E-Learning courses About Using Antivirus Software: These Methods Promote Success

Many organizations already rely on e-learning courses, for example, to build cybersecurity awareness and using antivirus software. But what is e-learning anyway and what do you have to consider to ensure success?

What Is E-Learning Anyway?

When someone completes e-learning (from “electronic learning”, also “online learning”), he or she learns via electronic devices and digital platforms. In organizations, the term is mainly used as a collective term for training courses via the Internet and so-called learning management systems (LMS). The training content or e-learning courses are then available to employees online on a learning platform and they can work through them independently.

E-Learning Courses vs. Traditional Learning Formats: Which Is Better?

The word "self-determined" already indicates that flexibility plays a major role in e-learning. And that is also the main argument of its proponents: Employees can work on the learning content regardless of time and place. So there is plenty of space for individual approaches. At the same time, e-learning courses are very cost-effective compared to traditional learning formats - such as time-limited workshops or training courses and effective. Once the learning management system and the relevant content have been implemented, the platform is available to employees around the clock. The whole thing also makes sense in terms of motivational psychology. Learners can decide for themselves when to devote themselves to the learning tasks. This principle is also called “just-in-time” learning: Our human need to learn something can always be satisfied directly and “on time”.

Educational, Meaningful E-Learning Courses Rely on These Methods

If you are currently planning an e-learning course, you should always think in terms of the employees. This is how you get the most out of the action. It makes sense to take a look at the scientific findings of the last few years. Below are some examples of how you can increase the learning success of your employees in this way:

1. Individual Levels of Difficulty: Feasible for Everyone

Many of us have found ourselves in the following situation: We are studying for an upcoming exam and suddenly stumble upon a task that we cannot solve right away. The typical psychological mechanism: frustrated, we break off the whole learning session.

E-learning courses should therefore offer individual levels of difficulty for employees with different levels of knowledge. The colleagues from the IT department certainly already know more about ransomware than those from the HR department. You can solve the problem by including aids, such as optional learning tips. Learners then decide for themselves when they need help and do not withdraw from the learning process in frustration.

2. Situational Learning: Tell Good Stories

We can remember exciting stories much better than a random string of numbers. It is not for nothing that indigenous peoples have passed on their knowledge of stories and legends. Why? We memorize situations much better than facts. The keyword for e-learning is, therefore "situational learning".

In addition to better memorability, situational learning helps especially with learning transfer. This aspect is an important sticking point, especially in vocational training. Knowledge - about phishing in awareness training courses - should not be passed on simply for the sake of knowledge. Rather, it should change behavior in the long term  - for example, encourage people not to click on suspicious attachments in emails in the future. The closer the e-learning is to the professional reality of the learner, the easier it is to integrate what has been learned into everyday life. It is therefore advisable, for example, to take e-learning courses based on the storytelling principle to build - i.e. to tell realistic stories in and across the modules. The exemplary scenarios make it easier for learners to apply the rules they have learned to new contexts.

3. Learning vs. Performance Tasks: Practice without Pressure

A big problem with traditional learning formats: They serve the pure testing of knowledge and thus build shyness and pressure. In your e-learning, you should break this structure and instead enable knowledge acquisition in a safe framework. Nobody is free from defects and nobody likes to be controlled. You should therefore clearly separate learning tasks from performance tasks so that learners have the opportunity to complete the latter when they feel ready.

For both types of tasks, the learners must receive individualized feedback promptly, for example about which content they should deal with more. This drives the human need to develop further. The employees remain motivated - want to expand their knowledge and change their behavior to achieve the overarching learning goal.

4. Diverse Forms of Learning:
from Video to Quizzes

Not only in science there is an agreement that varied forms of learning has a positive effect on the success of training courses. Who wants to read the rules bluntly or repeat the same exercise over and over again?

Different approaches to content promote learning and make knowledge more flexibly applicable. So that employees do not forget the knowledge they have acquired and also integrate it into their everyday work, you should incorporate various content formats into e-learning courses. These can be videos, interactive learning modules based on storytelling, quizzes, and playful, so-called gamification elements. This makes it easier to apply the content to everyday situations.

5. Distributed Learning: Regular Bits of Knowledge

A long-known insight from memory research has received astonishingly little attention in the course of employee training: the forgetting curve. What Hermann Ebbinghaus already described at the end of the 19th century has been documented several times in recent decades: after a short time, we forget a large part of the subject matter. According to Ebbinghaus, half of the imprinted content has already disappeared from our memory after half an hour.

However, researchers were able to demonstrate that a “spaced repetition” - that is, a “distributed repetition” - flattens this steep forgetting curve. If we repeat learning material at regular intervals, we slow down the loss of knowledge. This is where modular e-learning courses can score. Many small modules that repeatedly take up topics such as phishing can not only be better integrated into everyday life. They also help your employees to memorize the knowledge in a much more lasting way than would be the case with a 90-minute mandatory training course.

E-Learning Courses Promote Learning Success and Create Lasting Awareness

In the area of ​​vocational training, ultimately, it is primarily a matter of developing practical skills. This is about the distinction between “can” and “want”. On the one hand, the learners must be able to react to IT security risks, for example - they need the necessary knowledge for this. On the other hand, they must also want to act accordingly and, for example, actively change their password and use the best antivirus software. Guideline papers and blunt rules are often not enough to change the behavior of employees. Interactive workshops, but above all psychologically and pedagogically motivated e-learning courses, on the other hand, have powerful learning effects. Because they pay on internal learning mechanisms that boost the success of the training measures. Under the motto “Learners first”, organizations succeed in sensitizing their employees in a more sustainable manner and in training behavior over the long term.