5 Steps to Get Your E-Learning Right

We’ve all been there, forced to complete mandatory compliance e-learning. Clicking through slide-after-slide, no interaction, not really learning anything. But it shouldn’t be that way. This article explains the five steps you can take to ensure your e-learning is the best in class, just like our own off the shelf e-learning provision.

First let’s look at the benefit of e-learning, it really has huge potential. Done well, it’s flexible, scalable, and genuinely engaging. Done badly, as mentioned it’s a click-through chore that learners rush to complete while retaining very little – something we cannot risk in this age of regulatory compliance. The key messages have to land.

Whether you’re building training for employees, customers, or students, getting the fundamentals right makes all the difference. Here are five practical steps to help you create e-learning that actually works.

1. Start With a Clear Purpose (Not Just Content)

One of the most common mistakes in e-learning is starting with what you want to include rather than what learners need to achieve. Content focused e-learning lends itself to a linear session, running through rule after rule, which quickly loses the interest of the user.

Before designing anything, be crystal clear on:

• What should learners know or be able to do by the end?

• What problem is this training solving?

• How will success be measured?

This then allows you to design the content around a scenario rather than the rules - perhaps something the learner would need to deal with in their role. This leads us onto the second point.

2. Design for Learners, Not Stakeholders

It’s easy to design e-learning that looks good to managers (or even the FCA) but feels painful to learners. Long blocks of text, policy-heavy slides, and generic examples quickly kill engagement.

Instead, use real-world scenarios learners recognise as this helps them to ‘pin’ learning to a situation. Also keeping language plain, conversational, and human where possible, avoiding citing regulations. And always break content into short, manageable chunks as good e-learning respects the learner’s time and attention. If it feels relevant and practical, learners are far more likely to engage with it properly.

3. Make It Interactive (But With a Purpose)

Interactivity shouldn’t be there just for decoration. Effective interactivity helps learners:

• Apply knowledge

• Make decisions

• Learn from mistakes in a safe environment

This could be through quizzes, branching scenarios, short reflections, or problem-solving exercises. The key is that interaction should reinforce learning, not distract from it.

4. Keep It Simple and Accessible

Overly complex design, fancy animations, or cluttered screens often get in the way of learning rather than enhancing it. Instead focus on clean layouts with plenty of white space. Equally, consistent navigation and structure helps as following an overall learning plan which builds knowledge in a logical way helps the learner to understand and retain that information. To put it simply, simple design helps learners focus on the message — not on figuring out how the course works.

5. Test, Improve, and Keep It Fresh

E-learning shouldn’t be a “set and forget” exercise. Once your course is live, gather feedback and look at completion rates, quiz results, and learner comments. Follow up with learners as well, knowledge is best kept by doing so – team huddles or similar activities can be used to great effect here.

What next

Great e-learning doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of clear goals, learner-focused design, meaningful interaction, and ongoing improvement. Get those five steps right, and your e-learning won’t just be completed — it’ll actually make a difference.

Or you can use our e-learning platform which does all of this! We’ve built 18 compliance focused courses each designed exactly how we have described in this article. As the courses have been created by us, the compliance experts, you can be assured that they are factually correct and up to date. You can find out more here: Compliance E-Learning | RB Compliance Consultancy

If you would like a free trial, contact me: robert.bell@rbcompliance.co.uk