This blog has been updated to include best practices and features for learning and development in 2020
With GDPR still a hot topic in organisations around the world, learning and development departments are continually working to roll out training to employees, informing them of their rights and responsibilities regarding new legislation.
But that doesn’t mean that other compliance requirements disappear when new regulations come along. So, there is a lot to be thinking about for L&D professionals in creating their compliance content.
Here are the top 6 tips for you to create compliance content in your Moodle or Totara Learn LMS:
1. Insource your content using native tools
2. Make it 'micro'
3. Use real-world and scenario-based exercises
4. Get social and encourage collaboration
5. Create variety in assessment and assignments
6. Keep it fresh
1. Insource your content using native tools:
Moodle and Totara have some great authoring options for your eLearning content, and there are many benefits to using the tools available in your platform without needing to rely on third-party software or vendors.
Whilst eLearning “packages” (typically SCORM) can provide a quick solution for your compliance content, they can be expensive to develop or outsource.
Using the native authoring tools can save time and money, and it keeps you in complete control of your content. While there are some basic compliance elements which remain constant, regulations are often updated or company processes change, it’s important to stay on top of it.
There are many activities and resources to be created within Moodle and Totara Learn, including web pages, eBooks, multi-media support, assignments and quizzes. Coupled with clever course administration you can create learning pathways to “unlock” content as your learners’ progress and achieve Badges or Certificates upon completion. For collaborative working there are Wikis, Forums, Live-chat and resource-sharing activities.
If you’re not familiar with course creation in Moodle or Totara, training is a great first step to ensure you maximise the benefits of the tools available.
2. Make it 'micro':
There are a few understandings of what constitutes as “micro-learning”, but we can all agree that bite sized content is far more approachable than broad, drawn-out modules. In fact, micro-learning drives 50% more engagement compared to longer course.
The best news is, taking a more bite-sized approach to eLearning has never been easier in Moodle and Totara.
Creating content directly in your LMS can help to create resource-based courses, where learners can complete the training but also have easy access to a specific resource at their time of need. Many workers are not office-based and will find it difficult to set aside much time for training, so keeping your content short will help your learners access the content they need.
Both platforms offer a range of options for creating and sharing short-form content. Easily construct web pages, book resources and blog posts for quick information, or simply drag and drop media and infographics; tagging each item for quick access.
With a micro-learning strategy, the key is little, but often. Totara’s Program feature gives you the ability to group courses together and send scheduled e-mails with customisable messages. This could be used to send a daily e-mail encouraging learners to log on and access the latest material in the programme.
3. Use real-world and scenario-based exercises:
Using scenarios in compliance training is a great way for learners to act out the decisions they may need to make when faced with a real-world compliance issue. You can present options to decide on and provide a safe environment to practice and see the consequence of their action. This is great for high-risk compliance issues and helps to embed the knowledge as you are showing them why a certain decision is the wrong one.
The Lesson activity is ideal for scenario-based training. It enables you to present content and ask a question before moving to the next page. You decide which page the learner goes to depending on the answer they give, creating an interactive branching scenario exercise. There is no limit to the branching options with the Lesson and it can be designed as a fun throw-back to the “Choose your own adventure” storybooks!
Other features that make the lesson great for scenario-based training include immediate feedback on each decision you make, the chance to take a practice attempt, collecting points as you progress and a visual progress indicator. To add some competitive edge to your exercise, try adding the “Activity results” block to show your learners the Top 3 scores and who achieved them.
4. Get social and encourage collaboration:
There are many tools available for encouraging communication and collaboration between learners within a Moodle or Totara course. It could be easy to overlook these for a compliance-focused topic but sharing thoughts and experiences can be valuable in compliance training and improve the learning outcomes.
Forums can be used to evaluate learners understanding of compliance topics. You could ask learners to give examples of what they consider to a breach of policy or pose a question to the wider group to start a conversation. Learners won’t see other responses until their own answer has been posted, so you are guaranteed honest answers and a variety of input from your cohort.
Get your learners collaborating and creating their own content by adding entries to a course glossary, where they can also rate and comment on other entries. They could be building a collaborative list of compliance FAQs or situations they have experienced and how they worked through them. This glossary then naturally doubles up as fantastic ongoing resource for your learners to call to in the time of need.
5. Create variety in assessments and assignments:
Assessing learner knowledge on a subject by multiple choice questions in a quiz is a common method of assessment. As we all know, this type of assessment is prone to guessing as there is always a reasonably high chance of guessing it correctly. To truly assess your learners’ understanding, use a variety of evaluation methods and questions types to reduce the ‘lucky guess’ effect.
Along with scenario based questions previously mentioned, Certainty-Based Marking in Moodle and Totara helps to assess the learner’s confidence in the answer they give.
This type of questioning requires a learner to answer a question, then say how sure they are of their answer.
The points for each question range from +3 to -6, so there’s a lot to consider for a quick guess. Correct answers with a low certainty don’t achieve the fullest marks possible (1 out of 3), whilst incorrect answers with a high certainty attract a penalty of -6. With a leader-board displaying the results, you may think twice about what you know and don’t know!
With the right feedback this assessment can help improve the learning outcomes, as it rewards honesty, encourages further study of the material and, with practice, leads to more confidently competent learners. This can be used to great effect in a compliance course as your learners will be really thinking about how they know the correct answer leading to a more informed, compliant workforce.
6. Keep it fresh:
Compliance training is an ongoing endeavour. For most organisations, learners are required to recomplete some or all of the training to maintain compliance standards.
Totara uses Certifications to create renewable training programmes with scheduled notifications reminding learners to certify and re-certify. Keep learners engaged and informed by varying the training they receive.
Typically, the first time you complete training it is more intensive, whereas the ongoing training is more of a refresher. Your learners will be busy in their day-job and may have difficulty finding the time to complete the regular compliance training, so you may not want to present the same content to them on year 2 as they completed in year 1.
Certifications allow you to define a “re-certification path” so you can choose whether learners complete the same training as the first time, or on subsequent years they can complete different courses. This provides an opportunity to create smaller, refresher courses for the ongoing training, with the basic content and an assessment to prove their knowledge.
Making training relevant to your learner’s experience and current company practices, will be appreciated by your learners and help improve the overall engagement and satisfaction with the LMS.
About Hubken
Hubken Group provide learning solutions that help businesses automate compliance training, speed up employee inductions, and scale-up face-to-face training programs by bringing them online.
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