The Power of Onboarding in Online Learning
In this Article
The first time someone logs into a new online course, they’re rarely thinking about the content. It is more likely that they’re thinking: where do I click? Is this the right screen? Why won’t my password work? Where do I go next?
None of this clicking around is about learning, but all of it decides whether learning can even begin to take place.
The first week or two of any online course sets the student up for success – or drop out. We’ve supported thousands of students in online learning courses, and we’ve learned that someone is more likely to complete a course if:
- They can log into the course easily and successfully.
- They completed the initial orientation section of the course to get familiar with the platform.
- They started and completed all the activities in the first unit.
- They completed the first end-of-unit quiz.
Once these activities have been successfully completed, the student is significantly more likely to finish the course.
On the other hand, a great deal of the early drop-off happens between any one of these four points, that small, frustrating gap between starting a course and starting to learn.
Why Have an Onboarding Process?
Most early drop-off happens in the gap between signing up and truly starting to learn in a course. A dedicated onboarding process at the start of an online course is a key to unlocking the learning journey for many learners. Studies of online orientation programmes bear this out: a well-designed introduction to an online course measurably improves how ready learners feel, and even how likely they are to stay and finish the course.
Onboarding is the work of making every person feel comfortable, capable, and welcome in an online learning space. A dedicated and well-managed onboarding process at the start of an online course makes every student feel that they belong and can find their way to start the learning. More importantly, it starts to build their belief that they can learn successfully in online courses. We call this self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy is a person’s belief in their own ability to succeed at a specific task; this belief shapes how willing they are to try, persist, and push through difficulty. Onboarding is a tool to build self-efficacy.
Then the real work starts. Every unit has its own boards where teachers post how they solved a problem. One lays out the full working for counting squares on a chessboard; another pins a photo of their handwritten page; a third explains their generalisation in a sentence. Different routes to the same problem, side by side, where everyone can compare them, something a forum can hold but can’t display.
The Cost of Ignoring Onboarding
While online learning may be familiar for some, others arrive uncertain, and every unfamiliar button, drop-down or task feels like a small test they might fail. That difference has very little to do with ability and a great deal to do with exposure.
When onboarding is skipped, that uncertainty is often invisible to the facilitator. The nervous learner rarely emails or calls to say they’re stuck. They log in, scroll around, feel lost, and log out. Each fumbled attempt chips away at their belief that they can learn in an online space. Having worked with thousands of online learners, we’ve learned that those who lose their way at the start are usually the ones with limited prior exposure. Their leaving is easy to misread: it looks like a lack of commitment when it was really a lack of a way in, and dwindling belief that they can learn online.
There’s also a cost to the organisation. Every learner who leaves may look like a wasted enrolment, but they represent a lost opportunity for capacity building. As a result, the organisation, NGO or training provider doesn’t build the capacities needed in the team, and may even lose great people who most needed the skills because they couldn’t engage in the learning. Ignoring onboarding doesn’t just impact completion rates, but limits the organisation’s impact, and writes off the learners who could not be reached.
In conclusion
Onboarding is not the dull admin before the real learning begins. It is the moment that decides whether the learning begins at all. Done well, it turns a nervous beginner into a learner who believes they belong and can succeed. Done poorly, or skipped entirely, it loses people before they ever reach the content you worked so hard to build.
How do you actually onboard learners well? Keep an eye out for our Recipe for Onboarding in the next blog! We’ll share a practical, step-by-step guide to welcoming people into an online course and setting them up to succeed.
References
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W. H. Freeman.
Hayman, R., Wood, M., Wharton, K., & Shotton, L. (2022). Supporting the integration of first-year undergraduate widening participation sport students into university: the role of online programme induction. SN Social Sciences, 2, Article 272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-022-00574-7
Liu, J. C. (2019). Evaluating online learning orientation design with a readiness scale. Online Learning, 23(4), 42–61. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v23i4.2078
Saadé, R. G., & Kira, D. (2009). Computer anxiety in e-learning: The effect of computer self-efficacy. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 8, 177–191. https://doi.org/10.28945/166
Ready to help more learners succeed from day one?
A strong onboarding experience can make the difference between learners who quietly disappear and learners who confidently complete their courses. If you’d like to explore practical ways to improve onboarding in your Moodle LMS, book a complimentary 30-minute conversation with our team. We’d love to discuss your learning environment and share ideas tailored to your organisation.
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Dr Isabel Tarling – CEO
Isabel Tarling is a learning sciences scholar, programme designer and education researcher, with a PhD from the University of Cape Town. Her research in online and technology-supported learning forms the foundation for much of her writing. She aims to build easy-to-understand bridges between evidence-based research and its everyday application in real-world contexts. Isabel is the founder of Limina, where these ideas are put to work to reimagine learning for organisations of all shapes and sizes.