Dive Brief:
- The way in which learners encounter course content within a learning management system is just as important as what's being presented. This is referred to as the user experience or UX. There are 3 major components of UX that need to be in place to ensure learners are getting the most from online training, including: design, communication, and measurement.
- The UX is, "a quantitative and qualitative measure, because it examines both the platform’s functions, and the user’s perception of them," says Rajlakshmi Saikia, assistant vice president of corporate L&D at Genpact, who also contributes to ATD.
- Learning content that's well-designed includes the ability for users to easily login to the learning management system, access their courses, and find the information they need. The other components of great UX include a system for managing user progress and gathering feedback from learners. There should always be support to orient users to the LMS as well as a help guide for troubleshooting.
Dive Insight:
This is a good overview of the basic principles of user design as it relates to learning and development. However, it's also worth mentioning that a good part of the UX is how well learning content is organized for the benefit of learners.
A Bersin by Deloitte report mentions that the biggest challenge facing knowledge workers and L&D professionals today is the overwhelming amount of information that most companies have. By putting the content into a logical context and focusing on the learner experience, this can become the foundation for better and more effective online training programs.
