According to workforce.com, 73.6 percent of the online training in Fortune 500 firms comes through networked education software. These facts manifest the ever-growing popularity of e-Learning in the corporate environment over traditional instructor-led classroom training.
For decades, companies used the instruction-led training (ILT) system to train their staff. Though this training format is highly effective, at the same time, it’s inflexible and not cost-efficient. Moreover, the quality of training is highly influenced by the instructor’s competency in ILT, therefore, is inconsistent. To overcome these issues, organizations are now quickly adopting e-Learning landscape to impart training to their employees.
The benefits of blended learning greatly outweigh conventional classroom training, especially with the global expansion of organizations and remote employees. Now, employees can learn at their pace, and retain more because they are fully engrossed in the program. Technology is transforming traditional face-to-face classroom practice to a better, self-paced and distributed model, replete with simulations and multimedia.
e-learning offers unmatched multimedia merits as well. It helps enhance the learning experience using engaging videos, audios, and written and spoken words. With robust and fast networks, employees can now access e-learning modules from anywhere and anytime on their devices.
Many corporate e-Learning trends have popped up in 2017. Multigenerational workforces are now eagerly looking for fast and effective online training resources to hone their talent. However, organizations must know where to focus and invest their e-Learning budget to allocate their resources effectively. The top 5 corporate e-Learning trends organizations should watch are:
Microlearning Online Training Libraries
Now, employees don’t prefer longer courses, hefty manuals, boring workshops and training sessions. Instead, they want effective, easy-to-understand and quick information right on their devices.
Microlearning online libraries offer quick bursts of bite-sized information targeted to employees’ needs. In these libraries, companies store their lengthy web-based training content into small standalone nuggets. Employees get all-time access to online training libraries and learn what, when and how they want. It gives employees the opportunity to focus on the areas for improvement and fine-tune their skills.
Microlearning online training libraries enable learners to put their skills and knowledge into action right away. For example, they watch a 6-minute training tutorial and then immediately apply the skills, they’ve just acquired, in practice.
Employees no longer have to keep up with their co-workers or wait for the next training session. Now they can even create self-paced online training courses by compiling different microlearning activities and assessments.
Gamification
Gamification in eLearning combines game theory and game mechanism in non-game contents to engage and motivate employees. Incorporating gamification in corporate evokes a friendly competition and excites employees to participate on a personal level. It doesn’t have tangible incentives, such as monetary rewards or gift cards. Instead, the winner receives eLearning badges, points, or progressing through levels.
All these fuel their motivation towards professional success and foster an emotional connection to enhance the benefits further. Besides learning and training, gamification and serious games in the workplace promote employees’ health and reduce stress. Therefore, gamification eLearning trends are prevalent in the corporate world these days.
Your gamification strategies should have measurable goals. It should reinforce favorable behavior within the organization and guide employees in the right direction. Also, don’t forget to include late-starter in the game to keep them motivated. You can reward them with start-up bonus point or a special badge if they meet requirements.
Online Training Webinar
Webinars are taking the corporate world by storm. Also known as web conferencing, webinars offer huge interaction with other participants. Though webinars have been around the corporate world for quite a while, companies are now using them in innovative ways. Organizations are integrating videos in their webinars to increase their employees’ engagement and webinar’s visual appeal.
Many organizations offer few days boot camps to help employees quickly boost their proficiency and productivity. They also involve guest speakers, online games, and discussions to achieve the next-level employees’ engagement.
To achieve the best results, keep your webinars scripted and topic-centered. Create an eLearning storyboard so that you hit all the key points and focus on one core idea to reduce cognitive overload on participants. Always record the event for later viewing and invite employees to provide feedback. It helps improve your hosting strategy for future online training webinars. Connect your events with social media hashtags and page to encourage your employees to share their thoughts.
Social and Collaborative Learning
Though the learning and training approaches have evolved, we still inevitably learn from those we collaborate with. In e-Learning environment, collaborative and social learning is an approach where employees interact with each other through live chats, instant messaging and message boards. Social and collaborative learning at workplace not only increases productivity but also saves time and empower employees with shared ideas.
Collaboration is a mainstream tool for promoting employees’ engagement within the company. It enables them for smart decision-making and enhances business outcomes. Social learning plays an important role in team building and deploys the up to date learning technology in the organization.
Introducing an enterprise social network enables teams to work on same projects from remote locations and communicate instantly, all within a virtual framework of a social platform. It ensures that employees can access vital information, whenever required, at their fingertips.
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Personalized Online Training Paths
There are multitudes of ways people assimilate the information they need. Some simply hear and retain it in their memory, while others need to be hands on it. Identifying individual learning preferences requires careful research and is a time-consuming job. However, eLearning education software care designed to easily create more personalized online training resources for employees as per their requirements.
One of such resources is personalized online training path that involves online training assessments, videos, and goals custom tailored to individual’s needs. Personalized online training paths cater to specific experience levels, interests, and performance gaps. These personalized online training paths may involve individual training contracts, assessments, clickable eLearning course maps, and course catalogs that allow employees to choose the one they want.
