Are your e-learning courses getting stale?

In today’s fast-paced world, where the only constant is change, it’s important to keep your eLearning courses fresh and relevant. After all, you don’t want your learners to be snoozing through outdated content, do you?

In this blog post, I want to talk about the importance of maintaining your eLearning courses and also provide you with a simple maintenance checklist. So, put on your maintenance hat, grab your tools, and let’s get to work!

Who knew e-learning and cars had something in common!

Performing maintenance on your e-learning course is like performing maintenance on a car. Just as your car needs regular oil changes, tire rotations, and check-ups to ensure it runs smoothly and efficiently, your e-learning course also requires routine maintenance to keep it up-to-date and functioning properly. Neglecting either of these forms of maintenance can lead to a breakdown, or worse, a complete system failure. So, just as you wouldn’t skip regular car maintenance, don’t neglect the maintenance of your e-learning courses. Keep them running smoothly to ensure a successful journey for all learners.

Why should you perform maintenance on your courses?

Regularly maintaining your eLearning courses improves the user experience by addressing things like broken links, outdated multimedia elements, and other issues that may negatively impact your learners. Think about it, do you want your learners wasting time taking courses that are outdated? So, assuming we agree it’s time to assess your course catalog, let’s start with a plan.

Make a Plan

Before jumping in and starting to update your courses, make sure you have a plan. If it’s been a long time since you looked at your courses, it might be a little overwhelming! Here’s a simple process I’ve used in the past:

• Identify your business critical courses
• Use the Maintenance Checklist (shown later in this post) to perform a review
• Identify the elements of each course that need to be revised/updated
• Determine if you can make the changes internally or need the assistance of someone outside of your organization
• Put together a schedule and include milestones to track progress

Maintenance Checklist

Outdated Information:

• Have there been any changes in laws, regulations, or policies that affect the course content?
• Have there been any new developments or discoveries in the subject matter that should be included in the course?
• Are all statistics and data up-to-date and accurate?
• Are there any references to outdated technologies or tools that should be updated or removed?

Outdated Visuals:

• Are all images, videos, and animations up-to-date and still relevant to the course content?
• Do all visuals load correctly and play as intended?
• Are there any broken or outdated links to external sources?
• Are there any formatting issues with the visual elements, such as overlapping text or improper alignment?

Technical Issues:

• Are all interactive elements, such as quizzes or simulations, functioning properly?
• Is the course compatible with current web browsers and devices?
• Are there any issues with the course loading speed or performance?
• Are there any broken links or errors that need to be addressed?

Content Mistakes:

• Are there any typos or grammatical errors in the course content?
• Are all facts and information presented in the course accurate?
• Are there any discrepancies between the course content and related materials, such as handouts or instructor notes?
• Are there any contradictions or inconsistencies in the course content?