Are they perfect, though? The content is informative and interesting. The presentation is engaging. The subject is well-chosen. It’s… well, they’re almost perfect.
What is missing?
Your course is a static object. It’s only updated …what, every few weeks? More likely, every few months or once a year? And a user with a question (we all have questions)… where does he go? Maybe he can email you, and you can get an answer. But it’s not an ideal kind of interaction.
So, your course may be almost perfect. But it suffers from a defect that is hard to escape with web based eLearning. It lacks human interaction, and a sense of being immediate, the fruit of the best teaching today.
For every problem, we aim to have a solution. And when implementing eLearning, you want your online education platform to approach perfection. This is why we offer custom blog space for courses.
As mentioned previously, our LMS now has the ability to create a sophisticated blogging space on the site. You can put it on your home page, or you can set up a special area. You can make it free to the world, or show it only to your users. It’s a flexible, powerful tool.
The change we’re making is to give you the option to associate a single blog with a single course (or group of related courses). Why a blog? You can designate one or more “experts” to write about the course. It might be the author of the course, or any other expert you have. Or it might be yourself – you can pass along information from subject experts, and lead discussion. The learners – they can add comments, in which they can ask (and answer) questions, give advice, provide links, and talk. Their comments (and the blog) might be made visible (your choice!) only to those registered for the course.
This gives strong advantages to your customized eLearning:
- Stay Up-to-Date
You can update the course material without republishing the course. Find a new angle on the subject matter, or a link to a new resource or event relevant to the course? You can post about it in minutes. Imagine how handy this could be! Say your course is about risks in finance, and there is a high-profile financial meltdown in the news. Or maybe your course is about governmental rules and regulations, and an important court case is published – one that directly affects your course content. Add a blog post about it to your course! A few minutes of typing, and your course won’t have that dusty feeling too common with online learning. - Interaction Makes Better Learning
You can only program so much interaction. You can’t always predict common user rough patches or the direction of their curiosity. If they have a place where they can easily ask a question, or discuss the material with fellow learners, they’ll get more value out of the online training system. - User Feedback
You can polish the courses based on what you see in the discussions. They give a record of comments, criticisms, suggestions, and questions that can show you how to improve the course. Or they might give you ideas that inspire future content.
Adding blog space to your courses can add considerable value for you and your learners. If you’d like to learn more about how you can use this or other features to build your ideal online training solutions, contact us today!
