Why are people abandoning their e-learning courses?
I always enjoy the sight of Elliott Masie’s Learning Trends Newsletter popping up in my inbox.
One of his recent updates considered abandonment in e-learning courses. Evidently this is particularly common amongst MOOCs, where an 85% abandonment rate from learners is often seen after the first few sessions.
This piqued my interest and got me thinking; why?
Masie argues that there are a number of reasons contributing to this, for example busy learners who forget to return with no system in place to remind them to return, or as we at Lever see it – hold them accountable. Masie also considers that learners are simply ‘skimming’ with e-learning and do not feel the need to drill down to the detail, and that learners are not given motivation to continue to further modules in the same way they are when the course is being pitched at the beginning.
Similarly, I came across an article from Training Zone around ‘how much training your employees actually want’. Looking at research from Intercall, the article concludes that learning is very important to employees. However, 1 in 3 consider current training delivery methods to be an ineffective use of time.
The research found that employees felt e-learning was more enjoyable than classroom learning – but – here’s the problem, only 41% found online courses effective, compared to 50% for in-person classroom training. So as Training Zone rightly point out – is e-learning giving us the return we deserve?
I was relieved to see Training Zone criticise the research for not highlighting the need for transfer of learning support, be it from an internal manager or external specialist. The author’s final note;
“It doesn’t matter how the training is delivered – online or in-person. If the manager does not play the supporting and coaching role, the learning will soon be lost without even being adopted at the workplace.”
Bingo. Are we getting to the bottom of a more relevant issue? I would argue that it depends on the maturity and resources available in an organisation, as to who takes responsibility for the learning transfer piece, and a collaboration between learning and the manager often gets the best results.