Did you know that one of the elearning platforms that you can use are emails? An email is one of the first manifestations of the Internet. What is great about emails is that they never really changed much over the years. These are still effective means of communication. Whether for corporate or personal use, you can rely on your email to send and receive information.
Since elearning courses are practically useful information that come from instructors and is passed on to learners, who says we cannot use emails to send that data?
The great thing about an email is its simplicity and accessibility. If you do not have a budget for sophisticated learning management systems, this is something that you can use.
Almost everyone knows how to use emails. Although it is now plagued with spam and other phishing mails, most service providers have found a way to successfully filter the bad emails from the not. This guarantees that the elearning course in the email you will send will reach its intended recipient.
The question is, how can you use this simple tool to carry the lesson to the learners? Here are a couple of things that you should know about an email-based elearning platform.
- Lesson designs. This will highly depend on the lesson itself. If you have a short lesson only, an email message might suffice. But if the information you will send is quite lengthy, you can use a PDF file as an attachment. If the lesson is very long, you can separate them in chapters and send it in installment. That way, the learners will have time to absorb the lesson before you send them another batch to learn.
- Use autoresponders. This is a great feature of emails. You can set up a message once and if a visitor in your site meets the qualifications, you can send your elearning package automatically. For instance, a visitor in your site can opt-in to receive your course and it will be automatically sent according to how you have set it up – installment or a one time email. This is difficult to do with other real-time elearning platforms.
- Monitoring methods. Although it is very simple, you need to know that emails can help you monitor the recipient’s behavior. There are intelligence tools that will help you measure the open rate, click-through rate and other responses to the links and attachments on the email. This will help you gauge how many people the course have reached and how they have completed the course. If the email was forwarded or shared – this is also something that you can monitor.
- Testing your elearning course. Another quality of an email is allowing you to test your course on different sets of recipients. For instance, in the opt-in function, you can ask visitors questions and their answers will determine what type of course you will send them. Once you have taken the data (recipient behavior), you can switch the courses among groups and see what happens. It is a great testing ground for designers of elearning courses.
Emails are equipped with tools that will help you test what the learners got from the course. You do not have to worry about the elements of online learning like conducting tests or assessments. There are already tools available for that.
Take note that an email-based elearning course can be combined with other online learning tools. It can be used as one portion of your course or you can use it exclusively. It is all up to you. The important thing is, you know that this is one option that you can use for learning.
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