Blended Learning: A Productive Approach To Ensure Success

Do you want to design and deliver successful learning courses to your learners?

Blended learning is a way to deliver a well-thought-out and effective training that caters to the learner’s needs.

Today, We at WPEducate will help you in determining why blended learning is a productive approach to ensure success. 

What Is Blended Learning?

Blended learning is a term widely used to describe the combination of facilitated traditional classroom training and online training that creates an improved learning experience. It combines well with today’s generation as it takes less time and provides more learning choices to the learners.

What Makes Blended Learning A Productive Approach

Here we will discuss some of the parameters that will help you in determining that blended learning is a productive approach for your online courses. 

Collaborative Learning

Just like traditional ILT training, blended learning also promotes collaborative learning among learners. It collaborates learners in the discussion forums to discuss course-related issues, problems, and ideas. Learners can visit the discussion forums at their convenience and can give answers, comments, and ideas.

This is one of the impacts that blended learning has on your online courses. Choosing the right authoring tool keeps your learners collaborative with one another. 

Personalized Courses

In traditional classroom training, learners get training in groups. It might not be good practice for some learners as they can’t understand or didn’t like the teaching style of the trainer. To overcome this type of problems blended learning helps you in delivering personalized courses specially designed for the specific learners. 

Besides providing specific personalized courses you can also add various gamification elements, infographics, and charts to provide a better-personalized learning experience to the learners. 

Flexibility In Learning

Traditional classroom training has its own advantages and it becomes hard for corporate employees to meet up with the timing of the training. With the help of blended learning, they can plan when to learn based on their schedules. Thus it provides more flexibility to your online training and allows learners to learn at their convenience.

Blended learning helps instructors to provide flexible learning methods in terms of how and what to learn. It empowers learners to get control over their training and enables them to have easy access to the training content at their convenience through PCs and mobile devices on the go.

Engage More Learners

Not all learners learn at the same pace so combine some facilitated sessions with the online session to provide optimal environments for the learners. You can include videos, images, infographics, etc. to make your training more interactive and engaging. This sets a wider option to match their learning styles and preferences.

In blended learning, you can also add various gamification elements like- quizzes, puzzles, etc. to engage more learners. You can also offer certificates and badges when they successfully complete your courses. 

Cost-Effective

Every online course trainer prefers an effective strategy that should minimize the overall cost of the training. That’s why blended learning is an option to make your training cost-effective. To acquire the various necessary training resources and instructional designer’s needs it requires a lot of money.

Using the right authoring tool reduces the cost of creating online training. An authoring tool blends your ILT training with online training in very less time and reduces the overall cost of the training.

Conclusion

Blended learning is one way to engage and motivate your learners through online training. It reduces the cost of courses and provides an ease to the learners to take your training. I hope this article provides insights on why you should adopt blended learning to make your training more effective and significant. If you have any specific queries kindly do contact us or comment below.

How An LMS Makes Your Training More Effective And Powerful

Do you want to increase the effectiveness of your online training? 

Effective and powerful training means higher knowledge retention, unlimited reach, an increase in learner’s engagement and performance, and lower cost.

A Learning Management System (LMS) provides a platform to manage, schedule, and plan your training. It tracks the performance of learners and makes your training more impactful.

Today, we at WPEducate will help you in taking a deeper dive to make your training more powerful and effective with the help of an LMS.

How An LMS Makes Your Training More Powerful

As we know that instructor based training is very best because it delivers a great knowledge retention rate. Besides having more features, it has several disadvantages such as having limited reach, higher costs, tracking learner performance, etc. 

With the advancement in technology, online learning is gaining its popularity. Many online educators and trainers are now switching toward online training and generating more ROI.

Delivers Training And Establish Learning Path

The learning management system helps you to deliver your training courses seamlessly to every user around the world. You can upload pre-recorded lectures, videos, audios, PDFs, GIFs easily. A learner can easily access your training from anywhere from all across the globe. 

Ease in the availability of training courses enhances learner’s engagement with your courses. This way an LMS helps you in establishing a learning path for the learners as they can take your training anytime and anywhere. 

Generates Reports And Analytics Of Learners

A good LMS helps you to generate reports of your training courses. This report shows the analytics of learners’ performance through your training. The report shows the rate of the learners completing your courses, the number of learners who left the courses, etc. 

Thus an LMS can help you in improving your training strategy, and suggest how you can make your courses more engaging. It provides a report and a quick overview of the learner experience. These reports can be shared with the other team members of your organization.

Creates Quizzes And Assessments

An LMS enables you to create quizzes so that you can test your learners’ understanding of a topic. Adding quizzes to your training helps you in attracting more learners and keep them more engaged. 

You can provide personalized feedback to the learners when they successfully complete your training as well as you can also receive feedback from learners. You can use these reports and feedback to identify the improvements.

Enroll Learners And Send Notifications 

An LMS helps you in assigning the relevant training courses to the learners. The auto-enrollment features automatically assign the training to the register learners. It uses the learner’s database such as title, location, department, course expiration date, and course completion status, etc. and based on these data they assign the training courses.

Setting up Email reminders for completing the current training courses and upcoming courses can be set up easily with the LMS. This ensures the learners and makes them aware of courses that need to be completed.

Benefits Of Using An LMS 

  • An LMS reduces the overall cost of your training and saves your time.
  • It provides learning on-the-go, shows their performance and sends feedback when a learner completes your training. 
  • LMS puts a great insight on the flexibility of learning as it provides courses whenever they need it. 
  • The user-friendly interface motivates learners and delivers an effective learning experience to the learners.

Conclusion

Now, we can clearly say that LMS can make your training more effective and powerful. An LMS automatically manages, tracks, and delivers your training courses to the learners in real-time. Thus choosing an LMS like- WPLMS makes your training more effective and powerful at lower cost.

Microlearning Videos: Make Your Online Training More Effective

As an online course trainer, Do you want to make your training more effective?

Microlearning videos create awareness, build participation, and offer reinforcement of learning.

It facilitates on-demand learning, increases the impact, and makes your training more effective.

Here at WPEducate, we will learn how we can optimize microlearning videos in online courses training.

Microlearning Videos For Online Training Courses  

As the name suggests, microlearning videos are short, focused and learners centric videos that are designed to meet specific learning. Microlearning videos are very effective because our brain retains visuals information more rapidly and quickly. 

Keep Your Videos Short 

Microlearning means the short duration of learning content. Its short duration makes it so effective. Thus it helps the learners in retaining clear, uncomplicated and more information when their attention stays undivided. 

Try to limit the video length of 3 minutes to 6 minutes. This will help you in engaging them they are on the move and using mobile devices to take your courses. Organize the video with useful information and don’t stray from the training topic.

Provide Just-In-Time Training

When you are providing micro-learning videos to the learners then try to keep it simple. Don’t try to put interactive text and animation. A simple video will help them in implementing the information that they have watched. Learners use these microlearning videos usually on mobile devices. 

With JIT training learners can easily retain the knowledge that they have learned earlier. It helps them to learn a specific topic instead of learning the whole course again.

Keep Only One Learning objective

To make your online courses more effective, your microlearning video should focus on providing only one learning objective to the learners. When you put so much information into your video then you can confuse your learners and reduces the value of your courses.

So it’s better to engage your learners by providing them with only one learning objective instead of providing them a lot of information. Instead of creating a particular video try to create different microlearning videos for different topics.

Add Interactive And Visual Elements

Interactive videos help in the active participation of the learners and put an immersive learning experience and boost knowledge retention. Adding visuals elements enables learners to assess their knowledge easily. Including some visuals elements in the questions and branching scenarios helps the learners in gaining the knowledge easily.

To make videos more engaging and interactive for the learners you can use animations to make them more colorful. You can create a role-play to make your videos more lively.

Benefits Of Using Microlearning Videos

Better Engagement Of Learners 

Microlearning engages the learners as it focuses on only one learning objective. The shorter duration of courses keeps them engaged throughout the courses.

Better Retention Of Concepts 

Short microlearning videos help the learners in better retention of concepts. This helps the learners in learning a particular concept that is going to be performed and accomplished.

Mobile Learning

Today’s learners are more attracted to mobile learning. Short microlearning videos are the best way to learn a particular concept for learners. Short videos can be easily offered on mobile devices and engage the learners.

On-The-Go Learning

With the help of microlearning videos, a learner can easily take your courses from anywhere. It helps them in utilizing their time while traveling and learning new concepts.

Conclusion

In my opinion, every learner wants to learn the new concept in a shorter duration of time. Using microlearning videos in your online also helps them in recalling the previously learned courses. Thus we can say that microlearning is key for making your online course training more effective.

Cloud Vs. Desktop Authoring Tools: Which Is Better For Online Training?

Are you confused while choosing the right authoring tool for your online training courses?

Authoring tools, with the advancement in technology, has affected the way organizations manage their online training.

Cloud-Based Vs. Desktop Authoring Tools

Earlier, online course developers had quite limited options while creating new training courses for their organization. Now, there are two main types of authoring tools:-

  • Desktop authoring tools
  • Cloud-based authoring tools  

Desktop authoring tools are traditional tools that allow online course developers to build engaging courses. These authoring tools need to be downloaded and installed on the learners’ desktop before they start taking your online training courses. This authoring tool has been the best option for many course creators to deliver their courses.

With the introduction of mobile learning in online training, cloud-based authoring tools are gaining popularity. With the increasing rate of mobile learning users, cloud-based authoring tools are becoming the best choice of today’s course developers to deliver their training courses. 

Now, Let’s see the parameters which can help you better in choosing between desktop and cloud-based authoring tools. 

Flexibility Of Courses

When it comes to flexibility, Desktop authoring tools offer you very little flexibility. Your online training courses do not get updated quickly to the learners’ system. The contents needed to be downloaded and saved locally before getting your courses. So it can be accessible with or without an internet connection. 

On the other hand, Cloud-based authoring tools work on any device and operating system. There is no need to download the courses as the user can get the training over the internet from anywhere. When you update your courses in your system then it is updated automatically for all the users within a second.

Ease in Use Of Tools

Desktop authoring tools consist of sophisticated features. Many desktop authoring tools are old and consist of features. The learners did not get familiar with the features of authoring tools easily. That’s why most of the desktop authoring tools have complexity while learning. 

Cloud-based authoring tools is well known for its easy-to-use features. The learners can easily use while learning online training courses. With that, cloud-based authoring tools are more comfortable to use compared to desktop authoring tools.

Customization Of Courses

You can hardly customize your courses in desktop authoring tools. It offers very little integration with third-party apps. It allows only independent authoring. Only one-course authors can customize courses, publish and update their content before sharing it with the learners.

You can easily customize your online courses in the cloud-based authoring tool. One of the best features of a cloud-based authoring tool is its ability to integrate tools with other third-party apps. In this, more than one author can publish and update their course content.

Data Safety And BackUp

When you install an authoring tool locally on your desktop, you will be responsible to keep your backups to protect your data. While some authoring tools companies may offer you backup solutions, but most of the time you have to keep your data safe. If something wrong happens to your system hardware then your data could be leaked, or destroyed completely.

In Cloud-based authoring tools, your data is stored on the cloud storage. This type of authoring tool protects your data and courses from cyber attacks. You don’t have to install or store data of this authoring tool as you can directly surf your courses over the internet. The company is responsible for all the backups and protects your data. 

Conclusion

In my opinion, you can choose any of the two authoring tools depending on your organization’s learning requirements, However, Cloud-based authoring tool is better and easy to use, gives you space for a collaborative effort from the different authors, and saves time. Overall, cloud-based eLearning authoring solutions, like WPLMS is flexible than any other desktop software and can easily scale up your courses. It will go a long way in making you achieve engaging and accessible learning.

Factors That Enhance The Learning From Your Courses

A lot of research goes into account while designing a good online course.

Online Instructional Designers have to study deep into the psychology of learners, specifically how they will learn and it will affect the learning process.

Today, we will help you in determining those critical factors that affect the learning of learners while creating your online courses.

Create A Meaningful Content

Creating good and meaningful content is very much essential for engaging learners with online courses. If the content of the course is not relevant and doesn’t make sense then it becomes difficult for the learners to understand and this can disengage them from your courses. 

Introduce the value of the course in the first few pages. Use some of the principles like- association, visual metaphors, familiarity, frequency, patterns, and acronyms, etc. to improve the retention of the course. This will help the learners in understanding the meaning of the course.

Add Regular Practice Exercise

Adding a regular practice exercise in your online courses leaves a strong impression on the learners. Placing practice exercise at a regular interval when a topic completes in your online course yields better learning results to the learners. A regular spaced practice exercise is especially beneficial while learning an unfamiliar online course. It enables learners to associate with several contexts. 

Avoid Interference Effect

Avoiding interference effect while creating your online courses helps learners in impairing their speed of learning and memory performance. The interference effect can confuse both old and new material that has some similarities between each other. The learners can forget even those terms that they remembered clearly for years

Providing a long term gap between the courses that you have created earlier helps in remembering the previously learned courses while learning new material. 

Increase Knowledge Transfer Rate  

Transfer of knowledge takes place when a previous old course knowledge helps the learners in getting new knowledge. With the transfer of knowledge a learner can learn better from your courses who has previous knowledge than the other learners.

While designing a new course, try to mention some context from the old course so that it can help the learners in adopting new knowledge.  This can increase the knowledge transfer rate of the learners in learning new courses while retaining the previous course knowledge.

Create Organized Content

Creating a well-organized content for your course helps the learners in remembering and adopting your course. Every learner loves organized information that is why chapters, outlines, and sections are highly recommended as an instructional method. The well-organized content influences the learner to convey the right information.

As an online course creator, you can use advanced organizers, logical sequencing, highlighting the main ideas, using bullets, and summaries to organize your course content.

Conclusion 0f Learning

In my opinion, keeping in mind the above-discussed factor can help you in creating a good course. These factors can greatly influence the learning of learners from your online courses. Considering WPLMS as an LMS can help you in attracting more learners toward your courses. WPLMS offers you a wide variety of plugins, interactive elements, and gamification elements that can increase the popularity of your online courses.

Why Instructional Design Is Important In Designing Courses

Do you want to know the learners’ state of mind, what they need from your online courses?

Instructional design is a way to assist your learners by delivering engaging and effective courses.

Today, we at WP Educate will help you in understanding why instructional design is important while creating your online courses.

Instructional Design Retain Knowledge Of The Learners

Using instructional design while creating your online courses helps the learners in achieving the learning goals of the course. The way visual graphics like- images, videos, infographics, etc. are presented in online courses puts a great impact on learners retaining ability. 

According to the research, it is found that the human brain tends to recall information more easily and rapidly through images, charts, and infographics than the texts. 

Make Your Learner Engage Through Instructional Design

As an instructional designer you to find out who is your target learners, their demands, before creating your online course. This will help you in designing a course that will easily engage the learners with your online courses. 

By mentioning the important information and presenting it in front of the learner will make sense to them. This way your course will be more efficient and result in less waste of time.

Provide A Good Learning Experience

Delivering a good learning experience to the learners is the main aspect of instructional design. Create your online courses in such a way that it can be easily accessible by the learners. This can be achieved by using good instructional design in your online courses as it provides a great impact on the engagement level of the learners. 

Proper implementation of compelling color, images, videos and infographics while designing your online courses will deliver a good learning experience as well as engage your learners.

Instructional Design Delivers Your Message

Instructional design is considered more than decorations while creating your online courses. It delivers effective communication which helps learners in achieving their learning goals. 

Good instructional design has the ability to deliver your message directly to the learners. Try to make the content of your online course with a good design. This will ensure that you are passing the right message with your learners. 

Conclusion

Instructional Design is very important while creating your online courses. As an instructional designer, you will be able to engage a large number of learners. Nothing can beat you in engaging your learner with your courses. One secret to engage your learners is by analyzing them to know what they need, and by putting nice designs in place to meet the requirements. Choosing the right instructional design WordPress LMS, like- WPLMS that can help you in saving time and money to create outstanding courses for your learners.