonly used within an e-course to ascertain its effectiveness and also e-courses help learners monitor their own progress. Mostly, the results are given instantly and this helps re-enforce learning. Most online training software allow multiple attempts of a particular test or quiz. By assessing the results of a learner’s scores, his or her progress can surely be measured effectively. If the scores are low and the difference between initial scores and final scores is not much, it could be an indicator that the training is not making its due impact and a different learning path might be best for the learner. 

• Most e-courses are designed to deliver pertinent knowledge to a learner-group. To make sure that the knowledge transfer has been successful, formal tests are conducted that constitute multiple-choice questions, true/false and cognitive assessments. Formal assessments are also an eye-opener to the effectiveness of leaning within a group of learners. Comparing scores of different learners with online training software can point to the need gaps of training for certain kind of learners within the group. 

• Finally, we can also use the age-old mechanism of measuring the impact of learning – by asking the learners themselves. Going by Donald Kirpatrick’s popular training evaluation model, we can gather data on four levels – 

• Reaction: How do learners respond to the course?
• Learning: What did they learn?
• Transfer: What changes will they make while back on the job?
• ‘Result’: What are the business outcomes that are seen resulting from the learners’ performance? 

Questionnaires can be created to ascertain effectiveness of the online training software. Most modern online training software can successfully conduct surveys or polls and can quickly analyze them to provide a suitable measure of effectiveness of an online training.

Assessing effectiveness of the online training software not only helps to ascertain if the training objectives have been achieved but also helps create better learning resources for the organization.