How course certification improves learning outcomes (and how to create your own certificates!)

Let’s imagine you’ve created some of the most compelling, visually striking, and responsive learning content of your career. If you’ve used Gomo’s authoring tool to do it, that’s more than likely! But here’s the snag: your learners won’t be dazzled by the quality of your eLearning courses unless they actually engage with those courses.

While you might be tempted to assume that this will happen more or less automatically—employees do want to learn and develop, after all, in a trend that’s growing among newer entries to the workplace—you can’t take learner participation for granted. One in five employees don’t feel they have the time to participate in company training, for example, and it never hurts to bolster quality learning material with an extra incentive or two.

That’s where certification comes in. Read on to discover how awarding certificates can improve learning outcomes—and how to introduce certification within your Gomo courses.

Boost learning outcomes and engagement

According to a report on training and sales productivity, one organization saw a significant increase in deal size per rep when it rolled out—among other things—a formal certification program involving non-financial rewards. Of course, you won’t always be able to measure training impact based on sales or profits, and the program in question also involved other factors, but certification was at its core—and the results are pretty compelling.

More broadly, research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has found strong evidence that non-financial rewards (like certificates!) and similar forms of employee recognition can have a real impact on employee performance.

In short, there’s plenty of reason to believe that certificates can motivate employees to complete their training and participate in learning activities.

Keep track of learner progress

While certificates are a less sophisticated method of tracking learner progress than those offered by an LMS like our partner organization, Bridge, certifications are a great additional way for your learners to demonstrate that they’ve completed their courses.

This is especially true when you take advantage of Gomo’s date and timestamping functionality. This handy feature lets learners know exactly when they completed their training—adding an additional layer of administrative precision as you keep on top of every employee’s learning adventure.

How to create a certificate in Gomo

Supplying your learners with a certificate in Gomo is simple. Once you’ve designed and added a certificate screen to your course, you can add a ‘print to PDF’ button in either the header or footer of your course.

You can control this functionality from the navigation and tracking settings within each screen, ensuring that only the screens you want—like that all-important certificate—can be exported as a downloadable PDF.

Combine this approach with Gomo’s date and timestamp functionality, and you’ll have a fully functional certificate ready and waiting to motivate and encourage your learners.