4 Ideas to Help You Create Fresh Remote Training Content

Creating fresh, relevant remote training content is critical to the success of a corporate eLearning course or program. However, coming up with fresh content is easier said than done. It can be all too easy to stick with the status quo as opposed to improving your company’s training content. But taking the time to create fresh remote training content instead of rehashing old content is important. 

Wondering why you should put forth the effort to refresh your remote training content when you already have a lot on your plate? The answer is simple: fresh content improves learner engagement. 

Your employees/learners likely get tired of participating in the same training over and over. Without access to new, exciting training, learner engagement will inevitably fall. This is a big deal as employees may become disengaged with their jobs once they are disengaged with training. 

“Research shows that disengaged employees are less likely to work hard, feel motivated, or meet expectations for their role, and they cause 60% more errors and defects in work performance,” explained Guide Spark.¹ “In fact...73% of actively disengaged employees are on the lookout for new jobs or opportunities. This level of apathy and sub-standard work can cost companies between $450 and $550 billion a year in lost revenue and employee turnover.”

Companies cannot afford to have a disengaged workforce. One way organizational leaders can potentially boost engagement is by refreshing remote training content and improving online training programs and courses. But before doing this, company leaders should determine how engaged and motivated their employees/remote learners currently are.  

Determine Remote Training Effectiveness with LMS Reporting 

It’s not always obvious when learners are disengaged with remote training. Often, it takes dedicated effort to measure the effectiveness of training and learner engagement. It is worth it, though, as it allows you to ascertain how interested your employees really are in the remote training your company offers. 

One of the best tools for measuring the effectiveness of remote training is LMS reporting. Learning management system reporting gives administrators easy access to reports from their learning management system. It also enables company leaders to navigate and make sense of the data reports contain. User activity and performance are examples of data that comprises an LMS report. 

Data, such as user activity and performance, enables organizational leaders to “...gauge the effectiveness of your training and custom tailor it to meet the needs of your employees,” per eLearning Industry.² “For example, if you find that most of your employees are taking much longer to progress through a module than expected, you may want to assess its difficulty level to see whether it's too challenging.”

Learn more in “How to Accurately Measure the Effectiveness of Remote Training.” 

Signs Employees  are Disengaged with Remote Training Content 

If you don’t use LMS reporting, you can still get an idea of whether or not learners are engaged with remote training. “If you observe the following behaviors in your learners, they could be signs your learners are not engaged,” stated Designing Digitally³:

1. There is low (or even no) interaction with the remote training course. This could look like learners not asking questions, not using the social learning channels available to them, and showing low rates of participation. 
2. Learners show a lack of direction. They don’t know why they are taking the course. Also, they aren’t aware of what they will gain from it.
3. Learners are easily distracted from the course. They don’t have the focus they need to master the information the course communicates. Because balancing work and learning taxes learners’ time, they may show a lack of understanding of the course material.
4. Learners don’t perform well. They have poor grades, they don’t participate in the remote training course, and they don’t complete their assignments, for example. 
5. Employees/learners have negative beliefs about learning. 
6. Learners have prior-experience bias. For example, they may have had negative experiences with remote training in the past. You may notice that this diminishes their engagement with your eLearning program. 

You can gather this information through basic surveys. If you notice these signs of disengagement, it is time to create some fresh remote training content. 

4 Ideas for Creating Fresh Remote Training Content 

Ready to refresh your company’s remote training content and re-engage learners? Here are a few tips:

1. Get inspired by other companies’ remote training courses - Do you know how other companies are leveraging content to train their remote workforce during this time? If not, reach out to company leaders in your network and ask to get an inside look at their remote training. The point of this isn’t to plagiarize their content, but to see what they are doing that is getting good results and then implementing those ideas to create exciting new training content. 

Interested in getting organizational leaders and L&D team members to buy into your investigation of how they are training their dispersed workforce during the pandemic? Make your request to review their training more appealing by offering to discuss your company’s remote training with them and provide them with ideas for improving their training program. Knowledge sharing will make both organizations stronger. 

2. Poll your remote learners - eLearning Industry said polling your target audience is helpful when refreshing content.⁴ In stating this, eLearning Industry was addressing those who create eLearning content for readers. A contributor wrote, 

“(Your target audience are) the ones who eagerly anticipate your next post because they know it will be packed with useful info. So, poll them on social media to gather their input and identify new learning topics. Start with the challenges they face daily or trends they'd like to learn more about. You can also focus on your product or service. For example, which selling points convinced them to invest in your product?”

While the target audience eLearning Industry refers to are readers of eLearning-related articles and such, your target audience is your remote learners. You could easily apply the principles eLearning Industry references to refresh your remote training content. Simply poll your remote workers and ask them what they want to learn about, what challenges they are dealing with related to remote training, etc. 

You will get a host of ideas for creating fresh remote training content from your target audience (i.e., your remote employees), so be sure you are asking for their input.  

3. Edit content that isn’t useful - It’s possible that there is content in your remote training courses that isn’t particularly helpful to learners. Superfluous content can really drag down rates of engagement. You may have experienced this first hand if you’ve participated in training that contained unnecessary content. Perhaps you thought, “This training could be so much more succinct!” 

By reviewing your company’s remote training content from the perspective of a learner, you can better decide what content is needed and what isn’t. Don’t be afraid to edit any unnecessary content. 

Just as learners don’t appreciate remote training content that is redundant or simply not helpful, they also don’t appreciate training for the sake of training. Only provide training that is absolutely necessary, and leave out remote training that exists just to fill a gap. To learners, that type of training can feel like busy work.

4. Ditch courses that aren’t getting good results - Remote training content isn’t cheap. This is especially true of content created in house. However, no matter how costly training is, if it isn’t getting great results and delivering the ROI you need, you would be better off swapping it out for a different training course that does fit the bill. 

If you are hesitant to get rid of eLearning courses, consider selling the ones that no longer serve your learners to other companies. Or, you could have your L&D team keep the course templates and fill them in with entirely new content. It all depends on what your learners need, how much time your L&D team has, and what you can afford. 

The only way to find out what your remote learners need is to be aggressive about determining the effectiveness of individual remote training courses. Remember, LMS reporting can help you do this. 

Improve Any Remote Training Course with an LMS 

Do you want to create, deliver, track, and report on remote training, all from one social learning platform? If so, TOPYX remote training software is the solution you are seeking. 

TOPYX will help your company level up its remote training courses and engage learners like never before. It is a fully-hosted, flat-rate eLearning system that features everything you need to improve your remote training courses and programs. 

A few of TOPYX’s LMS features include:  

• Mobile learning
• Microlearning
• Certifications 
• Blended learning
• Social learning 
• LMS reporting
• Content library 
• Online communities
• Gamification 

With TOPYX, you can take your company’s remote training offerings from good to great. Request a free LMS demo of TOPYX to learn more. 

References: 

1. GuideSpark. https://www.guidespark.com/blog/how-disengaged-employees-affect-your-organization/
2. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/8-tips-to-measure-your-online-training-effectiveness
3. Designing Digitally. https://www.designingdigitally.com/blog/how-overcome-challenges-disengaged-online-learners
4. eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/fresh-elearning-content-ideas