What Not to Do When Developing Online Training

Having just completed some mandatory online training this week, I was inspired to take a side-step from the topic of “preparing to learn online” to cover today’s special topic, "What Not to Do When Developing Online Training."

1. Don’t waste your trainees' time.
2. Don’t waste the taxpayers' money (oops, sorry, that’s not so much a training issue, is it?).
3. Don’t mandate training for those who had it last year, and the year before, and the year before that.
4. Don’t pass laws to require training; instead, hire, train, and develop your employees well.
5. Don’t talk down to or BS your trainees.
6. Don’t make trainees change their password if they are only going to be in the system once.
7. Don’t be redundant. (Refer to #1)
8. Don’t make trainees click a link to get to a page where there is nothing to do but click a button to get to another page.
9. Do not use 4 pages of introduction, and then follow that with an introduction section of 13 pages!
10. Do not quiz your trainees on the introductory text. If it’s quiz-worthy, then it’s content, not intro. If you can’t find a better title for it than Introduction, then it’s bogus content. (Refer to #5)
11. Do not include an entire "content" section on why the training is mandatory. (If you couldn’t fit that into the 17 pages of introduction, you need to review your content…and your motives.)
12. If content is mandatory, don’t hide it under an optional-looking FAQ button.
13. Breaking confusing text up into chunks on separate pages, followed by a confusing multiple choice question, does not constitute training!
14. Do not ask trainees questions they could not possibly know the answer to!!!
15. Do not use training to "remind" people of information they already know.
    
    :-Þ Have a nice day at work!