How can you ensure behaviour change from an eLearning course?

Before I look specifically at ensuring behaviour change, I feel it is important to lay some foundations on my perspective of Learning & Development. For those of you keen to jump ahead however, click here. I'd encourage you to read through however.

What is an eLearning course?

ELearning, or eLearning courses, are any medium of learning conducted by electronic media. These eLearning courses are typically utilised within education or corporate spaces, For the purposes of this topic however, I will be focussing exclusively on the context of the corporate world as that is where my expertise and experience lay.

So, 'learning conducted by electronic media' may sound broad, and it does, I agree. When most people hear eLearning, they get flashbacks to dull compliance training they are forced to complete each year. These are usually in the format of: information crammed on a page, click 'next', repeat for 20 minutes, and a multiple-choice questionnaire at the end. I will say now, that if that is the image you picture when you think of eLearning, you have been done a great disservice.

What types of eLearning courses are there?

If the above is a poor example of an eLearning course, then what is a good example? That is the thing, a good eLearning course will come in whatever format is necessary to solve its particular goal. And an eLearning should *always* have a goal. They should always be aiming to achieve at least one, and in many cases, *only* one specific goal. This format can come in the format of: downloadable job aids, process diagrams, traditional slides, videos, etc.

What is the goal(s) of an eLearning course?

I mentioned 'goals' just now. This is something absolutely foundational to an effective eLearning module. In order for the learning to be effective, you need to have strong understanding of the end goal. What is it hoping to achieve? What barriers may be in place to stop the learner achieving it? Perhaps even, "why isn't this goal already in effect (lack of awareness, motivation, or simply because the learner hasn't had the chance to learn yet)?"

In order for Learning & Development to align with the business, it needs to be able to contribute tangible results to said business. In my opinion, all learning interventions should directly target, or impact, a specific business goal or pain-point. Whether that is a learning package to improve customer service thus reducing complaints, or affecting behaviour change in employees to improve company reputation or image. These two examples would have measurable business metric or positive behaviour change goals respectively. If there is no specific target the learning, it shouldn't exist.

How do you know if said goals have been achieved?

In my experience, this is the part of the Learning & Development process that is most sorely lacking. *(I would like to delve into this in more detail in another article which can be linked here)* Learning & Development should not be a 'implement and move on' process. The learning implementations effect on learners and the business should be tracked, measured, and improved upon over time. This is how you ensure positive results from the learning. If at first you don't succeed, don't move on, improve it.

Before you start an eLearning course, you should have metrics of success clearly agreed upon. What they are, how they are going to be measured, when you will review. Simply put, outline a metric you hope the eLearning should impact, measure it for a period prior to the learning implementation, then measure the change over the same length period after the learning has been implemented. Obviously, there can be other factors at play that you need to take into consideration, however this will give you a good start.

How can you foster behavioural change from an eLearning course?

For this article, I would like to focus on behaviour change in particular. Some courses have clear business metrics tied to them. Reducing complaints, reduced time to complete processes, etc. However some courses are a little bit more murky. Take a soft-skills course on building and maintaining strong business relationships, for instance. The topic is just as important for the business, however a little harder to quantify and measure. How can you track whether a course like this achieves its goals? How can you ensure learners make the effort to foster the new behaviours they learn in the course out in their day-to-day roles?

Now, the content within the course itself is important to this process, however I would like to focus on what comes after the course has been completed. In most instances this is where the process stops, however, for a lot of soft-skills, what they can learn in a course is only part of the process. It is what they implement, try out, experiment with *after* that internalises the learning. I proposed and implemented a four-step process to work on exactly this.

1. Ask the learners to complete a self-assessment relating to the topic prior to taking the eLearning. This will create a baseline.

2. At the end of the course, ask the learners to pick just one behaviour change that they are willing to commit to and try out. The scope and type of commitment will differ learner-to-learner as everybody will be at different levels. This also gives them the feeling of control. You don't want to impose a large commitment on someone as it will immediately put a lot of people off, however, if they are the ones to pick it the commitment, they are more likely to follow through.

3. Choose a duration for the commitment. The length of time should correspond to your goals. A shorter period, say 7 days, is long enough to gauge the early stages of behaviour change and for rapid testing. A longer period, 14-30 days, will give a more accurate account of lasting behaviour change, however comes at the cost of being harder on the learner to commit in a fast-paced environment and risks being forgotten. After this period, the learner receives an automated email asking them how their commitment went. They are given a follow-up self-assessment to see how things have changed since taking the learning, and also asks them whether they were able to keep the commitment. If so, what changed? If not, what barriers were in place making them unable to follow through.

How can you make the learners accountable to their commitments?

This is where step four of this process comes in. People don't (usually) work in isolation, they usually have a manager that they are accountable to. And that manager is responsible for fostering their workplace improvement.

Upon the learner making the the commitment, that manager is sent an automated email informing them this commitment. This immediately creates a sense of accountability and stakes for the learner. A third-party is involved. The commitment is outside of themselves. This email to the manager doesn't ask for much. It is simply informing them their team member has completed the relevant course, and made X commitment off the back of it based on what they think they need to improve. Simply awareness. It then gives the manager a short call to action. "Help them foster this commitment in what ever capacity you can."

How can you achieve this without excessive administration time?

Now, when I was initially working on this workflow, one of the key considerations was administration. As you can imagine, done manually, this can be a herculean task depending on the size of the company and number of courses. The key to making this implementation realistic and scalable is automation. I personally utilise Google Apps Script, however similar results could be achieved using any number of automation tools (i.e. Zapier, Power Automate, etc.).

The commitment deadline has come up - How do you proceed?

To round off this process, and bring the behaviour change confirmation to light, we come to the last step of the process. At step three of the process outlined above, when the learner completes their post-course self-assessment, we will begin to see a comparison from the answers they gave before the course. Although alone not enough for us to gather success data, it is still a good sign if the leaner feels they have improved their abilities since taking the course. Again, it is also where we confirm whether the learner was able to follow through with the commitment, what changed? Or, what barriers were in place to stop them?

To gain final confirmation on this behaviour change, their results will go to the manager, and we ask them to confirm: Did the leaner actually follow through? Did they not? Did you notice any change in them or the team? What ever the outcome ends up being, you are moving forwards with data. Actual data from the learners, and key members of the business about the effectiveness of your learning solution, with very little effort to acquire. If learners are consistently not following through, look a the barriers they list as the reasons, areas to improve upon. If they are not showing signs of improvement in the comparison self-assessment, look at the areas that are least affected, areas to improve upon. On the inverse, if you are receiving positive feedback from both learners and their managers that positive behaviour change is being affected, then you have clear data that can be carried over to make other courses more effective for the same audience. This positive date is also received incredibly well in a periodic Learning & Development report to executives or key stakeholders throughout the business.

What can you learn from this?

So, what can you learn from this? A learning solution doesn't need to be tied to quantifiable business metrics in order to be accurately measured or tracked. And that behaviour changes and soft skills improvements can be tracked and confirmed with an almost fully automated workflow, reducing the friction and time commitment to almost zero.