5 Expert Tips to Elevate Your Elearning Programs

Anu Rummukainen, Acolad's elearning expert, shares key insights about online training in the age of AI.

As many companies struggle to attract and retain people with the right skills, more and more emphasis is being placed on training and equipping existing staff.

Effectively onboarding, upskilling and ensuring regulatory compliance can depend on having quality elearning content.

The importance of such content is not going unmissed - IBM discovered that well-trained staff are much more likely to stay, complete projects effectively, and deliver about 10% more productivity. As AI is already revolutionizing our workplaces, it’s clear that the required skillsets are changing more rapidly than ever - and companies without effective training programs risk leaving that skills gap to grow.

Our Product Manager of Elearning Anu Rummukainen has extensive experience in crafting effective elearning experiences that can also easily be adapted to suit any language and culture.

We asked her to share some of her key insights into the latest trends and developments in elearning content creation - what impact AI is already having on creating elearning content, and how we should adapt content to make sure learning is as effective as possible.

Let’s take a look at what she had to say:

The Impact of AI on Elearning

"AI gives us new opportunities. It’s like a never-ending colleague to spar with. It gives you new ideas every time, it just keeps going. It’s just a great source of new ideas. When using it for visual creation it can also give you some good laughs, with those 6-finger images. In efficiency, AI can help by doing easy repetitive tasks in a faster way than what you would normally manually do from scratch. At the moment - it’s mainly used for ideation.”

New Audiences Means Refining Delivery Formats

“What we have noticed lately is that as the workforce becomes younger, we see a difference in the way they consume content. They are very familiar with video formats that they know from Tik Tok and YouTube. Videos are getting also much shorter. Back in the day, we thought two minutes for instructions would be fine, but no - it is way too long. Also, courses are getting shorter. We are creating more microelements there. That is also due to the fact that employees are busy, things are changing a lot and they have less time for learning. So it’s more interesting to ask their attention for five minutes. And it’s better to have information in one place, than to ask them to read a whole guidebook.”

Focus on Engaging Content to Cut Through

“It must be attractive and at the right place at the right time. It must be interactive and engaging. Otherwise it’s just another piece of information that would get lost in the noise of the overwhelming media flow that we have at the moment. In the context of workplace learning it needs to be relevant, otherwise you don’t want to spend extra time on it.”

Tailor Your Content to Fit Diverse Cultures

“Every time you are making content for elearning or any other type of format, you need to think about the target audience and the learner. It has to be inclusive and diverse, you have to think about the cultural aspects. For example, a Nordic-style piece of content cannot be used globally.

“You also need to think about whether you want to subtitle videos. In some countries where people are used to seeing dubbed content, it’s better not to use subtitles. Because then the experience is not what it should be and you would lose the impact of the elearning.”

Combining Elearning with Localization

“We offer elearning creation from scratch, this is what we have done at Acolad in the Nordics, since decades. But what is unique for us is that we combine the content creation with the localization expertise that we have to offer There are several steps to consider when creating easy-to-localize elearning content. Plan it from the beginning for a global audience, think about text expansion in layout, select the localizable media formats (video/voiceover)... Our long experience in the localization business makes the process smooth and not too costly.”