This page contains a detailed description of what your students experience as they participate in e-learning courses developed with our burst learning model. Each course consists of e-learning, workplace application, and follow up.

If you prefer a short overview review the Implementation section of The Leadership Journey for Supervisors and Managers or The Customer Service Road Map.

If you have any questions or would like help creating a training plan for your organization, please contact a training consultant or call us now at 1-800-541-7872.

Don’t Just Read About It – Experience It!

The best opportunity to learn is to experience. As you review the steps below, follow along in an e-learning course. Taking the course as one of your students will give you a complete understanding of the learning process. Choose one of two options:

1. Build Accountability and Trust with Positive Confrontations from our supervisory management training curriculum.
2. What To Say – And What Not To Say from our customer service training program.

Logging Into the Learning Management System (LMS)

First, a student will login to our learning management system (LMS). If you are licensing courses for your LMS, your students will login there. After logging in, a participant will open the e-learning course. Students can login and take courses on any internet connected device. This includes PCs, Macs, tablets, and smartphones.

Tracking Course Progress

At the top of the course is a progress bar. Students can identify where they are in the course, what they have completed, and what they have left to complete. Remember, courses are short, taking 25-30 minutes to complete. (The arrow in the image below is pointing to the progress bar.)

Reviewing the Course’s Key Learning Objectives

Each course starts out with a review of the course’s key learning objectives. It is important for students to review the skills they will be learning at the beginning of the course. This will improve retention of key skills. (This course’s key learning objectives are outlined in the image below.)

Printing the Note-taking Guide

Before a student can advance in the course, they are asked to open and print the note-taking guide that is used later in the course. (#1 in the image below.) After they open and print the note-taking guide, they are able to proceed to the next section. (#2 in the image below.)

Assessing Baseline Knowledge with Pre-Questions

Open-ended pre-questions help prepare the participants for learning by turning their attention to key ideas and helping them recall prior knowledge. In an e-learning environment when a student can be taking a course anywhere, at any time, it is very important that they turn their focus to learning. The pre-questions help them do this.

The Video Presentation and Note-Taking Guide

Next, students interact with a short, concise 8-12 minute video. Watching the video and recording keywords engages participants and allows them to take an active role during the video presentation.

The note-taking guide improves retention of essential skills by having participants write down keywords while watching the video. Using traditional pen and paper to record keywords while watching the video engages both the left and right sides of a student’s brain, thereby improving retention of the material. (Read more about the adult learning principles we use in our burst learning model.)

The keywords a student writes down act as “triggers.” When a student hears the keyword again, it triggers the brain to recall the idea. To learn more about the science and methodology behind triggers, read about interval reinforcement.

Post Questions and Workplace Application

Open-ended post discussion questions help participants transfer new knowledge and skills to the workplace. The open-ended questions are written in such a way that students really have to think about how they will apply their new skills to the challenges and opportunities they are facing back on the job.

Taking a Quiz – Checking Comprehension

With the short quiz, participants check their comprehension of the course material. The quiz is a gauge to make sure the students understand the skills presented in the course before they use them back on the job.

Applying Skills in the Workplace — The Personal Action Plan

Next, students complete their personal action plan. When they are done, they will have a written goal sheet complete with action steps that they can use back on the job.

Their personal action plan is a tool that makes it easy for them to apply skills in the workplace. With their written action plan in place, participants are better prepared to apply their new skills to the specific challenges, objectives, and opportunities they are facing.

Focus Drives Action

Students choose one key skill to apply to the workplace, instead of many. This makes it much easier for the student to take action. It is not overwhelming and the student sees it as an achievable goal – they get a taste of success and are excited to learn and apply new skills in subsequent courses. A cycle of continuous improvement develops.

Applying Skills Back on the Job

Learning doesn’t stop after a student finishes an e-learning course. They must now use the skills back on the job.

Our clients typically have students take one course every other week, or two courses a month. This gives a student plenty of time to put new skills into practice before they have to focus on the next set of skills.

Later in this article, you will learn two of the most popular ways to hold students accountable for applying new skills in the workplace.

Printing Job Aids to Use in the Workplace

If you are investing time and money developing your people, it very important that skills get used back on the job. With Business Training Experts’ burst learning model, application of key skills into the workplace is the primary purpose of the post questions and personal action plan.

Before a student finishes a course, they are able to print and save questions along with their answers in PDF format. Training is not “left on the computer and forgotten about” when they finish an e-learning course. Printing the material transforms it from electronic format to something tangible and useful.

We recommend printing the coursework and putting it a three ring binder. Students can combine the materials from the entire curriculum into one three ring binder. When they finish the curriculum, they will have their own customized reference tool that they can use throughout their career.

Review Key Learning Objectives and Getting a Taste of Success

The final section of the course is a “congratulations” screen notifying the student that they have successfully completed the course. It reviews the course’s key learning objectives, helping the students commit to long-term memory the key skills they just learned.

 Wait. There is more, and it is VERY IMPORTANT!

Tracking Performance – Workplace Application and Accountability

Learning does not stop after a student finishes the e-learning course. Students must now use the skills back on the job. They must understand that they have to apply their personal action plan in the workplace and that they will be held accountable for doing so. This will help drive action and extraordinary performance from your students.

Students usually have a week or two between courses, so they have a “deadline” of when they will use their personal action plan on the job. This gives them plenty of time to put new skills into practice, ensuring they will retain them and create positive change in your organization.

Earning Certificates of Achievement and CEUs

After a student successfully completes a curriculum, they are awarded a certificate of achievement containing continuing education units (CEU). Some curricula have a final exam that a student must pass before earning CEUs. Students can print their certificate or save it as a PDF.

Cheating the Learning Process – Skimming Through a Course

You’ve probably experienced a boring e-learning course that you wanted to end as quickly as possible. It may have looked something like this…listen to an audio while watching a PowerPoint slide, answer two questions, read another PowerPoint, answer two questions…repeat the process until you finish the course. With this type of learning, students will try to advance through a course as quickly as possible so they get credit for its completion.

At Business Training Experts, following our burst learning model, we design engaging courses that your students love participating in. Students see the value in learning practical skills that they know they can use back on the job. Courses are short and concise, so students don’t see it as a waste of their time.

Returning to a Course – Bookmarking

Courses are designed to be completed in one sitting (approximately 25-30 minutes), but we know this is not always possible. In each section of the course, students are required to click the ‘Save & Next’ button. If they close a course and return to it at a later time, they will have the option of continuing where they left off, or starting over.

Retaking Courses for Review

Students can retake and review courses as many times as they like. When they take a course for the second time, they are often experiencing different challenges and opportunities in the workplace than when they first completed the course. The second time they take a course, their results and how they apply the skills in the workplace are different. They are getting the benefit of learning and re-learning skills that are applied to new situations. Your organization benefits multiple times from the same course.

Continuous Improvement and Learning

With our burst learning model, students develop a continuous improvement mindset that drives change and bottom-line performance. Short courses are offered at regular intervals creating momentum — skills develop over time instead of tapering off. Students develop positive habits and a performance improvement mindset spreads across the workplace.