The shift toward online training has never been more important than over the past two years. As rolling lockdowns shuttered offices and the entire world moved online, every industry — whether early adopters or cautious observers — found themselves delivering training in an e-learning format.
For high-stakes, highly regulated industries, online learning can provide incredible benefits, but there are some special considerations to make sure it’s done right.
Here are six tips for providing online learning in regulated industries, to protect learner privacy, prevent credential fraud, and deliver successful training that moves the needle on strategic business goals.
strong>1. Create courses that will maximize retention
In industries that are safety-sensitive, like health care or construction, it’s of upmost importance that learners thoroughly retain the course material. But as a general rule, most people forget more than half of the information presented after just one hour. If you create courses designed by experts in instructional design and the science of adult learning, you can deliver e-learning with much high retention rates when it matters most.
2. Make sure the right person is taking your course
One major concern among regulated industries in switching to online training delivery is around weeding out cheating and making sure the right person is completing the coursework and testing. There’s no denying that moving training online creates more opportunities for this sort of subterfuge — unless you use learner verification technology. This tech can use facial recognition to verify you’ve got the right learner sitting in front of the screen, throughout the duration of the course and exam.
3. Cover your privacy bases
Another challenge arises when it comes to privacy concerns. The contentious company will often take pause before sharing a massive amount of employee data with a third-party LMS platform. That’s why it’s important to cover your bases with an LMS platform that is cloud-based, SOC 2 compliant, and goes above and beyond the basic standards for privacy protection.
4. Check credentials easily & regularly
In industries where it’s imperative that your credentials are current and, you know, real, it’s critical to be able to check and verify someone’s credentials quickly, easily, and frequently. Lawyers, nurses, insurance agents, and countless other professions have been rife with credential fraud in recent years — and when public safety is at stake, you need an easy way to verify that your team has the right credentials and skills. Using tools like digital badges makes it easy to check credentials on the spot.
5. Get ahead of certificate expiry
Another consideration in regulated spaces is making sure that your professionals keep current and compliant with all their credentials. It’s important to keep track of upcoming expirations so that you can stay ahead of them and get your team re-certified, but this can create a significant administrative burden. Automating reminders for upcoming expiries is a smart way to make sure you’re always compliant and no credentials lapse without your notice.
6. Use tools that can deliver training at scale
Regulators, associations and non-profits often accomplish a great deal with a lean team. Adding training delivery into the mix, sometimes for thousands of learners per year, can create a significant administrative burden. Using the right tools to sell, scale, and automate your training can be a game-changer, allowing you to get back to other priorities without sacrificing training quality or growth.
Want to learn more about levelling up your online training? Contact us for more info today!