Learning Benefits and Trends in L&D

 What do organizations want from L&D? Perhaps to become high performing learning cultures by applying independent evidence to analyze, activate and implement change, gain new insights on how to accelerate their strategy? Let’s mention a few important questions we need to answer first in our L&D journey. 

What are the benefits the learning strategy is delivering to the business and its goals?

• ·      Prove compliance with new regulations and legal requirements
• ·      Speed up the implementation of changes to systems and processes
• ·      Increase on-the-job productivity
• ·      Improve external customer loyalty
• ·      Improve people retention levels
• ·      Inform customers and suppliers of new products and services
• ·      Provide faster response to changing business conditions
• ·      Improve talent management
• ·      Improve organizational performance
• ·      Drive innovation for business growth
• ·      Manage risk successfully
• ·      Improve compliant behaviors within the organization
• ·      Increase the attractiveness of the company as a great place to work
• ·      Develop the learning culture within the organization
• ·      Harmonize learning across the organization
• ·      Enhance the L&D brand
• ·      Build the capability of the organization to solve problems
• ·      Facilitate new ways of working
• ·      Support company mergers and acquisitions
• ·      Support business growth in new markets
• ·      Utilize business intelligence to future-proof the organization
• ·      Enhance responsibility to the wider community

 What are the benefits that the learning strategy is delivering to individuals and their needs?

• ·      Improve the induction/ onboarding process
• ·      Increase learning access and flexibility
• ·      Increase the ability to personalize programmes to individual need/ context
• ·      Develop a better-qualified workforce
• ·      Improve communication and teamwork
• ·      Speed up and improve the application of learning back in the workplace
• ·      Reduce time to capability
• ·      Push updated information to our people at the point of need
• ·      Improve people’s attitude and commitment
• ·      Increase self-directed learning
• ·      Integrate learning within the workflow
• ·      Improve performance management
• ·      Increase the ongoing sharing of good practices
• ·      Decrease business continuity risk through knowledge sharing
• ·      Increase appeal to digital learners of all ages
• ·      Improve access to support at the point of need
• ·      Facilitate continuous learning
• ·      Support contextualized learning
• ·      Leverage networks to drive transformation
• ·      Embed the principles of diversity and inclusion
• ·      Enhance people’s well-being and health
• ·      Increase people’s engagement with learning

What are the benefits the organization is achieving relating to learning and development efficiency?

• ·      Improve management and administration of learning
• ·      Improve the way we gather and analyze data on learning impact
• ·      Improve the quality of learning delivered
• ·      Achieve greater consistency of the learning experience
• ·      Increase the volume of learning, reaching more people
• ·      Reduce operational costs
• ·      Reduce time away from the job
• ·      Deliver greater value for money
• ·      Improve the effectiveness of face-to-face learning
• ·      Extend learning to other locations/remote workers

Measuring Effectiveness

To determine if the learning strategy in place is driving business outcomes, companies must find a way to consistently measure its effectiveness. Companies should determine metrics in advance and include both business metrics and learning/HR metrics. Currently, most companies are considering team encouragement, employee engagement, and employee satisfaction over more concrete business metrics such as retention, turnover, and revenue per full-time employee. 

Ancient methods of providing print-outs and receiving feedback have replaced immediate response systems such as Clickers, allow immediate feedback. Handheld devices permit the instructor to test the class and also provide instant answers to proposed questions. Opinions can be gathered on the fly, and results can later be analyzed to improve future training.

Blended and Hybrid Learning

In the adult learning environment, the facilitator is not always an expert or only source of information and knowledge. The participants are and should be a great resource of information and experience.

Blended learning is an approach that allows participants to access learning in a variety of formats that help them use their face-to-face time for conversation and information-sharing.

In hybrid learning, participants have advance access to materials – articles, books, e-learning, podcasts, videos, quizzes or other formats - and when they come together through a virtual or in-person session, they can engage in more effective forms of learning.

Participants discuss their takeaways and how the information applies to their work context, share challenges, ask questions, or practice with case studies or simulations. The goal of blended or hybrid learning is to make the learning environment more balanced by effectively meeting all participants where they are and exchanging experiences that strengthen people’s understanding of the concepts they’re learning. It’s less about technology and more about using a variety of forms of learning based on learners’ unique needs.

Mobile Phones and Tablets in Learning

Using a smartphone in L&D has many benefits for both the learner and the organization. Accessing content on a mobile device is convenient for the learner because, for better or worse, our cell phones or tablets are with many of us at all times. With mobile learning, the user is in the driver’s seat when it comes to the best time and place to engage in professional development.

The mobile method also allows for microlearning – short, daily learning that helps reinforce behaviors or skills. This method leads to higher success. For those with busy or unpredictable schedules (everyone) or highly active roles, such as clinical professionals, mobile learning allows flexible access to different methods of delivery, such as podcasts, audiobooks or YouTube videos, at their convenience.

E-learning and Digital Storytelling

E-learning is now used to deliver all types of training, and there are thousands of online courses available. Storytelling is a technique that promotes the effectiveness of e-learning by using narratives to elicit creativity and transfer knowledge. Today, storytelling takes on the form of interactive media. Research demonstrates that using storytelling in e-learning can be a powerful strategy for influencing behavioral change and instilling an organization’s cultural norms. Rather than page after page of text and images, stories that are interweaved in the content, enhancing learner engagement by focusing on a challenge that incorporates the learning objectives.

What counts as a visual content? Infographics, slideshows, and presentations; memes; images and stories posted and created on platforms like Instagram and Snapchat; videos: this type of content comes in a variety of formats. Brands may produce short videos on Instagram or Snapchat or put up tutorials, product reviews, behind-the-scenes footage, or entertaining videos on Facebook, YouTube or Vimeo. It also includes live-streaming videos on Facebook and Periscope, which enable brands to connect with customers on a more personal level.

Best e-learning platforms: Docebo, Udemy, Skillshare, WizIQ, Adobe Captivate Prime, SAP Litmos, Absorb, LearnUpon.

Favorite Multimedia Storytelling Platforms: Sequel, Atavist, Twine, Steller, Story Maps, Medium; Shadow Puppet was designed for the classroom, iOS app Shadow Puppet allows users to combine photos and videos, record voiceover and add music, overlay text, and even add images from educational vanguards like the Library of Congress and Met Museum.

The Gamification of Learning

Gaming is an approach that gives learners the opportunity to apply their knowledge in real-life situations through a creative, productive and engaging experience. Because learners feel like they are playing a game, this method increases user engagement and information retention. You can develop simulations around any subject and adapt them for the skill level of the learner. By enabling users to apply their understanding of difficult concepts or test their knowledge, gamification can achieve comprehension in a less formal approach.

Gamification isn’t just for the digital world; you can use gamification in face-to-face training to simulate complex issues that teams must solve collaboratively or to prepare for crisis situations in a controlled environment. Another benefit of this format is that the learners receive immediate feedback on their choices, which helps reinforce the new knowledge or skills that change behavior.

From gamified micro-courses that help employees get to grips with procedures or software to educational apps that teach through quizzes, videos, flashcards, and memory games – the gamification of learning materials provides a fast and easy way to digest information.

By linking games with learning activities, organizations can tap into people’s desires of socializing, being rewarded, and making choices – which consequently makes them more likely to engage with the content and apply what they’ve learned practically.

AI and Chatbots

Chatbots are conversational interfaces powered by AI. Two of the most well-known are Siri and Alexa. The goal of a chatbot is to create a human-like conversation delivered via text or audio. In L&D, chatbots can conduct quizzes to detect employees’ progress after training, deliver learning practice and assessments, and perform a skills gap analysis to roll out questions in manageable chunks and offer feedback. A chatbot can send bite-sized learning by selecting an article at random from a curated pool and relaying a summary to the learner. You can also use chatbots to ignite a conversation, and then a human can take over with his or her understanding of what the user needs.

AI provides insights based on a large amount of data, which helps to learn professionals facilitate the creation of customized learning. By providing a better understanding of learner behaviors and predicting needs, AI recommends and positions content for the learner’s specific gaps, similar to the way Netflix and YouTube offer a list of shows or videos you may be interested in watching using an algorithm based on past behavior. As humans, our best option is to understand the jobs of our employees and the tools and techniques that are best to drive performance through learning. Our role will become more of a curator of resources and tools.

3D Printing in Learning

3D printing, which is also known as prototyping, allows us to learn with a more tangible and physical experience, in a safe environment.

Someone can easily shape his/ her idea of an object thanks to 3D printers. With 3D printing, we can give shape to our imagination. In any institution or organization, 3D printers can help us to unleash our creative ideas and have more hands-on experiences to deliver the best results every single moment.

Virtual And Augmented Learning Experiences

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have come as s big boost to online education. Thanks to VR and AR learners can actually get an immersive learning experience without needing to move their legs too much. If you want to learn about space objects just by running a 3D space video on your VR headgear, you can float in space while a background voice continues depicting you the Milky Way in detail. Similarly, real-time broadcasting of critical surgical operations allows medical students to learn through a more immersive experience.

Many big-tech companies such as Sony, Samsung, and the Facebook-backed Oculus, stake their claim on the VR market. VR is already applied in many learning settings – products like Google Cardboard, for example, are being used in a number of schools across the country.

Source: tmhealthcheck, peoplemattersglobal, training industry, clearvoice, reeduk