The idea that an eLearning portal caters only to learners seeking out distance learning avenues is a thing of the past. Today, online learning is not restricted to the realms of formal education. It is also increasingly embraced by a diverse demographic of learners who want to upskill.

Nearly half of the most profitable companies in the world are using eLearning methods to help rookie professionals develop their technical skills. With an eLearning portal, companies are experiencing an exponential increase in employee engagement. On average, employees spend more than 5 hours learning on an eLearning platform.

Since eLearning enhances learning opportunities and provides a medium for them, we have compiled some best practices for creating an eLearning portal. Dive in and read how you can develop an effective and productive eLearning portal.

Table of Contents:

The Essence of eLearning Student Portals

As per a Workplace Learning Report by LinkedIn, a whopping 94 percent consider these training programs an investment in their development and are likely to stick with an employer who caters to that need.

Today, modern education revolves around eLearning student portals and online learning platforms. These are essential for students, businesses, and educators alike to view course materials, assignments, communication, and much more. This guide showcases the most important aspects and steps taken to create an impactful platform for the learning environment.

5 Reasons Why You Need an eLearning Student Portal

With all the tools to facilitate learning at one’s own pace, eLearning student portals are in complete harmony with their target audience, making online learning portals a sought-after commodity.

The growing trend of utilizing eLearning student portals underscores their significance in the modern education system.

Here are five reasons why you must build an eLearning student portal:

1. Time and Cost Effectiveness

In this new eLearning space, upskilling programs are an urgent requirement for any education or business model. When this upskilling is done as an online learning program, it allows learners to access the content at their convenience and pace.

An eLearning student portal saves time because materials and tools are immediately available from one interface. It also reduces operational costs as it does not require physical resources and allows for ease in digital communication and assessment.

2. Better Scope of Retention

It is no secret that the modern-day learner suffers from a short attention span and is definitely out of touch with the practice of poring over long, heavy text. An eLearning platform can deliver important information that helps the learner to be receptive to bite-sized, simplified content in interactive modules.

Active features like quizzes, multimedia, and forums engage learners with the content, promoting retention. Portals also offer constant revision, with all content well placed at the learner’s fingertips. This engaging nature of content facilitates better retention and allows for internalizing the new concepts.

3. Consistency in Learning

In a traditional learning session, you would have a line-up of instructors, each with their tools, methods, and approaches to teaching. Learners may find it difficult to get attuned to one method after another while absorbing the information being shared.

Every student receives the same quality of materials, assessments, and updates, thus reducing discrepancies in learning experiences. An eLearning platform with its consistent content is the perfect alternative for creating standardized training programs.

4. Personalized Touch

If there is one thing wrong with the traditional system of learning, it is the one-size-fits-all approach. An eLearning student portal, on the other hand, takes the unique learning preferences and goals of each learner into account. This allows them the freedom to scroll through their course at their own pace of learning.

With built-in analytics, online learning portals can customize the learning journey to individual needs. Students receive personalized recommendations, progress tracking, and feedback, enhancing their overall experience. Once a learner feels in control, they are far more likely to remain invested in the goal of acquiring new skills and training.

5. Ease of Scalability

An eLearning portal is a one-time investment that can be scaled up or down with ease, allowing organizations to make it accessible to as many learners as needed.

The more learners sign up for the courses or training programs being offered, the more you can expand the purview of the platform and the quicker you can recover the initial investment. eLearning student portals are highly scalable; adding new courses, students, and features improves functionality or performance.

These software applications are designed to deliver learning materials to the target audience in an interactive and engaging manner.

5 Steps to Build an Online Learning Portal

Creating an online learning portal is an important step toward advanced digital education. From picking the right platform to launching the final product, these five steps will help you build a user-friendly and efficient eLearning student portal.

Here’s how you can build a portal that facilitates learning from scratch:

1. Choose the Right Platform

Although an eLearning portal offers enormous possibilities, your choice of platform plays a crucial role in maximizing its potential.

You must ensure that the platform supports content management, communication tools, and scalability. Key considerations include cost, ease of integration, and long-term adaptability.

Here are some options to pick from:

  • Open-Source Platform: This is one of the most versatile portals for eLearning, as it gives you the freedom to customize entire programs as per your goals and demands. It is easy to scale and diversify using third-party add-ons.
  • Massive Open Online Courses: These are appropriate for a large audience. Their biggest advantage is that these can be leveraged by anyone with access to the internet.
  • Web Conferencing Software: Designed to facilitate online classes through live chats, calls, or video conferencing, this is cut out for one-on-one learning.
  • Content Management Systems: These allow you to create websites and applications for eLearning and generate content within that framework. It is most suitable for customized learning programs.

2. Develop an eLearning Portal

The first and most crucial aspect of this step is to recognize and clearly define your requirements. The idea is to integrate features that contribute towards the creation of a customized eLearning platform in line with your goals.

Collaborate with developers or use intuitive software to build your portal’s core functionality. Focus on integrating essential features like course uploading, progress tracking, and secure access. Ensure your portal is flexible enough to accommodate future updates.

Here are some of the basic features to consider:

  • Flexible modes of authentication, such as social media logins.
  • Ease of navigation to browse through different courses and choose the one most suited to the learners’ needs.
  • Easy enrollment process
  • Notifications for new classes or content
  • Seamless channels of communication between learners and mentors
  • Engaging, interactive content
  • Statistics on performance
  • Valid certification

3. Design and User Experience

User experience is the key focus of any online learning program. Create a mind map – a graphical representation of your ideas. Follow it up with detailed wireframes to make sure every little detail and element gets captured and included in the end product.

Be sure to create a clean, intuitive, and mobile-friendly interface. Those areas related to ease of navigation allow students to easily locate course materials, share assignments, and communicate with the instructors. Accessibility features for different learners are essential.

4. Test Your Platform

Once the framework is ready, it is imperative to test it on real users to assess its effectiveness and use constructive suggestions, feedback, and criticism to better it.

Run usability testing and stress-test the platform with different loads. Gather feedback from a small focus group of students and instructors to determine possible improvements.

5. Launch

After all the tweaks and revisions have been made to create an interactive, intuitive, and versatile eLearning student portal, all that’s left for you to do is roll it out for your people.

After having ascertained that the platform is both robust and user-friendly, it is time to launch it. Give onboarding instructions clearly to the students, workforce, and educators. Provide training sessions and materials to familiarize the users with the features of the portal. Actively collect feedback to allow for continuous improvement and updates post-launch.

What are the Best Practices to Create an Enterprise eLearning Portal?

Once you know how to create custom eLearning programs, here’s how you can create an eLearning portal for enterprises:

1. Choose an Authoring Tool that Reinforces Your Brand Identity

One of the best practices for creating an enterprise eLearning portal is choosing an authoring tool that offers the functions and features you require.

Since every employee has unique learning requirements, you can’t go back to your programmers to update the portal every time. When you need to develop courses for every employee category differently with different time requirements, you should be able to do it without knowing the technical aspects of development. An authoring tool helps anyone create courses without the guidance of a programmer.

2. Focus on Visual Design

The second step is to utilize the numerous eLearning templates available online and design the course. By doing this, you can save on the course development time and also, at the same time, inspire the training team with no technical or design background to develop employee training courses.

Visual design is more than just creating pretty graphics and incorporating eLearning into brand collaterals. It sparks creativity, evokes emotion, and challenges learners. It is essential for you as a brand to consider how visual design can be utilized to maximize learner retention, enhance the experience, and make learning accessible to all.

3. Opt for a Cloud-Based eLearning Portal

The third and most crucial step is to opt for a cloud-based eLearning portal. Every employee can have hassle-free access to the curriculum on the cloud-based eLearning portal, where users can easily locate everything they need, ranging from videos, images, PDF files, and even quizzes. You can also create a shared calendar that highlights upcoming events and assignment deadlines.

4. Implement Social Learning Tools

The fourth step is to utilize additional resources, such as YouTube, Blogger, Facebook, etc. You can embed these links into presentations and other online content for trainees to watch learning videos, read up blogs about topics, or interact with peers online. These elements can help employees consume information faster. It also makes your course look more polished.

Big corporations like PayPal are attracting top talent and retaining their employees for longer durations by using a myriad of social learning tools on their eLearning platform. For instance, the Learning Management System (LMS) allows YouTube videos to be played directly without redirecting to YouTube’s home page.

5. Understand the Learner’s Limitations

The fifth step is to avoid overusing multimedia elements and thus resist the temptation of incorporating multiple videos, audio clips, and graphic elements into a single coursework. Additionally, you need to understand the learner’s limitations and keep upgrading the skill level only when the learner accomplishes a milestone.

Employees are always looking for a chance to grow and expand their professional and personal skills. Studies estimate that 30% of employees who are driven through a gamification environment supported by eLearning generate more ROI as compared to those who receive classroom training.

The Bottom Line

An eLearning portal is an important tool for transforming the future of learners. Yes, it takes a considerable amount of money, time, and effort to build one, but the returns make this investment every bit worth your while.

Since an eLearning portal gives access to course materials online, employees no longer have to fret about how they will be able to access resources. The course materials are available at the click of a button every time they face a difficult situation.

Adopting an eLearning student portal or online learning platform is no longer an option, but a necessity, for businesses aiming to succeed in the new digital-first education environment. With this knowledge and process in mind, you can build a portal with platforms like Hurix Digital that will improve learning results and operational efficiency.

Ready to build your eLearning student portal? Partner with us to use cutting-edge technology and expertise in building scalable, user-friendly online learning portals specifically tailored to your needs.